The Source

by James A. Michener

she was still gratified to hear in them a definition of Yahweh that included both austerity and lyric joy. As for herself, even before Gershom’s arrival she had been groping toward a more purified spiritual experience, as many in Israel would do in the centuries ahead, for the disappointments and contradictions of her life had proved that men and women required some central force to cling to. She had almost decided that for no man could this force operate effectively if it were shared between two different kinds of god: there could not be Yahweh and Baal. Reason told her that the time had come to accept one unifying entity who would absorb all lesser deities and she longed for identification with that all-embracing god. Personally she had long since abandoned Baal, but she was now prepared to condemn those who refused to do likewise, and these ideas she had nurtured by herself. To a minor degree they were an outgrowth of her longing for Jerusalem, but to a major degree they had generated that longing.

A religion with both austerity and joy - A purified spiritual experience and central force