monotheism

Mr spock i would say the begining was the factual person who became Mosas. He wanted to become the one "god" when he broke the tribe who became the jews away from the egyptions. So he made rules that said you couldnt worship anyone but him. I would sugest that is probably where the monothiastic religions started
 
I thought it first started to gain popularity with Zoroastrianism, but it could have started with Judaism.

Amenhotep in Egypt started a religion that featured himself as the sole diety, but that didn't last long after his death [wiki].
 
You could be right about that but jewisum is the first oviously successful example of it. He could have modled it of someone else thought but he was DEFINITLY trying to set HIMSELF up as a god, and the ONLY god compared to pharo who was set up as one of MANY gods
 
Mr.Spock said:
do we know its origins? :shrug:
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Nobody knows I think.

Hinduism has its Saguna Brahman (the Absolute), as revealed by this Rig Ved verse:

In the beginning, who was born the Lord the sole Lord of all that is who made the earth, and formed the sky, who giveth life Who giveth strength, whose bidding gods revere the ONLY GOD
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the Chinese had Shang Ti (Supreme Lord) and the Sumerians had "the One":
One, the maker of all things, the Spirit, the hidden Spirit, the maker of Spirits. He existed in the beginning, when nothing else was. What is created He made after he came into being. . No man knoweth how to find Him; His name is a mystery and is hidden. His names are innumerable. He is truth, He liveth on truth, He is the king of truth. He is life, through Him man liveth; He giveth life to man, He breathed life into his nostrils . . He Himself is existence; He neither increaseth or diminisheth. He made the universe, the world, what was, what is and what shall be . . . He heareth him who calleth on Him, He rewardeth his servants, those who acknowledge Him He knoweth, He protecteth His followers
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In present day religions I would have to say Mazdaism the religion that preceded Zoroastrianism and involved the worship of Ahura Mazda

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahura_Mazda
 
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Mr.Spock said:
do we know its origins? :shrug:
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It developed as a "logical" outgrowth of monolatry/henotheism, or the worship of a single god while acknowledging other ones, and monism, the belief that all gods are aspects or manifestations of a higher being.

Henotheism had existed for a long time in most civilizations and organised religions- one city had a patron deity, another city had a different one, and that god was venerated above all other deities in that region.
Monism first developed in Egypt, as an outgrowth of the Cult of Ra and the sun. This became a full-blown monotheistic religion with Atenism, devised and promoted by Pharaoh Akhenaten. After his downfall and the reinstatement of state polytheism, some of the immigrant ethnicities who had adapted well to it, such as henotheistic Habiru (or, Hebrews) people and their Cult of El, were persecuted for their adherence to extreme monolatry.
When they eventually fled back to the lands where they had originated, their monolatry developed into proto-Judaism, originally an ethnic henotheist religion, as a reaction against other polytheist religions held by rival ethnic groups. A way of saying "our god is more powerful than yours, so watch you step."
This mode of thinking developed further after the Jewish captivity in Babylon, where some think that the Old Testament was first put to writing. When the Jews brought their chief god, El, to a foreign nation, and still held onto their beliefs in El as superior deity, they placed him above all other gods, which they labelled as "false gods", and in so doing, transformed Judaism into a monotheistic nationalist religion, a form it has retained to this day, and has influenced more universalist offshoots like Christianity, Islam, and Baha'i.

In a similar development, in Persia, developments of native, ethnic religions led to the mono/duo-theistic religion of Zoroastrianism, which proclaimed a dualist system, of a supreme creator god, Ahura Mazda, and an opposing, evil, god of darkness, Angra Mainyu, in constant opposition. Although, not exactly monotheist, as it recognises an opposing deity, there are no allowances for worshipping a god other than Ahura Mazda, and so it is, in practice, monotheistic.
Zoroastrianism, as a religion of an Indo-European peoples, may have ties to Vedic religions and early Hinduism, another Indo-European folk religion, which itself has monotheistic, or at least monist, tendencies.
 
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S.A.M. said:
Wasn't El the god of the Canaans?
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From what I can find out, most of the archaeological evidence shows that the Hebrews were part of a nomadic confederation of tribes that originated in the Levant and Fertile Crescent, and swept through that region and then into Egypt; they mostly believed in the polytheistic religion native to Canaan and Mesopotamia.
This confederation, the Hyksos, succeeded conquering and ruling that country for about a century. When they were overthrown, some settled down, and one of those ethnic groups was the Habiru, or Hebrews.
 
