“Pagans divinized life, while Christians have divinized death.” [Staël, 1817]
As often in our history, renewal – whether political, religious, or artistic – arises from the desire to replace a system that no longer suffices to satisfy the requirements of a population. Levantine monotheism finds its sources in the polytheistic culture of Antiquity, in a wish to simplify the complexity of its pantheons and to concentrate divine powers in a few influential hands.
It is difficult to imagine a pantheon composed of some 30,000 divinities, as the one Varro describes in Rome [1]. With time, the personality and function of the lesser divinities became fuzzier, while the authority and power of the popular ones increased. Besides, it certainly is more pleasant to deal with one god who takes care of everything and answers all questions, rather than searching a labyrinth of divinities for the one who will be the most able to answer one’s request. Moreover, the frequent disputes and wars that raged in the pantheons did not make it easier, the divinities having to be pampered and flattered in order to obtain their support.
Another aspect that will exercise a considerable influence on the ideologies of these populations is the development of philosophical and scientific thought that will infiltrate the religious sphere by proposing other answers to the “mysteries” of nature. Even though these answers are not always satisfactory, and sometimes even mutually contradictory, they will broaden the field of possibilities and renew the structures and content of the relationship with the divine. By confirming the special place that humans occupy in the creation, they will make it easier to uncouple the religious exchange from its functional character, and from the concrete support in which polytheism was anchored, providing it with an existential dimension. As an example, let us mention the desire to escape mortality and finitude by introducing the notion of eternal life that appears in most religious systems during the last millennium [1b], and more significantly, that was totally absent from the quests of the polytheistic credos. Humans will go as far as establishing a pact with the divinity, a sort of all-risk insurance enriched with different clauses that guarantees the follower a place in paradise after his or her death. Such a contract, necessitating a unified and centralized religious system, would have been impossible in the polytheistic shambles. In Levantine monotheism, this contract will take the form of a code of laws with which Moses establishes the authority of his god. As we have seen in the previous part, this code is modeled on the civil codes of laws of the preceding millennium [2].
The use of logic and reasoning as introduced by philosophy and science will also have a noticeable influence on religious thought. Ultimately, this ascendancy will oblige the religious discourse to differentiate itself from that of science and of philosophy by establishing a relation of transcendence with the divinity, putting it beyond any logic, beyond any reason: in relationship with the divine, all human references are worthless [3].
It has long been acknowledged that Plato's influence on the mysticism surrounding “the religions of the Book” [4] was decisive, notably perceptible in the notion that every human being is a reflection of the divine and conceals a fragment of it. Influenced by Hindu mysticism, Plato's ideas brought revelation and transcendence to the religious systems of the Middle East.
Yet, in 1957 CE, approaching this period in a more global manner, Karl Jaspers introduced the notion of “Axial Age,” transforming the way we look at history and at the movement of ideas.