Page:A Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Genesis (Morgenstern, 1919, jewishinterpreta00morg).pdf/22

 The Book of Coicsis

4

through purely

man

that

should

human processes. Surely God has willed know more and ever more of Him and His

way; the knowledge which these prophets, as sons of Israel, God must have allowed, and even caused, them to discover, as He allowed and caused no men and no people Aye, this knowledge surely could not iiave before them. been only discovered by these prophets equally it must have been revealed to them by God. This is Revelation.

proclaimed,



Actually, however, Revelation

is

hardly a third source of

knowledge of God, but merely the same two sources viewed from the reverse side, in their divine, rather than in their human, aspect. It says not only that the Jew's knowledge of God came through the religious experiences and discoveries of individuals, particularly certain jjeculiarly fitted individuals, and through the religious experiences and discoveries of the entire people in all the stages and through the

all

Jew's

the fortunes of

that this fore,

its

history, but also that

knowledge come

really afTtirms

in this

manner.

God

has willed

Revelation, there-

only that the tw^o sources of the Jew's

knowledge of God have a divine, as well as a human, origin and cause. But in this sense Revelation means far more than as it is usually interpreted. True Revelation in Israel was through more than the prophets alone or rather, they were merely the agents or mouthpieces of Revelation, and Revelation itself was greater and grander far than just these prophets themselves and their inspired words. The prophets were primarily the children of their own times, spurred to activity not only by the conviction that God had literally called them, but also by the realization of the moral and spiritual evils and needs of their own days. They, above all others, saw God's hand constantly present in Israel's history, and read His divine purpose and guidance in all the events thereof. They realized that God was revealing His will, not only through them to Israel, but also, and to a far