The Origin Of Polytheism And Monotheism – OpEd
Dogs are pack hunter wolves that became Homo sapiens best friends. The wild dogs in Africa are pack hunters whose packs must out number their enemies by 3 to 1, because their enemies are always bigger then they are, if they are to survive. Homo sapiens needed weapons and bands of larger and larger groups to survive. Over the last hundred thousand years, religion evolved to make small bands into ever larger tribes.
As Torah tells us: ” God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea; the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:28)
Since the time of Aristotle philosophers have thought that mankind’s ability to use tools was what made humans unique. However, we now know that many different species (including birds) use tools, and Chimps not only use tools but also make at least three different kinds of tools for different functions.
So if tool making, culture, self awareness and language do not distinguish humans from our nearest primate relatives, what makes humans what we are? I offer human religious spirituality as an answer.
For almost all of the last 200,000 years Homo Sapiens were small group, hierarchically organized, social primates. Although biological evolution occurs in individuals, any genes that enable the group (extended family and/or band) to function better as a group, will contribute to individual survival rates and reproductive success within the group.
If one takes seriously the Torah’s claim that humanity was created in the Divine image, or the Qur’an statement that humans were created to be vice-regents with God, spiritual evolution testifies to the creation of creatures who are social co-creators of purpose driven non-material responses to environmental and social challenges.
Among the earliest Gods were birth Goddesses. Small stone figures of very pregnant birth Goddesses often referred to as “Venus” figures go back 30-35,000 years. They are the first examples of iconic religion. The worship of spirits within natural phenomena does not need iconic representation. But birth rarely took place in the open or in public.
The birth Goddess needed to be present in some tangible way in order to ease the anxiety of women in labor. Even today in some African countries the maternal mortality rate is 3% per birth. A woman who gave birth to 8 children had a one in four chance of dying from giving birth. Any band would benefit even if the presence of Goddesses reduced that mortality rate by only 5%. Carvings in wood of birth Goddesses probably preceded stone statues by many millennia and may have originated 50-100,000 years ago.
The biblical term for food offerings is korban. The verb l’karayv means to draw near or come close. A korban is a way to attach, engage or bind the human realm to the spirit realm. When food and drink are offered to another it is not a sacrifice. Food and liquid offerings are an invitation to a closer relationship.
Especially during ceremonial occasions food and drink serve to bring people together, including those who have been estranged from one another because of transgressions that have occurred. Thus offerings to the Gods can help people who feel estranged from God return to a closer (karayv) relationship. The food offered to a God is usually eaten wholly or in part by those who contribute it or by the priests who offer it.
God doesn’t want grain or meat offerings (Psalm 40:7). Humans offer them, especially when they feel estranged from the Divine, in order to draw closer (karayv) to the Divine. Only the sacrifice of human beings should be called sacrifice. While human sacrifice was widespread in the past it was usually relatively rare.
Ritual specialists, who unlike charismatic Shamans are more likely to be administrator types, usually direct these offerings. As time goes on the rites tend to get more complex and the necessary skills require more training. Those people performing the complex rites easily become a hereditary cast of professional priests.
They sometimes also offer an alternative type of leadership to that of the hunter/warrior types. Priests can become the custodians of the customary law of the tribe. Priests can offer advice to help in making important decisions by consulting the gods to determine their will.
Fortune telling enables decision-makers to avoid the backlash of wrong decisions while claiming credit for the good ones. Divination also reduces many people’s anxiety about difficult decisions in unclear situations. Even today millions of Americans still consult astrology charts and in Asia people in Buddhist temples still cast their fortunes.
Small groups that lack an incest taboo will be plagued by the ills of inbreeding; therefore exogamy in mating will be selected for. As ancestor worship strengthens kinship ties over more and more generations, it also expands kinship ties over more nomadic bands creating larger clans and tribes. These clans and tribes must gather periodically at a special place to exchange future mates.
They also started exchanging i.e. trading for desirable objects not found in their usual locale. Seashells, obsidian, red ocher and other materials have been found in campsites and graves more than 100-200 miles away from their closest source. The stronger the attraction of a special place, the greater the effort that distant clans will make to attend, so gathering spots that are turned into sacred sites of pilgrimage through special seasonal rites will enrich human communities both socially and economically. There are scholars who think that mankind’s advanced trade networks helped them out compete Homo Neanderthals in Europe (recent studies of Neanderthal DNA show that they were a distinct species not ancestral to us).
