Monotheism
Review of the previous post
The previous post, post number 6 of 22, was post number 4 of 7 posts discussing Yahwism, and continued the discussion of the origins of Yahwism in the people who were living in Canaan when the Jewish Nation immigrated into that region
Preview of this post
This post, post number 7 of 22, is post number 5 of 7 posts discussing Yahwism and discusses the connection between the proto-Jews in the villages of Canaan and the practice of Yahweh-only religion.
The connection between the proto-Jews in the villages and Yahweh-only
The connection between these proto-Jews and the Yahweh-only cult[1] is not clear and there is much speculation about it. It could have been an attempt to unify diverse groups of people. The common worship of one, all-powerful, god would preclude the worship of individual, regional, gods by each group. The common god would allow the diverse and geographically separated villages to come together for a common holiday thereby networking the people. A single religion or god also allowed such diverse and separated people to have common rules and practices so that a person traveling into a distant village would know what he could and could not do (see the commandments). A common god and religion also would allow the people to police themselves by making violation of certain common rules which were required to live together in peace (no stealing, murdering, taking a neighbor’s possessions, etc) a violation against that god[2]. A covenant with that god allowed the society to regulate its political, economic, religious, and social relations using a single standard which applied to all and to which all subscribed. The worship of one god also evened out social strata. Each individual was linked to the same god and to one covenant thereby linking all and making all equal: a one and equal people who would work with each other, protect each other and never take advantage of each other – a perfect formula for such an egalitarian civilization seeking freedom from oppression and exploitation by others.
Perhaps the Yahweh-only religion was thus a bottom-up development (developing from the people to fill the needs of a people who are emerging from oppression and exploitation of the powerful monarchs and the hierarchy of their time to a time and place where they can freely determine their own destinies, from experiment, success, failure, compromise and confrontation of a developing belief and life style) rather than a top-down development where an all-powerful, all-knowing loving god intervenes into history and does miracles to save and develop His “chosen” people. The society and its goals was unique, and the god they worshipped represented the society rather than the society being developed to match the god. The religion and the covenant only became top-down when its history was written down much later by the authors of the Bible who were already living in a society that practiced Yahweh-only and were writing the history with a hindsight reconstruction of that fact[3]. Such a hindsight reconstruction of the official religion would modify evidence of any earlier deviation (such as monolatry and “folk piety” which may have been actually practiced by the people) or stigmatize it as heretical and worthy of punishment, particularly by God.
Preview of the next post
The next post, post number 8 of 22, is post number 6 of 7 posts discussing Yahwism and continues the discussion of the connection between the proto-Jews in the villages of Canaan and the practice of Yahweh-only religion.
[1] See, The Treasures of Darkness-A History of Mesopotamian Religion, by Thorkild Jacobsen, Yale University Press, New York and London, 1976.
[2] Obviously, this system did not grow in an even, and unopposed, manner. Some villages, and certainly the larger urban areas, opposed it, see, for example, Jericho, Shechem Lachish, Debir, and Hazor.
[3] If the religion was, indeed, bottom-up, it is likely that it was monolatrous, i.e. worship of one god while recognizing that other gods may exist, as opposed to monotheistic which does not recognize that other gods exist Archeological discoveries suggest that, up until the time of the Babylonian Exile, Israel practiced more a form of monolatry. Such discoveries have included statues which may represent Asherah, a female deity worshipped by women for protection and assistance in conception and childbirth. This would also be consistent with the assumption that the Bible was written by authors living near the end of the Babylonian Exile. In fact, the Bible as written may only represent a version of the “Official” religion as opposed to a “popular” version that was actually practiced by the people.