Polytheism

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POLYTHEISM

POLYTHEISM . The term polytheism, derived from the Greek polus ("many") and theos ("god") and hence denoting "recognition and worship of many gods," is used mainly in contrast with monotheism, denoting "belief in one god." The latter concept is considered by theological apologists and nineteenth-century cultural evolutionists alike as a "higher" form of belief, to be superseded (at best) by modern, scientific atheism. To understand polytheism, one must look at the base component theism, meaning the belief in "gods" as distinct from other types of powerful or supernatural beings (ghosts, ancestor spirits, etc.). Unfortunately, no discussion of polytheism can ignore the connotations implied by the Greek word theos, especially as it is the Greek term that has influenced most Western discourse on the subject. Clearly Japanese kami (whose number according to Shintō tradition is 800,000) and Greek theos are not quite the same; nevertheless this article shall, at the risk of oversimplification, stay with traditional Western usage.

Historical (or rather, pseudo-historical) theories concerning the origin of polytheism were closely related to the evolutionist views that characterized early Religionswissenschaft. Primitive humanity was aware of its dependence on a variety of powers that were often conceived as individual nonmaterial ("spiritual") beings—for instance, the spirits of departed humans, especially ancestors—or as supernatural entities. One of the many modes of contact with this world of spirits was shamanism, a level of primitive beliefs and ritual behavior that has also been referred to as "polydaemonism." Sometimes more important figures emerge in these systems, especially in connection with accounts of the origins and beginnings of all things (first ancestors, culture heroes, originator gods), but such figures are not always central in the actual cultic life of the community. Even originator gods often remove themselves subsequently to the highest heavens and remain inactive. Although no longer generally accepted, this account of things has been reproduced here because for some time scholars have viewed it as a kind of initial stage in religious development, the last and final stage being monotheism. In this view, animism and polydaemonism become polytheism, and the latter evolves (how and why, nobody seems to know) into monotheism.

An opposing view known as the "Ur-monotheism school" (associated with Wilhelm Schmidt and the so-called Vienna School that defended also the Kulturkreiselehre ) asserted that monotheism was the original creed of humankind and that polydaemonism and polytheism developed as humans degenerated from a more innocent state. The element of theological apologetic in this theory is evident (though by itself that fact constitutes no argument either for or against its validity). In fact, it is an anthropological refurbishing of the traditional theological doctrine that Adam and his descendants were obviously monotheists, but that at some time between Adam and Noah, and then again after Noah, a process of corruption set in. The medieval Jewish version of this process is spelled out in detail by Moses Maimonides (Mosheh ben Maimon). Polytheistic humanity was then reintroduced to monotheism by divine revelation or by more mature philosophical reflection. There is an element of truth in the latter assertion, for although there is no evidence whatsoever of an evolution from polytheism to monotheism, it seems true to say that monotheism appears either as a sudden, revolutionary development (for example, no really polytheistic stage can be demonstrated in ancient Israelite religion) or else as a monistic tendency (as in late Roman antiquity or in certain forms of Indian religion), as a result of which the multiplicity of gods (divine powers or manifestations) are subsumed under one superior, all-embracing principle ("the One," "the All," brahman, and so on.).

The Nature of Polytheism

Turning from speculative historical guesswork to the phenomenology or morphology of polytheism, one is struck by the curious fact that polytheism, while it is one of the major and most widespread phenomena in the history of religions, has attracted less than the attention it deserves. It seems to have fallen, as it were, between the two stools of "primitive religions" and monotheism. Or perhaps one should say three stools, if nontheistic religions such as Buddhism are also taken into account. Like all phenomenological ideal types (to borrow Max Weber's term), polytheism does not exist as a pure type. The historical variety is not easily reducible to a common denominator. Greek polytheism is different from Japanese Shintō, and the latter is different again from Maya religion. Nevertheless some basic and characteristic features are discernible, even though not all of them may be present in each and every case.

