POLYTHEISM. - From Gk. πολύς = much, c. ὕπός = god, it is the belief and worship of many deities independent of one another, in contrast to monotheism. It should be noted, however, that belief in many supernatural beings dependent upon a single Supreme Being is a belief that can in itself be reconciled with monotheism. P. is also called paganism and, less correctly, idolatry; the latter signifies the worship of material objects, which is often, though not necessarily, associated with p. In the Old Testament the religious opposition between the worshippers of the true God and the polytheists was also a national opposition of the people of Israel with respect to foreign peoples. In the New Testament the worshippers of the true God, according to the revelation of Jesus Christ, are opposed to all other religious communities, considered as pagan, with the exception of the Jews. The emphasis on this fundamental distinction and the ignorance of other religions in the Middle Ages led to the consideration of Muslims as pagans, and thus as polytheists.
P. actually prevailed in almost all ancient high civilizations, in those of the Greeks, Romans, Semites, Egyptians, in India, in China (according to some), in Japan, in the high civilizations of ancient America, and it still prevails today in the majority of civilizations outside Europe and among peoples without writing, though possessing an advanced external culture, such as the Polynesians and the Western Sudanese. From the fact of the wide diffusion of p., the old history of religions, oriented in an evolutionist manner, took the pretext to consider p. as a general transitional stage of every religion according to this evolutionary process: polydaemonism-polytheism-monotheism. Often this evolutionary process was extended backwards: before polydaemonism (animism) another stage was posited, e.g., that in which religion was tied to purely material objects (fetishism) or combined with merely impersonal forces. In truth, in polytheistic religions there often appear tendencies towards monotheism, as, for example, in the syncretism of the later period of the Roman Empire. These tendencies, however, ordinarily limit their influence to the narrow circle of philosophers, or elevate for political reasons a particular deity above all others. This, however, lasts only until the political conditions change, as indeed happened in Egypt and Babylon.
Recent investigations have demonstrated the existence of monotheism among very primitive peoples, especially among hunting and gathering peoples: the Pygmies, the