Italicized paragraphs below are extracts from Christine Elizabeth Hayes’ book Introduction to the Bible (The Open Yale Courses Series) (pp. 304-305). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.
After 586 [BCE], some accepted the idea that the nation was suffering because of the accumulated guilt of previous generations (notably the Deuteronomistic historian), but for others the idea of accumulated guilt and transgenerational punishment lost much of its explanatory power. The destruction and exile were devastatingly severe punishments that were difficult to justify as delayed punishment for an earlier generation’s violations.
Ezekiel is among those who reject the doctrine of collective responsibility in the execution of divine justice. In chapter 18, he responds to the idea of suffering for one’s ancestors’ sins by declaring that times have changed. Yahweh will no longer punish the people collectively—each person will be judged individually, and only the sinner will be punished. This was a major departure from Ex 34 and even from the roughly contemporaneous view of the Deuteronomistic school.
[Below is a wonderful explanation of why the differences in the Hebrew Bible are not “mutually exclusive.”]
It should be noted that this kind of departure, this kind of polyphony, did not impinge upon the authority of the Hebrew Bible for the nation of Israel. The Bible’s authority did not derive from some supposed consistency or univocality. The philosophical tradition so influential in western culture that defines truth in monistic terms—that is, only that which contains no contradiction is true, and only that which is true is authoritative—is alien to the ancient non-Hellenized world. The Hebrew Bible is not a work of philosophy and does not strive to present philosophical truth. The various books of the Hebrew Bible present the best efforts of sages, prophets, scribes, and visionaries to respond to and explain the experiences and crises of the nation over a period of centuries. The Bible’s authority derives from the explanatory power of its insights into and understanding of Yahweh’s governance of the world and his plans for Israel. Those insights and understandings may shift and even stand in contradiction with one another, but they are not mutually exclusive, and their contradictions do not affect their authoritative status within the community, their ability to explain and to console, and their ability to nourish the faith of a people convinced that Yahweh would never desert them, no matter how difficult it may be to understand his interactions with them. [emphasis is the web guy’s]
