The Religion Paul Invented

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Paul’s reasoning

How did Christianity become the baffling religion it is today? A cloud of obscurity surrounds the first decades of the Christian movement. A few things we do know. Jesus started Christianity, but Paul of Tarsus, better known as Paul the Apostle, turned Christianity into the religion we know today. Paul was first a Pharisee who devoutly observed Jewish religious laws before becoming a follower of Christ. One thing we should know about Paul is that the scriptures were precious to him and more valuable than facts. Truth, in his view, is thus not, as Jesus taught, according to the facts as established by the senses, but according to the scriptures. And most people, religious or not, would not object to lying for a good cause, so it is not that strange.

How did Christianity become the baffling religion it is today? A cloud of obscurity surrounds the first decades of the Christian movement. A few things we do know. Jesus started Christianity, but Paul of Tarsus, better known as Paul the Apostle, turned Christianity into the religion we know today. Paul was first a Pharisee who devoutly observed Jewish religious laws before becoming a follower of Christ. One thing we should know about Paul is that the scriptures were precious to him and more valuable than facts. Truth, in his view, is thus not, as Jesus taught, according to the facts as established by the senses, but according to the scriptures. And most people, religious or not, would not object to lying for a good cause, so it is not that strange.

It is of the utmost importance, as it explains why Christianity has become the religion it is today. In Paul’s view, everything about Christianity should have a scriptural foundation. Paul’s education as a Pharisee is the reason why. We shouldn’t underestimate the consequences. Likely, most, if not everything, about Jesus that is ‘according to the scriptures’ is a fabrication. The label ‘according to the scriptures’ should serve as a red flag, signalling ‘invented by Paul.’ Hence, ‘Jesus rose on the third day according to the scriptures’ means ‘Paul made up that Jesus rose on the third day.’

It blows away the entire theological foundation of Christianity that Paul made up, including the idea of the New Covenant. That should come as no surprise if God is a woman who took a human form and married Jesus, telling him they were Eve and Adam reincarnate. It also suggests that the earliest document depicting the historical events, the Gospel of Mark, had already seen significant editing for theological reasons. If Christianity aligns with the Jewish scriptures, it gains credibility among the Jews. That was a good cause for Paul.

Christianity began as a small Jewish sect founded by an end-time prophet who claimed to be the Messiah. Many Jews awaited a Messiah but expected a strong leader who would liberate the Jewish nation from Roman occupation. Jesus didn’t live up to their hopes, and the Romans had him crucified. That wasn’t the end of Christianity, but just the beginning. Jesus later appeared to some of his followers, thereby giving credibility to his claims that he was the eternally living Son of God. That is possible in virtual reality, and it is hard to envision how Christianity could have survived otherwise. His post-death appearance gave his followers new hope and inspired them to carry on, leading to Pentecost and the belief in the Holy Spirit.

Paul, whose name was first Saul, was initially a fervent persecutor of Jesus’ followers. When travelling to Damascus, he received a vision. According to his own words, a bright light flashed from heaven, knocking him to the ground. He heard a voice he identified as Jesus accusing Saul of persecuting him. Today, we would call the experience a psychosis. The encounter temporarily blinded Saul. His companions led him to Damascus. There, Ananias, a Christian disciple in Damascus, restored Saul’s sight and baptised him.

It was a turning point in his life and an event that shaped the future of humankind. It was a personal calling. His response was not to consult any human being (Galatians 1:16). In other words, he didn’t go for a reality check. Instead, he went his own way and started preaching among the Gentiles (Galatians 1:15-16). Paul preached his own distinct gospel, which he claimed was revealed to him. He didn’t meet with most of the other Apostles for fourteen years (Galatians 2:1-10). He saw Simon Peter after three years, and also Jesus’ brother (Galatians 1:18-19). His mission succeeded. Indeed, God works in mysterious ways. In The Triumph of Christianity, Bart Ehrman attempts to reconstruct Paul’s reasoning, the foundation of Christian thought.

His vision proved to Paul that Jesus still lived as his followers claimed. Jesus had died, so he was resurrected, Paul reasoned. And therefore, he must be the long-awaited Messiah. That posed a few theological problems for Paul. The Romans had humiliated Jesus and executed him. So, why did Jesus have to die? Paul came up with an answer. In many religions, including Judaism during Passover, people sacrifice animals to please the gods.1 The Gospels agree that Jesus died either on the day of Preparation for the Passover or on Passover itself. Now, that doesn’t seem like a coincidence, so that pushed Paul’s thinking in this direction. Paul must have known that Jesus believed himself to be Adam. Adam led us out of Paradise, and Jesus would return us to it.

And so, Paul reasoned that Jesus came to undo what Adam had done. The Jewish religion doesn’t place such a dramatic weight on the Fall. It definitely wouldn’t justify human sacrifice, or worse, murdering the Son of God. To make the argument work, Paul inflated the significance of the Fall to grandiose proportions. That is why Christianity, contrary to Judaism and Islam, places such an emphasis on sin. Paul turned Jesus into the sacrificial Lamb of God. In his view, we are all sinners because Adam was, but Jesus saved us by sacrificing himself. It is a novel idea not found in Judaism or its scriptures. The Jewish religion opposes human sacrifice, and it is even blasphemous to think that God would require it, so this is alien to Jews, which made Paul’s innovation truly remarkable.

The Lamb of God

The sacrificial lamb is a revolutionary new type of saviour, someone who, by his death, provides redemption to his followers. According to Mark, Matthew, and Luke, the disciples shared bread and wine during the Last Supper. And Jesus said, ‘Take it; this is my body,’ and, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.’ It is outside the Jewish tradition and part of the sacrificial lamb imagery. So, did Jesus say these words, or did Paul invent them? Probably the latter. Paul wrote (1 Corinthians 11:23-26),

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

It begins with, ‘For I received from the Lord.’ In other words, the origin of this tradition lies in Paul’s imagination rather than in Jesus’ words at the Last Supper. He declared that he received the information directly from the Lord, not from an eyewitness. That is iffy. The Gospel of John fails to mention it. This gospel comes from a separate tradition outside Paul’s influence. John provides the origin of his line of thinking.

There, Jesus claimed that he was the bread coming from heaven in analogy to the bread that God sent from heaven in Moses’ time (John 6:25-59). Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’ (John 6:35) And, ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.’ (John 6:51) And, ‘Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.’ (John 6:53-54) According to John, Jesus said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

It is the same imagery, but with a very different context: Jesus as a life-giver and bread from heaven. It relates to what John alluded to when he wrote that the Word became flesh, and that Jesus gave us the right to become children of God. As Adam, he fathered humanity with Eve, who was God, or so that was what Jesus believed. As Adam’s reincarnation, he was a life-giver with eternal life to offer his followers, since many Jews believed in the resurrection of the dead. That Jesus was Adam and eternally married to God, and thereby the father of humanity, was unthinkable for Jews, and also for most Jewish Christians, who didn’t know about Jesus’ love affair with God. Gentiles had no problem with that. They had organised themselves in the Johannine community around their own Gospel, now known as the Gospel of John, so you only find it there.

And so, Paul gave the eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood a different twist by turning Jesus into a sacrificial lamb. He borrowed his offering theme from another part of the Scripture, in this case Melchizedek’s offering of bread and wine to Abraham. In the first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul writes (1 Corinthians 15:3-5),

For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Simon Peter and then to the twelve Apostles.

