Judaism

Judaism today is considered as one of the oldest monotheistic religions today. The religion dates back four thousand years ago, rooted in the ancient region of Canaan which is present day Israel and Palestine. Judaism traces its custom to the covenant God made with Abraham and his lineage, that God would make them a sacred people and give them a holy land. The primary figures of Israelite culture include the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, who received God's law at Mount Sinai. Biblical tradition says that Abraham was the first in his line to worship a one God. It was said that Abraham realized that the idols of the gods of his father had no power and so sought the real God.

Judaism however is also sometimes regarded as starting with Moses because God gave him the Ten Commandments, and because he is often credited with writing the first 5 books of the Bible the Pentateuch or Torah which largely define Judaism. Monotheism is the doctrine that there is one god, and that means the worship of one god and one god only, and the denial of all other gods. If the idea of monotheism really originated with Moses or from the time of the prophets such as Abraham, who’s known as the father of the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Abraham is considered by most Jews to be the first to believe in a single god. It was said that God chose Abraham to be his special servant and later made a solemn oath to him. It is said that Abraham was a gifted man of high intelligence and that Abraham didn't blindly accept the common worship. He contemplated the matter relentlessly and concluded that there is One God and that this should be taught to others as well. Although Abraham determined there was one god he did not deny the fact there could be other gods. This meant that monotheism likely didn't start with him.

According to the Bible the next important step didn’t take place until 450 years later. In the time of famine many of Abraham’s descendants left for Egypt. At first they thrive and were successful but eventually became enslaved for a long period of time. The Hebrew’s were eventually led by Moses out of Egypt from slavery and during the Exodus the second and most important covenant was made between God and Moses. It occurred at Mount Sinai, where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and other rules to which the Jewish people had to live by (contained in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible), marking the beginning of Judaism as a structured religion. As a result, Moses is credited for formally establishing the religion after receiving the Ten Commandments from God.

and the reality and power of Chemosh here and elsewhere are no more doubted than those of Yahweh himself. Kagan’s article further discusses about Albright’s view that the new concept which came with Moses was not the worship of Yahweh to the exclusion of all other gods, but the praise of Yahweh above the other tribal gods and untied allegiance of the several tribes to him as their confederate god, Yahweh being to the confederacy as a whole what the tribal god was to the tribe. What Moses did was turn the old tribal god Yahweh the god of amphictyony,