Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature

Call For Papers: Limits of Monotheism Monotheism has often been seen as the “crown” of theological development in research on the history of religions. Until today, this hermeneutic key is used to do theology and to evaluate the historical development. However, a closer look reveals a more differentiated picture. A few aspects are: In numerous writings of the DCL, there are notions of angels and demons, figures such as the Son of Man, or entities such as Wisdom, the Logos, and others. Ben Sira prefaces e.g. his book with an emphatic commitment to monotheism, but then introduces Wisdom as a figure besides God. In view of the many gods that all peoples of the Ancient Near East knew, the question arises how the earlier gods and god-like beings fit into this thinking and how the new ideas relate back to the old ones. How are the many names of God and the attempts to identify different gods from different religions and regions to be understood in this process? Theologically, the belief in one God aggravates the problem of theodicy, since there should be no other powers. Anthropological questions are also touched upon: What does a one-God belief say about people's self-understanding? What anthropological backgrounds are reflected in the development and emphasis of monotheism? All of this shows that the alleged “crown” of the development of the history of religion also contains problems when viewed from a differentiated perspective, and that monotheism has its limits. These are the questions that the PU is addressing this year.

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