It is another ‘for I received’ sentence, so many scholars believe these things have been passed on to him, possibly by fellow Christians as a creed, and that it reflects the earliest Christian beliefs.2 However, the repeated reference to the scriptures makes the supposed creed suspect of being a product of Paul’s creative ingenuity. He has proven himself capable of writing a beautiful poem about love, so that wouldn’t be beyond his capabilities. A passage in Isaiah can explain the ‘died for our sins according to the scriptures’ (Isaiah 53:4-6),

Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

You need not be too imaginative to apply this to Jesus, even though Isaiah had someone else in mind. Concerning the raising on the third day, Hosea 6:2 may come to assistance, as it says, ‘On the third day he will restore us.’ The larger the body of scriptures, the easier cherry-picking becomes. What comes next is even more unbelievable. Jesus supposedly appeared to more than five hundred at the same time. Paul was such a fantasist that it is unlikely to have happened.

Paul tried to answer the question of why God made Jesus sacrifice himself, which is a profoundly troubling question for a Jew. As a religious Jew, he looked for the answer in the scriptures, so facts were of secondary importance. Facts were never that important in religion, and are something scientists may care about. And humans are creatures who live by stories rather than facts. So, think of it as doing God’s work rather than lying. That was probably how Paul viewed it as well. And for good reason, because his diligent work united the early Church, a tremendous achievement.

So we should be cautious in concluding that Jesus believed that he had to die for our sins. The Gospel of John fails to mention it. John the Baptist calls Jesus ‘Lamb of God’ twice in the first chapter of John, but the other Gospels don’t mention that. It is an image from Pauline theology. There is no chance that John the Baptist said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God.’ Although the author of John’s letter supports the claim that Jesus died for our sins, that could be telling. The letter expresses the author’s opinion, influenced by Pauline theology, whereas the Gospel of John is an existing account he redacted.

Jesus’ teachings were another reason Paul believed Jesus died for our sins. So, what did Jesus teach? It was the forgiveness of sins. Mark tells us that John the Baptist preached baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and that he baptised Jesus (Mark 1:4-9). These also became Jesus’ teachings. Jews already practised ritual immersion and washing for purification, spiritual cleansing, and as a conversion rite, so John the Baptist operated within an existing tradition.

Jesus began as one of John’s followers, a fact the Gospels don’t mention for obvious reasons. Instead, they say that John was the messenger sent ahead of Christ, thereby fulfilling a prophecy of Isaiah (Mark 1:1-3), which suggests that it is contrived. John the Baptist probably had said something like, ‘Jesus comes to take away our sins’ rather than ‘Behold, the Lamb of God.’ Nevertheless, it gives a possible answer to the question of why Jesus had to die, so the conclusion Paul arrived at is not far-fetched.

It leaves us with the question of why Jesus willingly went to the cross. Mark tells us that Jesus was deeply distressed and troubled. He prayed that the cup would be taken from him (Mark 14:32-36), which is a very different prayer from the one in John (John 17), where he hopes to await great glory. Many scholars think it is a later embellishment to explain that Jesus died in accordance with the will of God. Such an explanation doesn’t presume an intimate relationship between God and Jesus. And so, it probably was Jesus’ choice, perhaps made under duress. Jesus could have avoided the execution by rescinding his claims of being the Messiah and the Son of God. That would be denying the truth and his mission. Believing himself to be Adam and eternally living, he expected to survive, which emboldened him and strengthened his resolve. And don’t forget what people do for love.

Defining the Christian faith

It must have been God’s plan to save Her/His people this particular way, so by Jesus sacrificing himself, Paul reasoned further, so observing Jewish religious laws is not critical for your salvation, nor do you have to be a Jew. Jewish religious laws being irrelevant is another truly revolutionary thought for a Pharisee. Prophecies in the Jewish Bible foretold that all the nations would accept the God of the Jews. To Paul, Jesus was the fulfilment of these prophecies. After all, Jesus was Adam, the father of humankind. And from Adam, God made all the nations that inhabit the Earth (Acts 17:26), so Jesus’ message applied to everyone, not just Jews alone. There were already Gentile Christians, and Paul preached to them, so that was his view from the outset. Making them all adhere to Jewish religious law proved ‘a bridge too far’ and could hamper the spread of the religion. Paul then concluded that rejecting false gods and having faith in Jesus would be enough. Paul believed he was God’s missionary to spread the good news.1

Paul was a knowledgeable scholar of the Jewish scriptures, whereas the other Apostles lacked such education. He shaped the beliefs of the early Church and the future Christian religion by establishing the theological foundation of the Christian faith. Paul defined God’s image as the Father, the amalgamation of the Jewish Yahweh and the Christian Mother Goddess. The result became a hybrid: a Father who can give birth. Jesus also became a hybrid: a godlike human. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says, ‘Abba, Father.’ (Mark 14:36) More than a decade before Mark, Paul used that particular phrasing twice (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6). You read Paul’s words in the Gospel of Mark, just like at the Last Supper. Also, ‘The Twelve’ is a quote you can trace back to Paul. Likely, there were no twelve disciples. It took Paul over a decade to work out his new theology, and perhaps countless sleepless nights as well.

Around 55 AD, Paul wrote that the woman came from man (1 Corinthians 11:7-8), thereby reasserting the biblical account from Genesis rather than the original Christian account, of which we can still find traces in the Gospel of John. In Galatians, Paul also writes that God sent His Son, who was born of a woman (Galatians 4:4). That Jesus was born of a woman is stating the obvious. You don’t need to stress that, even when God is Jesus’ Father. If God were a Father, this factoid could be among the most uninteresting disclosures in the entire letter. The original Christian teaching, which Paul tried to obfuscate, was that Jesus was Adam reincarnated, so he was born of God. Paul claimed that Jesus is the Son of God the Father and was not Adam. And so, he was born of a woman rather than God. For once, Paul didn’t lie by stressing that particular factoid. It is also noteworthy that he didn’t write ‘born of a virgin.’ Had he known about the virgin birth, it would have been worth mentioning. By 55 AD, no one still knew about it.

For religious Jews, it was blasphemy to say that God was a woman who married Jesus. So it was probably also problematic for many Jewish converts, while non-Jewish converts had no issues with it. The Greek and Roman traditions had several gods and goddesses who had children with humans. For the Greeks and the Romans, God being a woman marrying a man who lives eternally is not that spectacular, while it is unthinkable for Jews. That made uniting the early Church an enormous challenge. To Paul, a former Pharisee, the truth of the scriptures mattered more than the facts. He could dismiss the Christian creation story and change God’s gender. Not having been a firsthand witness and not having spoken much to the other Apostles for the first fourteen years further helped him maintain his independent and particular perspective.

And the facts created challenges that Paul’s fantasy theology would solve. In the first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul writes, ‘It is reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans don’t tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. And you are proud!’ (1 Corinthians 5:1-2). Possibly, a scribe watered down this controversial fragment during copying, or it was so scandalous that Paul himself chose to formulate the truth in this fashion. The man might have slept with his mother, or probably did. After all, it is sexual immorality that even pagans don’t tolerate. And the Christians in Corinth took pride in it. Perhaps they believed this man followed Christ’s example.

