From the Beginning to Plato

One god is greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals
either in body or thought.
(Clement Miscellanies V.109.1: fr. 23 [KRS 170])
All of him sees, all thinks, all hears.
(Sextus Empiricus Adversus Mathematicos IX. 144: fr. 24 [KRS 172])
Always he remains in the same place, moving not at all; nor is it fitting for
him to go to different places at different times, but without toil he shakes
all things with the thought of his mind.
(Simplicius Physics 23. 11 and 20: frs 26 and 25 [KRS 171])
Is fragment 23 an enunciation of monotheism, the first in Western thought?
Views are divided. 49 The best comparison with Xenophanes’ couplet is a line of
Homer:
One omen is best, to defend the fatherland.
THE IONIANS 65
(Homer Iliad XII.243)
Here Hector is rejecting a warning against fighting from his adviser Polydamas,
who has inferred a bad omen from the appearance of an eagle to the left, flying with
a snake in its beak which it then savaged and dropped into the midst of the
Trojan host. Hector’s memorably sceptical reply does two things. It says that
there is only one good omen, much better than all the rest, namely patriotic
action. But in suggesting that the other sorts of omens, on which the likes of
Polydamas rely, are worthless as a basis for decision and action, it implies a
radical reinterpretation of the very idea of an omen, removing from it any
connotation of divine revelation, and reducing—or elevating—it to a human
moral imperative. So Hector’s assertion is in effect much stronger: not just that
there is only one good omen, but that there is only one real omen, which is
obeying the appropriate human imperative. Xenophanes’ thesis works in exactly
the same way. It says there is only one supreme god. It implies there is only one
real god. For the very idea of god has to be reconceived. Fragments 23–6 show
what this theoretical revolution is to consist in. We must rid ourselves of the
notion that a god needs limbs and sense organs like a human being (cf. fragments
14–16). He can cause things to happen by thought alone, without moving a
muscle; all of him sees, hears, thinks. Is he then a pure bodiless mind?
Xenophanes writes as though the issue is not whether but how to think of god’s
body. So while it is tempting to diagnose a further radical implication,
questioning whether god needs a body at all, interpretation is probably not
justified in going that far. This is to find some measure of agreement with
Aristotle (Metaphysics 986b22–3) that Xenophanes made nothing clear about
‘the one’ (i.e. the Eleatic one, which is what Aristotle took his god to be).