The Axial Age and the one God: how monotheism emerged in ancient Israel

Between about 800 and 200 BC, the prophets of Israel, the Buddha, Confucius and the Greek philosophers all lived and taught. The philosopher Karl Jaspers called this the Axial Age. Was it real, and how did monotheism, the belief in one God, emerge in ancient Israel? This post sets out the Axial Age thesis and its quantitative test, then follows Israelite religion from the Canaanite god El to Second Isaiah. It reads that history through historical criticism, archaeology, and Catholic and Orthodox theology.

Part 4 of How did religion develop?. Previous: Gods of the first states. Next: Did "Big Gods" build civilisation?.

The Axial Age thesis

Jaspers (1949, bibliographic) proposed that between 800 and 200 BC, China, India, Iran, Israel and Greece each, independently, broke through to reflective, transcendent and ethically universal thought. He named Confucius and Laozi, the Upanishads and the Buddha, Zarathustra, the Hebrew prophets and the Greek philosophers. He meant it as a shared origin of human self-understanding that was not specifically Christian, in contrast to placing the axis of history at Christ. Eisenstadt (1986) recast it as a tension between transcendent and worldly orders, carried by new critical elites. Bellah (2011) tied it to the arrival of theoretic culture, thinking about thinking, added on top of ritual and myth rather than replacing them (both bibliographic).

Is it real? The Seshat test

The strongest empirical test used the Seshat Global History Databank. Mullins and colleagues (2018) found that the results "undercut the notion of a specific 'age' of axiality limited to a specific geo-temporal localization". Traits proposed as markers of the axial transformation "appeared across Afro-Eurasia hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of years prior to the proposed Axial Age" (Mullins et al. 2018). A follow-up book argues that axiality emerged again and again whenever societies passed a threshold of scale and complexity. One of its editors, Jenny Reddish, said: "We couldn't find any consistent Axial Age that was confined to those five societies" (Complexity Science Hub).

A different critique comes from a Christian scholar. Iain Provan (2013, bibliographic) argues that the Axial Age is a modern construct that flattens the differences between Israel's faith and Greek, Indian and Chinese thought. So the data scientists and the theologically minded critic both reject the strong version, a single synchronous world axis, for opposite reasons. One says axial traits are not unique to the period. The other says lumping the cases together erases Israel's distinctiveness. A weaker version, a first-millennium cluster of reflective ethical movements linked to scale, remains widely accepted. Defenders can also argue that a databank codes proxies such as moralising gods and limits on rulers, not Bellah's harder-to-code theoretic culture. The notes found no published rebuttal making that case, so treat it as the obvious reply, not a documented one.

Proposed causes

• Affluence. Baumard and colleagues (2015) argued that rising energy capture per person, not population or political complexity, best predicts ascetic, moralising doctrines (summary). Peter Turchin called the binary coding of "axial" cases a "Procrustean bed" and the Iron Age energy estimates shaky (Turchin 2014).
• War and empire. A Seshat study found that intergroup warfare, supported by resource availability, was the common driver of both complexity and moralising religion (Turchin et al. 2022).
• Coinage and literacy. Graeber (2011) and Seaford (2004) link coined money to axial thought. Goody (1986) and Assmann (1992) link the religions of the book to canonised texts (all bibliographic).

None of these has decisive support. All of them rise with scale, so they are hard to tell apart.

Israel: from many gods to one

The critical reconstruction

The dominant critical model starts from the Late Bronze Age tablets of Ugarit in Syria, which give a Canaanite-type pantheon: El, the aged father who heads the divine council; his consort Athirat (Asherah); and the storm god Baal, the rider of the clouds, a title also applied to Israel's God in Psalm 68 (Smith 2002, bibliographic). Mark S. Smith argues that Israel's religion emerged from within this world by convergence, as Yahweh absorbed El's titles and Baal's storm imagery, and then differentiation, as Baal and Asherah were rejected. On this view exclusive worship of Yahweh was promoted by prophetic and Deuteronomistic circles under kings such as Hezekiah and Josiah (late eighth to seventh centuries BC), and explicit monotheism came with Second Isaiah in the Babylonian exile, about 540 BC (Smith 2001, 2002, bibliographic). In Isaiah 44:6 God says that he is the first and the last and that besides him there is no god. Critical scholars widely treat passages like this as the first explicit denial that other gods exist.

