The Idiosyncrasies of Abrahamism

Traits that make Judaism, and its derivatives, different from other religious traditions.

Credit: mossacannibalis on Twitter. He’s a Korean pervert but sometimes he does make good art.

I’ve been engaging in a series of debates with people on iFunny recently over iconism in Christianity, which all started with some comments I made on the fumi-e test of faith in early modern Japan. I was suggesting two things:

A) The willingness to die before stepping on an icon represents an ignorance of biblical and even ecclesiastic understanding of the difference between icons and idols, even if it is done with noble intention.

B) The willingness to die before vacuously sacrificing or making an oath under a pagan deity is only a sensible thing to do if:

i) doing this will cause many believers to faulter in their faith, and will cement the beliefs of many non-believers

ii) Demons are real, intellectual beings and have power in this world, and sacrificing to idols brings some sort of undeserved gratification to Demons.

Some people I think misunderstood my comments, but others made good criticisms. One common criticism was “what would YOU do if someone were to make you do this the other way around?” and I think that there is an important distinction between Christianity and Paganism here, that is actually at the root of the split between Abrahamic religions. Today, I’m going to talk about what I consider the four primary distinctions between Abrahamism and other faiths, as well as what I consider certain elements of Abrahamism which are not unique to it, but represent a broader ‘Axial Age’ transition of religion. In these exceptions, we can hope to find the rule.

“…Thou shalt have no other gods before me…”

“Then he forsook God who made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger. They sacrificed unto demons, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.”

When recognizing the religious traditions of neighboring peoples, Pagans tended not to be bothered by the fact that foreign peoples worshipped foreign gods. Foreign deities were either interpreted as a different culture’s view of a deity from one’s own pantheon, or potentially even incorporated into one’s own pantheon. Pagan authors seem to reconcile these two views by considering pagan deities as belonging to their own geniuses. In a sense, they are perspectivally generated, but they are not necessarily “the same thing through different lenses”. Elements of deities should be compared but gods themselves should not be considered entirely equal. I think the best way to imagine this is through mathematical partition. Imagine you have a set of potentially infinite size. The total cast of gods represents all subsets generated from all possible partitions of this set, but each assortment of gods only belongs to its own variant of partition — its pantheon.

Certainly, whether one views it this way or through the simpler view of Interpretatio romana (by the way, in both views it makes sense for one’s self to interpret the gods of other peoples as one’s own) there is no reason for deities who are largely similar to be in conflict. There are scenarios where certain deities were transitioned in status to something not worthy of worship or even potentially demonic, as what happened in Zoroastrianism. Also, it was not uncommon to accuse barbarian peoples of practicing religion incorrectly. However, what you see in the bible — the idea of religions battling it out rather than peoples, was not common.

Take the Iliad, for instance. The Greeks did not interpret the war as the Greek gods fighting against the Trojan gods. They imagined it as their own pantheon presiding over both sides. None of the gods were necessarily evil for not siding with the Greeks, this was their will and that involved was that. The Greeks saw within the Trojan deities their own, although recognized that the same was probably true vice versa. Compare this to the story of Exodus, which was considered as a battle between the national god of the Israelites and the gods of the Egyptians. This extends to deities who were largely similar to Jehovah and who today we would recognize as sharing most of the attributes with Jehovah within the early Old Testament, such as Anu, Marduk, Dagon, and Ba’al Hadad. The Jews, however, did not say to their enemies that they simply had an incorrect understanding of Marduk, Dagon, and Ba’al Hadad. They didn’t believe, as later Perennialists would, that Marduk, Dagon, and the others were obviously just slightly distorted visions of the Jehovah they knew and loved. The Jews, in their hatred, and in their envy of superior nations, declared these gods demons and falsehoods. Consider how Jeramiah 51:44 describes the divinely ordained fall of Babylon at the hands of the Medes:

“And I will punish Bel [Marduk] in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed up: and the nations shall not flow together any more unto him: yea, the wall of Babylon shall fall.”

