Time

For a very long time there was a dispute as to whether primitive religion was polytheism, i.e., the worship of many gods, or whether this polytheism degenerated from the original monotheism (monotheism) due to a certain decrease in religious consciousness; this dispute is far from over and still. Look at monotheism as the original religion was formed under the influence of the Bible on the innocent as the first people, and direct their proximity to God the Creator; only the fall of men has caused him oblivion of the one God and the deification of multiple forces of nature, whence arose polytheism. On the contrary, others, standing on the point of view of the evolutionary theory, look at the original man as a savage who has just come out of the animal state, and therefore do not recognize it possible to allow this rude savage to show rudimentary glimpses of religious consciousness in the most perfect form, which is monotheism.

However, it should be noted that monotheism, which is really most often the property of the most cultured peoples, does not always represent the most perfect form of religious consciousness. The whole point here is what content a person brings to religion, what ideals he combines with it, and how much it morally ennobles him. It is possible to specify some periods in the history of Jewry when monotheism got along with the most rough superstitions and extremely low idea of a deity. So perhaps Chamberlain’s view of monotheism is not as paradoxical as it first appears. “There is a prejudice,” he says, ” which evidently came from the sophistic schools of Greece, that monotheism, that is, the idea of a single undivided God, should be considered a sign of a higher religion. But this is certainly a rationalistic conclusion: arithmetic has nothing to do with religion. Monotheism can mean impoverishment, as well as ennobling religious life.”

Max Muller, based on an analysis of the religious beliefs of the Hindus of the ancient Vedic era, comes to the conclusion that the question of whether primitive religion was monotheism or polytheism, should be eliminated, since among the ancient peoples of the original polytheism had the character of a kind of monotheism. This feature of ancient beliefs, which Max Muller wswaael name kathenotheism or henotheism is the fact that the existence of the vast host of gods, each individual deity, when he is approached with the prayer calling, the properties are attributed not only the Supreme but also the only deity; however, personal properties and characteristics of the gods are transformed into the names and attributes of the deity all uniform. So, in the Vedas, the ancient religious books of Hindus, the God Varuna in an address to his prayers is portrayed as the Supreme and unlimited ruler of the world, which is subordinated to the gods and all living things and which controls, as the Almighty and sovereign Lord, the whole life of the world: he’s the only one, and he has no equal.