Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] The evolution of jewish monotheism platinum post by Daniel Kohansky, read by John Paul Middlesworth, were ancient Israelites and then later Jews actually monotheists?
[00:00:13] What would that actually even mean? Did their belief in the gods God change over time? Here is an intriguing and informed discussion by platinum blog member Dan Kohansky. What do you think?
[00:00:27] The evolution of jewish monotheism this article is derived from my book, a God of our invention, Apocryphal Press, 2023.
[00:00:37] Monotheism, the idea that there is one and only one divine being in the universe, is the underlying foundation of Judaism. Jews reaffirm this twice a day by reciting the Shema, the basic statement of the jewish faith. Hear, o Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. This belief is said to have started with Abraham and established for all by Moses that Sinai is one of the ten commandments. You shall have no other gods besides me. Exodus chapter 20, verse three.
[00:01:09] But is this really the way it happened in history? Even in biblical history? I suggest that the idea of monotheism evolved only gradually among ancient Israelites, and even after it was generally accepted by their descendants, the Jews. It was not completely so until roman times. Footnote the Israelites were the tribes that settled in Canaan and eventually coalesced into the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Jews from the word Judah are the descendants of the remnants of the kingdom of Judah, who went into exile in Babylon and there formed what became the jewish religion. There is a continuing debate among scholars as to exactly or even approximately when to start calling them Jews.
[00:01:54] Here, then, is a scenario that, to my mind describes the evolution of monotheism.
[00:01:59] In the beginning, the Israelites were polytheists, just as all their semitic kinfolk and canaanite neighbors were. They may have had a smaller pantheon than some of the others, but we do have archaeological and biblical records of El Baal, Molochemen, Ashtoreth, Milcom, Chemosh. See one kings, 1133 and the gods of Aram in judges ten six, among others. In addition to Yahweh, the book of kings records how Manasseh rebuilt the high places to other gods that Hezekiah, his father, had torn down two kings 21 three. Then another kingdom. Manasseh's grandson Josiah tore them down again.
[00:02:47] Then Josiah's son Jehoahaz did evil in the eyes of the Lord, as all his fathers had done.
[00:02:55] Two kings 23 32 chapter 17 of two kings, which was written by members of the court of the southern kingdom of Judah, record how the destruction of the northern kingdom was brought about because the Israelites had offended the lord their God, and they had feared other gods.
[00:03:16] Two kings 17 seven eight translator Robert Alter comments on this passage that it is notable that all the transgressions are cultic. There is no mention of ethical failings or injustice.
[00:03:31] None of this reads like a record of a people much impressed by yahwehs demands at Sinai.
[00:03:37] At most it shows a tendency towards henotheism. We have only one God for us, but other nations have their gods.
[00:03:45] In judges, Jephthah argues with the Amorites, do you not take possession of what haemus your God gives you to possess, and all that the Lord our God has given us to possess, of that we shall take possession?
[00:04:00] Judges 11 24 25 another way the Israelites saw Yahweh was as the chief among the gods and the judge of other gods. As, for example, God takes his stand in the divine assembly. In the midst of the gods he renders judgment.
[00:04:19] Psalm 82 one then there is the political aspect of the religion. The headquarters of the Yahwist cult was the temple in Jerusalem, which was also the capital of the kingdom of Judah. The Yahwists tried to influence the judahite kings to minimize and if possible eliminate the competing cults of Baal and the others. They were spectacularly successful with Josiah and spectacularly unsuccessful with Manasseh, and they also seem to have gradually won at least partial adherence from the general judahite population.
[00:04:52] But in the days of the first Temple, the Yahwist cult takes a stand closer to henotheism than monotheism, as we see with psalm 82 and psalm 97. For example, after the prophet Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal in a magic contest, he proclaimed about Yahweh, this day let it be known that you are God in Israel, in Israel, but not necessarily elsewhere.
[00:05:22] It is also noteworthy that while 400 prophets of Asherah were also present at the contest, Elijah never challenged them, only ordering that the prophets of Baal be seized and slaughtered.
[00:05:40] There are few hints in some older texts of a belief in Yahweh as the one and only God of all.
[00:05:46] When the prophet Elisha cured the aramean general Naaman of a skin disease, the general exclaimed, now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel. Two kings 515 when the Assyrians were massing to destroy Jerusalem, King Hezekiah prayed to Yahweh, saying, you alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth.
