Avodah Zarah 054

1:
Our present mishnah seeks to define or describe actions which may or may not indicate that an idol has lost its religious significance for its owner. Let us remind ourselves once again that the reason why such a matter can be of concern in a code of Jewish law is because if a statue or icon or its accessories have religious significance for the adherent a Jew is forbidden to derive any benefit from it; but if it has lost its sanctity in the eyes of the erstwhile adherent then it is just an ordinary work of art and a Jew may derive benefit from it.

2:
Our mishnah describes two kinds of action that an idolator might take regarding an idol that might be considered sufficient to cancel its status as an idol in the eyes of the idolator.

3:
It will be easier for us to understand the psychology that underlies our mishnah if we deal with the second group of actions first:

At first glance one wonders what actions could one perform to or in front of an idol that are more desecratory than those mentioned in our mishnah. The Gemara [AZ53a] quotes biblical verses [Isaiah 8:21-22] by way of explanation:

The prophet is understood to be talking about idolators and their habits. When they are suffering they despise their gods because they hold them responsible for their wretched situation. But later on, when their rage cools, they 'look upward' to their god once again or they may look downwards if their god is an infernal god (such as Pluto or Persephone). In other words, some actions of desecration may just be prompted by a momentary anger of frustration which will later abate and the idolator will return to his worship of the idol. That is why such actions, as deprecatory as they may be, cannot be construed as cancelling the religious status of the idol. Indeed, the anger and disappointment themselves indicate that the idolator still believes in his idol, because he holds it responsible for his situation.

4:
However, the actions described previously in our mishnah are deliberate acts of 'sacrilege' which cannot be construed in any way except that they indicate that this statue or icon has lost its status as an idol in the eyes of the person wreaking damage to it.

5:
The last clause of our mishnah is concerned with a difference of opinion between Rabbi, the compiler of the Mishnah, and the rest of the sages. Rabbi holds that if an idolator sells his idol or pawns it he has thus indicated that it is for him no longer a sacred object. The rest of the sages disagree. The Gemara [AZ53a] clarifies that the actual bone of contention is concerning a situation in which an idolator sells his idol to a smelter. Rabbi assumes that anyone who hands over an idol to a smelter knows that it is going to be melted down and destroyed and therefore he has indicated that it is of no religious significance for him. (If the smelter receiving the idol is a Jew even the rest of the sages agree with this conclusion.) The sages hold that if an idolator sells his idol to a non-Jewish smelter that need not necessarily mean that he no longer sees it as sacred: perhaps it has been received for the purposes of worship. For what it is worth, the halakhah follows the opinion of the rest of the sages.

Marc Auslander writes:

The idea that is it acceptable to make use of items left to show disrespect to the idol raises the question of what the sages thought was wrong about idol worship. If they thought that the very idea that the idol was a "god" must be rejected, then I don't see the difference between showing respect and disrespect, since either acknowledges the "godliness" of the idol. If they thought it was wrong to worship other gods, even though they did exist, then the logic makes more sense to me.

I respond:

Of course the sages held that the 'other gods' were imaginary. The reason why they object to them is because the Torah says so! In the haftarah that was read in synagogue this last Shabbat the prophet [Isaiah 44:9-20] expresses the view in scathing sarcasm: