I like another approach. As I've read elsewhere, and Rodney Start reminded us, a "High God" tradition is pretty universal among "primitive" groups. In The Idea of the Holy Otto describes an "encouter with the numinous" that he, I think properly, regards as the source of religious feeling. Depending on when and where this encounter happened, you might attach the sense of awe with the ocean, or the stars, or the forest, and come to think of that as the god. The default numinous experience would be monotheist.
Polytheism comes in when the original experience fades, or you have to get along with (swear oaths for) neighbors who either had a different experience or inherited the rituals from someone who had a different experience. And henotheism devolves to polytheism (by the next generation, if not sooner) which will dilute devotion.
If this approach applies, then Akhenaten had such an experience, and was in a position to (at least for a while) defy politics and tradition and try to inspire everyone to give up the corrupt rituals of non-worship in favor of a truer devotion.
In other words, the two could have been independent.
3 comments:
If you take a materialist viewpoint where there are no real gods, yes, this makes sense. On the other hand, if there are real gods, then the story could be quite different.
Something I have trouble with is reconciling sociological & anthropological work, which necessarily are at least methodologically naturalistic, with belief in God. That is, sociologists and anthropologists cannot explain the phenomenon of religion by even proposing that maybe religion came from a true experience of God or gods. That possibility is out of bounds, literally unthinkable, and so they have to come up with materialistic explanations that preclude the existence of non-material causes.
I understand why they have to approach it that way, but I doubt the veracity of their conclusions.
So long as they approach sociology and anthropology from the framework that only things that are measurable are appropriate input, they're stuck. I judge that the paradigm's wrong for the subject matter, of course.
Yes, I agree.
BTW, have you ever read David Kaiser's book, How the Hippies Saved Physics? He's a physicist at MIT who also has a PhD in the history of science.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/039334231X/?bestFormat=true&k=how%20the%20hippies%20saved%20physics&ref_=nb_sb_ss_w_scx-ent-pd-bk-d_de_k0_1_16
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