Perhaps the most striking fact about polytheism is its appearance in more advanced cultures only. (This may, incidentally, be one of the reasons why the evolutionists saw it as a post-primitive phenomenon.) In most cases, at least for the purposes of this article, the phrase "advanced cultures" means literate cultures (e.g., China, India, the ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome), though polytheism is occasionally also found in nonliterate cultures (e.g., in Mesoamerican and South American pre-Conquest religions, among the Yoruba people of West Africa, or in Polynesia). Usually such cultures also practice a more sophisticated type of agriculture (for example, one in which the plow supersedes the hoe), although, once again, this is not necessarily the case everywhere. In the case of Polynesia it could be argued that the bountiful earth itself produced the surplus that rendered possible the social and cultural background of polytheism (social stratification, division of labor, authority structures, and so forth), which elsewhere depended on more advanced types of food production. "More advanced" cultures are those whose economy in some way provides sufficient surplus to create a certain distance between humankind and nature. Society no longer lives with its nose to the grindstone, as it were. The result is increased division of labor (including bureaucracies and a priesthood), social stratification (including warrior castes, chieftains, royalty), and political structures (cities, city-states, temple establishments, empires). Greek polytheism flourished in city-states; Mesopotamia (Sumer, Assyria, Babylonia) and Egypt were kingdoms and at times empires, and the same holds true of pre-Conquest Mesoamerica and Peru. The Indo-Aryan and pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religions certainly were not primitive. Similarly, the Yoruba kingdoms of Ọyọ and Ifẹ (present-day Nigeria), for example, clearly represent a high though nonliterate culture, as does early Japan with its kami worship, practiced long before the infiltration of Chinese culture and literacy.

The above considerations are not meant to explain or otherwise account for the appearance of polytheism. They merely suggest the cultural and spiritual background against which the emergence of polytheism becomes intelligible. In every religion, society attempts to articulate its understanding of the cosmos and of the powers that govern it, and to structure its relationship with these powers in appropriate symbolic systems. In the societies under discussion here, humankind already faces the cosmos: closely linked to it but no longer inextricably interwoven in it. There is a sense of (at least minimal) distance from nature and even more distance from the powers above that now are "gods," that is, beings that are superhuman, different, powerful (though not omnipotent) and hence beneficent or dangerous—at any rate their goodwill should be secured—and to be worshiped by cultic actions such as sacrifices. These divine beings are personal but not material (although they can assume bodily shape temporarily and for specific reasons); above all, their behavior and motivations are similar to those of humans. Their relevance to human life is due to the fact that, unlike the primitive high gods (originator gods of the deus otiosus type), they intervene in human affairs, either on their own initiative or because called upon to do so in prayer, sacrifice, or ritual.

One of the most distinctive characteristics of gods, as compared to human beings, is their immortality. Though not eternal in the abstract, philosophical sense, the gods, as the worshiper knows them, are the "immortals." Herein lies the main distinction, not (as in monotheistic religions) in a fundamental difference of essence that then, on the philosophical level, becomes transcendence. Even when the difference is emphasized, it is not a contrast between creator and creature, but one of levels of power and permanence. The relation is one of bipolarity; humans and the gods, though different, are related. Hesiod (Works and Days 108) relates "how the gods and mortal men sprang from one source." Even so, "one is the race of men, one is the race of gods, and [i. e., although] from one mother [i. e., Gaia] do we both derive our breath. Yet a power that is wholly separated parteth us: In the one there is nought, while for the other the brazen heaven endureth as an abode unshaken forever" (Pindar, Nemean Odes 6.1–5).

Yet although the gods to whom humanity is related are durable and permanent, this does not mean that they do not have origins or a history. Unlike the biblical God who makes history but himself has no history, let alone a family history, their history is the subject of mythological tales, including accounts of their family relations, love affairs, offspring, and so on. Hence the mythological genealogies, stories of the gods that preceded the ones ruling at present (e.g., Greek Ouranos-Gaia; followed by Kronos, followed by Zeus; or, in later Indian religion, the replacement of originally principal gods like Indra, Varuṇa, and Mitra by Śiva, Viṣṇu, and other deities). These gods are personal (in fact, this personal character is also one of the main features and constitutes one of the main philosophical problems of monotheism), and herein resides their religious significance: They are accessible.

Such a generalization must, of course, be somewhat qualified in view of the phenomenon of "dying and rising" gods such as Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Dumuzi, also in polytheistic myths and rituals.

