POLYTHEISM. - From Gr. πολίς = many and θεός = god, it is the belief in and worship of several divinities independent of one another, as opposed to monotheism. It should be noted, however, that the belief in many supernatural beings who depend on a single Supreme Being is a belief reconcilable in itself with monotheism. P. is also called paganism and, less correctly, idolatry; the latter means the worship of material objects, which is often, but not necessarily, joined with p. In the Old Testament the religious opposition between the worshipers of the true God and the polytheists was also the national opposition of the people of Israel with respect to foreign peoples. In the New Testament the worshipers 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 distinction in principle and the ignorance of other religions in the Middle Ages led to considering the followers of Islam as pagans too, and therefore held to be polytheists.
P. truly dominated in almost all the ancient high civilizations, in that of the Greeks, the Romans, the Semites, the Egyptians, in India, in China (according to some), in Japan, in the high civilizations of ancient America, and it currently dominates also in most civilizations outside Europe and among peoples without writing, who nonetheless possess an advanced external culture, such as the Polynesians and the western Sudanese. From the fact of the vast diffusion of p. the old history of religions, evolutionistically oriented, took the pretext for considering p. as a general stage of transition of every religion according to this evolutionary process: polydemonism-polytheism-monotheism. Often this evolutionary process was extended backward: before polydemonism (animism) another stage was placed, e.g., that in which religion was tied to purely material objects (fetishism) or joined with simply impersonal forces. In truth, among polytheistic religions certain tendencies toward monotheism not infrequently manifest themselves, as, e.g., 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 else elevate a particular divinity above all others for political reasons. This, however, lasts only until political conditions change, as indeed happened in Egypt and in Babylonia.
Recent investigations have demonstrated the existence of monotheism among very primitive peoples, especially among hunting and gathering peoples: the Pygmies, the South-eastern Australians, the Fuegians, etc., as well as among nomadic pastoral peoples: the Turks, the Hamites, the Hamitoids, the Nilotes. In many cases, comparative research has also been able to demonstrate the great ethnological age of this monotheism.
The origin of polytheism in already monotheistic religions is explained: 1) by the separation and formation of hypostases, that is, by the fact that qualities and functions of the one God are made independent and transformed into personal figures placed beside him, e.g., lightning and thunder, and sometimes even his own dominion over certain natural beings, such as wild animals, fish; 2) by the personification of the individual parts of nature, e.g., the celestial bodies; by the sublimation of the spirits of nature into divinities, such as those of the spirits of water, air, mountains, etc.; 3) by the deification of deceased men and of mythological persons, such as ancestors, especially the progenitor, kings, heroes, and particularly cultural heroes or saviors; 4) in a materially more advanced and specialized culture, by the origin of divinities of competence or jurisdiction over individual activities (e.g., hunting, war, crafts), and those who practice them; 5) in mixed cultures, resulting from the domination of nomadic pastoral peoples over farmers, from the conjunction of the God of heaven with Mother Earth; 6) by political centralization: that is, when many city-states, each having its own local god, are united into a great State, the local divinities are also gathered into a pantheon, in which genealogical relations, mostly artificial, are established among the various divinities. In all these six processes of the formation of polytheism the prior one Great God becomes obscured and fades away to become a deus otiosus, without influence in practical life, especially moral life. In many polytheistic religions there are traces of a one-time Great God who has lost his significance.