How did belief in monotheism develop?

Answer 1

Monotheism started back in the Mesopotamia Era. It started when Moses came in to power and he supported Monotheism, which is pretty much believing that their is only one god. Moses believed Yahweh, and said that he was the one and only God. When Moses said all other gods were just imagination. When this got around it started spreading the idea of Monotheism Whoooo i can't believe i just wrote that, i feel so smart. Thank you A.P. World history. This wonderful description is by moi, im david and im 15 years old

Answer 2

Belief in monotheism arose independently in different religions over a long period of centuries.

It has been suggested that the earliest pagan religions that succeeded animism and shamanism worshipped Mother Earth, sometimes known as Gaia, as the sole divinity, although this claim is still debatable.

The earliest known monotheistic religion is Zoroastrianism, which arose in a polytheistic milieu in southern Russia sometime before 1700 BCE.

Amenhotep IV, later known as Akhenaten, introduced a number of reforms in Egypt, including the worship of one god, Aten - the sun disc. Like some other monotheistic religions, this was not totally mononotheistic, 'strongly monotheistic', because the people were required to worship Amenhotep IV, who was the son of Aten. In any case, the old religion must have continued outside the capital, since Egyptian monotheism did not survive Akhenaten's death.

Many see The Bible as implying that monotheism existed in the time of Abraham, or at least Moses, but scholars point out that there was no monotheistic belief among the Hebrew people before some time in the first millennium BCE. King Josiah introduced monotheistic Judaism as the official religion of Judah in the seventh century BCE. It has been pointed out that if monotheistic beliefs existed before the time of Josiah, then it must have been a small and persecuted sect, constantly at loggerheads with the monarchy. During the Babylonian Exile, Judaism came into contact with Zoroastrianism, which had arrived in Persia a century earlier, and appears to have adopted some Zoroastrian beliefs. In fact, a minority of scholars say that monotheistic Judaism really began at this time, and that the religious reforms of Josiah were written retrospectively into the Bible to give an appearance of antiquity.

Christianity was the next great monotheistic religion, but some scholars consider this religion to be 'weakly monotheistic'. The divinity of Jesus created problems forthe early Christians, who continued to hold to the monotheistic doctrine of the Jews, and this was eventually solved when Jesus came to be seen as one of three persons in the godhead of the Holy Trinity. Some scholars still regard Christianity as 'weakly monotheistic', not only because of the divinity of Jesus, but also the veneration of saints and the autonomy given to Satan.

Some six hundred years after Christianity, Islam adopted many of the concepts of Judaism and Christianity, but insists on the strong monotheism of Judaism.

Answer 3

There are several different ways to look at the development of monotheism. There are, of course, those who believe that monotheism was an inevitable development since it is based on absolute, revealed divine truth. It may also be that many people prefer monotheism because it is simpler to understand the universe by means of a single deity than by means of a complicated pantheon of many deities, and people enjoy simplicity. It may also be that the people who advocated monotheism were just more aggressive in their marketing strategy, than the adherents of polytheism. Perhaps in the competition for human belief, the most aggressive deity wins.