As they purged the Promised Land, God told them to destroy everything associated with false religions. Upon entering the land, he gave them the Ten Commandments and ordered them to drive out the pagans. After Yahweh dethroned the gods of Egypt, he brought an exceedingly large number of Hebrews back to Canaan. To prevent that from happening, God sent the Hebrews to an isolated area in Egypt. The resulting syncretism would have ruined God’s purposes for the Jewish people. The stories of Lot and Esau demonstrate this point. Over time, through intermarriage and social intercourse, pagan beliefs and practices would have corrupted the radical monotheism that they inherited from Abraham. When Jacob lived in proximity to the Canaanite peoples who surrounded his small clan, his family interacted with the local inhabitants. Even though they flirted with foreign gods, idols, and the religious practices of the polytheistic peoples with whom they interacted, they never became a polytheistic people.Ī quick recap of what was previously discussed will help explain why the ancient Hebrew literature lacks copious references to the demonic. The Israelites are the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Instead, one can make a case for original monotheism. There is no evidence that the early Hebrew people practiced polytheism. The Hebrew Scriptures don’t support Spangenberg’s main thesis. However, he asserts, hints to its existence can be found in the Hebrew He argues that the surviving Hebrew literature lacks a robust demonology because the Israelites sanitized its polytheistic literature when they embraced radical monotheism. This is in keeping with the evolution of religion During the polytheistic period, the Hebrews would have produced a lot of literature that dealt with the demonic. Spangenberg speaks for the academic consensus when he claims that the ancient Hebrews were polytheistic before Yahweh prohibited them from serving other gods. Interestingly, the surviving literature from ancient Israel makes fewer references to demons than the literature of the surrounding nations. The literature has taken the form of legends, myths, sacred texts, magical incantations, psalms, and exorcism rituals. Since ancient times, people have written about demons.
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