#62 Polytheism, Paganism, and the Tower of Babel + Dr. James Sedlacek

When Jesus showed up, the world was already full of other gods, like Zeus and Artemis and Mithras and Isis. Where did polytheism even begin in the Bible?

The clearest place for me to land is Genesis 11, with the story of the Tower of Babel. It seems, at least as far as from the heavenly perspective goes, that that wasn't just humans.

So there's a concept of the divine counsel, they are no longer serving the Lord, they're serving themselves.

That's began a creation of grotesque images that humans were worshiping, something anti-creation.

What happened to them? Where'd they go?

Welcome to Biblically Speaking and the Episode Topic

Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Belluno, and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding God easier.

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Today we're going to talk about something that has always interested me, the origin of polytheistic gods. And this is going to be very different from the other conversations that we had regarding other gods and their creation story compared to Genesis, or how were they viewed by other gods amidst a Israelite people worshiping a monotheistic god.

Because this is important because when Jesus showed up and he preached in Galilee, the world was already full of other gods like Zeus and Artemis and Mithras and Isis. We see this all over the Old Testament.

And then he walks into throne rooms dedicated to Zeus. So in this episode, I've brought on the renowned, the beloved Dr. James Sedlicek. You are a repeat guest who I always love to have you back on. You are one of the smartest people I know, and you're going to walk us through the ancient spiritual background of scripture from Genesis to Revelation and how polytheistic gods emerged and why divine beings are even being acknowledged in the Bible and what we as Christians need to do to live faithfully despite these false gods.

So just for anybody who has not listened, this might be your first episode. You are in for a treat because Dr. James Sedlicek is highly, highly qualified to speak on this. You have a PhD in biblical studies with a focus on Greek language and linguistics on the New Testament.

You have an MDiv of biblical studies focusing on Hebrew and Greek exegesis. And right now you do teach biblical languages and interpretations at the Israel Institute of Biblical Studies. And then you also serve as a professor for Greek exegesis and the textual criticism for God's Bible School and College.

If we were going to talk to anybody, we'd be talking to you. So welcome back to the show, Dr. Sedlicek. How do you feel about today's topic?

I'm excited about it. First of all, I want to thank you so much for having me on the show. It's always a pleasure. We've had several good episodes in the past, and I would like to continue this, and it's always a pleasure to speak.

And even with different ones that have asked questions or posted comments, it's been fun to follow up with some of those items that we've had a chance to follow up with. So I want to thank everyone for logging on and being part of this.

Amazing. What are some of the comments that you've seen and followed up on?

I think the majority of them were related to the grabbing of the robe.

That was amazing. Did you see all of that recently? Oh my gosh, people love that.

I'm happy that it was worth reposting.

So when you have people reach out, do they share the same sentiment? Because all I see when I repost that kind of content is this opened up so much more about the Bible than I've previously known.

I've had some people contact me on the side too and want to know what classes they can take and learn more. So that's also helpful.

Oh my gosh.

Okay.

Well, I know we only have an hour and we'll probably have to do two of these because this conversation is going to be so good. I already have a feeling about it, but let's jump right in. So when we think about all of polytheistic religions, it's really difficult for me as a Christian to understand where those came from.

There must've been something that came before Genesis. Had they showed up and there was already a Greek pantheon, a Roman pantheon, some of the books that I've read, there's this thing called a divine feminine.

Where did polytheism even begin in the Bible? Because the Bible begins at the beginning of time. Where do we get these polytheistic gods?

Romans 1, Genesis 11, and the Tower of Babel

Yes. One of the first places that's caught my attention is Romans 1 because Paul begins to explain the origin of idols and demonic activity and how the Gentiles or the nations pursued this to their own detriment.

And while there's been some misinterpretation of Romans 1 in terms of what's really being said, one of the clearest pictures that you can get out of Romans 1 is this first century idea that there was an original setup that went bad.

And then the thing that goes bad also affects those who followed it. So the Gentiles were all affected by it by the time of Paul.

So he's like referencing a past event.

Yes.

Got it.

And it's not clear when you're reading the chapter what event this was or how it relates to the rest of the stories. The clearest place for me to land is Genesis 11 with the story of the Tower of Babel.

So I think you have... That was one of the key verses that you highlighted was to talk about the Tower of Babel. We get a very thin sketch there that there were a bunch of human beings all speaking one language, and they built a city, they built a tower, and then gods came down, confounded their languages, and then they all scattered.

The story doesn't get into a lot of details about the whys of things, but in Jewish tradition, alongside of the stories, there was an understanding that there were some beings that were sort of between human beings and God in some kind of way, in some kind of governance, and they went bad.