Paul’s unique advantage, which placed him in the position to shape Christian theology, was that, apart from being an educated scholar with a dedication to the scriptures, he was not a firsthand witness to the events. To him, reality had to fit the scriptures rather than the other way around. He never met Mary Magdalene and Jesus, and didn’t meet with the other Apostles during the first years of his preaching. That allowed him to develop his theology independently of the facts.

As a Jew preaching among the Gentiles, he could bridge the gap between the Jewish and the Gentile views. His theology appealed to Jewish Christians because it connected Christianity to the Jewish scriptures and portrayed Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. At the same time, his preaching tours and letter writing provided him with a support base among the Gentile Christians as well, who saw Jesus as godlike. Pauline theology also shares that view. God the Father became the compromise between Yahweh and the Mother.

Paul’s diligent labour provided Christianity with an elaborate theological foundation, and his view could also bring unity within the early Church, so it prevailed. Most people only knew Jesus from stories, and few knew the details, so it was possible to sway opinions with false stories. It is still possible today, even when everyone can check the facts. The outcome of Paul’s intervention was that Christianity became an entirely different religion. Had a close follower of Jesus from 30 AD accidentally run into a time portal and leapt into the future, he wouldn’t have recognised his religion already in 100 AD, let alone today.

Spreading the good news

Paul dedicated his life to spreading the good news that faith in Jesus could save everyone. During his many travels, he founded Christian communities. His mission wasn’t easy. His message caused upheaval, and Jews expelled him from their synagogues several times. But he was determined and worked hard. Paul’s gospel of personal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, which is open to everyone, appears to have caught on. However, it is a most peculiar tidings and not something you would believe if you had grown up in a different tradition, whether you were Jewish or worshipped other deities. And so the success of Christianity begs for a better explanation. Ancient sources indicate that stories about the miracles Christians performed made people convert.1 An example was the healing of a lame man when Paul and Barnabas visited Lystra.

We have to take Paul’s word for it, as he is a likely source. Had we not known Paul as a fantasist, it appears plausible. In other words, it might have happened. In other words, it might have happened. As the story says, Paul had healed the man. The Lycaonians then concluded Paul and Barnabas were gods in human form. The priest of Zeus brought bulls and wreaths to the city gate, as he and the crowd wished to offer sacrifices to them. Paul and Barnabas explained that they were only human and messengers of the good news that the God of the Jews, who had made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them, had decided that all nations should no longer go their own way. And the proof, they said, was that the Jewish God had shown kindness by giving us rain from heaven and crops in their seasons and filling our hearts with joy (Acts 14:8-18). The proof thus was the seasons, the crops and the rains, and, of course, joy in our hearts. The seasons and the crops had always been there, and people had been joyful before, so that didn’t prove much. Hence, it must have been the miracle of healing that made people believe Paul’s unusual message.

Paul’s activities led to a riot in the city of Ephesus. Demetrius, who made silver shrines of the goddess Artemis and brought in a lot of trade for the local businesspeople, realised the consequences of Paul’s good tidings. He called the craftsmen and workers in related occupations together and said, ‘You know, my friends, we receive a good income from this business. And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray many people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited and that the goddess herself will be robbed of her divine majesty.’ When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting, ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!’ Soon, the whole city was in an uproar (Acts 19:23-29). A mob seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s travelling companions from Macedonia, and brought them to an assembly in a theatre.

A city clerk managed to quiet the crowd in the theatre. He said, ‘Fellow Ephesians, doesn’t the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? Since these facts are undeniable, you should calm down and not do anything rash. You have brought these men here, though they have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess. If Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance against anybody, the courts are open, and there are proconsuls. They can press charges. If there is anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly. As it is, we are in danger of being charged with rioting because of what happened today. In that case, we would not be able to account for this commotion since there is no reason for it.’ After he had said this, he dismissed the assembly (Acts 19:35-41). Had it been untrue, then the spread of Christianity would have become a bit harder to explain, but not impossible. More upheavals were to come in the following centuries.

Contending versions of Christianity

During the first centuries, there were several versions of Christianity. It highlights contentious issues, suggesting that early Christian beliefs differ from those of Christianity today. Christianity today is not what it originally was. The alternative views are likely closer to the original faith in some respects because they reflect earlier beliefs. The most well-known deviant groups were the Nazarenes, the Marcionists, the Ebionites, and the Arians:

  • The Nazarenes continued to observe the Jewish religious laws. Jesus didn’t intend to abolish them. It was Paul who came up with that idea.
  • The Marcionists taught that the God of the Gospel is the true Supreme Being as opposed to the evil Jewish God. Indeed, God is not the deity the Jews imagined.
  • The Ebionites didn’t believe that Jesus was divine, nor did they think that he was born of a virgin. That is also correct.
  • Arianism emerged around 300 AD. The Arians opposed the doctrine of the Trinity, which was not an original Christian teaching.

Except for the Arians, these groups existed from an early period. Christianity was in flux. That began to change once the Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. Constantine invited all the bishops in the Roman Empire to the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. It was the first effort to create a uniform Christian doctrine. More efforts followed. The Roman state promoted the Church’s official teachings. Consequently, other strains of Christianity faded into obscurity.

The Gospels of the New Testament date from 70 to 100 AD, more than forty years after Jesus preached. Mark, Luke, Matthew, and John did not write the Gospels attributed to them. The Apostles were uneducated, Aramaic-speaking Jews, while the authors were educated, Greek-speaking Christians who were not eyewitnesses. Scholars believe Mark, Luke, and Matthew are collections of stories that circulated among early Christians. The author of the Gospel of Luke even says so (Luke 1:1-4).

Whenever someone retells a story, details change, new episodes emerge, and parts get omitted. And the story may become more spectacular. And so, the Gospels likely don’t accurately tell what happened. Several letters in the New Testament are anonymous, despite claiming to be from Peter, Paul, or another well-known figure. Jesus’ brother couldn’t have been the author of the Epistle of James because it contains no inside knowledge about the relationship between God and Jesus. And we don’t have the original texts of the New Testament. The oldest preserved copies date back to the second or third centuries AD. Scholars have used these copies to reconstruct the original texts as much as possible.

Latest revision: 30 July 2026

Featured image: Head of St. Paul. Mosaic in the Archbishop’s Chapel, Ravenna, 5th century AD (public domain)

1. The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World. Bart D. Ehrman (2018).
2. How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher. Bart D. Ehrman (2014). HarperCollins Publishers.

Explaining the Unexplained

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The paranormal is a subject of controversy. The evidence is often problematic and certainly not scientific. Take, for instance, psychics. Scientists have investigated their abilities. In experiments, psychics fail to perform better than guessing. Scientists isolate a psychic so others can’t supply this person with information. Sometimes, psychics make stunning guesses, but not in these experiments. Divination can be fraud or manipulation. The same is true for the paranormal in general. Paranormal incidents can be natural phenomena or the result of fraud or delusion.

Still, a large number of paranormal incidents remain without explanation. Few scientists dare to investigate them, as it could make them a laughingstock to their peers. And what can be worse than getting zero publications in respectable scientific magazines because you take reincarnation stories seriously? That is groupthink and intellectual cowardice on a grandiose scale. Apart from that, there is little science can say about the paranormal because there likely is no such thing as the Third Law of Paranormal Activity that explains it all neatly in an elegant mathematical formula.

