Page 584 - Atlas of Creation Volume 2

the last stage of the Egyptian religion, that known to the Greek and Latin writers, heathen or Christian, was by far

the grossest and the most corrupt. 76
The anthropologist Sir Flinders Petrie says that superstitious, polytheistic beliefs emerged through the

gradual corruption of belief in a single deity. In addition, he says that this process of corruption can be seen in
present-day society as well as in societies in the past:
There are in ancient religions and theologies very different classes of gods. Some races, as the modern Hindu, revel

in a profusion of gods and godlings which continually increase. Others ... do not attempt to worship great gods, but
deal with a host of animistic spirits, devils...

Were the conception of a god only an evolution from such spirit worship we should find the worship of many
gods preceding the worship of one God... What we actually find is the contrary of this, monotheism is the first
stage traceable in theology...

Wherever we can trace back polytheism to its earliest stages, we find that it results from combinations of monothe-

ism.... 77

The Origins of Superstitious Polytheism in India

Even if Indian culture is not as old as Middle Eastern cultures, still it is
one of the oldest surviving cultures in the world.
In Indian paganism, the number of so-called deities is virtually end-
less. After long study, Andrew Lang has determined that polytheistic
religions appeared in India as a result of a process similar to that in

the Middle East.
Edward McCrady, writing about Indian religious beliefs, ob-
served that the Rig Veda shows that in the early days, the deities were

regarded simply as diverse manifestations of a single Divine Being. 78
In the hymns in the Rig Veda, we can see traces of the destruction of
the monotheistic idea of a single God. Another researcher in this area,
Max Müller, agrees that at first, there was a belief in one God:

There is a monotheism that precedes the polytheism of the Veda; and even in the
invocation of the innumerable gods the remembrance of a God one and infinite,
breaks through the mist of idolatrous phraseology like the blue sky that is hidden by

passing clouds. 79
From this, it is again obvious that there has been no evolution of religions, but
that people added false elements to true religion, or neglected certain commands and

prohibitions—which finally resulted in the perversion of religious belief.
The superstitious Hindu
religion has many false
deities. However, re- Contamination of Religions in European History
search has shown that
in the early days of We can see traces of a similar contamination in the beliefs of historical European
Indian culture people societies. In his book The Religion of Greece in Prehistoric Times, Axel W. Persson, a re-
believed in a single searcher in Ancient Greek paganism, writes:
God.
... there later developed a larger number of more or less significant figures which we meet
with in Greek religious myths. In my opinion, their multiplying variety depends to a very
considerable degree on the different invocating names of originally one and the same deity. 80
The same traces of alteration can be seen in Italy. An archaeologist by the name of Irene Rosenzweig, after

researching the Iguvine tables, which date from Etruscan times, concludes that "deities are distinguished by ad-
jectives, which in their turn emerge as independent divine powers." 81
In short, all of the last century's anthropological and archaeological evidence indicates that throughout his-

tory, societies first believed in one God but altered this belief with the passage of time. At first, peoples believed

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