And when exactly do they go bad is a big question, because the story isn't given to us in Genesis 11.

Are you talking about like at the time of Tower of Babel, it wasn't just humans on earth?

It seems at least as far as from the heavenly perspective goes, that that wasn't just humans. Now from an earthly perspective, humans may have thought they were alone.

Oh, okay.

So that's possible. Now for me, it's been instructive to also see the book of Enoch as it unfolds. And Enoch kind of goes in and explains some of the whys and puts details behind some of the missing data that we read when we read Genesis or other books that it seems that Paul is informed by, and it seems that John is informed by when they write their books, Revelation in particular.

And so if Enoch is such a source of information, it's probably worth our time to at least see what it has to say. Enoch was not accepted as a canonical book by many groups, both Jewish and Christian, but it was accepted by a few groups at different times and places, and it shows echoes throughout a lot of the books that we call New Testament books.

So it's an interesting book. One of the things that Enoch kind of clarifies for us, because Enoch goes back to the reason for Noah's flood, and in there, there was beings who interacted with humans in a way that produced harm and destruction, and then God needed to bring the judgment on the people.

And then the beings were bound in a place far, far away. It isn't clear, even from Enoch, where that location is, and it's also not clear how these beings still exert force onto the earth from their prison, wherever that is.

But it seems as though when you get to the Tower of Babel story, these beings are still active somehow. Even though they aren't roaming loose, they're still active. And so I wanted to kind of throw that out as a foundation, because the question is about idols.

Where do they come from? And you almost have to go back to Genesis 1 and 2, when God is creating mankind, to see that God builds the universe where there's a firmament between two levels of water. That word for firmament is sort of a key piece for us, because that's the same word used for the ceiling of the temple and the tabernacle later, and it's the only place we find it.

Used.

And prophets, when they're looking in the heavenly throne room, they see this same word, separating the beings supporting the throne from the throne and the divine being on top. So this word is kind of a, if you know other places where the word shows up, it makes you wonder what's really going on in the creation story.

And the other piece that's critical for us is that God makes man in his own image, and then breathes the breath of life into him. Well, this sounds just like, oh, this is a life-making moment. If you know nothing else about ancient religion, that seems to be all it's saying.

But in ancient religions, in their temples, in their idolatry-focused temples, the idol in the temple was always called an image. And it needed life breathed into it from this being who wasn't there.

In order to activate the religion of the place. In other words, it wasn't just the stone or wood idol that sits there. There was some kind of understood being that was spirit-like, stronger, greater than humans, but yet invisible to humans, who would animate the image and breathe life into it and interact with its people through that image.

So for the creation story, the animals are the creation God wishes to interact with. So he breathes into man, and man becomes his image, and therefore the one who interacts with the animals. And this key point is bounced upon many times through scripture, that the idols around, in the nations, do not live, do not breathe, do not move, because a different image does.

And it's the human image who actually lives and breathes and moves. Yes, sure.

What were you saying about the animals not breathing?

No, the idols, the images. They don't move, they don't breathe, they're made of wood and stone, they have no activity, they can't perform anything in their realm. That's hit upon a number of times. Well the reason that that's important is because the image of the true God, in other words, is in a breathing, living human being who can act and move.

Right. I mean, I get that, because I'm on the Christian side. So what's the argument for the other side that thought that this wooden deity was worth worshipping, or even the breath of God, that God's, lowercase g's, life got into it?

The next piece I want to move us into is something called a divine counsel.

We love this term. We've talked about this before. Let's go.

Someone I'm thinking of who's done a lot with this is Michael Heiser. Maybe some of you have read books by him. But this idea that when God is in the creative moment, he begins to speak to a plural group, saying let us make man in our own image, and it's like, wait a minute, who's the we and who's the our here?

And it leaves it mysterious. It's not answered there. In fact, it leaves a lot of question marks in the history of Jewish interpretation.

And there's no other explanation in other Jewish texts on that one?

Not right there. Throughout the development of rabbinical thought, there were a lot of posed explanations. One of them is these divine beings, not divine in the sense that they're truly God, but that they are somewhat elevated above humans and they're spirit-like, invisible.

And they can zap into a room, zap out of a room at will. And they have these abilities.

Oh my gosh. Okay, so basically Tower of Babel. So there's a concept of the divine council where it's not yet like messenger angels, but it's not God's. It's something in the middle that is advising and counseling God within this divine council.

