God Against the Gods (4 page)

Christian Soldiers

“Pagan” is a word invented by early Christians to describe anyone who refused to recognize the Only True God, and no self-respecting pagan ever described himself as one. Paganism, in fact, has been so thoroughly defamed that our language lacks the words and phrases to describe it in value-neutral terms. “A pagan,” according to one of the dictionary definitions of the word, is “an irreligious or hedonistic person.”
²⁸
All of the synonyms and variants—“heathen” or “idolater” or “infidel” or “barbarian”—are equally dismissive or derogatory. We are left with the dry and highly technical terms that distinguish between someone who worships only a single god, a “monotheist,” and someone who worships more than one god, a “polytheist.”

One explanation for the root meaning of “pagan” allows us to see what was at stake in the encounter between monotheism and polytheism in ancient Rome. The word derives from the Latin “
paganus
,” which originally referred to a “village-dweller” and carried the sense of a “country bumpkin.” But the word was also used in Roman military circles to mean “civilian” and to distinguish one who is ready to fight in war from someone who stays behind. According to some scholars, that’s precisely the meaning of “pagan” that inspired its first use by Christians—the Christian rigorists regarded themselves as soldiers, ready to march forth as crusaders in a holy war, and they characterized anyone who refused to take up arms in the service of the Only True God as a civilian, a slacker, a “paganus.”

“Pagan” eventually came to mean anyone who worshipped any god or goddess other than the deity who was recognized as the Only True God in Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition. For that reason, the term encompasses a multitude of supposed sins, ranging from the elegant rituals of the Roman senator who represented the highest expression of classical civilization in the ancient world to the cruder rituals of the Celtic tribesman who painted himself blue and fought naked against the Roman legions. And Christianity would ultimately carry the holy war in the name of the Only True God to every corner of the Roman empire and far beyond—no distinction was made between the patrician and the barbarian, and the religious practices of each were regarded as equally “abominable” and equally worthy of persecution.

Now and then, a willful and hateful monarch might abandon the long tradition of tolerance that characterized the world of classical polytheism and undertake a war of his own against monotheism—the persecution of Christians in pagan Rome, of course, is the most famous example. Whether the Roman persecutions were quite as pervasive or quite as horrific as depicted in the martyrologies, however, has been the subject of hot debate for several centuries—Edward Gibbon, for example, characterized the worst atrocities as “extravagant and indecent fictions” that were invented to inspire the faithful.
²⁹
Indeed, the spectacle of men and women who went willingly and even ardently to their deaths—and, long afterward, the memory of these martyrdoms and the relics of the martyrs themselves—only stirred the fires of true belief and inspired ever greater acts of zealotry. Sometimes the pagan magistrates literally begged the Christians to make some gesture of compromise in order to save their own lives.

“Unhappy men!” cried one Roman proconsul to the all-too-willing martyrs. “If you are thus weary of your lives, is it so difficult for you to find ropes and precipices?”
³⁰

What the pagans found most provocative was not the fact that the Christians chose to worship their own deity in their own way, but that they stubbornly refused to drop a pinch of incense on the altar fire or mumble a few words of prayer in honor of the Roman deities. Ironically, the word “atheist” was first used by
pagans
to describe
Christians
because they denied the very existence of the gods and goddesses whom the pagans so revered. What the Christians saw as an act of conscience, the pagan saw as an act of disloyalty and disrespect—all that was required of them was some simple demonstration of their “civic virtue,” which is the phrase that was used by one school administrator to justify the recital of the Pledge of Allegiance when a California court recently ruled it unconstitutional because it includes the phrase “under God.”

Whether or not the “Great Persecution” of the early fourth century, the tenth and last of the persecutions carried out against Christianity by pagan Rome, would have been successful in extinguishing or at least containing the fires of true belief, we will never know. Remarkably—and, according to Christian tradition, miraculously—the Christians were rescued from their torturers and executioners when Constantine, one of the many pagan contenders for the imperial crown, managed to prevail in battle over all the others and then put himself under the protection of the Christian god. Here is one of the rare moments when the willful act of a single human being can be said to have changed the course of history.

