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 Stories from the Judaeo-Christian bible have been around a long time. The creation account is so ancient that it predates writing, and appears to have had its origin in the first city: Sumer. Although the names were different, the Sumerian creation account includes Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Noah amongst others. Even the Mesopotamian concept of God (singular plural) was the same. It was used to describe the chief deity in a council of gods.
The creation story has no real beginning date since it pre-dates the written word, and evolved with each telling. As knowledge changed, so would the story. Clans began to interact and trade with other clans, sharing religious stories along with produce and supplies. Generations passed, each one adding new details and concepts to the original stories until very little of the original story remained.
This was ancient Mesopotamia.
Small city-states began sprouting up all along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, using the water for travel as well as irrigation. As new technology improved farming and decreased flooding, the Mesopotamian population began exploding. And their long history trading and sharing religious ideas, meant these city-states believed in more than one deity, though each population tended to favor one over another. That favored deity was known as their patron god/goddess.
Sumer favored Enki/Ea. Lagash favored Shamash. Ur favored Inanna. Etc. Etc. Though they had favored gods/goddesses, they still acknowledged and respected the other deities. This could involved offering sacrifices, sex, offerings, pilgrimages, or creating pious statues that could kneel in perpetual adoration beneath the alter floors.
In the beginning, the number of gods coincided with amount of natural forces at work around them: sun, moon, rivers, ocean, day, night, rain, rainy season, dry season, fertility, harvest, storms, trees, desert, etc. But as their knowledge increased, so did the number of gods they needed. With the invention of the plow, they needed a god of the plow. With the invention of the axel, they needed a god of the axel. With the invention of writing, they needed a god of writing. And if you have new gods, that you needed parents, siblings, etc., and so complicated relationships were created to explain their position in the panthenon.
EXAMPLES:
Inanna was the goddess of fertility and bounty, which meant her worshippers favored fertility rituals (often involving nugigs - priestesses who were the living representatives of their goddess). Through the sexual act, the worshipper (as the plow), would till the fertile soil (the priestess), and plant his seed. (FYI: when a child was conceived by one of these sacred joinings, he would be considered a messiah/savior.)
Enki was god of freshwater (and later of crafts)--including that of the Tigris and Euphrates. Both rivers were known to overflow their banks, but the Tigres was the most violent and could bring the worst devastation. The Mesopotamian landscape was riddled with irrigation channels that would irrigate their crops. Needless to say, this made Enki a powerful deity. He could wipe out crops or whole communities in a flood. His worshippers sacrificed fish and other water creatures to appease him. The priest would dress in a fish costume--since he was the living representative of Enki--and accept these sacrifices as his due.
Eventually, the sheer number of deities became insupportable. How could any worshipper adequately honor thousands of deities? Something had to be done. The panthenons were too unwieldy, and as with anything that becomes too huge to support itself, it had to either adjust or die.
Nothing is simple. I suspect there were multiple concurrent events that forced the consolidation of gods/goddesses...the most influential being political expediency and economic necessity.
Politically, it is easier to control the masses if they all worship the same set of deities. The masses can be rallied to war under the name of one (or more, especially if the god has become triune). Laws, if enacted in the name of a deity, are more likely to be self-enforced (without the need of police) if the people believe obedience will please their god.
SIDENOTE: This may have been the impetus for the bloody civil war between the Levites that accompanied Moses onto the Mountain and returned with laws for the people, and the Levites that remained in the valley and started worshipping the Golden Calf.
Economically, thousands of deities would have required thousands of priests. Such a massive priesthood would have become too dangerous to the ruler and too expensive for the nation to support. Sacrifices required to appease thousands of deities would have crippled the masses. I suspect the various priesthoods probably started fighting amongst themselves for worshippers -- more, specifically, for the offerings that the worshippers brought to them -- and that might have similiarly endangered the sovereignty of the nation, making them vulnerable to outside attacks.
The Hebrew scriptures repeatedly illustrate the importance of war in establishing or discrediting deities. When the Israelites escaped captivity from Egypt, it was a victory for their patron deity, Yah. It proved he was stronger than Egypt's gods. When the Israelites entered Canaan, their wars were against the gods of the Canaanites. Their genocidal tactics were meant to eliminate all evidence of those foreign deities, and all the worshippers, as well, lest they be tempted to integrate foreign gods into their own worship (which they repeatedly did).
SIDENOTE: If the Israelites won, it was a sign of Yah's supremacy. If they lost, it was a sign of Yah's displeasure with them due to a sin in their camp. They'd find the culprit (even if they had to frame someone), and sacrifice him and his family to Yah (e.g. Achan, et al). This "purged the camp" of sin and ensured a subsequent victory. Notice the political genius of this tactic. Blaming a person for the defeat, meant the people retained their confidence in Yah, and retained a healthy fear of disobeying their leaders, who spoke for Yah. More importantly, it gave the people confidence in their ability to defeat the enemy since, this time, there was no sin in their midst.
After Solomon, Israel began to decline in importance, ultimately being defeated by other nations. The prophets blamed it on the people turning away from Yah. They claimed Israel had integrated pagan practices into Judaism and lost Yah's favor. And it's true, the Israelites had integrated other religions into their own. Most influential of all religions upon Judaism was Zorastrianism--the predominate religion of Persia while Israel was dispersed there. The prophets lamented over the people's infidelity...even while teaching Zorastrian concepts: duality, heaven and hell, a messianic reign, the messiah, etc.--concepts foreign to Judaism until that timeframe. True, the Israelites didn't worship Ahurah Mazda (the Great Lord, 7-in-1), but they integrated Ahurah Mazdah's theology into their own. Kabbalism--Jewish mysticism--also had its start here.
The above illustration was not a unique phenomina but common. Defeated gods/goddesses didn't completely disappear. Aspects of them--their beliefs, attributes, practices--were often incorporated into another, more popular, deity. Thousands of deities became a few hundred which became a few dozen, etc., but the needs which initially spawned thousands of deities hadn't changed. Those needs still needed an outlet. The inexplicable still needed an explanation. So each time a god/goddess was eliminated, its contribution to mankind was retained, eventually resulting in the omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscence we associate with our modern deities. |