Thinking that science will one day give the answers is also a belief. Science can become like a religion once you discard evidence that contradicts it. Evidence for the paranormal doesn’t meet scientific criteria, but that doesn’t make it invalid. Science requires that we use a theory, such as the existence of psychic abilities, to make predictions that we can subsequently check. So, if a psychic doesn’t do better than chance guessing during an experiment, this individual has no psychic abilities from a scientific perspective. But there is more to the world than science can prove.

Countless times, witnesses have observed things that the sciences can’t explain. In the early twentieth century, Charles Fort collected 40,000 notes on paranormal experiences. They were about strange events reported in magazines and newspapers, such as The Times, as well as in scientific journals, including Scientific American, Nature, and Science. Most incidents probably never become public, so the total number of these incidents is impossible to guess. It could be billions. Fort had worked on a manuscript suggesting a secret civilisation controls events in this world. He compared the close-mindedness of many scientists to that of religious fundamentalists.

So, did my wife’s father make himself noticed from the other side? Or was the wind gust and the clocks being back just bizarre coincidences caused by natural phenomena? Or did my wife make it up to have a good story to tell at birthday parties? I know her better than you do, and I don’t think she did. I have witnessed countless strange incidents, so I don’t think she was mistaken either. She could only have noticed that these clocks were back by looking at other timepieces. Even if she had been wrong and did not find out about it, it still would have been a remarkable coincidence.

The wind gust was peculiar. The clocks made it even more mysterious. In virtual reality, the laws of nature don’t have to apply. Clocks can stop for an hour, and elephants can fly. We haven’t seen flying elephants, but virtual reality makes it possible. Psychic abilities may exist, even when the scientific method can’t certify them. And Jesus could have walked on water and raised the dead. And meaningful coincidences, even when caused by ordinary natural phenomena, may indicate someone is pulling the strings.

Latest revision: 18 July 2025

Featured image: Psychic reading room

Building a Nation with Religion

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Israel emerging

The Jews started as tribal people in Canaan, the area currently covered by Israel and Palestine. For a long time, the area was under Egyptian control. The earliest known reference to Israel is on an Egyptian stone engraving from around 1200 BC. It lists the enemies the Pharaoh Merneptah defeated during his campaigns. Among them was Israel, which had revolted against its Egyptian overlords. The engraving lacks detail. There was no state of Israel, so quite possibly the uprising was no more than a few skirmishes with local hill dwellers. However, the Egyptians had already called the land Israel, named after the principal local deity, El, so the tribes living there had their own distinct religious beliefs.

Around 1150 BC, Egypt faced droughts, food shortages, civil unrest, corruption, and court intrigues. This period is known as the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Similar crises in neighbouring civilisations led societies to turn inwards and focus on local issues. Egypt retreated from Canaan. Setbacks at home were the reason the Egyptians gave up Canaan, which was an insignificant border province to them, filled with unruly hill dwellers who caused nothing but trouble. It was a footnote in Egyptian history, nothing more. The Egyptians, who had been there for centuries, suddenly went home,1 leaving the Israelites a victory they had not fought for. The locals may have viewed it as a miracle and came to suspect that their favourite deity, El, or perhaps Yahweh, had done some magic. Poof. The Egyptian army, which had been there for centuries, had suddenly vanished due to setbacks at home.

Stories retold grow more sensational over time, so the Bible now tells us that God sent seven devastating plagues to Egypt, and appointed a fellow named Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, under the guidance of an irate and fiery cloud, split the Red Sea, drowned the Egyptian army and let the Israelites escape. The Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:1-18) could be the oldest text in the Bible, together with the Song of Deborah, and it mentions the drowning of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea. The song seems much older than the rest of Exodus, and it doesn’t mention Moses. Scholars disagree on whether the account has a historical basis, and therefore, also the song. It could date back to the Babylonian captivity 600 years later. In that case, the author used archaic language in the Song of the Sea to make it appear older. That would require the author to have knowledge of ancient Hebrew, which seems a stretch. Likely, parts of the song are ancient.

It took several centuries for new civilisations to take over, creating room for small local polities in Canaan until that time. Several small kingdoms emerged, including Israel and Judah. These petty kingdoms existed for a few centuries until new imperial powers overran the area. At first, the Israelites worshipped several gods and goddesses, among them Yahweh. Archaeological finds indicate that El was the supreme deity in the Canaanite belief system. The goddess Asherah was his wife.2

They were the parents of the other Canaanite deities, Baal, Anat, Yahweh, and Yam. Asherah is Yahweh’s mother and El his father. El was often depicted as a bull and was also known as Shor-El, the bull god. And so, we have the highly peculiar situation that half the world’s population now worships one of the children of El and Asherah, two deities of an insignificant tribe living somewhere between the more advanced civilisations of Egypt and Mesopotamia 3,000 years ago, as the supreme God who rules the entire universe. That might have been a hilarious observation if people hadn’t been murdering each other in the millions for their delusions.

Map of Canaan from around 750 BC
Map of Canaan from around 750 BC

States and kings used religion to justify themselves. It matters whether a powerful entity like a god or a goddess supports the state and the king, for only the stupid and the suicidal defy the gods. The kings of Judah, and perhaps also those of Israel, promoted a national religion centred around Yahweh. Other kingdoms in the region also adopted national deities. Milcom was the deity of Ammon, while Moab had Chemosh to defeat its foes and supply the country with blessings (1 Kings 11:33).

Yahweh thus became the deity of the state religion in Judah and possibly Israel. Many in the area also worshipped other gods alongside Yahweh, as having multiple options is prudent. If Yahweh forsakes you, perhaps Baal or some other deity will still assist you. The Bible testifies to tensions between those who still worshipped different gods and goddesses alongside Yahweh and those insisting on worshipping Yahweh alone. As Yahweh had become the favourite deity of the Israelites, El became the word for ‘god’, and Asherah became Yahweh’s wife.

Writing the Bible

As time passed by, new empires arrived on the scene and set their eyes on Canaan. The Assyrians overran Israel in 720 BC. The Babylonians conquered Judah in 597 BC, following their takeover of the Assyrian Empire. The Babylonians deported many of the Judeans. Others fled to Egypt. It was the beginning of the diaspora. The Jewish communities in Egypt, Babylon, and Judah became dispersed. The authors of the Jewish Bible tried to reconnect them by showing that they belonged to a larger group, a nation with common ancestors. Judah already had religious writings. They became part of the Bible. The Jewish Bible became a compilation of tales from these communities and the royal archives of the former kingdom of Judah. The Jewish Bible presents the history of Israel and Judah from the perspective of the Kingdom of Judah.

After the Persians had conquered the Babylonian Empire, the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great allowed the Jewish people to return to Canaan. He commissioned the rebuilding of the Jewish temple. Those still living in the area were not keen on a group of religious zealots entering their country. They opposed the plan, and a political struggle unfolded. After seven decades, Ezra and Nehemiah succeeded in rebuilding the temple. Jewish society was on the brink of being wiped out. Israel and Judah no longer existed. The remaining Jews were mixing with the surrounding population. Jewish leaders had to find a way to keep their people together. Marrying outside the community became frowned upon, and the Jews became a seclusive group. That has caused them a great deal of trouble in the centuries that followed.

