Background

In ancient times, people did not worship idols as if they were, per se, deities. Agbẹ́gilére, the skilled sculptor who creates numerous copies of a deity’s idol in his shop, understands that these idols are not the real divine beings; if he believed they were, there would absurdly be countless Èṣù and Baal as gods. Moreover, on a successful business day, his shop would otherwise be empty of gods—something no one desired! Everyone recognized that an idol was a vital point of contact, a mediator, to connect with a specific god. Each “idol worshipper” sought to reach her particular deity through the idols and her supplications. Strictly speaking, nobody thought a god was destroyed because his idols were burned. And, of course, a devotee could always get new replacement idols. This is not to deny that devotees sometimes think of their idols as gods, especially after repeated associations. However, idols can be viewed as gods precisely because of their connection with immaterial, external deities.

This concept of an idol is not far removed from the first pages of the Bible, though we overlook the implications too often. Genesis introduces Yahweh as existing beyond our created world. Yet, astonishingly, this transcendent being chose to establish a “home” within creation (Isaiah 66:1), transforming the cosmos into a temple. (A temple is a place gods live or operate through.) By forming the heavens and earth, God makes himself accessible. As if that was not scandalous enough, God made humans in his image, the famous Imago Dei. Scholars continue to debate the meaning of Imago Dei. A common approach postulates that humans image God in that they can uniquely do some things God can do. No doubt, there is some truth to this angle.

But there is another cultic-priestly way scholars understand God’s project of making specific creatures in his image, a way that would have resonated with ancient Near Eastern readers (or hearers): God wanted idols. He wanted “versions” of himself gamboling around on the earth with the intent of fellowshipping with them. Indeed, the language in Genesis 2:7 that God breathed into the image he had molded so that it became animated could also be understood as God’s presence indwelling his idol – implying that his presence animated the idol. Middleton writes, “the human being may be understood as God’s cultic image, located in the cosmic temple as a visible and tangible site of the divine presence on earth” (6). Genesis, consistent with similar ancient Near-Eastern creation literature, portrays the cosmos as a temple that God has come to inhabit, and every temple needs a priest working as a mediator.

Idolatry is so strongly condemned in the Bible because it demeans humans and insults God. Humans are already the greatest idols that could ever be imagined, being the images of the most High God. Every other idol we come up with will fall short. We also cannot make idols of Yahweh because he already made that move, and we cannot surpass him. Notice that the reason for the condemnation of idolatry is not because no other gods exist. As we shall shortly see, there are many gods, and the Bible affirms their existence. The pervasive idea that no other gods but Yahweh exists now enjoys a canonized status in many churches, but we are about to show why it is incorrect.

The other gods

Part of the problem is linguistic and worldview differences. The word “God” – with the capital G – derives its meaning from a worldview utterly different from the Hebrew word elohim. As pointed out in another blog entry, elohim in the Bible does not uniquely refer to Yahweh. Indeed, “elohim” is used to refer to Yahweh, gods of Israel’s neighbors (cf. Deuteronomy 32:17), ruling divine beings (Psalm 82:1), angels  (Psalm 8:5 – angels are a subset of divine beings), and the spirit of a dead human (1 Samuel 28:13). So, “elohim” does not discriminate among the beings it refers to. So, if “god” is the appropriate English word for “elohim,” there are many gods in the original Hebrew worldview, including Yahweh.

The very first of the Ten Commandments says:

Exodus 20:3-5 ESV
[3] “You shall have no other gods before me.

[4]  “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. [5] You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,

Sunday School church meetings have made a habit of reading verse 3 above as saying that the people should never become so neurotic that they manufacture new gods to replace Yahweh. But that is a gross misreading. First, the Faith Life Study Bible reminds us, “Biblical Hebrew has no verb meaning ‘to have.’ Instead, it conveys the idea of possession in a variety of ways. The most common is the phrasing found here: ‘there shall not be to you.'” In other words, Exodus 20:3 assumes the common knowledge that there were other gods that Israel’s soon-to-be neighbors worshiped but forbade Israel from going after them. The description in verses 4 and 5 is likely the details of the gods the people in the land already worshiped. More importantly, what would Yahweh be so jealous of if there were no other gods? The offense is so severe that Yahweh says he would hold the people accountable for four generations! If the issue is a simple sculpting of images from wood and metal, that would be art taken too far – not idolatry. The images forbidden in verses 4 and 5 depend on the gods in verse 3.

