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23 2 Worship and the Question of Jewish Monotheism in the Greco-Roman Era Before we can determine whether various early Christian writings fit within Jewish monotheism as it was understood and practiced in the Greco-Roman period, we must determine whether and to what extent Judaism was in fact a monotheistic faith, and whether there was a unity or diversity of views on the matter. Rather than simply move directly into the evidence regarding the Roman era, it is crucial that we begin earlier, with a review of the evidence that Judaism was recognized by others in the Hellenistic age as having some sort of distinctive focus on one God alone. Because scholars such as Margaret Barker claim that Christianity simply took up elements of a “polytheistic ” form of religion that never died out in Israel, it is important to determine the character of Jewish beliefs not only in New Testament times but also for several generations before. Then and only then will we be in a position to explore possible categories of classification that may enable us to do justice to both Jewish distinctiveness, as well as to the fact that this distinctive focus on one God may not be identical to what is generally meant by terms such as “monotheism” in our time. There are three major possibilities when thinking about Jewish monotheism and/or polytheism in this period: McGrath_FINAL.indb 23 McGrath_FINAL.indb 23 11/14/2008 12:08:26 PM 11/14/2008 12:08:26 PM 24 chapter two 1. It is possible that “in those days there were no rules in Israel, and everyone did as he saw fit.” In other words, the diversity within Judaism may have included both what we might call monotheists (or perhaps “Yahweh-aloneists”) and polytheists. Within this latter category might be included both those who continued a pre-exilic form of religion that remained uninfluenced by the Deuteronomic innovations of the reign of Josiah, such as appears to have existed at Elephantine in Egypt, and those who engaged in worship of the local gods in those parts of the Diaspora where they lived.1 According to this view, there is simply a diversity of “Judaisms,” of groups who may well have had nothing in common apart from their bearing of the designation Ioudaioi, “Jews.” 2. It is possible that there were rules that most if not all Jews considered binding and authoritative, such as for example those found in the Torah. If this was the case, then as scholars for such a long time maintained, things like the inscriptions to Pan made by Jews living in the Diaspora were exceptions, ones that would have presumably been considered by most Jews to be beyond the pale of acceptable practice. When I say there may have been rules, I do not mean this in the sense of a universal orthodoxy, which clearly did not exist in this period. What I mean is that the view that one should worship only one God could by this stage in their history have become a well-established part of Jewish identity, self-understanding, and culture. There are plenty of viewpoints that can be regarded as the opinion of the majority of Americans in our time but two hundred years ago were completely unknown.2 Whether a viewpoint was established by propaganda or by force at some time in the past, or through some slower process of cultural development, matters little. It did not take more than a couple of centuries for Islam to come to dominate in Arabia—or for Protestantism to become the dominant force in certain European countries after the Reformation. Enough time had passed between the origins of the Yahweh-alone movement and the start of the Hellenistic age that, even without some central authority to impose its viewpoint as orthodoxy, this viewpoint could nonetheless have established itself as “common Judaism .” Whether it had in fact done so is a matter that must be considered carefully, but it is certainly a genuine possibility and should not be excluded simply because it was assumed without question to be the case by earlier generations of scholars. 3. It is possible that there were rules or a generally accepted viewpoint but that some of the things usually felt by scholars to be examples of “polytheism” or syncretism may in fact have been compatible with devotion to one God alone as understood in Hellenistic Judaism . Paula Fredriksen has said, “While not every ancient...

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