The beginning of god
I think it’s fair to say when many think of God we tend to think of it as a man with human emotions.
Reza Aslan calls this sort of thinking ‘humanized God’ in his book God: A Human History of Religion. We give God traits like loving, kind, compassionate, merciful, angry, and wrathful. Such traits are the same as humans and I’ve yet to come across a religion that doesn’t do this. So does this mean when we think about God we’re just thinking of someone thought up by ourselves and/or other human beings? If so where does the idea of God come from? And can God still be real if human beings thought it up?
When it comes to the human thoughts about life there has always been this belief in a God or gods. While it’s impossible to know who exactly were the first humans to have ideas about the divine we do know that an ancient civilization based in Western Asia called the Mesopotamian had a belief system because they were the first people to write about it, and rather remarkably what they believed still influences religions today. Their scriptures consisted of stories about the gods and men. About the battles they had and the women that they loved. There was a belief in sin and the need for forgiveness. And while they believed in many gods there was a national state god. When looking at most of the major religions today the followers of these religions have similar beliefs. Furthermore, they had their own flood story that is very similar to the story of Noah and the flood.
Noah and the flood is, of course, a well-known story which can be found in all of the scriptures of all the major religions today. One of those religions being Judaism and this isn’t the only thing that the Jewish religion has in common with what the Mesopotamian believed. They had and still have their own concepts of sin and forgiveness where sin is the ‘result of our negative human tendencies or inclinations’. Sin is such a big thing in Judaism that there are different forms of forgiveness. Today Judaism might be a monotheistic religion yet it didn’t start that way. Judaism started with Abraham and he wasn’t a monotheist but a monolatrous. In fact, for a long time, the children of Israel were monolatrous. Their monolatrous belief can be seen within the Ten Commandments where it states, ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me’. There’s no denial of the existence of others just that their God is more important. Reading the Jewish Bible there is a struggle among many Jews as to which god was worth devotion and sometimes the God that spoke to Abraham isn’t their god. Like in 2 King 17:7–11 where it mentions how the Israelites worshipped other gods and had ‘set up sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree’. This is one example of many places in the Hebrew scriptures of this happening. There are plenty of incidences where the text tells stories of Israel worshipping other gods or God complaining about them worshipping other gods. One reason given for Israels defeats in scripture is that they worshipped other gods. The introduction of the Shema shows a desire for there to be one God and it is thought the reforms by King Josiah inspired the writing of the text. With this being the case I would suggest that one reason (if not the only reason) for Israel becoming monotheistic is to make a nation stronger. Different people following different god could weaken a nation. A nation divided by something as important as gods could be disastrous. If a king declares that God said they should do something his subjects are more likely to accept it, but on the other hand if the subjects believe in different gods they might respond by asking which god told them to do what.
The idea of everyone believing the same thing in religion is important because when there’s an acceptance of differing beliefs there is a loss of power for states. Emperor Constantine I set up and presided over of the Council of Nicaea which set ‘secular patronage in ecclesiastical affairs’. Constantine was able to stabilise the Roman Empire and I would argue getting most Christians to believe the same thing helped him achieved that. And even today what was established by the meeting is still believed by Christians today. Christianity wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Judaism which even the Christian Bible acknowledges this. It isn’t just Christianity’s holy book that has the Jewish influence within it, the Quran has many biblical characters within its pages including Noah. Like Judaism, Christianity and Islam have their own concept of sin and forgiveness.
We can’t know for sure what the early humans believed until the Mesopotamian but from this civilisation, we can see how religions have been influenced by each other. Something is said on the subject of sin and forgiveness plus they each have their own flood story. What they say and believe may differ but there is a connection. I would argue that you wouldn’t have Islam or Christianity without Judaism, and you wouldn’t have Judaism without the Mesopotamians, and if Judaism had accepted polytheism the major religions of today would be polytheistic.
So to answer the questions I asked earlier: God has been thought up by people. When we think about God we are thinking of ideas that have been handed down throughout the ages from civilizations who wrote their ideas about God down. And despite God being thought up by people, it can still exist.