And we get that allusion to it in Genesis. So when Tower of Babel happens, God says, okay, my council, go rule over these new nations. Instead of directing people to worship the Almighty, they direct the worship towards themselves, arguably becoming a fallen now opponent of God because they are no longer serving the Lord.

They're serving themselves. People are interacting with deities that have supernatural power. So they think they are talking to capital G God, and it's just little case G God. And as they talk to their neighbors across the mountains, they say, oh, there's a sun.

God.

Like now, how does it now attribute to, well, you have a sun God. I've got a fertility God. You know, mine is Artemis and it helps with war. And then you get these sacrifices. Where's the next step to this?

These entities needed life in them.

Oh, they needed images for humans to notice. So that's began the creation of grotesque images that humans were worshiping. And the interesting thing is these images could be made of things that were creation, elements of creation, or they could be something that never was created, something anti-creation.

And so what's that mean?

Mixed bird beaks and camels, legs and horses, body, you know, all these different.

It's not like a tree. It's like, oh, it's like a concoction of dead bodies.

Yeah, a concoction of different body parts. If you look at especially the Near East depictions of some of the deities, some of them have human faces, but animal bodies, some of them have. Yeah, opposite, they have human form, but animal heads, Egypt, Egypt is like that, or.

Many of them. So the anti-creation essentially was just dead body parts that they were putting together. And again, just using creation to create these like images of like I think of Shiva, isn't Shiva for the Hindu religion?

Like I'm modernizing this entirely, but it's like a human face with like an elephant trunk or like an elephant body with a human face with a human body.

Ganesh, Ganesh is like that. It's more of an elephant. Yeah. And Shiva has multiple arms. So you get a lot of this kind of thing. If you look at the Assyrian or the Babylonian or the Persian deities, and they have some that they consider bad and some that they consider good.

The bad ones are always more grotesque with more random assortment of body parts, while the good ones are usually mixed between human and animal features.

It's just so wild to me how it's jumped, you know, how you start with, OK, I'm interacting with a god. I'm going to, you know, because I'm getting the best results when I pray about the rain, I'm going to call it my like weather god, because then, you know, when I pray to it, I'll get rain, my crops will grow.

And I depend on that for livelihood. This probably has these concoctions of items and you create that anti-god or that anti-creation, as you stated. And then it balloons into this like godlike image.

It's just it's hard for me to see that evolution of it because I'm just I'm seeing the whole thing. But it would be hard for me to see this something that's like giving me some responses made out of legs and arms and tree trunks and whatever I'm using to create it into now this like godlike figure that then you like pass on the mythology of it to the to your generations and your children.

Like what how does that work? And like I'm entering this as humble and like ignorant about this, but I'm truly trying to understand how you can go from the starter to the end that we see today.

Yes. And the the images are wildly different and the beings behind them are the beings that are connected to this divine council. We can think of them as watchers. Enoch always calls them watchers instead of angels.

What what should we call them? That's always an open question, but that's what Enoch calls them. Some texts don't call them that. They call them sons of God, plural, which we find that reference in the Hebrew Bible on occasion, which is interesting.

And we see that in some pagan literature, too, with with the sons of God doing their thing. And if you look at even Greek and Roman pantheons, there's always a head god and then there's the sons and daughters of that god.

And then they yeah, I would love to get into that next discussion.

Destruction. Yeah. Each version of these culturally are different from each other. So Babylon had their version. Canaan had its version. Persia had its version. Greek and Rome each had their versions.

But most of these versions that reach the first century are amalgamated. For example, the Greeks had some core ones that were close to home, like Athena or Helen. And then from there, they acquired more as they conquered more people.

And they claimed Artemis, for example, into their own pantheon of gods and goddesses. But that one wasn't originally Greek. It was the Amazonian women, the big invaders that had the bow and arrows, you know, that gave the Greeks havoc back in the day.

And so the Amazon tribe of women warriors was the one that brought Artemis into the Mediterranean.

What? So they were defeating different people and then just inheriting their god.

Yes. And here's the way it would work. If you go and conquer that other people group and you sack its main temple, you grab all of the stuff from its temple and go put it in a storehouse that belongs to your own temple.

And then you have allowed your god to conquer other gods.

Because now you've captured a god.

This is why the Israelite temple stuff ends up in Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. And Nebuchadnezzar wouldn't touch it. He left it in the storehouse. But his grandson decided, I'm going to use that stuff.

And that's when his kingdom ends, because he messed with the god stuff that was in captivity.

OK, but oh, my gosh, this is insane. OK, OK. So I can totally see the thinking behind this. Like, this makes sense that you have a deity, works for you. My neighbors, they have a deity for water. I'll take that one.

