Jahweh: His Remarkable Rise

"Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests."

- Jim Morrison, 'An American Prayer'


Jahweh or Jehovah, if I may name that god so familiarly, has had a remarkable journey from obscure Bronze Age tribal deity to his present exalted position - if we identify him with Allah - as Boss of 3 of the world's major religions.

It's like the spread of coffee from its home in Ethiopia to its status now of being consumed throughout the world.

The spread of an idea is like the spread of a commodity. People pass it on because they like it & because it suits them, & other people new to it accept it & incorporate it into their lives for the same reason. At least, that's when it happens benignly. Less happily, ideas & commodities are also spread by force & conquest of course, & here resemble the spread of disease.

I cannot accept that Jahweh/Jehovah/Allah/God the Father/God the Trinity is the one true God. How can the Trinity be simultaneously 3 gods & 1 god anyway ? Rowan Williams might know; he is apparently one of the leading experts in the world on the Trinity. But at first glance it doesn't seem very likely; & I strongly suspect that once Occam's Razor had been to work on the reasons why the Trinity is in fact 1 god, they would be left looking pretty tattered.

I recognise Jahweh as a god, but not the one true God. I reserve the right to worship some or all of the Celtic, Norse/Anglo-Saxon, Greek, Egyptian & Romano-British gods & goddesses, all of whom are in my cultural inheritance as an Englishman and a European. For me personally I would include Woden, Thor, Aphrodite, Demeter, Isis & Osiris. More primally, I reserve the right to worship directly the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the Sky, the Earth & the Sea, Sacred Animals; & to experience the sacred & the numinous wherever I find it.* You may say this is rather a mish-mash, but isn't Christianity, in terms of its ritual & iconography, just such a mish-mash ?

If we take Christianity & Islam together (I can't find a reliable figure for the current total number of adherents to Judaism), Jahweh/Allah has 3.7 billion adherents who regard him exclusively as the one true God - 2.2 billion Christians & 1.5 billion Muslims. He hardly needs me as well.

In this connection, you will be acquainted I suggest with the terms polytheism, monotheism, atheism, agnosticism, deism, animism, & pantheism. But have you heard of the term henotheism ? I stumbled across it while reading about religion in the Classical world. It means you have one god who you personally, or as a tribe or a cult, venerate in particular, but that you are perfectly happy at the same time to recognise the validity of all gods & godesses whatsoever. A position of total tolerance. It strikes me as supremely civilised. And dangerous to the exclusive claims of Christianity, Judaism & Islam, which is why I think you never hear the term. It's suppressed as an option. The options you're presented with are the ones I named at the start of this paragraph, which are in fact the possibilities of religious belief & practice viewed from a monotheistic perspective, one that regards monotheism as true, right & natural.

When it comes to Christianity, I don't hear the term henotheism. The terms I do hear are heresy, schism, anathema, excommunication & idolatry.

On the subject of idolatry, I find it singular that the Christian Church, East & West, condemns idolatry so roundly while at the very same time practicing it so enthusiastically. It's odd sometimes to see a copy of The Ten Commandments set up in a church which is simultaneously full to bursting with graven images. The proscription of graven images in The Ten Commandments is explicit & insistent, & Muslims & observant Jews in general follow it's obvious & intended meaning. The proscription of graven images from The Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 is worth quoting in full because of the stress it is given, & the prominence, being the Second Commandment:

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the the third & fourth generation of them that hate me;

& shewing mercy to thousands of them that love me, & keep my commandments.

Now, in a pagan world, not having graven images is a ready & highly visible way to distinguish your religion from all the others around you, who precisely do have graven images which they venerate.

The Christian Church defends its use of graven images by asserting it is not idolatry to have them, because the worshiper does not worship the image itself but rather what it represents. This is sheer sophistry. The proscription in the Second Commandment is perfectly clear & straightforward. There have often been iconoclastic movements & controversies in both the Eastern & Western Churches, & quite rightly so.

The Christian use of images is an excellent example of the fact that mores are vastly more important in terms of their effect on human behaviour than the official morality that people are supposed to be following at a given time. Mores shape almost everything, morality virtually nothing.

A final thought on Christianity. It has always struck me as funny, and so human, that the opposing factions in Christianity call themselves Catholic, meaning universal when it is nothing of the kind, & Orthodox, meaning 'Right-Believing', or 'Just so you're clear, We're Right & Everyone Else is Wrong.'

It's not Sacred - it's sacred to you !


With thanks & respect to Xenophanes, William of Occam & Voltaire. Further reading: The Lost Gods of England by Brian Branston.

*Before I wrote this, I had no idea I was such an old hippy. But let it stand .....