But Israelites initially worshipped multiple gods and monotheism competed with polytheism for a long time.
"They went south to Egypt," he says, "and in that merger the Christians said, 'Man, this is gonna be complicated, because we have one god and no rituals to speak of, and you guys have multiple gods and lots of rituals.' And so in the end they settled on one god with lots of rituals.
Unlike polytheistic religions, which acknowledge multiple gods, Judaism is monotheistic it recognizes only one god.
Do they worship multiple gods, or only one?
In her delightful 2008 animated feature entitled Sita Sings The Blues, filmmaker Nina Paley demonstrated that gods with multiple arms, multiple heads, and animal bodies are only a tiny part of Indian culture that can be mined for laughs.
A striking feature of Hindu and Buddhist art is the portrayal of gods with several arms and heads, symbols of multiple powers and responsibilities.
Educated Romans liked to connect Roman gods with Greek gods.
They found that 6% of non-Christians believe that the Bible should be interpreted literally as the actual word of God, and 21% considered it the actual word of God with multiple possible interpretations.
Landing in India in 1834, Thomas Babington Macaulay could scarcely fathom its strangeness: women and men who to him looked black and nearly naked; fanged gods bristling with multiple arms; the air so humid every smell seemed to ripen instantly into rot.
He replaced God with Henry Ford.
