DOI: https://doi.org/10.52510/sia.v3i2.52 UDK: 2-154:26./.28]:2-157
Original scientific paper

This article traces the idea of a binary between one religious truth and another religious falsehood. The cycle of true versus false religion began with the birth of biblical monotheism. While monotheism of Christianity was neither the first nor the last to fall into this typology, the author argues that its particular location in the historical unfolding of monotheist communities compelled it to become the most exclusive.

Thus, Christianity tends toward totalitarianism, whereas Judaism and Islam, although both equally as elitist as Christianity, do not. The article examines the argument between established religion and new religion in the way that Jewish adherents of monotheism opposed the claims of the new Christian monotheists, so did the established Jewish and Christian adherents of their notions of monotheism opposed the claims of the new Muslim monotheists. The author notices that by the seventh century, there were not only two expressions of monotheism, but many, for Jews and Christians had each split into several distinct communities based on differences in theology and praxis. The new divine dispensation of Islam, therefore, did not couch its argument in relation to an established monotheism but to several. Perhaps because of this, Islam does not claim an exclusive truth in relation to prior monotheisms, but rather a more accurate truth. Our greatest religious role-models – Moses for Jews, Jesus for Christians, Muhammad for Muslims – characterized and exemplified the divine attribute of ultimate humility throughout their lives. They all suffered. They all triumphed. Throughout, they remained remarkably modest.

Key words: One God, gods, deities, religion(s), monotheism, truth, polytheism, falsehood, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, internalized trauma.

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