The authors of the Jewish Bible sought to preserve Jewish identity through a shared religion, history, and cultural heritage. The Jewish religion gradually became monotheistic. At the time, Zoroastrianism, a dualistic religion, became the official religion in the Persian Empire. The prophet Zoroaster believed in a good creator and an opposing evil power. And it had considerable influence. It brought Judaism monotheism, messiahs, free will, heaven, hell, and, of course, that horned fellow named Satan. Zoroastrianism not only affected Judaism. Some Greek philosophers around 400 BC were also monotheists.

The polytheist origin of the Jewish religion may explain why God says in Genesis, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.’ Later, the Jews became henotheists. They believed that other gods existed, but that they should worship only Yahweh. That is why the commandment says, ‘You shall have no other gods before me’ rather than ‘You shall believe there is only one God.’ Yahweh was jealous and didn’t appreciate offerings to other gods, such as Baal. Several texts in the Jewish Bible have that henotheist perspective.

The Jews wrote most of their scriptures between 600 BC and 300 BC, but there are older parts that date back to the royal archives of Judah. The Ketef Hinnom amulets are the oldest surviving evidence of texts that are now part of the Jewish Bible. They date back to 600 BC. So, before the Jews went into exile to Babylon, they already had an established religion with scriptures. And that later helped them maintain their Jewish identity. The Song of Deborah is one of the oldest texts in the Bible, dating back to the 12th to 10th century BC. Only, the Song of the Sea might be older. Little evidence supports the historical account in the Jewish Bible of the period before the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. However, that doesn’t mean that all these stories are entirely fictional.

Scholars believe David may have been the king of Judah, rather than the king of a united kingdom, as the Jewish Bible states. Based on archaeological excavations, experts have estimated that Jerusalem had around 1,000 inhabitants at the time David supposedly lived, suggesting that Jerusalem was a minor regional centre rather than the capital of a larger kingdom. However, archaeologists have also uncovered a 9th-century BC stone engraving with the lettering BYTDWD in northern Israel, possibly referring to the House of David. Another engraving found in the former kingdom of Moab contains the same lettering. That could raise questions, such as whether a larger kingdom existed.

Creating a nation

Whether or not it was fiction, the authors of the Jewish Bible employed the concept of a united kingdom to foster unity among people originating from Israel and Judah. A shared history united the inhabitants of Israel and Judah, as well as their offspring, into one great nation. The purpose of the Jewish Bible was to establish the Jewish nation based on a shared history and religion. That can be a reason to imagine a united kingdom that once existed. If you go back in time to before the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the history of the Jews becomes murky. No written records exist from these times. The tales about Abraham, Isaac, and Moses may have originated from different communities, merged into a single narrative to promote a single Jewish identity.1 To make the proposition more attractive, the Jews believed they were the chosen people.

The survival of the Jewish people has been hanging by a thread for a long time. They were a small nation between great powers. They hoped for a Messiah who would save them from oppression, just as Moses had once done. Great powers came and went, but the Jewish people remained. After more than 2,500 years, the Jews are still around, so their nation-building project proved a successful long-term survival strategy. They managed to reclaim their original homeland. It is also remarkable that Judaism stood at the cradle of Christianity and Islam. The Jews have played a central role in world history, unmatched by any other nation. It is an impressive feat, considering their numbers. Today, Jews have an imposing power, and they slay their enemies at will. So, what do they need a Messiah for?

Historical analysis

How do historians and scholars look at the Jewish Bible? Apart from the lack of archaeological evidence, they find the early Jewish history in the Jewish Bible too neat to be correct. It presents an agreeable genealogical line extending from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, who had twelve sons who, coincidentally, became the twelve tribes of the nation. The number twelve has religious significance, so the facts must have undergone some religiously inspired processing. Jacob and his family went to Egypt during Joseph’s days. Later, Egypt began to oppress the Israelites, and they escaped under the leadership of Moses. The Egyptians kept records, and they tell nothing about the Exodus. The reason is probably not that the Egyptian defeat was too embarrassing.

After Moses’ death, the story goes, Joshua took over and led the Israelites into the Promised Land. Following the death of Joshua, a series of judges took over. They governed Israel and saved it from its enemies. Each judge came from a different tribe, which is also unbelievably neat. It smells like fiction. Then Saul, Israel’s first king, was not up to his task, so David replaced him. The kingdom fell apart into two after the death of Solomon, David’s successor. From then on, the descendants of David ruled only in the south, thus in Judah. The northern part, called Israel, had several dynasties.

Many of the people described in the Jewish Bible may have once lived. Probably, they had very little to do with each other. The authors of the Jewish Bible compiled them to create a unified history of Israel. Abraham was probably not Jacob’s father, Moses was not Miriam’s brother, and David was not Saul’s successor. They may have figured in local tales from tribes and petty kingdoms that later became part of the Jewish nation. The stories in the Jewish Bible originate from several sources and have been revised and retold multiple times throughout the centuries. And the stories have undergone some religiously inspired processing. Think of God sending plagues to Egypt because the Pharaoh took Sarah as his wife. The Jewish Bible is a nation-building project rather than a historical account.1

Textual analysis

It might be interesting to see how scholars analyse the texts to understand biblical history and arrive at their conclusions. Professor Jacob Wright explained the basics using the example of Genesis 26 to illustrate how the authors of the Jewish Bible have woven the story of Isaac and Rebecca into the broader historical narrative of Israel.1 Biblical scholars attempt to uncover the construction process of the texts by examining various sources within biblical texts, including additions and other editing techniques. Genesis 26 tells the story of Isaac living in the Philistine land of Gerar, located west of Judah.

Isaac’s wife, Rebecca, was a beautiful woman. When his neighbours asked Isaac about Rebecca, he claimed she was his sister, so Isaac followed Abraham’s footsteps. Isaac feared the Philistine men in Gerar would kill him and take his beautiful wife. One day, Abimelech, the king of the Philistines, gazed out his window and spotted Isaac and Rebecca making out. He demanded an explanation. Abimelech feared one of his subjects might have slept with her, which could make his kingdom subject to divine retribution.

Abimelech then issued a decree stating that whoever touched Isaac or his wife would be put to death. Rebecca would become one of the matriarchs, a crucial figure in Israel’s history. Isaac prospered among the Philistines and eventually became mightier than them. Everywhere Isaac went in the waterless environs of Abimelech’s kingdom, he discovered water wells. His success aroused jealousy among local inhabitants. That amount of luck captures the imagination like Gladstone Gander’s in a Donald Duck tale.

Instead of fighting for his territories, Isaac moved on and ended up in Beer-Sheba in the south. Abimelech visited Isaac there. The Philistine king blessed him. Isaac invited him to a feast. After eating and drinking all night long, they exchanged oaths of peace. Later that day, Isaac’s servants discovered another water source, in yet another stroke of unbelievable luck. Isaac named this well Beer-Sheba, referring to his treaty with the Philistines. The story served a political agenda, which was to demonstrate that Beersheba was part of Israel.

A closer look at Genesis 26

Genesis 26 contains two kinds of material, which are the story about Isaac’s clan and how he came to possess towns in the far south and Beer-Sheba, and the broader narrative of the book of Genesis, which links this story with the other parts of Genesis to make it a coherent history of the nation. There are multiple ways of looking at the text. Hence, different scholars may come to different conclusions. One way of viewing Genesis 26 is as follows, with the parts that link the story into a broader narrative underlined:

1 Now there was a famine in the land, besides the previous famine in Abraham’s time, and Isaac went to Abimelek, king of the Philistines, in Gerar. 2 The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, ‘Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. 3 Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. 4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, 5 because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees and my instructions.’

