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?

Humanism v. Monotheism in the Context of Individual Rights

Defining Terms and Values

hu·man·ism noun

an outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. Humanist beliefs stress the potential value and goodness of human beings, emphasize common human needs, and seek solely rational ways of solving human problems.

The Humanist values what it can see, think and feel. They value the cognitive capacity of human beings to rationally consider all sides of an issue without the aid of religion or what I call “magical thinking.”

mon·o·the·ism noun

the doctrine or belief that there is only one God.

The monotheist, and for most Americans this translates Christian, values only what is taught in Holy Scriptures as “the law” or “the word of God.” It sees the world in terms of black-and-white, us-and-them, right-and-wrong, saved-unsaved, heaven-or-hell, righteous-sinner… There is no gray area where life is actually lived. It is filled with “magical thinking.” The fact that you have to conjure up some image of what this deity looks like—in most opinions, male—acts like or thinks like is where imagination comes in, thus “magical thinking.”

Let’s apply these terms and values to the debate on abortion and individual rights.

Liberal-minded Christian with Humanistic Leanings

As a liberal-minded Christian, with Humanist leanings, I can say with near certainty that the core of the “pro choice” stance is human dignity, liberty and Constitutionally-protected rights. It is not about the life and death struggle, the tug of war between mom and baby. It’s about the inalienable rights of the woman who has already survived the gestation period and several years on planet Earth. How do the rights of an embryonic life form, with nothing more recognizable than a heartbeat, trump the rights of a living, breathing human being? Have you seen what the fetus looks like when there’s a detectable heartbeat? It resembles a blood-red jelly bean.

Conservative-minded Christian View

As a conservative-leaning monotheist, which I once was, I can say with near certainty that the core of the “pro life” stance is the belief that life is God-ordained and begins at the moment of conception. It’s not even a question about women’s rights or even the health and well-being of the mother. It’s merely the fact that a life has been conceived in a woman’s womb, that sacred space where they believe God miraculously breathes life into the cells of this fertilized egg, a zygote.

I’ve batted for both teams, so to speak. I don’t speak from a limited understanding of the issue, of what’s at stake. I see both sides of the coin. But it does, indeed, boil down to a matter of individual rights, and whether you default immediately to the fetus/baby’s side or to the woman/mother’s, you have to choose who’s rights are more at stake here.

The U.S. Supreme Court has spoken, nearly 50 years ago. But it wasn’t so many years before that, women were fighting for equal rights, and black women for equal rights was only a decade older than Roe v. Wade! 

So let us look at equal rights, shall we?

EQUALITY

The Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….” which, at face value, seems to be like a wholly monotheistic ideal. But is it really?

At the time this declaration was penned in 1776, chattel slavery was a widely-accepted practice in the American colonies. Brought to the colonies by the Dutch in the early 1600’s, one could argue that the very republic was built on the backs of non-white slaves. That fact alone stands in complete contradiction to the opening assertion of the Declaration. Were not the slaves endowed by their Creator?

Slavery was an institution supported by the Church and justified by Scripture. In fact, nowhere in Scripture is this concept of equality for all found, certainly not equality for slaves or women. Off the top of my head, the Book of Hebrews is the only place I can recall where equality is preached at all! And there, it is equating the Christian to the Jew as “God’s chosen,” “his children,” “joint heirs” in the promise of Abraham. I would argue that even that Scripture is only saying the Christian male and Jewish male adherents are equal in God’s eyes.

Even the Creation Story itself doesn’t promote the myth of equality. God created Adam from the dust of the Earth. Eve was created out of Adam. From Genesis forward, I don’t see a single shred of evidence where women share an equal footing with men. That patriarchal system, established in “the beginning,” was by God’s design. It influenced the very men who wrote the sacred texts, the bishops who canonized The Bible and the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence.

Even the founding fathers of our nation didn’t all share the same views on monotheism v. humanism. This concept of equality that they immortalized in the Declaration was a myth. It wasn’t supported by Scripture, even though it has very religious overtones, and it wasn’t even practiced in the colonies by the men who wrote it. They believed women inferior, slaves inferior (lower than livestock) and any non-white inferior to them. So what was this equality they spoke of? An ideal? An unrealized goal?

