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Did You Know Holy Pagans Helped Shape Our Faith?

Did You Know Holy Pagans Helped Shape Our Faith?

Last updated on: November 10, 2026 at 9:57 am by Henry Karlson

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Did You Know Holy Pagans Helped Shape Our Faith? 2026-11-10T09:57:36-05:00 Henry Karlson

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eyob: Saint Mary of the Assumption Parish (Springboro, Ohio) – stained-glass detail of Melchizedek, one of the holy pagans found in Scripture, created by the studio of F.X. Zettler – Munich / Wikimedia Commons

Christians tend to have a negative view of the Canaanites; there is an undercurrent which has us think all of them were bad, that there was no one among them who is worthy of our honor and respect. After all, didn’t the people of Israel come into the land of Canaan and overthrow it, purifying the land from their sins? While it is easy to understand where this sentiment came from it, it wrong. No human is entirely evil because human nature is good. Not only is it wrong to think they all were irredeemably evil, it is wrong to believe there were no righteous men and women who lived among them. It is also be wrong to assume Canaanite religious beliefs were completely and utterly erroneous, without any element of the truth found in them. A careful reading of Scripture confirms that there were righteous Canaanites. Even if they were imperfect, even if we can discern various erroneous religious beliefs held by them, they were acknowledged by the people of Israel, and Scripture, for what they did. For example Melchizedek, the priest-king of Jerusalem, and Danel a man whose righteousness and faith was remembered by the people of Israel, both represent holy pagans which the people of Israel accepted as having a good relationship with God.

First, and most important of the two, is Melchizedek; the author(s) of Genesis recognized the connection he had with God, and through that connection, the way Abraham looked up to him and even paid him a tithe:

After his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High. And he blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” And Abram gave him a tenth of everything (Gen. 14:17-20 RSV).

After Lot had been captured, and Abraham rescued his nephew, Abraham met with the kings who helped him free Lot, including Melchizedek. The text is clear: not only was Melchizedek a priest-king in Jerusalem, in the land of Canaan, he was a priest of “God Most High.” Abraham respected his priesthood, and his relationship with God. They shared the “God Most High” in common with each other, and so Abraham felt it was good to get Melchizedek’s blessing. We should not be surprised about this. The people of Israel are related to the Canaanites; indeed, the people of Israel can be said to be a group which emerged from and separated from them. As they did so, they borrowed, developed, and purified various myths and legends coming from their cultural (Canaanite) background. This explains why both the people of Israel and the Canaanites use the name “El” to refer to the “supreme God,” with the Canaanites doing so with a polytheistic understanding, and the people of Israel doing so first with a henotheistic understanding before embracing full-fledged monotheism. Thus, when we read that Melchizedek was a priest of the “God Most High,” this likely means he was a priest of El, and it is as such Abraham would be able to come to him and worship God with him.

Cardinal Jean Danielou, writing on the way the Tanakh (the “Old Testament”) gives us examples of holy pagans who lived outside of the Mosaic covenant, indicated that Melchizedek served as a priest of a “cosmic” religion that was found throughout the world.[1] God is not just a tribal god, a god of the Jews alone, but rather, God is God over all. God works with, and continues to work with, all humanity, even if God also gives special revelation to some, such as when the people of Israel received the Mosaic covenant:

Melchisedech is ‘the priest of the Most High God … who created heaven and earth’ (Gen. 14:18-19). He knows the true God, not under the name of Yahweh which is to be revealed to Moses as an indication of the new divine treasures revealed in the covenant, but under the name of El, which is name of God the Creator Who is known through His action in the world. This is a fresh witness to the knowledge of God attainable by means of the cosmos such as we have already found in Henoch. Melchisedech is a priest of that primitive religion of mankind, which was not to be limited to Israel but to embrace all peoples. He does not offer sacrifice in the Temple at Jerusalem, but the whole world is the Temple whence rises the incense of prayer.[2]

Many pagans are presented in Scripture as following God, as having an authentic relationship with God. They were seen to follow, in some way, the covenant God established a covenant with Noah, who himself, being before Moses, was a “holy pagan.” When people follow the expectations in that covenant, even if they have an imperfect understanding of God, they are seen to follow after God, to be righteous among the nations. This is why they can be seen as saints, because they are following the truth which they know. Noah certainly is an example of this, just like Melchizedek. But so is Danel. He is mentioned in Ezekiel, both as being a man of wisdom (cf. Ezek. 28:3), but also as a man to be honored alongside other representations of the “cosmic” religion:

Son of man, when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it, and break its staff of bread and send famine upon it, and cut off from it man and beast, even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, says the Lord GOD (Ezek. 14:13-14 RSV).

For centuries, it was assumed he was mentioning the prophet Daniel, even though it was odd to place him alongside Noah and Job, but when the Ugaritic Tale of Aqhat was discovered and studied, scholars began to understand Ezekiel’s message much better. In the story, Danel was a wise and righteous man who had no son. Thanks to his prayers to El, and his generosity towards others, El granted him his desire, and gave him a son. The son who would eventually be unjustly murdered, leading Danel to demand justice. The story presents Danel as a righteous man, a man who loved and desired justice, a man who had faith in El, the Most-High God. While the story, of course, was written, not from a strict monotheistic viewpoint, but from the over-arching Canaanite cultural norm, as Danel’s son was killed at the insistence of the goddess Anat in the story because she desired a bow his son had and would not give to her, scholars were able to see why Ezekiel was able to mention him as a righteous man of God alongside Noah and Job. He suffered, in a lesser way, similar to what Job suffered, but he was unwilling to abandon his faith. Writing about him, Cardinal Danielou states:

