alternatehistory.com

Judaism has come down to us today as a exclusively monotheistic religion. But there are some indications that it was not always that way.

--The Ten Commandments begins, not with, for example, something like Islam's affirmative statement that "There is no God but Allah," but with the much less definitive, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt; you shall have no other gods before me."

--There have been archaelogical finds in which the Hebrew God, YHWH, is associated with a goddess, Asherah.

--There are, in the Bible, many allusions to and direct condemnations of the fact that other gods were being worshipped by the Hebrews along with YHWH.

The picture that emerges, when one really looks at the evidence for early Judaism, is that it was, in fact, henotheistic (i.e. one in which the Hebrews recognized the supremacy of one God, but did not deny the existence of others) rather than monotheistic. This seems to have changed sometime after the Babylonian Captivity, likely because of the experiences of the Captives while in exile.

But what if early Judaism (for lack of a better term for the religion of the early Hebrews) had been, from a very early date, strictly monotheistic. Say, instead of the version of the Ten Commandments which were passed down in OTL, Moses receives a version, the first verses of which are a much more clearcut pronouciation of God's uniqueness...

"I am the Lord thy God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. I am the One God, the Creator of the Universe and all who dwell therein, and there are no other gods except me. Thou shalt not worship other gods, as they are a deception, and to worship them is an insult unto your one true God."

As a result, Hebrew religion is exclusively monotheistic from that time forward. What might the impacts of this be on history?
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