6 So Isaac stayed in Gerar. 7 When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, ‘She is my sister,’ because he was afraid to say, ‘She is my wife.’ He thought, ‘The men of this place might kill me on account of Rebecca because she is beautiful.’ 8 When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelek king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebecca. 9 So Abimelek summoned Isaac and said, ‘She is really your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?’ Isaac answered him, ‘Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her.’ 10 Then Abimelek said, ‘What is this you have done to us? One of the men might well have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us. 11 So Abimelek gave orders to all the people: ‘Anyone who harms this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.’

12 Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold because the Lord blessed him. 13 The man became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. 14 He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. 15 So all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth. 16 Then Abimelek said to Isaac, ‘Move away from us; you have become too powerful for us.’

17 So Isaac moved away from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar, where he settled. 18 Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them. 19 Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of fresh water there. 20 But the herders of Gerar quarrelled with those of Isaac and said, ‘The water is ours!’ So he named the well Esek because they disputed with him. 21 Then they dug another well, but they quarrelled over that one also; so he named it Sitnah. 22 He moved on from there and dug another well, and no one quarrelled over it. He named it Rehoboth, saying, ‘Now the Lord has given us room and we will flourish in the land.’

23 From there, he went up to Beersheba. 24 That night, the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bless you and will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.’ 25 Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord. There he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well.

26 Meanwhile, Abimelek had come to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath his personal adviser and Phicol the commander of his forces. 27 Isaac asked them, ‘Why have you come to me, since you were hostile to me and sent me away?’ 28 They answered, ‘We saw clearly that the Lord was with you; so we said, ‘There ought to be a sworn agreement between us’—between us and you. Let us make a treaty with you 29 that you will do us no harm, just as we did not harm you but always treated you well and sent you away peacefully. And now you are blessed by the Lord.’ 30 Isaac then made a feast for them, and they ate and drank. 31 Early the next morning, the men swore an oath to each other. Then Isaac sent them on their way, and they went away peacefully. 32 That day, Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug. They said, ‘We’ve found water!’ 33 He called it Shibah, and to this day, the name of the town has been Beersheba.

34 When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith, daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and also Basemath, daughter of Elon the Hittite. 35 They were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebecca.

The first five verses are part of the larger narrative, except for the first part of verse 1. In verse 6, the story itself starts. Abraham comes up in verses 15 and 18. The Lord’s intervention in verses 24 and 25 is also part of the larger narrative. The mention of Esau at the end is part of the encompassing story. That raises the question of where Jacob and Esau were all that time. They were adults at the end of Genesis 25. One explanation is that Genesis 26, without the underlined parts, was once a separate story.

The stories about their sons, Jacob and Esau, seem wrapped around the story of Isaac and Rebecca and their dealings with the king of the Philistines. In this way, the authors created a larger narrative. Genesis 25 contains the story of the birth of Esau and Jacob and of Esau selling his birthright to Jacob. That story resumes at the end of Genesis 26. In Genesis 27, Jacob deceived his father into giving him his blessing with the help of his mother. These interweaving narratives come from different sources.

One is the P-source or priestly source. It tells an independent story of Israel. The authors merged it into the narrative. According to the P-source, Jacob didn’t flee from Esau because of stealing the birthright but because he was in danger of a mixed marriage. The P-source describes how Esau married a Hittite woman and how Rebecca asked Isaac to send Jacob away so he would find a woman who would not make her life miserable.

There is an older account of Isaac and Rebecca and how they came to possess Beersheba. Around it is wrapped a story about their children, in which Isaac is Abraham’s son and the father of Esau and Jacob. Another small story tells how Rebecca sent Jacob off to find wives from her own family. Another source tells us how Jacob stole his birthright from his brother Esau. The authors of the Jewish Bible thus wove an older story and two other sources into a broader narrative.1

Theories from scholars

According to scholars, the P-source is a late source from after the exile in Babylon. It deals with Israel’s identity and its relationship to others. Mixed marriages outside the Jewish people became a huge issue after the defeat of Judah. Marrying within the clan or nation helped to maintain a community defined by a shared culture. Therefore, Esau’s marriages to Hittite women caused Rebecca concern.

Another source is the Jahwist source, also known as the J-source. A part of Genesis 25 comes from the J-source. It tells about the birth of Jacob and Esau. It continues in Genesis 27 and 28, where Jacob stole Esau’s birthright and pursued the deal with the help of his mother, Rebecca. Jacob then had to flee from Esau. According to the J-source theory, the J-source has incorporated an older source into the broader narrative. Later, the P-source altered the reason why Jacob had to flee.

The formation of the earliest sources, the histories of Israel, whether it be the history of Israel’s ancestors and the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the exodus from Egypt and the conquest of the land, is built on linking stories. The authors brought together individual clan representatives in a larger narrative to create the idea of a Jewish nation. Many scholars believe that the first chapters of the Jewish Bible, known to Jews as the Torah, comprise four distinct sources.1

Whether these sources ever existed as independent texts is a subject of controversy, but scholars assume them to explain how the Jewish Bible came to be. So, scholars explain why the Bible has two creation stories by assuming that the first creation account, which runs from Genesis 1:1 to the middle of Genesis 2:4, comes from the P-source, and that the remainder, beginning at the middle of Genesis 2:4, comes from the J-source. In the second story, God redoes many of the things done in the first. In the first, God is abstract and operates according to a perfect cosmic scheme. In contrast, in the second, God appears as a person on the ground, doing things like forming a man from dust, breathing life into him, planting a garden, figuring out what is best, concluding that it is a good idea for man to have a companion, and making her out of his rib.

Countless authors have contributed to the Jewish Bible over the centuries. The Bible even reveals how a book came into existence. King Josiah had commissioned artisans to work on the Temple, where they ‘discovered’ the Book of Law (2 Kings 22:8), probably Deuteronomy. Likely, King Josiah had ordered the book’s composition to advance his political agenda of centralising the worship of Yahweh in the Temple in Jerusalem. That could increase his standing as a king. And so, they made up the story that artisans stumbled upon this work that had supposedly been gathering dust there for centuries.

Much of the writing and editing took place to serve purposes other than accurately presenting the facts, so you can’t expect that the Jewish Bible is an accurate account of historical events. There is more to say about scholarly research into the Jewish Bible. For our purposes, this brief explanation is sufficient. It illuminates how the first chapters of the Jewish Bible, which describe Israel’s earliest history, evolved, and how scholars interpret these texts to reach their conclusions. Likewise, scholars attempt to reconstruct the origins of the Gospels, as that is an even greater mystery.

Latest revision: 14 June 2026

Featured image: Torah scroll (public domain)

1. The Bible’s Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future. Wright, Jacob L. (2014). Coursera.
2. El the God of Israel-Israel the People of YHWH: On the Origins of Ancient Israelite Yahwism. In Becking, Bob; Dijkstra, Meindert; Korpel, Marjo C.A.; et al. Only One God?: Monotheism in Ancient Israel and the Veneration of the Goddess Asherah. Dijkstra, Meindert (2001).

