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Notes -
Christians, like Jews before them, asserted quite strongly that the gods the average Roman of the day worshiped were false: non-existant and worthless at best, if not evil. This was unique to Jews and Christians, polytheist cultures in the region usually had an inclusive attitude towards foreign gods; not usually calling them "not real gods", but just ignoring them or sometimes adapting them within their own mythology.
This exclusive approach to God tended not to make monotheists very sympathetic to Romans.
The scriptures interestingly can go back and forth a bit on this. Some passages can be extremely 'disenchanting', firmly asserting that idols do not correspond to any kind of living or spiritual being, and have no power of any kind. In some places the New Testament seems to agree with this logic - for instance, 1 Corinthians 8:4, Romans 1:22-23, or the protest of the idol-makers in Acts 19:23-27 is remarkably materialistic. In other places, however, there is a sense that the gods of the nations may exist in some sense. Famously in Exodus, for instance, the Egyptian priests seem to possess magical powers of some kind as well (e.g. Exodus 7:20-24), and in places the New Testament also seems to flirt with this idea. Galatians 4 and Colossians 2 talk about the believers formerly being enslaved to "the elemental spirits of the universe", and while these are probably not gods in the proper sense (cf. Galatians 4:8), they do at least seem to be real, or possessed of some kind of power, even if that power is meagre and false in comparison to that of Christ. Indeed, that power seems to have been enough to make liberation from them necessary. This seems consistent with the various exorcism narratives in the gospels and Acts - whether 'god' is an appropriate name for them or not, the world appears to be populated with invisible spiritual powers, most of which are in some measure of rebellion against the Lord.
You can probably reconcile these perspectives to an extent - the world is full of hostile spiritual powers, and human beings deludedly believe that images made of stone and wood can influence these beings, or that the images come to contain power themselves - but I think it's nonetheless interesting that you can find the tension there.
Isn't this just a consequence of Christianity's curious choice to retain a legacy base of accumulated scriptures from hundreds of years as part of its canon? As you read between the lines of the Old Testament, it's possible to trace a gradual evolution from what was basically a standard polytheistic religion following the ancient Semitic pattern (multiple gods exist; our city/tribe's tutelary god is one of them; we owe him particular fealty and flattery because he is ours, and he will bring us success in battle against competing tribes and their gods in return; also don't think of slighting him or cheating with other gods, for he is very jealous) via gradual snorting of one's own supply (he really is better than the others, that's not just something we say because we have to) and dismissal of the competition (they are lesser/false gods) to something resembling the earlier Christian pattern (competing "gods" are more something like petty demons, evil and weak; our god is the God of everything, existing in a category wholly above petty city-state struggles). NT Christianity then simply continued this pattern, at a slower pace - I'm sure that if you had polled popes over the past 2000 years about their beliefs as to whether Baal Hammon "exists" and to what extent he can influence the real world, you would see a neat downwards trend.
This definitely isn't true narratively (in the sense that e.g. Genesis clearly sets out God as the Creator God) but I don't think this is true textually, either, at least in the sense that the older parts of the Old Testament are more polytheistic and the newer parts of the Old Testament are more monotheistic. Wikipedia, which I assume is probably a good summation of scholarly consensus, lists the Song of the Sea as possibly the oldest part of the Old Testament. And the Song of the Sea has a fairly standard monotheistic (or, if you prefer, henotheistic) line:
The Song of Moses (again, one of the four oldest passages as per Wikipedia), has even stronger language, identifying other "new" gods worshipped by the children of Israel as demons or devils, and differentiating God from the gods:
So it seems fairly clear that the earliest written parts of the Old Testament were already making a distinction between God and gods qualitatively, suggesting that the other gods were in some sense false. (Now, obviously, if you take the Scriptural narrative as a historical one, it definitely records that the children of Israel were in fact often polytheistic in practice.)
And as OliveTapenade points out, this sort of rhetoric (where the other gods are false gods or demons) doesn't gradually disappear, but reappears even in the New Testament. Interestingly (and to Goodguy's question below) my understanding is that some early Christian apologists centered some of their pitch around the idea that the old oracles had begun to die after the advent of Christ, which suggests that they thought a persuasive argument to pagans or post-pagans was "the old gods are out, the One True God has defeated them." (I guess pagans were primed for this, the death of Pan supposedly occurring under Tiberius' reign, chronologically close to the crucifixion of Christ). But in order to make those sorts of arguments, early apologists had to concede the existence of other gods of some kind. So the most maximalist monotheistic idea ("there are no other gods and pagan religious practices are all bunk") isn't really something that you see either in even the New Testament or the early Church.
To be fair, the sorts of people who make this evolutionary argument will typically point out that the Old Testament is not written down in the order in which it was composed (for instance, Genesis 2 is usually thought to be significantly older than Genesis 1), so we have to do a bit more work to determine which texts came first chronologically, and then discern the evolution that way.
