God against the gods : the history of the war between monotheism and polytheism Book
Author: Kirsch, Jonathan, 1949-
Publisher, Date: New York : Viking Compass, 2004.
ISBN: 0670032867 (alk. paper) - Description: xii, 336 p. : map ; 24 cm.
Has anyone here read this book? I've just started it. My viewpoint has been that the prophets and priests who wrote the books of the Bible were even more competitive than Bill Gates. They wanted no competition. All the meat, all the power was to go to them and any competing religions were treated with vicious aggression. In the pursuit of the monopoly on religion they cleverly used guilt against their believers. If something bad happened to Isreal or Judah it wasn't because another God was more powerful than Yahweh, hence they shouldn't switch allegiances rather they were being punished by Yahweh, and if they didn't fall into line fast things would only get worse.
This form of control proves to this day to be very effective, as the wealth and power of the Falwells, Robertson's, Popes, Church of the Latter Day Saints, etc demonstrate. It's easy to set up a business and control enough people to make at least a comfortable living in the religion business.
When Constantine used Christianity in his power struggles the religion came to dominate Europe. Unable to utterly eradicate the rationality of the pagan Greeks eventually during the Renaissance there was a resurgence of inquiry. This struggle between the rule of the priests seeking irrational emotional control through myths and the desire to use reason and tolerance to explore and create a better life is waged to this day even here on this forum.
Kirsch book is an interesting study of monotheism. I have only read the first 32 pages but it reminds me why I stopped being a believer decades ago.
lfen