Jonathan Kirsch is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, PEN Center USA West, and a book columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He lectures widely on biblical, literary and legal topics and is an author of a number of books.

In the work under review the author explores the struggle between monotheism and polytheism in the ancient world from Prophet Abraham onwards. According to him religious liberty and diversity were core values of classical paganism, and it was monotheism that introduced the terrors of true belief, including holy war, martyrdom, inquisitions, and crusades.

            He has interpreted 11 September, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in terms of a “3000-year-old conflict between monotheism and polytheism.” Currently he blames the Islamic world for the bloodiest acts of violence in the name of God. Besides the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, he refers to the dynamiting of ancient Buddhist statuary in Afghanistan, the sentencing of Nigerian women to stoning for the sin of adultery, Iranian journalists to death for the sin of blasphemy, and suicide bombings by Palestinians who seek martyrdom in jihad (holy war). He, however, ignores the socio-economic and political causes for such acts.

            Kirsch brings out the fact that the roots of religious terrorism are not found originally or exclusively in Islam, but begin in the pages of the Bible. He goes back to the earliest biblical skirmishes when Yahweh (i.e. God in the original theology of the Israelites) decreed a holy war against any one who refuses to acknowledge him as the only God. Proceeding further from Torah to the recorded history, he refers to the national wars of liberation fought by the Maccabees against the pagan king of Syria and later of the Zealots against the pagan emperor of Rome. He claims that these wars give the first account of men and women willing to martyr themselves in the name of God. Later, during the first century, the banner of holy war was taken up by the early Christians when they brought the news and the message of the Jesus Christ to imperial Rome where “the decisive battle” between monotheism and polytheism was fought.

            During the fourth century, the Roman emperor Constantine led a revolution in the name of monotheism and soon thereafter the emperor Julian sought to work a counter-revolution for polytheism. The world, according to the author, at that time, faced a choice between two futures – monotheism or polytheism.  Julian died soon and with him his pagan counter-revolution ended. Consequently, Christian tradition salutes Constantine as “the Great” and condemns Julian as “the Apostate.” The author gives a hypothetical statement when he says that if Julian had succeeded in his mission, the spirit of respect and tolerance would have come back into Roman government and into the roots of Western civilization.

            The word “paganism” never existed in Rome before the birth of Christ. “It is not far from the truth to say that before Christianity invented it, there was no Roman religion, but only worship, expressed in a hundred-and-one different ways.” (John Holland Smith, The Death of Classical Paganism (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976) p.6.)

            While comparing the ideologies of monotheism and polytheism, he says that Judaism, Christianity and Islam agree that “only a single deity is worthy of worship for the simple reason that only a single deity exists.” The deity variously called “Yahweh” or “Lord” or Allah” is thought to be one and the same God.  On the contrary, pagans embrace the idea that some gods are more powerful than other gods and phrases like “Supreme God” and “Highest God” fit into the theology of polytheism.

            “For though there be gods many and lords many”, explains Paul, “but to us there is but one God” (1 Cor. 8:5-6) According to Christianity and Judaism, the god of monotheism is “the living God”, “the everlasting King” (Jeremiah 10:10) and “the Only True God” (John: 17:3). In the words of Jeremiah all other gods are “no gods” (Jeremiah 2:11) and to Apostle Paul they are “devils” (1 Cor. 10:21). According to biblical monotheism to worship wrong god is “not only a sin but a crime, and a crime that is punishable by death” (author, p.10). Thus monotheism cruelly punishes the sin of “heresy” but polytheism does not recognize it as a sin at all. The polytheist, the author argues, can live in harmony with the monotheist but not vice versa. Polytheists are tolerant of other religions but monotheists are not.

He regrets that we rarely consider the dark side of monotheism and the bright side of polytheism in our churches, synagogues and mosques. “It is not possible that only one road leads to so sublime a mystery.” (Cited in Pierre Chuvin, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, trans. B.A. Archer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), 1990, p. 58.)

            He condemns the existence of “extreme strictness” in religious belief and practice and the worst excesses of the Crusades and the Inquisition inflicted by the Christians on Jews and Muslims, all of whom believed in the same God. He feels that all the excesses of religious extremism in the modern world are the latest manifestation of a dangerous tradition that began in the distant past. When the Taliban dynamited the Buddhist statuary, when Arab suicide bombers carry out “martyr operations” in Israel, and when a Jewish physician opens fire on Muslims at prayer at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, they are “inspired by a tragic misreading and misapplication of ancient texts.” Religious terrorism is carried out by true believers in one or another variety of monotheism against their fellow monotheists.

            He acknowledges the “deeply empathetic teaching” of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The majority of Jews, Christians and Muslims embrace the values of respect, toleration and compassion that are found in their sacred texts. Fundamentalism, fanaticism and religious terrorism are found only on the “ragged fringes” of all three faiths.  The “blessings of Judaism, Christianity and Islam far outweigh … the curse of religious fanaticism.” But, at the same time, he asserts that we make a mistake when we dismiss the pagan tradition as something “crude and demonic”. He claims “the values that the Western world embraces and celebrates – cultural diversity and religious liberty – are pagan values.” Some of us may differ with him and argue that these values are also incorporated in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. 

Dr Noor ul Haq
Research Fellow, IPRI