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Structure
The affirmation that there is a “structural analogy” between religious systems would require extended treatment, and will be the topic of a monograph or a full narrative in a future version of this website. In the meantime, we can refer to the related idea in linguistics developed by Saussure and later extended by Levi-Strauss and many others. In the sense we use it here, “structure” refers in particular to the kinds of relations that obtain between actors, or agents, in the system.
One major difference between Mesopotamian polytheism and Biblical monotheism lies in the directionality ascribed to the divine actors. In polytheism, most of the activity is ascribed to the human client and the cultual technician who intercede with a god. The correlative descending motion of a gift or a word from the god to the human is rarely spoken of. On the other hand, Biblical monotheism presents a highly active God, who has a name and a personality, who speaks frequently, and who acts directly both in creation and in other “new creations” during the historical time described by the authors of the Bible. There is thus a great difference in the structure of the two systems: the former is highly asymmetric, the latter (while still asymmetric) presents a give and take between human and divine actors.
A graphical expression of this structure can be found in a video presentation given at the EASR conference in 2021.
Back to top: Structure