They're no doubt correct to an extent here, but the risk is that the way we identify a text's origin comes to be a self-fulfilling prophecy - we might create a narrative for ourselves of development from polytheism to henotheism to monotheism, and on that basis alone assign more henotheistic-sounding texts to earlier strata. So some degree of skepticism is warranted, and classic forms of the documentary hypothesis have come under plenty of fire.
Incidentally:
There are some interesting examples of this! Here's one from the epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians:
The star of Bethlehem agitated the heavens, and destroyed the power of magic. So the people who might once have been in slavery to spirits, demons, or sorcerers have now been set free, and are ready to hear the gospel.
Merry Christmas!
(cf. also New Testament contempt for sorcerers, such as Simon Magus in Acts 8, or the fortune-telling girl in Acts 16:16-19. There may be a sense that the magic is 'real' - the girl's 'spirit of divination' enables her to immediately and correctly realises that Paul and Silas are apostles of God - but even so, it's bad, and Paul and Silas exorcise her and free her, much to the consternation of the girl's owners, who were making money from her power.)
Yes, I agree – that's why I focused on the Song of the Sea and the Song of Moses, since they're supposed to be composed early, as I understand it. From what I understand of mainstream Scriptural textual criticism, I'm a bit skeptical of some of the approaches
you[edit:] textual critics employ (for the reasons you lay out), but I think it's interesting to make arguments with even significant concessions. Any other candidates of early Old Testament texts that come to mind for you?Beautiful. Merry Christmas!
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I've read - and it has the ring of truth to me - that the earliest form of the First Commandment was thou shalt have no other gods before My face (that is, no (other) idols in Yahweh's temple/tabernacle/whatever).
I can see why one might think so, as a polytheistic precursor to the version we now have, but it's not in line with Judean polytheists' practice. When King Josiah of Judah decided he was done putting up with all this pagan nonsense, the Jerusalem temple had plenty of artifacts of polytheistic worship for him to burn, grind up, and/or throw into the river.
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But if that is true, then how in the world did the Christians win?
Much higher fertility rate and offering a better deal to people who had some influence in Roman society but weren't particularly esteemed. I encourage people to actually read the church fathers talking about how Christians should behave- it's not really a mystery why lots of people shut out of formal power in Roman society but with a bit of influence really liked Christianity. They got much better treatment that way.
The first laws Christians used their newfound power to get passed under Constantine, after of course protections for themselves, were slave welfare laws. That attitude extended up the totem pole; 'not getting treated like dirt by your immediate superiors' is a hell of a benefit in a strongly hierarchical society.
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Frequently the stubborn minority can outcompete the flexible majority.
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My confirmation saint, St Adrian, was a Roman soldier, a jailer of Christians, who saw the courage of Christians he imprisoned and was converted on the spot.
Certainly I'm inclined to give a fair amount of weight to the "being right" hypothesis. Eschewing the spirit of impartiality for a moment, it is at least partly because monotheism is true, Jesus is Lord, and many (one may even hope most) early Christians behaved as if this were true.
That last part is especially important. All sorts of things are true but don't spread; all sorts of things are false but do spread. The conviction and behaviour of the witnesses matters.
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Outbreeding and not killing their offspring. It seems to have been a numbers game.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=1kfnGJR59lk?si=6XCpXAJytPo_8HS4
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I'm not sure what part of pigeonburger's narrative makes it implausible that Christians might have done a good job of convincing pagans of this?
Indeed, on a more macrohistorical level, one of the observations I would make is that firstly polytheism seems remarkably fragile or weak in the face of robust monotheism, and secondly monotheisms seem remarkably resilient to each other.
Both Christianity and Islam expanded remarkably quickly and did excellent jobs of sweeping over pagan resistance - what efforts there were (sorry Julian) were mostly ineffective. Even factoring in that both Christians and Muslims used the sword and other incentives to an extent, they did this very rapidly. (And the sword by itself hardly seems to explain it - after all, polytheists are just as good at using brute force as monotheists.) To an extent we can continue to see this today, where traditional religions frequently don't put up much of a fight, looking through more recent evangelical or da'wah efforts in Africa or Asia. Hinduism is probably the only great polytheism to have resisted very strongly, and Hinduism has always had a bunch of quasi-monotheistic tendencies of its own.
Meanwhile, Christianity and Islam have both been noticeably ineffective at converting each other. There are a handful of exceptions (Muslims in Spain, Christians through parts of the Middle East), but for the most part, and barring a handful of individual exceptions, monotheist-to-monotheist conversions are quite rare. Judaism is also a strong example here. The biggest exception I think of here is Zoroastrianism, which did mostly collapse in the face of Islam (though it took a few centuries; most of early Islamic Persia remained Zoroastrian for a few centuries), and maybe you could argue Manichaeism or something as a Roman monotheism that also fell before Christianity, but in general it seems that when a monotheistic religion gets entrenched, it is extraordinarily difficult to convert people away from en masse.
