Reply #24: My Apologies For So Belated A Reply, Sir [View All]

[The Magistrate]

There have been many calls on my time lately.

The question of the origin of Hebrew monotheism is not resolveable to a single source, it is part of the body of thought and inquiry into the subject, and not only by secular thinkers. Ms. Armstrong's "A History of God" is an extended discussion on the subject by a most devout author, that is widely available, and heartily recommended. There is no question at all that monotheism was not practiced by the Hebrews in the "post exodus" period. The book of Judges contains numerous references that establish the dieties of neighboring people were accounted real and powerful entities, that images of dieties were maintained even by members of the priestly caste, and that the immolation of children in sacrifice was practiced by men accounted holy and favored by their divinity. The whole body of prophecy can be summarized as an extended denunciation of people worshipping multiple dieties, and suffices to establish certainly that the practice was the normal practice of the society, and that at the very least, a nascent doctrine of monotheism, however derived, found scant purchase among the people. Even the great purge of Josiah, occassioned by the "discovery" of a document during temple renovations, did not suffice to stem this popular practice, as many instances of its persistance can be found after this episode. The claim of true montheism, of a diety universal and solitary, did not emerge until the post-exilic period as a general practice. As it was in this period that the books were codified and put into their current form, it is likely to the point of moral certainty that a good deal of current ideology was read back into past accounts: the principle "Who controls the present controls the past; who controls the past controls the future" hardly originated in Mr. Orwell's formulation of it with such elegance. The people who compiled these documents had power, and sought to maintain and extend it: that they felt it a sacred business they were on does not alter human character, or exempt them from the same regard any holder of temporal power deserves.

Indeed, the episode of Aton is instructive in this regard. It is never wise to take the religious claims of the past at face value: societies were all much more deeply saturated with religion then than it is easy for a modern to conceive, to such a degree that most of the matters we are accustomed to view as purely political or economic in our day were played out then in religious garb. Old Egypt was an absolute theocracy, in which Pharoah was the focus of the sacred, a living god, the focus of the interaction between the action of the gods in regard to such necessities as the harvest, and the humans dependent on these divine actions. Yet over time, in this system, priests of the chief god, Ammon, had built up a sufficiency of wealth and popular regard that they had come to constitute an alternative power bloc to Pharoah. The important element of the episode was not the theology; the important element was that elevating Aton, this previously obscure conception of the sacred, to the first and sole rank, dispossed the priests of Ammon, and the priests of other dieties. The aim was to destroy the alternative source of power. As matters developed, the stroke came too late; the priestly power was too greatly advanced and deeply entrenched, and they were able to effectively revolt against Pharoah, and re-establish their power. After a short interegnum of chaos, a military adventurer became Pharoah, but the system was never quite the same again, for it had been established that politically, Pharoah no longer was quite all-powerful.