1.2 When there were many gods

In my cycle of writing, the project called, "the flow of revelation" comes next for a couple days. Here are the previous posts in this series:

Introduction
1.1 What Christians Believe about God
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1.2 Many gods
1. When you see the word God in your English Bible, it is inevitable that you will insert into that word the sense of God that is in your head. It is likely you will infer that same picture of God everywhere you read about him in the pages of Scripture. You will invest him with all the attributes you believe he has. You will assume all the impressions you have of God.

Reading the Bible on its own terms requires us to move beyond what is in our heads and into the world of the text. For example, the English word God appeared nowhere in the books of the Bible when they were written. It was rather words like the Hebrew Elohim or the Greek theos. The proper name of God does not appear in most of our English Bibles -- Yahweh. It's hiding when you see LORD in all caps in the Old Testament. Learning these names for God in the Bible is a first step toward hearing Scripture for what it first meant rather than defining God with the definitions in our heads.

A second step is to realize that the understanding of God is not static throughout the pages of the Bible. After all, there is perhaps more than a thousand year span between the earliest references to God in the Hebrew Bible and the end of the New Testament. As God walked with his people, their cultures did not stay static, and God continued to meet with them throughout that time. 

2. Let's start at the beginning of the record. Before Abraham, what was the state of belief in God? Many like to think that there was some pure line of faith in one God that came down through a godly line from Adam to Noah to Abraham. But here is what Joshua 24:2 says:

"On the other side of the River [Euphrates], your fathers lived from of old. There was Terah the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor. And they served other gods."  

Joshua is quite clear that the father of Abraham and the fathers before him were polytheists. That is to say, they believed in many gods and they worshiped many gods. This picture certainly fits with what we know of the ancient Sumerians who lived at Ur during its peak. It fits with the Elamites after the Sumerians lost power. And it fits with the Old Babylonian culture that replaced them.

Joshua tells us that Abraham grew up in a polytheist home. Does that mean that God never spoke to anyone for thousands of years since Noah? I personally don't think so. It may not be exactly what John had in mind, but I'd like to think that God gives light to every person who comes into the world (John 1:9). 

Obviously, if God speaks to everyone at some point in their life, they do not always know what to call him. A native American living in the year AD1000 would not know the name Jesus or Yahweh. But is it possible that some might have genuinely worshiped God with what limited knowledge they had? After all, no one in the Old Testament knew to worship Jesus either. Then at death they would have recognized their Lord as he is. There is an old saying: "God judges us according to the light we have."

3. In revelation, God meets us where we are and then moves us from there. Did Terah authentically worship God with the knowledge he had? We don't know. Most in Ur at that time called the king of the gods, "Enlil." Then again, Abraham may have been an Amorite, in which case it is at least possible that he grew up calling the king of the gods El.

There was no written Bible at this time. It would be hundreds of years -- perhaps 1000 years before any of the Old Testament was written down. As we will see, the name Yahweh was not yet known as the personal name of God (Exod. 6:13).

Jacob's wife Rachel was clearly still a polytheist because she stole the ancestral household gods from her father (Gen. 31:19). This is not surprising if Terah was still a polytheist. It suggests his son Nahor and grandson Laban were as well. Rachel follows suit. The Genesis text does not try to hide it.

So what do you call God when he has not yet fully revealed himself to you? When God meets someone in this world where they are, what name does he use?

Why it is only natural that they would think of him as "the Most High God."

4. How does God begin to reveal himself to those who genuinely worshiped him in these centuries from Abraham to Moses? They know him as El Elyon ("God Most High") and El Shaddai ("God Almighty" or possibly "God of the Mountain").

When Abraham has rescued Lot from Amraphel (Hammarabi?) in Genesis 14, he meets a priest named Melchizedek upon his return. Of what God is Melchizedek a priest? He is the priest of El Elyon -- the highest God, the king of the gods. [1]

Of course! In a polytheistic world, what is the most logical way to think of God? Why he is the highest God! He is the strongest God! He is the king of the gods!

Both Genesis and Exodus 6:3 suggest that the primary way that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob referred to God was as El Shaddai, which is commonly translated as "God Almighty." Scholars debate the exact connotation of shaddai. If it is a carry over from the Babylonian world, it might mean "God of the Mountain."

It is true that Genesis often refers to God as Yahweh, but this is likely the later author identifying God in terms of what was later known. It would be as if a story referred to a character by a name that wouldn't be known until later in the story. For example, there are some place names in Genesis that are referred to by names they wouldn't have till centuries later. [2]

Trying to get into Abraham's head, then, he may have served El Shaddai whom he also called God Most High. But he probably acknowledged that there were a host of other spiritual forces out there as well. Perhaps he didn't worship them. We don't know for sure. We're at 1800 BC or so. We are a thousand years before Elijah would try to stop Israel from serving other gods.

There is a name for worshiping one God while accepting that other gods exist. It is called henotheism. And the worship of one God while there are others around is called monolatry...

1.3 One Legitimate God

[1] There is a tradition to see Melchizedek as a pre-incarnation Christophany (Christ-appearance) or cameo of Christ in the Old Testament. This is based on a popular interpretation of Hebrews 7 in church history. However, Hebrews 7 is much more likely using Melchizedek in Genesis 14 as a type of Christ rather than thinking that Melchizedek was Christ.

[2] So northern Canaan is referred to as "Dan" in Genesis 14:14. But Dan was Abraham's great grandson -- clearly not the name that location had in Abraham's day.