Comparative Religion

Jonathan Sheehan had a fascinating article in the Journal of the History of Ideas several years ago, in which he explored the uses of the categories of “idolatry” and “sacrifice” in early modern theology, comparative religious studies, and politics. Along the way, he cited a number of seventeenth century writers who attempted to give a Christian/biblical account of ancient paganism.

In 1660, for instance, Theophilus Gale’s Court of the Gentiles “catalogued the many imitations of Judaism by ancient religions, taking as its epigraph: ‘Paganism is nothing else but Judaisme degenerated.’” Huguenot writer Samuel Bochart agreed that “‘the Pagans Temples and so also their Altars’ were imitations of Jewish ceremony.

Following a suggestion of Maimonides, Hebraic scholar John Spencer argues that “The ceremonial laws of the Jews-and especially its sacrificial rites-were a practical necessity for this ‘Aegypticizing’ people, prone to fall into error after their long captiv- ity by the Pharaohs. The Israelites, ‘accustomed to sacrifices, expiations, purifications, and other similar religions, could not have been led to the worship of the true god unless God had tolerated such rites . . . in his worship.’ The ceremonial law consoled them for the loss of their false gods and gave them new tools for knowing the real one.”

At the same time, the Jewish ceremonies distinguished Israel from the nations. His “1685 Ritual Law of the Hebrews described a Jewish ceremonial law designed by the God of distinction. Circumcision, for example, intended to ‘discriminate the sacred people of God from the idolaters’; the Sabbath severed ‘the common cares and affairs of life from God and religion’; God provided dietary laws ‘to separate’ Jews and Gentiles, and so on. This was no less true of sacrifice: the institution of the paschal lamb, for example, resuscitated a symbol familiar to the en- slaved Hebrews – namely the ram of Ammon – but by sacrificing it, the Jews ‘reenact[ed] and reenforce[d] the separation from Egypt and from idolatry.’”

Drawing on Spencer’s work, Samuel Parker used the Pauline phrase “Elements of the World” to describe “customs common to Jews and heathen alike,” and argued that even idol worship was “not only necessary for a fallen mankind but indeed sanctioned by God himself.” He gave a similar explanation for the Torah’s use of these rites: “When God has casher’d the more rank and notorious Acts of Hea- then Worship, he retained some of their more innocent Rites . . . lest if God had given a law altogether new, and abolished all their Old Customs, People that are always fond of the Usages of their Fore-fathers, should rather have revolted to the Heathen Idolatry . . . . therefore out of condescension to their rudeness and weakness, God permitted them to retain several of their former Rites and Ceremonies in his new Worship.”

Vico made similar claims about the origin of even the most vicious paganism: “Even the Phoenicians, when they burnt their children in honor of their bloodthirsty god Moloch, were acting on ‘the counsel of divine providence.’ ‘All this was necessary to tame the sons of the cyclopes and reduce them to the humanity of an Aristides, a Socraties, a Laelius, and a Scipio Africanus,’ Vico insisted.”