Now I took over.

What is it?

That's the key point. That's the key point right there, because you've got a deity for fertility, but you don't have one for water. And the other country has one for water. You need both. So you go get their deity and now you've got both fertility and water.

Which begs the question, when they were creating these anti-creations, why was the thinking, this is only a god for X, not this is a god for all of me?

I don't know the answer to that, but that raises some interesting questions. One of the purposes of these beings seems to be to destroy what God's trying to do with creation. So what better way to.

So because these are fallen deities that are leading them, they're in rebellion, open.

Rebellion. So if they can get human beings to fight each other, declare war on each other, kill each other, then they've succeeded.

Oh, my gosh. OK, OK.

And so that's one way they succeed. The other way they succeed is establishing human sacrifice and people are killing their kids and other people that they captured in battle. You know, and so nearly all of your Old Testament and New Testament pagan religions had sacrifice.

So like Rome, it was different than it was in Babylon or Persia. But in Rome, if you conquered somebody, you always drag the captives to the feet of Zeus and sacrifice them there. That was the way that you did that, or Jupiter, I should say, rather than Zeus.

But some of the Canaanite religions, you sacrificed a person that you cared for in order to get the gods to send rain. So it was about appeasing the deities to get what you needed.

That's so interesting because I'm reading a lot of 1 Samuel and there's so much war and bloodbath and being delivered of the Philistines into the Israelites' hands. And so you think like once this monotheistic god isolates the Israelites and he's still declaring war over other peoples, they're not doing the same thing that they were doing before.

It's like same, same, but slightly different of like we're not sacrificing these people for God. We are taking out an enemy that is a bad influence, essentially. Would you say that that's the correct distinction there with the Israelites?

There are several things going on with the Israelite situation.

I know I just like jumped so far in the future, but.

It's OK. But there are people groups that have allied themselves to a particular demon, to use a blunt word. And they they are worshipping this demon and sacrificing humans to this demon. And God said there's enough.

So he's going to have his people come in and remove those people. And it's one of the explanations that makes theological sense when you look at, well, what were the Israelites really doing to the Canaanites and why?

You know, that becomes a big modern day question. Was it genocide? Was it God declaring war on those who rebelled against God? And it's if we see those different strands of statements, why God tells the Israelites to go do this.

And there was a time when God said not to. And then he said that their iniquity was not yet full. And so it's like, well, what does that mean? When does the iniquity become full? We don't know that answer.

There's it's never spelled out where it says, OK, their iniquity is full. Now it's the time. It's all we know is that it wasn't the time because the iniquity wasn't full. And then, oh, now it's the time.

And we don't get an explanation for what they did, what was different, what was the thing that was so bad that God said, hey, go in there. But something was bad and we just don't have the detail of it.

Nothing recorded. Was it human sacrifice?

Was it?

What really was it, it's hard to say.

You're saying the Israelites were doing something that's not really expanded upon that Jesus, that God in heaven was like, I'm not going to help you guys out just yet because you're doing something bad.

I don't think I understand fully.

No. So at some point, God doesn't say to the followers of God that it that that it was OK to go in and remove the Canaanites from the land. It wasn't it wasn't their time yet, as if there's coming a time, as if there's something that needs to be done before the time is right.

And we don't get the detail. We don't know what it was or what time it was that made all of that right. But then when God inaugurates with Joshua to go in and start clearing the land, Joshua does it and it's the right time and the iniquity is must be full.

But what was it? We don't know.

Yeah. OK, got it. I understand now. Thank you for explaining that.

Months, Weekdays, and the Spread of Pagan Worship

Yeah, because we get into this discussion a lot with genocide and what is right, what is wrong when in this case it's it's very different from a typical situation. But coming back to the idols and to the development of idolatry, you see various things in various cultural groups because some of them accumulate deities from conquering other city states and some of them are happy with a set core and just never really add more.

So a lot of them associated some of their deities with certain constellations in the sky. And this is what gave us the sense that you had one for each month. And eventually, because there's 12 months in a year, they just kind of felt that stopping at 12 made sense.

So they had a 12 deity pantheon, one for each month. So some of the month's names that we have today are named after Roman deities. Wow. January is one. It's named after Janus, the two faced god. And March is named after Mars, the god of war.

And there might be one more, but it slipped in my mind. But originally when you are saying originally stuff, because there's always time before that, but you go back far enough, a lot more of these months were named after deities.

But eventually some of the months just became named after a number. So like September, October, November, December are seventh month, eighth month, ninth month, tenth month. But that's all they mean.

But December's not the 10th month.

