Monotheism came before polytheism

Dr. Arthur C. Custance who is an Anthropologist, scientist, and specialist in Christianity and science wrote "the doorway papers." In paper 34, he writes about the evidence for monotheism coming first before polytheism: "... found themselves dealing with a tremendous number of gods and goddesses and other spiritual powers of a lesser sort which seemed to be always at war with one another and, much of the time, highly destructive. As earlier and earlier tablets, however, began to be excavated and brought to light, and skill in deciphering them increased, the first picture of gross polytheism began to be replaced by something more nearly approaching a hierarchy of spiritual beings organized into a kind of court with one Supreme Being over all." Scholar Samuel Zwemer wrote of a monotheistic God in the Pygmies of Africa, the Tierra del Fuegians, Indians of North America, central Australian tribes, and primitive Bushmen, as well as people in arctic cultures. He noted that this being had the same attributes and was everywhere. He spoke of the war-like Zulus who quoted a bishop claiming to have contact with "The Almighty" or "first essence." Madagascarian beliefs also speak of this God in proverbs like "Do not consider the secret valley, for God is overhead." Another is "The willfullness of man can be born of a Creator, for God alone bears rule." Anthropologist James E.O says: " Thus, it is impossible to maintain a unilateral evolution in religious thought and practice in the manner suggested by the rationalistic classifications of Tylor and Frazer following along the line of the "Law of the Three Stages" enunciated by Comte. Nevertheless, neither the Euhemeran speculation that the idea of God arose in ancestor worship, revived by Herbert Spencer, nor the Frazerian evolution of monotheism from polytheism and animism as a result of a process of the unification of ideas, can be reconciled with the shadowy figure of a tribal Supreme Being now known to have been a recurrent feature of the primitive conception of Deity." (1) There are several polytheistic religions which also have the concept of monotheism: Stepehen Langdon, an Assyriologist says of the Sumerian religion in "the scotsman": " The history of Sumerian religion, which was the most powerful cultural influence in the ancient world, could be traced by means of pictographic inscriptions almost to the earliest religious concepts of man. The evidence points unmistakeably to an original monotheism, the inscriptions and literary remains of the oldest Semitic peoples also indicate a primitive monotheism, and the totemistic origin of Hebrew and other Semitic religions is now entirely discredited." From ancient tablets regarding the Sumerian and Babylonian gods, it's been noted the following: " In addition to their more tangible results, our excavations have established a novel fact, which the student of Babylonian religions will have henceforth to take into account. We have obtained, to the best of our knowledge for the first time, religious material complete in its social setting.We possess a coherent mass of evidence, derived in almost equal quantity from a temple and from the houses inhabited by those who worshiped in that temple. We are thus able to draw conclusions, which the finds studied by themselves would not have made possible. For instance, we discover that the representations on cylinder seals, which are usually connected with various gods, can all be fitted into a consistent picture in which a single god worshiped in this temple forms the central figure. It seems, therefore, that at this early period his various aspects were not considered separate deities in the Sumero-Accadian pantheon." In other words, polytheistic people were describing attributes of the same monotheistic God, just slightly different versions. Friederich Delitzsch's book "Babel and Bible" refers to a tablet reported by T.G Pinches saying that the Babylonians mostly worshiped the highest deity of the Babylonian Pantheon: Marduk meaning "possessor of power." There were many names in the Babylonian language to describe one God. Egypt has the same elements. Renouf in his Hibbert lectures quotes M. de Rouge. He says that Egypt phased through Sabeism which states that the sun is a manifestation of one God. He writes: " It is incontestably true that the sublimer portions of the Egyptian religion are not the comparatively late result of a process of development or elimination from the grosser. The sublimer portions are demonstrably ancient; and the last stage of the Egyptian religion, that known to the Greek and Latin writers, heathen or Christian, was by far the grossest and the most corrupt. M. de Rouge is no doubt correct in his assertion that in the several local (centres of) worship, one and the same deity re-appears under different names and symbols. . . .He infers from the course of history that since polytheism was constantly on the increase, the monotheistic doctrines must have preceded it." Gradually, people mistook natural objects as manifestations of divine beings : Flinders Pete, pioneer of archaeology wrote this: " There are in ancient religions and theologies very different classes of gods. Some races, as the modern Hindu, revel in a profusion of gods and godlings which continually increase. Others . . . do not attempt to worship great gods, but deal with a host of animistic spirits, devils, or whatever we may call them. . . . But all our knowledge of the early positions and nature of the great gods shows them to stand on an entirely different footing to these varied spirits. Were the conception of a god only an evolution from such spirit worship we should find the worship of many gods preceding the worship of one god. . . . What we actually find is the contrary of this, monotheism is the first stage traceable in theology. . . . Wherever we can trace back polytheism to its earliest stages, we find that it results from combinations of monotheism. In Egypt even Osiris, Isis, and Horus, so familiar as a triad, are found at first as separate units in different places: Isis as a virgin goddess, and Horus as a self-existent God. Each city appears to have had but one god belonging to it, to whom others were in time added. Similarly Babylonian cities each had their supreme god, and the combinations of these and their transformations in order to form them into groups when their homes were politically united show how essentially they were solitary deities at first. " (Religion of Ancient Egypt) (2) With all the evidence presented, it's clear that in the beginning, there was only one all -powerful, all-knowing, loving, and infinite one God. Sources: 1. ( James, E. O., "Religion and Reality," Journal of the Royal Archaeological Institute, vol.70, 1950, p.28.) 2. http://www.amazon.com...