Now, you could say that Marduk is being described more symbolically here rather than as a literal being, but it’s besides the point. The enemy of Israel is Marduk, not Babylon. The Babylonians are an enemy because they follow Marduk, this false God. This is very different from what a Pagan might say. For instance, many Greek thinkers have criticized Homer and other authors for portraying the gods with certain mortal flaws. They did not view Homer as worshipping “false gods”, they viewed his writing as ascribing to the gods actions which contradict their nature. For the record, there are also many thinkers who defended Homer in this regard. I think Proclus provides a late defense of Homer in the face of Socratic criticism. Certainly, Homer’s negative attributions to the gods pale in comparison to what later poets and playwrights would do, which is much more worthy of scrutiny. Also, for some reason Hesiod sometimes gets criticism for attributing negative elements to the gods, but if you read Hesiod he clearly recognizes Zeus as fundamentally good and a defender of justice. You want to criticize someone? Criticize Aeschylus.

The Israelites also pioneered the infantile polemical technique of “My god is stronger than your god” as if it’s some sort of Dragon Ball Z powerscaling argument. Albeit, while the Jews might have been first to it, I do see it sometimes in Buddhist tales, where the Buddha defeats some local deity. But that’s more to demonstrate the nigh-unlimited power of one who has achieved enlightenment, rather than a demonstration on why not to worship the gods. This is obviously present in Exodus, which I’ll get to in a second, but it happens many times in the bible. Where basically, the Jews just prove the superiority of their god through some contest with foreign priests.

For the record, I do think that the Israelites recognized foreign gods as demons, whose power in this world could be harnessed through sorcery.

“Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his servants, and it turned into a snake. Pharaoh called in his wise men and sorcerers. The magicians of Egypt did the same thing by their spells: each man threw down his staff and they all turned into snakes. But then Aaron’s staff swallowed their staffs.” —Exodus 7:10–12

How can you possibly argue that these Pharaohs were using some sort of slight of hand? The text even says that they did it by virtue of spell-craft. Of course, God wins in the end, but it is implied that one can achieve supernatural powers through either natural means (without the assistance of God) or through some sort of dark power (in this case, presumably the Egyptian deities). The Pharaoh’s magicians are able to replicate the first two plagues of Egypt as well (although why they did, I don’t know... Destroying your own kingdom to prove your power level seems a little bit strange).

The Jews, furthermore and unlike Monolatristic Pagans, viewed the other nations of the world as engaging in evil by worshipping other gods by other names, and wanted an ideal world where everyone worshipped Jehovah (even if they were not proselytizing). Here, through the unordinary nature of the Jews and the reaction of the world they put themselves against, we can get a glance at a possible true Tradition, under which the large majority of the religions of peoples.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth…”

The second characteristic of Abrahamism, which separates it from its neighbors, is the notion of creatio ex nihilo, or creation out of nothing. You must understand, this is not “creation out of ones self”, but creation out of nothing. God is creating something that is not part of himself. Heavy emphasis on that capital G, because yes, gods are often credited with fashioning the universe in Pagan cosmologies. These gods may even represent something functionally omnipotent, but they are not God. The correct term for a figure like this, is a Demiurge. And he is not creating out of nothing. Before him comes Chaos — the icy rind, the primordial waters, the churning abyss. Arguably, to characterize this as Chaos is incorrect. Chaos is what we recognize as the residual element which follows the qualification of the Demiurge. Before this, there is only being. The One.

I have argued in the past that I believe the Jehovah was initially a Demiurgic figure, like his contemporaries in Mesopotamia and other parts of the Levant. He is not the Demiurge in the Gnostic sense. The Gnostics, with the exception of the Valentinians, believe that the Demiurge actually did (malevolently) create something out of nothing. They believe that material is substantially different from the spirit, and is not a component of the true God. They believe that Jehovah in the Old Testament is this evil Demiurge, that is not what I am suggesting. I am suggesting that Jehovah was originally the Demiurge in the more Platonic sense, that he is the source of form and created the world by combining form with hyle. Another thing — hyle is not exactly “material”. All material, down to the smallest parts of things, has form. Hyle is better characterized as chaos, disorder, entropy, necessity, ferment, noise…

Julian the Apostate agrees with this characterization, pointing out that in Genesis, God hovers over the Primordial Waters without ever having been described as creating them. The Waters in Near Eastern mythology represent this initial indeterminate state of existence, and after the rise of the Demiurge the waters bring forth the Dragon — Tiamat, Lotan, et cetera. In the Bible, these waters are known as Tehom, or the deep. However, as time went on, it seems like it became the traditional interpretation of the Abrahamic crowd that God created the world out of nothing, and the world is not simply an emanation from himself (in the case of The One) nor is it composed of preexisting substance which God simply brought order and form to.