“Behold, the Rivers Are Running Backwards”

We are encouraged to regard monotheism as a self-evident truth that could not fail to win the heart and mind of anyone to whom it was revealed. “But nothing made its final victory inevitable,” insists historian Diana Bowder. “[T]he final triumph of Christianity and extinction of paganism [were] still far from certain or obvious.”
³¹
Among the many faiths on offer in ancient Rome, all but Christianity and Judaism were polytheistic in origin—and Christianity, as historian Kenneth Scott Latourette concedes, “seemed to be one of the least of many rivals and with no promise of success against the others.”
³²
Indeed, even after the famous conversion of the emperor Constantine to Christianity, the outcome could not have been predicted with confidence at any time until the ultimate victory.

“If Christianity had been checked in its growth by some deadly disease, the world would have become Mithraic,” speculates the nineteenth-century historian Ernest Renan.
³³
“[I] magine how the history we trace in this book would have unfolded,” proposes the contemporary historian James Carroll in
Constantine’s Sword
, “had the young emperor been converted to Judaism instead.”
³⁴

Indeed, as we shall see, the revolution that Constantine had set in motion was still imperfect and incomplete on his death—the ruling class, the culture and the vast majority of the population of the Roman empire were still pagan. When Julian, no less ambitious and no less visionary than Constantine, ascended to the imperial throne, he promptly revealed his intention to undo everything his uncle had done in the name of the Christian god. “Behold, the rivers are running backwards, as the proverb says!” writes Julian in one of the elegant, highly literate and often bitterly ironic discourses that were his real passion and his only enduring monument. The ancient proverb that Julian quotes was understood to signify that “all is topsy-turvy”—and thus does he acknowledge his own audacity in seeking to undo the revolution that Constantine set into motion and work a revolution of his own.
³⁵

The Christian emperor and the pagan emperor, in fact, shared much in common. Both of them, like other famous makers of both religions and revolutions, were masters of self-invention. Each was convinced that blessings had been bestowed upon him from on high, although each credited a different god for his curious fate, and both claimed to have seen divine visions and received divine visitations. Yet they were both driven as much by grudges and grievances as by true belief, and intimate family politics mattered as much as the wars and conspiracies in which they were engaged. Both were so enmeshed in scandal, intrigue and betrayal that their life stories resemble something between a soap opera and a Shakespearean tragedy. Each of them was deeply and decisively influenced by the women in his life—mother, sisters, wives and concubines. Above all, each one sought to remake the world over which he reigned, and each one very nearly did so.

Julian, of course, ultimately failed to reverse the flow of the river of history that Constantine had turned in the direction of monotheism. A spear thrust ended his life, and thus ended his pagan counterrevolution, only two years into his reign. He was still a young man when he died in battle, and if he had lived as long as his uncle, the war of God against the gods—a war that has never really ended—might have turned out much differently. Indeed, as we shall see, it is tantalizing to consider how close he came to bringing the spirit of respect and tolerance back into Roman government and thus back into the roots of Western civilization, and even more tantalizing to consider how different our benighted world might have been if he had succeeded.

BOOK ONE

THE GOD THAT FAILED

You have rejected the Lord who is among you, and have troubled him with weeping, saying, “Why, now, came we forth out of Egypt?”

—Moses, Numbers 11:20

CHAPTER ONE

AGAINST ALL THE GODS OF EGYPT

A Young Pharaoh’s Experiment in Monotheism and Why It Failed

God is a latecomer in the history of religion.

—G. van der Leeuw

Only rarely does an archaeological discovery challenge everything we have been taught to believe about the history of religion. But that is what happened when an expedition of so-called biblical archaeologists began to excavate the ruins at Tell el-Amarna, a remote site near the banks of the Nile in southern Egypt, in the late 1880s. Suddenly, all that the Bible tells us about the origin of monotheism was called into question.

