I saw a flaming thread about Christianity, and I think we can appreciate both sides by learning a little history about monotheism. This started as a reply post, but I thought it deserved its own thread. Read this and you'll understand why the ideas are awesome and the church wasn't.

Monotheism started when the Persian polytheist priest Zoroaster had a mystical experience, like many of us have experienced here. He said there was only one highest truth, one formless godhead called Ahura Mazda, and all polytheistic gods are false. Zoroastrians use fire as a symbol for God because of its ungraspable nature. He wrote some hymns, the Gathas, which spoke about Ahura Mazda and the nature of "good mind", Vohu Mana. Zoroastrianism developed over the years and developed most of our modern dualistic ideas, such as good and evil, Heaven and Hell, God (Ahura Mazda) and Satan (Angra Mainyu). It also started many popular ideas about creation, apocalypticism, and a fall from righteousness.

These ideas diversified and spread around the middle east, gaining a small following in Israel. Israel was mostly polytheistic, and apocalyptic teachers told Israelis to repent and follow the one true God because the end was near (isn't it always?). Assyrians from north of Israel pillaged and destroyed Israel, and many Israelis fled. A group of these monotheists gathered in the small state of Judah south of Israel. They claimed to survive because they were chosen by God. At this point, everything they knew came from oral tradition.

These people in Judah, or Jews, created a theocratic government based on this oral tradition. They created laws to protect each other and to differentiate themselves from foreigners. They didn't eat pork or shellfish because these foods could be dangerous if prepared incorrectly. They all cut their hair a certain way so they could recognize outsiders. The temple was the center of the Jewish community. It was where Jewish citizens went to pay their taxes, have celebrations, and worship. It was a political center where laws were made and government gold was stored.

Religion was law, and law was religion. Whenever Judah was invaded and the temple destroyed, the people stayed together and defined themselves through their traditions. Over and over again, they regrouped back in Judah after being exiled. Each time they came back, they celebrated because God had chosen them to survive. Those who did not make it were said to not be chosen by God.

These traditions became concrete, and people followed these laws without knowing why they were created in the first place. Many of these laws were created to keep people happy and safe, but they were now being used to keep people in power. There were four main social classes in Judah, and it was ruled by the Pharisees.

By this time, most people had forgotten about the original teachings of Zoroaster. Zoroastrianism maintained a small following in Persia (Iran), but Judah had its own stories and traditions. His original message was to be good to each other, stop worshipping made up gods, and seek higher truth. This was about 2000 years later, and most people were doing the opposite. Political activists began to speak out against these laws, and one of these activists was a rabbi named Jesus.

I think most Christians miss the point Jesus was trying to make. Jesus spoke a lot of truth in ways people from Judah could understand. His message was peace, love, and acceptance. He adopted everything else from the Jewish tradition. He wouldn't have gotten his message out if he denied Jewish law any more than he did. He really did shoot down most of the stuff we hate about religion.

The truth is that we don't know a whole lot about Jesus' life. Of course people are going to make up stories about him. They did the same with Buddha and his "psychic powers." There are so many gospels (stories) out there that aren't even in the Bible. At first, everyone had a different idea of what Jesus did because each region had its own stories.

Paul of Tarsus was against Christianity until he had a vision (oh hey, isn't that familiar) and saw Jesus speak to him. This was after he was crucified. Inspired by this vision, Paul sent a bunch of letters (epistles) to early Christian groups, telling them HIS ideas about Jesus. Paul placed a lot of importance on faith, and he focused more on the stories about Jesus than he did on what Jesus actually taught. Pauline Christianity did two things: it started to unify Christian thought, and it emphasized Jesus' stories instead of his message.

Christianity came to power when Simon, aka Peter, started his church in Rome. Keep in mind that Rome was FAR away from Jerusalem, both geographically and culturally. Rome was the center of the Roman empire, and it was filled with the ideas of Rome instead of the ideas of Judah (land of the Jews, just south of Israel). Think Greco-Roman gods like Zeus, and Greco-Roman philosophers like Aristotle. People from this region pictured Jesus as a god because their gods were very human. Jewish Christians wouldn't dream of making Jesus a deity because this would be idol worship.

The Roman church became very powerful when the Roman emperor Constantine converted. He made this sect of Christianity the official religion of Rome, and it dominated Europe. This Christian sect became the ONLY Christian sect, and the Catholic Church was born. It selected Roman gospels and Paul's epistles, and it condemned the others. It combined the Jewish Tanakh (Old Testament) with these writings (New Testament) to make the Bible.

When Rome collapsed, the Roman Catholic church remained. The Holy Roman Empire ruled over Europe, and more or less started and enforced the Dark Ages. It invented a variety of taxes which were enforced by faith (such as indulgences), and philosophy was eradicated to ensure unquestioning obedience. Only church officials could read, and the church did not and would not translate the Bible into a language anyone could understand. In this way, most of Jesus' ideas were oppressed in favor of his stories.

