I'm sure this has been speculated on time and time again, but what if Judaism remained polytheistic? As far as I can tell, Yahweh being the "one true God" is a relatively recent phenomenon as far as the history of Judaism is concerned; the idea of a monotheistic religion for the Israelite people only really started to coalesce into its current form after the Babylonian exile in the 580s BCE. So what if Yahweh remained just one of many gods in a wider pantheon? How would the history of the Abrahamic religions change, and how would that affect world history in turn?
WI: Judaism remained polytheistic?
- Thread starter TheMolluskLingers
- Start date
Depending on the PoD, you might mean henotheism rather than polytheism. The latter is a lot further back - we have to assume it, basically, because the first useful texts surface when the henotheistic Canaanite nations were already well-established as such. So it would take a lot of guesswork, and probably some heavy butterfly netting to get “Judaism,” “Israel”, and “Hebrews” that we would even recognise at all. The Bronze Age in Canaan is far darker than the Iron Age.
Henotheism is much easier to imagine, albeit not the sort that we see in the Bible and e.g. the Meshe Stele - where each of the Canaanite nations had their own god, Chemosh to the Moabites, Yahweh to the Israelites - because the region of Canaan itself was probably going to consolidate politically during the higher Iron Age anyway. So if, as in OTL, the Israelites get the upper hand and assimilate the surrounding regions (whether or not they imagine themselves not to be aboriginal “Canaanites” in the first place - I wonder whether the myth of Moses would have arisen in this scenario), their religion is going to be contrasted with those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and maybe later those of Europe, rather than those of various petty kingdoms. It could still be a henotheism, but a different one to what we find hinted at in some of the older parts of the Bible (e.g. Deuteronomy 32:8-9) - which would probably appear more monotheistic, since it’s opposed to entirely foreign religious systems rather than the particular patron deities of sister nations. IMHO it wouldn’t look very different, even, to what Judaism was like OTL during the Persian, Greek, and earlier Roman periods, outside of the periodic waves of reformation. If the Jews are serious about their henotheism, they aren’t going to let the *Romans, or any foreign conqueror, put their gods into their temples or change their sacrificial rites - so how does that differ from monotheism, really?
I think once you’ve established the national deity system of Canaan in the early Iron Age, there’s no way back from monotheism without actually replacing that system. The later Iron Age brought empires, and empires like two things: taxes, and public displays of loyalty from the upper classes. To maintain their exclusive worship of Jehovah, the Jews are going to have to repudiate the worship of all gods but Jehovah; saying “Amun and Apollo are all very well for the Egyptians and the Greeks, but I’m a Jew, and we Jews have our own god” isn’t very different from what actually happened OTL. The Maccabean revolt was a national revolt with religious implications, not a religious revolt with national implications (like you might get with Christianity and Islam many centuries later). The division between henotheism and monotheism breaks down here.
That isn’t to say Judaism couldn’t have been very different. Preventing the Exile, or the Persian resettlement, or many other PoDs, would have a huge impact on Jewish self-consciousness in ways that are hard to determine. But I don’t think preventing “monotheism” would be one of them.
If you do manage it, though - however you define it - you really can’t speak of the Abrahamic religions at that point. Christianity is inconceivable without a very specific situation in first-century Roman Judea, and the personal lives of fourteen very special people within it; Islam has its own remarkable story, and is inconceivable without Christianity to boot. If you get offshoots to *Judaism ITTL, whatever they are, they won’t be anything like Christianity or Islam any more than Orpheus is “like” Jesus. At that point, you’re 600 - 1200 years beyond the PoD, and the Middle East is pretty much unrecognisable.
Henotheism is much easier to imagine, albeit not the sort that we see in the Bible and e.g. the Meshe Stele - where each of the Canaanite nations had their own god, Chemosh to the Moabites, Yahweh to the Israelites - because the region of Canaan itself was probably going to consolidate politically during the higher Iron Age anyway. So if, as in OTL, the Israelites get the upper hand and assimilate the surrounding regions (whether or not they imagine themselves not to be aboriginal “Canaanites” in the first place - I wonder whether the myth of Moses would have arisen in this scenario), their religion is going to be contrasted with those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and maybe later those of Europe, rather than those of various petty kingdoms. It could still be a henotheism, but a different one to what we find hinted at in some of the older parts of the Bible (e.g. Deuteronomy 32:8-9) - which would probably appear more monotheistic, since it’s opposed to entirely foreign religious systems rather than the particular patron deities of sister nations. IMHO it wouldn’t look very different, even, to what Judaism was like OTL during the Persian, Greek, and earlier Roman periods, outside of the periodic waves of reformation. If the Jews are serious about their henotheism, they aren’t going to let the *Romans, or any foreign conqueror, put their gods into their temples or change their sacrificial rites - so how does that differ from monotheism, really?
I think once you’ve established the national deity system of Canaan in the early Iron Age, there’s no way back from monotheism without actually replacing that system. The later Iron Age brought empires, and empires like two things: taxes, and public displays of loyalty from the upper classes. To maintain their exclusive worship of Jehovah, the Jews are going to have to repudiate the worship of all gods but Jehovah; saying “Amun and Apollo are all very well for the Egyptians and the Greeks, but I’m a Jew, and we Jews have our own god” isn’t very different from what actually happened OTL. The Maccabean revolt was a national revolt with religious implications, not a religious revolt with national implications (like you might get with Christianity and Islam many centuries later). The division between henotheism and monotheism breaks down here.
That isn’t to say Judaism couldn’t have been very different. Preventing the Exile, or the Persian resettlement, or many other PoDs, would have a huge impact on Jewish self-consciousness in ways that are hard to determine. But I don’t think preventing “monotheism” would be one of them.
If you do manage it, though - however you define it - you really can’t speak of the Abrahamic religions at that point. Christianity is inconceivable without a very specific situation in first-century Roman Judea, and the personal lives of fourteen very special people within it; Islam has its own remarkable story, and is inconceivable without Christianity to boot. If you get offshoots to *Judaism ITTL, whatever they are, they won’t be anything like Christianity or Islam any more than Orpheus is “like” Jesus. At that point, you’re 600 - 1200 years beyond the PoD, and the Middle East is pretty much unrecognisable.
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Then it wouldn't be Judaism. Judaism is one big repudiation of Levantine polytheistic traditions. The fight between monotheism and polytheism is basically a subplot in the Tanakh. Either way, the Israelites probably would just be one of many polytheists that came and went with time. The only thing I can see filling that gap left by Christianity and Islam is Zoroastrianism.
Indeed. Heck, the commandment 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me' is effectively recognising that other gods exist, just that the Israelites shouldn't worship them.
That's not how it's seen in the Jewish worldview FYI. Other gods "exist" in the sense that people worship them, that doesn't mean we believed that they actually existed.
They're idols of wood and stone.
Why bother worshiping them when you have the One True G-d after all.
Why is Canaan probably going to consolidate? You mean unify as a state, ie the Kingdom of Israel?
Exactly, that's what I'm saying. There's the midrash of Abraham smashing all the idols in his father's shop that conveys exactly that message.
Ooh, I remember that one!
Barely (it's been a while and my memory is poor), but still. Abraham smashes the idols, then when his dad asks what happened he says they destroyed each other and then when his father finds that patently silly, it's used as a bit of a lesson.
But yeah, the point of my previous post was a succinct sort of summary of the view of Jewish thought on other "divinities".
Edit to include the story: Terach is said to have produced idols for his livelihood, and he had Abraham watch over his shop one day, while he was out. Once his father was gone, Abraham took up a hammer, and smashed every idol in the store, save one, before placing the hammer in the hand of the surviving idol. When Terach returned to see his products ruined, he was understandably unhappy, and demanded to know what had happened. Abraham replied that a woman had come to the store with an offering for the gods. The idols began arguing amongst themselves as to who deserved it most, until the surviving idol took up the hammer and destroyed his brothers. Naturally, Terach responded that they are only idols, with no mind, desires, or ability to move. To which Abraham responded by asking why they were worthy of worship.
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Did anyone ever really see the idols as being gods and able to act in their own right? Or was that a Jewish polemic and strawman, since in an environment of worship of images iconoclasm is a logical way to differentiate and reinforce your monotheism?
One way of looking at a polytheistic Judaism without taking henotheism would be to have the continued worship of Asherah as the wife of God, who was according to some scholars briefly worshipped as consort. If she were to survive the polytheistic transition to monotheism, you could technically have a polytheistic Judaism of two gods, a divine pairing of feminine and masculine entities. This may have influenced family dynamics or opened up a feminine priesthood, as matriarchs and female royalty honored her.
I don't think any did. Generally the statues were seen as votive offerings to the gods or as a way to focus yourself on a particular god; The closest I have read to this is the idea that Gods could inhabit the statue in question, but even in that case you were still worshiping the God in question not the statue.
There's a few references to the act of seizing the statues as being "taking the gods" from a number of inscriptions and proclamations. In the context of war and victory over another state at least.