A fascinating and interesting article. I remember reading something around 10 years ago about Nabatean religion that I believe argued that the Nabateans and other Arabs of the Levant and northern Arabia were increasingly henotheistic in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. It would be interesting to read more about that to see what the general academic consensus is, and whether this increasing henotheism enabled a greater acceptance of monotheism. Similarly, it would be interesting if there was research on the religious beliefs of the Arabs of the interior that suggested there was a similar process by which the region was moving toward some form of monotheism via henotheism.
Thank you. I just have not drilled down on this enough to give any kind of answer, alas. Where I have delved, it is really difficult to get a handle on the landscape. One aspect is that henotheism might be a consequence of the spread of monotheism, rather than cause. But telling apart the sectaries is so tricky and trying to categorise many of them is basically impossible. The phenomenon of Jewish and Christian doctrines bleeding into one-another is not unique to the Qur'an community, and the pagan dimension can be difficult to tease out.
Sometimes the paganism shows up "spiritually", where a pretty firmly monotheistic community still has a shrine or pagan symbolism in churches or for Court rituals, and elsewhere it seems something more substantively pagan has blended with the monotheism, or is coexisting alongside it - which is one form of henotheism, I guess, where the One God has come to dominate, but the other gods have not been set aside or at least the belief in their existence has not, even if they are no longer worshipped.
A fascinating and interesting article. I remember reading something around 10 years ago about Nabatean religion that I believe argued that the Nabateans and other Arabs of the Levant and northern Arabia were increasingly henotheistic in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. It would be interesting to read more about that to see what the general academic consensus is, and whether this increasing henotheism enabled a greater acceptance of monotheism. Similarly, it would be interesting if there was research on the religious beliefs of the Arabs of the interior that suggested there was a similar process by which the region was moving toward some form of monotheism via henotheism.
Thank you. I just have not drilled down on this enough to give any kind of answer, alas. Where I have delved, it is really difficult to get a handle on the landscape. One aspect is that henotheism might be a consequence of the spread of monotheism, rather than cause. But telling apart the sectaries is so tricky and trying to categorise many of them is basically impossible. The phenomenon of Jewish and Christian doctrines bleeding into one-another is not unique to the Qur'an community, and the pagan dimension can be difficult to tease out.
Sometimes the paganism shows up "spiritually", where a pretty firmly monotheistic community still has a shrine or pagan symbolism in churches or for Court rituals, and elsewhere it seems something more substantively pagan has blended with the monotheism, or is coexisting alongside it - which is one form of henotheism, I guess, where the One God has come to dominate, but the other gods have not been set aside or at least the belief in their existence has not, even if they are no longer worshipped.