Yeshua Explored
3rd October 2022
The ‘powerful ones’
How did the ‘gods of other nations’ arrive here?
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“You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3)
The literal reading of this verse in the original Hebrew is: Another powerful one will not exist for you in My Presence. This is, of course, an acknowledgement that there are other ‘powerful ones’ or ‘gods’ out there that could lead the Hebrews and, by extension, us too, astray. It is interesting that famed Jewish sage, Rashi, translates the term as “gods of others”, which is perfectly feasible bearing in mind that Biblical Hebrew is not the easiest to translate, in that only consonants are in the original script, the vowels were added later. This gives us leeway in translating into English and also, as a consequence, puts us at the mercy of the translators and their mindsets. Rashi’s translation makes an important point. If we use the expression “other gods” then we are acknowledging the existence of rivals to the One True God, but if we use “gods of others” or “gods of other nations” we are distancing these rivals and minimizing their power to sway God’s people.
In our current multicultural society “gods of other nations” are not over there any more but are very much over here. In a legal sense, it all began in 1858, when, after the Indian Rebellion, Queen Victoria told Indians that they are now British subjects and would enjoy religious toleration. They were Hindus, though the concept itself was a British invention, referring to rulers in India who were neither Muslim nor Christian! Ordinary Indians at the time preferred to define themselves according to matters of family, caste, region of origin and sectarian inclinations, with huge varieties in terms of rituals and “gods” to worship. The British were fascinated by this ‘rich tapestry’ and enormous collection of ‘gods’, currently running at around 33 million, including the elephant-headed Ganesh, Shiva the destroyer and the wrathful Kali!
The person most responsible for anglifying Hinduism was Swami Vivekananda, who tirelessly popularized the religion in lecture halls throughout England and the USA. He sold Hinduism as the most ancient source of spirituality, merging it with western materialism and making it more palatable for potential converts. Another major factor was the activity of a mystical cult known as the Theosophical Society, formed in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky, which merged Hinduism with occultism and the Kaballah with a stated objective of bringing religions together and making sense of the universe. Since then there have been four waves of Hindu immigration to England; after the Second World War in 1947, in the 1960s to help save the NHS, which was running out of doctors, in the 1970s expulsion from Uganda by Idi Amin and in the 1990s, as refugees or for economic advancements. Hinduism is currently the third largest religion in England, representing over 1.5% of the population.
Islam has been influential indirectly, through its philosophical ideas and scientific advancements since the Middle Ages. Some early Protestants were quite favourable to the religion and there were alliances made with the Turkish Ottoman empire in the 16th Century. In the 17th Century, academia fell in love with Arab culture and Arabic was taught at Oxford and Cambridge universities. Arabic literature, such as the Arabian Nights, was translated into English. In terms of the Muslim population, the first to arrive in any quantity were sailors from India in the early 18th Century one of whom, Sake Dean Mahomet, opened the first Indian restaurant, the Hindoostane Coffee House, in 1810.
One by-product of the success of the British Empire, was the huge number of ‘subjects’ pulled in. By 1911 there were far more Muslims than Christians in the Empire, growing to around half the world’s Muslim population by the 1920s! Mass immigration to England started after the Second World War, to help rebuild the country, including, as with the Hindus, a huge influx of Muslim doctors to shore up the NHS in the 1960s, encouraged by the health minister … Enoch Powell. Currently Muslims account for around 5% of the population, the second biggest religion in England and Wales.
Buddhism hasn’t been around on these shores quite as long as the other two. It probably all kicked off in 1924, with the foundation of London’s Buddhist Society. It was seen as a contemplative, monastic tradition and there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing to Asian retreats to top up the spirit levels. Around 0.5% of the English population are Buddhists, around the same as the Jewish population.
So ‘the gods of other nations’ have very much made their home in Britain. It used to be that the responsibility for integration into ‘British ways’ was firmly at the feet of these immigrants, but times have now changed with the advent of multiculturalism as one of the strongest forces in society. It is the indigenous population (nominally Christian) that is now expected to adapt and change and ‘British ways’ are painted with very broad strokes. On the face of it this would seem to be a positive step, particularly for those of us who have a ‘progressive’ outlook on life, but we must balance the advantages with the costs involved.
This is an extract from the book, Sinner’s Charter: Are the ten commandments for today?, available for £10 at https://www.sppublishing.com/the-sinners-charter-260-p.asp
