| |
The Boundaries of Monotheism
Recensie, Bijdragen, 05-11-09
 "The attacks on the Babylonic symbols of Western culture on September 11, 2001 (…) sparked new political and scholarly interest in monotheism as a banner, or for others as a phantom, of the religious heritage of the Abrahamitic religions." (p. 1) In the volume The Boundaries of Monotheism editors Anne-Marie Korte and Maaike de Haardt have collected eleven contributions in which the ‘dark side’ of the faith in One God is being reflected upon. Monotheism has been firmly criticized (among others by Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain. The Violent Legacy of Monotheism, 1997) as "the culpit of many serious deteriorations of the Western culture, such as intolerance, superiority, colonialism, racism and antifeminism" (p. 83). While the problematic and compromising aspects of biblical based monotheism is affirmed by all contributors, they try to deconstruct this concept instead of ‘simply’ putting it aside.
Bob Becking points to recent developments in the field of Biblical Studies, more exactly to the findings of the Paleo/Hebrew inscriptions containing references to "Yahweh and his Asherah". Becking shows convincingly that in the old Jewish pantheon there was more room for gods and deificated mortals than meets the untrained eye. In a similar vein, Patrick Chatelion Counet questions the widely spread supposition that early Christianity borrowed their concept of the ‘Son of Man’ form their Hellenistic environment. Based on canonical and apocryphical like those found in Qumran, he claims that "the idea of the messiah being the Son of God is not a Christian invention" (p. 41). We have to abandon "the idea that the conception of a Binitarian of Trinitarian God is a Greek influence" as well as the idea that "the veneration of Jesus as the deified Messiah in the New Testament was un-Jewish" (p. 51).
The contributions of Jacqueline Borsje and of Bert Blans and Marcel Poorthuis show that the biblical allowance for and actual praxis of worshipping more than one God did not disappear in Christianity. In Ireland the belief in ‘fairies’ (not the Disney’s Tinkerbell, but as divine ‘good neighbours’) "survived sixteen centuries of Christian monotheism". The classification of "the multitude of supernatural beings in early Irish texts turned out to be a difficult task." (p. 81) Poorthuis and Blans draw a similar conclusion from the German Romantic period: "When Christ is portrayed as brother of all and true erotic love as divine revelation, the gods appear sometimes in a divine brotherhood with Christ or as His demonic mirror-image" (p. 104).
Four contributions have a more systematic-theological approach. René Munnik, Maaik de Haardt, Kune Biezeveld and Akke van der Kooi deconstruct in a most convincing way the biblical concept of monotheism as "a source of religious superiority, national conflict, racial hatred and ethnic division" (p. 214). These authors acknowledge the severe problematic aspects of monotheism but are unwilling to ‘resolve’ the issue by simply changing it for polytheistic or pluralist alternatives. The opposition between monotheism and polytheism that dominated 20 th academic and public debate are no longer considered to be the most appropriate focus to explore and discuss the monotheistic aspect of Christian faith. Eric Borgman presents in his article an Islamic position in this (seemingly purely Christian) debate by analysing Salman Rushdie’s novel Fury as both a call for the return of the Gods and as an expression of fear for the violence which is unleashed by their return, the violence which was before contained in the monotheistic concept.
Anne-Marie Korte and Maaike de Haardt (red.), The Boundaries of Monotheism. Interdisciplinary Explorations into the Foundations of Western Monotheism (Studies in Theology and Religion 13), Brill: Leiden (2009), ISBN 978-90-04-173163, 16 x 25, 247 p., € 89.
Bron: Deze recensie is gepubliceerd in het wetenschappelijk tijdschrijft Bijdragen 70 (2009, nr. 3), p. 378-379.
|
