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Diachronic Developments
1 While taking the synchronic approach, we must ask ourselves about possible structural changes, particularly the introduction of monotheism in contrast to polytheism (as opposed to non-structural changes such as the progressive development of monotheistic philosophy).
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Prehistoric Evidence
2 Cuneiform texts show two groups of lexical elements that do not reveal Sumerian or Semitic origins pointing at a Proto-Euphratian substrate language: 1. names for professions that appeared during the agriculture revolution around 6000 B.C. and 2. trisyllabic personal names. There are elements in Mesopotamian deity names which are phonologically similar to these names and suggest a derivation from the same time period. This would explain the similarity between names for demons and archaic gods and highlight the conservative nature of the Mesopotamian tradition genealogy which would be a theogony, but not primarily as an affirmation of filiation, rather as a systematization of prehistoric relics.
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The Absolute
3 Rather than evemeristic interpretations of myth, wherein gods are allegories for abstract concepts or natural phenomena, I propose that what lies at the beginning is the perception of the absolute, and the reference to natural phenomena is the result of an effort aimed at giving substance to this perception.
4 The ancients had a perception of the absolute quite similar to ours, and they seriously tried to confront its basic assumptions, isolating individual attributes as indicative of a hidden reality in a concrete and specific way. Elements that gave concrete form to religious culture were those of nature, social and political relations, abstract ideas, spirits of the dead, and geographical locations.
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The Chronology of Biblical Events
5 The controversial chronology of the tradition of Biblical events is relevant to the origins of monotheism. Two considerations are the emphasis on the beginning of religious traditions, which is not a concern in Mesopotamian religion, and the relatively late chronological moment of Abraham’s conversion, conceived as history and not myth. Biblical traditions provide a reasonable framework for the long process of the development of monotheism.
6 From 2400-1600 B.C., the expansion of Amorites into the steppe as agro-pastoralists gave rise to the tribe (a political group bound by kinship ties rather than territory). Biblical patriarchal tradition follows the same trajectory and can be read as a possible ideological manifesto of the great Amorite sociopolitical movement.
7 The reason that Mesopotamian Amorite history is remembered in Palestinian writings a millennium later may be due to the founding of the Amorite kingdom of Amurru in Syria between 1400 and 1200 BC.
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Babylonian Elements in the Bible
8 The elements in Biblical tradition derived from Mesopotamian culture can be assumed to derive from before the Babylonian exile, as Mesopotamian elements appear in stories that are not Mesopotamian in their structure, making them unlikely to have been inserted later, and the attitude of the exiles in Babylon is polemical. An Amorite origin is more likely.
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The Patriarchal Tradition
9 The revelatory nature of monotheism gives historical beginnings a more foundational importance. The patriarchal tradition should be seen not only as the documentation of a historical phenomenon in its own right, but also as the memory of Mesopotamian cultural material absorbed in a new context. We can see a Mesopotamian context behind Abraham’s perception, and a historical development of increasingly strict prohibition against representing the divine.
10 The evolution of perception highlights the profound coherence of the perceived referent.