Polytheism seems to make a lot more sense that way. Cities (and personal trajectories as well) have ups and downs. If you understand it as a competition between various gods, it makes sense that they’d have a lot of back and forth going on. If there’s only one god, it must have some preposterously convoluted plan, it just seems a bit silly.
In Polytheistic culture, gods fight and gods die. Zeus eats his (and thus kills) his father Chronos. Thor dies in Ragnarok.
In Monotheistic culture, the one true God is above all else. As it turns out, different Monotheistic cultures can then cooperate as it's an argument over what this one true God believes (Catholics vs Muslims).
Then we get into weird blends like Hindu and their many avatars of Vishnu (who'd argue that Jesus probably existed and could do those things because he probably was that time's Vishnu).
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Polytheism is likely flawed as an organizational concept because it's clear that gods were creations of man. Monotheism flips it and makes God the master of the universe while man struggles to understand the nature of God.
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But yes. As the sibling comment points out: the gods of most polytheistic cultures are NOT omnipotent or omniscient. They are more powerful or smarter than humans but they are still able to be killed or destroyed.
Maybe back when cities and religions would get wiped out by warfare, it was more common to see religions die out (and thus those old gods die with those religions/cultures). It makes you wonder about the nature of human belief systems and how humans lived differently back then.
> Polytheism is likely flawed as an organizational concept because it's clear that gods were creations of man. Monotheism flips it and makes God the master of the universe while man struggles to understand the nature of God.
I don’t think that’s true of polytheism at all. That the gods aren’t everywhere or all-powerful doesn’t mean they were invented by the local humans, just that they were discovered by them.
They just look made-up by humans to us because we don’t believe in them. I’m sure ancient people believed in their gods’ stories just as much as some modern ones do, and most religions don’t feature some “humans created the gods” story, right?
I’m not sure what it means to be “flawed as an organizational concept.” States that had polytheistic religions as the main one stuck around for a long time of course. It is hard to say what’s predictive and what’s a coincidence in history I guess.
> I’m not sure what it means to be “flawed as an organizational concept.” States that had polytheistic religions as the main one stuck around for a long time of course. It is hard to say what’s predictive and what’s a coincidence in history I guess.
Romans would have had to integrate and work with many pantheons due to the reach of their empire. Obviously they were cool with the Greek gods for the most part, but what happened when the Romans encountered the Egyptian gods?
Suddenly seeing gods in a new light would cast some doubt on whether or not Helios / Apollo was really pulling a chariot across the sky each morning, as it's the Sun God Ra who blessed Egypt.
I'd imagine the Egyptian gods would be a novelty to Romans and I'm deeply curious how humans in antiquity would have tried to create a multi culture that works together.
But in my eyes.... As different pantheons integrated with each other, it immediately becomes clear that the Pantheon consisting of THE God and one and only would win out.
Not only does 'One God' solve the issue of the different creation myths (ex: you misunderstand but we both believe in the same One God), it also leads to the 'Ultimate, most powerful' concept of a God above all other gods.
I presume that the simplest gods (ie: Sun God, Sky God, Sea God) would have lasted the longest as cultures met and integrated with each other, as almost everyone would worship the sun or sky or sea. But an ultimate God for everything is still a seemingly more elegant solution to the idea of worship.
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But yes, this could be modern bias and could be seen as a silly idea 1000 years from now. But it is my opinion and understanding of how cultures would interact in my mental simulation of antiquity.
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So that's where I mean with Hindus coming up with 'Jesus is an Avatar of Vishnu' thing. Different cultures need to adapt and integrate with other concepts of gods and religion to sustain in the long run. So it's not impossible for a modern polytheistic religion to exist today and feel consistent with the world or other cultures, Hinduism perfectly shows that off.
But maybe I'm biased because Hinduism is the most prominent modern Polytheistic Pantheon and maybe the Pantheons 1000 or 3000 years ago made different arguments.
I don’t think they fully merged their pantheons as a logical exercise. I suspect the problem of why (from the Romans point of view) the Egyptians made different observations could be resolved in various ways; depending on how multiculturalist the Roman was, he could understand the Egyptians as being just, like, wrong about everything, or he could interpret their beliefs as observations of some other aspect of Apollo. If those multi-cultural beliefs about Apollo doing things in Egypt bounced around enough, they could be integrated into the conventional Roman belief system, but it could happen smoothly, so it needn’t cause any cognitive stress.
