I’m currently in the process of reading a very intriguing book called God: A Human History by Reza Aslan, the religious scholar and commentator who has recently become more well-known through his media appearances about Islam. In this book, he traces the history of religion and belief in God from earliest days, essentially from time immemorial.

Throughout this book, he traces the evolution of how humanity conceives God or gods, and his central claim is that our mental conception of the divine often reflects ourselves as humans and the organisation of society. In essence, we humanise the divine based on our values in any given period. A controversial thesis for many believers, but a fascinating one nevertheless. Coming from the author himself, who has faith in God, it doesn’t necessarily need to undermine one’s belief.

Anyway, through this book, I’ve learnt a new scholarly term for the conception of divinity and I thought I would share it here. As hinted by the title of the post, it is Henotheism. This essentially means the belief in one supreme God without necessarily denying the existence of other lesser deities – an all-powerful god who rules over a pantheon of other divinities. This term has actually been around for quite some time, having been coined by Friedrich Schelling, a nineteenth century German philosopher.

Many religions throughout history and across the world, some even continuing till today, have held this conception of divinity, and many scholars suggest that it contributed to the rise of monotheism in the world. As human societies evolved from small relatively egalitarian agrarian communities to more centralised, hierarchical and authoritarian empires, the way they understood the divine changed as well. As kings emerged, king gods did too. Ancient Mesopotamia was one of the first civilisations to adopt this belief. In the early days of Mesopotamian societies, their pantheons consisted of numerous gods who would only take on a few functions like war, the sky, fertility and the like. Moreover, the myths surrounding them reflected a relatively democratic pantheon of gods who would debate and reach compromises on the matters of the universe. But as empires such as the Assyrian and Babylonian empires rose, so did a supreme god. For example, the historically obscure god at the time, Marduk, who was just the local god of the city Babylon, rose to become the god of gods in the mythology and religion of the Babylonian Empire. And as a result, he received far greater powers and many more attributes than his original function as protector of the city.

As mentioned this occurred across the world, with gods such as Amun-Re in Egypt, Zeus in Greece, Odin in Northern Europe, Shiva in some sects of Hinduism, and Tian in China, all reflecting the concentration of power into a single authority and centralised power structure. Indeed, historians, biblical scholars and archaeologists now think that in the very early days of Israelite society, God in the Bible was originally two gods, Yahweh and El. The one who was the focus of worship depended on whether one was living in the north or south of the region. These two gods were slowly merged together as monotheism became more prominent in ancient Israel.

However, with these gods such as Zeus acquiring more and more roles, responsibilities and attributes, contradictions and other issues ultimately arose. For most people of the time, it is quite difficult to conceive of a god who takes on all the attributes of lesser gods at the same time like war and peace, creator and destroyer, and so on. This is not to say that we’re necessarily a whole lot smarter than our polytheistic ancestors, but rather we’ve had monotheism in our collective consciousness for so long that it seems far more natural and conceivable than having countless gods each with a specific part to play. It’s more just of a flip of the mind.

In Greece, Egypt and Ancient Persia, a solution to this arose which was to realise the existence of an underlying ultimate reality, responsible for everything in the universe, that was part of everything too, yet was without personality or shape. The philosophers Plato and Xenophanes among others attempted to do this, and so did Akhenaten, the rather odd looking pharaoh who abolished the Egyptian pantheon with the exception of the all-powerful Aten. Zarathustra, founder of perhaps the first monotheistic religion in the world, also believed in a featureless, all-encompassing God, of which he had a revelation. The common story amongst all these figures however, was that the general population simply weren’t ready for such a radical shift in thinking, being much more content with a whole host of gods with distinct personalities.

The idea though that there is an absolute God who is above and beyond all other gods in a pantheon makes quite a lot of sense. And in my eyes gives some credence to the beliefs of our ancient ancestors. It doesn’t seem quite right that the concepts, ideas and beliefs of people across the world for hundreds, if not thousands of years were entirely false. Polytheistic religions were onto something and that is the infinite nature of the divine and it’s capacity to do anything. Polytheism simply divided the limitless traits of divinity into a simple to conceptualise way for the needs and times. With societies who need frequent help to grow crops, the threat of disaster and famine always lingering, it makes sense that a god or goddess of fertility comes into existence as a separate deity to when a society needs aid from a god of war.

The evolution of regular polytheism to henotheism appears to be another development that addresses the needs of people, given the transition to a more hierarchical and centralised structure of government as mentioned earlier. And it appears that it simultaneously led people closer to the truth about the nature of divine reality, one that Hinduism appears to have worked out fairly well, with the existence of countless deities all forming aspects of an underlying reality named Brahman. Henotheism, could be considered a bridge between monotheism and polytheism, allowing us to realise that both conceptions of the divine, whether there is one God or numerous gods can both be right in some way, or at the very least, it helps us understand that the sincere spiritual efforts of followers who do not belong to the “correct” religion may not be going down an utterly hopeless path. All believers are worshipping the divine in some way or other, the main difference seems to be how we think of it.

Finally, with much being written about God and gods being created by humankind, I should briefly address why this doesn’t necessarily need to undermine faith. This is because of the big “why” questions revolving around the origin of religion. We may figure out how religion arose with scientific and archaeological discoveries. But we may never answer why being spiritual and religious is a universal trait (arguably even shared by our evolutionary ancestors), and is deeply ingrained in our neurology. Even evolutionary theories on the origin of spiritual belief seems to be rather inadequate and filled with holes (perhaps a future post is needed on this one). Whether think belief is entirely natural or divinely inspired may ultimately always down to a leap of faith.

All this talk of how religions and our ideas of God might not be quite what we traditionally thought about God and religion, but this doesn’t matter, because to me, our evolution of belief and conception is really just a way for us to mentally understand something that we have intuitively and experientially felt has always been with us, a universal soul, an ultimate reality beneath it all which we’re currently calling God.

Images taken from:

https://thecostaricanews.com/importance-pineal-gland-health-well/marduk-pine-cone-magic/

https://truththeory.com/2017/02/13/5-egyptian-gods-goddesses-summon-progression-humanity/

http://www.ancientfacts.net/greek-mythology-facts-gods-and-goddesses-of-ancient-greece/