The “emphatic concept of Truth” that Assman refers to is more than just a sales pitch for conversion: it is the “law” that guides and binds adherents into a community of worship. Assmann writes, 

To sum up, whereas “monotheism” is a regulative idea, “polytheism” designates a religious practice that stands opposed to this idea. There has never been a religion that declared its commitment to polytheism as a regulative idea. Polytheism is a concept suitable only for describing monotheism as a counterreligion that polemically distances itself from other religions. While the concept of polytheism may have served historically as a neutral substitute for the unambiguously polemical and vituperative concept of idolatry (“idol worship”), it has inherited the negative connotations of its precursor, since both concepts have precisely the same meaning in an extensional sense.¹

Assmann’s remarks are particularly cogent to understanding the category of religions deemed monotheistic. His argument suggests something of an answer to the question of survival raised in the previous section.

In Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel, Sparks gives a list of principles for studying “ethnic sentiments,” a few of which appear to shed some light on the potential relationship between the interconnected building blocks mentioned by Assmann and the development (and survival) of these religions deemed monotheistic. He writes, “We should first recognize that ethnicity is one of the many varieties of human behavior and is perceptible only in certain cultural contexts…This implies that our comprehension of a given ethnic community is achieved primarily as we come to identify its discursive strategies of self-definition and also as we understand the devices it uses to [distinguish] itself from other communities.”² Although he discusses “ethnic sentiments,” Sparks’ comments can easily be translated to the present discussion on religious identity. If “religious sentiments” might be described as “one of the many varieties of human behavior…perceptible only in certain cultural contexts” then it seems that the discussion returns to Taves’ work. One strategy of her Building Block Approach is to contextualize things deemed religious in broader discussions about human experiences, beliefs, and behaviors. It is particularly important to consider the implication noted by Sparks regarding the “discursive strategies of self-definition” and “devices” used to distinguish one community from another. Following Assmann, it might said that among the discursive strategies and devices-for-distinguishing used by religions deemed monotheistic are those derived from the distinction between “ethnic” and religious identities and the sense of “incompatibility” with an “emphatic concept of Truth.” 

Consider another of Sparks’ principles: “Third, ethnic sentiments do not arise in a vacuum but as distinctive behaviors in contrast to other social groups, and both the members and nonmembers usually recognize these sentiments. This distinctive identity is intensified (and some would say created) by competition, either between ethnic groups or between an ethnic group and other social modalities.”³ Translating this to apply to “religious sentiments” points to an insight noted by a number of scholars of the Hebrew and Avestan texts: the relationship of the protagonists with the “Other” clarifies and strengthens the identity of the “in-group” community of worship. In both textual corpora, each of what de Jong calls the “we-group” in the text has an antagonistic counterpart: in contrast to Israel, the reader/listener of the Hebrew Bible is told about the Canaanites; and the Avestan texts identify the Tuiriia as the enemies of the Aryans.⁴ Interestingly, the enemies of the “ethnic” identities of these “we-groups” is only half of the picture: the religious opposition faced by Mazda-worshippers comes from the worshippers of the Daevas; the community of worship centered on YHWH are threatened by any number of “false” or “other gods.”⁵

Sparks’ suggestion that “distinctive identity is intensified (and some would say created) by competition” shows how these religious identities might have survived, in part, dueto encounters with other religious societies. Recall Frachetti’s theory describes the development of social institutions in pragmatic response to both geographic as well as social landscapes. It is possible that the building blocks implied by Assmann’s list might have developed in response to social and environmental pressures and functioned to preserve aspects of the religions across time and space under different, but perhaps no less pressing, circumstances. The separation of “Religion” from “Ethnicity” allows for the possibility of a religious community surviving despite, and because of, its geographic (not tied to a locale) and social (not tied to a society) mobility. It is plausible that the “carrots and sticks” of conversion, in the form of an “emphatic concept of Truth” and “looking-down” on “incompatible” religions could have functioned in conjunction with physically mobile adherents to spread the religions of YHWH and Ahura Mazda. Although this story is familiar to a 21^stcentury world dominated by Islam and Christianity, it is reasonable to consider its potential in the early development of the very ancient religions of Ahura Mazda and YHWH because they all belong to the category of religions deemed monotheistic.

In Big Gods Norenzayan points to the survival of ancient religions into the modern era as evidence of their particular fitness in the difficult game of cultural selection.⁶ He writes, “religions have always been multiplying, growing, and mutating at a brisk pace. In one estimate, new religions sprout at an average rate of two to three per day. ‘Many are called, but few are chosen,’ says the Gospel according to Matthew (22:14). This ‘Matthew Effect’ might as well refer to the iron law of religious evolution, which dictates that while legions of new religious elements are created, most of them die out, save a potent few that endure and flourish.”⁷ Norenzayan’s point highlights the fact that the religions centered around YHWH and Ahura Mazda didn’t just survive, but appear as forerunners of a category of “potent” religions deemed monotheistic that have out-endured and out-flourished many religions deemed polytheistic over the last few millennia.