Using Frachetti’s concept of “Environmental Pragmatism,” this dissertation argues that the religions respectively centered around Ahura Mazda and YHWH developed, in part, as pragmatic responses to limits and opportunities presented by similar environmental contexts. Chapter Two (“An Approach: Theories and Methodology”) discusses the applicability and usefulness of another concept developed by Frachetti that is particular cogent to this investigation. His “Non-Uniform Complexity Theory” takes the fairly well-established assumption of “Environmental Pragmatism” on an economic level (mobility as an economic response to resource limits and opportunities) and extends it to include political and social developments. He argues that models of social complexity based on the settled agricultural societies of the ancient Near East or Asia cannot accurately represent the systems of pragmatic responsiveness that underlie economic as well as social development among steppe societies.¹

The same chapter explores the groundbreaking work of Ann Taves and explains how her “Building Block Approach” serves as a highly productive approach to this research. In arguing for her methodology Taves pushes against a traditional sui generis approach of protecting things considered religious from comparison with those considered non-religious.² By suggesting that scholars study “things deemed religious” as opposed to “religious things”, she points to processes of social-construction that underlie the generation and development of things religious. Like Frachetti's notion of environmental pragmatism, the reorientation Taves proposes highlights the innovative thinking and creative adaptability of human actors as they interact with each other and the worlds around them. By drawing attention to the creation and creators of a “thing” Taves' Building Block Approach offers a way to both avoid and problematize the issue of defining “Religion” while allowing a subject “thing” to exist for “deemers” as “religious”. 

Although Taves’ approach, and method of redefining of subjects, is aimed at understanding the “building blocks” that make up various religions, Chapter Three (“Religions Deemed Monotheistic”) uses this method to describe the category in which the worship of Ahura Mazda and YHWH appear to belong. This chapter is the first of three that explore the categories of religion (Chapter Three), society (Chapter Four), and landscape (Chapter Five) that appear to be connected. Adapting Taves’ approach, this work explores the ways in which these religions have been (and continue to be) “deemed monotheistic” and interrogates the functionality of such categorization. This discussion is not merely theoretical but has real consequences for adherents in various parts of the world. The struggle of Jewish and Zoroastrian communities in diaspora has historically turned on the manner in which their respective religions have been regarded by predominantly Christian and Muslim powers. By defining the subject “type” of “Religion” according to the language proposed by Taves, this research assumes the most objective scholarly perspective possible with regard to these cases: it neither confirms nor deny the validity of claims that one or both of these religions is “monotheistic.” 

Although there are a number of other religions that may fall into the category of “religions deemed monotheistic” this dissertation focuses on the generation and early development of the worship of Ahura Mazda and YHWH. The choice of case studies is partly informed by a statement made by Hultkrantz in An Ecological Approach to Religion: “Every historian of religion knows what a rôle the alleged desert pattern of the primitive Israelites has played in the study of Oriental religions.”³ In Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce uses similar language in commenting, “The beliefs and observances of the Old Iranian and Vedic religions were evidently shaped by the physical and social background shared by the Indo-Iranian peoples....The vastness of the steppes encouraged the Indo-Iranians to conceive their gods as cosmic, not local, divinities”⁴ Boyce's observation closely echoes Hultkrantz's comment regarding Israelite religion: each statement is offered without substantiation and claims a causal relationship between certain environments and religions. 

The work of Carlos A. Botero et al. appears to be much more solid.⁵ In their 2014 article The Ecology of Religious Beliefs, Botero et al. suggest that beliefs in “moralizing high gods” are “more prevalent among societies that inhabit poorer environments and are more prone to ecological duress.”⁶ Although this finding seems to be much more scientifically authoritative when compared to the claims of Hultkrantz and Boyce, issues of definitions and scope belie its promise to the investigation at hand. Botero et al. define “moralizing high gods” as “supernatural beings believed to have created or govern all reality, intervene in human affairs, and enforce or support human morality.”⁷ Such a definition, fitting so closely to modern Jewish, Christian, and Muslim conceptions of “God,” suggests methodological assumptions that have featured prominently in the history of Religious Studies. These assumptions might not be as concerning if the authors limited their interpretation of the findings to the modern societies in which a concept like this might function, but Botero et al. are interested in the evolutionary implications of such data. Taking interest in a long view of “Religion” across the entirety of human history has yielded remarkable (and controversial) biological and cultural evolutionary theories in the nascent sub-field of “Cognitive Science of Religion” (CSR). Natural and social scientific approaches, integrated in this kind of work, lend findings an authority and credibility that bodes well for an increase in future research. Unfortunately, this promise can be undermined by a lack of attention given to what Taves describes as “[grappling] with the instability of the concept of ‘religion’ at the cultural or individual level” a struggle familiar to scholars of religion.⁸ She points out that many researchers in CSR, like Botero et al., focus on supernatural agents or divine beings in defining what is religious and suggests that this, as with other similarly narrow approaches, presents limits and difficulties.⁹ Thus, studies like that conducted by Botero et al. are a step in the right direction away from the unsupported claims of Hultkrantz and Boyce, but, in terms of reliability and substantiation, it is clear that more work is needed. Chapter Two considers further some of the theories proposed by scholars working in CSR and explores in greater depth the applicability of these ideas to this investigation.

The potentially causal influence of environmental contexts on the development of these religions is investigated across six points of comparison: three categorical “types” and three “building blocks.” Chapters Three, Four, and Five examine the categories to which these cases belong and argue that the origins of these two religions deemed monotheistic in mobile pastoralist societies was influenced by the agriculturally marginal landscapes. Applying Taves' Building Block Approach to the investigation, Chapters Six, Seven, and Eight explore the relationships of three components of religions to these cases: temples (“buildings deemed religious”), icons (“art deemed religious”), and narratives of “prophet-founders” (“people deemed religious”).

The final chapter of this dissertation offers remarks on a few of the implications of the research. It is clear from this introduction that the current body of research, on the relationship between environments and religions, is unbalanced. Although the scholarship available on the impact of societies, culture, and religions on “Nature” continues to serve an important function in and outside of academic circles, the environmentalist efforts of scholars of religion and theologians would be bolstered by research examining the effects of environments on the generation and development of religions. Although an awareness of climate change has only manifested itself as such in recent years, innumerable scholars and activists have fought for decades (and longer) to remind humanity that Homo sapiens is a part of the interconnected biosphere of this planet. The work of Rachel Carson and James Lovelock encourage readers to comprehend human psychology as something that has evolved within (and is continuously engaged with) pressures of natural and built environments. It is important to remember that participants in the earliest communities of worship centered around Ahura Mazda and YHWH were also members of the same species as the humans reading this dissertation. If they could be affected by their environmental contexts such that they developed particular religious, cultural, social, or economic systems – why not modern populations? How are modern humans affected by natural and built environments? As climates shift and the biosphere threatens catastrophic changes how will the minds of seven, ten, or twenty billion humans be affected? As landscapes, across the globe, are reorganized into newly unfamiliar and potentially harsh environments, how will this species adapt? Survive? These are very big questions that cannot be answered by this dissertation. Perhaps, however, there are tools for addressing such questions, or for surviving the threat of environmental ruin, to be found among the religious remains of ancient societies that adapted to survive what some might consider to be difficult environments.