The term (German for "primeval monotheism") or "primitive monotheism" expresses the hypothesis of a monotheistic Urreligion, from which polytheistic religions allegedly degenerated. This evolutionary view of religious development contrasts diametrically with another evolutionary view on the development of religious thought: the hypothesis that religion progressed from simple forms to complex: first pre-animism, then animism, totemism, polytheism, and finally monotheism.
History
In 1898, the Scottish anthropologist Andrew Lang proposed that the idea of a Supreme Being, the "high God", or "All Father" existed among some of the simplest of contemporary tribes prior to their contact with Western peoples, and that Urmonotheismus ("primitive monotheism") was the original religion of humankind.
The Catholic priest Wilhelm Schmidt (1868–1954) defended the idea of Urmonotheismus in his work (The Origin of the Idea of God), published 1912 to 1955, opposing the "Revolutionary Monotheism" approach that traces the emergence of monotheistic thought as a gradual process spanning the Bronze and Iron Age religions of the ancient Near East and Classical antiquity. According to Schmidt, alleged traces of primitive monotheism appear in the Assyro-Babylonian deities Ashur and Marduk, and in the Ancient Hebrew god Yahweh. Schmidt views monotheism as the "natural" form of theism, which was later overlaid and "degraded" by polytheism after the deceased ancestors became objects of worship in primitive human societies, and personified natural forces became worshipped as well as divine beings.
A significant part of the work of Italian anthropologist and historian of religion Raffaele Pettazzoni (1883-1959) on the study of ancient religions concentrated on refuting the speculative theory of "primordial monotheism" (Urmonotheismus) previously developed by Schmidt, and on the study of the conceptions of the Supreme Being in so-called "primitive" religions. Schmidt believed that evidence of monotheism existed in tribal societies, and argued that all human societies recognize the Supreme Being as a non-exclusive spiritual entity which is paramount and also opposed by other spiritual entities. Pettazzoni challenged Schmidt's concept of a Supreme Being as necessarily entailing monotheism. Rather, Pettazzoni writes that monotheism is a recent religious development over the course of a slow revolution in polytheism and perhaps henotheism. In the Hebrew Bible, this debate is carried on by the narratives about the Old Testament prophets who wrangle with the Canaanite gods; such scenarios serve to re-affirm both the ethical monotheism of the Israelites in opposition to the Canaanite religion and their belief in one exclusive transcendent deity coexisting with lesser divine beings. (See also: God in Abrahamic religions).
Schmidt's hypothesis was controversially discussed during much of the first half of the 20th century. In the 1930s, Schmidt adduced evidence from Native American religion and mythology, Australian Aboriginal religion and mythology, and other primitive civilizations in support of his views. He also responded to his critics. For instance, he rejected Pettazzoni's claim that the sky gods were merely a dim personification or embodiment of the physical sky, writing in The Origin and Growth of Religion: "The outlines of the Supreme Being become dim only among later peoples". Schmidt adds that "a being who lives in the sky, who stands behind the celestial phenomena, who must 'centralize' in himself the various manifestations [of thunder, rain, etc.] is not a personification of the sky at all". According to Ernest Brandewie in Wilhelm Schmidt and the Origin of the Idea of God, Schmidt also claims that Pettazzoni fails to study Schmidt's work seriously and often relies on incorrect translations of Schmidt's German. Brandewie also says Pettazzoni's definition of primitive ethical monotheism is an "arbitrary" straw-man argument, but he says Schmidt went too far when he claimed that such ethical monotheism was the earliest religious idea.