Let’s Talk About Monotheism

Wikipedia defines monotheism as “… the belief in the existence of one and only one god.” Apparently the word God is not capitalized the way most of us would normally type it because of the fact that there are many gods in other religions and we don’t normally capitalize the word when we refer to other gods. I am speaking as a monotheist myself. I am speaking as a Jew.

“Mono” means one, and “theism” means the doctrine or belief in the existence of a God or gods. So, the belief in one God is a belief that is sets monotheists apart from the belief in more than one god. There are a handful of monotheistic religions in the world today, most notably Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These are the three major religions in the modern world, and they all represent monotheism, although in very different ways.

Unless a person sets about to study the history of religion and comes to understand that the world was very different in the past, it is quite normal to think that monotheism has always been the primary accepted belief. But that is not the case at all. I am going to take the liberty of generalizing for the sake of this article, but of course many references can be found on and offline for my statements.

Centuries ago when people couldn’t read, even before there were written languages for humans to communicate, people had a deep need to connect with something or someone more powerful than themselves. That is a basic human need which seems very much like the desire for safety and security seen in human infants. Babies cry out for what they need, and we often do the same to a power greater than ourselves when we come before God to pray. Before there was a social, political or religious concept of only one god, there were literally thousands of gods with different names and purposes that people at different times and in different places recognized as their own. These deities were based on objects that humans could see and touch, or in the case of the moon and the stars in the sky, that humans could not touch. Of course we long to touch the moon, and that is basis of worship, longing. Humans longed for what they could not have and made idols or objects of worship out of familiar things to represent unattainable qualities.

For example, an image or a sculpture of a bear might be used to represent unattainable strength in the world, while the image of a superhuman god might represent power in higher realms. It was comforting to think that the spirit of an animal in this world or an invisible god in another world could provide protection and power when needed. And of course it was generally understood, although the understandings were many and varied, that one must please the gods in order to earn protection and power for oneself and one’s family . Pleasing the gods took a variety of forms, but generally involved bringing sacrifices to a special place at a special time. The nature of sacrificial offerings over the course of history is nearly incomprehensible to us today, but the geographical and cultural norms made sense to people in ancient times. Regional plants and animals were involved, making the study of ancient worship on each continent quite elaborate and unique.

It is understood by monotheists following Torah, the Bible and the Koran that Abraham the Patriarch was the first person to promote monotheism. His story is well known, having been retold in countless Bible commentaries and also popular novels and TV documentaries. As regards the exact time in history when Abraham appeared on the scene, it is heavily debated. Summarizing a much longer explanation, Wikipedia concludes...” the most that can be said with some degree of certainty is that the standard Hebrew text of Genesis places Abraham in the earlier part of the second millennium BCE[Before Common Era, which is the same as BC].” That means somewhere in the two thousand years before the birth of Jesus, or about 3,500 to 4,000 years ago. So, it’s no surprise that a large proportion of the world’s population today has no other understanding of religion than monotheism itself.

I treasure the understanding that once upon a time there lived one man who said, “Enough!” because he knew in his soul and his spirit that many gods did not represent true power. Abraham was that man, and whether his story is merely allegory, as some people believe, or whether he was a real man whose remains are buried in a double cave in Machpela in Israel, I admire him. Breaking out of centuries of tradition, while leaving his family and community to establish an entirely new culture in a distant land, Abraham broke the chains that bound the entire world to false images of power and gave it hope in one true Creator of the Universe. We have Abraham to thank for the fact that monotheism, or one God is the primary concept accepted in the world today.