volume 6, issue 1, 2014, pages 1-22

DOI: https://doi.org/10.64438/sbsGFPA3140
Published online: 2014-06-01
Published in print: 2014-06-30

Abstract: The article states how theories about the development of biblical monotheism have developed: from evolutionary and revolutionary model to the current wide range of theories that can be divided into three groups based on the period when monotheism, according to their authors, emerged in Israel’s history – before exile, in early Israel and in exile and beyond. Then attention is focused on the theory of Mark S. Smith who can be placed in the first group of authors, and on the methods by which, in his opinion, the development of biblical monotheism was recorded: the dual process of “convergence” and “differentiation” and a more recent method of “cultural memory and amnesia”.