Friday, April 3, 2020

Jan Assmann on Exodus 20:3 and the Ontological Existence of other "Gods"



Thou shalt have no other gods before me. (Exo 20:3)

Commenting on this commandment in the Decalogue, Jan Assmann wrote:

Tellingly, God does not say that there is no other gods besides him. On the contrary, such gods exist, but Israel is forbidden from having anything to do with them. In the words of Benno Jacob, “the gods are not denounced as ‘idols,’ nor are other nations dissuaded from following them. All that matters here is the relationship between YHWH and Israel, and YHWH takes Israel into his heart: “you are mine! No-one else’s! I betroth myself to you forever! It is the image of a marriage that lies behind this expression [i.e., “no other gods,” J.A.]. Whatever the circumstances may be, the wife belongs to one  man alone. For her, everyone else is an ‘îš ‘aḥēr. This is not to say that there are no other men out there, only that they do not exist for her” (Jacob, Das Buch Exodus, 555).

In the first commandments we have before us the central tenet of biblical monotheism. It is not a statement of the “monotheism of truth,” which denies the existence of other gods. Instead, it explicitly attests to the “monotheism of loyalty.” When referring to this form of an exclusive commitment to God, some scholars therefore prefer to speak of “monolatry” rather than “monotheism.” By this they mean the exclusive (or “monogamous,” to stick with Jacob’s metaphor) worship of a single god that simultaneously acknowledges the existence of other gods. The problem with this terminology, however, is that it obscures the fact that we are dealing here with a completely unique conception in the history of religion. Monolatry may crop up here and there, and Israel’s exclusive worship of YHWH may indeed have arisen from original monolatry. But there is an absolutely crucial additional factor in play here: the covenant theological foundation. What is called for here is loyalty. The “other gods” do not simply go unheeded when the Israelites turn in reverence to face their one and only lord; rather, they are expressly prohibited ad their worship is anathematized as a breach of the covenant. A covenant is made here between one god among many and one nation among many, and this covenant is based on an act of salvation that connects the people freed from Egypt, and this people alone, with the god who freed them, and this god alone. (Jan Assmann, The Invention of Religion: Faith and covenant in the Book of Exodus [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018], 216-17)

Further Reading on the "Number" of God and Exo 20:3