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How/why did monotheism evolve?

New Testament, not Old. :).

Of course.
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I think worshipping only one sky-daddy and/or sky-mommy was actually more or less the starting point.

Egyptian cities had one god each, for example, and the 'commandment' was to not deny the god of the city you're in. Which already tells you right there that people didn't care all that much about the other gods. Also, essentially ALL gods, regardless of what domain they had been saddled with when they merged them into a pantheon, were getting prayers and blessing amulets for everything. There are for example fertility amulets in the name of Seth. Which again tells me that people tended to stick to one deity for everything.

Also, as far back as we have a documents about it, the cities in Mesopotamia had a god each, the king was the god's representative, and that was that. And people almost denying the other gods in prayers to their own god was really common all along.

Polytheism was pretty much just a way to try to not get on each other's nerves too much. Sure, your God is real too. Plus, of course, the guy on top getting to say that his deity is the greatest, but then you'd ignore that and pray to your own anyway.

Way I see it, monotheism wasn't as much an evolution, as a step back. Some people basically just stopped playing nice about other people's gods.
 
This video outlines how it happened:



Sorry that it's a video, rather than a page of text, but it is fairly concise and runs only 15 minutes.

For those who would question the source of information in the video, it's gleaned from the book A History Of God by Karen Armstrong. Armstrong is a former nun (so is certainly not biased against the idea of God as a real entity, even though I'd find that difficult to square with this narrative) and a religious historian. There's a lot of talk on the internet about this particular book, if you choose to look for it, and one thing that it all has in common is in praising how well-researched the book is.

It is, I believe, the most highly-regarded academic work on the origins of the Abrahamic religions.
 
From what I know, many early religions involved multiple deities. But then it seems that in what we now call the West and the Middle East, a very definite change toward monotheism occurred. What brought that on? Was there some functional reason? Did someone decide it worked better? What was the impetus to discredit polytheism?

I know a little bit about how it came to dominate Roman thought, but the changes I'm thinking of occurred earlier than that.

97% of our history is "gone". All what we can say is that in the last 5000 years or so we had a period of polytheism followed by monotheism. As far as I can tell nobody can really say monotheism was invented that time. Personally I credit a simple fluke of history.
 
From what I know, many early religions involved multiple deities. But then it seems that in what we now call the West and the Middle East, a very definite change toward monotheism occurred. What brought that on? Was there some functional reason? Did someone decide it worked better? What was the impetus to discredit polytheism?

I know a little bit about how it came to dominate Roman thought, but the changes I'm thinking of occurred earlier than that.

To answer that too, if we're talking about around the time we switched the clocks from BC to AD, I think the biggest factor in the new cults was not as much a desire to discredit the old gods, but a transition from communal gods to personal saviour gods.

Traditionally gods had been more of a community thing. Rituals and whatnot were supposed to grant the whole city stuff like a good crop or protection in the next battle and so on. Whether they also gave you an eternal life for being good (e.g., Osiris) or not (old style Yahweh) was more of a secondary thing. The more important part was to not get a drought that kills everyone right now.

As such, you also didn't really have much of a choice about participating, especially since essentially everyone was a theocracy back then. Even people you normally think more advanced and philosophy minded like the Greeks, were still struggling to find a distinction between "righteous"/"law abiding" and "pious" for example. Which is why the original Euthyphro dilemma worked. Or the Roman republic's political life was all about appeasing the gods and reconnecting with the gods. I don't even mean stuff like you had to be a Pontifex before you can be a consul, but even the struggle between patricians and plebeians for who can be consul was centered around who can appease the gods properly.

But at some point the people's interests started to slide towards the other way around. Appeasing the gods for a good harvest took a back seat to the interest in finding eternal life.

I couldn't properly say why, but I guess between the Pax Romana and most agriculture being by now in the hands of literally a handful of families, the average guy had no immediate interest in either the crop or military matters. I can imagine that taking part in the communal rituals for either was not all that high a priority for most people.

And in that reality, there seemed to be a lot of interest in new cults centered around someone who cares about YOU personally, and can give you eternal life. The new gods were less about the city, if at all, and more about YOU and the saviour deity that cares about YOU.

