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How/why did monotheism evolve?

eight bits said:
Aisha


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.
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Ooops, I meant "contemporary to the (purported) time of Muhammad", referring to the Christians of Najran mentioned in the hadith. I guess I should have used the word "contemporaneous" instead, sorry!
 
One reason for the conversion of Yahweh from the head of a small pantheon - including his wife, Asherah and the goddess Ashtart (the West Semitic version of Ishtar), called the "Queen of Heaven" - or from a tribal, henotheistic god, into a universal deity was the Exile. The plight of the inhabitants of Jerusalem transported by the Chaldeans to the vicinity of Babylon is expressed poignantly by the psalmist in Ps. 137:1 - 4:

By the waters of Babylon we lay down and wept
when we remembered thee, Zion.
We hung our harps upon willows,
for there, those who carried us away captive required of us a song
and they that had wasted us required of us mirth,
saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion."
How shall we sing a song of [Yahweh] in a strange land.

Since they could not sing a song to Yahweh (rendered as "the LORD," in most bibles) outside his own turf, they eventually had to transform him from a tribal deity to a universal God. This, in turn, brought up the problem of evil, the whole subject of theodicy, and, in so doing, generated the mythos of the grand apocalyptic war, and with it, the Messiah.
 
Economies of scale.
Reduced wear & tear on temples.
Reduced probability of error in choice of sacrificial recipient.

Stuff like that.
 
IMO, it all boils down to "my mythical sky-daddy is bigger than your mythical sky-daddy" the inevitable result of which is "One sky-daddy to rule them all" !!
 
TimCallahan said:
One reason for the conversion of Yahweh from the head of a small pantheon - including his wife, Asherah and the goddess Ashtart (the West Semitic version of Ishtar), called the "Queen of Heaven" - or from a tribal, henotheistic god, into a universal deity was the Exile. The plight of the inhabitants of Jerusalem transported by the Chaldeans to the vicinity of Babylon is expressed poignantly by the psalmist in Ps. 137:1 - 4:

By the waters of Babylon we lay down and wept
when we remembered thee, Zion.
We hung our harps upon willows,
for there, those who carried us away captive required of us a song
and they that had wasted us required of us mirth,
saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion."
How shall we sing a song of [Yahweh] in a strange land.
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It is very poignant indeed, and when I hear a Gospel Choir singing words inspired by Ps 137, I idly wonder, How the hell are they going to handle the poignancy of vv 8,9?
8 O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. 9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
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The new "universal deity" here looks pretty much like the old particular deity of a few bands of desert-dwelling goatherds.

"Hey, we have a theodicy problem!"
"You mean, a universal divinity is permitting evil things to happen?"
"I mean, he's telling us to smash children's heads against rocks."
"Yes, you have a theodicy problem."
 
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smartcooky said:
Excellent!
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& Jesus was descended thru David although he was the son of God. Poor Joseph he must have been so confused. Hmm Jesus is from the line of David thru Joseph but Joseph wasn't his Dad.:D

I'll say the biblical writers did a remarkable job of creating a myth that the average person doesn't take the time to sort thru.
 
Craig B said:
It is very poignant indeed, and when I hear a Gospel Choir singing words inspired by Ps 137, I idly wonder, How the hell are they going to handle the poignancy of vv 8,9?
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Oh, you just stop before that and mix in some lines from another psalm. :) Some youth sentiment:
 
This is a great question and several great, and quite accurate, responses have been supplied which outline specific instances and their traces of growth.

Since those have been supplied, I will address the more loose range of the subject which targets the growth of civilization and how such a motion occurs to begin with.

As some have already alluded to in some fashion or another, the move to some resembling form of monotheism typically occurred for political reasons.
As it has been noted, effectively all civilizations were theocratic in the Bronze Age and was still quite common in the Iron Age.

When we look at the evolution of human civilization around the Mediterranean region, what most notably stands out is the evolution from clusters of people to City States to unified City States to Kingdoms; not always in perfect line and with some exceptions to this construct (for example, Egypt is hard to determine in this manner as it was well formed into a full Kingdom by a point far earlier than surrounding cultures which we can far more easily observe in regards to early evolution).

In every case, however, the theocratic motive (Roman adoption is similar but different) for the monotheistic solution is a change from the ruling power being that of an individual pleading to the deities in some fashion, typically through a political party of priests, into a single source system where the ruling power appears to do less pleading and more "channeling" (we'll borrow that phrase to summarize) of some selected/reformed deity (somewhat like we think of the Pope today, but not exactly the same as each culture is its own form).