By a tradition that is embraced in all three of the monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—the first person to recognize and worship the single all-powerful deity variously known as “Yahweh” or “Lord” or “Allah” was Abraham, whose encounter with the God of Israel in the land of Canaan is memorably depicted in the Book of Genesis: “And the Lord appeared unto Abram,
¹
and said, ‘Unto thy seed will I give this land,’ and he built there an altar unto the Lord.”
^2
a
A distant descendant of the first patriarch, the man called Moses—yet another prophet who is honored by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike—is shown in the Book of Exodus to challenge the pharaoh of Egypt on the fundamental theological issue that divides monotheism and polytheism, the rivalry between the single all-powerful god who calls himself “Yahweh” in the Hebrew Bible and the countless gods, goddesses and godlings of Egypt.

“Who is Yahweh, that I should obey his voice?” a bemused pharaoh asks Moses. “I know not Yahweh.”
³

“Against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment,” promises Yahweh. “I
am
the Lord.”
⁴

The diggings at Tell el-Amarna, some 180 miles south of modern Cairo, tell a very different tale. The inscriptions on the stones and shards that were scratched out of the ground at el-Amarna show us the remarkable life of a young man who worked a revolution in ancient Egypt by scorning all the old gods and goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon, and worshipping one god alone. The man was not Moses; rather, he was a pharaoh who never met or even heard of a man called Moses. But perhaps the most surprising fact about the world’s first monotheist is that his daring new religion died and was buried with him.

Cats and Crocodiles, Leeks and Onions

Some 3500 years ago, a young man ascended to the rule of Egypt under the throne name of Amenhotep IV (died c. 1347 B.C.E.).
⁵
The name refers to the deity called Amon, the loftiest of the fantastic array of gods and goddesses who were worshipped by the men and women of Egypt. Amon was associated with the sun—the deity was thought to be the most powerful of the many gods, just as the sun is the brightest of the many objects in the sky—but there were plenty of others to whom prayer and sacrifice were offered.

Indeed, the high king may have chosen a name that honored the high god, but his subjects continued to worship the jackal-headed Anubis, who was thought to weigh the hearts of the newly dead and watch over their tombs; the fertility goddess called Isis and her sibling-lover, Osiris, who was believed to reign over the netherworld where pious Egyptians hoped to spend their afterlives; and the troll-like Bes, ugly and misshapen, but cherished as the cheerful god of music and dancing and the good-hearted protector of children. Like everyone else in the ancient world, the Egyptians were ardent and unquestioning polytheists.

The Egyptians, in fact, were famous in the classical world for their sheer inventiveness in matters of faith, which included the worship of deities who were symbolized not only by household pets and wild animals but even by otherwise humble vegetables. “The comic writers and satirists never tired of scoffing at the adorers of the cat, the crocodile, the leek and the onion,” reports Franz Cumont, citing as an example the most famous satirical poet of first-century Rome: “Juvenal says ironically: ‘O holy people, whose very kitchen-gardens produce gods.’ ”
⁶

The worship of gods and goddesses, however, was not merely a matter of whim or whimsy. Each of the most prominent deities was served by a priestly caste that consisted of men and women who were both proud and protective of the temples where they lived and worked and of the ceremonies over which they presided so solemnly. Like clergy in every place and every age, they courted the favor of the rich and powerful, and the pharaohs of Egypt were flatteringly likened to one or another of the gods. Over the centuries, the polytheism of ancient Egypt rooted itself in the political and economic establishment, and the pharaohs came to be regarded both as gods and kings.

