I was watching a recent Frontline episode last night, where they interviewed a number of religious leaders (christian, Islam, Jewish).
One of the comments that struck me was one that a rabbi gave, which I’ll poorly paraphrase here: "People ask me ‘how could god allow such a thing?’ and I think to myself, my job as a rabbi isn’t to answer that question, but to help people live with that question. God doesn’t have a plan. People who say about september 11, ‘well, that was god’s way’ or ‘god must have a plan’ well, if that is how you cope with god, then good for you. But that isn’t MY god.
I’ve often felt that when each of the major religions pray to god, they are all praying to the same god, but with different interpretations. And, that is one way to take the rabbi’s comment.
But, I began thinking that what if the rabbi meant something different - or even if he didn’t, prehaps another group of people do - people that believe that thier god is NOT the same god as the gods of the other religions. It’s almost as if no one really wants to believe in pantheism, but they then are somehow willing to use pantheism to explain the differences in THEIR god versus the other gods.
Is it possible that the ancient greeks actually already delt with this situation? That is, the ancient greeks assimilation of differnt cultures believing in differnet gods, and instead of destroying them in holy wars, they integrated into the pantheism we all know that exists in ancient greek society.
Some scholars do believe that some members of the Greek pantheon (not pantheism) were borrowed from other cultures, and that minor figures in Greek myth such as Io or my namesake might have been goddesses worshipped by people conquered by or assimilated by the Greeks.
However, I don’t think this has much to do with the set-up of your question. Judaism has always recognized that non-Jews worship other gods. The God of the Jews is just that, and certainly was not the same as Ba’al or Osiris or Jupiter or any other god of any other people. This was a pretty common view in the ancient world – we’ve got our gods, you’ve got yours, we’ll worry about ours, you worry about yours. The ideas that all gods are one god, or that there is only one true god (or set of gods), seem to have come along much later.
I disagree, Lamia. The Jews, like the Christians, believe (and always have) that their god is the only one. Judaism is a monotheistic religion. However, monotheistic religions make references to other gods, that’s true. Notice, however, that they use the TERM “god” for other religions, and the NAME “God” for their own. I learned in Bible class a long time ago that anything that you idolize or put at a high place in your life becomes a god to you. The Jews believed that other religions put things before “God,” and therefore referred to these things as “gods.” To my knowledge, however, they didn’t believe Ba’al actually existed outside the minds of his followers.
We may need an actual Jew to sort this out for us (Hey, where are you guys?), but it has been my understanding that Judaism is a monotheistic religion because Jews worship only one god, not because they insist that there is no possibility of the existence of gods other than their own. I’m not saying that the ancient Israelites definately believed that there was a real Ba’al, just that I don’t think they much cared whether the gods of other tribes existed or not. A good Jew couldn’t worship those other gods either way, so what difference did it make? I think this is the idea that many modern people find difficult to grasp, that it is possible to believe in (or at least not outright deny the existence of) a god without worshipping that god.
As for the Greeks, there were many cases of gods being “merged”. For instance, the Greeks said that the king of the gods was Zeus. The Egyptians said that the king of the gods was Ra. When the Greeks came into contact with the Egyptians, they came to the conclusion that Zeus and Ra were two names for the same god, since there obviously couldn’t be two kings of the gods. Likewise for the Romans, for instance: Jupiter and Zeus had different origins, before it was decided that they were the same, and Neptune was a fairly minor Roman god before the conquering Greeks decided that that must be what the Romans called Poseidon.
I’ve heard this presented as one reason why Zeus is so promiscuous in the myths. In one assimilated culture, the King of the gods is married to a sky goddess. In another, he’s married to a fertility goddess. In another, the goddess of light, or of beauty, or of the household, or whatever. Since Zeus can’t be married to all of them, he’s given one as wife, and the rest as lovers.
Lamia, I, for one don’t believe the Greek gods existed in actuality, but I refer to them as “gods.” Just as I don’t believe the Christian god exists except for in the mind of Christians, but I refer to him as “god.” The way I was always taught history and religion, that’s the same way the Jews felt about other gods.
IS there a Jew (or someone close to the faith) around to give us a straight answer? Heck, a religion major will do - I’m sure y’all know more than I do.
Scholars think that the “classical” greek gods had originally various cultural origins (say, some originated in Asia Minor, others in Crete, etc…) and were assimilated, intermixed, had their attributes changed, etc…over time. To which extent greek people from the classical period were aware of these “borrowings”, of the actual origins of their various gods, I don’t know.