Interestingly, these movements don't seem to last with near pure unilateral power intact, but the religious summation doesn't appear to redistribute post-unilateral ruling power once power has been redistributed.

Loosely speaking, and with much error in specific as this is a generalization, some party charges the ruling unilateral power of some wrong and the system of government is diversely shifted in some manner (usually to a two-branch system which typically previously already existed) and the communal branch (priests, or political senate style) takes some of the powers related to the theocratic associations typically revolved around law making and the "King" (in the various forms) takes (what we might call today) "executive" controls and powers.

I am unaware of any event whereby such occurs and the subsequent reaction following the charge of corruption results in a dissolving of the monotheistic-like religious alterations.

Rome is a bit different due to its later and more evolved political infrastructure, but it more or less falls along these lines to a lesser degree.


It is easy to imagine the motive is greed, and in some manners we may say such is the case, but with that greed we should also note that in each case a very real political and social issue was being addressed; each unique to their culture and time.
However, as a very generalized view, we can understand that in each early case the ruling power was seeking to unify some perceived schism, end political conflict and in-fighting, and gain capabilities which would allow them to restructure their ruling area's infrastructure into one singular design and focus.

In a way, we could say these were "experiments" for solutions to issues that arrived as populations grew and the dynamics of party interests became such that a range of diverging ideas and visions about how to proceed "nationally" were perceived to be a problem; a weakening.

Effectively, one could say the idea of "categorization" was the basis for the change, as cultures continued to struggle to survive; the solution for survival was tried in multitudes of manners of diversities, with a constant focus reappearing for a singular cultural integrity - a unification and singular front.

It is quite worth noting that in most cases (all that I am aware of, but I may be missing an exception) the "monotheistic" movement politically arrives as part of a solution during extreme civil stress within a theocratic society engaged in polytheistic diversities.

This is itself not a foreign behavior for humans, to unify power and direction during extreme stress.
Take, for instance, Dwight D. Eisenhower and the surrounding political commotion regarding the notion for a Supreme Commander to address the issues presented to the Allied forces in retaining diversified command.
This event of new and stressful circumstances which appear to be beyond the ability of any to solve with the "current" paradigm and therefor permitting the argument and conclusion of a unilateral command shares a sociological relation to the shifting of theocratic civilizations from diverse pantheons with diversified governing to a unified deity and political ruling.

Like Eisenhower, too, again, each of such motions tends to be short-lived before the unilateral political power is once again diversified; though the ideologies outlining a unified culture during that time appear not to be thrown out (again, similarly, the Allies stopped being "governed" by a unilateral commander, but the idea of such command and unification in military global control greatly influenced the operational procedures existent today in the UN).

That's my two cents

Cheers,
Jayson
 
That was a nice summary Jayson. My 2 cents is Judaism was supposed to replace polytheism and worship of inanimate objects with an unseen power ( As I recall Genesis). The Old Greco Roman Gods had a chief God in both cases, so with the Christian invention of a Trinity, how is that different?
 
Fellow Traveler,

Thank you.
If by "Judaism" you mean the religion which followed the reformation of Judah after the fall of the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah removed the option of Kingdom of Israel cultural vying for religious cultural influence, and from roughly the 8th c BCE onward range dominating heavily from the 5th c BCE onward specifically, then yes, that Judaism was geared specifically to wipe out polytheist adherence within the land - though it should be noted that archaeology does not indicate a clean break occurred.

When looking at "Judaism" and tracing it back, you have to keep in mind that it began from the Canaanite pantheon which is headed by the god of god's, El.
The Hebrew cultures didn't reflectively, early on, set about a religious path by means of reaction to Grecian or Roman religion, but instead as an extension from their inherited religious beliefs from the lands in which they grew - that is the Canaanite pantheon most notably.

The later mixture of Christianity, or Judaism, into the Roman cultures is vastly different in evolution as in such we are now looking at something more akin to the 1960's America ingesting Indian and Asian religions into their own forms as opposed to looking at how the comparative relation between Samaria and Judah in relation to effectively differing takes of the same religion.

The trinity specifically is a unique feature of a specific cultural faction and not uniform across early Christian cultures; indeed such was the theological battles for nearly a century over the matter - of which many such issues are still not settled and account for still extant divisions even among the Orthodoxies.
 
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