The Price of Monotheism

Nothing has so radically transformed the world as the distinction between true and false religion

NB: This is one of the most thought-provoking studies in the history and philosophy of religion that – in my limited reading – I have come across. The author Jan Assman (1938-2024) was a German Egyptologist, cultural historian, and religion scholar of global standing. His research deserves serious consideration. DS

By Jan Assmann Translated by Robert Savage

Nothing has so radically transformed the world as the distinction between true and false religion. In this nuanced consideration of his own controversial Moses the Egyptian, renowned Egyptologist Jan Assmann answers his critics, extending and building upon ideas from his previous book. Maintaining that it was indeed the Moses of the Hebrew Bible who introduced the true-false distinction in a permanent and revolutionary form, Assmann reiterates that the price of this monotheistic revolution has been the exclusion, as paganism and heresy, of everything deemed incompatible with the truth it proclaims.

This exclusion has exploded time and again into violence and persecution, with no end in sight. Here, for the first time, Assmann traces the repeated attempts that have been made to do away with this distinction since the early modern period. He explores at length the notions of primary versus secondary religions, of “counter-religions,” and of book religions versus cultic religions. He also deals with the entry of ethics into religion’s very core. Informed by the debate his own work has generated, he presents a compelling lesson in the fluidity of cultural identity and beliefs.

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Reviewed by Ekaputra Tupamahu (Indonesian Journal of Theology; Vol 1 # 2; December 2013)

This book is Jan Assmann’s response to the critics of his previous book, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Harvard University Press, 1998). Assmann states, “This
book does not aim to provide an exhaustive account of the shift from polytheism to monotheism, from primary to secondary religions, but rather to clarify and further develop the position I advanced in my
book Moses the Egyptian by confronting it with a number of critical responses and objections.” (p. 4) With this in mind, it is helpful for a reader to actually encounter Assmann’s arguments in Moses the Egyptian
before reading this book. This said, because the primary task of this essay is to examine The Price of Monotheism, it is going to be focus of my attention. Let me summarize briefly first the content of each chapter and then I will give my assessments of the book.

In Chapter 1 Assmann tries to re-articulate his argument on the distinction between primary religion (polytheism or cosmotheism) and secondary religion (monotheism). This is actually Assmann’s
effort to answer his critic’s objection that he is an anti-monotheistic, or anti-Semitic, scholar that paints monotheism as a religion of intolerance and violence. For Assmann, both primary and secondary religions exist side by side, but in opposition to one another, in the Bible. The primary religion can be found in the Priestly tradition, whereas the secondary religion is seen in the Deuteronomistic source
and prophetic tradition.

The break from the primary religion to the secondary religion took place through the mythical figure of Moses. Moses, an Egyptian who follows a strict monotheistic religion, introduced the Jews to the concept of an exclusive God. Moses imposes a strict law that separates between true and false religion, a concept that Assmann calls “Mosaic distinction” throughout the book. Assmann acknowledges that monotheism is a religion of intolerance. It operates similar to the law of the excluded middle (tertium non datur) introduced by the Greek philosopher, Parmenides, in the sixth century BCE. This law of logic is characterized in its very core by “differentiation, negation, and exclusion.” (p. 12) Assmann explains further that the primary religion usually works within the hermeneutics of translation. The deity is translatable to other forms of deity. “Religion functioned as a medium of communication, not elimination and exclusion.

The principle of the translatability of divine names helped to overcome the primitive ethnocentrism of the tribal religions, to establish relations between cultures, and to make these cultures more transparent to each other.” (p. 19) Conversely, monotheism or the secondary religion functions within the hermeneutics of difference. It “assures itself of what is its own by staking its distance from the Other, proceeding in accordance with the principle ‘Omnis determinatio est negatio.’ ” (p. 23)

For Assmann, explaining this exclusive and intolerant nature of monotheistic religion does not have to lead to anti-Semitism or anti-monotheism. Both monotheism and the Greek scientific understanding are “the civilizational achievements of the highest order.” (p. 13) They are good because they contribute to a people’s ability to “have their own criteria of validity, verifiability, and falsifiability” by which they make a distinction between truth and lies. Assmann argues that he is actually not advocating a return to the primary religion. He states, “I am not advocating anything; my aim is rather to describe and understand.” (p. 13)

In Chapter 2, Assmann deals with the question of the real opponent of monotheism by distinguishing between religion and theology….

https://indotheologyjournal.org/index.php/home/article/download/88/177/167

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Peter Brown: A Life of Learning (2003)

The Oceanic Circle: Talk on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s 155th birthday

Tracing the Hard Edges of Religion: On Peter Brown’s “Journeys of the Mind”

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