Internalization And Transcendence: On The Relationship Between The Hebrew Bible Yahweh Faith With The Nation Of Israel

There are both religious and ethnic meanings of the concept of Israeli. It serves as an ethnic group and also a religious group. On the one hand, faith in YHWH, which unities the group of Israel people, gives them common cultural identity and lifestyle. On the other hand, the special characters of Israeli ethnic group add a lot more contents to the faith in YHWH. The paper believes that the Israeli ethnic created the YHWH faith while the faith in YHWH unified the Israeli ethnic identity.The thesis tries to answer a series of questions as follows: How does the double meaning of Israeli come together in one term of Israeli? Which are the influences of YHWH faith on the formation and development of ethnic Israeli? And what are the effects of the ethnic character of Israeli on the YHWH faith? What is the relation between the YHWH faith and Israeli ethnic? The answer to these questions is the main contents of this thesis.This study takes the "Hebrew Bible" (often known as the "Old Testament") as the raw materials, with the issue of relationship between religion and nationality as the central question. Combined with some theories on religion and nationality, the classic approaches of literary and historical criticism are applied in studying the basic issue of the relationship between the Israeli nationality and its religion.This thesis believes that the faith in YHWH plays a significant role in the formation of Israeli ethnicity. The faith in YHWH, which unities Israeli ethnicity, is internalized into its ethnicity. But on the other hand, it also, to some extent, transcends the narrow ethnic boundaries, containing rich universal orientation. This thesis also holds the point that the ethnicity of Israeli constrains the faith in YHWH to a certain extent. Ethnic factors restrict it in its universality and openness, and finally resulting in the failure of the faith in YHWH to become a world religion.