The Golden Calf incidence of Exodus 32 is helpful to treat here. In that account, the Israelites were still in the wilderness after Yahweh rescued them from Egypt. It is critical to remember that the people had lived all their lives in Egypt, a land with various gods managing different affairs of life. God had summoned Moses up a mountain, and he had been gone for some days. The people became restless and decided to make a move:

Exodus 32:1, 4 ESV
[1] When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”
[4] And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

This passage is open to multiple interpretations, but unless one posits a sort of group psychosis, surely the people must know that the inanimate calf they brought into existence from their gold belongings did not time travel to lead them out of Egypt! Another curious point in the passage is how the people spoke of the calf as “gods” (verse 4).

However, the people operated with an assumption: it was foolish and dangerous to proceed without a god in their midst. Indeed, centuries of life in Egypt likely influenced them to believe that they could summon the deity who led them out of Egypt into the calf idol. They could have meant the calf as a point of contact with the delivering deity. However we read the Golden Calf account, notice that it does not invalidate the existence of other gods. In fact, God would soon reiterate the same message as in Exodus 20:3-5 during a renewal of his covenant with Israel:

Exodus 34:11, 13-17 ESV
[11] “Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
[13] You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim [14] (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), [15] lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods … and make your sons whore after their gods. [17]  “You shall not make for yourself any gods of cast metal.

When they get to the promised land, the Israelites are to destroy the places where the residents of the land worship their gods. There is no indication here that the neighbors’ gods do not exist. On the contrary, the destruction of the worship places and items was necessary to prevent Yahweh’s people from being ensnared and enticed. Of course, as we read later, they were enticed and led astray not long after the people inherited the land.

By the time of the prophets, Israel and Judah often gave up on your Yahweh altogether, whoring after the gods of their neighbors. The situation provoked some of the Bible’s sharpest verses on other gods. First, Jeremiah writes:

Jeremiah 16:20 ESV
Can man make for himself gods? Such are not gods!”

The answer, of course, is No. Humans cannot manufacture gods. The graven image or whatever material thing a human worships is no god. The verse seems to remind us that idols are not gods per se. But Judah thought otherwise:

Jeremiah 2:26-28 ESV
[26] “As a thief is shamed when caught, so the house of Israel shall be shamed: they, their kings, their officials, their priests, and their prophets, [27] who say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ For they have turned their back to me, and not their face. But in the time of their trouble they say, ‘Arise and save us!’ [28] But where are your gods that you made for yourself? Let them arise, if they can save you, in your time of trouble; for as many as your cities are your gods, O Judah.

Yahweh’s people had gone really deep into idolatry as they ascribed the glory of God to trees and rocks. But, again, these prophetic messages do not imply that other gods do not exist. Here is Jeremiah again:

Jeremiah 10:11 ESV
Thus shall you say to them: “The gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens.”

A non-existent thing cannot perish. The gods who did not create the universe will perish only because they exist and have lured God’s people into sin. Here is one more message from Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 16:11 ESV
[11] then you shall say to them: ‘Because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the LORD, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law

Once again, nobody can serve or worship a nonexistent thing. Furthermore, if God is angered by his people’s act of going after other gods, it must be that those gods exist.

We must address a popular passage in Isaiah before moving on to the New Testament:

Isaiah 45:20-22 ESV
[20] “Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, you survivors of the nations! They have no knowledge who carry about their wooden idols, and keep on praying to a god that cannot save. [21] Declare and present your case; let them take counsel together! Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the LORD? And there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me. [22] “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.

The passage begins by reiterating the obvious point that idols cannot save. Then it says there is no other god besides Yahweh. The point is restated for emphasis: I am God, and there is no other. Does not this passage definitively prove that there are no other gods? No, not really, and we shall get to that shortly.

Isaiah is not the only one to report such an exclusive statement about Yahweh. Indeed, he was not the first. Deuteronomy makes the same point in various places:

Deuteronomy 4:35 ESV
[35] To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him.

Deuteronomy 4:39 ESV
[39] know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.

Deuteronomy 32:39 ESV
“‘See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

What exactly are these passages talking about? The Isaiah passage is more straightforward and can be explained briefly. The poetic parallelism of the Isaiah 45 passage tells a specific contextual story: There are no other gods besides Yahweh who are righteous and able to save the Israelites. However, this explanation is insufficient for the “No other gods” portions of the Deuteronomy passages above.

We begin by noting that “there are no other gods besides me” cannot possibly mean there are no other elohim because the Hebrew Bible affirms the existence of other gods. Consider Psalm 82 again. Here, Yahweh himself speaks thus:

Psalm 82:1, 6-7 ESV
[1]  God [elohim] has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods [elohim] he holds judgment:
[6]  I said, “You are gods [elohim], sons of the Most High, all of you; [7] nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.”

