The demonization of victims and calling good evil and evil good has always been the primary function of propaganda, and this has proved to be the case with religious propaganda as well. The prophet Hosea condemned both the propaganda assault against the tribe of Benjamin, and the massacre which followed, (justified in the book of Judges) and the slaughter committed by Jehu against the followers of Baal and the descendants of Ahab which took place in the valley of Jezreel (given high praise in the Book of Kings). Hosea was not a modern Biblical critic, just an outraged prophet. His method of Biblical criticism was entirely subjective and based only on common morality. He was not a Biblical apologist. For Hosea, their guilt was tied up in the scroll. Their sins remained on record. (Hosea 13:12)

      As Hosea recognized, and as later history demonstrates again and again, the role of such religious propaganda was to bring people into subjection to political authorities (he equates the two in his prophecy), and there has never been a better method of stirring up war fever or social intolerance in the service of the state than to claim that it was called for and endorsed by God. Form follows function, according to form criticism, and this case the form (religious and political war propaganda) was certainly dictated by the obvious function such writings were intended to serve.

      The Book of Hosea opens with an unequivocal attack on the Bible, and the story is employed as a metaphor. Some prophets spoke of "the day of YAHWEH,"a day of judgment. For Hosea this became "the day of Jezreel." Prophetsspoke of hammering spears into plowshares and learning war no more. For Hosea,this takes place in the Valley of Jezreel. Jezreel means, "God sows." Hoseawrote, "they sow the wind and they reap the whirlwind," another indication thatthe story is employed as a paradigm in his booklet.

      Consideration of this matter brings to mind interesting questions about the dating of certain Biblical manuscripts. What we have before us is theinteresting case of a prophet fulfilling the role of one of the world's firstrecorded practitioners of biblical criticism. The book of Kings was composed fromearlier source materials, and whether Kings as we know it existed in any form inHosea's day is irrelevant. Literary criticism holds that the Bible should beevaluated as it stands, with no need to consider sources or the form andoriginal function of the writings. For better or worse the Bible now exists asa whole, and should be judged as a single work, since this is how it functionstoday. If we adopt this mode what we find is a prophet, Hosea, the biblicalcritic, 'deconstructing' the books of Kings and Judges, playing the role of a source critic and a redaction critic.

     Thetechnique he employed appears to be very simple. Who cares what they wrote on the scroll? It was atrocious. Plain and simple. It was sin. The fact that they recorded it on their sacred scroll only made Hosea even angrier. They were doubly guilty. Their guilt was tied up in that scroll, and it was as simple as that, for Hosea. Their sins were obviously kept on record, and stamping 'Holy Book' onto that record of sin did nothing to erase their guilt. Hosea's method of 'deconstruction' was to simply tie into the scroll and tear it to pieces on the simple grounds that it violated common morality. He appeared to need no other reason. Neither do we. If we argue, for example, that 'Hosea was a prophet' and that, as a prophet, he had 'the authority' to attack the Bible, we completely miss the point of the lesson to be learned.

     If Hosea had 'authority' on this matter, it was moral authority, and if 'the authority' of a prophet is to be recognized by anyone it will never be on the grounds that 'the religious authorities said so' or 'it was in the official book of prophets' but rather that we, too, have a sense of moral outrage and a disgust with offensive propaganda. It is only if we, too, can be morally outraged by the degrading of anothers humanity that we can, like Hosea, feel offence at 'holy scripture' (which in cases like this one is anything but) and with our moral sense intact we can, like Hosea attack everything immoral and inhumane, making no exceptions for sacred cows or sacred scriptures. For Hosea was no one special before his book became part of the Bible (and who remains no one special, even after the fact).

     There are many different forms of Biblical criticism, but the method of Hosea is particularly necessary for the practice of faith. It is entirely subjective, and this subjective methodology supercedes objectivity when it comes to evaluating a manuscript not for its history or sociology, but as a rule of faith. When approached as a document of faith this methodology demands that one not remain 'scientificallyobjective' and 'hygienically free of value judgments' but rather demandssubjective evaluation of the manuscripts. The Bible, after all, is not a bottleof chemicals. Certain avenues of research require objectivity, and there is aplace for objectivity in biblical research as well. The impact that the Biblehas always had on human life demands that value judgments be made.

     And it is here that we find what I have called 'the lost message of the prophets.' It is a too little known fact that the Jewish prophets were relentless critics of the Bible and in particular the Torah.

     If such beliefs as that of 'inerrant scripture' are to be kept in force, even until modern times, this requires that the lost message of the prophets remain lost. Find their message would render the practice of Christian apologetics pointless. It would also tear at the foundations of classic Christian theology (which is built upon the foundations of the ideology of the sacrificial system of the Levitical priesthood in old Israel, which the radical school of prophets roundly condemned.) If this were to happen Christian understanding would have to be rethought and reinvented from the ground up. Entire manuscripts would require reinterpretation, entire manuscripts would have their inclusion into the canon questioned, for it was prophets who first attacked the canon of scripture (ironically becoming part of scripture in the process, and sadly, becoming nullified scripture in actual practice, despite the doctrine of 'sola scriptura.')

     The cure for this belief system is clearly demonstrated by a prophet named Hosea, no one special, who, on simple moral grounds, and nothing else, tore into the delusive 'Holy War' propaganda found on the pages of the Bible, and through happy circumstance became 'a prophet' and part of 'holy scripture' no less. Even though his voice has been stilled, like most of the prophets, he lies in wait. To use his own metaphor, he sits like a lion or a bear, crouched beside the road, waiting to pounce. As Jeremiah recognized the role of the prophet, they were to sit quietly in ambush. "Now people do not know the requirements of God. How can you say, 'we are wise for we have the law of God,' when, actually, the lying pen of the scribes had it falsified. Their leaders are dismayed, for they have been trapped and snared. But they rejected the Word of God, so what kind of wisdom did they have?" (Jeremiah 8:8)

A Unified Field Theory

The Unified Field Theory
is also available as a zip file -> unified.zip

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