The all-reconciling Zeus of Cleanthes’ Hymn often seems to me to mark the major emergence of a monotheistic.God, leaving no room for any ontologically similar beings, into popular culture. Rather more warm than Plato’s High God or Aristotle’s unmoved mover. Jewish aniconism then contributed to the general movement in Helllenistic philosophy towards treating deity as something necessary absolute and unique. Yet the impulse to think that there must be more than one supernatural being in touch with deity, angels and demons, has never completely gone away
The all-reconciling Zeus of Cleanthes’ Hymn often seems to me to mark the major emergence of a monotheistic.God, leaving no room for any ontologically similar beings, into popular culture. Rather more warm than Plato’s High God or Aristotle’s unmoved mover. Jewish aniconism then contributed to the general movement in Helllenistic philosophy towards treating deity as something necessary absolute and unique. Yet the impulse to think that there must be more than one supernatural being in touch with deity, angels and demons, has never completely gone away