07-07-2015, 02:39 PM
(07-07-2015, 01:06 PM)PhilHos Wrote: What evidence? I ask this with completely sincerity. From my research (admittedly, it's been awhile and even then it wasn't the most comprehensive research), I've not come across any evidence to suggest that Judaistic worship incorporated the worship of other gods. I am aware that the Israelites often worshiped other gods, but that these deities were not part of Judaism and ran counter to the Judaistic commandment of "Thou shall have no other gods".
I would be most interested to discover the evidence that suggests that Judaism originally incorporated the acceptable worship of multiple gods.
From what I've read, most people seem to think Zoraster was born sometime during the 600s BC. I forget exactly why but IIRC, I think a big chunk of it is with the language and syntax of his writings and how they fit in with that particular time period.
You're thinking of the history of Judaism in the wrong way, here. The ancient Semitic religion eventually transitioned into Judaism, but Judaism was never polytheistic. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this well or not.
We know the pantheon of the ancient Semitic people, Semitic being the culture of the area surrounding the Holy Land, consisted of several deities. The people believed that each nation had a deity that oversaw them and the most powerful of these deities was the one for them. This god's name was El or Elohim. This is why as the language of the culture changed and as Judaism rose the word El became the Hebrew word for God. When I say there is evidence of all of this we aren't talking hard and fast evidence that definitively proves anything. What we have is the existence of a pantheon prior to the exile, and a marked decrease in any mention of the other gods upon the return of Semitic people to the region.
It's interesting that you keep bringing up the worship of multiple gods, because even with a pantheon worship was almost exclusively of El/Elohim among the Semitic people as that was the most powerful of the gods and their protector of their nation (thus the "chosen people" aspect). So what you're asking for there isn't evidence of because that wasn't the case. In fact,t he quote you provide is missing something, is it not? "You shall worship no other gods before me." This is seen by some biblical scholars as fingerprints of the ancient Semitic religion recognizing the existence of other gods, but that Yahweh (which merged with El within Israel) is the god of these people and so comes first.
None of this is of course finite because discoveries are made all of the time. This is just what the archaeological evidence leads us to right now. I took a course last summer on the history of the Abrahamic religions at Eastern Mennonite University where I learned most of this in more detail. I knew that there was a transition, but as far as some of the more nitty gritty stuff I didn't know until then. But the long and short here is that Judaism was never polytheistic, but the God of Abraham is the primary deity of the pantheon of the ancient Semitic peoples and the prevalence of monotheism among them, and thus the earliest form of Judaism, did not occur until their return from exile in Babylon and the Second Temple.