[00:06:12] Some of the first Temple period prophets, Amos in particular, made similar claims. But as Hezekiah's own son, Manasseh, proved Yahwist monotheism, or even Yahwist henotheism, did not have a strong hold on the Israelites.
[00:06:29] Then came the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple of Yahweh and the babylonian exile. This could have been a death blow to the cult of Yahweh. The Babylonians who worshiped Marduk had destroyed the sacred sanctuary of the israelite goddess. Didn't this mean that Marduk was more powerful than Yahweh?
[00:06:47] The answer that the prophets came up with is that Yahweh hadn't allowed Marduk's worshipers to destroy his own house. He had ordered them to do it, and he did so in order to punish the Israelites for continuing to worship other gods.
[00:07:03] Jeremiah, writing at the time of the destruction, has Yahweh announced that I myself have given all these lands into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, my servante.
[00:07:14] Jeremiah 27 six furthermore, Yahweh is about to furthermore, Yahweh is about to make Judah a horror for all the kingdoms of the earth because of Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, for what he did in Jerusalem.
[00:07:31] Jeremiah 15 four in rumors explanation, the destruction of Yahwehs temple clearly signifies that Yahwehs power is not limited to his own people. He is the master even of the enemies of Judah.
[00:07:48] This attempt to explain the national catastrophe in a way that would preserve Yahwehs status as the God of the Israelites has had a number of significant consequences, principally in reinforcing the idea that natural disasters and defeat in war are gods way of punishing us for something we did or didnt do. But the more immediate consequence for my purposes is that it gave historical as well as theological grounding to Yahwist monotheism.
[00:08:16] Yahweh was no longer just the God of Israel. He was the God of even Israels enemies, the God even of nations that had never heard of Israel.
[00:08:25] Second Isaiah, writing around the time the exile ended, made this I am the first and I am the last, says Yahweh to Isaiah. And apart from me there is no goddess.
[00:08:38] Isaiah 44 six but this is not the end of the story. Almost 400 years after Isaiahs proclamation of Yahweh as the only God forever, the seleucid emperor Antiochus IV put this proposition to the test by ordering his jewish subjects in Judea to worship a statue of a God, probably Zeus, that he had set up in Jerusalem in the temple itself in in 167 BCE.
[00:09:06] The story of the maccabean revolt against this idolatry is well known, celebrated each year in the minor festival of Hanukkah.
[00:09:14] What is less well known is that some Jews went along with Antiochus demands.
[00:09:20] All the Gentiles accepted the command of the king. Many, even from Israel, gladly adopted his religion. They sacrificed to idols and profaned the sabbath first maccabees. 143 maccabean propaganda may have exaggerated the numbers, but if there were no basis in fact for this claim, it would not have passed muster.
[00:09:43] Mattathias and his sons had to flee into the hills and conduct a guerrilla war against the Seleucids, indicating there was not a widespread willingness to take up arms against apostasy. Contrast that hesitancy with the reaction a little more than 100 years later when the Romans tried to impose a similar idolatry on Judea. Josephus tells how Pontius Pilate around the year 30 CE brought Caesar's effigies into Jerusalem whereas our law forbids us the very making of images, for many days the people petitioned Pilate to remove them, but he refused. When Pilate threatened to send his soldiers out among the protesters, the Jews then threw themselves on the ground and laid their necks bare and said they would take their death very willingly, rather than that the wisdom of their laws should be transgressed.
[00:10:38] This, says Josephus, so impressed Pilate that he backed down and had the images removed. Josephus, antiquities, 1855 through 59.
[00:10:49] The belief in Yahweh alone had finally taken hold, but even then it was not a complete monotheism. For one thing, while the Jews hoped that in the end of days all nations would come to worship Israel's God, they never, with perhaps one or two exceptions, attempted to impose this belief on any non jew. They even attended as spectators, not as worshippers, various roman ceremonies honoring the state gods. They probably did so for practical political reasons, but in any event they went it would fall to Christians in their takeover of the Roman Empire to use its mechanisms to enforce their version of monotheism, or an outward acceptance of it, at least over its domains.
[00:11:37] The post concludes with a bibliography of six sources and further footnotes.
