Monotheism is defined as “the doctrine or belief that there is only one God”. I always assumed that the Bible was a monotheistic work, as Christianity only worships one God, however after class today I am not sure. According to our first reading, monolatry is defined as “the belief that there are more deities but only one is to be worshipped”. I did not think this was a good word to describe the Bible, but as I did more research I learned that the Bible may be more of a monolatrous work than a monotheistic one. The Bible insists that only Yahweh is to be worshipped, no other god. Simply saying this phrase assumes the existence of other gods, it just claims the superiority of God as the one who deserves worship.
In class, we talked a lot about prophets. First, we tried to think of any people in today’s world that are similar to the prophets of Biblical times. Some people compared prophets to scientists, who foretell the future through research, or social justice figures, who are listened to by some and hated by others. After that discussion, we began to think about monotheism in the Bible. Prophets played a major role in the development of monotheism. The people of the Bible were not monotheistic, they worshipped many deities and were under the impression that gods were meant to specialize. It took prophets coming to earth and teaching these people to change their minds about monotheism and even the prophets were ineffective in convincing the people to change their ways and become monotheistic.