Accepting that the Jewish, Christian and Muslim God are the same entity, about half the world’s population worships a single deity. A large part of this must be due to the fact that Christianity and Islam were the dominant religions of two wealthy and expansionist cultures. This still begs the question of how the Abrahamic god reached that point in the first place, especially given that Judaism actively discouraged outsiders from joining their religion.
What (non-religious) theories exist to account for this? Was it coincidence, a matter of being in the right place at the right time on two occasions? Could Buddhism or Hinduism be substituted with the same results or is the Abrahamic god unique in this sense?
I’m not sure the question is very clear but I guess in essence: is the Abrahamic god an extraordinarily virulent and adaptable meme complex or has it had an unfair geographical/temporal advantage over other religions?
The last sentence was not always the case. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, you find various individuals or groups either joining or being absorbed into the people of Israel, as well as Yahweh God promising that through Israel, all nations would know of & come to Him. The first century BCE and the first century CE saw Jewish communities reaching out to the Greco-Roman culture.
Interesting question. I’ve seen speculation that Abraham and Sara were actually the same as Brahma and Saraswati in the subcontinent (perhaps suggesting that the Abrahamic god actually WAS Abraham, just wearing Groucho glasses), but I don’t know how much stock to place in that.
Someone recently pointed out in another thread that, by the numbers, there’s about the same number of Jewish people as Mormons. 'Bout baked my kugel, that little factoid did. I would never have guessed it to be so small, but the poster had, like, numbers and stuff.
So how did that happen, that their god became so powerful and well known and followed, while their religion itself has stayed so small? I think that points to “adaptable”. I’m not sure a Rabbi of 3000 years ago would recognize his YHVH in many modern Christian churches’ worship or teachings. We’re used to this idea that they’re the same god, but Birkenstock Jesus really doesn’t have a lot in common with I AM.
And from what I’ve read trying to get answers to this, Yaweh was derived from El Elyon, one of the gods in the Canaanite pantheon who presumably bore little resemblance to the later Jewish god.
I guess all long-surviving ideas need to be adaptable; perhaps this one was just unusually well suited to being grafted onto foreign cultures?
Arguably only one, given that Islam spawned from Christianity. And “it was the right place and the right time” is one of the commoner theories I’ve heard. It was by no means the only cult that was active at the time, it was a period of religious ferment I understand. And then there’s the fact that such extremely successful religions didn’t pop up either later or earlier; Christianity hasn’t been swept away the way it swept away so many older religions, nor did such a world-spanning religion appear earlier. That too seems to imply that there was probably something special about that time and place.
It can be argued that Buddhism actually did much the same to a lesser degree, considering how widespread and numerous it is. Hinduism on the other hand is both older and just doesn’t seem prone to the same kind of massive expansion.
Accident. Jesus happened to be Jewish. Islam copied off the Christians. Now why Christianity and Islam so quickly and thoroughly eliminated the pagans, I’m not sure.
Yes, either full fledged Judaism or a kind of ethical monotheism built around what Judaism calls the Noachide laws (don’t worship idols, don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t commit sodomy, incest, adultery, or bestiality, don’t blaspheme, don’t eat a living animal, and punish people who break these laws).
It was a pretty common thing until first the various Jewish revolts against Rome and then the growth of Christianity made conversion dangerous, both for the convert and the proselytizer.
Hinduism doesn’t have the “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations” mandate. You could say Islam has a similar mandate but they don’t approach it with the missionary model. Without those missionaries traveling to all parts of the known world, Christianity probably wouldn’t have spread nearly as widely as it did.
Jesus may have been necessary or he may have just been a charismatic figure who acted as a catalyst for events that would have happened in some form whether he existed or not. It’s possible that history is replete with Jesus-like people who weren’t born into conditions as favourable for religious upheaval as the Middle East was 2,000 years ago.
I’ve never heard of this before. It sounds like Judaism attempted and failed to do what Christianity achieved with the same deity, at the same time and with the same target demographic but starting from a much smaller base.
Yep, it’s that plus the explicit need in both religions to either spread the message or at least stop people worshiping other gods.
But more than that they were a more “evolved” style of religion than many that existed at the time (in the sense of being more appealing to human psychology):
It had a god that in general cared about humans
It had a god that actually cared about you. Yes, even you.
It had an afterlife
It had a reason for god to screw you over from time to time – because it’s a necessary part of a grand plan (also note #3 again). If you just have a rain god, when there’s a prolonged drought, how do you explain that?
It had a central human that people could relate to: Jesus, Muhammed
True. It is the missionary zeal coupled with a violent intollerance of any other religions that explains the success.
Without the missionaries Judaism was intolerant but remained just a very local religion.
Other religions just didn’t have the agressiveness of Christianity and Islam, people just accepted that different people had different gods. They didn’t see the others as competition.
It isn’t that the message was so terribly persuasive but the simple fact that they were the most violent and persistent ones, and they didn’t tollerate any competition.
Actually I take this one back. The idea of evil being necessary for some greater overall plan, or free will, is a modern idea.
I think for most of these religion’s histories god was just seen as…a bit of a dick, frankly, who just dealt humans a duff hand from time to time because he felt like it.
Well, yes, he isn’t called ‘Lord’ for nothing. People were used to having someone of rank above them,a master. God is, for most of history, a master and can do with his people as he sees fit.
It being part of an overall plan might be modern but evil was certainly not blamed on God.
The devil was a great excuse for bad things happening. Bad things weren´t part of the plan, they were the work of the devil.
