Was Judaism Henotheistic Prior to Babylonian Captivity?

I am quite fascinated by the scholarly study of theology and religion, namely as it pertains to the roots of Christianity and Judaism. During the deconstruction of my faith in the mid 2000s, I still took for granted that the stories in the Bible were based in some historical fact. I believed that stories like Moses and the Exodus and King David’s reign and the great empire of King Solomon were somewhere rooted in truth and historical fact and that there was evidence to back it up.

But very recently as I’ve started to deconstruct the myths about Jesus and Christianity, and even the Old Testament patriarchs, and even God himself, I am beginning to question everything that I was ever taught about our religion.

As I discuss in the video, above, the very origin of the God Yahweh in the Old Testament came from the ancient Canaanite myths about God. Just like the pantheon of gods that existed in the mythology of the Roman and Greek people, or the Egyptians, or other Mesopotamians, The God El in Canaan was considered the high God among many. In fact, his name translates as the eternal. Isn’t it interesting that Yahweh identified himself as the Eternal One, the I Am? 

This Henotheism, present in Canaan when Moses and his nomads arrived, is also evident throughout the Hebrew scriptures. Take the First Commandment from Exodus 20, “You shall have no other gods…“ That very statement denotes the existence of other gods. But Yahweh was instructing his people to worship him as the most high of all the other gods. That, by definition, is Henotheism.

And look what happens 12 chapters later, Moses descends the mountain only to find Aaron and the priests have erected a golden calf. And what the scripture doesn’t tell you is that the bull, which more than likely it was, is the symbol of El the Canaanite god. Moses comes down and finds them worshiping another god, the one from which their God was fashioned.

This theme rules the Old Testament in story after story of the Israelite people worshiping “false gods.” Gods like Ba’al, the son of El, and his consort Asherah. It’s why the prophets are always railing against the people of Israel. And the archaeological record bears this out. In the northern kingdom of Israel there were temples to these other gods at the time when the Bible CLAIMS they were strictly monotheistic, only worshipping one God, Yahweh. History indeed bears out that this isn’t true. The earliest Old Testament scriptures bear out that this isn’t true. If they were not polytheistic, which most scholars agree that they were until the Babylonian captivity, they were very much henotheistic. They believed Yahweh was THEIR God and the Most High of all other gods in existence at that time.

Scholars believe that the destruction of Solomon’s temple and then being driven into exile is what caused them to coalesce as a people around this monotheistic idea of Yahweh. They needed a unifying, cultural and religious ideal in which to rally around as a conquered nation. Think about the United States post 9/11 and how we all rallied around the patriotic ideal that no terrorist nation will attack us on our own soil and get away with it. In no other period of my lifetime have the citizens of this country united under the banner of “one nation under God.” So it was for the captive Israelites. And for that reason, scholars believe that’s when the religion turned monotheistic.

In fact, scholars also believe that that’s when the Hebrew Bible became canon. They believe that King Josiah trying to legitimize the new nation of Israel, centered in Jerusalem, began perpetuating the myth that Judaism had always been a monotheistic religion with Yahweh at the helm and that they had been brought together by King David. But we now know that none of that is probably true. Watch my video above on that and the one below on the Moses Myth.

If there’s no archaeological record, and the texts as we have them now point to Henotheism, at least, then how do we know any of the myths are true? Was monotheism rooted in the desire for a national identity as the chosen of God?