Against the ridiculous idolatry polemic.

Idolatry is almost an ingrained assumption when talking about worship. Many people feel uncomfortable with it even today. Another thread will discuss why the Jews likely became so against "idolatry".

Let's get this out of the way. Abrahamic religions teach that those worshiping idols LITERALLY worship the material object as a god. According to them, pagans literally think this is Zeus. And that the image is expected to move and do stuff and answer prayers.

Take a story from the extended version of Daniel. "Bel and the Dragon." In it, King Cyrus of Persia literally thinks the statue of Bel(Marduk) is the god. He thinks the statue moves and eats. Daniel has to tell him it is just a statue. The priests eat the offerings.

Cyrus when he finds this out, has the priests of Bel and their wives and children executed, and allows Daniel to smash the statue of Bel. This is typical of Jewish literature, a sort of deceit or even gaslighting. Pagans KNEW the sacrificing officiants ate most of the food.

This cannot be disputed, Greek, Babylonian, and all other written sources attest to this. There was no idea(especially held by the king!) that the statue eats all that. Though it is true that the statue was treated with reverence and cared for as the god himself who was present.

One of the big attractions of public sacrifices was that people would be given food, after the ritual portions were burned for the gods

The Jews themselves fed their god food and blood and fat daily, with the priests eating the leftovers.

This is from Isaiah 44. It is supposed to show idol worship as ridiculous. You are worshiping something you made yourself. One could just as easily tell the writer here that a product of the imagination like Yahweh is no more potent than a rock or tree stump would be.

If Yahweh is so great, let him contend. What would he need texts or ranting preachers for? Let Yahweh convince people. He had no problem doing so in the Old Testament. He killed people all the time just because he was angry. Christians made similar arguments about Zeus and others

That rhetoric pretty much invites atheism in by the back door. Which is why many pagans insist on a link between Abrahamism and atheism. The Jews had their temple destroyed multiple times, even after Yahweh said he would protect them and Jerusalem would be safe forever.

And yet, the Jews developed the perverse worldview that the gentile "idolaters" were prospering because the Jews were "not obeying all the laws" and constantly punished. Never stopped to think maybe they were being punished and the Babylonians were being rewarded by the gods.

A worldview where repeated failure and false prophecies only proves you right. If gentiles destroy Yahweh's temple, it is proof that Yahweh is angry with the Jews. If the Jews destroy your temple, it is proof that Yahweh is punishing the sinful gentile idolaters.

This is from Isaiah 2. I don't want to quote the Old Testament ad nauseum, but I do want to point something out. Why make an exception for "idols"? So Yahweh doesn't have idols made of him? A mental conception of something is not somehow more real than a physical depiction.

Take for example the story of Gideon. Gideon smashes the local statue of the god Baal. When people come to kill him, his father tells the people "let Baal come down here and fight Gideon then." And that convinces people. Now let the Abrahamists apply their own words to themselves

Smash a cross, an image of Mary, a statue of Jesus, burn a Bible, a Quran, a Torah, blaspheme Yahweh. Then say "let Yahweh(or Jesus) come over here and do something about it." Would that have worked in the past? No, they would have killed you for blasphemy.

Below is an idol.

Atheists today use this argument on Christians. I have seen one say churches should get no money, and if a church burns nothing should be done. Let Yahweh take care of his buildings, if he is so great. Christians deserve this treatment for making the same arguments against others

This is from Clement of Alexandria. There are numerous other early Christians who wrote the same thing. Celsus even pointed out how Christians always made this sort of argument. Or "I smashed an image of Zeus, nothing happened, Zeus is powerless hahaha" sort of arguments.

Using Greek philosophers(half were subversives by the way, don't trust them uncritically) was a typical apologetic tactic. If burning a wood image of Herakles somehow proves a sort of atheism, would burning one of Jesus do the same for him?

Uzvaltians, you non-Christians.
In our Dievs(Baltic sky god) they believed not.
By hanging up a piece of wood
They say "that's our savior"- A Latvian daina about Christians.

I posted this one before, but it is pertinent. It turns the mockery back on Christians.

By the way, Jews literally believed(and still do) that the physical Torah scroll has the presence of Yahweh. They treat the scrolls and every letter very carefully, as sacred. Anything with Yahweh's name written on it is as if he is there. They keep Torahs in a special shrine.

Here is an article on the subject. So they do have an idol, it is just a paper one. Bibliolatry, quite literally. We see this to a lesser extent among Muslims and Christians.

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jtigay/TigayBERLINFS.pdf

This last point is a lead in for the next part on why this all started. Shifting society away from worshiping localized places, pillars, images, with their own stories and toward worshiping a single book was vital for establishing priestly central control over Judea.