The Monostheistic God

The ideology of monotheism has always been problematic. Many people seem to assume that monotheism, once introduced, took hold immediately and was observed from then on. This simply isn't the case. The entire history of monotheism is one of rising and falling popularity. The first documented incidence of monotheism was during the reign of Amenhotep in Egypt (1379-1362 BCE). During his 17 year reign Amenhotep tried to enforce monotheism. When he died in 1362, the people of Egypt immediately took up polytheism again.

The Israealites too attempted monotheism. Originally a polytheistic people, the Yahwehist priests began in about 600 BCE to enforce loyalty to Yahweh. The attempt is only marginally successful at first. Yahweh is depicted as a jealous god who will not tolerate the Israelite people worshipping other gods before him. Appareantly at this point it's alright if they worship them, just not ahead of Yahweh. So what is advocated here is not so much monotheism as henotheism.

The Yahwehists continue to exert their influence throughout the period before the rise of Christianity. The story of the Old Testament is the story of the rise of monotheism, and it's battles with the prevailing dogma - polytheism. The people continued to worship other gods throughout the texts. Baal, Dagon, Molech, Asherah, El, Tammuz, Chemosh, Nisroch, "household gods" and many nameless gods are mentioned throughout the Old Testament as gods who were being worshipped by the Israelite people at the time.

Yahweh's wife Asherah (also known as the "Queen of Heaven and sometimes called Ashtoreth) seems particularly prominent in the Old Testament. The women in Jeremiah lament that since they have stopped worshipping the "Queen of Heaven" they have "have had nothing and have been perishing by sword and famine." (Jeremiah 44:18) In fact Yahweh must constantly admonish the people not to build Asherah poles and to tear down existing ones throughout the Old Testament. Asherah continued to be worshipped by the Israelite people after the fall of the kingdom of Judah. Her last temple was not destroyed until about 300 CE when "the emperor Constantine brought an end to the Ashtoreth sanctuary at Aphaca". (Stone, 1990) As worship to Asherah was eliminated, a new god rose on the horizon - Yahweh's son Jesus. A third, the Holy Ghost, was later added, forming a new polytheistic ideology.

Many people seem to think that the Israelites were always monotheistic and that some of them just wandered into worshipping "foreign" gods. This however conflicts with what archaeology has shown us.

Though buried deep beneat the sands of what was once Canaan, statues of the female deity have been continually unearthed in archaeological excavations. These images of the Goddess, some dating back as far as 7000 BC, offer silent testimony ot the most ancient wroship of the Queen of Heaven in the land that is today most often remembered as the birthplace of both Judaism and Christianity. (Stone, 1990)
Another misconception, propagated by the Bible, is that the Israelites conquered the Canaanites and adopted "foreign" gods that way. This too has been shown to be false. Instead of conquering Canaan from without "the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause. And most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan -- they emerged from within it." (Finkelstein & Silberman, 2001) The gods worshipped by the Israelites were the same god worshipped by other Canaanites. The same gods which had been worshipped for a millenium. The emergence of a monotheistic god was a new idea to the Israelites at the writing of the Old Testament texts. And it did not catch on until centuries later. Even then, many of its adherents went back to polytheism with the advent of the new polytheism: Christianity.

 

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