Was Judaism originally polytheistic?

[BrethrenBoy]

For a long time I have had a strong interest in Judaism, as it is the older brother of Christianity. I started to read so articles online, and came across some that are causing me to question my faith. This articles, mostly from Wikipedia, claim that the Exodus never happened, the Jewish people arose for the Canaanites, Judaism was polytheistic until the Babylonian exile, God had a wife, and even that the YWHW was originally a Canaan god. Is there any truth to this? If so, how does this affect Christianity?

 

[OxygenMan]

For a long time I have had a strong interest in Judaism, as it is the older brother of Christianity. I started to read so articles online, and came across some that are causing me to question my faith. This articles, mostly from Wikipedia, claim that the Exodus never happened, the Jewish people arose for the Canaanites, Judaism was polytheistic until the Babylonian exile, God had a wife, and even that the YWHW was originally a Canaan god. Is there any truth to this? If so, how does this affect Christianity?

I can’t answer all of your questions, but I can answer a few of them. Judaism, that is, the religion of the Israelites, was not polytheistic. The problem was, the Israelites adopted many of the Canaanite idols when they entered into their lands. Among ancient pagans, the practice of seeing different gods as manifestations of each other, or mixing the elements of different gods together, was common. So for the common, “everyman” Israelite, there was a time when the worship of Baal and the worship of YWHW didn’t seem that different. This was dangerous and false, which is why so many of the Old Testament prophets speak out against it. Judaism was not polytheistic before the Babylonian exile, but many Jews lapsed into polytheism.

God did not have a wife. This is one of the elements of blending traditions in paganism that I mentioned. A major Canaanite god was El. His wife was Astarte (Ashtoreth). When the Jews lapsed into worshiping idols, they blended that tradition and claimed that Astarte was the wife of YWHW, polluting His temple with her worship.

There are no records of YWHW being a Canaanite god. There is some evidence that a cult worshiping existed around Sinai before the exodus, but even that is mostly conjecture. Even if there was, it in no way proves YWHW to be a false god.

As for the exodus, I don’t have any resources on hand at the moment, but the claim that it was entirely false seems to be quite biased. There is evidence from Egyptian records of the “Hapiru” (probably the Hebrews) being a nomadic people who did move in large numbers.

Wikipedia can be a good source of information, but know that it can also be heavily biased, despite its claims of merely presenting facts.

 

[meltzerboy]

For a long time I have had a strong interest in Judaism, as it is the older brother of Christianity. I started to read so articles online, and came across some that are causing me to question my faith. This articles, mostly from Wikipedia, claim that the Exodus never happened, the Jewish people arose for the Canaanites, Judaism was polytheistic until the Babylonian exile, God had a wife, and even that the YWHW was originally a Canaan god. Is there any truth to this? If so, how does this affect Christianity?

There were originally several different kinds of Judaism vying for dominance, more than twenty according to one Hebrew scholar! Most of us are familiar only with the most influential forms as practiced by the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and a few more varieties. However, there were variations even within the Pharisees, for example, and furthermore wider variations between the principal forms of Judaism and smaller competing movements that had divergent ideas about what Judaism is and should be all about. Thus there is some truth to the assertion that at least some forms of Judaism distinct from the major varieties were polytheistic in their beliefs during the same era, in the sense they may have come to worship one G-d but together with a group of lesser gods. To make matters more complicated, there seems also to be a chronological shift in the attitudes of many of those people who adopted Judaism, moving from polytheism toward monotheism. So much more research needs to be done to piece all this together, if such research is even possible given the length of time involved and the relative paucity of historical evidence on the subject. As to the notion of G-d having a wife, I have never heard of this before, but it may have been believed within certain Jewish movements. The truthfulness of the Exodus is really a separate issue from the polytheism vs. monotheism question of Judaism, and I recall there is a separate thread or two on the matter. As a side-issue, the appearance of Jesus as a liberal, even revolutionary, Rabbi in the context of Judaism (though not Christianity, of course) was viewed by some as yet another variant of Judaism that became a movement and, needless to say, quite a successful one.

 

[Walcot]

For a long time I have had a strong interest in Judaism, as it is the older brother of Christianity. I started to read so articles online, and came across some that are causing me to question my faith. This articles, mostly from Wikipedia, claim that the Exodus never happened, the Jewish people arose for the Canaanites, Judaism was polytheistic until the Babylonian exile, God had a wife, and even that the YWHW was originally a Canaan god. Is there any truth to this? If so, how does this affect Christianity?

You might find Karen Armstrong’s book ‘the history of God’ interesting. She is very knowledgeable and thorough.

 

[Darryl1958]

For a long time I have had a strong interest in Judaism, as it is the older brother of Christianity. I started to read so articles online, and came across some that are causing me to question my faith. This articles, mostly from Wikipedia, claim that the Exodus never happened, the Jewish people arose for the Canaanites, Judaism was polytheistic until the Babylonian exile, God had a wife, and even that the YWHW was originally a Canaan god. Is there any truth to this? If so, how does this affect Christianity?

The jury is out, for the dominant viewpoint changes with each new archeological discovery.

For sure though, the concept of monotheism emerged out of a polytheistic world.
On an allegorical level at least, the Exodus of the bible was literally an exodus out of polytheism into a monotheistic point of view.

there is no evidence of a huge exodus out of Egypt by any people. There is however evidence of campsites emerging in the Judean hills culturally identical to those campsights around them, except for the absence of pig bones in the cooking pits. This would be before the Babylonian exile for sure, before the Davidic kingdom.

Dietary regulations are seldom for health reasons— in a religious world without modern medicine at least. Dietary laws enable a people to se tthemselves apart.
This is not to say that the tales of Exodus and Genesis do not touch upon some ancient memory, but the best evidence right now is that monotheism emerged as this distinct people with distinct dietary laws emerged out of the Canaanites and other Semites that were at one time identical in every way to them.

Polytheism is in the end a worship of nature, and an attempt to manipulate the natural world through magical practices directed toward the nature gods. Monotheism speaks to a truth about our human nature that realizes that who we are transcends nature in some way.
This is the case that the Bible makes.
Dietary law