I was reading Cecil’s latest column (about historical records of the Exodus), and a thought struck me as I was reading that according to the Egyptians of the time, the Israel tribe had been destroyed. I wondered idly what religion would have taken Judaism/Christianity’s place in the world had that been true, and realized there were no other monotheistic religion back then that I knew of :
the Romans had a colossal pantheon of gods they’d nicked over the centuries from the cultures they conquered
Egypt of course had quite the roster
the Carthaginians had a few (Baal was the big one, but there were minor divinities)
the Celts, Gauls and Germanic tribes all had their own pantheons
further east, Hindus and Chinese also had a number of divinities, while the Japanese were more shamanistic/pagans
across the ocean, the various Pre-Columbian cultures also had multiple gods, except perhaps Native Americans ? (I admit I don’t know much about their beliefs besides the Great Spirit cliché)
So… we’re down to Islam (born of the Jewish book anyway) and possibly Zoroastrianism, which I don’t know much about. Are there any other monotheistic religions I missed ? And if not, how come monotheism became so prevalent and caught on this well, when it appears polytheism was much more “intuitive” or popular at the time ?
As a bonus exercise, feel free to post your WAG as to which religion would have filled Christianism’s shoes, had the Jewish faith been nipped in the bud :).
Mithraism was reportedly very popular in the Roman empire until Theodosian banned it and all “pagan” rites in 394. With no Christianity in competition, it may well not have been banned. Many aspects of Mithraism are similar to those in Christianity. See various cites on Mithraic mysteries, e.g. Wikipedia
I can’t vouch for any of this from primary sources.
Zoroastrianism, as you mentioned, is another possibility. And some people think there is a link between those two. Others do not.
Since you’re asking for WAG’s; I’ll contribute my drive by musing. Monotheism tends to result from people that could view a wide open sky i.e. the Great Spirit of the plains indians. Polytheism tends to result from more jungle type environs i.e. the Maya. I’m guessing that there is no comparable monotheistic religion that would fit the bill. I have no CITEs. That’s just my, invited, WAG.
The ancient Egyptians themselves briefly experimented with monotheism in the form of Atenism (under the rule of Pharoah Akhenaten) before reverting back to pantheism not long after his death.
Strictly speaking, Zoroastrianism is bitheistic, not mono. The Zoroastrians believed that there were two gods, more or less equal, one evil and one good.
Hinduism, of course has Ishvara (supreme god) as well, whereas your devas (Krishna, Vishnu) could be considered to be more angelic in status. It’s all how you read it.
I am not a biblical scholar, but aren’t there verses in the earlier books of the old testament that suggest the the Hebrew faith may have been henotheistic?
I doubt this has anything to do with it, unless you think the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, etc. lived in the jungle. I think it’s just a more natural idea that there are many gods (because there are many forces in the world unexplainable to primitive peoples), and so there were only a few times that an entire civilization thought that one being was behind all of those forces.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: And Chronos, I seem to recall that many historians think that that’s where the Christian idea of God and the Devil comes from. Is that right?
That was also my perception of it (in my mind, it was in the same ballpark as Cathar dualism) but skimming over the wikipedia page made me doubt, as Angra/Ahriman isn’t defined as a god but an “aspect”, so I figured maybe it was about one god with two sides rather than two different gods, if that makes any sense (similar to Janus for example)
During the night I also came up with a possible explanation of why Christianity took over so well - maybe it’s the only one that actively proselytized ? Did the early Romans, Mayas, Aztecs, Egyptians, Vikings and whatnot ever “force” their gods upon anyone or try to spread their creed in any way ?
@Oldguy : good point ! I had forgotten about the mysteries and Sol Invictus. But did they trump the old mythologies ? Did belief in the former preclude from believing in the latter ?
This is only my opinion but it seems to me that monotheism could be a prerequisite for evangelism. Only a monotheist would worry about the fact that the guys up the road worship different gods. If I was a polytheist then it would be perfectly normal but to a monotheist, the guys up the road have the wrong God and ought to be corrected.
That must create a memetic pressure such that once monotheism appears somewhere, it tends to drive out polytheism through proselytizing or - on a bad day - putting infidels to the sword. Also, a polytheist can’t incorporate monotheism and make it part of a broader religion. Once monotheism is accepted, the old gods have to go.
Returning to the OP, if I’m right then if the Egyptians wipe out the Hebrews, sooner or later monotheism will spring up again somewhere and overwhelm everything else.
I got the impression, from Who Wrote the Bible, and Hebrew monotheism was in part due to the centralization of power in Jerusalem and the Temple from the increased power of the priestly class. I can’t think of other cultures where the priesthood was so powerful relative to the monarchy before this. Banning other gods allows the priests to prevent power centers springing up in regions of the country sacred to those gods.
Monotheism seems to be a hard thing to sell. I don’t want to get into GD territory here, but to me, being raised Jewish, much of Christianity seems conflicted about being monotheistic and worshiping Jesus as almost a secondary deity. The existence of patron saints also seems to be close to the minor specialized gods of Greek and Roman times, though I realize that officially all power comes from a single God.
I wonder if any studies have been done to determine if we are naturally monotheistic or polytheistic.
No, the Romans did not proselytize, but they did get ticked off at the Christians for refusing to pray to the gods because they feared retribution inflicted on the entire community if everyone did not pitch in. It was one of the major reasons why the Romans persecuted the Christians, besides the fact that they just had no respect for “new” religions.
The idea of God and the Devil espoused by most Christian churches is that Satan is far below God, and comparable to Him only in his own pathetic little delusions of grandeur. But the popular notion of Satan as some sort of direct analogue to God was probably heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism.
As for proselytization, it isn’t really necessary for polytheists. When the Greeks or the Romans encountered another polytheistic religion, they just identified most of the gods, and added the rest to the list. “Oh, that thunder guy? Yeah, we worship him, too, except we call him Zeus”.
I doubt the vaishnava majority of hindus relegates Vishnu to angelic status. Krishna, of course, is a pretty major dude in the whole bhakti-thing. They’re henotheistic (as, in fact, most polytheists are) rather than monotheistic, though; there’s not much of a tradition in hinduism for the concept of “false gods”.
Do any of the world’s monotheistic faiths share traits in common to the Judeo-Christi-Islamic “I Am Who Am”?
A General Purpose Deity (hey…screenname ;)) that posesses the attributes of an entire pantheon would certainly seem to give rise to omnipotence, omniscience, omniprescence, etc.
If you really mean “back then,” you’re covering a lot of centuries by mixing, for instance the Aztecs (c.1350 CE) and Japanese (c.200 CE), with the time of the Exodus (which is thought to be, IIRC, c.1400 BCE).
Aside from Zoroastrianism and the Abrahamic faiths, I can’t think of many truly monotheistic religions. As others have pointed out, Hinduism could be either monistic or monotheistic, depending on how you translate those traditions into the mono-/polytheistic paradigm. The Bahá’í Faith has five or six million followers according to Wikipedia, and that dates from the 19th Century. Sikhism is essentially monotheistic, although not in the same way as Christianity.
IIRC, some of the Mesoamerican religions viewed the “gods” as powerful beings from another realm that were not omnipotent, nor were they “creators” of the natural world. Some of those had a concept of a single source of Creation for everything (Om? I’m digging in the dusty recesses of my brain and coming up empty – I’ll hunt up a text or two and see if I can find the reference I’m thinking of).