for Eos
for Eos . . . the rest of you go to sleep . . . because if you read this you will. . . .
Shoo!
This is a compilation notes I prepared when a poster on another forum sent me the outline of a paper he wished to write for a class. I have added to it over time, because it is a subject that comes up frequently in religious discussions.
Henotheism of the Old Testament
The intention of this paper is to explore the polytheism and henotheism of the Pentateuch, commonly known as the Torah or first five books of the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible reflects the religion of the time of the composition of the texts. Each text is really a combination of sources (Friedman, 1996; 2003). Each source preserves a religious and political point of view. In some cases, it was against the prevailing opinion against which the writers wrote. The evidence for polytheism in the religion of the people that produced the texts of the Torah exists in extra-biblical inscriptions, iconography, and in the texts themselves (Cross, Handy, Keel, Schmidt).
Polytheism refers to the belief in many gods.
Henotheism refers to the worship of one god over other gods.
Exodus preserves unmistakable textual evidence for polytheism and henotheism. The independent poem of
Exod 15:2-18, "the Song of the Sea," which is possibly the oldest composition in the Hebrew Bible (Cross; Friedman, 2003), asks in verse 11, "Who among the gods is like you, YHWH?" This verse considers YHWH greater than the other gods. Similarly, in a verse from a different source (Friedman, 2003) Jethro states, "Now I know that YHWH is greater than all other gods, (
Exod 18:11)." Moses and Jethro admit the existence of other gods, while praising their god, YHWH, above them. In the following five passages from
Exodus, it is reiterated that it is forbidden to worship other gods. These commands are not to be confused with the mere proscription against worshiping idols or statues; it is acknowledge that other gods exist, but they must not be worshipped:
Exodus 20:3 "You shall not have other gods before my face."
Exodus 22:19 "One who sacrifices to gods shall be completely destroyed--except to YHWH alone."
Exodus 23:24 "Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices."
Exodus 23:32 "Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods."
Exodus 34:14 "Do not worship any other god, for YHWH, whose name is Jealous, and is a jealous God.
The command not to worship other gods is anything but infrequent, to the point that YHWH declares his own jealously on the issue. Consider further
Exodus 20:4, "You shall not make a statue or any form that is in the skies above or that is in the earth below or that is in the water below the earth." It distinctly prohibits creating and worshipping idols, which is a separate and different command from the ones above. Consider further the later Deuteronomistic version of the passage,
Deut 5:7-10: You shall not have other gods before my face. You shall not make a statue, and form that is in the skies above or that is in the earth below or that is in the water below the earth. You shall not bow to them, and you shall not serve them. Because I, YHWH, your God, am a jealous God, . . .
Schmidt notes:
Deut 5:7-10 neither unequivalently denies the existence of other gods nor does it address the making of YHWH images. Instead, it assumes the existence of other gods . . . while warning against the total abandonment of YHWH or the diminishing of his importance relative to that of other gods. In other words, if one refrains from reading a monotheistic or an aniconic perspective into these verses, one does not find it present in them (Schmidt).
On
Deut. 32:8-9, Schmidt notes:
The relevant Septuagint and Qumran readings of Deut 32:8-9 describe how the Most High or the Canaanite high god, El . . . had allotted to each of the nations one of the members of his pantheon or "sons of El" (la ynb). . . . Deut 32:9 also reveals that YHWH was once viewed as an independent, but subordinate, deity to El and was assigned by El to Jacob/Israel. In other words, the tradition suggests that YHWH was once viewed as a deity possessing equal or lower rank and power to that of the astral gods (Schmidt).
The existence of multiple gods is assumed throughout the
Psalms (Handy). Perhaps the most interesting passage is
Psalm 82, which describes a great assembly of gods, which are all "sons of the Most High":
God presides in the great assembly; he gives judgment among the gods:
"How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked?
Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.
Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
They know nothing, they understand nothing.
They walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
I said, 'You are gods; you are all sons of the Most High. But you will die like mere men; you will fall like every other ruler.'"
Handy notes, "Psalm 82 deals solely with the deities of the higher orders and conforms to the understanding of those deities; . . ." (Handy). It refers specifically to "gods,"
elohim, and not "angels" or other figures (Handy). Cross notes that YHWH judges in the
'adat 'el, "the assembly of El" and condemns the gods of this council to death (Cross).