I would say, yes.

Women, slaves and non-whites had to struggle for equality and most didn’t achieve it until the last half of the 20^th Century. It wasn’t achieved in 1776 with the Declaration, nor in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, nor even in 1920 with the success of the suffrage movement and adoption of the 19^th Amendment. The dream of equality, heretofore just a myth, is just now being realized in the 21^st Century, and not just for women but for “all Men,” gay, straight or otherwise.

Is this a God-given right or a human right? I’d argue the latter.

Left to well-meaning monotheists, this right would never have been endowed upon anyone but the white men who codified the rules, enforced them, preached them and interpreted them. We’ve only seen cracks form in the patriarchal system of control handed down to us from Abraham, and later Moses from Mt. Sinai.

Humanists would argue that we haven’t gone far enough. Their view is that monotheism and patriarchy have done enough damage, run their course. Let the idea of inherent human dignity be the sole driving force behind equal treatment under the law—no God required.

That’s at the heart of the abortion debate—human rights.

I don’t feel that the woman’s right to chose what to do with her pregnancy is anybody else’s business. Like “all Men,” she has bodily autonomy and unless that fetus is grown in a test tube, it certainly depends on the “host,” as some have labeled pregnant women. They are not merely hosts. They are living, breathing life-support systems. They can determine for themselves if a pregnancy is wanted or unwanted. They can make this medical decision for their own bodies and fetuses, just as any human being has a right to bodily autonomy.

Granting women this right, which took from 1776 – 1973 (grasp that span of time for a moment), is a logical step towards this ideal which our forefathers set out in the Declaration. That is nearly 200 years to realize this dream of equality for a woman to be given equal treatment under the law. Are we now to repeal what took 197 years to establish?

Patriarchy, bred of monotheistic ideals, would certainly answer that question with a resounding YES! The establishment would have us believe that the Supreme Court made a mistake. The most outspoken of those on the far right would make a case for a theocracy—a system of shariah-like law practiced in other monotheistic states.

The humanist in me must reject such magical thinking. God did not descend with his scepter in hand and “bippity, boppity, boop!” life was created miraculously in a woman’s womb. It took a man and a woman, and not necessarily in an act of loving, consent. Still, biologically-speaking, two humans of opposite sex had to join forces to conceive. Life, for a humanist, is not a God-ordained miracle. It is biology. Period.

In that sense, the human beings involved in “pro-creation” are ultimately involved in bringing this life to fruition or choosing to end the gestation period. Even in that case, the male co-conspirator doesn’t have more say over the gestating than the women who bears the sole responsibility. Her body equals her choice.

Their religious-sounding, monotheistic rhetoric aside, the 56 men who declared this myth of equality, even while holding women and slaves in submission, couldn’t foresee a time when abortion would strike at the heart of this myth. But now that the myth, the ideal, has been realized it can’t be stuffed back into it’s 1776 packaging. We won’t return to an 18^th, or even a 20^th, Century mentality, no matter how hard the right pushes us in that direction.

Anti-Christian Believer

I haven't expressed many religious views in some time and that was partly the basis for this blog which began in 2005 or thereabouts. And as I was showering this morning, I thought about the deconstruction of my faith that has been occurring in spurts and starts ever since that time. So let's talk about that, shall we?

MONOTHEISTIC MYTH

Some of the world's great religions--Christianity, Islam and Judaism--purport this mythic creative being who is so above our human consciousness so as to be nearly incomprehensible. But is "he" really?

On counterpoint, the humanist idea purports this idea of the fully realized self--the perfect human, if you will. But is that idea really so different? Allow me to explain from my own personal upbringing.