The ACOUP guy did a nice series about polytheism [ https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polythei... ]. An observation that stuck with me is that polytheist people (at least where he studied) were less focused on Orthodoxy, and more on Orthopraxy. If you have a give-and-take relationship with the gods (instead of one where the God frequently checks what you are actually are thinking inside your head and nothing is truly transactional), I wonder if you are more willing to go along with Egyptian rituals while you are in Egypt. Apparently Apollo is fine with the Egyptian rituals. In Egypt at least.
Well, you probably will be ok with doing an Egyptian farming ritual. I guess if you are a Roman, you probably are pretty confident that the gods are receptive to your pre-battle rituals, given their track record.
Anyway, if your Roman ritual was just something that your ancestors discovered through trial and error, I guess you probably won’t be too freaked out by the fact that the Egyptians’ ancestors found a different ritual. The gods are mysterious and temperamental, after all.
Good link, I'll probably read that series over time.
Yeah, I don't mean 'Merging of Pantheons' as much as how different religions interact. When I speak to Hindus about Jesus (and when they speak to me about Vishnu) we aren't really adopting each other's gods, but instead trying to find pleasantries and similarities between our ways of thought.
I also have come to the opinion that Vishnu in Hinduism adds a weird case of Monotheism in an otherwise Polytheistic religion. (Same with Buddha in Buddhism).
Shintoism might be the only religion that's classically polytheistic, and only because Japan was isolated for so long.
The Monotheistic argument of an Ultimate God above all others (be it Vishnu, Buddha or Jesus) is something that virtually all mainstream religions have today. This cannot be a coincidence.
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But yes. Applying history to historical theologies/polythists is probably a better idea than me applying modern religious concepts and pretending that people a thousand years ago had similar conversations as me and my Hindi friend. Lol. But my knowledge of the Romans and Egyptions is not quite as deep as the blog you listed there.
> Anyway, if your Roman ritual was just something that your ancestors discovered through trial and error, I guess you probably won’t be too freaked out by the fact that the Egyptians’ ancestors found a different ritual. The gods are mysterious and temperamental, after all.
Well sure. That's an argument for how polytheists talk with other polytheists.
The issue is when the Romans talks with the proto-Monotheists. The Hewbrews, Zoroastrianism, the Gnostics and the Catholics. At this point, the idea of 'God above all other Gods' is taking root.
It may take centuries before the discussion plays out, but it's started. Maybe in another universe we'd all be Zoroastrianists instead of Catholic, but it feels like the inevitable march towards a God above all gods when you have so many monotheistic religions popping up.
Besides, worship of just one god sounds a lot easier than trying to memorize the long lists of Helios / Apollo / Ra / Amaterasu (sun gods) and hoping your rituals are keeping them appeased.
As a practical manner, if you were going to try out a new Religion, it only makes sense to try out the most powerful ones. Be it El, YHWH, Jesus, Vishnu, Buddha, Zoroaster, the Gnostics 'Supreme Being's or whatever. That's the benefit of Monotheism.
Polytheistic religions have more room for multiple worldviews than monotheistic religions. Polytheists have internalized the fact that there can be different paths that are right for different people. That’s why you get so much division in monotheistic religions.
In polytheistic religions, you still get infighting, but it isn’t considered virtuous.
Put another way, monotheism is polytheism except with a single title, Lord of the Universe, that all the gods/theologies/denominations have to compete for in order to be legitimate. That competition of different gods/worldviews is the essential innovation that monotheism brings.
That competition, that need to justify one’s beliefs, provides a drive that monotheists have and polytheists lack. And that is why monotheism prevailed in so many areas.
As far as I know the history, the Roman religion was pluralistic in the sense that you could worship whatever gods you wanted, but you also had to pay respects to the Empire's gods. The monotheists refused to do that for the obvious reason, and that was the primary cause of conflict
Early Christians seemed weird to a lot of the people of the Roman Empire. Sort of how Christians now think of gay and trans people. It was deviant and socially upsetting. Modern Christians would probably not get along with early Christians.