Yahweh refers to some other elohim later identified as “sons of the Most High.” We have addressed this passage elsewhere and argued that these elohim are not humans. Indeed, verse 7 says that whatever these elohim are, they shall die like men, implying that they are not humans. However we read Psalm 82, this passage affirms the existence of other elohim besides Yahweh, and he explicitly addressed the audience as elohim. It is worth pointing out that in a world without other gods, “the Most High God” – a common description of Yahweh also found in Psalm 82 – is meaningless. Hence, the point of the exclusive language in the prophets and Deuteronomy seems to be this: While Yahweh is an elohim, no other elohim is Yahweh. Yahweh is the grandest among the elohim. Indeed, Yahweh created the other elohim while he was an uncreated first cause.

Besides, another line of evidence supports our reading of the exclusive “there is no other” language. Consider the following passages:

Isaiah 47:1, 8 ESV
[1]  Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground without a throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans! For you shall no more be called tender and delicate.
[8] Now therefore hear this, you lover of pleasures, who sit securely, who say in your heart, “I am, and there is no one besides me; I shall not sit as a widow or know the loss of children”

Zephaniah 2:13, 15 ESV
[13] And he will stretch out his hand against the north and destroy Assyria, and he will make Nineveh a desolation, a dry waste like the desert.
[15] This is the exultant city that lived securely, that said in her heart, “I am, and there is no one else.” What a desolation she has become, a lair for wild beasts! Everyone who passes by her hisses and shakes his fist.

These are the tales of two different cities at their heights of influence and might. Both Babylon and Nineveh each proclaim, “There is no other besides me.” Indeed, these cities could not have conceivably meant that no other cities existed. Babylon and Nineveh surely knew about each other, Egypt, Jerusalem, and other cities. In fact, a significant reason for the wealth and might of these cities informing the proud proclamation was the domination of the people of other regions and the cornering of their natural resources. So, the point of the “there is no other” comments is a declaration of military supremacy. The comments cannot be taken as a denial of the existence of other cities. Similarly, when Yahweh says there are no other gods, it is a statement of ontological supremacy, not a denial of the existence of other gods who Yahweh himself created.

Paul on the other gods

The New Testament continues the same theme we have been exploring. Though the focus is going to be on certain Pauline writings because they supposedly contain the most direct commentary on our subject, I think it is helpful to begin with a passage in Acts since it nicely summarizes a core argument of this entry:

Acts 19:26 ESV
And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods.

Read in isolation, this verse gives the impression that idols are merely gods made with hands, which accentuates the traditional understanding of idolatry. That reading claims that the god is the idol and nothing more. However, the passage in Acts continues:

Acts 19:27 ESV
And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.”

If the Ephesians thought the local idols were Artemis, the inference that “all Asia and the world worship” her would be inconceivable. Again, though idolaters often refer to their idols as gods by association, they know that the idols are not the real deal. The idols are mediators between the devotees and the god(s).

Sometimes, people point to 1 Corinthians as teaching that there is only one God. In chapter 8, we read:

1 Corinthians 8:4 ESV
Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.”

The passage concerns eating food “sacrificed to idols,” something all the Corinthians did before they encountered Jesus. Having been in Jesus, however, the question arose about how they should conduct themselves. In verse 4, Paul states, “an idol has no real existence.” What is he talking about?

A quick excursus is in order here. One of the recent achievements in Pauline scholarship is the discovery that Paul often quotes his audience in his letters. Notice the ESV rendition of verse 4, which places some bits of the message in quotation marks. The ESV does that because Pauline scholars have determined that those bits are not what Paul asserts. He is merely interacting with the Corinthians’ ideas in this portion. Hence, the Corinthians, the former pagans who devoted their lives to several idols, claim that “an idol has no real existence” and “there is no God but one.” But what does Paul say to these assertions?

1 Corinthians 8:5-6 ESV
[5] For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— [6] yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

Paul immediately affirms the existence of other gods – “as indeed there are many gods.” However, the Corinthians were not wholly wrong in saying only one God exists. As Paul clarifies, there is only one God for the Corinthians and all believers in Jesus. Paul here reformulates the central message of the Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4, “the LORD our God is one.” Contrary to popular belief, this verse does not say only one God exists. In fact, the verse is equivalently rendered, “The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.” So, there is only one God for ancient Israel and the new Israel in Christ.

Paul stays on the topic of food sacrificed to idols in chapter 10. Here, he further elaborates on his theology of idolatry:

1 Corinthians 10:14, 19-20 ESV
[14] Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.
[19] What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? [20] No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons.

Paul says the sacrifice of pagans, which the devotees offer at temples full of idols, is to demons. So, Paul implies that there really are external, supernatural entities behind the idols of paganism, and he does not want the Corinthians to fellowship with demons. Idols are distinct from the supernatural entities (i.e., gods) behind them. Paul does not affirm the pagan narrative. He does not believe that Zeus, as imagined by the Greeks as ruling the other gods on Mount Olympus, exists. Nevertheless, he would grant that there are (deceitful) supernatural beings behind the idols and temples of Zeus.

