National god

The concept of a national god is most closely associated with the God of Israel (YHWH) who in the Torah is described as the sole God to be worshipped by the nation of Israel. This understanding is expressed, for example, by the prophet Michah (4:5), who states:

"All the nations may walk in the name of their gods (elohim); we will walk in the name of the Lord (YHWH) our God (Elohim) for ever and ever." (NIV)

This understanding of divinity was common in the Ancient Near East during the Late Bronze Age. Deities were geographically localized by association to their main cult center, ultimately as tutelaries of their respective city-states. In Egypt, Horus came to be interpreted as the national god, identified with the currently ruling pharaoh. Horus was in competition with Amun, who became the national god of Egypt under the Theban dynasties. The first of the national gods to aspire to universal supremacy was probably Marduk, the national god of Babylon, with the rise of Babylonia from the time of Hammurabi. Marduk's claim was later imitated by Aššur, the national god eponymous of the Assyrian capital, from the 10th century BC.

During the Iron Age, the notion of national gods began to give way to emerging monotheism, by the process of individual national gods beginning to claim universal validity. Smith (2008) interprets this process in terms of a loss of "translatability" between deities, reflecting the essentially monopolar political landscape in the Near East during the Iron Age, the Assyrian Empire linearly succeeded by the Medo-Persian Empire and later the Seleucid Empire, a process that also gave rise to the concept of translatio imperii. In this interpretation, the development of a "one-god" worldview in 7th century BC Judah was a response to the claims to hegemony of the Mesopotamian (Assyrian) "one-god" ideology of the time.^[1] Some parts of the Torah which predate the 6th century BC preserve vestiges of the theology centered on a national god during the monarchic period.^[2]

In antiquity, each national god was usually also considered the original progenitor of his people, as for example in pre-Islamic Arabia Almaqah was the national god of Saba`, Wadd of Ma`in, Shams of Himyar, etc.^[3] Examples from Canaan include Milcom of the Ammonites, Chemosh of Moab, etc.

Beginning in the Hellenistic period, and fully developed by the Roman era, the theological view of the mainstream of Greco-Roman culture was monotheistic or monistic with national gods remaining as little more than national allegories, such as Athene as the tutelary goddess of Athens. From the point of view of Greco-Roman ethnography, it was the barbarian nations who retained a genuine tribal polytheism with a different national deity worshipped by each, such as Zalmoxis of the Getae, the "Mercury" of the Celts and the Germanii, etc.

Christian missionaries have repeatedly re-interpreted national gods in terms of the Christian God. This fact is reflected in the names of God in various languages of Christianized peoples, such as Shangdi  or Shen among Chinese Christians, Ngai among a number of tribes of Kenya, etc.

In a modern context, the term of a "national god" addresses the emergence of national churches within Christianity. This tendency was of "nationalizing" the Christian God, especially in the context of national churches sanctioning warfare against other Christian nations during World War I, was denounced as heretical by Karl Barth.^[4]

In Islam, the term Ummah means the nation of Muslims.

See also

• Constitutional references to God
• Ethnic religion
• God and the State
• Imperial cult
• National church
• National allegory
• Religious exclusivism
• Tutelary
• Ummah

References

1. ^ Mark S. Smith, God in translation: deities in cross-cultural discourse in the biblical world, vol. 57 of Forschungen zum Alten Testament, Mohr Siebeck, 2008, ISBN 9783161495434, p. 19.
2. ^ Mark S. Smith, The origins of biblical monotheism: Israel's polytheistic background and the Ugaritic texts, Oxford University Press US, 2003, ISBN 9780195167689, 155-163. "The national gods of the peoples surrounding Israel were not seen as heads of the Pantheon. The OT is still conscious of the fact that Yhwh, the national god of Israel, originally was one of the gods in the council of El" K. van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter Willem van der Horst (eds.), Dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible (DDD), 1999, ISBN 9789004111196, p. 485 (s.v. "king").
3. ^ Wendy Doniger (ed.), Merriam-Webster's encyclopedia of world religions, Merriam-Webster, 1999, ISBN 9780877790440, s.v. "Arabian religions".
4. ^ Barth, Ethnics, ed. Braun, transl. Bromiley, New York, 1981, p. 305.