The promulgation of emphatic concepts of “Truth” and the provision of fodder for perceptions of incompatibility with “Others” are two functions of texts deemed religions in these religions deemed monotheistic. Chapters Three (“Religions Deemed Monotheistic”) and Four (“Mobile Pastoralism”) discussed the role of conflict with social and religious enemies presented in the Hebrew Bible and Old Avestan texts. Connected with these narratives are the respective presentations of adherents (the literary protagonist “in-groups”) as “good” or “right” for having been selected (and for selecting) to worship YHWH or Ahura Mazda. These descriptions stand out in contrast to the “Others” who either do not follow these religions or oppose communities that do. The Hebrew Book of Genesis, for example, appears to offer a long history of relationships between the “Patriarchs,” ancestors of the “in-group” variously described in subsequent books as the “Sons-,” “People-,” or “Children of Israel,” and the Deity.¹ The depiction of these relationships as an agreement or covenant between two parties is notable and could be key to understanding something of how adherents regard themselves, in religious terms.

Throughout the Hebrew Bible, there is a clear tension between the actions of “the people” and the interests of the Deity. The latter, despite being described throughout the Torah as having the power to control or destroy human populations, is depicted in struggle with “the people.” Contrast this notion with the idea, in ancient Mesopotamia, that humans were created to serve the deities: “Since humans were on earth to serve the gods, the temple offered the ultimate opportunity for service. The only purpose for the state – even, in its earliest manifestations, the justification for its survival – was to shelter, maintain, and serve the gods.”² Schneider’s comments illuminate a worldview that appears to be found in a number of ancient religions deemed polytheistic. Recall that individual choice (and the freedom to choose) appears to be a key aspect of the religions of YHWH and Ahura Mazda – one that seems likely to have derived from respective origins in mobile pastoralist social contexts. In The Price of Monotheism, Assmann writes, 

[For] Polytheism…The divine cannot be divorced from the world. Monotheism, however, sets out to do just that. The divine is emancipated from its symbiotic attachment to the cosmos, society, and fate and turns to face the world as a sovereign power. In the same stroke, man is likewise emancipated from his symbiotic relationship with the world and develops, in partnership with the One God, who dwells outside the world yet turned towards it, into an autonomous—or rather theonomous—individual. Therein lies the most significant of monotheism’s psychohistorical consequences. This is what “freedom” means in the religious sense. Monotheism transforms the self-image of man no less fundamentally than it does his image of god.³

Although Assmann takes this line of thinking into a discussion that reads like a series of wild speculations, this insight is significant and appears to be grounded in a variety of modern religions deemed monotheistic. It is applicable to the present chapter because it highlights differences in conceptions of the role of human beings between religions deemed polytheistic and those deemed monotheistic. 

It seems that, whereas the preservation of ancient religions deemed polytheistic was linked to the solvency of government (on various scales), individual worshippers of YHWH and Ahura Mazda are integral to the development and maintenance (and spread) of these religious communities.⁴ One may consider, in theory, that all societies are composed of individuals or groups that must choose to exist together, but it is seems likely that in these religious communities, like in mobile pastoralist societies, individuals are more aware, at some level of thought, of their power to choose.⁵ It is difficult to ignore the different environmental contexts underlying the apparent general patterns of centralized power in settled agriculturalist societies and its seeming decentralization in mobile pastoralist communities. Recall Scott’s argument that various aspects of production and crop provided opportunities for the development of early state governments among grain-based farming cultures.⁶ The distribution of economic and military power across various, necessarily smaller, mobile pastoralist populations appears to map onto the available data indicating the relative distribution of religious power in the religious communities centered around Ahura Mazda and YHWH.