Page 1 of 7 Original Research Beyond monotheism? Some remarks and questions on conceptualising ‘monotheism’ in Biblical Studies Author: In the first part of this article I outline serious objections against the concept of monotheism. 1,2 Christian Frevel I will ask whether the ambiguity and the problem discredit the concept of monotheism as Affiliations: inappropriate for Biblical Studies, or whether it calls for differentiation. In the argument 1Faculty of Catholic Theology, following thereupon, the concept is found to be more useful to describe certain stages of Ruhr-Universität Bochum, the conceptual and linguistic development of Israelite religion. The term and concept of Germany monotheism in Biblical Studies is necessary, but not sufficient, if we want to reconstruct 2Department of Old the religious history of Israel, Judah, Yehûd and Early Judaism or Judaisms. In this article Testament Studies, University I propose categories such as implicit monotheism, intolerant monolatry, implicit exclusion, of Pretoria, South Africa explicit uniqueness, monotheism as implication et cetera, which are especially useful if we want an accurate description of the statements. This makes the category of monotheism useful Correspondence to: Christian Frevel as heuristic and relational category. Email: [email protected] Introduction Postal address: In 1991 John Hayman called ‘monotheism’ a misused word in Jewish Studies and wrote solid Lehrstuhl für Altes considerations against it with the following tenor (Hayman 1991): Testament, Katholisch- Theologische Fakultät, it is hardly ever appropriate to use the term monotheism to describe the Jewish idea of God, that no Gebäude GA, Etage 7, progress beyond the simple formulas of the Book of Deuteronomy can be discerned in Judaism before Raum 149, Universitätsstr. the philosophers of the Middle Ages, and that Judaism never escapes from the legacy of the battles for 150, D-44780 Bochum supremacy between Yahweh, Ba‘al and El from which it emerged. (p. 2) Dates: By focusing on the post-biblical Jewish traditions he tried to convince his audience that ‘the Received: 29 Oct. 2012 pattern of Jewish beliefs about God remains monarchistic throughout. … God is the sole object Accepted: 21 Mar. 2013 of worship, but he is not the only divine being’ (Hayman 1991:15). The general critique towards Published: 20 Sept. 2013 Jewish religion from postexilic times to the Middle Ages was a threat to traditional views, but How to cite this article: questioning the concept of biblical monotheism was not new at all. Whether the philosophical Frevel, C., 2013, ‘Beyond descriptor ‘monotheism’ matches the biblical reality at all is a well-known question in Biblical monotheism? Some Studies. So for example, Walter Moberly entitled his paper ‘How appropriate is “monotheism” as remarks and questions on conceptualising a category for biblical interpretation?’ (Moberly 2004). Gregor Ahn has questioned the capability “monotheism” in Biblical of the diametrical conceptualisation of monotheism/polytheism in religious studies as a whole. Studies’, Verbum et Ecclesia He sees some suitable advantage of the term in emic studies, but not at all in its use as an etic 34(2), Art. #810, 7 pages. category: ‘Als Klassifikationsmuster eines metasprachlichen Wissenschaftsdiskurses wird das http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ Monotheismus-Polytheismus-Schema dagegen zunehmend fragwürdiger’ (Ahn 2003:9).1 In sum, ve.v34i2.810 there are several and in some way independent threads questioning the ‘monotheism’-concept Note: of Biblical Studies. Bringing the lines together, the Society of Biblical Literature International The following article is Meeting in London 2011 held a panel discussion captioned ‘The concept of monotheism: Should dedicated to my esteemed it have a future in Biblical Studies?’, which included papers by Rainer Albertz, Bob Becking, colleague Jurie le Roux Philip Davies, Nathan MacDonald, Diana Edelman, André Lemaire, Saul M. Olyan, Thomas (Pretoria) who is always 2 ready to discuss Old Römer, Rüdiger Schmitt, Konrad Schmid, Mark S. Smith and myself. The following article, which Testament problems in stems for the largest part from my contribution to that London seminar, adds some questions and a broader systematic remarks to the question of appropriateness of ‘monotheism’ in Biblical Studies. I will relate to the perspective. discussion on monotheism in recent decades, but I do not intend here to go deeper into details of Copyright: the Forschungsgeschichte [history of research] of this problem. © 2013. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS OpenJournals. This work Can history avoid future? Monotheism as backlash is licensed under the Is it the right question to ask whether the concept of monotheism should have a future in Biblical Creative Commons Studies? Can we ever get rid of the concept of monotheism? We should not delude ourselves by Attribution License. assuming that our concepts could be abandoned so easily. It is not just a decision of ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Read online: Is it not the same with other terms and concepts which are considered to be anachronistic to the Scan this QR biblical world, like ‘monarchy’, ‘state’, ‘class’, ‘nation’, ‘religion’, et cetera? Only playing with the code with your smart phone or 1.Ahn (2003:9) and already Ahn (1993:1–24). mobile device to read online. 2.I would like to thank the Käte Hamburger Kolleg at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum who provided me with many opportunities to deal with the topic of monotheism in religious studies and supported my own focus on this subject. http://www.ve.org.za doi:10.4102/ve.v34i2.810 Page 2 of 7 Original Research difference between object language and meta-language does aber darauf abzielt, die für die Anhänger dieser so beschriebenen not solve problems. It is true that monotheism is burdened Religionen ausschlaggebende religiöse Wirklichkeit und 8 with much trouble because it is rooted in the early modern Welterfahrung zu erfassen. (p. 6) era and it is also true that the term was coined as a neologism first by Henry Moore in 1660 and was used apologetically Either-nor? The burden of to discriminate the Christian anthropomorphic concept of systematisation God from the Deistic concept.3 Later, in the 17th century, the term ‘polytheism’ was added as an oppositional term An implicit claim of the systematisation of ‘religion’ is to ‘monotheism’. Following in some way the usage in inherent in the diametrical scheme monotheism/polytheism. antiquity (from Tertullian onwards), the term was in the 16th The scheme pretends to encompass any religion in an century used synonymously to idolatry (e.g. by Jean Bodin). either-or-decision: if it is not ‘monotheistic’, it has to be ‘Polytheism’ originated in the 1st century CE in Philo’s ‘polytheistic’ and vice versa. We all know that this binary δόξα δ᾽ ἡ πολύθεος [the honor of a polytheistic doctrine] scheme has caused problems in Religious Studies, because (Phil. de decalogo 65) and οἱ πολυθειας ἐρασταὶ [the lovers of it fails in regard to many particular religions which lack polytheism] (Phil. de mutatione nominum 205). Philo uses the ’theism’. The same holds true for the evolutionary scheme term polemically to distinguish the non-Jewish religions from of an original and normative monotheism which later the Jewish concept of the First and Second Commandment.4 degenerated, and similarly for the assumption of an original Contrary to ‘monotheism’, the term ‘polytheism’ has some animism which developed through a stage of polytheism connections to the object language level, but like monotheism, into the higher, more reflective and similarly normative state the term is not an endonym or a self-imposed term of any of monotheism. In sum, the problems of conceptualising ancient religion in an emic perspective. It is further true that religions as ‘monotheistic’ are immense: within the history of ‘polytheism’, which was developed against the background concepts, monotheism is ‘evolutionary’, ’lopsided’, ‘Christian of a constructed ‘monotheistic faith’, was a polemical and imperialistic’, has an ‘aesthetical bias’ and is for the greater apologetic term, also in its Christian usage in modern post- part ‘projection’ rather than description. enlightenment times. Hacking at the heart: Monotheism However, concepts can be developed further and can be transformed in modern research. Neither has ‘monotheism’ and violence to denote Moore’s concept nor has ‘polytheism’ to retain the Following Friedrich Nietzsche, Odo Marquard and others synonymy to idolatry.5 In more recent Religious Studies, the linked the birth of modernity to the death of monotheism. term ‘polytheism’ is used neutrally to describe religions that Criticism of monotheism as ‘monomythic’ thinking and the conceive of a multiplicity of deities who act for the most part ‘praise of polytheism’ seemed to form a modern ‘pluralistic’ personally in respect to the world. Polytheistic religions are alternative way of thinking (Marquard 1989:87–110). In characterised by a structured pantheon which relates deities recent debates, monotheism has furthermore become a to each other genealogically, socially or with reference to their scapegoat of modernity, as in some way in Peter Sloterdijk’s competencies. As regards polytheism, the accomplishment of argument (Sloterdijk 2009), for instance. Since David Hume regional, political, social, economical, et cetera integration is and Arthur Schopenhauer, monotheism has been fraught very important6 – polytheism is part of a ‘professionalisation with the