Most polytheistic religions possess, as has been indicated in the preceding paragraph, a highly developed mythology that is not restricted to theogony and cosmogony though it is often used, or deliberately manipulated, to account for things as they are and to legitimate the cosmic, social, political, and ritual order. But such is not always or necessarily the case. Perhaps the best example of a highly developed polytheism with an elaborate ritual system but almost totally lacking a mythology is ancient Rome. In this respect the contrast with ancient Greece is striking. Yet even when there exists a rich body of mythology, its imagery reaches the present in comparatively late literary elaborations. Thus the mythology of ancient (pre-Buddhist) Japan is accessible only in literary works composed after the absorption of Chinese (i. e., also Buddhist) influences.

Without implying commitment to any simplistic theory about the divine order always and necessarily being a mirror of the human and social order, one cannot deny that the two are correlated. The polytheistic divine world is more differentiated, more structured, and often extremely hierarchized, because the human view of the cosmos is similarly differentiated, structured, and hierarchized. There are many gods because humans experience the world in its variety and manifoldness. Hence there is also specialization among the gods, of a nature that is either local and tribal-ethnic (gods of specific localities, cities, countries, families) or functional (gods of specific arts, gods of illness, cure, fertility, rains, hunting, fishing, etc.). The highly developed Roman sense of order could take things to extremes, and the early Christian fathers in their antipagan polemics made fun of the Roman indigitamenta, or invocations of highly specialized gods. Each householder had his genius; women had their Junos; children were protected when going in, going out, or performing their natural functions by Educa, Abeone, Potin. In fact, there was a goddess responsible for the toilet and sewage system: Cloacina. (The Roman example illustrates another important principle. Deities can be mythological beings of symbolic immediacy, to be subsequently "interpreted" or rationally allegorized; they can also be the personifications of abstract concepts.)

To cite another example of parallel hierarchy, few divine worlds were as hierarchical as the Chinese; in fact, these realms seem to be exact replicas of the administrative bureaucracy of imperial China. Just as the illustrious departed could be deified by imperial decree, so gods too could be promoted to higher rank. (Japan subsequently adopted this Chinese model, as it did so many others.) As late as the nineteenth century, these imperial promotions were announced in the Beijing Gazette.

The possibility of elevation to divine rank of living or departed humans (in the Western world such was the case with Hellenistic kings and Roman emperors) calls for a qualification of an earlier statement that polytheism displays an unbridgeable difference (though not quite as radical as that of monotheism) between humans and gods. For, much as humans can occasionally attain to divinity, the gods can assume human shape (as in the example of the Hindu avatāra s) or exist in human manifestation (as in the Japanese concept of ikigami ).

An important corollary of polytheism is that, though the major deities can be very powerful, no god can be omnipotent. Only a monotheistic god, being monos, can also be all-powerful. With growing moral differentiation, originally ambivalent gods split into positive (good) and negative (bad, evil, or demonic) divinities. Thus the original Indo-Aryan asura s (deities) became, in Vedic and post-Vedic India, demonic antigods, in opposition to the deva s. The multiplicity of gods of necessity produced a hierarchy of major and minor gods and a pantheon, or overall framework in which they were all combined. The more important gods have names and a distinct personality; others form the plebs deorum, a body often indistinguishable from the nameless spirits of animism. Many gods are experienced as real though unidentified, and hence a Roman might invoke the deity si deus si dea or distinguish between dei certi and dei incerti (rather like addressing a prayer "to whom it may concern"). There even is a reference to aius locutus "[the god] who has spoken [on a certain occasion, whoever he may be]."

When polytheism is superseded by monotheism, the host of deities is either abolished (theoretically), or bedeviled (i. e., turned into demons), or downgraded to the rank of angels and ministering spirits. This means that an officially monotheistic system can harbor a functional de facto polytheism. No doubt for the urban masses in fourth-century Rome, the cult of the Christian martyrs was merely a kind of transformation of the earlier polytheistic cults, and the same is probably still true of much Roman Catholic Christianity, especially in rural areas.

