The vast majority of the Old Testament was written by henotheists and monolatrists, who accepted the existence of gods other than Yahweh but refused to worship them. Yahweh was the royal and national god of Israel and Judah, and the Yahwist Bible authors believed the Israelites should only worship him.
A great example of monolatrist thought in the Jewish Bible is the first commandment, ‘You shall have no other gods besides me…You must not worship or serve them, for, I, Yahweh your god, am a jealous god’ (Deuteronomy 5.7-9). This statement explicitly accepts the existence of other gods, they clearly must have been believed to exist for Yahweh to have got so jealous of them.
We find similar thought in the Book of Psalms where we read, ‘God stands in the court of heaven to deliver judgement among the gods themselves’ (Psalm 82.1), along with, ‘Among the gods none are like you lord, no deeds compare to yours’ (Psalm 86.8) and ‘Yahweh is a great god, a great king above all gods’ (Psalm 95.3).
The archaeological evidence from the Levant suggests that the Israelites were originally a subset of Canaanite culture, and that they originally worshipped the same gods as the other Canaanites – El, Baal and Asherah. At some point they also adopted Yahweh into their pantheon, and at a later date he became the chief god of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
The Old Testament was written by priests of Yahweh, during the ninth to second centuries BCE, but the Torah and much of the writing probably dates to around the 5th century BCE. The Old Testament largely represents the authors’ view of history and religion projected back into a fictional past. The Hebrew Bible actively denigrates the worship of the other Israelite and Canaanite gods, it’s a veritable handbook of religious intolerance.
In the Old Testament, we constantly read of Yahweh’s anger at the Israelites for worshipping their other gods. Yahweh is portrayed as an intolerant, vengeful, jealous god that cannot stand the sight of a temple, idol or altar dedicated to any other deity. There are plenty of examples of this in the Bible, like in the Book of Exodus, where Yahweh tells Moses,
‘Break down their altars, smash their sacred pillars and cut down their Asherah poles. Do not worship any other god, for Yahweh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous god.’ (Exodus 34.13-14)
The same story is retold in the Book of Deuteronomy,
‘Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.’ (Deuteronomy 12.3)
We also find plenty of religious intolerance in the biblical stories about Moses, some of which are quite shocking, in the Book of Numbers, Yahweh tells Moses to kill Israelites for worshipping the rival god Baal,
‘While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in fornication with the Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate the sacrificial meal and bowed down before these gods. So Israel joined in the worship of Baal of Peor, and this kindled the anger of Yahweh against Israel. Yahweh said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of these people, and execute them in broad daylight before Yahweh, so that Yahweh’s fierce anger may turn away from Israel.” So Moses said to Israel’s judges, “You must put to death everyone who has joined in worshipping Baal of Peor” (Numbers 21.1-5)
Archaeology has shown that the Israelites were traditionally polytheistic and worshipped a small pantheon of Canaanite gods from the dawn of their nation. The authors of the Bible however call these other Israelite deities ‘foreign’ and ‘new’ gods. A good example of this is in the farewell speech of Moses,
‘They forsook the god who made them
and rejected the rock of his salvation.
They made him jealous with their foreign gods
and angered him with their abominations.
They sacrificed to demons, which are not God –
gods they had not known,
to new gods that had recently appeared,
gods your fathers had never dreaded.’ (Deuteronomy 32.15-17)
The worship of Baal and Asherah are singled out for the most vilification by the writers of the Bible. Baal was the other deity most similar to Yahweh, and Asherah was the consort of El in Canaanite religion, who may also have become the wife of Yahweh in Israelite religion. Several inscriptions are known from ancient Israel and Judah that speak of ‘Yahweh and his Asherah’.
The Deuteronomic books of the Bible are particularly vehement in their opposition to Baal and Asherah. Good examples of this are in the Book of Judges, which contains a fabricated ‘history’ where the Israelites continually ‘sin’ and worship gods other than Yahweh, for which an angry Yahweh punishes them. We read in Judges 2,
‘Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of Yahweh and served the Baals. They forsook Yahweh, the god of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused Yahweh’s anger because they forsook Yahweh and served Baal and Ashtoreth. Yahweh’s anger burned against Israel and he gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever Israel went out to battle, the hand of Yahweh was against them to defeat them, as Yahweh had spoken, and as Yahweh had sworn to them, and they were very distressed.’ (Judges 2.11-15)
This formula is repeated again in Judges 3.7, 4.1-4, 6.1-10, 10.6-10, and 13.1-5, and again in the Book of Samuel.
