Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism

3. All Gods are One: Evolutionary and Inclusive Monotheism

53 3 All Gods Are One Evolutionary and Inclusive Monotheism The writer and medievalist C. S. Lewis once stated that monotheism should not be regarded as the rival of polytheism, but rather as its maturity. Where you find polytheism, combined with any speculative power and any leisure for speculation, monotheism will sooner or later arise as a natural development. The principle, I understand, is well illustrated in the history of Indian religion. Behind the gods arises the One, and the gods as well as the men are only his dreams. That is one way of disposing of the many. . . . The gods are to be aspects, manifestations, temporary or partial embodiments of the single power.1 As early as the seventeenth century, when the terms “monotheism” and “polytheism” were being coined, Ralph Cudworth stated that all religions were basically monotheistic in that they acknowledged only one supreme deity as origin or creator of the universe.2 There are, in fact, several roads that seem to lead from polytheism to monotheism, to reduce the number of gods and to transform diversity into unity. One, which I will call “Translating Gods,” is typical of Mesopotamia but spread all across the ancient world of classical antiquity.3 The other is typical of all polytheistic religions and consists of a well-defined hierarchal structuring of the pantheon, with a single god at the top who tends not only to surpass the other gods but also eventually to absorb them. This is what Eric Voegelin has called “Summodeism,” the belief in a supreme god far above the other members of the pantheon.4 In the first model unity is a matter of common elements, of what two or three— and eventually even all—gods have in common; in the second model unity is a question of power. Two Paths to Unity Translating Gods From the viewpoint of monotheism, polytheism seems prehistoric: original , primitive, immature, a mere precursor of monotheism. However, as soon as one changes this perspective and tries to view polytheism from within, say, from the viewpoint of ancient Egypt, polytheism appears as a great cultural achievement. In polytheistic religions the deities are clearly differentiated and personalized by name, shape, and function. The great achievement of polytheism is the articulation of a common semantic universe. It is this semantic dimension that makes the names translatable, that is, makes it possible for gods from different cultures— or different regions and traditions within a culture—to be equated with one another. Tribal religions are ethnocentric. The powers and ancestral spirits that are worshiped by one tribe are irreducibly and untranslatably different from those worshiped by another. By contrast, the highly differentiated members of polytheistic pantheons easily lend themselves to cross-cultural translation or “interpretation.” Translation works because the gods have a well-defined function in the maintenance of cosmic, political, and social order. The sun god of one group, culture, or religion is the same as the sun god of another. Most of the deities have a cosmic competence and reference or are related to a well-defined cultural domain, such as writing, craftsmanship, love, war, or magic. This specific responsibility and competence renders a deity comparable to other deities with similar traits and makes their names mutually translatable. The tradition of translating or interpreting foreign divine names goes back to the innumerable glossaries equating Sumerian and Akkadian words, among which appear lists of divine names in two or even three languages, such as Emesal (women’s language; used as a literary dialect ), Sumerian, and Akkadian. The most interesting of these sources is the explanatory list Anuˇ sa ameli, which contains three columns, the first two giving the Sumerian and Akkadian names, respectively, and the third listing the functional definition of each deity.5 This explanatory list gives what may be called the “meaning” of divine names, making explicit the principle that underlies the equation or translation of gods. In the Kassite period of the Late Bronze Age the lists are extended to include such languages as Amorite, Hurritic, Elamite, and Kassite in addition to Sumerian and Akkadian. In these cases the practice of translating divine names was applied to very different cultures and religions. 54 All Gods Are One The origin of this practice may be found in the field of international law. Treaties had to be sealed by solemn oaths, and the gods who were invoked in these oaths had to be recognized...