Intolerance, Exclusivity and the Heirs of Abraham

A thread on a forum I frequent has motivated me to wonder something about the so-called Abrahamic religions, i.e. those which look back to the patriarch Abraham as a founder, directly or indirectly.  What I wonder about them may strike some as disturbing or even blasphemous.  I wonder whether there is anything peculiarly good about them; whether, in other words, they in themselves contain or preach anything good, that hasn't as it were been borrowed or assimilated in the course of their histories from elsewhere.

Above is a picture in stained glass, I think, depicting Abraham about to sacrifice his son in accordance with the will of his God.  I sometimes think of the God of the Old Testament as a kind of colossal, unsleeping cat, toying with his creation as a cat would a mouse.  A cat without a cat's usual charm and grace, though, and without its vast capacity to sleep, and doing no harm by doing so.  Whether urging the chosen people to destroy the Canaanites and take their land, laying waste to entire cities, flooding the world, or playing torturous games with Abraham and Job, he's perpetually doing something to us.  He seemingly made us to be the objects of his whims.

A particular belief in a particular God has been the cause of much violence and many wars, it's true.  But was it so, is it so, when one of the Abrahamic religions is not involved?  As far as I know, the pagans of the ancient Mediterranean didn't war against each other because one group worshipped Isis and one Mithras, for example.  Tolerance of religious beliefs was characteristic of the Greco-Roman world, except, of course, when it came to the Jews and Christians.

Greeks and Jews we know rioted against each other in Alexandria.  Roman suppression of the Jews in the two "Jewish wars" was ruthless.  The Roman state, periodically and with varying degrees of seriousness, persecuted Christians, but with nowhere near the seriousness depicted by Hollywood and others.  But violence against Jews and Christians was not motivated by the fact that they believed in Yahweh or Jesus as opposed to one or several of the pagan gods.  It was motivated by the fact that they believed themselves to be exclusively in possession of that which is right and good by virtue of the fact they worshipped their particular god and refused to recognize as right and good and indeed despised anything they did not think right and good--including pagans, the Roman state, and pagan institutions.  They were considered anti-social, as they were against pagan society and culture.  They appeared to subvert society, traditional religion and the government.

Jews and Christians were exclusive, sometimes militantly so, and intolerant.  Once Rome became a Christian Empire, it persecuted pagans far more relentlessly and effectively that the pagan empire persecuted Christians.  Islam, once founded, was similarly exclusive and intolerant, and engaged in great conquests in the name of its God.  Christianity was an imperial force as well.  All over the world, people were "saved" by being made Christian.

There are works of art inspired by religion, and they can be said to be goods peculiar to particular religious beliefs.  What of wisdom or ethics can be said to have resulted only by virtue of the Abrahamic religions, however? 

I would say nothing, not really.  All that was or could be said on those topics was said before Christianity or Islam existed, and developed independent of Judaism, primarily due to the ancient Greeks.  If one discounts unsubstantiated claims such as Plato or Solon got lessons from Moses, there's nothing to indicate the Greeks were influenced by Judaism in any significant respect.  That Christianity borrowed extensively from pagan philosophy is clear.

It's often claimed that Christianity brought with it the idea of love, something said to be absent from paganism.  Readers of Plato's Symposium might find that surprising.  But Christian love has much more often than not merely been given lip service.  If there was such a teaching, it's been ignored as a practical matter.  And arguably, the love touted by Christianity has never been capable of realization.  One simply does not love everyone.  Respect and dignity were accorded to all by the pagan philosophers; a much more achievable goal.

Well, that's what wondering can do.  But what can be expected from religions which hold themselves out to be the only way to God, the only way to worship God, but conflict in the name of God until all believe the same?

Angry Gods

The man we know as Lucius Apuleius wrote the only entire Latin novel to survive the fall of the ancient word, The Golden Ass also known as the Metamorphoses (the Satyricon of Petronius has come to us with sections missing).  It is perhaps the first picaresque novel, its hero suffering through all kinds of discomforts at the hands of many, both as a human and while transformed into an ass. 