Both the archaeological and biblical evidence tell us that many Israelites were still polytheistic in the 7th and 6th centuries when parts of the Old Testament were first written. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, ‘You have as many gods as you have towns, Judah. The altars you have set up to burn incense to that shameful god Baal are as many as the streets of Jerusalem’ (Jeremiah 11.13). The Book of Ezekiel tells of people in Jerusalem worshipping other gods and the Sun, both of which are called ‘detestable’ (Ezekiel 8).
The first Book of Kings tells a story where the prophet Elijah invites 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah to a contest of magic on Mount Carmel. Elijah also claims that there are only two prophets of Yahweh left in the whole of Israel at the time (1 Kings 18.19-22). After Elijah defeats the prophets of Baal and Asherah, he tells the Israelites to seize and kill all 850 of them (1 Kings 18.40).
The book of Ezekiel is full of unpleasant vitriol against other gods and their worshippers,
‘Mountains of Israel, hear the word of the lord Yahweh. This what the lord Yahweh says to mountains and hills, ravines and valleys. I am bringing the sword against you, and I will destroy your hill shrines. Your altars will be destroyed and your incense altars shattered. I will throw down your slain before your idols. I will lay the carcasses of the Israelites in front of their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars. Your altars will be laid waste and ruined and your idols shattered and destroyed, your incense altars pulled down, and all your works wiped out. With the slain falling about you, you will know that I am Yahweh.’ (Ezekiel 6.3-7)
This hatred of other gods and strict adherence to worshipping only Yahweh probably took hold of the Jewish psyche after the fall of Judah. The Bible authors blamed Judah’s defeat on the Israelites worshipping gods other than Yahweh. Ezekiel describes the return from the exile in Babylon with,
‘Thus speaks the lord Yahweh – I will gather up the Israelites from their places of exile among the nations. I will gather them from every quarter and restore them to their own soil. I will make them one single nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. They shall have one king, they shall no longer be two nations divided into two kingdoms. They will never again defile themselves with their idols, their detestable ways and their disloyal acts. I will save them from their sinful backsliding and purify them. They will become my people, and I will become their god.’ (Ezekiel 37.21-23)
The intolerance to other gods might also be the result of Persian influence. In the texts of Zoroastrianism, the Persian state religion of the time, we find a class of deities called daevas, who are to be rejected.
In one Persian religious text, a priest describes himself with, ‘I confess myself a worshipper of Mazda, a follower of Zarathustra, one who hates the Daevas and obeys the laws of Ahura’ (Zamyad Yasht 19.0). The Jews may have equated the other gods around them with the daevas. One could also ask did the Jews create Moses as their version of Zarathustra? An inscription of the Persian king Xerxes at Persepolis likewise states,
‘And among these countries there was (a place) where previously false gods [Daevas] were worshipped. Afterwards, by the favour of Ahuramazda, I destroyed that sanctuary of the demons, and I made proclamation, “The demons shall not be worshipped!” Where previously the demons were worshipped, there I worshipped Ahuramazda and Arta (cosmic order) reverently.’ (XPh 35-41)
We find extreme intolerance to non-Jews in later Jewish texts like the book of Jubilees, written in the 2nd century BCE. The book has Abraham say, ‘My soul has hated idols, and I have despised those that served them’ (Jubilees 21.3). It lists the commandments of Abraham to Isaac and Jacob as,
‘Separate yourself from the nations, and eat not with them. Do nothing according to their works, and don’t associate with them. For their works are unclean, and all their ways are a pollution and an abomination and uncleanliness. They offer their sacrifices to the dead and they worship evil spirits’ (Jubilees 22.16-17).
The temple of Jerusalem was the centre of Judaism before its destruction in 70 CE. Non-Jews were banned from going any further than the outer Court of the Gentiles under pain of death. An inscription at the temple in Latin and Greek read, ‘No gentile is to pass inside the balustrade and wall round the temple. Anyone who is caught is responsible to himself for the fact that death follows’ (Josephus – The Jewish War 6.124-6).
Some Jews of the Roman Empire also shared this intolerance towards the worship of other gods and ‘idolatry’. The mid third century CE synagogue of Dura-Europos in Syria has wall frescoes that depict the violent destruction of a pagan shrine. The Dead Sea scrolls were written between 150 BCE and 70 CE by a sect of Jews living in Judea. They were fanatically anti-pagan, and believed the world was about to end at which point they would fight and defeat all the other nations on earth under the auspices of Yahweh.
This mindset also affected early Christians, who also were extremely intolerant of the other gods of the Roman Empire. All the early Christian writers made it clear what they thought of the other gods of the Roman world. Tertullian (155 – 240 CE) wrote, ‘You think that others, too, are gods, whom we know to be devils’ (To Scapula 2).
The Bible and Mythology 