Concept

Israelite Monotheism

Intro

Israel's confession that there is one God is not simply a head-count of gods. Egypt had a pharaoh, Akhenaten, who tried to make one sun-god supreme, and Greece had Zeus as king of the gods. What made Israel different was ethical monotheism: the one God is also the moral authority over everyone, the king included. When King David took another man's wife and arranged the man's death, the prophet Nathan walked into the palace and said, "Thou art the man" (2 Samuel 12). No law could reach an Egyptian pharaoh that way, because the pharaoh stood between the gods and the people. In Israel the king stood under the law with everyone else.

Skeptics often point out that many ancient Israelites worshipped other gods too, especially the goddess Asherah, and that archaeologists have found inscriptions pairing Yahweh with "his asherah." That is true, and the Bible says so first. The books of Kings are largely a record of Israel doing exactly that and being condemned for it. The real question is not whether some Israelites mixed their worship, but whether exclusive loyalty to Yahweh was the original demand they kept breaking, or a late invention read back into the past. This page lays out what the evidence shows and why the mixing is fully consistent with the biblical account.

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In full

Ethical monotheism names two claims held together: (1) there is one God who alone made and rules all things (Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 45:5); and (2) this God is the source and judge of moral obligation for every person, so that worship of Him carries duties to neighbour, stranger and poor. Monotheism supplies the first claim; the "ethical" supplies the second. Showing that some other culture had one supreme deity therefore does not show it had ethical monotheism. The Aten cult of Akhenaten (14th century BC) elevated one deity and suppressed others; Egyptologists debate whether to call it monotheism, and James Hoffmeier (Akhenaten and the Origins of Monotheism, 2015) argues its developed form was. Even granting full monotheism, the political theology differs at the decisive point: the pharaoh was the unique intermediary of the god, whereas Israel's Torah binds the king to write out and read the law so that "his heart be not lifted up above his brethren" (Deuteronomy 17:18-20, KJV), and its prophets could condemn the king by that law. Nor is a Greek high god a parallel to Israel's Creator: in Hesiod's Theogony Zeus is born of Cronus and Rhea into a cosmos already populated by earlier powers, a contingent ruler within the world rather than its source.

The historical question is when exclusive Yahweh worship became the norm. Critical reconstructions associated with Mark S. Smith and others propose a gradual development out of a wider Canaanite religious environment, with exclusive Yahwism prevailing late in the monarchy, through Josiah's reform (c. 622 BC) and after. The biblical reconstruction presents the covenant demand as early (Exodus 20:3) and the monarchy as a long record of breaking it. The archaeological data (the Mesha Stele naming Yahweh c. 840 BC; the Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom inscriptions associating Yahweh with an asherah) prove that Yahweh was worshipped well before Josiah and that some worship was syncretistic. They cannot by themselves decide between the two reconstructions, because syncretism is exactly what the biblical account describes and condemns.

Monotheism versus ethical monotheism

The logical point is simple: "Akhenaten worshipped one god" does not entail "Akhenaten had Israel's ethical monotheism." Ethical monotheism includes monotheism, but monotheism does not include the ethical claim. Finding an earlier single-god cult therefore does not show that Israel copied its distinctive idea.

Zeus is not a creator

A common claim is that "the Greeks already had a creator god in Zeus." In Hesiod's Theogony, the standard early account:

• Chaos, Earth, Tartarus, Eros, Heaven and the Titans exist before Zeus is born.
• Zeus is a son of Cronus and Rhea, and wins his rule by overthrowing the Titans.
• Humanity is associated more with Prometheus (who in later tradition forms humans from clay) than with Zeus; the first woman, Pandora, is fashioned by Hephaestus at Zeus's order.

Zeus is therefore a ruler and orderer inside an existing world. The God of Genesis 1:1 is not born into the cosmos but brings it into being. For the metaphysical difference between a powerful being within reality and the necessary ground of reality, see Necessary vs Contingent Being.

