There are three glorious kings at the genesis of the three great monotheistic religions:
- King David, the Judean Emperor in the 10th century BC. According to James Kugel the recording of the key passages in Torah and the most important Judaic formulations point to the 10th century BC.
- King Constantine the Great, the Roman Emperor in the 3rd century AD. Constantine legalized Christianity in the Empire and introduced it as a state religion.
- King Muhammad, the Prophet of the Arabian Peninsula and the future Caliphate, 5th century AD. During that time (or after) was the recording of the Qur’an and the creation of the creed.
The three kings had much in common. Foremost each emperor unified the dispersed tribes and the remote provinces into a state ruled by the absolutist power, a one monarch (monarcha – one ruler):
- King David attacked and captured Jerusalem and made it his capital, the City of David. He unified or conquered the Northern tribes of Israel, creating an empire that lasted till the death of his son Solomon. Still the new Temple and the ritual became etched in the imagination for the next three thousand years.
- King Constantine attacked and captured Byzantium, renamed it Constantinople and made it the capital of the unified Roman Empire. The period immediately preceeding Constantine’s rule is known as Tetrarchy when the vast territory of the Roman Empire was split into four separately governed provinces. Constantine unified the empire by force and intrigue and moved the capital from Rome. Allegedly before one of his victorious battles he branded his soldiers with a cross and hence became a believer.
- King Muhammad attacked and captured Mecca and Medina and made it the base for the jihad, the complete conquest and unification of the Arabian Peninsula.
Constantine burning Arian books, from a compendium of canon law, ca. 825
There is a pattern, monotheism was initially an instrument for the rapid imperial expansion. Later even Stalin figured this shtick, he had a blueprint. If you rule over the dispersed and conquered by force tribes with conflicting ethnic allegiances to their own gods and idols, a single ideology it’s not just a religion but a confirmation that a king is anointed (a moshiach) by the Creator himself. Hence a rebellion is a religious offence against the One God who shows no mercy.
The central shrine inevitably moves to the new capital – Beit Hamikdash Temple in Jerusalem, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and Masjid al-Haram in Mecca. The ruthless founding generals over time morph into the lyrical founding poets (in addition to the loot of the land, the illiterate warlords plunder the creative imagination of the nameless scribes).
Interestingly the most important theological controversy in Christianity was Arianism after the teaching of Arius of Alexandria (256-336 AD). Arius preached that Jesus was a man, not a God’s essence. The Bishops were doctrinally split when the Emperor Constantine hosted the Council of Nicaea in 325. The illiterate Emperor Constantine sided with the (meshichisten) bishops who maintained that the Jesus was God and in the Nicene Creed declared the Arianism a heresy. This was no accident, although Constantine formally only converted on his death-bed, he had his burial prepared far in advance. At the splendid Church of the Holy Apostles they entombed Constantine inside a lavish gold coffin surrounded by the symbolic twelve coffins representing the apostles of the Almighty God, with the Christ’s successor in the middle. Similarly both David and Muhammad are meta messianic. Had the Turks not destroyed the Byzantine civilization with the Christendom shifting back to the old Rome and to the Third Rome in Moscow, Constantine would have endured as the central meta myth as well.
From the beginning the imperial business (and later business of nation states) was war, slaughter and conquest. In the authoritarian states the monotheism evolved as the unifying ideology. The mortal, monarchical powers relied on monotheism to further the earthly grab, to nourish the thirsty souls, to bathe the senses in the cathartic rituals and to dance deliriously to the cruel, territorial drumbeat of One God and One Truth.
- Further Reading:
- The Population of Rome
- Embrace the Emptiness and the Despair
- Going to Constantinople
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Well argued.
This is not an argument but an idea.
Constantine did not “attack and capture” Byzantium; It was an ancient Greek city already well within the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Mecca surrendered to Muhammad as part of a political deal (Mecca would become the focus of the new cult as opposed to Jerusalem).
You seem to be suggesting that monotheism is the cause of conquest, slaughter, rapine, etc. However even a brief survey of the pre-monotheistic (“pagan”) world would show that all these horrors were in abundance there as well. The problem is Man. While men often use religion as a holy cloak to justify their actions, removing that cloak would not in any way purify or ennoble them. Men would just find another excuse to do what men do best: slaughter and oppress their fellows.
Phillip, you are dealing in semantics – attacked vs. surrendered, etc. I am saying that the unified religion fits into the scheme of one rulers under one God.