Hapsburg said:
From what I can find out, most of the archaeological evidence shows that the Hebrews were part of a nomadic confederation of tribes that originated in the Levant and Fertile Crescent, and swept through that region and then into Egypt; they mostly believed in the polytheistic religion native to Canaan and Mesopotamia.
This confederation, the Hyksos, succeeded conquering and ruling that country for about a century. When they were overthrown, some settled down, and one of those ethnic groups was the Habiru, or Hebrews.
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Yeah I read that too.

I was referring to the Canaanite pantheon

The pantheon was conceived as a divine family, headed by the supreme god El; the gods collectively made up the Elohim:

* Anat, Virgin goddess of War and Strife, mate and sister of Ba'al Hadad
* Asherah walker of the sea, Mother Goddess, wife of El (also known as Elat)
* Astarte, possibly androgynous divinity associated with Venus
* Baalat or Baalit, the wife or female counterpart of Baal (also Belili)
* Ba'al Hadad, storm God, superseded El as head of the Pantheon
* Baal-Hammon, god of fertility and renewer of all energies in the Phoenician colonies of the Western Mediterranean
* Dagon, god of crop fertility, father of Hadad (usually).
* El Elyon (i.e. God most high) and El
* Eshmun or Baalat Asclepius, god of healing (or goddess)
* Kotharat
* Kathirat, goddesses of marriage and pregnancy
* Kothar, Hasis, the skilled, god of craftsmanship
* Lotan, serpent ally of evil ,Yam
* Melqart, king of the city, the underworld and cycle of vegetation in Tyre
* Moloch, "king" of child sacrifices
* Mot, God of Death
* Qadeshtu, Holy One, Goddess of Love
* Resheph God of Plague and healing
* Shalim and Shachar
* Shamayim, the God of the Heavens.
* Shemesh, Sun God
* Tehwom, Goddess of the "Deeps"
* Yam-nahar or Yam, also called Judge Nahar
* Yarikh God of the moon, lover of Nikkal
* Zedek


And I wondered if El was the same God.
 
Mr.Spock said:
do we know its origins? :shrug:
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Local or more global?

In what is currently known as the Middle East, tribes usually had their own individual and local deity who was seen to be their guardian, if you will.

To date, I think the first individual to actually proclaim that there was only 1 'god' was Pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), who attempted to force all in the Egyptian Empire to adopt Aten (think sun god), as the one true God.
 
There's a book on the topic, that eveyone who has read it says is great. I haven't,

The History of God http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_God

but I keep running into details and quotes that others have taken from that book, among them that much of the Bible's Old Testament was written before the religion narrowed down to one God (which others have pointed as well, noting that an accurate translation of the famous opening line of Genesis would be: "In the Beginning, the Gods Created the Heavens and the Earth" ).
 
I don't agree with Asguard, Zoroastrism was fairly successful, and there are Zoroastrists even now. And it supposedly is older than Judaism. So my vote goes to Zoroastrism as one of the first known classical monotheist religions.

All in all I think there's nothing special about monotheism, a concept just as good and bad as any.
 
I will say one thing for it, it alowed infant humanity to begin to think about how the world worked and why which eventually seperated from religion into fully fledged science. Before that to predict a thunderstorm you would have to work out the sex lives and relationships between 100s of gods, after it you could imagin one underlying REASON why it was going to rain or why the sky became black (elclips) ect and eventually to predict them
 
Asguard said:
I will say one thing for it, it alowed infant humanity to begin to think about how the world worked and why which eventually seperated from religion into fully fledged science. Before that to predict a thunderstorm you would have to work out the sex lives and relationships between 100s of gods, after it you could imagin one underlying REASON why it was going to rain or why the sky became black (elclips) ect and eventually to predict them
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And gave a model for fascism and other authoritarian total dominance societal structures. Daddy is in charge in heaven as on earth. The monotheisms also paved the way for denial of the earths importance, the descralization of nature. We can dominate nature and treat it is as if it has no interests of its own. And if we look around today: we can replace 'faulty' nature with a better one. That we do this to ourselves also is not compensation.
 
Asguard said:
Mr spock i would say the begining was the factual person who became Mosas. He wanted to become the one "god" when he broke the tribe who became the jews away from the egyptions. So he made rules that said you couldnt worship anyone but him. I would sugest that is probably where the monothiastic religions started
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I do not agree with u.May Allah send blesings upon Moses who caled in worshipping ALLAH.I believe in his revelation and prophet ent by God to paraoh and jews to call for the unity of ALLAH.He was given Miracles by allah uch as saving jews from paraoh by slpiiting his stick by ALLAH leave and defeat magician since in that time was known as era of magic
 
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