Lionheaded figurine from Stadel in the Hohlenstein cave in Germany

On the Origin of Religions

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We, humans, have become the dominant species on Earth. That is because we collaborate flexibly in large numbers. Social animals, such as monkeys and dolphins, work together flexibly but only in small groups. Ants and bees cooperate in large numbers but only in fixed ways. Language enables our large-scale, flexible collaboration. Some animals use signs and calls or give each other names, but we use far more words.1 That allows us to cooperate in more ways and for a wide range of purposes. Language allows us to make and communicate agreements. And we can describe things in detail. We can write, ‘Please read these safety instructions carefully before using model T92.’ Then follow many pages of instructions. Butterflies don’t observe a written list of safety instructions before leaving their cocoons like NASA does when launching a spacecraft. That is why butterflies have never landed on the Moon.

We are also imaginative creatures. We imagine things into existence. We envision laws, money, property, corporations, social classes and states. We imagine that there is a law, and that is how the law works. In other words, we envision the law, and lo and behold, it exists. The same is true for money and corporations. We humans say, ‘Let there be corporations.’ And lo and behold, there are corporations. Only humans do that. No other species envisions money and corporations. I can’t give a dog a debit card to go to the supermarket to buy dog food. A dog lacks the imagination for that. A dog can’t think of money, laws and corporations. And so, you can’t make dogs work together in a corporation to produce dog food by paying them money. Our fancifulness existed long before civilisations emerged. Archaeologists uncovered a 32,000-year-old sculpture of a lion’s head upon a human body. These lion-men only existed in the imagination of humans.

We are also religious creatures. We cooperate using myths. People of the same religion can go on a holy war together. Faith can also motivate people to engage in charitable work and provide for the poor. Religions promote social stability by justifying the social order and promising rewards in the afterlife for those who support it. As societies grew more stratified, the elites, such as kings and priests, tried to justify their existence and lavish lifestyles, and why peasants had to toil. And so, creation myths emerged, explaining that the gods created humans to work the ground. Established religions were often schemes to exploit peasants. You can’t let a dog submit to you by saying obedient hounds will go to heaven and enjoy everlasting bliss after they die, and unruly canines will be fried forever in a tormenting fire. A dog lacks the imagination to even think of it, let alone believe it. We have a religious nature. We make up stories and believe in them. We are social beings and need a group to survive. Beliefs hold groups of humans together, so it is a matter of survival to believe in our own imagination

Small bands of people cooperate because their members know each other and see what everyone contributes. In larger groups, that becomes more difficult as people can cheat. That is where states, money, and religions come in. They facilitate collaboration between strangers, allowing us to operate on a larger scale. States do so by coercion, money by trade, and faith by inspiration. As there has always been a survival-of-the-fittest-like competition between societies, those who cooperated most effectively survived and subjugated others. Religions forge bonds and help maintain peace within a group, or inspire group members to go to war. Religions played a crucial role in the survival of humans. If believing means surviving, it is rational to have faith, regardless of how curious the belief may be. It is in our nature to be religious, and usefulness rather than correctness is the essence of religion. And so, it is better to view a religion not as a set of lies, but as something people agree on to believe in, which helps them to cooperate and survive.

We make up stories and believe them. Hollywood films featured reptiles disguised as humans. Since then, some people have claimed that reptiles live among us disguised as humans. You can see how we can go collectively crazy in this way. When we retell stories, they change. We forget parts of a tale, add new elements or alter their meaning. And so beliefs and religions evolve. The evolution of religions has been a process in which ideas emerged and interacted. Early humans were hunter-gatherers who believed that places, animals, and plants possessed awareness, feelings, and emotions. They asked them for favours, like ‘Please, river, give me some fish.’ Hunter-gatherers felt they were more or less on an equal footing with the plants and animals around them.1 Animism is the name for these beliefs. These beliefs were local and concerned visible objects like a tree or a mountain. Over time, people began to imagine invisible entities like fairies and spirits. A crucial step in the development of religions was ancestor veneration.

The first humans lived in small bands based on family ties. Their ancestors bound them together. And so, they began to venerate the dead. It was a small step to imagine that the spirits of the dead are still with us and that our actions require the approval of our late ancestors. Ancestor veneration made it possible to envision a larger-scale relatedness in the form of tribes. A tribe is much larger than a band. The belief that its members share common ancestors holds a tribe together. Tribes are too large to identify their common ancestors, so tribespeople imagined their ancestors, and the stories about them are myths. The Romans started as a tribe. They had a myth about their founders, Romulus and Remus. As the tale goes, a she-wolf raised them. Tribes are much larger and can muster more men for war. That is why tribes replaced bands. It helps when people attribute magical powers to their ancestors and fear the consequences of angering them. In this way, ancestor veneration turned into the worship of gods. The previous beliefs didn’t disappear completely. Many people still believe in ghosts.

Hunter-gatherers can move on in the event of conflict, but farmers invest heavily in their fields, crops, and livestock. Losing their land, animals, or harvest meant starvation. With the arrival of agriculture, property and territorial defence became paramount. States defend their territory and can afford larger militaries. Kinship is an obstacle as states enlist the people within their realm, regardless of family ties. States thus needed a new source of authority, and the worship of gods replaced ancestor veneration. When humans subjugated plants and animals for their use, they needed to justify this new arrangement. Myths emerged in which the gods created this world and ordained that humans rule the plants and animals. In Genesis, God says, ‘Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’ (Genesis 1:28) Most of the world’s major religions originated in agricultural societies.

Religions emerged from ancestor worship. And so, gods could be like mothers and fathers. People gave devotion to several ancestors. Each ancestor had a specific admirable quality. Consequently, early religions featured multiple gods and goddesses, each with a distinct role. That is called polytheism, which is the belief in several gods. Henotheist religions emerged later when people became emotionally attached to one particular deity. Henotheism is the belief that multiple gods exist, but that we should worship only one of them. Even polytheists can believe there is a supreme being or principle. However, that supreme being is indifferent to our concerns, so it doesn’t make sense to direct prayers to it in the hope of receiving help. The gods, being on a lower level, have desires, so we can befriend them by making offerings, polytheists believed.1

The next step is monotheism, or believing there is only one God. Monotheists believe that there is only one God who rules the universe. Monotheistic religions were successful because monotheists, most notably Christians and Muslims, have missionary zeal. They believe that God craves our worship. Converting others is an act of mercy, as unbelievers will end up in hell. The worship of other deities is an offence to monotheists. After all, it contradicts their belief that there is only one God worthy of infinite adoration. Failing to take action against the unbelievers could anger God. Polytheists are less likely to feel offended when some choose to worship just one of the many deities or invent a new one.

In the first centuries AD, Christianity replaced the worship of local deities. To help pagans accept Christianity, the Church replaced these deities with saints, who often had the same purpose, and took over existing holidays. Each saint had specific qualities, just like the previous deity. In Ireland, St. Brigid of Kildare replaced a Celtic goddess with the same name. Both occupy themselves with healing, poetry, and smithcraft, and their feast day, 1 February, is the same, which is not a coincidence. And so, polytheism didn’t disappear entirely, as Christians continued to pray to saints. The Church also took over the Roman holiday commemorating the winter solstice, which was on 25 December. It turned pagan rites to celebrate the rebirth of the Sun into a Christian feast commemorating the birth of Christ.

