monotheism

The one-true-God revolution in human thought that Jiang says created money, individual, nation-state, and the modern world.

In this lecture, the intellectual premise that one God designed a knowable universe and gave humans the capacity and responsibility to discover its laws.

A recent religious innovation centered on one God, treated by Jiang as the basis for modern hierarchical thinking.

Jiang argues that the appearance of the word 'gods' in heaven is deliberately jarring because a Christian listener expects strict monotheism, so the wording itself becomes evidence that Divine Comedy contains subversive pressure against a simple orthodox reading.

Jiang says the plural 'gods' can only point toward the Greek pantheon because Christianity is monotheistic, and he uses that friction to argue that Divine Comedy contains a subversive layer beneath its official Catholic chronology.

Students explicitly resist Jiang's wording by arguing that wanting equality with God or replacement of God does not automatically mean a desire to kill God.

Using Koestler, he argues that Khazaria adopted Judaism because Christianity or Islam would have subordinated it to Byzantium or the Abbasid Caliphate, while Judaism offered neutral monotheistic authority.

He defines monotheism as politically important because one God authorizes one ruler and therefore makes empire easier to build.

Jiang reads the Quran as telling Abrahamic factions that they are all children of God and should stop fighting over later sectarian differences.

Return from exile is framed as a second chance to prove loyalty to God by worshiping only Yahweh.

Zoroastrianism reorders polytheism by placing Ahura Mazda as lord of wisdom and locating heaven and hell as forces inside the human person: Asha as truth and Drush as lie.