The Portrayal of Pagan Worship in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Judaism

This monograph argues that a decisive change took place in ancient Jewish portrayals of the Other around the 3rd century B.C.E. In Israelite/Jewish literature composed up to this point, the worship of other gods and the reverence of their icons is consistently depicted as sincere, and its appeal, whether to Israelites or non-Israelites, is, as a rule, not questioned. At some point around the end of the 3rd century B.C.E., however, a new form of portrayal arises, one which the author terms “the Bad Faith Argument”: that the worship of other gods and the reverence of their icons is, in fact, an entirely unattractive practice, and that even its practitioners must inwardly reject it. While the Israelites in the Hebrew Bible, for example, worship the god Baal Peor out of a genuine attraction to his cult, early rabbinic midrashim about this same narrative entirely reject the possibility that such devotion could have been sincere. Instead, the Rabbis insist, the Israelites who engaged in such worship must have done so only instrumentally, driven by an ulterior motive for sex with Baal Peor’s pagan devotees (and not by any real attraction to the god himself).