Biblical and Early Rabbinic Views

Abstract

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Jews are presented as God’s chosen people; they alone are the recipients of his true revelation. This conviction led to the renunciation of foreign deities and the prescriptions against idolatry. According to the biblical writers, the gods of other peoples are non-entities. Yet, foreign nations were not condemned for their pagan ways. Idolatry was sinful only for the Jewish people. Here then in the Bible is a mildly tolerant form of Jewish Exclusivism. The religion of the Jews is presented as the one true faith, yet there is no harsh condemnation of idolatry. In addition, the prophets foretold that at the end of days, all people will recognize that the God of Israel is the Lord of history. Thus there is hope even for pagan peoples in the unfolding of God’s scheme of salvation. Rabbinic teaching about non-Jews continued this tradition of tolerance: those who follow the Noahide Laws (given originally to Adam and Noah) are viewed as acceptable to God. Even those who engage in seemingly polytheistic practices are admissible as long as the gods they worship are conceived as symbolically pointing to the one true God. In the writings of medieval thinkers such as Rabbenu Tarn, this earlier rabbinic conception of symbolic intermediacy was applied to Christian believers: in the view of these scholars Christianity is not idolatry.