
Originally Posted by
orange
We are not supposed to just offer sacrifices when and wherever we feel like it (Deut. 12:13-14). It's considered a sin to offer sacrifice in any place other than where G-d has designated..
It was the Deuteronomists who insisted that all other temples used by ancient Israelites were to be abandoned and that true temple worship could only take place in the heykel at yerushalayim. This was a profoundly political move by the Deuteronomistic party to concentrate power into their own hands.
Deuteronomy is perhaps the most deliberately theological book in the Hebrew Bible, if by theological we mean explaining in a systematic and thoughtful way what the nature of God is and what faith entails. The theological teaching of Deuteronomy as amended by the Deuteronomists can be distilled into three phrases.
1) One God.
The Deuteronomist affirms a "practical" monotheism. "YHWH (or YHVH) is our Elohim, only YHWH." He was not concerned with abstract theological formulations. He stated that there was only one God who was interested in Israel. God demonstrated that by his care in the past. He demands their undivided loyalty in the present. He is the one and only God for their future. The people were bound to Yahweh by means of a legal contract, called the covenant. It defined the shape of their loyalty and specified how they would remain in God's good graces.
2) One People.
Deuteronomy is addressed to the people of God as a whole. No distinction is made between Southern and Northern Kingdoms. There are no tribal distinctions. This presumes the people of God are unified. This is affirmed in the covenant formula, "Yahweh is the God of Israel, and Israel is the people of God." The oneness of the people transcends generations. The book is addressed perpetually to the "now" generation. References to today and this day abound. The covenant is made "not with our fathers but with us alive today." The unity of the people is not based on genetic commonality but on the belief that God called them to be his people. They alone are the people of God, set apart from the rest of the nations and held together because Yahweh, in love, chose them. Sometimes called the "election" of Israel, this notion affirms that these people were singled out by God at his own initiative. That is what makes them special--Yahweh's "treasured possession" in Deuteronomy's language (7:6; see also Exodus 19:5, where the same term is used).
3) One Faith.
Israel had wandered into trouble because it had lost spiritual focus. Local variations in religious practices and the tendency to drift in the direction of Baalism resulted in unorthodox worship. The Deuteronomist demanded uniformity in worship. This could only be enforced if one central sanctuary was officially designated. "The place Yahweh will choose" became the only worship center. Although left unspecified in the text, the Deuteronomist had Jerusalem firmly in mind.
The Deuteronomist assembled annals, prophetic biography, temple chronicles and other historical material and molded them into his own theological image. This is especially true of the central Deuteronomistic tendency to maintain that there is only one legitimate place where Yahweh can be worshipped- the temple in Jerusalem. Thus, those who worshipped at other places were charged with sin (cf. 1 Ki 15:26, 34;16:19, 26).
The Book of Deuteronomy (whose Greek title means, Second Law, is accepted as having been written by Moses himself, but then to have been “lost” until its rediscovery in 622 BC. In the three long discourses of Deuteronomy, Moses reveals a list of instructions that includes criminal and civil law as well as commandments and prohibitions about worship. The composition of Deuteronomy marks, in an important way, the beginnings of the scriptural religions of the Western world.
Prior to 622 BC various texts were kept in the Jerusalem temple, but none of them claimed to be “the word of God.” Instead, they were either hymns to Yahweh (many of the Psalms were composed before this date), or stories about Yahweh, telling what mighty deeds he had done: his creation of heaven and earth, his unleashing of the Flood, his dealings with Abraham, his victories over the enemies of Israel and Judah, and so forth.
In contrast to these earlier texts, Deuteronomy provided the words of Yahweh, as recorded by Moses after his descent from Horeb or Sinai, where Yahweh had spoken to him. Deuteronomy was thus a sacred text.
Judahite religion at the end of the seventh century BC has been called “henotheism” but a more appropriate term for it is “monolatry.” The Judahites - at least in theory - now worshiped only one god. In earlier centuries they had given preferential treatment to Yahweh (“Thou shalt have no other gods
before me!”), but they had not been kept from worshipping other gods.
After Josiah's reform, worship of any other god was regarded as a grave violation of Yahweh's covenant. As rewritten by the Deuteronomist historian, Yahweh had from the very beginning been the one and only god worshiped by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all of Jacob's descendants. Just as the Elohist had interwoven the worship of Yahweh with everything known about the history of Israel in the northern kingdom, so now the temple texts in Jerusalem told how the history of both Israel and Judah was synonymous with Yahweh's blessing and punishing those kingdoms and their forbears.
Although Judahites recognized the existence of other aniconic gods in other kingdoms, in their own kingdom Yahweh became
the deity. His name was so sacred that to say it aloud was to profane it, and he came to be addressed instead with the title, Adonai (“My Lord”).
The Deuteronomist was fanatical in his monolatry and his hatred of anyone in Judah who worshiped other gods. In Deuteronomy Moses is made to command the people to seek out and kill all those in “Israel” who worship gods other than Adonai. You were to slay such a person, regardless of whether he or she was your friend, brother, sister, son or daughter. Thus did the Deuteronomist give to Adonai in Judah the same “jealous” and bloodthirsty character that he had in Israel during the dynasty of Jehu.
Along with this change came the direction that only the Jerusalem temple was the house of yhvh, and that others, especially those in the northern kingdom of Israel should be torn down and treated like the high places and groves of the nations.
M:RGANITE