Incidentally these new cults were appearing without much of a history or existing adherents, and as such rather than having to take part by virtue of being born in a city, they were about voluntarily joining your new spiritual family.

And I THINK their being centered around one deity -- with some exceptions -- is also more of a... form-follows-function thing, so to speak, rather than trying to demolish polytheism per se. If you're going to make a new mystery cult, whose whole focus is your being personally saved by some deity, really, you don't really need an army of saviours. You just need one, really.

And you don't need to pad the list with gods of various communal activities, since you're not focusing on those activities in the first place.

Plus, I guess it makes it a better story to have one guy (or in a few cases, gal) who underwent some great passion and gained power over death, than to have a dozen stories about a dozen different guys who underwent a dozen different passions to gain power over death. If it's just a one time thing, it sounds more special.

So, yeah, whether you were selling Mithras, or Zalmoxis, or Jesus, you don't really need more than one saviour, if you think about it.
 
It's anecdotal and I can't find the reference, but I recall a comment on the part of a Christian missionary working with polytheists that monotheism is simpler. The locals were constantly anxious that they were offending one deity or another by forgetting about them and one stop service for all your religious needs was quite appealing.

I haven't studied the matter closely, but the recent Dead Sea Scrolls museum exhibit stated that most ancient homes in Israel have artifacts associated with pagan worship. Also, the Old Testament in my opinion can be read as a document written by monotheist hardliners in a society where most people were polytheists. Most of the kings seem to have carried out some sort of pagan worship, and got criticized for it.
 
Um...I'm pretty sure smartcooky meant New Testament and just mistyped.



"Mughira b. Shu'ba reported:
When I came to Najran, they (the Christians of Najran) asked me: You read 'O sister of Harun' (i. e. Hadrat Maryam) in the Qur'an, whereas Moses was born much before Jesus. When I came back to Allah's Messenger I asked him about that, whereupon he said: The (people of the old age) used to give names (to their persons) after the names of Apostles and pious persons who had gone before them." - Sahih Muslim 2135/25:5326

EDIT: That is, Muslims have been aware of that particular accusation, per at least mainstream Sunni tradition, since the time of Muhammad, and believe that Muhammad himself addressed it.



A'isha,

What do you think of this apologetic....

I had the same discussion with a Muslim guy. I told him the above point and he responded that the meaning is not that Mary is the actual sister of Aaron but that she is from the line of Aaron.

Now that fits in that Mary’s cousin (Luke 1:36) Elizabeth was definitely a Levite (Luke 1:5). Her husband Zachariah is even expressly identified as a priest (Luke 1:9).

Moreover in the Infancy Gospel Of James (IGOJ) (http://blog.cnaughton.com/mediafiles/pdfs/james.pdf) Mary’s mother is said to have pledged her to serve in the Temple and she did so until she reached puberty where then the priests married her off to Joseph .This indicates that she is definitely a Levite otherwise she would not have been able to serve in the Temple.

Of course all this is just pure fiction but Muhammad did not know that when he composed his version of the same fiction and thus he might have been familiar with the IGOJ and definitely familiar with the Infancy Gospel Of Thomas (Child Jesus and Sparrows of clay story).


But why would Muhammad have said "sister" instead of "daughter" which would be more consistent with descendent?

Also, her family is named in the Quran as “Imran” Chapter 3…. Is this the Arabic for Levites?? It is not synonymous even with allowance for language phonetic variations??? Also Aaron in the Quran is called Haron so not close either???

However, it is an apologetic that made me pause for thought.... I am inclined to accept it IF someone can explain why sister not daughter is used and what is the Arabic equivalent of Levite.
 
EDIT: That is, Muslims have been aware of that particular accusation, per at least mainstream Sunni tradition, since the time of Muhammad, and believe that Muhammad himself addressed it.
I'm not sure.
At length she brought (the babe) to her people, carrying him (in her arms), They said: "O Mary! Truly a strange thing has thou brought! "O sister of Aaron, thy father was not a man of evil, nor your mother a woman unchaste!" -- Sura 19:27-28
Aaron was of course Moses' brother. Of course, if Jesus had a mother of that name, true it is that she must have been named after Moses' sister, but it was common practice to name children after Scriptural characters at that time as noted in Sahih Muslim 2135/25:5326 cited by you. Jesus himself was named after Moses' successor Joshua son of Nun, and we are told he had brothers named Jacob, Joses and Simeon.
 
