Author Jonathan Kirsch would put a finer point on the charge. He blames the leading monotheistic religions--Judaism, Christianity and Islam--for much of history's bloodshed. The reason, he maintains, is monotheism's traditional claim to exclusive possession of absolute truth.
Too bad Julian the Apostate, the Roman Empire's last pagan emperor, died young in battle, says Kirsch, author of the newly published "God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism" (Viking). Had Julian lived longer, he might have succeeded in reinstating classical Greco-Roman polytheism, which was marginalized when Emperor Constantine the Great institutionalized Christianity's ascendancy--and world history might have turned out more benign.
"Julian is one of the great 'what ifs?' of history," said Kirsch, whose earlier books include "The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible" and "King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel."
"Human history is the history of our evolution toward greater individual liberty. I have the nagging feeling that, at least in the West, we might have gotten there faster and in a more direct way had Julian lived."
Polytheism, the belief that there can be more than one god, was the ancient world's dominant religious system. Today it survives chiefly in Hinduism, in tribal traditions, in Afro-Caribbean faiths such as Santeria and Voodoo, and in Wicca and other neo-pagan movements that are growing in North America and Western Europe.
Greco-Roman polytheism reached its philosophical peak in Neo-Platonism, which emphasized ethical behavior and the existence of a unifying transcendent reality.