Monotheism comes with a few logical difficulties. We hope that God cares for us and answers our prayers. However, prayers are often not answered, and bad things are happening. So, how can an almighty Creator allow this to happen? The obvious answer is that there is no god, or God doesn’t care. That is not what we want to hear. And so people imagined Satan, God’s evil adversary, who makes all these bad things happen.1 And we hope that the people we hate receive punishment, if not now, then in the afterlife or a final reckoning on Judgement Day. Religions cater for our sentiments, a psychologist might say.

In modern times, Europeans developed ideologies, such as liberalism, socialism, and fascism, which, like moral philosophies, describe how we should live. These ideologies are much like religions. They have prophets, holy books, missionary zeal, and preachers. The prophets of communism were Marx and Lenin. They had theologians who explained their writings. The communists had public holidays, such as 1 May, and heresies like Trotskyism. The Soviet army units had chaplains to oversee the faithfulness of the troops, although the Soviets named them as people’s commissars. The communists further expected an end time, the proletarian revolution, after which they would enter Paradise, world communism. A fanatic missionary zeal further characterised Soviet communism.1 And so, communism is much like a religion. The foundations of the ideologies of liberalism and socialism are the Christian values of freedom and equality. Fascism developed from nationalism, and the struggle for survival in nature inspired Nazism, which helped to make it especially cruel.

After the Middle Ages, educated Europeans began to doubt Christianity. The contradictions in the Scriptures began to attract attention. And then came the party pooper, Charles Darwin, who wrote On The Origin Of Species. Plant and animal species are the outcome of a struggle for survival. Despite the frantic efforts of religious people to fiddle with the facts, the evidence continued to mount. Religions exist because we invent stories to promote cooperation, and that contributes to our success, not because there is an invisible fellow in the sky. But human imagination reigns supreme. We live in such a universe created by an advanced humanoid civilisation. That already happened. We live in such a universe. And so there is a God after all.

Latest revision: 23 September 2025

Featured image: Lion-headed figurine from Stadel in the Hohlenstein cave in Germany.  J. Duckeck (2011). Wikimedia Commons.

1. A Brief History Of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari (2014). Harvil Secker.

Society on Pillars

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Identity groups

Dutch society has long centred around religious and ideological identity groups. The Dutch have a word for it: pillarisation. A pillar is vertical and encompasses all social classes, including doctors and factory workers. Dutch social life occurred within their identity group, and the Dutch had few contacts with outsiders. The pillars had their own sports clubs, political parties, unions, newspapers, and broadcasters. Roman Catholics and Protestants also had their own schools and hospitals. It was living apart together, so like being married while sleeping in separate bedrooms and having very little sex or not at all.

Dutch society consisted of three pillars: Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Socialist. Each of them represented 30% of the population. The Protestants had split into smaller groups, each with its own specific views on the Bible. Protestants were more literal in their interpretation of the scriptures, which has led to some irreconcilable disputes. The remaining 10% of the Dutch were liberals. The liberals were less organised and opposed pillarisation, but they also had a political party, a newspaper, and a broadcaster.

Strong communities are close-knit, share norms and values, and have social obligations. The pillar organisations focused exclusively on their communities. Similar arrangements existed in other countries, but the Netherlands was known for it. In the Netherlands, none of these groups dominated society. The shared Dutch identity and the state kept these relationships cooperative. The pillars thus supported Dutch society. Pillarisation was not a success everywhere. The arrangement had long helped Lebanon, but eventually the country collapsed into a civil war with interventions of foreign powers such as Israel and Syria.

The Dutch were renowned for their tolerance, which at times approached indifference. The identity groups accepted each other and minded their own affairs. After 1800, there was no longer any threat of civil war. The 1848 revolutions passed the Netherlands as the king promptly implemented liberal reforms. Leadership played a significant role. The leaders of the pillars were willing to compromise, and the members of the identity groups merely followed their leaders, thereby ensuring peaceful relations in society.

Identity issues nonetheless dominated Dutch politics at times. There were several petty disputes. An example is that on 11 November 1925, the cabinet fell when the Catholic ministers resigned after Parliament accepted an amendment introduced by a small Protestant faction to eliminate funding for the Dutch envoy to the Vatican. A Protestant government faction had supported the amendment.

None of the identity groups dominated society. Instead, they had to make deals with each other. On identity issues, Roman Catholics and Protestants helped each other. They arranged for schools and hospitals to retain a religious identity and for the state to fund them as public schools and hospitals. The Socialists made deals on working conditions and social benefits with Catholics and Protestants.

Pillarisation in the Netherlands began to take shape at the close of the nineteenth century. Dutch society was built upon the pillars. The arrangement allowed groups with different identities to coexist peacefully and gradually integrate. From the 1960s onwards, the pillars lost their meaning, and the Dutch became one nation. Pillarisation can be helpful if you believe in a shared destiny for the nation-state but have different backgrounds that prevent short-term integration. In this sense, it is a variation on multiculturalism.

Dutch broadcasting system

Both commercial and state media have issues, at least if you value honest reporting and diversity of opinion. Most of today’s large media outlets are part of a few large conglomerates and vulnerable to a takeover by a leader and his billionaire cronies, so that you end up with the worst of both. That has occurred in Russia and Hungary, and it is now happening in the United States. The Dutch had a solution. In 1930, the Dutch government enacted the Broadcasting Time Decisions and Radio Regulations laws. Broadcasters were required to represent an identity group in society, and the state oversaw content to ensure it was neither inappropriate nor subversive.

Initially, there were four large broadcasters, namely KRO (Catholic), NCRV (Protestant), VARA (socialist) and AVRO (liberal) and some smaller ones. Later, membership counts determined airtime, allowing for new entrants, such as EO (evangelical), TROS (entertainment), and Veronica (more entertainment). Another change was allowing advertisements. Allowing more entertainment and advertising eroded the system’s original intent, making it more like commercial media.

As the Dutch government had outlawed commercial radio and television and only allowed public broadcasting, the police took illegal radio broadcasters off the air. In 1960, the commercial radio broadcaster Veronica started challenging the existing order by broadcasting from the sea, outside the Dutch territorial waters. It signalled the start of a long struggle. The Dutch government was reluctant to open the broadcasting system to commercial interests because of the supposed detrimental effects on society. It eventually succumbed to the pressure and made Veronica a public broadcaster in 1975.

Veronica soon gained the largest membership count. Low-level entertainment is popular with the public but ill-suited for public broadcasting. Yet, the compromise allowed the Dutch government to block commercial television for another fifteen years. By 1989, satellite television had taken off, and Dutch commercial television began broadcasting from Luxembourg. At the same time, the basis for the broadcasting system, the pillarisation, had largely disappeared, and admitting entertainment had eroded the original mission.

Today, the Dutch broadcasting system is a costly relic of the past. Members pay a low fee, and taxes pay for most of the budget. The distinction between commercial television and public broadcasters is unclear. Public broadcasters air entertainment programming, while news on commercial television adheres to the same journalistic standards. The foundation of the system was identity groups that have disappeared. Membership counts have also dropped. About 20% of Dutch adults are members of a broadcaster, which is probably half of what it was a few decades ago. There have been several rounds of budget cuts. Still, this concept aims to address the issues the media face today.

Latest update: 29 June 2026