From Henotheism To Monotheism

Henotheism represents “monotheism in principle; polytheism in practice”. It is claimed by some scholars that the Israelites, unlike other nations, were never polytheists, but that they passed from the worship of the great powers of nature, first to the worship of an exclusive national deity, and then to the worship of the one God; that is to say, from animism to monotheism through henotheism. The religion of Israel, beginning under Moses with exclusive henotheism, developed finally under the prophets into pure monotheism. As described in the Books of Judges and Kings, the worship of Baal, Astarte and Asherah was common and not exceptional. Only after the Exile [586 BC - 536 BC], more than seven centuries since Moses, was monotheism fully accepted and implemented. How different is this to the representation of the prophets, which emphasized the fact that there was no other god in existence but Jehovah (Isa. 45:5, 18); therefore it was useless to compare him with any other supposed divine power (Isa. 40:18, 25).

To Israel's religious conceptions before it became an independent people, that is to say, at the time it was taken in hand by Moses, there is only an indirect allusion, but such as it is it tends to show that the early Israelites were not animists, that is to say, they did not view the various phenomena of nature as endowed with personal life; on the contrary, they believed the gods to be spiritual beings who were wont to embody themselves principally in animals, and to whom they, i. e., the worshipers of these gods, had apportioned certain symbols. Now, this is polytheism pure and simple, and, if it is contended that it is but a higher form of animism, then an animist is a polytheist, and vice versa.

Polytheists, like the ancient Chaldeans and the Greeks, who have gods many and lords many, to all of whom they endeavor to be loyal, are apt to have trouble; for their gods are always in politics, and it is often extremely difficult for the humans to know how to manage their conflicting loyalties. The henotheist escapes some of these embarrassments by choosing out of the pantheon one god, and maintaining his loyalty to him. He does not deny that other peoples may have their gods, but he adheres to his own god and of course he believes that his god is the greatest of the gods, and able to protect him against all other powers, celestial or infernal.

Just what Abram's faith was may not certainly be known. He is often credited with being the first monotheist, but he might have been and probably was a henotheist — a believer in, and a worshipper and servant of, one God; but not a denier of the existence of other gods. The monotheist, properly speaking, is one who believes that there is only one God, one supreme deity, the Creator and ruler of all the nations and all the worlds. The later Hebrew prophets advanced to this higher stage of monotheistic belief; but the earlier Hebrews, beyond a question, were henotheists; they were worshippers of one God; Jehovah, or Yahveh, was their God, and they meant to be loyal to him; but now and then, when the crops were poor and times were hard, they ran away after other gods — Baal and Asherah and Moloch and the star of the God Rephan; and had to be punished for their disloyalty. At the same time they recognized the right of every other nation to have a god of its own, only maintaining in their best moments that Jehovah, their God, was the great God, and that in the fullness of the times all the other deities would be subservient to him.

There is a narrative in Genesis of a very solemn sacrificial covenant in which Jehovah pledged himself to Abraham that he should be a father of many nations— " And I will be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. And I will give to thee and to thy seed after thee the land of thy sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be thy God." No such promise as that so far as the Old Testament tells us was made to the people of Egypt or of Syria or of Chaldea. Jehovah was Abraham's God. He had no conception of any universal Fatherhood.

Jacob appears not over-anxious to adopt the god of his father and grandfather, unless he would guide, protect, and feed him ; then, and evidently then only, would he worship him as his god (Gen. 28:20). This incident shows plainly that Jacob could not have conceived El Shaddai as the sole God. Indeed, this is made clear from his evident indifference as to whether his wives worshiped other gods or not (Gen. 31 :30-35). When, subsequently, he desired them not to worship these "strange gods," he did not destroy them, as he certainly would have done had he deemed them to be no gods, and their worship as mere superstition, but he buried them, or hid them, beneath a sacred oak at Shechem (Gen. 35:4; Josh. 24 : 26; Judg. 9:6). The respect shown to this ancient shrine by Jacob is clear evidence that he believed in other divine power besides that assumed to be possessed by the god of his fathers.

The conception which Moses himself evidently entertained of God, and which he undertook to impart to the Israelites, was not monotheism, but exclusive henotheism. The phrase: "Jehovah is the God of Israel" did not mean that the one and only God had chosen Israel, but that Israel had chosen Jehovah as peculiarly its God, as distinguished from the gods of other nations. Thus the religion offered to Israel by Moses was belief in an exclusive tribal deity, otherwise henotheism.

Moses never represented God as the sole God (Exod. 3: 12; cf. Numb. 33:4), but merely as the chief of the gods (Exod. 15:11; 18:11), who had selected Israel to be in an especial sense his people (Deut. 7:6). Many eminent scholars view Moses as taking a family god, Jehovah, whose name is seen in that of Moses' mother as well as in Joshua, and putting him forward as the god who had befriended Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, induced Israel to accept him as their national god, who would stand by them through all difficulties as long as they would stand by him (Deut. 31:16, 17). The Israelites were commanded to worship only Jehovah, not because there was no other god to worship, but because Jehovah was a jealous god, and would not suffer other gods to be worshiped with him (Exod. 20 : 5; 34 : 14). The frequent allusions to Jehovah as the greatest of all gods, who had overthrown those honored by the Egyptians, warrants us in saying that Mosaism was founded upon henotheim and not monotheism.