Concepts of Scripture in Yehezkel Kaufmann 239reality was fundamentally diff erent from that of their neighboring soci-
eties, they were unable to understand the true experience of polytheism,
as a “vital, fundamental, psychic experience”;31 that is, they were unable
to conceive of and experience the world and life according to the notion
of the metadivine. Th us, he concludes, “in the sphere of religious creativ-
ity,” polytheism and monotheism “were two worlds, distinct and mutually
incomprehensible.”32
For Kaufmann, accordingly, startling resemblances that comparative
scholars have identifi ed between biblical and other ancient Near Eastern
literature — such as in narrative, law, wisdom, prayer, ritual, and historiog-
raphy — are only on the formal and not on the conceptual level. Biblical au-
thors incorporated and appropriated the literary and cultural conventions
they, or their culture, had inherited from their neighboring polytheistic
cultures and transformed those conventions according to their own world-
view, self-understanding, and value system. Indeed, to elucidate this trans-
formation and delineate the history of biblical monotheism as refl ected in
biblical literature was one of Kaufmann’s major objectives in his Toledot.
On the Inception of Monotheistic Insight — An Empirical Take
Like any major work, Kaufmann’s study has compelled a host of questions
and serious criticisms that include such fundamental ones as the follow-
ing: What Kaufmann presents as a phenomenology of biblical monothe-
ism may hold true, by and large, for the religion as portrayed in biblical
literature, but is that the case also for the religion as actually practiced by
ancient Israelites during the biblical period? Th e typological approach
whereby Kaufmann discusses polytheism and monotheism accentuates the
diff erences between the contrasted systems, but does he not thereby over-
shadow possible crossovers between the two? Th e results of his contrastive
analysis between the polytheistic and the monotheistic systems are impres-
sively clear-cut and edifying, but how thoroughly — and with what degree
of sophistication and depth — did Kaufmann actually examine ancient Near
Eastern literature? Or, put diff erently, did he not interpret the actual texts
in a forced manner to meet his overall thesis of biblical religion? Kaufmann
emphasizes the cognitive assumptions of biblical writings — especially, the
idea of one supreme deity — but does he not thereby overlook the diver-
sity of competing, oft entimes even confl icting, perceptions attested within
biblical literature?33 Is not the biblical notion of one supreme deity who