In the modern day world, religion is a sensitive topic for debate, fraught with ideological landmines and political pressure points that shouldn’t be touched upon. There are dozens of religions such as Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and more: whose beliefs all fall under the three categories of polytheistic, monotheistic, or atheistic. While atheism is radically different—as it is defined as the lack of belief in any deities—monotheism and polytheism can be compared and contrasted in many different ways.  Polytheists believe in many deities while monotheists believe in one deity – a brobdingnagian distinction that sets the two apart. The main differences between monotheism and polytheism are how deities interact with humanity and the way the afterlife is portrayed. In monotheism, God interacts less with humanity and there is a different power dynamic between the two, while the polytheists put less stress on the afterlife and the difference between heaven and hell.

The interaction between the heavens and humanity are not akin between monotheism and polytheism. Monotheistic societies place their deity on a higher pedestal and interact less with them, while polytheistic societies stand on more equal footing with their gods and goddesses, and thus associate with them more. The people turn to God “to worship, and to [God] [they] turn in time of need” (Hunt), a dynamic that gives all the power to God because of how reliant the people are upon a higher presence and the strict rules that God sets. The literal meaning of the word Islam is “submission to God” (Hunt), a stark example of the nature of the interactions between Allah and his disciples. God also sets laws for his followers. For Jews, “the Hebrew Bible sets forth the religious and moral code the Hebrews had to follow” (Hunt), mostly outlined in the Torah, which contains “an exposition of the law that Israel received through Moses” (Mattern & Winks). One of the laws that are set out for Jews in the Ten Commandments is: “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:2-17) among others. These specific laws that outline a way of life, including festivals, dietary requirements, and circumcision, demonstrate the control God has upon his monotheistic believers, not just in Judaism, but in Christianity and Islam too. God commands Christians to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5). For Muslims, “the Qur’an contains the foundations of history, prophecy, and the legal and moral code by which men and women should live” (Hunt), and these outline their way of life just as much as the Torah does for  Jews and the Pentateuch and Gospels do for Christians.

Polytheism, on the other hand, is much more equal in terms of interactions between humans and divinities. Respect for deities is still required, as “throughout the Hellenistic world, Greek-style temples were constructed to traditional Hellenic gods (such as Zeus) and their priesthoods were prestigious civic offices (Ancient Mediterranean World), but in the myths outlined in The Odyssey and Metamorphoses, the interactions are much more equal. For example, “Calypso, a great goddess, // had trapped [Odysseus] in her cave; she wanted him // to be her husband” (Wilson, I, 15-17). The act of marriage between a deity and a mortal is unthinkable in monotheistic cultures; however, the goddess Calypso wants to marry Odysseus, and it is not just her. In the myth of Jove and Io, Jove looked down on Earth and upon seeing a beautiful mortal, “concealed // the land entirely beneath a dense // dark mist and seized her and dishonored her” (Martin, I, 830 – 832). This situation between God is acting as a human towards another human creates a sense of equality that occurs especially through carnal love in polytheistic cultures. Deities are overall heavily invested in the affairs of humans, and set no rules for them. Athena, for example, states that she is “agonizing // about Odysseus and his bad luck” (Wilson, I, 48-49), a demonstration of how closely she is watching over the humans and how much she cares about what is happening in their world. The overall interactions between the heavenly and the human are vastly different when comparing and contrasting monotheism and polytheism.

The afterlives of monotheism and polytheism differ too, with monotheistic societies having two separate sections, Heaven and Hell, while polytheistic societies only have an Underworld. Hell, as seen by monotheistic cultures, is a wretched place designed for equally wretched sinners. In Dante’s Inferno, the Christian narrator travels through Hell and is forced “To hear the cries of despair, and to behold // Ancient tormented spirits as they lament // In chorus the second death they must abide” (Pinsky, I, 90-93), making it a truly miserable place. Dante elaborates on Hell, talking of spirit’s “sighs that trembled the timeless air” (Pinsky, IV, 20 – 21). This demonstrates how heartbreaking the wretched sighs of the damned are using the trembling of the air in Hell, a place where the pain is commonplace, yet the cries of the spirits there are so wounded and full of agony that even the air trembles. Hell is called the “city of woes” (Pinsky, III, 3) – a phrase that captures all that Hell is as the land of suffering. The Qur’an even tells Muslims that for unbelievers, “Their final abode is Hell: And what a wretched destination” (Qur’an). Polytheistic cultures, on the other hand, have a different view of the afterlife: “To the Greeks and Romans, Death was the new beginning” (Matyszak 41). The Underworld is also split up differently “into three sections – The Fields of Asphodel, for regular, everyday people, The Fields of Punishment, for sinners, and Elysium, for the good. Getting into these places, however, is not determined by how well the people followed God’s Laws but by how honorably they lived their life according to society’s standards” (Matyszak 40-48). It is more of a destination than anything; when Odysseus travels to the Underworld to talk to the dead, a spirit states, “This place is hard // for living men to see. There are great rivers // and dreadful gulfs, including the great Ocean // which none can cross on foot” (Wilson, XI, 156-159), thus describing the Underworld as less of an otherworldly place, but rather a location. When the afterlife is seen as a matter of Heaven versus Hell, more stress is put on the people to follow God’s laws, while in polytheistic societies less stress is put on Death because everyone will go the same place anyway, making a stark difference between the two cultures.

Monotheism and polytheism are vastly different and much easier to contrast rather than to compare. Their main differences center around the interactions between the heavens and the earth, and the portrayal of the afterlife. Religions are wildly different in some ways and yet, similarities can be drawn between monotheistic religions and polytheistic religions, even while contrasting the two and generalizing differences. The similarities in monotheism can be attributed to the fact that Christianity came from Judaism, as did Islam, but the similarities between polytheistic cultures are unique because of the fact that while Greek and Roman culture was very similar, other polytheistic cultures such as Hinduism are found with the same themes even while coming from very different places. Both monotheism and polytheism, however, center around one idea- belief, a rather beautiful idea when it comes to understanding the unknown.

Works Cited

Dante, Inferno. Translated by Robert Pinsky, 1994.

Dodd, C. Personal Interview, 30 May 2019.

Exodus 20:2-17

Ford, S. Personal Interview, 30 May 2019.

Gospel of Matthew 5

Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Emily Wilson, W. W. Norton and Company, 2017.

Hunt, Lynn. The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012.

Matyszak, Philip. The Greek and Roman Myths: a Guide to the Classical Stories. Thames & Hudson, 2017.

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Charles Martin, WW Norton and Company, 2005.

Renaker, T. Personal Interview, 28 May 2019.

“The World’s Favorite Online Thesaurus!” Thesaurus.com. https://www.thesaurus.com/

Winks, Robin W., and Susan P. Mattern-Parkes. The Ancient Mediterranean World: from the Stone
Age to A.D. 600. Oxford University Press, 2004.