Constitutional Law
Part 2: “What Were They Thinking?”
Digression: “A History of Government in 6 Revolutions: From the Paleolithic to Philadelphia”
122. Inventing God and Law: The Rhetoric of Monotheism
TITLE: Part P: The Rhetoric of Monotheism
Panel 1: A well-fed elite Yehudan man, dressed in green robes, pantaloons, and slippers of Persian style, reclines on luxurious pillows and bolsters.
ELITE MAN:
It’s simple:
We kill the pantheon.
-=-
Panel 2: Narration box.
NARRATION:
Monolatry had always been a political policy.
Government officials follow policies. Everyone else lives by principles.
Yehud needed a new principle.
Yehudites needed to believe that no other gods were worth worshipping… and that doing so wasn’t just incorrect—it was wrong.
Only then would they begin to worship only Yahweh.
-=-
Panel 3: An elite man dressed in purple, holding a scroll, stands on a stage to harangue a very large crowd on all sides. In the foreground, a man and a woman in the crowd turn to speak to each other.
NARRATION:
To accomplish this, Yehud’s religious leaders started employing the rhetoric of MONOTHEISM
ELITE SPEAKER 1:
There are NO other gods!
MAN IN CROWD:
Rhetoric? More like gaslighting.
WOMAN IN CROWD:
Oh hush.
-=-
Panel 4: Against a dark night sky, a gray-bearded elite man in rich garments holds aloft a flaming wooden idol of some deity or other. He is preaching to another crowd that is not shown.
NARRATION:
New scriptures and teachings proclaimed:
ELITE SPEAKER 2:
OTHER GODS AREN’T REAL!
They’re just imaginary stories about magical sky beings!
Their idols are man-made trinkets. You can burn ‘em in a fire, and nothing will happen to you.
Did the gods of mighty Babylon and Assyria save them from destruction?
NO! Because their gods weren’t real!
By worshipping other gods, the people of Isra-El guaranteed their own destruction.
Why?
Because those gods were never real!
-=-
Panel 5: A nighttime rally, lit up almost like a music festival. On the far stage, another elite speaks to a massive audience. In the foreground, the same man and woman from before turn to speak to each other.
ELITE SPEAKER 3:
But Yahweh? Sure, he may have to teach us a lesson now and then. Even so, once we come back to him, Yahweh always saves us.
We know he’s real!
Besides, don’t we already know that he has no father, no wife, no offspring? Don’t we already know that he created the universe all by himself? Don’t we already know that Yahweh alone is supreme?
So isn’t it obvious that Yahweh is the only god?
And that you are his only chosen people?
MAN IN CROWD:
You know? That does feel true!
WOMAN IN CROWD:
I feel it in my heart.
-=-
Panel 6: An illustration of Daniel in the Lions’ Den. The rocky ground makes a kind of bench that Daniel sits on, human bones strewn at his feet. A sleeping lion and a lioness lay their heads in his lap, while he rests his arms around their shoulders. Another lioness lies sleeping against the lion. On the rocks above Daniel, another male lion lies as sleeping, with one eye opened to look at a shaft of light coming from above. A young lion cub is crawling down from there to join the others with Daniel, who is also looking up at the shaft of light.
NARRATION:
Applying our superpower of story, the vivid tales of the new scriptures turned all this rhetoric into truth.
-=-
FOOTNOTE:
You’ll have to forgive the anachronism in that last panel. The story of Daniel in the Lions’ Den wasn’t added to the scriptures until about 150 B.C., long after the time period we’re talking about. But I already did the Moses epic, Noah’s Ark, and Jonah and the Whale a couple of pages back, and the Daniel stories do still fit the theme.
You’ll also have to forgive me for compressing a much longer process into a single page. First, scriptures told stories of the other gods being Yahweh’s servants (e.g., Deuteronomy 33; Psalms 89, 103, 293). Others included the powers of other gods in Yahweh’s powers, or re-defined earlier references to gods in general (“elohim”) as referring specifically to Yahweh. Another early approach was to refer to other gods as mortal, and even dying (e.g., Psalm 82, Jeremiah 10).
Next came stories mocking gods and idols as man-made and imaginary—and mocking those who thought their gods existed (e.g., Isaiah 44-45, First Kings 18, Second Kings 19, Chronicles 32). At the same time, other stories asserted that Yahweh was the only divine being—so if you wanted, say, divination, then Yahweh was the only one who knew the future (e.g., Isaiah 40-48, Deuteronomy 4, First Kings 8).
Eventually, texts were written (or revised) to reflect a universe where other gods were simply absent. There was no need to deny them or deride them, because of course there is only the one god. Genesis 1 is a good example, but you see this all over the final version of the Old Testament.
The rhetoric of monotheism was part of a very fluid process, involving many different tactics. And it took place over many generations. And it was only one of several things driving the writing of the scriptures. (Some Old Testament scriptures were still being written when Jesus was alive!) So for me to suggest that it was a single event, reflecting a single ideology, is a godawful oversimplification. But all we need to know here is that this was a thing that happened.
Anyway, what’s more interesting (for our purposes) is what happened next.
