The Idea Of Semitic Monotheism

The Idea of Semitic Monotheism examines some major aspects of the scholarly study of religion in the long nineteenth century--from the Enlightenment to the First World War. It aims to understand the new status of Judaism and Islam in the formative period of the new discipline. Guy G. Stroumsa focuses on the concept of Semitic monotheism, a concept developed by Ernest Renan around the mid-nineteenth century on the basis of the postulated and highly problematic contradistinction between Aryan and Semitic families of peoples, cultures, and religions. This contradistinction grew from the Western discovery of Sanskrit and its relationship with European languages, at the time of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Together with the rise of scholarly Orientalism, this discovery offered new perspectives on the East, as a consequence of which the Near East was demoted from its traditional status as the locus of the Biblical revelations. This innovative work studies a central issue in the modern study of religion. Doing so, however, it emphasizes the new dualistic taxonomy of religions had major consequences and sheds new light on the roots of European attitudes to Jews and Muslims in the twentieth century, up to the present day.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IX. THE GODS OF ISRAEL. The only people who ever invented or evolved a pure monotheism at first hand were the Jews. Individual thinkers elsewhere approached or aimed at that ideal goal, like the Egyptian priests and the Greek philosophers: entire races elsewhere borrowed monotheism from the Hebrews, like the Arabs under Mohammad, or, to a less extent, the Romans and the modern European nations, when they adopted Christianity in its trinitarian form: but no other race ever succeeded as a whole in attaining by their own exertions the pure monotheistic platform, however near certain persons among them might have arrived to such attainment in esoteric or mystical philosophising. It is the peculiar glory of Israel to have evolved God. And the evolution of God from the diffuse gods of the earlier Semitic religion is Israel's great contribution to the world's thought. The sacred books of the Jews, as we possess them in garbled forms to-day, assign this peculiar belief to the very earliest ages of their race: they assume that Abraham, the mythical common father of all the Semitic tribes, was already a monotheist; and they even treat monotheism as at a still remoter date the universal religion of the entire world, from which all polytheistic cults were but a corruption and a falling away. Such a belief is nowadays, of course, wholly untenable. So also is the crude notion that monotheism was smitten out at a single blow by the genius of one individual man, Moses, at the THE HEBREWS POLYTHEISTS x8i moment of the Hebrew exodus from Egypt. The bare idea that one particular thinker, just escaped from the midst of ardent polytheists, whose religion embraced an endless pantheon and a low form of animal-worship, could possibly have invented a...

Monotheism is a powerful religious concept shaped by competing ideas and the problems they raised. Surveying New Testament writings and Jewish sources from before and after the rise of Christianity, James F. McGrath argues that even the most developed Christologies in the New Testament fit within the context of first century Jewish monotheism. McGrath pinpoints when the parting of ways took place over the issue of God's oneness, and explores philosophical ideas such as "creation out of nothing" which caused Jews and Christians to develop differing concepts and definitions about God.

Early Christology must focus not simply on "historical" but also on theological ideas found in contemporary Jewish thought and practice. In this book, a range of distinguished contributors considers the context and formation of early Jewish and Christian devotion to God alone-the emergence of "monotheism". The idea of monotheism is critically examined from various perspectives, including the history of ideas, Graeco-Roman religions, early Jewish mediator figures, scripture exegesis, and the history of its use as a theological category. The studies explore different ways of conceiving of early Christian monotheism today, asking whether monotheism is a conceptually useful category, whether it may be applied cautiously and with qualifications, or whether it is to be questioned in favor of different approaches to understanding the origins of Jewish and Christian beliefs and worship. This is volume 1 in the Early Christianity in Context series and volume 263 in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series

Jack Shechter offers a detailed clarification of the ideational development within each of the tenets that flow from the Oneness of God that is the core of the monotheistic idea as it has evolved over the centuries. The Idea of Monotheism historically traces the concept of God as it emerged in the ongoing life of the people in specific time periods; it reflects the newly perceived perspectives about the deity due to changing times, locales, and climates of opinion. However, so profoundly One is God in Judaism, these transformations had not effect whatever on this eternally uniform substance. Thus, what man did over time was to uncover God's true nature; he unraveled that which was always there—the nonexistence of other gods and His universality.

This book provides an exploration of some of the essential aspects of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Leading Jungian analysts, theologians and scholars bring to bear psychological, religious and historical perspectives in an attempt to uncover the nature and psychology of the three monotheisms.

Concept of Momotheism in Islam & Christianity