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@ OP

No religion today is TRULY monotheistic. Christianity has 3 gods (The Trinity) and a fourth lesser god called Satan (see this post) along with Angels and demons and Saints etc.

Islam is really a dualism with Satan being almost as powerful as God. It also has Angels and demons and Djinn etc.

See below as far as Judaism is concerned.

All these Angels and so forth carry on with the very same functions that the members of the pantheons of the gods of pagans used to do.

Even the Pagans had a supreme head-god and lesser gods which are akin to Angels in the so called monotheistic religions.

The spread of Christianity and Islam (as well as Judaism see below) was because of Imperial and Royal edicts enforced by the sword along with political, taxation and societal incentives or penalties.

For example have a look at this bit of history showing what it took to eradicate Paganism from the Roman Empire and make Christianity the only religion.


I haven't studied the matter closely, but the recent Dead Sea Scrolls museum exhibit stated that most ancient homes in Israel have artifacts associated with pagan worship. Also, the Old Testament in my opinion can be read as a document written by monotheist hardliners in a society where most people were polytheists. Most of the kings seem to have carried out some sort of pagan worship, and got criticized for it.


In fact the Tanakh is far from being Monotheistic. It is Henotheistic. There are numerous verses to prove it (see some listed below).

Judaism only became more monotheistic (but not fully) upon contact with the Persian Zoroastrianism with Persian Imperial edicts and emissaries to enforce it (Isaiah 45:1, Ezra 1:1 Ezra 7:10, Ezra 10:3) and even then it was under threats of horrendous punishments and blaming all past misfortunes on past lapses in the worship of YHWH alone (Deuteronomy 28).

People in Israel were always worshiping many gods (see for example Judges 2:11-15 which is a typical theme repeated ad nauseam in the Tanakh) and most beloved was Asherah (Jeremiah 7:18, 44:17-19) whose figurines were found in all strata almost all over Israel which indicates she was a very beloved household goddess.

Even Solomon erected temples to her and Baal and even Chemosh right next door to the temple for YHWH (1 Kings 11:4-8).

Israel did not become Monotheistic proper until the Hasmoneans (also see this) enforced it by Royal FIAT upon their subjects under penalty of death.

Bible Verses
  • Exodus 15:11 - Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods?
  • Exodus 18:11 - Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods:
  • Exodus 22:28 - Thou shalt not revile the gods
  • Deuteronomy 10:17 - For the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords.
  • Psalm 82:1 - God standeth in the congregation of the mighty, he judgeth among the gods.
  • Psalm 86:8 - Among the gods there is none like unto thee, O Lord.
  • Psalm 96:4 - For the Lord ... is to be feared above all gods.
  • Psalm 97:7 - Worship him, all ye gods.
  • Psalm 135:5 - Our Lord is above all gods.
  • Psalm 136:2 - O give thanks unto the God of gods.
  • Judges 2:11 - And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim: {2:12} And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that [were] round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger. {2:13} And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. {2:14} And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them, and he sold them into the hands of their enemies round about, so that they could not any longer stand before their enemies. {2:15} Whithersoever they went out, the hand of the LORD was against them for evil, as the LORD had said, and as the LORD had sworn unto them: and they were greatly distressed.
  • Jeremiah 44:17 - But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. {44:18} But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.
  • Jeremiah 7:18 - The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.
  • 1 Kings 11:4 - For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father. {11:5} For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. {11:6} And Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and went not fully after the LORD, as did David his father. {11:7}Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. {11:8} And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.
  • Deuteronomy 28:21 - The LORD shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to possess it. {28:22} The LORD shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish. {28:26} And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray [them] away. {28:28} The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart: {28:30} Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her: {28:32} Thy sons and thy daughters [shall be] given unto another people, and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long: and [there shall be] no might in thine hand. {28:35} The LORD shall smite thee in the knees, and in the legs, with a sore botch that cannot be healed, from the sole of thy foot unto the top of thy head.
  • Deuteronomy 28:56 - The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, {28:57} And toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all [things] secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates.
 