Not anymore. But in the Roman calendar, they started their year with March one. And they finished with February. So December was the 10th month back then.

OK, got it.

They start with the signs of life in the spring. That was the start of the new year.

Oh, OK.

Yeah, that makes more sense.

So the names of some of our months are stuck on those months from something that happened 2 ,500 years ago when they named them this way based on the system that they use. We've never updated the names of our months.

That's wild. Oh, my gosh.

The days of our week in English are also named after deities, but not Roman ones. They're named after German ones. Monday is the day of the moon. Tuesday is the day of Tues. Wednesday is the day of Woden or Odin.

Thursday is the day of Thor, Thor's day. Friday is Frigga's day, Frigga the goddess. Saturday is the day of the Satyrs. Only Sunday has a kind of nice name to it, but it's just like the moon. It's the sun god.

So it's Sunday.

So that's interesting to bring up German culture because I'm so stuck in like we're in Israel. So how did like when you're saying like, is that coming from a place of when people after the Tower of Babel, people were sent out, they were truly sent out all over the land.

Of course, I'm being so centralized and like the arid of like the Middle East, like this was everywhere that this was happening.

Yeah. So you get human expansion over the globe, each taking one of the 70 guides with them. Eventually, these guides are banished and judged. We actually get a passage in Psalm 82 about the judgment of these entities.

The counsel of God being under judgment. God judges them over their inability to do the right thing and sentences them to serious judgment and then extols humanity to serve only God and not serve them.

So this is kind of like the origin of. OK, wow. So this is kind of like the origin story of like every different religion other than the original God, like this is where all the global religions came from, you could say.

And that's what the order presents itself to us in Romans one. It begins with the worship of one God and then it degenerates to the worship of things not God. And then it multiplies and it increases. Just a kind of sort of a touchstone on this is when you look at the development of Hinduism, if you go back to the original Vedas.

About the development of Hinduism. Yes. If you look at the oldest Vedic scriptures, there's one God. When you look at scriptures, the Vedic scriptures around the year 800, think about Isaiah's time frame.

There's three gods. BC, AD. BC. Yeah. OK. Isaiah's time.

OK. 800 BC. Because of the taking over other civilizations, needing other gods.

It's less clear in Hindu. A lot of things that are more concrete in Greek and Roman history are less clear for Hindu history. So it's not exactly as clear how one becomes three and how three become more.

But if you go back to around the time Israel goes to captivity, there's 30. And if you go to about the first century, there's over 100. And today, modern estimates think there's as many as 300 ,000 gods and goddesses in India or in Hindu.

And they have that many. Why? What was the need to keep adding?

It's difficult to understand fully, but not. OK. Imagine you're in an ordinary situation in life. You went to the store to buy a hamburger or whatever. And while you were waiting in line, something you could not explain happened.

And you tried to explain it with the best of your rationality and you could not. And so you believe that something happened, manifested itself right near you, and it was divine in origin or otherworldly in origin.

It would be very easy to say, well, that's another god who spoke to me or who did this. Now, what happens is maybe one village says, well, that's another god. But somebody in the city a little further away would say, no, that's the same god we already have here just manifested itself in a new way.

So there's all this debate whether there's really 300 ,000 or if there's there's there's some forms of Hinduism that believe there's only one ultimate god, but it manifests itself differently in all these 300 ,000 manifestations.

So you do get variety of understanding about them. But if something manifests itself to you as a mushroom that's talking and three months later, something manifests itself to you as a cow that's doing something else strange, it'd be easy to think, well, those are not the same deity.

Those are two different deities.

Right. That makes sense.

But then someone else philosophically could say, well, that's the same deity just talking to you two different ways.

OK, so those would be like three different civilizations with three different approaches to that event.

Three different philosophical understandings of a particular divine manifestation. Yeah. So in the Hindu religion, you get various answers to to how many deities are there and really is there only one?

Is there many, many, many? Or is there just a handful? And who knows what the rest is? You get a lot of different answers. But India shows us or the Hindu religion shows us a modern way that worshipping or.

Don't. That's a good question of like what happened to the Mayan gods? Did they become a different religion that we honor today or why are they gone? Why do we not have or are they still here? Maybe I'm just completely ignorant.

That begs the question, essentially, that it like what happened to these polytheistic religions that no longer exist? You know, I think of the Mayan religion and I could be totally ignorant here that there are currently people in South America that still worship those Mayan gods, but they're not mainstream.

So for the ones that let's just assume they're completely gone, what happened to them, where they go and what determined the end of that? Do you think that there's like the Easter bunny that may be more pagan in its origin?

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