Course XXVII - Teaching 13: Moses’ Religion

The Atlanteans had a divine religion that, by considering the Absolute One as source of all things and unique reality, was reluctant to reflect about physical life and the purpose of man after death.
But this concept became total materialism in the entirely decadent last Atlanteans sub-races.
The Semites that inherited this religion had the same concept about man. God is Everything, the Absolute One, the Unnameable One, Who comprises everything, but man is transient.
In contrast to the Aryans, who believe in life after death and in “Pitris”, invisible protectors of the race, the Semites and particularly the Hebrews do not believe in the survival of man in the hereafter; to them, their name uttered reverently after their death and the memory of the Patriarch, perpetuated in the race, are enough.
Beyond there is just the nothing, eternal silence, what a man must not investigate. In the most extraordinary of cases, certain chosen men will be taken off, even alive, toward the kingdoms of God, to live close to him.
Nomadic tribes of the Hebrews, or rather, some few of them, had settled so steadily in low Egypt that took their own name, since they were called Ben-Joseph. They prevailed over Ben-Israel’s and Ben-Jacob’s tribes, and after attracting these tribes, they controlled them in an aristocratic way.
But frequent nomadic invasions had weakened Egypt and Pharaohs, and periodical internal revolutions were produced by these foreigners in Pharaohs’ provinces.
A young man that served the Egyptian worship, or Levi, called Moses, incited the Hebrews against the Pharaohs, and guided this people to escape toward the desert of Canaan.
The Hebrew people did not take anything from the Egyptian worship, since in Judea always deemed censurable whatever could remember Egypt: the golden calf, the serpent of brass, and other idols. They just preserved the Egyptian priesthood that they copied from the Levis.
The entire worship Hebrew, as you have see, is based on worships of Chaldea and Assyria. But the pure early worship of the Elohim, that had culminated in he beautiful patriarchal figure of Abraham and that only was monotheistic universal, gradually becomes racial monotheism: Yahveh, the Jehovah of the Jews, now is not the Eternal God comprising all, but the peculiar god of the new people, a god reduced to a narrow strip of land, to a short number of man and to a personal relativity.
As this people settles in Canaan as a steady tribe, further condenses in itself this individual god. The spiritual concept of the Hebrews becomes more obscure, in spite of the reign of David and of Solomon’s Temple; as the earthly splendor progresses more and more, materialism prevails more and more among them.
But pain and prophets awakened this people to preserve in the course of races the heritage of Semitic religion.
During their bondage in Babylon, far away from Jerusalem, far away from splendors of Palestine and from the great solemnity of their destroyed Temple, they thought again of the true immensity of God and to listen to words of eternal life of their prophets.
Back in Jerusalem, by will of Cyrus “the Great”, King of Persia, they re-established the purest worship. Ezra compiles lost and scattered laws of the people, and enlarges and established definitively the Torah.
The spiritual life flourishes; and philosophies and men of religion proclaim the existence of the spirit after death.
Later, the Sadducees are materialistic, while the Pharisees are the spiritual branch in Israel.
They consider not only the dead letter of law, but also study its esoteric and hidden part. And when the emerging Christians wanted to appropriate the holy books of the Hebrews, the latter handed them over the Christians with no trouble; so they gave the dead letter to the Christians, and hid the esoteric part –beautifully reflected on the Talmud.