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Also, her family is named in the Quran as “Imran” Chapter 3…. Is this the Arabic for Levites?? It is not synonymous even with allowance for language phonetic variations??? Also Aaron in the Quran is called Haron so not close either???

However, it is an apologetic that made me pause for thought.... I am inclined to accept it IF someone can explain why sister not daughter is used and what is the Arabic equivalent of Levite.

"Imran" is the Arabic version of Amram, the father of Harun (Aaron) and Maryam (Mary). This is the same genealogy for both Mary the sister of Moses and Mary the mother of Jesus. The differences in the genealogies are in who was Amram's father - Mathan was the father of the Amran who fathered the mother of Jesus, while Yishar (sometime spelled Izhar) was the father of the Amran who fathered the sister of Moses (though in the Torah, Yishar and Amran were brothers, not father and son).

Haroun/Aaron was a Levite, so anyone "in the line of Aaron" would be a Levite (kohanim are required to be of direct patrilineal descent from Aaron).

Due to the identical names and the rather vague explanation in the hadith quoted above, there were some that claimed that there was only one Amram and Maryam, not two, and that the mother of Jesus was indeed the sister of Moses. The famous 14th Century historian Ibn Kathir called such traditions "nonsense, a serious error", and 12th Century Persian scholar al-Zamakhshari pointed out that the Qur'an's story of Zakariyah/Zechariah being Maryam the mother of Jesus' guardian is enough to show that the sister of Moses and the mother of Jesus were two different people, since unlike the multiple Amrams and Maryams, there was only one Zakariyah, and he lived at the time of Jesus' mother, not Moses' sister, since he was the father of Yahya (John the Baptist).

As for the whole "sister of Aaron" thing, both Ibn Kathir and al-Zamakhshari explain it as the "sister of/brother of" appellation being used to describe tribal descendants (an explanation also found in the 8th Century Tafsir Muqatil, the oldest surviving complete tafsir): "Ali bin Abi Talhah and As-Suddi both said, 'It was said to her, يَا أُخْتَ هَارُونَ (O sister of Harun!), referring to the brother of Musa, because she was of his descendants. This is similar to the saying, `O brother of Tamim,' to one who is from the Tamimi tribe, and `O brother of Mudar,' to one who is from the Mudari tribe. It has also been said that she was related to a righteous man among them whose name was Harun and she was comparable to him in her abstinence and worship." (Tafsir Ibn Kathir)
 
I'm not sure.

Huh? :confused:

The hadith I cited has one of Muhammad's followers telling him about how the Christians of Najran noticed that the Qur'an calls Jesus' mother the sister of Aaron, implying that the Qu'ran was asserting that the mother of Jesus and the sister of Moses were the same person despite Jesus and Moses living hundreds of years apart, and relates Muhammad's answer to that accusation.
 
"Imran" is the Arabic version of Amram, the father of Harun (Aaron) and Maryam (Mary). This is the same genealogy for both Mary the sister of Moses and Mary the mother of Jesus. The differences in the genealogies are in who was Amram's father - Mathan was the father of the Amran who fathered the mother of Jesus, while Yishar (sometime spelled Izhar) was the father of the Amran who fathered the sister of Moses (though in the Torah, Yishar and Amran were brothers, not father and son).
Haroun/Aaron was a Levite, so anyone "in the line of Aaron" would be a Levite (kohanim are required to be of direct patrilineal descent from Aaron).

Due to the identical names and the rather vague explanation in the hadith quoted above, there were some that claimed that there was only one Amram and Maryam, not two, and that the mother of Jesus was indeed the sister of Moses. The famous 14th Century historian Ibn Kathir called such traditions "nonsense, a serious error", and 12th Century Persian scholar al-Zamakhshari pointed out that the Qur'an's story of Zakariyah/Zechariah being Maryam the mother of Jesus' guardian is enough to show that the sister of Moses and the mother of Jesus were two different people, since unlike the multiple Amrams and Maryams, there was only one Zakariyah, and he lived at the time of Jesus' mother, not Moses' sister, since he was the father of Yahya (John the Baptist).

