Origins of the Judeo-Christian god and religion

Central to these themes is the notion of monotheism, which most scholars believe to have been the outgrowth of a process that began with polytheism, progressed to henotheism (the worship of one god without denying the existence of others), and ended in the belief in a single Lord of the universe, uniquely different from all His creatures. He is compassionate toward His creation, and in turn humans are to love and fear (i.e., stand in awe of) Him. Because God is holy, He demands that His people be holy, righteous, and just, a kingdom of priests to assist in the fulfillment of His designs for humankind and the world.

The first signs of monotheism in West Asia come from the Bible, where by around 1000 BC the Jews seem to have already thought that they should worship only their own one God. They clearly believed that there were many gods, but they should only worship theirs, and in exchange he would take care of them against all the other gods. They may have gotten this idea from the Egyptians.

Jesus brought the next wave of monotheism to West Asia six hundred years later with the development of Christianity. Christianity was the first religion to insist that not only should you worship only one god, but the other ones were not really even gods at all, but demons. This has some similarity to the Zoroastrian idea that some minor gods are on the side of the Lie, and some relationship to the Jewish idea that you should only worship your own one God, but it takes both ideas to more of an extreme. Christianity gradually took over most of the western part of West Asia, the part that was under Roman control, but the Sassanian part of West Asia remained Zoroastrian until about 700 AD.