(July 12, 2024 at 9:35 pm)Belacqua Wrote: I think you give two examples: first, the fact that Abraham and Ishmael begin as monotheists, and then (somehow) the descendants of Ishmael in Arabia revert to polytheism by Muhammad's time.
The archeological record shows that the god of Abraham originated in the native Canaanite pantheon with the addition of Yahweh from a foreign source. Yahweh and El undergo syncretic fusion, which is why the god of the OT seems a bit schizophrenic by times. If you fuse an older, wiser head of a pantheon with a red-handed god of raiders and storms you get an OT god who is handing down parables and psalms one moment and slaughtering all but the virgins the next.
Abraham and Ishmael were both fictions concocted during the First Diaspora by priests in Babylon. There's no archeological evidence for extensive early monotheism in the Arabian peninsula, with the first real influences arriving via Jewish communities followed later by Christians. Poltyhesists outnumbered either prior to Islam.