As for the whole "sister of Aaron" thing, both Ibn Kathir and al-Zamakhshari explain it as the "sister of/brother of" appellation being used to describe tribal descendants (an explanation also found in the 8th Century Tafsir Muqatil, the oldest surviving complete tafsir): "Ali bin Abi Talhah and As-Suddi both said, 'It was said to her, يَا أُخْتَ هَارُونَ (O sister of Harun!), referring to the brother of Musa, because she was of his descendants. This is similar to the saying, `O brother of Tamim,' to one who is from the Tamimi tribe, and `O brother of Mudar,' to one who is from the Mudari tribe. It has also been said that she was related to a righteous man among them whose name was Harun and she was comparable to him in her abstinence and worship." (Tafsir Ibn Kathir)



Thanks A'isha....excellent.... this makes a lot of sense especially given the Arabic trend of calling people "brother of" to mean "from the same tribe of" and also given the Christian folklore that Mary was a Levite.

Thanks for the explanation of Imran.... yes that makes linguistic sense too.

So I accept the explanation that rather than being an error it in fact shows how knowledgeable Muhammad was of canonic as well apocryphal Christian Lore as well as of the Jewish lore.
 
Thanks A'isha....excellent.... this makes a lot of sense especially given the Arabic trend of calling people "brother of" to mean "from the same tribe of" and also given the Christian folklore that Mary was a Levite.

Thanks for the explanation of Imran.... yes that makes linguistic sense too.

You're welcome. :)

So I accept the explanation that rather than being an error it in fact shows how knowledgeable Muhammad was of canonic as well apocryphal Christian Lore as well as of the Jewish lore.

I don't know that I'd go that far (at least, not attributing everything to the direct knowledge of a historical Muhammad). Yes, it's pretty obvious that the Qur'an draws rather heavily from early Christian traditions that are now considered apocryphal, but how much of that is due to the milieu in which the corpus of the Qur'an was identified and assembled and how much to a historical Muhammad's direct knowledge is kind of up in the air.

And at the very least, the traditions were confusing and contentious enough to have been used in contemporary Christian polemics against Islam, and for important historians and mufassir to have to address these issues over the centuries.
 
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I don't know that I'd go that far (at least, not attributing everything to the direct knowledge of a historical Muhammad). Yes, it's pretty obvious that the Qur'an draws rather heavily from early Christian traditions that are now considered apocryphal, but how much of that is due to the milieu in which the corpus of the Qur'an was identified and assembled and how much to a historical Muhammad's direct knowledge is kind of up in the air.

And at the very least, the traditions were confusing and contentious enough to have been used in contemporary Christian polemics against Islam, and for important historians and mufassir to have to address these issues over the centuries.


Well, at least let's say whether it is an actual person called Muhammad or a cadre of persons led by a guy given the title Muhammad or just a cabal of people who invented Muhammad as a front, whichever the case maybe, they were people really acquainted with much of the myths of Judaism and Christianity and not just mainstream but heresies and factions too.
 
Aisha

And at the very least, the traditions were confusing and contentious enough to have been used in contemporary Christian polemics against Islam, ...
Contemporary 'polemics' against Islam are not a peculiarly Christian undertaking. You didn't say they were, but you have introduced a distinction among critics without explaining what you believe follows from that distinction. It is reasonable to seek your clarification.

Meanwhile, the goal of such arguments is not necessarily to stand "against" Islam. As you note, a moderate Muslim apologetic surrebuttal is to acknowledge the figurative character of Koranic language, even when presenting a factual point.

The encouragement of "literary-critical" attitudes toward any "sacred" text is no small thing. Islam is not the only religion for which encouragement of such an attitude among adherents can be a practical goal. For example, I think the world would be improved if some Christians recognized Genesis 1:1-2:3 as the hymn that it probably once was.