The God of my childhood was certainly created in human image and explained to me as a loving, yet militantly disciplinary parent. I mean, uber-militant, like say your prayers or risk hellfire. Scary, right? Juxtaposed to his sense of fairness and justice, was the loving father figure who, once in his good graces, couldn't lavish enough love on you. As I grew to understand this concept of a perfect being of the most perfect love, I realized God possessed both masculine and feminine characteristics. I mean, even the Bible describes him/her as a mother hen gathering us like chicks under her wings.

But in all those descriptions, meant to put God in terms we could understand, he/she is merely the perfect parent or fully realized human--God in our image.

Is that so different than the humanist view of a supreme being? To me, this idea purported by monotheism that he is something more is a vain attempt to explain how and why we are here.

INTELLIGENT DESIGNERS

The argument of the intelligent design community is a full spectrum away from the randomness of the chaos theory. But let us be honest. Isn't it just as plausible that aliens of a far more advanced reality designed our universe as it is that a God creature did it in a mere six days? And what's so intelligent about a black hole anyway? Did those designers say, "Yeah, this is great and all, but you know what this galaxy needs? A huge vacuumous drain!"

I'm only halfway joking, here. If I am supposed to believe there is this incomprehensible being "out there" somewhere looking over this intelligent design he created with a word, why can I not consider him/her and alien being. Maybe she's an alien mother hen that exists in another realm---a highly creative chicken with a sadistic sense of humor.

ANTI-CHRISTIAN

My deconstruction of my faith has caused me to become very anti-Christian. Especially in today's polarized social climate, I have very little tolerance for the bigotry, sexism and homophobia of ultra-right-wing Christian expression.

My own Christian experience ran the gamut from Catholic to fundamental Baptist to the zaniness of Pentacostalism. I minored in religion at Florida State University to try and make sense of it all. What I came away with left me convinced that they are all basically full of shit. And the crazy part is that the Protestants don't seem to understand that the book they so highly value was given to them by Catholic Bishops from the 4th - 6th centuries, who couldn't have been any further removed from the Christ figure if they were meeting on Neptune, instead of Europe. And these bishops had an agenda. Why do you think some books were in and some were out? Because they picked what fit with their worldview, theology and bias. And the world--Catholics and Protestants, alike--have been lapping it up like it's water from the fountain of youth ever since. We don't even question it, not even when it clearly contradicts itself, at least I was raised not to question it.

My father, to his credit, did question the authority of the Pope and the Catholic Church. That's why we left and became Baptists in the late 1970's. He had what he describes as a conversion experience in a charismatic Bible Study that led him to a spiritual retreat called Cursillo. Just before we moved to Florida, however, my mom got very interested in the Charismatic movement in the Church, an outgrowth of the hippie church movement of the late 60's. She and my dad read a book called "Walking and Leaping" by Christian author Merlin Carothers. Once in Florida, they sought out a church that was "filled with the Spirit" and that's how we became CathoBaptiCostals, term I like to think I coined in the mid-1980's.

I always said that this upbringing gave me a well-rounded view of Christianity, but it really didn't. It was all pretty much based in fundamentalist ideology. It just took very different approaches to the foundational salvation message. It wasn't until college and even into adulthood, when I first encountered liberal Christians on Internet message boards, that my fundamentalism was even challenged. I'd never considered Christianity from a liberal or humanist worldview. I didn't know those kinds of Christians existed, or at least I never validated their brand of Christianity. I looked down upon such blasphemers as fake Christians.

When I go to church now, which is infrequently, I surround myself with these liberal types, who believe in justice, equality, inclusion and such. But I go to that church with a very anti-Christian mindset. I just don't trust Christians very much anymore. I totally get why a large portion of the world hates and distrusts them.

I still want to believe in goodness, in love, in fairness and justice, I just don't believe that it all starts with this other-worldly being who we cannot really comprehend. It'd be just as reasonable to assert that it started with highly evolved beings from another galaxy or whatever.

The theology and the book it is loosely based upon don't interest me as much as the result. How does your belief define you and make you treat others? Are you a decent human being? Are you a responsible, charitable and compassionate inhabitant of this planet? Do you make others better by your being here? The results, the actions, are what speak the most to me.

Well, I've run out of steam, so we can discuss this more later...