When Did the Bible Become Monotheistic?

See Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, translated by Simon Kaplan (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 35-49. Cohen here is summarizing a line of thought that goes back at least as far as the middle ages. According to this doctrine, belief in one corporeal god would not count as monotheistic for two reasons: First, anything corporeal is divisible and therefore fails the test of unity; an anthropomorphic god like Zeus or Athena has multiple body parts, moods, and loyalties. Second, by virtue of being corporeal and having parts, an anthropomorphic deity fails the test of singularity; the Greek gods wore clothes like people, had emotions like people, and in the final analysis were essentially glorified versions of people.

Editor’s note: For a discussion of this midrash and the lack of a back story for Abraham, see Amit Kula, "Abraham, Smasher of Idols, and the Question of the Torah's Historicity," TheTorah.com (2013); Seth Kadish, "How Did Abraham Discover God?" TheTorah.com (2013); Yishai Kiel, "Why the Midrash has Abraham Thrown into Nimrod’s Furnace," TheTorah.com (2015).

Editor’s note: For the likelihood that some biblical texts are envisioning something more like a pantheon, or at least, divine beings underneath YHWH, see, Jonathan Ben-Dov, "Are There Gods, Angels, and Demons in Deuteronomy?" TheTorah.com (2018); Benjamin Sommer, "Why Are There Demigods in a Monotheistic Torah?" TheTorah.com (2015); TABS Editors, "Are There Secondary Gods?" TheTorah.com (2013). According to Psalm 48:3, YHWH, like Zeus, may even be ruling on a mountain, in this case, Mount Zaphon.

Editor’s note: See Ben Zion Katz, "God’s Appearance to Abraham: Vision or Visit?" TheTorah.com (2013).

Editor’s note: See Marc Z. Brettler, "The Multifaceted Revelation at Sinai," TheTorah.com (2013).

Benjamin Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1. For a detailed reply to Sommer’s claim, see my “What the Hebrew Bible Can/Cannot Teaching Us about God,” in Imagining the Jewish God, ed. Leonard Kaplan and Ken Koltun-Fromm (Lanham, MY.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), 63-85. Also see James L. Kugel, The God of Old (New York: The Free Press, 2003), p. 36 ff., who argues that the boundary between the spiritual realm and the earthly is often crossed in the Book of Genesis.

Editor’s note: For more on this vision, Richard Lederman, "The Seraphim," TheTorah.com (2019).

Editor’s note: For more on this vision, see Carl S. Ehrlich, "Ezekiel's Vision of God and the Chariot," TheTorah.com (2019). For a discussion of how Maimonides may have understood this vision, see Daniel Davies, “The Secret of the Maaseh Merkava According to Maimonides,” TheTorah.com (2015).

Sommer, The Bodies of God, 59–61; Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 1.54. The difference is indicative of a disagreement on what constitutes the real meaning of a text. Is it how the original audience would have understood it or how later generations and further reflection made sense of it? Suffice it to say that Jewish tradition has had distinguished representatives of both approaches.

These are only three of the possible meanings of the verse. For a fuller discussion of the verse’s possible meanings, see Daniel Zucker, "Shema Yisrael: In What Way Is YHWH One?" TheTorah (2017).

Guide of the Perplexed, 1.4.

Guide of the Perplexed, 1.65.

Guide of the Perplexed, 1.10.

For an excellent treatment of the various understandings of idolatry, see Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry, trans. Naomi Goldblum (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).

For more on Second Isaiah and the concept of monotheism in general see my Thinking about the Prophets, Chapter 8, forthcoming from the Jewish Publication Society.

Also see 43:10-13 and 45:6-7. A similar sentiment is expressed in one verse in Deuteronomy:

^{דברים ד:לה} אַתָּה הָרְאֵתָ לָדַעַת כִּי יְ־הוָה הוּא הָאֱלֹהִים אֵין עוֹד מִלְבַדּוֹ.

^{Deut 4:35} It has been clearly demonstrated to you that YHWH alone is God; there is none beside Him.

This verse may be a later addition, contemporaneous with Second Isaiah, as it contradicts other passages in Deuteronomy that assume the existence of other gods, such as Deut 4:19 and the original text of Deut 32:8–9.

For a different interpretation of the verse, see Saul Olyan, "Is Isaiah 40–55 Really Monotheistic?" Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012): 190–201.

For more on metaphors in Second Isaiah, see Marc Z. Brettler, “Incompatible Metaphors for YHWH in Isaiah 40–66,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 78 (1998): 97–129. For more on metaphors about YHWH in the Bible, but focusing on Deuteronomy 32, see Andrea L. Weiss, "The Multiple Metaphors for God in Shirat Haazinu," TheTorah (2014).

This does not mean that metaphors are problematic; Second Isaiah does compare God to a woman in labor, for instance (Isa 42:14). Nevertheless, this is not the same as saying that YHWH is a like a very powerful human being, which is how we picture deities like Zeus or Athena, since such a statement is not meant as a metaphor but as a description. For a monograph on the question of God’s incomparability, see Casper J. Labuschagne, The Incomparability of Yahweh in the Old Testament, Pretoria Oriental Series 5 (Leiden: Brill, 1966).

For other discussions of the development monotheism in the Bible, see Benjamin D. Sommer, “Chapter 10: Monotheism,” in The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Companion, ed. John Barton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 239–270; Jack Schechter, The Idea of Monotheism: The Evolution of a Foundational Concept (Lanham: Hamilton Books, 2018).

Guide of the Perplexed, 1.35.