Pitched
to a group of undergraduates, the question “What is monotheism?” almost
invariable elicits the answer “belief in one God,” or “the belief that only one
God exists.” Christians, Jews, Muslims—the respondent will testify that since
these embrace the Bible they are the identifiable monotheism. The Bible is the
root of Western culture, and the Bible admits no equivocation on this point,
there is only one God.
Westerners,
it need hardly be said, pride themselves on their monotheism. They cherish
derogatory but quaint ideas about polytheists (who worship idols and other
fetishes; practice sympathetic magic; see gods, almost paranoically, in every
tree and under every bed; and sacrifice virgins to volcanoes). Under the
circumstances, it is not surprising that the student who first furnished the
definition of monotheism squirms skeptically on learning that Psalm 82 depicts
YHWH judging the gods in their assembly, that Psalm 29 enjoins the gods to
praise YHWH, and that according to Deuteronomy 32 and much other biblical
thought, each people had been allotted its own god as Israel had been allotted
YHWH (32:8-9; cf. for example, Micah 4:5) The Israelites, insists the student,
could not be polytheists—they had received the revelation at Sinai! Even
hearing that Israel considered YHWH the chief god does not mitigate this first
flush of indignation. After all, the pagan Greeks and Romans had chiefs of the
gods. Could it not be that those notorious Israelites had simply backslid into
paganism? Or—and there is the inspiration—are not those other gods really
angels? A sigh of comfort regained; once more the ancient Israelite had been rescued
from the heresy of not being us.
But
let us press this hypothetical student of ours further, employing that petty,
sadistic process of embarrassment that is called the Socratic method. “How do
we, now, differ from pagans?” “We only have one God.” “Do Catholics believe in
saints, Jews and Muslims in angels, Protestants in devils?” “That is different,”
comes the response! “Do angels not live forever, enjoy supernatural powers,
exist in a dimension different from that inhabited by mortals?” “Still
different!” And should we press the point that angels and devils, being divine,
may be called gods, that the difference between monotheism and polytheism in
the student’s mind is the difference between God and go—between two ways of
spelling the same word—we shall meet with the no longer smug but nevertheless obstinate
assurance that modern Christianity or Judaism or Islam is somehow being kicked
unfairly in the knee. There is only one God, no other gods need apply. (Baruch
Halpern, “’Brisker Pipes than Poetry’: The Development of Israelite Monotheism,”
in Judaic Perspectives in Ancient Israel, ed. Jacob Neusner, Baruch A. Levine,
and Ernest S. Frerichs [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987], 78-79)
