Monotheism
Review of the previous post
The previous post, post number 8 of 22, is post number 6 of 7 posts discussing Yahwism and continued the discussion of the connection between the proto-Jews in the villages of Canaan and the practice of Yahweh-only religion.
Preview of this post
This post, post Number 9 of 22 is post number 7 of 7 posts discussing Yahwism, and discusses changes in Yahwism.
Yahwism changes
After the Northern Kingdom split away from Judah, those living in the Northern Kingdom came under the influence of the Baal religion. Some of those leaving Judah may not have had strong ties to Yahwism, and thus were susceptible to either abandoning that religion altogether or modifying their own religion to accommodate and assimilate. This is where the stories of the prophet Elijah take place. David was the king who spread the Jewish view of God far beyond the geographic borders of Judah. The Elijah stories differ from the David stories in regard to the religion in that the David approach was gradual and piecemeal replacement of a local religion with Yahwism whereas the Elijah approach was to humiliate the gods of the local religion and destroy the local religion. This precipitated a strong clash between Elijah’s religion and the religion of Baal with a death threat to Elijah. Elijah fled to the source of Yahwism, Mt Horeb (Mt. Sinai to those in the South) where he found desolation. Thus, Elijah found that the situation of Yahwism there, in its birthplace, Midian, was worse than it was in the land he left[1]. This conflict finally erupted into a bloody war described in 2 Kings 10:28). Some believe this war ended the Israelite religion’s monolarty[2] thereby transforming Yahwism into monotheism.
In fact, one might even find basis in reading the entire story of the split between the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom as a referendum on monotheism versus monolatry. The Northern Kingdom favored monolatry (which was the practice of worshipping YHWH but allowed for the existence of other gods); whereas, the Southern Kingdom favored monotheism (which refused to recognize the existence of any god other than YHWH). According to the biblical account, the Northern Kingdom failed miserably and was totally annihilated and disappeared from history (the “Ten Lost Tribes;” maybe these tribes were “lost” never to be found is because they never existed beyond the example used for teaching of the Bible); whereas, even though the Southern Kingdom was conquered and its people dispersed (much like the dispersal of the people of the Northern Kingdom), it survived. This, according to the Bible, proves that monolatry was wrong and monotheism was right.
Preview of the next post
The next post, post number 10 of 22, is post number 1 of 4 posts discussing the prophets and their relation to monotheism.
[1] Could this be the “still small voice” that Elijah heard in 1 Kings 19:12?
[2] Archeological discoveries suggest that, up until the time of the Babylonian Exile, Israel practiced more a form of monolatry, see the section Origins of Yahwehism in this essay.