Perhaps you do believe that Islamic counterapologetics is especially Christian, polemical, exclusively "against," and unable to generalize its criticisms beyond Islam. That's fine, but other critics from other perspectives have also found these same traditions confusing and contentious. So, allow me to add their voices to those you have mentioned.
 
No religion today is TRULY monotheistic.

This ^^

Even going by the polytheistic ones, you'd almost always have a clear hierarchy. Whether it is Odin, Zeus etc
You'll have one guy who is the big cheese and the rest are below him.

Essentially, what is the difference between Hermes, messenger of the gods, to any of the various angels in the monotheistic religions?

Not much. Just cooler super powers.
 
Essentially, what is the difference between Hermes, messenger of the gods, to any of the various angels in the monotheistic religions?

One thing I've noticed is that in religions called polytheist the individual divine being follow their own agenda and work at cross-purposes. In monotheistic religions you get maybe one overt act of rebellion which leads to banishment and a clear break.

Satan aside, no Christian angel is going to give God the same headaches that, say, Mercury gave Zeus.
 
One thing I've noticed is that in religions called polytheist the individual divine being follow their own agenda and work at cross-purposes. In monotheistic religions you get maybe one overt act of rebellion which leads to banishment and a clear break.

Satan aside, no Christian angel is going to give God the same headaches that, say, Mercury gave Zeus.


Have a look at these verses below that describe the following scene:
His Imperial Majesty God is sitting on his throne with all the COURTIERS of the court of heaven surrounding him.
God desires to resolve a political problem he is befuddled by.
So he asks for council from his courtiers.
Some say this and some say that and God listens.
He finally likes the idea of one of the schemers and he thinks the scheme is good and thus he orders it carried out.​

2 Chronicles 18:18-22
18:18 Again he said, Therefore hear the word of the LORD; I saw the LORD sitting upon his throne, and all the host of heaven standing on his right hand and on his left.
18:19 And the LORD said, Who shall entice Ahab king of Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramothgilead? And one spake saying after this manner, and another saying after that manner.
18:20 Then there came out a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and said, I will entice him. And the LORD said unto him, Wherewith?
18:21 And he said, I will go out, and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt entice him, and thou shalt also prevail: go out, and do even so
18:22 Now therefore, behold, the LORD hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets, and the LORD hath spoken evil against thee.


So here we have the image of a Supreme God in a Court of lesser gods angels and he is the supreme LIAR and SCHEMER and PLOTTER of what needs to be done.

You know the saying
It's not God who made man in his own image but rather Man made god in his​


Monotheism EVOLVED along with human evolution.

At the beginning when man was a frightened little weasel living in caves afraid of everything that rustled, he attributed hyper agency to everything and bowed to it so as not to kill him even if it was wind or rain or fire or snakes or lions. Thus Animism

Later when they started farming and started clustering together in bigger groups than could fit in a cave they needed lesser gods and rain and wind became instruments of fewer gods rather than gods themselves. Thus Ancesteralism and polytheism

Later when brigands started asserting control over clusters of clusters they needed to also assert their own gods as stronger than the clusters' gods. Thus Hierarchical Polytheism

Later when bigger brigands asserted their brigandage over clusters of brigands they needed their god to be the super god. Thus Henotheism

Finally when the Supreme Despot (Emperor) wanted to assure full and unchallenged control over everything and everyone, he found it prudent to unite all the sheep under one shepherd that he can easily control rather than herding many shepherds. Thus Monotheism

But of course all the sheep and goats and cattle and rabbits and swine are still disparate animals despite all being herded in their various pens and paddocks on the very same farm and each group needs to squeak in their distinct manners despite being slaughtered in the same abattoir for the enrichment of the same farmer.

In Christianity they call Jesus Lord of Lords and King of Kings for a reason.

:D Do you know why they call the clergy Pastors and their congregations the Flock?
because they FLEECE the sheep :D


The prayer “The Lord is my shepherd…” is there for a reason…. Do you think a shepherd takes care for the sheep and feeds them out of altruistic love? Do you think he protects them from the wolves out of fatherly concern? Or is it that the shepherd is fattening them for the feast and does not want to lose any to the wolves?
 
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