The pharaohs who preceded Amenhotep to the throne of Egypt regarded themselves as the bearers of an old and fixed tradition, and they dutifully consulted the priests of Amon and the other gods and goddesses before embarking upon any enterprise. Nor did they have reason to doubt that the gods favored Egypt above all other nations of the known world—Egypt was what we would today call a superpower, and it dominated the ancient Near East, not only because of its superior military strength but also because it was regarded as the center of art, commerce and diplomacy. Indeed, museums throughout the modern world are filled with the rich artifacts that attest to the superb achievement of Egyptian civilization.

But the young pharaoh called Amenhotep was not content with following the example of the seventeen dynasties that had come before him. He resolved to use the power that he possessed as pharaoh of Egypt to decide, not only for himself but for his subjects, what gods and goddesses ought to be worshipped. Here we encounter another new and terrible phenomenon in the history of religion—the fusing of religion and politics into a single instrument of power wielded by a single human being. Amenhotep now decided to defy all of the old traditions and invent some new ones of his own making.

Virgin Soil

Amenhotep was born and raised among the opulent and elegant ceremonies of worship that constituted the state religion of ancient Egypt. But something inspired him to reject the status quo, to re- invent himself and revolutionize his spiritual beliefs and practices. The young pharaoh repudiated all of the gods and goddesses in favor of the single high god called Aton, a word that means “sun disk,” and he renamed himself in honor of his new and all-powerful deity. Just as Abram became Abraham when he embarked upon the worship of the new god called Yahweh, the pharaoh signified his new faith by changing his throne name from Amenhotep (“Beloved of Amon”) to the one by which he is known and remembered today: Akhenaton, which is translated as “Splendor of Aton.”
⁷
So named, the restless and willful young pharaoh was ready to carry out a purge and work a revolution in the kingdom that he ruled.

Aton, just like Amon, was identified with the sun. But Akhenaton forbade any depiction of Aton that might remind his worshippers of a living thing, animal or vegetable. By royal decree, Aton was symbolized by an austere circle of gold that was meant to suggest the sun shining at its brightest in the noon sky. For that reason, no idols were fashioned in the image of Aton because, remarkably, he was a god whose form could not be imagined.

And, just as remarkably, the pharaoh insisted that Aton, quite unlike Amon, was a jealous god who refused to share the affection or the attention of his worshippers with other gods and goddesses. At Akhenaton’s command, the shrines and temples of rival deities were closed, the rituals of worship were suppressed, the statues that symbolized the other divinities were shattered and their names and images were literally chiseled off the stone monuments of ancient Egypt. The high priest of Amon, whose services were no longer needed, was put to work in a stone quarry like a common slave.

To put himself beyond the taint or temptation of the old gods, Akhenaton abandoned the royal capital of Thebes, where generations of pharaohs had reigned and were now buried beneath pyramids and sphinxes, and he built a new capital on virgin soil along the bank of the Nile. Here he established not only a new religion, with temples dedicated to Aton alone, but also a new style of art and architecture, a new royal entourage and a new government. Like other true believers who would follow his example in the centuries to come, Akhenaton convinced himself that the brave new world he had created would replace all that had come before and would last forever.

In the Mansion of the Sun

Like Moses, who is shown in the Bible to condemn the worship of a golden bull and other graven images, Akhenaton rejected all the traditional icons of paganism and chose a simple geometric shape to symbolize the god Aton. Like Solomon, he built a temple to the new god, the so-called Mansion of the Sun-Disk. Like Constantine, who founded the city of Constantinople to replace pagan Rome as capital of the Roman empire, Akhenaton personally participated in the planning and design of the new city dedicated to Aton.

Akhenaton can be compared to these famous monotheists, but—as far as we know—he was the first person to embrace these ideas, and he deserves the credit for inventing something wholly new in human history. New gods and goddesses had already been imagined and embraced throughout human history, no less in ancient Egypt than elsewhere around the world, and that is exactly why the pantheon of polytheism was always so crowded. Nor was there anything unprecedented or even unusual in a god who was understood to be the higher in rank than all other deities—both Amon and Aton were, after all, identified with the sun, the brightest but hardly the only object in the sky above Egypt.

