Judaism, the religion of the Jewish people, was the first to have only one god. Jews believe that Judaism began in the Middle East 4000 years ago when God’s word was revealed to Abraham, the father of the Jewish people. God told Abraham that the Jews would be his chosen people in return for obeying his laws and spreading his message. Throughout their history, Jewish people have suffered persecution in many parts of the world.
Judaism is one of the oldest monotheistic religions in the world, although some scholars have argued that the earliest Israelites (pre-7th century BCE) were monolatristic rather than monotheistic. God in later Judaism was strictly monotheistic, an absolute one, indivisible, and incomparable being who is the ultimate cause of all existence. The Babylonian Talmud references other, “foreign gods” as non-existent entities to whom humans mistakenly ascribe reality and power. One of the best-known statements of Rabbinical Judaism on monotheism is the Second of Maimonides’:
God, the Cause of all, is one. This does not mean one as in one of a pair, nor one like a species (which encompasses many individuals), nor one as in an object that is made up of many elements, nor as a single simple object that is infinitely divisible. Rather, God is a unity unlike any other possible unity.
Some in Judaism and Islam reject the Christian idea of monotheism. Judaism uses the term shituf to refer to the worship of God in a manner which Judaism deems to be neither purely monotheistic (though still permissible for non-Jews) nor polytheistic (which would be prohibited).
Picture credit: Google