Let us suppose that biblical religion was squashed early on: that either egypt or Babylon or Antiochus IV successfully obliterated Judaism: therefore no rabbis or Paul or Jesus. And since Israelite theology was the vehicle for bringing a philosophy of a strict monotheism into the world, without it we would all be polytheists.
Would we be better off?
It’s hard to know how things actually would have turned out in that contrafactual world, but one thing I would note is that the polytheists seemed to be a lot less dogmatic than some of the Abrahamic religions ended up.
Robert might be right that monotheism would still have spread, but a philosophical monotheism has a very different tenor than a monotheistic religion rooted in purported revelation.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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