“Where did Abraham get the idea
there was only one God?”
It’s not a surprising question given the polytheistic nature of today’s religious scene. Coming to belief for the modern individual is like shopping for just the right outfit only worse.
There are many different gods to choose from and once you settle on one you still must wade through the many different conflicting ideas popularized for the one you choose.
You’d need a guru to lead you along. Trying to keep track of it all is near impossible.
But did Abraham have the same problem? Are we to assume he also faced an endless list of gods?
The world was polytheistic in Abraham’s day for sure but rather than ask where Abraham got the idea of one God, a better question might be, “where did the multiple-god idea originate in the first place?”
We mustn’t assume that what we observe today was always true.
For example, where would Abraham, in the dawn of human history, get the idea there was only one God? Did Abraham coin the concept or did monotheists predate him and pass the idea down?
The evidence indicates the latter is true.
- It was one God who spoke to Adam and Eve.
- It was the same God who accepted Abel’s offering and confronted Cain.
- Who took Enoch.
- Who spoke to Noah.
- And led Abraham to the land of Canaan.
Abraham and his ancestors were familiar with only one God. There was no reason for him to expect there to be more. Only an overactive imagination would lead him to think otherwise.
And apart from what Abraham’s ancestors experienced and believed, is there anything in nature, in his day or ours, that suggests polytheism is true?
Is there any reason to believe that the control of a universe too vast to measure could be managed better by disparate, sometimes antagonistic multiple gods rather than by one?
Since Adam and Eve, and those who came after only dealt with one God, maybe we should see polytheism as the outgrowth of: [Read more…]