![Rembrandt [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](/bundles/ncbsw/media/584px-Rembrandt_Harmensz._van_Rijn_079.webp "Moses with the Tablets of the Law")
The Bible both spurs and traces a long trend towards monotheism.
The mono-ness is present in the earliest stories. In the beginning, God creates the universe, the earth, and Adam and Eve. God warns Noah to build an ark, and makes a covenant with him after the great flood. God disperses the people who are trying to build the tower of Babel.
In Genesis 11:14, we hear of the birth of Eber, from whom the Hebrews get their tribal name -- and six generations later, Abram, in Genesis 11:26. By this time, the religious culture in the Middle East has become polytheistic and idolatrous. See, for example, Joshua 24:2, 14, 15 and Genesis 31:53, and also the explanation in Arcana Coelestia 1356. 1
Abram is a pivotal character in the story. He starts out as an idolator, and a polytheist, but he has the potential to change, to become a monotheist. Jehovah God sees this potential, and leads Abram and his descendants towards it. It's a gradual process.
Abram lived some 4000 years ago, probably around 1900 BC. In the Genesis stories, God tells him to leave Ur, in Chaldea (now southeastern Iraq), where he was born, and to journey to a land that God will show him. Abram obeys, and in his long life that follows, he spends time in Padan Aram (Syria), and then in Canaan, and then in Egypt, and finally back to Canaan. Because Abram does as God commands him, his name is changed to Abraham, and his wife Sarai's name is changed to Sarah. Abraham has, eventually, many children. His first son, Ishmael, by Hagar, becomes the father of the Arab peoples. His second son, Isaac, by Sarah, becomes the father of the Israelites and the Edomites. He is the forefather of the founding peoples of three great durable monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
One sign of developing monotheism occurs in the Jacob/Rachel story. Abraham's grandson Jacob and his wife Rachel are leaving her father's household after many years there. Rachel steals the images of the household gods from Laban's house (Genesis 31:19). But then, in Genesis 35:2-3, not long afterwards, we find Jacob telling his household,
"Put away the foreign gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments: and let us arise, and go up to Beth-el; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went."
Some generations later, the process is further along. Moses is given the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, and the very first commandment is this:
"And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the LORD thy God, who have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make to thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." (Exodus 20:1-4)
This progress from polytheism to monotheism is important. New Christian doctrine teaches that the very most ancient people had a monotheistic belief, but as time went on, and they became more "civilized", their early purity was corrupted, and they fell away into polytheism. Their sacred celebrations of aspects of God, e.g. God's power, or God's love, would gradually change into a sort of pantheon. 2
God made His covenant with Abraham to start to reverse this trend, and - with many false starts and aberrations - it has worked. Monotheism is the most prevalent form of belief today. It's trueness makes a clean space in which Jehovah God can operate in our lives. In True Christian Religion 9, we find this statement:
"As a consequence of the Divine influx into the souls of men, treated of just above, there is in every man an internal dictate that there is a God and that He is one."
If we open our minds to this influx, we can receive it, and become better aware of God's leading. When Jacob exhorts his people to "arise, and go up to Beth-el", that's what he's talking about. In Hebrew, "Beth-el" means "the House of God" -- and we can go up to it.
അടിക്കുറിപ്പുകൾ:
1. Arcana Coelestia 1992 says outright (at the top of subsection 3) that Abram was an idolater.
2. See Arcana Coelestia 4162: ...those who were of the Ancient Church distinguished the Divine (that is, the Lord) by various names.... They who were wise among them understood by all these names none but the one only Lord; but the simple made for themselves so many representative images of that Divine; and when Divine worship began to be turned into idolatry, they fashioned for themselves so many gods. [In subsections 2 and 3]