The church held power and wealth over everyone, including kings. Everyone was poor, and the church was indescribably rich. Meanwhile, Muhammad formed the Islamic Empire that encroached upon Christian territory in the south. That's another story, but the church sent millions to die in a war that didn't go anywhere. This was the most brutal time period one could possibly live in. The Roman Catholic Church was probably the most profitable organization of all time, at the expense of human evolution and well-being.

Humanity recovered during the Renaissance when Martin Luther published a list of 95 complaints about the Catholic church, called the 95 Theses. Like Jesus, Martin Luther taught that people should follow their own paths. The church began to lose power when King Louis broke Catholic ties and formed the Church of England. Others followed King Louis' lead, and the Catholic church lost its oppressive abilities.

Philosophy, science, art, and literature exploded. And God saw that it was good.

I have read and heard that the supremacy of Ra in the Egyptian system is monotheistic, and that the other beings are akin to spirits or angles as opposed to gods, that ra was viewed as above all.

Vishnu can be seen in a similar light, as with amitabha Buddha.

I am unsure that monotheism originates entirely with Zoroaster, though he is one of the earliest recorded sources of it.

Interesting stuff though you can find monotheistic religions older than Zoroastrianism it is still a root source of it in our culture,

nice summary, thanks for sharing this. some of these things are a little more complex than you lay them out. but none the less, great read.

Thank you Gateless,
An very good brief summary of the pre-history and development of Christianity.

May I recommend "The historical Jesus" and "The Jesus Seminar" for more on the man who was Jesus (the Christ). I would post thes links but I am physically and technologically challenged.
Spangles

Thanks for the book recommendations, Spangles. I'll have to read those as soon as I finish Dune.

Haeratic, you bring up a good point. This short summary I wrote out doesn't even begin to describe many important events and cultural developments that took place. And like anyone, I have biases and limits to my knowledge of the subject.

AlbertKLloyd, I have read a bit about beliefs like these. Often, a city-state would have a god of that land, who would protect them and nobody else. They acknowledged other gods, but sometimes treated them as enemies. A god was like a king. Eventually, these beliefs became more refined, like we can see with the Egyptians.

A belief in one highest god and an acknowledgment of others is often referred to as henotheism. I personally consider this to be essentially monotheist, but a couple people have argued that it is closer to polytheism. Of course, there's a spectrum. In Hinduism, Brahman is the ultimate reality or truth which is manifested in everything and everyone. The gods are also manifestations of Brahman. Most people would still consider this polytheism though because Hindus worship more personal gods.

You can also see henotheism in Christianity. Some Christians pray to saints and angels, though they are not considered to be gods themselves. They could be considered beings on the same level as Buddhist arhats or bodhisattvas, enlightened historical people within Therevada and Mahayana Buddhism, respectively.

More recommended reading: The Evolution of God

http://www.evolutionofgod.net/

..nice summary thanks gateless..

some vestiges of more gnostic or feminine or original christianity lingered on up to around the 12th Century through the Black Madonna in Spain etc..probably the Templars too, till they got burned at the stake..!

Shall we please be careful not to let another thread like this burn to the ground?


Kind regards,

The Traveler

..point taken Traveler..

it's hard to know what to say without offending someone!
i never imagined the final days of 2012 would see the christian-nexian wars!..should've foreseen it and stuck to entheogen talk..

In my own study, Hinduism appears to be a very broad category whose very name references a region and not a belief set.

The Trimurti is analogous to a divinity, and it is said in many Vedic texts that they are one, indivisible and supreme, thus no division exists in many teachings between Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, all are as elements of a singularity that can be viewed as monotheistic, but it depends upon the Vedic teachings because more recent works delineate them as separate deities and as entities, though early works seem to address their essence as a form of quality and not as personalities. To expound upon this takes more time and space than I wish to employ at present, but I view some of the Hindu or Vedic systems and cosmologies as monotheistic in interpretation, and other manifestations as fundamentally polytheistic.

Of course concepts are hard to a slate due to the limiting parameters of language, the word god is not a very good translation of some of these concepts, thus for some, the idea that the Trimurti are God is questionable in terms of the original intent of the teachings. Likewise in some some translations what also might be called spirits are called gods, leading to polytheistic interpretations as an artifact of western scholarship.

I wonder about this, for in one light, one might view Christianity and Judaism as fundamentally polytheistic, for one might consider angels and other such divine creatures as gods themselves. In one light perhaps then one might consider true monotheism to indicate that there is but one god and no other spirits, angels, beings etc, just a single one.

The Ten Commandments include a commandment to have no other gods before YHVH, indicating a subtle tone of polythesism in terms of the suggestion, implicitly, that other gods indeed exist but are not to be worshiped. So this might be considered authoritarian or even political monotheism as opposed to monotheism in an absolute sense.

Still, despite many years of study I remain ignorant and what I offer here are just thoughts, not observations in the truest sense.