Jesus as an Idol?

Finally, I want to suggest a provocative idea, but let me clear the floor first. In 1 Corinthians 9:19 – 23, Paul reveals a secret behind his evangelistic successes: he becomes like the people he preaches to in the hope of helping to save them. He tries to understand their native ways and find an opening to exploit for Jesus. In Athens, for instance, Paul was troubled because the city was full of idols (Acts 17:16). Virtually every major city in the Greco-Roman world was full of idols. People had several idols in household shrines, public spaces like marketplaces and public squares, temples, governmental buildings, graves and tombs, and so on. Paul must have genuinely cared even as he was troubled because he found, among several others, an altar with the inscription “to the unknown god” (Acts 17:23). Paul would soon use this fact of daily Athenian life to introduce Jesus to the people while standing before the highest governmental assembly in ancient Athens, the Areopagus.

In his speech to the assembly consisting of philosophers of different persuasions, Paul cited two pagan sources that would have been familiar to his audience for his argument:

Acts 17:28 ESV
for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

The first quote comes from Epimenides’ Cretica. The longer quote, addressed to Zeus, is as follows:

“They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one,
Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.
But you are not dead: you live and abide forever,
For in you we live and move and have our being.”

The “holy and high one” here is Zeus. Epimenides, who lived in the 6th century BC, debunks a belief among the Cretans that Zeus is dead. For Epimenides, Zeus is immortal. Paul also uses the poem’s second line concerning Cretans in Titus 1:12.

The second quote in Acts 17:28 comes from a Stoic philosopher’s work, Phaenomena, book 5:

From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring; and he in his kindness unto men giveth favourable signs and wakeneth the people to work, reminding them of livelihood. 

So, the very successful evangelist Paul begins his argument in the presence of Stoic (and Epicurean) philosophers in the Areopagus by claiming that he is making known the god hitherto acknowledged as unknown by the Athenians. But then he soon delves into well-known passages addressed to a known god, Zeus, and applies them to the unknown god! Now is not the time to exegete Acts 17. My goal in pointing out all these details is to portray Paul as an evangelist with a deep knowledge of the pagan world that he fought hard to win over for Jesus.

In light of the above details, consider the following words that Paul penned to the pagans-turned-Christians of Colossae concerning Jesus:

Colossians 1:15 ESV
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

The most natural way to understand the “image” language here is sculptures, especially considering the overwhelming presence of sculptures in the first-century Roman empire. (Photography would take another 1700 years before it would be invented.) That being the case, it would be unusually irresponsible of Paul to have phrased his message in this way if he did not want his ex-pagan audience to think about idols. Paganism already taught Paul’s audience that idols are visible representations of invisible gods. So, by placing Jesus in the role of an idol, much like he placed Yahweh in the place of Zeus in Acts 17, Paul likely intended his audience to think in terms of the category.

Furthermore, pagans already habitually worshipped their various gods and the idols representing them. Since Jesus is deserving of worship, he would be an appropriate “idol” for the ex-pagans to worship. Lastly, Paul also describes Jesus as the mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5), a fact that every idolater knew so well. An idol was primarily a means of contact with a god, much like the temples of Judaism were a means of contacting Yahweh. Even if Paul did not intend this reading and was merely infelicitous, it is not inconceivable that some of the ex-pagans would have taken Paul as saying Jesus was the legitimate idol of God. That is a sensible way people in a pagan context would have understood such an image language.

Wrapping up

Idolatry elevates things lesser than Yahweh to the place Yahweh alone should occupy in human lives. As argued in this entry, idolatry is a sin involving often sinister supernatural beings. Interestingly, Paul says to the Colossian (3:5) and Ephesian (5:3) churches that greed – pleonexia in Greek, the consuming desire to possess more things than others regardless of actual need – is idolatry. The churches would have understood Paul’s point as saying greed was practically the worship of other gods. Greed is an unhealthy drive to appear better than someone else created in God’s image. In the end, embracing greed not only undermines the dignity of others but also depreciates one’s inherent God-given value. No material possessions can genuinely enhance our status as imagers of God. As Jesus says in Luke 12:15, “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

Works Cited

Barry, John D., Douglas Mangum, Derek R. Brown, Michael S. Heiser, Miles Custis, Elliot Ritzema, Matthew M. Whitehead, Michael R. Grigoni, and David Bomar. 2012, 2016. Faithlife Study Bible. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Middleton, J. Richard. “Image of God.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Theology, vol. 2, edited by Samuel E. Ballentine et al., Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 516 – 523. Citation is from a version of the work on Middleton’s website: https://jrichardmiddleton.com/articles/