Monotheism.

[whatdoiknowanyway]

Most of todays religions are monotheistic, with Christianity, Islam and Judaism all having the same origins. Can anyone tell me where and when this belief in one god began.

If one believes in the veracity of the Old Testament, then it can be traced back to Abraham. But, Abraham was from Ur. As far as I know Ur had a Pantheistic religion.

[Buffy]

Judaism has some claim to being the first monotheistic religion. Yes, Abraham was from Ur, but so what? He's one of the "founders" of the Jewish faith, and therein lies the claim.

Polytheistic religions tend to set up conflicts between the gods, with no god being absolutely "good", and thus while this conflict is excellent for describing the awful things that happen to people, they result in an inability to posit god as a "source" of "truth". In polytheistic faiths, there were often cults built around each god, but no one had an absolute franchise on "the truth". By developing monotheistic faiths, shamans and chiefs and kings were able to claim such a franchise and thereby justify their absolute domination of their peoples. As a result, monotheism became *extremely* useful from a socio-political standpoint, and tended to sqash the polytheistic faiths except where they were geographically isolated (e.g. India and the Far East).

All One God! Dilute! Dilute!
Buffy

[whatdoiknowanyway]

So Monotheism is just the states method of controling the masses. Very clever.

As for Abraham, I would have thought he would have been a folower of Zoroastra. This would explain his monotheism prior to his arrival in Isreal. Of course, this would then throw some doubt on the claims of Judaism as being the origins of monotheism.

[Rebiu]

I believe it is called the kissing disease and you treat it the same as the flue.


I believe the Hindu are polytheistic.

I believe Tibet has a substantial population of polytheistic Bat practitioners.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by whatdoiknowanyway

Most of todays religions are monotheistic, with Christianity, Islam and Judaism all having the same origins. Can anyone tell me where and when this belief in one god began.

The Egyptian Pharoh Akhenaten established monotheism during his reign beginning about 1352 BC.
http://www.crystalinks.com/akhenaten.html

Akhenaten is principally famous for his religious reforms, where the polytheism of Egypt was to be supplanted by monotheism centered around Aten, the god of the solar disc. This was possibly a move to lessen the political power of the Priests. Now the Pharaoh, not the priesthood, was the sole link between the people and Aten which effectively ended the power of the various temples