Was Yahweh worshipped before Josiah?

Yes, and the evidence is external as well as biblical.

• The Mesha Stele (c. 840 BC), set up by a king of Moab, a hostile neighbour, boasts of taking vessels of Yahweh from an Israelite site. That is a non-Israelite witness to Yahweh worship roughly two centuries before Josiah. See Mesha Stele.
• Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom (8th century BC) carry blessings in the name of Yahweh, in some cases alongside a reference to "his asherah." Scholars debate whether asherah here names the goddess or a cult object associated with Yahweh's worship.
• The Bible itself pictures ninth-century Israel divided between Yahweh and Baal: "How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him" (1 Kings 18:21, KJV).

Three separate claims are therefore in play:

1. "Israelites did not worship Yahweh before Josiah." False.
2. "Pre-Josiah Israelites all worshipped Yahweh alone." Also false, and the Bible never claims it.
3. "Josiah enforced exclusive Yahweh worship and centralised it in Jerusalem." True, and that is why his reform is remembered.

Asherah and the two reconstructions

The Hebrew word asherah (H0842, 40 verses in the Strong's-tagged KJV, where it is rendered "grove") names both the goddess and wooden cult objects associated with her. The Torah forbids the very combination the inscriptions show:

Thou shalt not plant thee an Asherah of any kind of tree beside the altar of Jehovah thy God, which thou shalt make thee. (Deuteronomy 16:21, ASV)

Kings then records the prohibited thing standing in Yahweh's own temple until Josiah removed it: "he brought out the grove from the house of the LORD ... and burned it at the brook Kidron" (2 Kings 23:6, KJV).

So the discovery that some Israelites paired Yahweh with Asherah fits both reconstructions:

Syncretism, by itself, does not decide between them, because syncretism is what the biblical historians say happened. Evidence of Asherah worship is not a surprise to the Bible; it is the Bible's own charge sheet. The critic answers that the prohibitions in Deuteronomy may themselves be late, projected back onto Moses. That is the real point of dispute, and it is a question about the dating of Deuteronomy, not about whether syncretism existed. The case for an early covenant core is argued at Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch and Yahweh Borrowed From the Canaanites Objection Defeater.

Did Josiah invent the Bible?

The claim that "the Bible was written under Josiah" usually rests on the report that the high priest Hilkiah found "the book of the law" during temple repairs (c. 622 BC). But the text says the book was found, not written: "I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD" (2 Kings 22:8, KJV). Even the critical view that Deuteronomy reached an important stage of composition or editing in Josiah's time is a claim about redaction, and redaction is not invention. It does not show that Israel had no earlier written or oral covenant tradition, and the Torah itself reports Moses writing down covenant words (Exodus 24:4; Deuteronomy 31:9). See Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch and Documentary Hypothesis for the full debate, including de Wette's original thesis.

Why the difference matters

1. A king under law. Ethical monotheism is the root of the idea that power does not create right. Nathan's rebuke of David and Elijah's of Ahab are only possible where the ruler is not the source of morality.
2. Human worth. Because the one God made every person in His image (Genesis 1:27), king and servant share one category. See Imago Dei.
3. The stranger. The same law commands love of the resident foreigner "as thyself" (Leviticus 19:34), an ethic that follows from one God over all peoples.
4. Apologetic scope. An argument that early Israelites were syncretistic does not touch the claim that the one God exists; that question is settled, if at all, by the arguments at Cosmological Arguments and Moral Argument, not by cult archaeology.

See also

• Monotheism, the doctrine across Judaism, Christianity and Islam
• OT Polytheism Objection Defeater, the "Old Testament is polytheistic" charge
• Yahweh Borrowed From the Canaanites Objection Defeater, the Canaanite-origins thesis
• Polytheism, the religious systems Israel's faith opposed
• Mesha Stele, the Moabite witness to Yahweh
• Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch, the dating question behind the Asherah debate
• Divine Command Theory, the moral side of ethical monotheism