At the end of the novel, however, there is a seemingly very serious and interesting description of ceremonial in the worship of Isis and her consort, Osiris, as that goddess was worshipped in Roman times.  Apuleius is initiated into the mysteries of Isis, the Queen of Heaven, Regina Caeli.  Also included in the novel is a description of ecstatic dancing and blood-letting (flagellation) by eunuchs in the worship of what is referred to as "the Syrian goddess."  I assume that is Cybele, given the role played by eunuchs in her worship.

Older Catholics like me will find the title Regina Caeli familiar as one given to the Virgin Mary, which could be heard in a hymn to her sung back in the old days of the Latin mass and Novenas.  As for flagellation, and even ecstatic dancing, Christianity has had its proponents of both.  These are reminders of the debt (if one can call it that) owed by Christianity to the ancient pagan past.

But there is one sense at least in which Christianity differs from the religion of the ancient pagans (amusingly called Gentiles by Christians).  It isn't monotheism either, assuming "monotheism" is properly used to describe the three gods in one said to be the Christian God.  There were monotheists among the pagans, or at least those who could claim to be monotheists as appropriately as could Christians of the time.  It is instead Christianity's pretension to being the only true religion, the one path to heaven, the sole truth; that is to say its exclusivity, and its often violent intolerance of that which is not Christian. 

Christianity isn't alone in this remarkable conceit of course.  So are the other major religions said to derive from Abraham, Judaism and Islam, which have been equally exclusive, equally intolerant.  Their gods are angry, jealous gods; we are sinners in their hands, though some sinners are worse than others.  I know little of the religions of the East, but it seems to me that they have at least been less intolerant than those of the West.

The pagan religions from which Christianity borrowed so much had no such pretensions in the sense that they were generally not exclusive and not intolerant.  One could, and did, worship many gods.  One could be admitted to the mysteries of Isis and those of Mithras.  Admission to the Eleusinian mysteries was open to all, after they ceased being purely local; several emperors were initiates.

Religion was essential to Greco-Roman society; there were temples everywhere, rituals were to be performed with great frequency.  The worship of some gods or goddesses was considered silly or barbaric or contrary to social order from time to time.  Christianity was indeed thought to be anti-social and was persecuted because its followers refused to participate in the ceremonies believed to be essential to the welfare of the Roman state and its people.  However there was no insistence that only one god should be worshipped, no claims that worshipping other gods was evil, no crusades as in Christianity, no religious conquests as took place as was the case in Islam and Christianity, no Inquisitions.

It's interesting to consider just how it came about that the Abrahamic religions became exclusive and intolerant.  If it wasn't the influence of pagan religion, what could it be?  Judaism was certainly exclusive and intolerant, and there was a long tradition that Jews alone were the favorites of the one God.  There were occassions as in Alexandria where fights would break out between Jews and pagans--riots, really.  There was frequent tension, but nothing quite like the virtual warfare with pagans and heretics resulting from the triumph of Christianity and later Islam.  Perhaps the Jews' belief in their own sanctity and righteousness didn't result in the extermination of other religions and beliefs and those who followed or held them on a larger scale because they never obtained political and military power as did Christianity and Islam. 

It's likely that such intolerance derives from the belief not just in a single God but in a single truth, a single way of living that is the only way.  We see the same intolerance in Nazism, fascism, Stalinism, Maoism.  This intolerance seems to be associated with a figure divine or semi-divine who issues commandments to be followed or interprets those given by some other figure.

Sheep and Shepard seems an all too accurate analogy for humans and our relationship to power of all kinds.  But it's curious that this kind of religious absolutism didn't develop during the time of polytheism.  There was political absolutism enough in the Roman Empire, of course, but the emperors didn't begin to demand the closing of the temples and the schools of philosophy and the acceptance of a particular version of Christianity until the reign of Theodosius (he also banned the Olympic games).

An all-powerful, all-knowing god who is jealous, demanding and angry.  What does this reveal about those who worship such a being and were induced to do so at the end of antiquity, and the state of the culture and society which saw the triumph of such a religion?