This seems to complement many of Jehovah’s characteristics. He is a being who presents himself with a will distinct from the ongoings of the world. This is different from what you might see out of a Monistic God. Consider this passage from

Birrin

, in his essay Finding God in the Void:

“Instead, the birth of provisional reality is seen as an automatic function, neither random nor willful, like breathing or blinking. “We could say that Maya is the potency of the divine and that creation is without any will or design to it, such that it sort of spills out of God like vomit or some kind of breathing, it is automatic and ‘unconscious’, like an activity of a divine being, etc.,” says my good friend, who shall be introduced later.”

I often am reminded of a comment by former iFunny user Barret: “Existence just is”… This comment always stuck with me, because I remember only seeing it after I was made aware that he had committed suicide. Enough talk of that. To present creation as “without will or design” I feel is more of a pessimistic sentiment about the world which I wouldn’t really say I agree with, but it gets the point across. The Monistic God is utterly simple and without quality or interest. Or from a different perspective, it is with total quality and total interest. Either way, it is quite distinct from the God of the Bible, who again acts more like a Demiurge.

Some Christians throughout history actually have embraced a Panentheistic view, or at least a “soft panentheistic” view of God. I believe some Catholics are like this, and more OrthoDOGs, but from what I understand it is generally not full panentheism. God is present within all things (“pan-entheism”) but is not the substance of these things (panen-theism). Nonetheless, I think more esoteric and mystical Christians probably do embrace full Panentheism, as I know many philosophers throughout history have tried to reconcile the two. Muslims are similar to this. Most Muslims recognize Ex Nihilo, but some Sufis have adopted a Panentheistic/Monistic outlook that is without question influenced by Dharmic and Platonic philosophy.

Some people also suggest that Jews are this way, and that Kabbalah is Panentheistic. I would say, no, it isn’t. Lurianic Kabbalah very explicitly clarifies that God needed “conceptual space” (Tzimtzum) to create the world, and only before this he was all-encompassing. God intentionally retracts his being in order to create the world.

Once again, we see that the exception leads us to the rule. The unified and qualitatively empty substance from which existence arose, the Chaoskampf, the Demiurge, these are elements of religious traditions throughout Eurasia. These are all things that seemed to emerge in completely distinct religious systems — among the Aryans, the Semites, the by intuition, which is rather interesting.

Now, some people will insist that Zoroastrians also believe in a deity akin to Jehovah in this respect, but this is not clearly the case. Ahura Mazda and Ahriman are described as twin spirits, and Ahura is never described as having willfully created Ahriman. Some have taken this to mean that Zoroastrianism is dualist, and this dualist interpretation would go on to influence Gnostic traditions like Marcionism and Manichaeism. However others, and I think this is more correct, interpret Ahriman and Ahura as being subservient to a more neutral ultimate reality — Zurvan. This is heavily influenced by a verse of the Gathas, the traditional Zoroastrian hymns:

“The twain spirits which appeared in the world of thought in the beginning were good and evil in thoughts, words and deeds. The wise will choose rightly (of the said two thoughts), but the unwise shall not do so and shall go astray.” —Yasna 30.3

Ahura and Ahriman appear “in the beginning”, and are twins, which implies a common source. Under this interpretation Ahura is more similar to other demiurgic figures in Indo-European religions. Generally, demiurgic qualities are shared between the Sky Father and the Thunderer, who can be reconciled as the latter vertically emanating from the former. In some traditions, the latter has been totally absorbed into the identity of the former, for instance Jove. Odin, Indra, Zeus, Zojz, and Perkunas all represent demiurgic figures in Indo-European mythology, and likely gave heavy influence to non-Indo-European figures like the Finnish Ukko.

“…Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image…”

Here is what I consider the third unique quality of Abrahamism, anti-Idolatry. I had to go through the first two in order to provide proper context for this.

Raphael’s Triumph of Christianity. My blood should be boiling at this, but it’s impossible to hate Raphael.

