I’ve been getting ready for teaching another Old Testament
Survey class this summer by reading a new assigned book, Ronald Youngblood’s The Heart of the Old Testament, Second
Edition (Baker Academic, 1971, 1998). Youngblood
traces various OT themes, including monotheism, sovereignty, election,
covenant, theocracy, law, sacrifice, faith, and redemption.
I was struck by his discussion of monotheism in the OT. He notes that modern historical-critical and
comparative religion scholars have tended to see monotheism as “a product of
evolution.” So, there was a “process of
evolution” in the religion of Israel from primitive animism (belief in spirits
in natural objects), to polytheism (belief in many gods), to henotheism (also
called monolatry, belief in one superior god among many gods), and, finally, to
monotheism (belief in one true God).
Youngblood, however, responds:
But it simply cannot be shown that
there is a universal tendency of the part of polytheistic religions to
gradually reduce the number of deities until finally arriving at only one
deity. Indeed, in some instances such a
religion may even add more deities as
its adherents become aware of more and more natural phenomena to deify. At any rate the Old Testament teaches that
monotheism, far from being evolved through the centuries of Israel’s history,
is one of the inspired insights revealed to the covenant people by the one true
God himself (p. 11).
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