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L. Eslinger § Polytheism in the Old Testament |
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Examples of texts that demonstrate an implicit assumption of multiple gods: Exod 15.11; 18.11; 20.3; 23.24; Num 25.2; Deut 10.17; Josh 24.15; 1 Kgs 11.2-10; 2 Kgs 17.31
Examples of texts that claim (usually polemically) monotheism: Deut 4.28 (but cf. 5.7); 6.4; Ps 96.5; Isa 42.17
The contrast in the tonality (polytheism a quiet assumption; monotheism a strident polemical claim) of the two kinds of evidence for mono- and polytheism is itself evidence for the counter-cultural nature of monotheism in ancient Israel. (Supplementing the textual evidence, there is a good deal of extra-biblical evidence (both artifactual and textual) that shows that "polytheism" persisted throughout Israel's history in popular religion (itself more a shadow than a presence in the "official literature" of the Bible).
"The existence of high places and other forms of ancestral and household god worship was not -- as the book of Kings imply -- apostasy from an earlier, purer faith. It was part of the timeless tradition of the hill country settlers of Judah, who worshiped YHWH along with a variety of gods and goddesses known or adapted from the cults of neighboring peoples. YHWH, in short, was worshiped in a wide variety of ways -- and sometimes pictured as having a heavenly entourage. From the indirect (and pointedly negative) evidence of the books of Kings, we learn that priests in the countryside also regularly burned incense on the high places to the sun, the moon, and the stars" I. Finkelstein and N.A. Silberman, The Bible Unearthed. Archeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York, Toronto: Free Press, 2001), pp. 241-42.
The issue of mono- versus polytheism, for ancient Israel (pre-586 BCE) has been skewed by polemical ideological (aka theological) trends in the subsequent development of this cultural tradition. Hinduism is a culture that still preserves a sophisticated multiple god worldview:
"The most prevalent expression of worship for the Hindu comes as devotion to God and the Gods. In the Hindu pantheon there are said to be three hundred and thirty-three million Gods. Hindus believe in one Supreme Being. The plurality of Gods are perceived as divine creations of that one Being. So, Hinduism has one supreme God, but it has an extensive hierarchy of Gods. Many people look at the Gods as mere symbols, representations of forces or mind strata, or as various Personifications generated as a projection of man's mind onto an impersonal pure Beingness" hindunet.org/god/.
Jan Assmann offers a perceptive analysis of this form of religion in the ANE, which he calls "cosmotheism" (aka "polytheism") (Monotheismus und Kosmotheismus: Ägyptische Formen eines "Denkens des Einen" und ihre europäische Rezeptionsgeschichte (Sitzungs/berichte der Heidleberger Akademie der Wissenschaften 1993.2; Heidelberg: 1993); Moses the Egyptian. The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press, 1997):
The recognition that different cultures worship the same gods by different names was "among the major cultural achievements of the Ancient World." Such theological insights emerged out of economic realities. "It seems probable to me that the interself-transcendence in translations and equations for gods of different religions arose out of the Akkadian assimilation of the Sumerian pantheon and developed in the context of foreign policy. I do not assume that something like a conviction of living in a common world and worshipping common gods went before and formed the fundamentals of this political practice. Rather, I see it the other way round: the growing political and commercial inter-connectedness of the Ancient World and the practice of cross-cultural translation of everything including divine names gradually led to the concept of a common religion" (p. 46 in Moses the Egyptian).