Danel is a just man. We observed earlier on that he judged justly. But here it is no longer a question of that. To be ‘just’ in the biblical sense is not defined by reference to justice between men but by reference to that judgment made by God The ‘Just Man’ is he whom God recognises as such. He is the equivalent of what we call a saint. He is the one who ‘is pleasing to God’ because he fulfills His law. The kings of the Orient had a book of wisdom containing the maxims in which their officials were meant to find their inspiration. It was after the same fashion that Solomon composed his collection of proverbs.[3]

Danel can be seen as a predecessor to Solomon, and perhaps, even to Daniel; his wisdom, his righteousness allows us to recognize him as a saint alongside Noah and Job. He shows us that before the children of Israel overtook and transformed the land of Canaan, there were those who not only exemplified holiness and righteousness, but whose story made its way into Scripture to show us the continuing value it had in the ancient world. It is even possible that this was in part inspired by Canaanites who joined themselves with the people of Israel, among which we know was Rahab. Not only was she a Canaanite woman, she was an ancestor to David, and so, an ancestor of Christ. The people of Israel were willing to listen to the tales of the people who joined them, to engage them and embrace them, if they proved worthy, as Danel’s story did, learning from them, such as in the way Danel showed them to seek after wisdom and promulgate what they learned:

Thus we see Danel as a pagan king, just and wise, of whose salvation Holy Scripture assures us. The kings of the Orient had a book of wisdom containing the maxims in which their officials were meant to find their inspiration. It was after the same fashion that Solomon composed his collection of proverbs.[4]

When we see this, we can begin to understand there is more going on with the Tanakh, more going on with the Torah, than many Christians have understood. We see the people of Israel taking in and adapting the good found in other cultures, recognizing holy men and women found in them! This included those who came before them in the land of Canaan. What they did could even be said to be a form of comparative theology. It should not be surprising, therefore, that scholars have seen that many of the moral positions presented in the Torah, and also in the prophets, are adaptations and developments of what the people of Israel learned from others:

Most interpreters are agreed today that Israel received its concern for social justice from the Near Eastern cultures surrounding it. In fact, protection of the poor, widows, and fatherless children was a common policy in the Near East. In Mesopotamia there are frequent references to this concern as early as Sumerian times (ca. 2850- 2360 B.C.E.). It is mentioned in Mesopotamian legal texts like the reformatory measures of Urukagina of Lagesh and the Code of Ur-Nammu and in Wisdom writings such as the Babylonian Theodicy and the Proverbs of Utnapishtim.[5]

Egypt, especially, had a profound influence on the people of Israel. Not only do we see an Egyptian hymn to Aten transformed and adapted in the Psalms, we can see how the category of social justice, important to the Egyptians, gave much for the people of Israel to use as they developed their own notions of social justice:

Social justice was also a dominant theme in Egyptian literature. It occurs in ideal biographies, declarations of innocence, inscriptions, hymns, and Wisdom writings. Social justice was particularly important during the First Intermediate (twenty-second to twenty-first centuries B.C.E.) and the Middle Kingdom (twenty-first to eighteenth centuries). Those with power were asked to deal impartially with all or even to seek out and meet human need. [6]

While the Mosaic covenant, and then later, with the judges and prophets, the people of Israel received various forms of revelation from God, it is clear that they took what was revealed to them and used it to engage and adapt the wisdom which they received from the world they lived in. In doing so, they were able to purify and correct errors, especially those which led to immoral activities (with the prophets often finding such immorality, such as social injustice, was connected with idolatry). What is important is that Scripture confirms there were those who we can describe as being holy pagans, and that such holiness meant they could and did offer something to the people of Israel (and through the people of Israel, to everyone). God is not some tribal God, but the God Most High, the God who is God over all. While many ancient Christians recognized this, allowing them to see philosophers, and even religious figures, like the Sibyls, as being inspired by God, it is an understanding many Christians lost over time, so that they ended up having a deficient understanding of God and God’s work with humanity. Unlike Christians, the people of Israel have always understood this, which is why they have not been evangelical, seeking convert to their faith, for they believed others would have their own proper relationship with God. While they did not view others as their equals, they accepted there would be righteous people living among the nations, people who had their own connection with God. Christians should embrace this understanding. We must not think all that is non-Christian is evil and demonic, and so, worthless and to be rejected. We can and should believe the opposite. We should be willing to learn from others, just as the people of Israel did. And, like the people of Israel, we should do so with care, comparing what we learn from others to what we know from revelation, the revelation given to us from Christ, so that if something needs to corrected or “baptized” before it is adapted, we do the work which we need to do so we can properly engage what we have learned and see how it can enrich us in our faith. The more we do so, the more we will be amazed at what holy pagans have done throughout history, holy pagans who we find, like the people of Israel, we can and should honor.

[1] He uses the term “cosmic religion” to reflect what is often understood under the category of “natural theology” because he thinks it is a better term. He says it prevents various misunderstandings the term “natural theology” can suggest, that is, either it means a theology which has no supernatural content, not revelation, connected with it, or the kind of theology people do reflecting on “nature” using what they observe to speculate on the nature of truth and morality. One of the many problems with the latter is that “nature” is not pure, it is affected and influenced by sin, so what is speculated based upon it will be some distortion of the truth.

[2] Jean Danielou, Holy Pagans of the Old Testament. Trans. Felix Faber (Baltimore: Helicon Press, Inc., 1957), 104.

[3] Jean Danielou, Holy Pagans of the Old Testament, 64.

[4] Jean Danielou, Holy Pagans of the Old Testament,, 67.

[5] Bruce V. Malchow, Social Justice in the Hebrew Bible (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1996), 1.

[6] Bruce V. Malchow, Social Justice in the Hebrew Bible,2-3.

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