. Although monotheism and torah are fundamental to rabbinic judaism, many critical bible scholars claim that certain verses in the torah imply that the early israelites accepted the existence of other gods, while viewing their god as the sole creator, whose worship is obligated (a henotheistic point of view). another way of putting this is that the israelite, yahwistic religion that preceded rabbinic judaism, as represented by the early prophets, demanded monolatry: worship of a single, "jealous" god. interestingly, the biblical text that is considered to be the core of judaism (deut. 6,4: "hear, o israel, yhwh is our god, yhwh is one" (in hebrew, "shema yisrael adonai eloheinu adonai echad", with "adonai" standing in for yhwh), represents this god's apparent intolerance of accepting the worship of other gods besides himself. as yhwh himself was originally a war-god ("yhwh of the hosts"), the worship of fertility gods such as baal (or the baalim) was attractive once the israelites had settled down. in this view, it was only by the hellenic period that most jews came to believe that their god was the only god (and thus, the god of everyone), and that the record of his revelation (the torah) contained within it universal truths. this attitude reflected a growing gentile interest in judaism (some greeks and romans considered the jews a most "philosophical" people because of their belief in a god that cannot be represented visually), and growing jewish interest in greek philosophy, which sought to establish universal truths, thus leading - potentially - to the idea of monotheism, at least in the sense that "all gods are one". | . The people of Israel then told Samuel the prophet that they had reached the point where they needed to be governed by a permanent king, as were other nations, as described in the Books of Samuel. Samuel grudgingly acceded to this request and appointed Saul, a great but very humble man, to be their King. When the people pressured Saul into going against a command conveyed to him by Samuel, God told Samuel to appoint David in his stead. |
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