The need for all the clans to show up about the same time leads to fixed seasonal holy days and religious calendars. The need to mark time for pilgrimage festivals led people to study the cycle of the moon and the movement of the constellations and thus move some of the spirit powers into the sky.
Recent brain studies have shown how biologically organic trust and sharing are to human minds. Activities that build group loyalty and interpersonal trust enhance individual survival and promote individual spirituality much more than cognitive beliefs and ideologies. But urbanization, writing and mass communications may be changing this. Written revelation introduced a tremendous force expanding the power of religion both in space and time.
The development of a class of religious scholars who study sacred scriptures and attempt to spread the sacred teachings among the people only happens when a religion has a “book”. The impact of religions with written revelations on historic human culture is comparable to the impact of modern science and invention on 20th century lifestyles. Both together will make the 21st century a turning point in human destiny.
What role does God (the One God of the revealed religions) play in all this? According to Genesis 4:26 humans only began to call upon the name of the One Lord in the days of Adam and Enosh. That means that the generations prior to Adam and Enosh evolved religion naturally. Only with the rise of scriptural revelations did the One God enter into human consciousness. Or it could mean that human consciousness had risen to the level of being able to receive Divine communication from the One God. It took over 3,000 years for monotheism to spread world-wide even with scriptural revelations so it is not surprising that it took over a 100,000 years to get to humans ready to receive Divine revelations.
Spirituality among Homo Sapiens has been evolving for at least 100-150,000 years. The idea that reason, socialism or modern science would replace spiritual and religious thinking has turned out to be a wish fulfillment fantasy of some people, many of whom bear a grudge against religion and spirituality. Religious rituals and ideas are ubiquitous among humans and continue to evolve as the creative intelligent minds of Homo Sapiens encounter changes in their environment. This will most likely continue as long as we have creative intelligent minds.
But the thousands of years of human created polytheism made it very hard for God’s prophets to establish ongoing imageless monotheistic communities. For thousands of years after Prophet Adam and before Prophet Abraham, Allah sent thousands of prophets to thousands of tribes and nations on the earth, and not one of them were able to establish an ongoing imageless monotheistic community. So Allah decided to do things in a different way.
Allah decided to make a covenant with a small tribe, and send 600 of his prophets to this small tribe; and work continually for many centuries with the people of this tribe until they were able to establish an ongoing community that would always have a large core of righteous and loyal believers.
Allah selected Abraham the Hebrew (Genesis 14:13) and the descendants of Prophets Ishmael, Issac, and Jacob to become the first, but not the last monotheistic community. “There is for you an excellent example (to follow) in Abraham and those with him.” [Qur’an 60:4] and “Indeed Ibrahim was a nation obedient to Allah, a Hanif, he was not one of the polytheists.” [Qur’an 16:120].
As Prophet Isaiah said: “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he [Abraham] was only one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him. (Isaiah 51:1-2) and as the Qur’an states:”Follow the way of Abraham as people of pure faith.” (3:95)
Finally, if one believes that God inspired prophets are able to describe scenarios of various developments in the distant future then one has to accept that the understanding of these passages should change and improve as we come closer and closer to the times they describe. As an example, Jeremiah describes a radical future in which women surround men, “The Lord will create a new thing on earth-a woman will surround a man” (31:22).
The great commentator Rashi understands ‘surround’ to mean encircle. The most radical thing Rashi can think of (and in 11th century France it was radical) is that a woman will propose marriage (a wedding ring/circle) to men. In today’s feminist generation we can see women surrounding men in fields once almost exclusively male such as law, medical and rabbinical schools. Indeed women are now outperforming men in education in 70% of countries worldwide.
Of course, this means that a few generations from now we might have even better understandings of some predictive passages in the prophets so humility should always be within us.
Rabbi Allen S. Maller
Allen Maller retired in 2006 after 39 years as Rabbi of Temple Akiba in Culver City, Calif. He is the author of an introduction to Jewish mysticism. God. Sex and Kabbalah and editor of the Tikun series of High Holy Day prayerbooks.
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