The archaeology

The evidence of practised religion fits a gradual model:

• Kuntillet ʿAjrud in Sinai, about 800 BC, has inscriptions blessing "by Yahweh of Samaria and by his asherah" and by "Yahweh of Teman and his asherah" (summary). Whether "his asherah" means the goddess as Yahweh's consort (Dever 2005, bibliographic) or a wooden cult pole is disputed. Hebrew normally does not attach a possessive to a personal name, which favours the cult object. A similar blessing appears in an eighth-century tomb at Khirbet el-Qom.
• The Bible itself reports Asherah objects in the Jerusalem temple and their removal under Josiah (2 Kings 23), and condemns them (Deuteronomy 16:21).
• Elephantine in Egypt, in the fifth century BC, had a Judaean temple of YHW, and its papyri name other deities alongside him. Even after the exile, diaspora Yahwism was not uniformly monotheistic (Porten & Yardeni, bibliographic).

Other finds bear on the history of Israel rather than on monotheism. The Merneptah Stele (about 1208 BC) is the earliest mention of "Israel" outside the Bible, apparently as a people in the hill country of Canaan. The Tel Dan stele (ninth century BC) almost certainly mentions the "House of David" (Tel Dan summary). Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified site of about 1000 BC, is a live debate over the scale of early Judah (Garfinkel et al. 2015). The 2023 Mount Ebal "curse tablet", said to carry the divine name in the Late Bronze Age, has been rejected by most specialists who have published on it. Critics say the images show no discernible letters, and one suggests the object is a fishing-net weight (Times of Israel; Haughwout 2024). Its lead author remains confident there is writing. It would be a mistake to rest an argument for early Mosaic religion on it. And even if every maximalist reading held, these finds would show Israel, David's dynasty and the divine name early. They would not show exclusive worship, which is the point at issue.

The traditional view

The traditional view places exclusive covenant worship of Yahweh with Moses at Sinai, as the narrative of Exodus and Deuteronomy presents it (Exodus 20:2–3; Deuteronomy 6:4). Later polytheistic practice is read as apostasy from that covenant, which is exactly what the prophets condemned, rather than an earlier stage. Kitchen (2003) and Hoffmeier (1997) defend the substantial historicity of the early narratives (both bibliographic).

Is "monotheism" even the right word?

Nathan MacDonald argues that "monotheism" is a seventeenth-century category, and that Deuteronomy's concern is exclusive love and loyalty to Yahweh, not a count of how many gods exist (MacDonald 2003, bibliographic). Peter Hayman notes that even rabbinic Judaism kept a populated heaven of angels and the divine council (Hayman 1991, bibliographic). Larry Hurtado defines Jewish monotheism by exclusive worship, and Richard Bauckham by God's unique identity as sole Creator and Ruler (Kok 2015). This lets a reader accept the divine-council language of the Hebrew Bible without calling it polytheism. Part 6 shows why the definition matters for early Christianity.

Elsewhere in the axial world

• Persia. Zarathustra's date is unresolved. Many scholars put him about 1500–1000 BC on linguistic grounds, and an older tradition puts him in the sixth century BC (Encyclopedia.com). Persian influence on Jewish ideas of angels, resurrection and final judgment is plausible. But most Zoroastrian texts that spell out those doctrines are centuries later, so the direction and extent of borrowing remain disputed (Yamauchi 1990; Shaked 1994, bibliographic).
• India. The early Upanishads are usually placed in the seventh or sixth century BC (Olivelle 1998, bibliographic). For the Buddha's death, Heinz Bechert wrote that the old agreement on a date near 480 BC "has become a thing of the past", and most contributors to his symposium placed it considerably later, without agreeing on how much later (Bechert, LMU text).
• China. Mozi argued that Heaven wills righteousness and punishes wrongdoing, a moralising high god by any definition, though his school died out after the Han. Confucius reformed rather than rejected the ritual worship of Heaven and the ancestors (Fingarette 1972; Puett 2002, bibliographic).
• Greece. Xenophanes mocked gods made in human image and spoke of one god, greatest among gods and men. The Stanford Encyclopedia notes that the plural "gods" in the same line points to one greatest god rather than the only god, and that his remarks may be best read as traditional Greek piety (Lesher, SEP). Plato's Republic gives the first attested use of the word theologia.

Through the lenses

Historical criticism

The critical model explains a lot: Ugaritic parallels, divine-council texts, Asherah inscriptions and the late, explicit monotheism of Second Isaiah. It strains on chronology. Much of it depends on dating biblical texts late, and the historicity of Josiah's reform is itself debated, with some scholars seeing a core event and others a later retrojection.

Archaeology

Here critics and traditionalists largely agree on the facts. Much practised Israelite and Judaean religion was not monotheistic before the exile, and some was not after it. They disagree on whether that was the original state or a departure from a covenant ideal. Archaeology documents practice, not the earliest normative ideal, so it cannot settle that question.

Quantitative history

Seshat dissolves the "age" into a recurring response to scale. That is powerful against the strong thesis. It is weaker against claims about the content of particular traditions, which a databank can code only crudely.

