| Wow. I did not expect that this would be traced all the way back to Pythagoras. So it seems that the idea of a single God or even a trinity may have been derived from pythagorean number theory. So could this be the 'missing link' and perhaps monotheism actually comes from a misinterpretation of the philosophical science of pythagoras? Crazy. But considering the impact the Greeks had on the rest of the world, it is likely a large influence on the consequential development of monotheistic religions, such as the Hebrew interpretation of YHWH as being one God.
If this is true, than preceding religions or influences such as Sumer, Zoloastrianism, Vedic, and the Iranian Heroic Age are probably just minor contributions to theology of Judaism, but not to the overall essence of monotheism.
Hmm, should I rule the Aten Cult out than as an influence to the idea of one god? Is it possible that Akhetaten himself could have been influenced by this monotheistic interpretation? Or perhaps we could take a more holistic point of view and hypothesize that the idea of one god could have come from multiple sources, such as pythagoras, aten, zoloastrianism, Sumer, and the Midian tribe, making Judaism a large mosaic of a myriad of preceding cultures and religions. |