Of course, today there's a third combatant in the ring in the form of atheism/secularism/irreligion, and it seems to be doing pretty well at smashing both Christianity and Islam. Perhaps in a few centuries my descendants will be discussing how zero-theism outcompeted monotheism just as monotheism outcompeted polytheism. But please forgive me if I hope that is not the case.
I think a big problem for premodern paganism was the lack of a Bible or Qu’ran as a way to unite the faith and to unify the practices and mores. Pagans were more open, but also less United and had fewer touchstones of belief — tribes outside of yours might not know your gods and even if they did, didn’t know the same mythology or worship in the same way.
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It seems like substituting "Abrahamic religions" for "monotheistic religions" in your model makes it fit with fewer epicycles.
Perhaps, but then I think I would have to deal with a new epicycle - what makes Abrahamic religion different to other monotheism? If there's an Abrahamic advantage separate from just monotheism, what is it?
A pro-social covenant premise?
Abrahamic religions have a common premise that not only is [God] real and present, but that while love may be unconditional favor is not- if you / your collective society sins greatly, not only will god permit the outsider to overthrow you, but God may throw the first meteor. On the flip side, the way to earn / retain gods favor is a bunch of tenants / commandments that, coincidentally, happen to be good for healthy societies that can succeed in cooperation, unleashing those benefits of scale.
This sort of covenant premise is not inherent to monotheism. You could believe there is one god, but that it expects nothing of you and implies no type of action. You could believe there is one god, but they are eternally absent. There could be one god, but it hates you. There could be a god and a covenant, but the demands are less socially beneficial. Etc.
It's interesting to note that the other ancient monotheistic religion which survives to this day, Zoroastrianism, is also very pro-social and big on sin reducing the favor of God.
The difference is that Abrahamaic religions command their adherents to improve the world. Zoroastrianism does not; in Zoroastrianism the adherent is commanded to do charity, but it doesn't actually matter if that charity helps the recipient. There is no equivalent to teach a man to fish as there is with Christian charity, which is big on education, hospitals, etc in comparison.
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Hard to tell since almost all modern monotheism is derived from Abrahamic religion, which itself probably takes its monotheism from Zoroastrianism. Even Sikhism which is the other major non-Abrahamic monotheistic faith was strongly influenced by Islam.
Sikhism is an interesting one to me - I wasn't terribly familiar with it until the first time I visited a gurdwara and heard a lot from a Sikh community in themselves. I already had some academic and practical knowledge of both Hinduism and Islam for context, and as they explained their history, doctrines, and practices to me it felt blazingly obvious what Sikhism is.
That is, and with apologies to any Sikhs here, to me Sikhism reads as what you get out of a Hindu reform movement in a place where there is a lot of Islam already in the water supply. There's a lot of it that feels midway between Hinduism and Islam, or as a kind of hybrid. If you come from a Hindu background (as Guru Nanak did), become convinced of the oneness of God in a way that goes a little beyond the soft-monotheism of a lot of Hindu theology, and are surrounded by Islamic influences but are not interested in just becoming Muslim yourself... well, it's fairly intuitive where that ends up.
Anyway, I don't think I would be convinced that Abrahamic monotheism ultimately originates in Zoroastrianism? I think there are Zoroastrian influences in the mix in places (the magoi Matthew references, famously, but also the Zoroastrian influences are especially visible on Islam), but the genealogy is too hard to trace through ancient Judah, I think. I find it more plausible that monotheism independently evolved in several different places historically - after all, if you glance at anything from Hinduism to European paganism to even Chinese traditional religion, I'd argue there are a number of proto-monotheistic trends that often seem to appear. Most of them didn't get to full monotheism the way that Zoroastrianism and Abrahamic religion did, but Brahman or Heaven or the Stoic vision of God or what have you are enough to make it plausible to me that concepts of a unitary divine can just evolve independently.
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I feel compelled to point out that this is evidence Christianity is correct.
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It only takes one contrarian sympathizer, if that sympathizer is the emperor. Constantine the Great converted and then started converting the empire.
*EDIT: As to how Christians converted Romans to subsist until that point; their attitude towards salvation was a big factor, as was the egalitarian nature of it all. That the lowliest of criminal could repent and accept salvation and be the equal of anyone else in Heaven is quite a revolutionary concept at the time. Romans and Greeks were making sacrifices and offerings to jockey for position in the Gods favors, only a few were going to be headed for paradise. As for the Jews, their texts were mostly concerned with what would happen to that specific people; what would happen to converts was not clear. But Jesus was clear; here is one God that only asks that you believe in Him and he immediately saves you, reserves a place in Heaven for you, and has you in as high a regard as anyone else who also accepted Him? Seems like a great deal! It's certainly a better chance at eternal life for the destitute and marginal than what they could hope for from the Roman and Greek polytheist worship.
Most Jews circa 2000 years ago did not believe in an afterlife. They thought you had your material body and that's it. A select few people get to leave to be with God. The rest of us are dead forever or resurrected in a strictly material sense.
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