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In the late ninth century, other gods were still alluring, but they had to stay on the opposite side of the Jordan. This was not a monotheistic text. If no other gods existed, it would be unnecessary for the people to make such a choice. 37 Monolatry (the worship of a single god) was a liturgical arrangement. The “Yahweh alone” movement urged Israelites to offer sacrifice only to Yahweh and to ignore the cult of other deities. But this position required courage, a narrowing of divine resources, and a loss of familiar and beloved sanctities. Israel was about to embark on a lonely, painful journey of severance from the mythical and cultic consensus of the Middle East.
No such painful rupture was required of the Chinese, whose Axial Age
would not break with the past but would develop from a deeper under¬standing of the ancient rituals practiced by the Zhou kings. The ninth century was a time of great weakness in China. The old feudal system was disintegrating and the Zhou domain was under constant attack from the barbarian peoples in the surrounding lands. We know very little about the historical events of this period, but there are sporadic references to palace intrigues, which, on at least two occasions, forced the king to flee his cap¬ital. The king could exert little control over the cities of the central plain, and the old monarchy had in effect been replaced by a confederation of lords united by their ideological loyalty to the Zhou, but in practice oper¬ating independently.” The only thing that held them all together was the cult. The rites reminded the king’s vassals that the monarch was the Tianzi, the “son of Heaven.” He had received a mandate from Tian Shang Di, Heaven Most High, to rule the Chinese people. He alone was permit¬ted to sacrifice to the High God, and Zhouzhuang, his capital in the Wei Valley, was the religious center of the entire network of Zhou cities. No other city was allowed to hold the prestigious royal rites in honor of the deceased kings of China except Lu, whose prince was a direct descendant of the duke of Zhou.
