it’s sort of amusing that humans invented polytheism, monotheism, atheism, in that order.
Did we tho? I mean, Judaism’s been around for like almost 6000 years hasn’t it? I’m hard pressed to think of a religion that predates that, the mesopotamian, egyptian, and indus valley civilizations were more like contemporaries I thought. And prior to that wasn’t it more like animism than polytheism?
Judaism’s been around for like almost 6000 years hasn’t it
Ah 6000 years, as old as the Earth then.
More seriously though, I was brought to believe that that’s not really true. Historical records of Israel don’t go further back than the 13th century BCE and scholars seem to have charted a progression with the ancient Israelite religion from polytheism, possibly to monolatrism, then to monotheism, with strict monotheism possibly emerging around 6BCE (a.k.a. the Second Temple Period).
Rabbinic Judaism certainly isn’t older than about 1500 years. Judaism qua Judaism, i.e., a distinct religion which strongly differentiated itself on more than ethnic lines from those around it, formed about the period of the Babylonian Captivity, when the need to create a stable Jewish identity in a foreign land became important. (But religions aren’t static, and this religion was different in important ways from later, rabbinic Judaism.) Post-Exile is also when the religion of Israel became distinctly monotheistic; monotheism/monolatrism had originally been a minority view within the ancient Hebrew religion. El, one of the prototypes of God as found in Judaism, was a major Canaanite deity, the consort of Asherah, later merged with Yahweh. The background of the ancient Hebrew religion is fairly ordinary Semitic polytheism, it’s just that for unique historical reasons the national god of Israel has had a lot more staying power than Chemosh, Milcom, or Quas.
I was going to question this on the grounds that pretty much every single religion seems to have strong tendencies in both directions. The “monotheistic” religions separate their god out into numerous components and intercessors and powers, and the “polytheistic” religions quite often (Always?) seem to have notable traditions insisting that all the different gods are simply expressions of one singular godhead.
Many Aztec philosophers and priests believed that the Gods were all expressions of one unified godhead; their religion is “polytheistic”.
The Christians say the same about the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, their religion is “monotheistic”.
I’d like to see evidence that one of these traditions actually predates the other.
Monotheism, in the modern sense of the term, doesn’t show up before the Axial Age. You don’t even have the right philosophical ingredients available.
You can find instances of henotheism from way back when, if that matters to you. “Our god is the best god, we worship only him, accept no substitutes” is not a difficult idea to generate.
But a monotheistic god is a different sort of creature, conceptually, from “a pagan polytheistic god except that there’s only one in existence.” A monotheistic god is not just, like, a superpowered prayer-answering wizard who lives on a mountain somewhere. A monotheistic god is necessarily part of the system of the world. (This is true whether or not you buy into omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, any of that Ultimate Stuff – although it’s not an accident that monotheists keep being drawn to Ultimate Stuff.) Monotheism implies that at least certain things work the same everywhere, that godliness is connected to some kind of universal existential truth that can be studied and understood.
And, surprise surprise, monotheism-in-the-modern-sense appears at right about the time when people start asking big philosophical questions about universal truths. Which is basically the same time across, at least, Eurasia.