Anxiety over Idolatry seems to be everywhere in the Old Testament. I think that modern ideas of portraying distractions in your life, like status, money, wealth, power, as “idols” are not necessarily wrong in doing so. However, they do sort of sell short the very literal and zealous anti-Idolatry that the Bible directs particularly towards religious idols. The fact that it is targeted with scrutiny among Gentiles suggests it is not merely demanded as a condition of the Mosaic covenant, but that Idolatry is generally and absolutely immoral. There are honestly too many quotes in the Bible to count against Idolatry, but the common reasons against this include: 1. Idols have no power in this world (“the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell”). 2. Idols are gods made in man’s image, unlike God who made man in his image. 3. When you worship an idol, even if the idol is associated in some way with God, you are worshipping only that idol and not God. Or at least, you are susceptible to fall into this category of thought.

There are probably examples in some places where people were Anti-Idolatrous, but I have not heard about this. Especially not to the extent of the Abrahamics. I would say, Idols are a good thing, and will offer what I see as the Pagan responses to these three points. Firstly, Idols have power in this world insofar as they are a mantle for the god they represent. Gods do not necessitate human worship nor do they necessarily demand it, the former claim is nigh-universal while the latter claim I can only really say with confidence about Indo-European religion (I have heard that Semitic gods were a bit more demanding of worship). Nor, given all of this, are they entitled to grant you anything. However, worship is good for similar reasons as prayer is in Christianity. It is right behavior as someone subordinate to the gods, and it encourages the good grace of the gods. Just as the gods physically manifest in nature, they manifest in the idol and so it is not empty.

As for the second point, I will offer a classic Platonic argument, that our souls were once familiar with the ideal realm where the forms and the gods reside, so creative depictions of deities is not necessarily uninformed. This is how Aristotle defends art in general, despite Plato’s criticisms of art as something of a further pastiche of the original form. Aristotle suggests that we make art in an attempt to express our internal recognitions of the forms in-themselves, rather than through any particular instance of them in this phenomenal world. Even for portraiture, this is true. You are attempting to capture the essence of that person. A sculpture or painting is still, it is a single glimpse into a persons entire being just as the soul is ultimately timeless and immortal. And recall, the gods are not made by man but they do assign themselves to men, and the idea that man is made in divine image is not exclusive to Christendom.

As I said on iFunny, the third point is more understandable from a Christian perspective, and may even provide an argument for the iconoclastic crowd. It isn’t that icons are bad, but that many people through focus on icons will unintentionally develop an idolatrous mindset. And even from a pagan point of view, too much idolatry can lead to misunderstandings about the nature of the gods. Guenon offers an interesting explanation for the Judeo-Islamic rejection of icons, while Christians and Iranic Muslims demonstrate a more lax approach in this video by Tom Rowsell (skip to 3:30 for the section on Idols). But basically, he suggests that Muslims and Jews developed their anti-Idolatry due to a sort of intense idolatrous tendency of people within that region, which could derail their religious development. Meanwhile, peoples of Indo-European stock have a more moderate mode of Idolatry which is why among the Muslims, Iranic peoples are less strict about depictions of Muhammad et al., and among European Christians icons are extremely common.

The Calvinists may have had a good point in my opinion because at that time Christianity was beginning to spread to barbarians. For Christians, icons are a mere mental tool. They remind us of who we’re worshipping, rather than distract us from him. However, and as I was saying about the Japanese Martyrs… This should come with the caveat of general non-attachment to physical idols. A Pagan such as myself has a fairly legitimate reason not to physically disrespect an idol. But part of the deal with icons is that you should not worry about them as if they have some sort of internal being.

““Light unto the world”

Now, this is the first trait which I may not consider idiosyncratic of Abrahamism. It might be more of an “Axial Age” trait in general, but only very broadly. The idea that in an ideal scenario everyone on earth is a member of some religion, that is more of a general “Axial Age” characteristic. However, the idea that everyone alive is ripe for conversion and complete initiation, that I would say is a later Abrahamic trait. For the Dharmics recognize that certain people are not fit for full initiation in this lifetime, and that they are spiritually inferior in some sense to those who are. To the Gnostics, many people are “Hylic” and incapable of achieving Gnosis. However, to Christians and Muslims, everyone is ripe for conversion. As for the Jews, I would argue that this belief cropped up for a while, and then went away possibly due to losing out to the Christians in the conversion game. Jews were recorded by the Romans as being heavy proselytizers, and the Torah certainly doesn’t discourage converts. Some later Jews, like Maimonides, also suggest that Jews have a responsibility to spread the word of God to the gentiles, it just isn’t necessary that Gentiles follow all of the tenets of Judaism.

