Reikoku wrote:Is there a reason that Judaism is an insular faith? It always seemed strange to me as a child to contrast the universalism of the New Testament with the particularism of the Old Testament where non-believers weren't required to convert. Does that mean Judaism is more henotheistic than monotheistic?
The first thing you need to do is get passed the idea of "Abrahamic faiths."
Yes, Christianity and Islam share plenty with Judaism, having both sprung from it. And all share the legacy of Abraham. For the purposes of this discussion, however? You need to consider that connection irreverent.
See, Christianity and Islam are universal faiths, as you've pointed out. Neither applies to a single group, or "nation," of people. They claim universal truths for all of mankind.
Judaism, in its present form, is very much monotheistic. That being said? Its view of both the divine and how that relates to the "nation" has more in common with the "folk" pagan religions that dominated much of the world prior to Christianity and Islam.
See, Judaism in its present form didn't spring from nothingness. Oh sure, you can point to the Babylonian Captivity as the time when modern Judaism began to be codified as a belief system, but that codified ideology was born of something. Simply put? The religion of the Israelites, the forefathers of the Jewish people, was polytheistic.
Israelite paganism evolved from Canaanite paganism, with the Israelite variety seeing the storm god Yahweh supplant El, the traditional head of the pantheon. So Yahweh was still central to worship among pre-Babylonian Exile Israelites. He just wasn't the only god.
In this respect? The Israelite polytheistic religion, which was the immediate forerunner to Judaism, was very much in line with all other "folk" polytheistic faiths. In this world? Everyone worshipped the gods of their nation, and the people in the nation next door worshipped their gods. Your gods were real and served your nation, their gods were real and served their nation. The pagan Israelite faith fit right in with that world view.
Hell, fast forward a few thousand years to see this world view in action. The Romans had Jupiter, the Germanics had Odin. Both a Roman and a Germanic believed the other's chief god existed.
Anyway back to pre-Babylonian Exile polytheistic Judaism. Yahweh is the head of the pantheon, and there are other gods. Then, however, the Babylonians attack. The Israelites are marched off to Babylon in bondage, where they would remain from 597 BCE to 539 BCE. This might seem like a short amount of time, but it had far reaching consequences. Not just for Judaism, but for the world as a whole.
The Israelite leaders realized that the only way their people would retain their distinct cultural identity in a foreign land was to finally codify the Israelite folk religion. Oral stories such as Genesis, the story of Abraham, and the Exodus from Egypt were finally transcribed "definitively" after thousands of years of being passed down orally. The history of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea were re-cast to remove the importance of the King from the concept of the Israelite "nation."
And finally? All other gods in the pantheon were struck down. Yahweh was elevated from being merely the chief of the pantheon to being the only god. Not just of the Israelite nation, but of all of creation. It's here the concept of the "chosen people" emerged. Yahweh was always depicted as favouring the Israelites. This made sense as the head of the Israelite pantheon, but now it was recast as the Israelites being the chosen people of the one true god.
All of this was done, as I said, to give the captives and their descendent a sense of community and identity that could be maintained even when enslaved in a foreign land.
So when Cyrus and his Persian Empire defeated the Babylonians in 539 CE, allowing the Israelites to return to Judea? Well the old polytheistic Israelite faith was gone. That had gone into the Babylonian Exile. Judaism, as we would recognize it as a "modern" faith, came out.
Now shockingly this didn't change post-Exile Jews' attitudes of the concepts of nation and divinity. Their Israelite ancestors had believed that Yahweh was the god of their nation, and other gods co-exited with Him, both in His pantheon and outside of it. The post-Exile Jews simply modified that to account with the new monotheistic belief system.
Now Yahweh was the one and only god, but only the Jews were chosen to follow His faith. No one else was required to convert, and the "righteous" of "all the nations" will be saved. In this sense we understand the concept of Jews being a "chosen people" to merely be a way to marry the post-Exile monotheism with the pre-Exile understanding that those outside of the nation don't need to be converted.
This attitude continues to this day. Which is why I said that you needed to let go of the "Abrahamic Faiths" idea. Judaism's sense of itself as it relates to "unbelievers" has more in common with Egyptian or Greek or Mesopotamian or Norse polytheism than it does either Christianity or Islam.
And so to finally answer your question? Modern Judaism is very much monotheistic. Plenty of Jewish prayers reference Yahweh as the one true god of the universe, and any Rabbi will tell you that there is only one god. So it certainly isn't henotheistic.
That being said? It's attitudes towards non-Jews is stepped in an old henotheistic world view that predates the Babylonian Exile and remains strong with the faith to this day.