Catholic theology

Catholic teaching accepts historical-critical method while reading the canon as progressive revelation (Dei Verbum 12; Pontifical Biblical Commission 1993, both bibliographic). In that frame, a gradual historical emergence of monotheism is compatible with a divine pedagogy: God teaching a people step by step. The Greek strand has a patristic place too. Clement of Alexandria wrote that philosophy was given to the Greeks as "a schoolmaster to bring the Hellenic mind, as the law, the Hebrews, to Christ" (Stromata 1.5). Where the lens strains: progressive revelation can absorb almost any sequence, which makes it hard to test, and it sits less easily with the traditional claim of Mosaic exclusivism from the start.

Orthodox theology

The notes suggest a framing that fits patristic logic. When the God of Israel takes El's titles and Baal's imagery, that can be read theologically as appropriation and polemic: the true God claiming attributes falsely given to others. This is a theological reading, not a historical finding, and both Churches share the patristic sources it draws on. A second point, which the notes offer as their own inference: the Greek path (a philosophical turn towards one supreme, good, unchanging divine principle, while civic cult carried on) and the Israelite path (exclusive worship first, explicit statements about other gods later) met in Hellenistic Judaism and then in the Fathers. The Orthodox Church, which reads Scripture through the Fathers, inherits that meeting directly. That is where it would locate the real convergence of the axial streams, rather than in a shared world age. Where it strains: the patristic synthesis is a later theological achievement, and it cannot be read back as evidence about what Israelites believed in the eighth century BC.

What we can say with confidence

• A strong, synchronous Axial Age is not supported by the comparative data. Axial traits appear earlier and elsewhere, tied to scale.
• Israelite religion grew up in a West Semitic world it shared with Ugarit.
• Some Israelites around 800 BC linked Yahweh with an asherah, and Second Isaiah states monotheism explicitly in the sixth century BC.
• The Mount Ebal tablet does not, on present published evidence, show the divine name in the Late Bronze Age.

What remains open

• Whether exclusive Yahweh worship was an early covenant ideal or a late achievement.
• Whether Asherah at Kuntillet ʿAjrud was a goddess or a cult object.
• Zarathustra's date and the extent of Persian influence on Judaism.
• Which causes, if any, explain the first-millennium cluster of ethical movements.

Sources

• Bechert, H. (ed.) (1991–97). Die Datierung des historischen Buddha. LMU full text
• Baumard, N. et al. (2015). Current Biology 25(1). Bibliographic entry
• Bellah, R. N. (2011). Religion in Human Evolution; Eisenstadt, S. N. (ed.) (1986) (bibliographic).
• Clement of Alexandria, Stromata I.5. newadvent.org
• Complexity Science Hub (2019). On Seshat History of the Axial Age. Link
• Dever, W. G. (2005). Did God Have a Wife? (bibliographic).
• Dei Verbum 12; Pontifical Biblical Commission (1993) (bibliographic).
• Garfinkel, Y. et al. (2015). Radiocarbon. HUJI record
• Graeber, D. (2011); Seaford, R. (2004); Goody, J. (1986); Assmann, J. (1992) (bibliographic).
• Haughwout, M. S. (2024). Heritage Science 12. DOI
• Hayman, P. (1991). Journal of Jewish Studies 42; MacDonald, N. (2003) (bibliographic).
• Jaspers, K. (1949). Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (bibliographic).
• Kitchen, K. A. (2003); Hoffmeier, J. K. (1997) (bibliographic).
• Kok, M. (2015). Critical Questions for the Early High Christology Club. Bible & Interpretation
• Kuntillet ʿAjrud inscriptions, summary. Wikipedia
• Lesher, J. Xenophanes. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. SEP
• Mullins, D. A. et al. (2018). American Sociological Review 83(3). DOI
• Olivelle, P. (1998); Fingarette, H. (1972); Puett, M. (2002) (bibliographic).
• Porten, B. & Yardeni, A. Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt (bibliographic).
• Provan, I. (2013). Convenient Myths (bibliographic).
• Smith, M. S. (2001). The Origins of Biblical Monotheism; (2002) The Early History of God (bibliographic).
• Stripling, S. et al. (2023). Heritage Science 11:105, and critiques. Times of Israel
• Tel Dan stele, summary. Wikipedia
• Turchin, P. (2014). Does affluence lead to asceticism? Blog
• Turchin, P. et al. (2022). Religion, Brain & Behavior 13(2). Listing
• Yamauchi, E. M. (1990); Shaked, S. (1994) (bibliographic). Zoroaster dating overview: Encyclopedia.com

The notes behind this post: 04_axial_monotheism.md, with the Ugarit and Kuntillet ʿAjrud material also in 03_early_states.md.

Part 4 of How did religion develop?. Previous: Gods of the first states. Next: Did "Big Gods" build civilisation? The moralizing gods debate and the retracted Nature paper.

Produced with AI assistance (Claude) from the cited notes in the religion-origins project.