Week 6: Israel’s Monotheism Problem?

Reading the late, pre-exilic prophets this week has introduced me to a lot of the context surrounding the words of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Nahum, Habbakuk, and Zephaniah. For me, Jeremiah has always held a place of affirmation and hope because of the oft-quoted 29:11 verse “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for prosperity and not for disaster, plans to give you a future and hope.” And yet, when taken in context of Jeremiah’s very unpopular prophecy in Jerusalem to the last Judean kings before the start of the Babylonian exile, his message is hardly one of hope and prosperity. Ezekiel was in the same boat in Babylonia himself. Theologian and historian Barry Bandstra writes, “Both assumed essentially the same task: to convince their audience… not to delude themselves. Yhwh indeed would punish them for their iniquities, and Jerusalem would fall” (Bandstra, p.318).

As I have been ruminating on this interpretive shift, and what it means to hold faith and hope in tension with the reality of suffering and destruction (a lesson from the dissonant wisdom of previous weeks), I pushed myself to read an article by Christopher Rollston, a professor of the Old Testament. Rollston makes the very bold claim that monotheism was not a core tenet of ancient Hebrew religion. While pointing out that the Yahweh proscribes having “any other God before me (Yhwh),” (Exodus 20:3) the sentiment behind such an explicit recognition of other gods belies plausibility in polytheism in popular Israelite custom and tradition (Rollston, 96).

To support this claim, Rollston relies on a blend of supporting materials, namely biblical and epigraphic (i.e. physical inscriptions on buildings, coins, or other edifices). Texts from Mesopotamia and the Levant, which demonstrate the culture’s wide held polytheistic conceptions, lend credibility to his thesis, at least in part because of their geographic proximity to Israel (Rollston, 97). He reads the Hebrew Scriptures in their socio-contextual history, suggesting that the narrative of Israel’s creation captured in Genesis 11:31 supports its “birth” as emerging from the polytheistic culture surrounding it (and substantially so) (Rollston, 98). This larger culture was reflected in the states of Moab, Edom, and Ammon, all of which are mentioned (cursed) by Jeremiah for their profligate ways (c.f. Jer 32:35, 48:7, 49:1). That these non-monotheistic ways would be reflected in the beliefs and practices of the people in contravention of the Mosaic covenant should come as no surprise for the alert reader of Jeremiah’s jeremiad; he decried these very practices and prophesied judgment on the Judean kingdom for the same (Bandstra, p.333).

And this brings me back to the dissonance I’ve been observing/experiencing in what I read in the text, what I read about the text, and what I hold to be true based on my beliefs and what I’ve been taught. What I read in the text (i.e. the world presented to me through the narrative of the Biblical text) is similar in many respects to what I’ve been taught in my faith community (i.e. the Biblical narrative world presented to me as distilled through the lenses of more contemporary culture). That Rollston’s claim is hardly controversial in the field of biblical studies, in the words of Dr. Brooke Lester, would come as a pretty big shock to some of the folks in my faith community of the United Methodist Church.

Many of the people who were instrumental in my faith formation read the Bible in a literal way. For them, when the Decalogue proclaims the supremacy of Yahweh’s Lordship, it does so in a kind of vacuum that doesn’t recognize even the option that the Israelites could have had popular polytheistic views. Such a reading of the scripture would require the kind of critical and academic deeper dive that both the OOTLE 16 course and Rollston evidence. They are unsettling propositions, even to me, because they challenge the idea that God’s existence as “one and only” has been with at least one group of people (i.e. God’s people Israel) since time immemorial (i.e. the Creation). Notwithstanding that I’ve already accepted this last conception as allegorical, the monotheism of Israelite is something I’ve always taken for granted – despite clear evidence in the text itself that has invited this critical reading.

Reading Rollston’s article in light of Jeremiah and Ezekiel reminds me to be faithful to the God who is still being revealed to me, even now, after a couple decades of study and faith formation. While being challenged by Rollston and by the prophets (who, like Rollston in some contemporary churches today were deeply unpopular because of the ways they challenged the powers and principalities of their day), I cling to the hope ultimately found in Jeremiad Covenant: God is continuing to write God’s promise in our hearts, where true understanding may be found.