Sunday 31 January 2016

A brief history of Yahweh

Yahweh started out as a small time tribal god, just one of many in the Middle East several thousand years ago. He stayed this way for a long time until a guy named Saul, aka Paul, (2) pulled off one of the greatest PR campaigns in history and started convincing Gentiles to follow Yahweh (not having to cut off the tip of their dicks really helped increase the numbers). This set off yet another branch (with many twigs) in the family tree of Judaism.

Then Constantine, the Roman Emperor, stopped the persecution of Christians and eventually declared himself a Christian. While his unfettered support for the Catholic Church surely helped increase Yahweh's stature, it wasn't until Theodosius I made Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire that Yahweh really spread throughout Europe…usually at the end of a sword.

In one of the great ironies of history, one of the most persecuted religious sects in history, became, arguably, the greatest persecutors of other religious sects in history. By doing so, they managed to turn a small time Bronze Age tribal god into the most worshipped god in the world…but yeah, Yahweh is totally real.

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