In bigger groups people need to deal with new forms of cooperation and competition. They encounter a social world that is both overwhelming and threatening; creative and destructive, powerful as well as violent. How to find a way in this new world? It will be vital to transfer knowledge and experience in a way that can easily be memorized- like stories and rituals. All religious traditions have rites and myths, intended to preserve knowledge and peace.
The oldest sanctuary in the world is Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. It is approximately 12000 years old. From far away hunter-gatherers came together here to perform religious ceremonies for everything they depended on (sunshine, rain, animal migration) and to avert natural disasters. At Gobekli Tepe people worshipped animal spirits. But not much later they started to cultivate crops and live in permanent settlements. It seems that they made an ever starker distinction between themselves and wild nature, because their living spaces and fields increasingly differed from the natural habitats of wild animals. People saw themselves as separate from nature. Because they had more know how and learned to control nature, people also started thinking more in terms of cause and effect.
As a result their religious mind changed as well. For the first time people worshipped gods rather than spirits. Gods are more personal, less capricious than spirits and they can be influenced. With prayer and offerings people are trying to propitiate the gods in order to get things done.
Henceforth for many thousands of years this ‘quid pro quo’ religion would be the basic pattern of mankind’s religions. Initially for the benefit of the whole tribe, city or state. Later also for the individual. As with morality it is all about reciprocity. Essentially it is an attempt to gain control of life and environment, even though one knew well that such control is ultimately beyond human reach.
From here to Israel’s monotheistic image of One, trustworthy God is a long way. In Catalhoyuk, Turkey idols have been excavated representing the goddess of female fertility and the gods of male strength. The goddess in the image of a woman, the god like a bull. Eventually the gods became more human with qualities of character and with intentions. They may or may not take action. Around 3000BC large city civilizations arise in the Middle East. In those times the gods become the rulers of the cities, and they lived in temples. In 1500BC even personal gods appear in Mesopothamia. Those gods were not particualrly powerful but they served just one purpose: to protect a single individual.
Clearly the image of God is changing over time. This can also be observed quite well in the Bible as we will see later. As humans become more aware and as society becomes more complex, the image of the gods evolves. Atheists will say, this shows that God is nothing more than a human projection. But this is a weak argument, because everything that people know and think is human projection, human thought expressed in human language.
God says: call me “I am”. This articulates that God is really present but at the same time that each image of God falls short. God is not just a principle, a process or a person. God is like an ideal – a mental horizon receding and opening up an ever wider space once we get near. Hence the old advice: ‘do not create an image of God’. Not with your hands nor in your mind. All we can imagine is the relation between God and man. This relation is personal because people are personal and become more personal over time.