As I continue to make my way through the Old Testament, the most surprising thing is the extent to which the proof of Divine existence continues to hinge on the literal manifestation of divine presence, specifically either God speaking through the mouth of an angel or other messenger and/or through semi-magical acts like the visitation of plagues on this people or that town,* or by God's messenger predicting the fate of this or that character, which then comes to pass.
This flies in the face of the idea that Judeo-Christian monotheism represents a step change in the evolution of religion from paganism to an ethics-based religions, a claim made particularly poignantly by WH Gombrich in his magisterial A Little History of the World (which I really should listen to again), if memory serves correctly. Maybe it doesn't.
But we are still very early in the Bible, which is a book stitched together of writings from very different moments in history and, as my office mate David, a very learned Jewish fellow indeed, pointed out, the Torah is a different kind of religious text. Still trying to figure this out.
*Most interestingly, the episode of the walls falling around Jericho as the tribe of Israel circles the town, which I remembers as much ballyhooed from my church-going youth, happens really as a brief aside in the Bible itself. The walls do fall down, yes, but not much is made of it. Probably it was just an easy thing to visualize for children and easy to make into a song ("Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho")
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