In The Price of Monotheism, Jan Assmann uses the terms “primary religion” and “secondary religion” in the place of “religions deemed polytheistic” and “religions deemed monotheistic” respectively. The use of this terminology highlights his discomfort (he is not alone) with the limiting and loaded terms “monotheism” and “polytheism.” One of the benefits of Assmann’s shift in terminology is the freedom (from the constraints of loaded terms) he uses to define, at length, his categories. He writes, 

The distinction between “primary” and “secondary” religions goes back to a suggestion made by the scholar of religion Theo Sundermeier. Primary religions evolve historically over hundreds and thousands of years within a single culture, society, and generally also language, with all of which they are inextricably entwined. Religions of this kind include the cultic and divine worlds of Egyptian, Babylonian and Greco-Roman antiquity, among many others. Secondary religions, by contrast, are those that owe their existence to an act of revelation and foundation, build on primary religions, and typically differentiate themselves from the latter by denouncing them as paganism, idolatry and superstition.¹

Despite differences in terminology, in the larger discussion of “monotheism” Assmann appears to be “saying what everyone is thinking.” He points to the assumptions of categorical differences that seem implied with the usage of various terminology in discussions of “monotheism.” He goes on to define the category of “secondary religions” by identifying some building blocks of religions deemed monotheistic: “All secondary religions, which are at the same time book, world, and (with the possible exception of Buddhism) monotheistic religions, look down on the primary religions as pagan.”² It is this last notion that leads the discussion from the last section into this one: these religions “look down on the primary religions as pagan.”