This henotheism is underscored in the following four excerpts from
Psalms:
Psalm 86:8 "Among the gods there is none like you, YHWH, abounding in love to all who call to you."
Psalm 95:3 "For YHWH is the great God, the great King above all gods."
Psalm 97:7 "For you, YHWH, are the Most High over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods."
Psalm 135:5 "I know that YHWH is great, that YHWH is greater than all gods."
Handy concludes:
On the other hand, the Psalms also convey a belief in the existence of other deities in the divine realm and, if these poems did indeed derive from the cult, then it would have to be argued that the Judahite cult recognized several deities. This seems the most reasonable conclusion from the biblical texts, (Handy).
As in
Exodus there is an acknowledgement of other deities, while maintaining that their god is greater than all other gods. This contributes to the idea of competition between gods, as shown in
Exodus where YHWH competes and defeats the Egyptian gods where both sides exhibit feats of power and divinity.
However YHWH does not always win. In a curious passage, a foreign king sacrifices his son to his god which results in the defeat of the attacking Israelites:
Seeing that the battle was going against him, the king of Moab led an attempt of seven hundred swordsme to break a way through to the king of Edom; but they failed. So he took his first-born son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him up on the wall as a burnt offering. A great wrath came upon Israel, so they withdrew from him and went back to their own land (2 Kgs 3:26-27).
Levenson notes, "More serious is the great 'wrath' (
qesep) that falls on Israel . . , for the implication is clear: Mesha's sacrifice worked. . . . . . . the term
qesep indicates a force external to the people involved. . . . the author saw Mesha's sacrifice of his first-born son as having a profound effect upon the deity to whom it was offered, in thes case presumably the Moabite national deity Chemosh. . . . (Levenson).
Extra-Biblical evidence of polytheism places the texts in context. Edelman notes:
During the period when Judah existed as a state, from ca. 960-586 BCE, it seems to have had a national pantheon headed by the divine couple, Yahweh and Asherah. As the title Yahweh Sebaot would suggest, Yahweh was king of a whole heavenly host that included lesser deities who did his bidding, having various degrees of autonomy depending upon their status within the larger hierarchy, . . . (Edelman)
Excavations of a caravanserai at Kuntillet ?Ajrud dated to the first half of the eighth century, revealed paintings and inscriptions on two large storage jars or
pithoi (Keel). Controversy persists on whether or not the depictions represent YHWH and the goddess Asherah (Keel, Laughlin, Schmidt), however the inscription reads: "
lyhwh smron wl'$rth, translated: "To Yahweh of Samaria and His a/Asherah," (Laughlin). Laughlin notes that while debate continues as to whether or not the inscription intends a cultic symbol, "asherah," or a consort goddess akin to the Asherah of the Canaanite god and probably equivalent to YHWH, Baal (Cross), ". . . these inscriptions and other material remains . . . all point to the fact that in popular religion, at least, many Israelites associated Yahweh with a female consort," (Laughlin).
Cross cites examples from the Ugaritic and Canaanite and Mesopotamian texts that YHWH is a verb from an epithet for the god, El (Cross). He notes, "The accumulated evidence thus strongly supports the view that the name Yahweh is a causative imperfect of the Canaanite-Proto-Hebrew verb
hwy, "to be," and, "Our evidence also points strongly to the conclusion that
yahwe is a shortened form of a sentence name taken from a cultic formula," (Cross). Day cautions against this conclusion since no one has ever found such a cultic name (Day).
Bibliography:
Cross FM.
Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973.
Day J.
Personal Communication. 2004.
Edelman DV. "Introduction,"
The Triumph of Elohim: From Yahwisms to Judaisms. Edelman DV, ed. Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995.
Friedman RE.
Who Wrote the Bible? 2nd. Ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996.
Friedman RE.
The Bible with Sources Revealed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003.
Handy LK. "The Appearance of Pantheon in Judah,"
The Triumph of Elohim: From Yahwisms to Judaisms. Edelman DV, ed. Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995.
Keel O, Uehlinger C.
Gods, Goddesses and Images of God in Ancient Israel. Thomas H. Trapp
trans. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998.
Laughlin JCH.
Archaeology and the Biblep. London: Routledge, 2000.
Levenson JD.
The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Schmidt BB. "The Aniconic Tradition,"
The Triumph of Elohim: From Yahwisms to Judaisms. Edelman DV, ed. Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995.