Some scholars consider henotheism (the exclusive worship of one god only without denying the existence of other gods) as an intermediary stage between polytheism and monotheism, the latter being defined as the theoretical recognition of the existence of one god only, all the others being (in the language of the Old Testament) sheer "vanity and nothingness." The terminology seems somewhat artificial (both hen and monos signify "one" in Greek), but it attempts to express a real distinction. Thus it has been claimed that henotheistic vestiges can still be detected even in the monotheistic Old Testament (e.g., Exodus 15:11, "Who is like unto thee among the gods, O Yahveh," or Micah 4:5, "For all nations will walk each in the name of its god" while Israel walks in the name of Yahveh, their god for evermore). The fact that the most frequent Old Testament name for God, Elohim, is an originally plural form is often mentioned in this connection, but the arguments are doubtful and perhaps influenced by lingering evolutionist patterns of thought. Henotheist tendencies are also evident in Vedic religion and, to a lesser degree, in the bhakti ("devotion") directed toward a variety of later Hindu deities.

One problem that cannot be ignored is the disappearance (with a few exceptions) of polytheism as a result of either monotheistic "revolutions" (e.g., ancient Israel, Islam) or unifying tendencies. Indeed, too little scholarly attention has been paid to the strange fact that polytheism has gradually disappeared except in some East Asian religions. In most contemporary philosophical discussions the alternatives considered as available to society seem to be monotheism or atheism; polytheism is treated as an important phenomenon or stage in the history of religions but hardly ever, philosophically or theologically, as a live option.

The quest of an overarching unity (one universe in spite of the multiplicity of forms of existence; one natural law under which all other laws can be subsumed) is clearly one factor that led to a view of the divine as one. By using impersonal language, it is relatively easy to speak of "the divine" in the singular. A personal god is a more difficult matter. But at any rate unifying tendencies are discernible everywhere, even in antiquity. The Greek dramatist Aeschylus speaks of "the one with many names," and the Ṛgveda says of the evidently one god that "men call him Indra, Mitra, Varuṇa, Agni." The polytheistic paganism of the late Roman empire was syncretistic in the sense of evincing a tendency to identify the individual gods of the various (Greek, Roman, Oriental, Germanic) cultures. Hence it becomes possible to speak of a "pseudo-polytheism," a religious system that preserves the traditional polytheistic terminology but considers the many gods mere manifestations of what is ultimately one divine principle. This tendency is especially noticeable in many modern types of Neo-Hinduism. For some Hellenistic writers (e.g., Marcus Aurelius) the grammatical distinction between theos (singular) and theoi (plural) has become practically meaningless.

All monistic—even nontheistic—views on the higher and more sophisticated doctrinal levels notwithstanding, a de facto functional polytheism can continue to exist among the masses of devout believers. This is not the place for a psychological and sociological analysis of the role of the cult of saints among many Roman Catholics. In India, no matter what monist or nondualist doctrines are theoretically held, the religious life of the mass of believers is a de facto polytheistic one. The case of Mahāyāna Buddhism is even more striking. On the doctrinal and scholastic level, as well as on the level of higher mystical experience, there may be no god or divine being, and the key terms are emptiness, nothingness, and the like. Yet the ordinary Buddhist (and even the Buddhist monk) relates to the many Buddhas and boddhisattvas that in fact constitute the Buddhist pantheon like a polytheist to his gods.

Bibliography

There is little, if any, systematic literature on the subject. Discussions of polytheism can be found in articles on monotheism in the older, standard encyclopedias (the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, and so on) as well as in accounts of specific polytheistic religions (for example, Germanic and Celtic; ancient Near Eastern; Greek and Roman; Indian, Chinese, and Japanese; Mesoamerican and South American). Perhaps the first modern discussion of polytheism, in the Western sense, is David Hume's The Natural History of Religion (1757), though Hume's account is obviously shaped by eighteenth-century European Enlightenment attitudes. Systematic considerations can be found in Gerardus van der Leeuw's Religion in Essence and Manifestation, 2 vols. (1938; Gloucester, Mass., 1967); E. O. James's The Concept of Deity (New York, 1950); and Angelo Brelich's "Der Polytheismus," Numen 7 (December 1960): 123–136. On the relationship of polytheism to more highly developed political organization (e.g., the Greek polis), see Walter Burkert's "Polis and Polytheism," in his Greek Religion (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), pp. 216–275.