Posted on 12/13/2013 8:06:15 AM PST by Salvation
Featured Term (selected at random:
HENOTHEISM
Worship of one god in preference to others, while not denying a plurality of gods. In practice it means that one god is worshipped by an individual clan or nation to the exclusion of other deities belonging to other peoples. It is a form of polytheism in that even this one preferred deity is not recognized as the only true God.
All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.
I wonder what the base and origin of the word is.
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Current example of henotheism is Mormonism.
Mormonic teaching is that there are an unlimited number of mormon gods (4 Earth Gods alone), but mormons are instructed to worship just one. Male Mormons are also taught that if they obey the extensive rules of mormonism, they can also become a mormonic god that has their own worshippers.
Henotheism is not Christianity.
hen = the one
Theos = God
Greek.
The idea that there is only one Supreme Being, and that all other "gods" are either non-existent frauds or expressions of the demonic, seems to take hold in Judaism during the Babylonian exile. To be sure, there is a difference between reality and perception: the ancient Hebrews may have been henotheistic, but that doesn't mean that the truth of God was henotheistic, only that the perception of God was henotheistic at the time.
theism — of God
Maybe heno means “not”
The word “Henotheism” was coined about 1860 by Max Muller from the Greek hen (one) + theos (god) to denote the religion of people who worshiped only one god but did not deny the fact that other people worshiped other gods. For example: “Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Ba’al-ze’bub, the god of Ekron?” [2 Kings 1:3]
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