Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Monolatry

Monolatry is an important word to know for understanding a country like Israel whose nationhood is bound so closely with its religion.

Monolatry means the worship of one god. This is as distinguished from monotheism, which means the belief in one god. Catch the distinction?

So, the role of monolatry in the history of the Jewish religion is as a middle form between polytheism and monotheism. King David, like all Israelites at that time, was a polytheist. At some point after David, however, there was a change. Judaism changed into a henotheistic religion, which is to say it believed in several gods but preferentially worshipped one. The next stage after henotheism (and this would be about 300 years after David) was monolatry.

Monolatry was a little different from henotheism because monolatry introduced the idea of god having a special relatioship with the nation of Israel. Monolatry is where religion and nationalism become linked. A monolater may or may not believe that other gods exist, or he may be agnostic about them. But he believes that, as far as his nation is concerned, there is only one god for them. Unlike a henotheist, a monolater does not fear the dust storm god or the bad luck god and the sea storm god and so forth; even if they do exist, they can't touch him because his nation is protected by his national god. As long as his nation stands, so does his god.

Monolatry is not monotheism. Monotheism developed only after the Jews were exiled to Babylon. For then, their nation really was destroyed, and they needed an enlarged, more universal understanding of god in order to carry on being Jews. So, they developed monotheism: the positive belief that there is one and only one god for all of man kind.

Monotheism is a pretty tall order, and I would argue that many many modern Israelis are in fact not monotheists, but monolaters. I mean this in the following sense: their religion is bound up in nationalism. Think of the kotel, the western wall. Its most powerful association for most secular Israelis is as the place where certain army units are sworn in. The kotel is a religious symbol co-opted for nationalist purposes (and has been ever since Herod built it). For a true monotheist, god is a parable for universalist ideas such as universal human dignity, human rights, human brotherhood, etc. One god is the proverbial reflection of the idea of one humanity. But for a monolater, one god is a parable for the unity of his nation. One god is the reflection of his unified nation.

I think ideally Judaism is a religion of both monotheism (belief in one god) and monolatry (worship of one god). Judaism says that there really is only one god for everyone, but that the Jewish people has a special relationship with that god. (Judaism is open to and ultimately agnostic about the possibility that other peoples also have special relationships with that same god.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fascinating! I didn't realize all the nuances. And most interesting to me is that monotheism came on their arrival in Babylon!

Anonymous said...

It does ring true, however I'm wondering what your source(s) is/are?