Abstract
The present volume contains the proceedings of an international and inter-disciplinary symposium held in Bern in January 1993 under the auspices of the Swiss Academy of Human and Social Sciences. Experts from three contents working in various fields and disciplines (archaeology, epigraphy, Biblical exegesis, Religious Studies and theology, feminist or not) are engaged in a broad scholarly debate on Biblical monotheism. New light is shed on the historical processes that led towards Biblical monotheism. Historical research is accompanied by more systematic questions: How can the notion of a single God mirror a plurality of worlds and worldviews? How does the One God relate particularly to women’s experience and religious practice? Why and how is the God of the Bible one God alone?
Most religions know several deities, male and female, and so did all Ancient Near Eastern cultures of the second and first millenia B.C.E. Epigraphic sources give evidence of a rather limited polytheism in first millennium Syro-Palestinian religions, not to be mixed up with the more extensive Egyptian or Mesopotamian pantheon organizations. However, the Bible itself shows clear traces of the cult of other deities in and around Israel. In this basically polytheistic environment, Israel generated a monotheistic idea. Yahweh, having a history of his own, seems to have integrated roles and images of various other gods and goddesses. At the same time, the latters’ cult is explicitly banned from Israel by numerous Biblical texts and traditions. A considerable part of the Biblical heritage religious practices. But not everyone in Israel was ready to accept such exclusive tendencies. In post-exilic Judaism it was possible to develop angelology and sapiential (Sophia) mysticism, the latter reviving elements of earlier and contemporaneous goddess symbolism. Exclusion or syncretism notwithstanding, the idea of monotheism eventually became essential to the Biblical perception of God.
This book brings together first-hand artifactual, iconographical and inscriptional evidence and current research on the Bible. 28 papers reflecting a multiplicity of scholarly approaches give new clues for a better understanding of the history and the essence of Biblical monotheism.
Dietrich, Walter