God and the gods:  inter-faith relations in the Old Testament

A discussion paper by Ida Glaser

1.  Introductory

The Old Testament is not often seen by Christians as an important resource for positive inter-faith relations.  Typically, it is said that the Old Testament views other faiths almost entirely in terms of idolatry, but that (1) God uses other nations even when they do not acknowledge Him, (2) there are people from other faiths who learn about Israel’s God and come to Him, (3) there is a vision of all nations coming to the One God, (4) there are Gentile individuals who appear to worship the One God and (5) the wisdom literature indicates use of materials from the other faiths[1].  Such an analysis may offer the beginnings of a framework for dealing with the traditional list of theological questions which western Christians have been asking about other faiths in recent years, but it scarcely begins to ‘scratch the surface’ of the wealth of Old Testament material.

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