“I won't look further than my own backyard”¹

Egyptologist Jan Assmann, in his book Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism, describes a trend of modern scholarly interest in monotheism which he suggests is linked to the perception of violence perpetrated by, and against, monotheistic religions: “The times are over when religion could be viewed as the 'opium of the people.' Nowadays, in the hands and minds of certain movements, religion appears as the 'dynamite of the people'...during the past fifteen years monotheism has become one of the most hotly debated topics in theological and intellectual circles, at least in the Western world.”² It is not just the nature and impact of monotheism, but questions of origin and source which appear to inspire such research and it is difficult to deny that much of the research on the subject focuses solely on biblical monotheism, assuming as Assmann does, that “...monotheism is a Jewish achievement.”³ Theophile James Meek, scholar of the Old Testament, summarizes this bias in Hebrew Origins: “...with no people in ancient times did that tendency [toward monotheism] attain such full expression as it did with the Hebrews, and the question immediately arises, whence and how came that monotheism?”⁴ This chapter will consider Meek's questions of “whence and how” regarding both Jewish and Zoroastrian monotheism. I suggest that it was the respective monotheistic worldviews of ancient Iranian and Israelite religions that was refined in the development of the recognizable forms of Zoroastrianism and Judaism respectively.

In order to address the question of whence came monotheism, as it is associated not only with Judaism, but also Zoroastrianism, we must understand what constitutes this 'type' of religion. Historically there are many ways in which religions have been categorized⁵ and it is beyond the scope of this writing to negotiate the merits of various taxonomic structures which might best describe the boxes into which these monotheistic religions fit. Though it seems overly simple, we might consider biblical scholar Mark S. Smith's observation to serve as a reasonable communis opinio: “...in discussing monotheism, one must exclude the reality of other gods...it is preferable to restrict the discussion to examples that clearly articulate monotheism, not those that simply exclude veneration of other deities.”⁶ If this definition is accepted with regard to modern Judaism and Zoroastrianism, one can be fairly safe in asserting that the religions are monotheistic. This is not to say that both religions can be said to express monotheism in the same way. For example, differences between characterization of the divine and recognition of other spiritual agents differentiate these two not just from each other but from other monotheistic religions, particularly Christianity and Islam. In order to understand the complex religious systems typically characterized by categories such as ‘monotheism’ or ‘polytheism’, we must separate the conception of a religious worldview from the numerical definition which are often lumped in the shorthand of those ‘-isms’.

For our purposes, it is important to consider that just as Zoroastrianism and Judaism express monotheism differently in the modern period, we could expect that their respective antecedents would be also differentiated. It is in comparing these antecedents, the ancient Iranian and Israelite societies respectively, that we might better understand characteristics of a monotheistic worldview which includes differences between mono- and polytheisms with regard to the distance between the supreme deity of a pantheon and human society. It is beyond the argument of this work to consider the various details of differentiation between monotheistic and polytheistic worldviews; for present purposes, I suggest this specific focus on the relationship between a supreme deity and human beings as a short hand for identifying the religious frameworks that go beyond the numbers game attached to the prefixes mono- and poly-. It is useful to consider a working definition of monotheistic worldview as one characterized by flatter divine hierarchy than might be found in a polytheistic worldview, and therefore comprising fewer degrees of separation between the supreme deity and the lowest human..

As we shall discuss, an example of this difference might yet be understood numerically as it seems that religions, such as those of the ancient Iranians and Israelites, with a (proto-)monotheistic worldview can be associated with a smaller pantheon than a polytheistic worldview.⁷ Interestingly, although it is beyond the scope of this research there appears to be a potential correlation between the number of levels in the hierarchies of humans and deities – as if the society of the gods reflects the power dynamics governing the society of human beings. With regard to the religions of the ancient Iranians and Israelites, if we can understand how these two are similar to one another, yet different from other societies in the greater Near East (with religions constructed around a polytheistic worldview), we can comprehend the religious systems (and their monotheistic worldviews) which would develop into religions characterized by monotheism. We shall begin with an exploration of the religion of the ancient Iranians because, as Assmann notes, the “...histories of God, of Israelite religion, and of biblical literature are fields that have been richly cultivated.”⁸