Akhenaton, however, was the inventor of a religion with a crucial and fateful difference. Never before had a deity been understood to demand that all other gods and goddesses be rejected and abandoned. Akhenaton did not regard Aton merely as the one god among many who specially favored him and thus deserved his special attention in prayer and sacrifice. Rather, he regarded Aton as the
one
and
only
god, and he refused to allow anyone else to believe or act otherwise. “The monotheistic revolution of Akhenaton,” explains Egyptologist Jan Assmann, “was not only the first but also the most radical and violent eruption of a counter-religion in the history of humankind.”
⁸

The Forgotten God

What turned the pharaoh of Egypt, inheritor of a rich and accommodating tradition of polytheism, into a revolutionary and a rigorist? At the heart of monotheism, of course, is the notion of the Only True God who reveals himself to ordinary men and women, causes the scales to fall from their eyes and thus turns them from benighted sinners into true believers. Did Akhenaton, too, experience an epiphany like the one that was visited upon Moses when a divine voice addressed him from within “a bush that burned with fire but was not consumed”
⁹
or the one that manifested as “a light from heaven”
¹⁰
and sent Paul to his knees in awe and terror on the road to Damascus?

Such is the common vocabulary of true belief in the history of monotheism. But there are other ways of understanding what happened to the excitable young pharaoh who embraced the solar god with such fervor. One theory, which has been applied to Constantine and Julian as well as Akhenaton, suggests that he was expertly manipulated into undertaking his missionary work by one of the guileful women in his life—a theory that relies on the primeval stereotype of woman as seducer and thus echoes the tale of Eve and her notorious apple. Perhaps Akhenaton, who is described by one scholar as “a sensitive aesthete,”
¹¹
fell under the influence of his mother, who may have been the first member of his family to worship Aton. Or perhaps it was his wife, the celebrated Queen Nefertiti, who prevailed upon the impressionable young king to join the cult of the sun god.

Another theory, which also prefigures the political conflicts that raged in the courts of both Constantine and Julian, proposes that Akhenaton was courted by the rival priesthoods of Amon and Aton, one based in the old royal capital at Thebes and the other in the “Sun-City” of On (Heliopolis), each faction vying against the other for the wealth, power and privilege that were the rewards for winning the favor of the new king. When it came to converting Akhenaton to the cult of the sun god, “[i]t is likely that economic factors,” insists historian John Bright, “played as great a part as did religious zeal.”
¹²
The priesthood of Aton, which prevailed over the priests of the old and established cults, provided the pharaoh with a ready supply of the “new men” who now served in the royal court as generals, chamberlains, chroniclers and butlers.

Of one thing, however, we can be sure—Akhenaton failed to win the hearts and minds of the ordinary men and women of ancient Egypt. Living and ruling in his remote capital for nearly seventeen years, he was distrusted and detested by the worshippers of the old gods and goddesses. Promptly upon his death, the monotheistic revolution that he imposed from above on ancient Egypt was wholly undone—the royal capital and the temples of Aton were abandoned, and the newfangled cult was forgotten. Just as Akhenaton had once erased the names of the old gods from the monuments of ancient Egypt, now it was Akhenaton’s name that was chiseled out of the stone inscriptions and stricken from the lists of kings that the Egyptians maintained with such meticulous care.

Akhenaton was succeeded on the throne by his son-in-law, who moved the royal court back to Thebes, reopened the old shrines, changed his name from “Tut-ankh-
aton
,” a name that honored the god Aton, to “Tut-ankh-
amon
,” thus proclaiming his allegiance to the old and beloved Amon—he is the celebrated King Tut whose magnificent tomb was found in 1922. The royal tomb where Akhe-naton was buried, by contrast, was pillaged. When the tomb was finally uncovered by the archaeologists at work at Tell el-Amarna, the mummified corpse of the founder of monotheism was gone.