Wow, my brother snores loud. I hope that fatass doesn’t develop sleep apnea. I don’t think I’m a snorer, but I do drool in my sleep.

Uhh, anyways. Yeah, Maimonides’ main issue with Christianity as far as I know was that he didn’t like the trinity. Muslims are the same way. Because of this, I view Judaism and Islam as much more favorable to each other than either is to Christianity, even if Muslims believe in some bastardized headcanon version of Jesus. I had a pretty decent post on iFunny about the trinity, maybe I’ll make a new post on it some day here. But I digress… The focus on proselytization in Abrahamism is facilitated by a very important element of Abrahamic religion, the binding nature of revelation. This is strongly opposed to the more scientific nature of Hindu thought, where all deductions are expected to be justifiable from an innate perspective. Being a Jew, or a Christian, or a Muslim requires a leap of faith, it requires faith that revelatory law is actually legitimate. Some truths seem to be incomprehensible to the human mind under Abrahamism and possibly not even worth trying to understand. I was raised with the understanding that God only very rarely revealed himself to people directly in the Old Testament because sensory witness of God could literally cause you to die. It’s kind of like The Elder Scrolls in… Well, The Elder Scrolls. This is not that indicative of anything though. Platonists also believed that God could only sort of reflect himself in this world, there was no “seeing” him. It is more the focus on scripture which confirms this leap of faith idea, because scripture is obviously an empirical thing. And our senses are imperfect, and the senses of people in the distant past were imperfect and only provide a shallow degree of understanding to some event. I would go further and argue that the Trinity and the nature of Christ are mysteries human beings can partially understand under Christianity, which I believe is what many OrthoDOGs believe. That’s why the typical cast of analogies always end up accidentally alluding to some sort of heresy like Modalism or Partialism. There is an apparent contradiction in these things because of our error of imperfect perspective, and Christians have to put their trust in God that the trinity actually does make sense. Probabilistically, you can argue that Christianity is very likely compared to Naturalism, but there is still that leap of faith.

Existentialist Christians like Kierkegaard argue that this is a bug, not a feature, and I think that is a fair thing to say, but Kierkegaard also believed certain odd things about Christianity that compensated for his views, so I will say little on this. I think Christian Existentialism is sort of a sore spot, because it is very Protestant in some of its leanings, as opposed to the very Athenian path that Catholics take trying to logicize as much elements of theology as they can.

‘Axial Age’ values

There are some elements of religion which I think are present in Christianity, but also present themselves in other religious movements around middle and late antiquity. Firstly, there is the practice of asceticism and monasticism. This probably has existed in small amounts forever, but seems to really kick off during the Iron Age. It is present among Hindus and Buddhists. Some Greek groups like Orphics and Pythagoreans engaged in some lifestyle restrictions, although I don’t know if I would consider it the same as the Monasticism of Buddhists and Hindus and later Christians, all of which stress some form of celibacy. To do this requires an abnegation of power in this world, which above all else is characterized in the ability to create life, and a rejection of the natural fulfillment that comes from achieving the biological goal of life. Some, such as Nietzsche, would call this “life denial” and I find this title fairly apt. After all, many Christians in my comments were telling me about how it is desirable to get martyred over pretty much anything. I found this to be odd. Don’t they believe that life is a gift? View martyrdom as a chance to demonstrate virtue, sure, but doing it because you want to go to heaven ASAP is just odd. Buddhists are the same way though, if they think they’ve achieved enlightenment or simply have nothing left to learn or do in this life, I think a lot of them just stop eating.

However, this is not an Abrahamic belief in general. I don’t think Muslims are very keen on Monasticism, and this may come from their Zoroastrian influence. Zoroastrians believed that Monasticism was bad because it is a rejection of the good things in life granted by Ahura Mazda, and furthermore it rejects the active role one should play in promoting goodness and halting evil. It is wrong because it is a form of inaction and wastefulness. The Bhagavad Gita suggests similar things but only for a man born to the warrior-elite like Arjuna. For other people, it may be perfectly sensible to become monastics. Perhaps…

I have to go to bed now. Thanks for reading