All language subtitles for East to West 2of7 The Triumph of Monotheism

(TURKISH MUSIC)

This is the untold story

of the making of the modern world.

A fresh perspective,

charting the spread of civilisation

across the globe.

From the dawn of mankind

and the first cities and empires...

to the belief in one God.

(Sings call to prayer)

We follow the flow of civilisation

from the Middle East...

An extraordinary place
that has been a vital link

between the continents of Asia,
Africa and Europe for millennia.

An economic, scientific
and cultural centre of the world.

(DRAMATIC, SOARING MUSIC)

It will be an epic journey
of discovery...

from the east

to the west.

This is the story
of the birth of religion.

Here in the Middle East it inspired
the journey of civilisation.

In this programme
we explore early man's struggle

to understand and explain nature,

life and death,
and the world beyond.

They are not ancestors,
they are not priests.

They are beings from another world.

We discover the first temples
of the Middle East

and how the pantheon of pagan gods

that ruled from Mesopotamia to Egypt,
and Greece to Home,

were overthrown
by a revolutionary idea -

monotheism.

It's absolutely a watershed moment
in history.

It's the story of the difficult
birth, and eventual growth

of this idea that came from the East
to dominate the West

and much of the rest of the world.

Monotheism - the belief
in one universal God.

The idea of one universal God is so
integral and familiar to our culture

that we forget
that in a world of many gods

it was once a radical idea.

Where did it come from,

how did it grow,
why did it succeed?

Judaism, Christianity and Islam

all look to Abraham
as their founding father.

The story of Abraham
first appears in Genesis,

the first book of the Jewish Bible.

When you open the Bible,
you very quickly come to Abraham

and basically the whole Bible
from then on

is the story of one man's family

and that one man is Abraham.

Everything is about his encounter
with God, his experience with God.

MAN'S VOICE: And I will
make of thee a great nation,

and I will bless thee,
and make thy name great.

According to the Bible,
Abraham spent much of his life

in an ancient city in Mesopotamia
called Harran,

believed to be in what is now Turkey.

In Harran

people worshipped many gods.

Like the rest of the ancient world,
polytheism ruled.

The defining moment
in Abraham's story,

why he is synonymous with monotheism,

came with a command from God.

Take your only son,
your beloved son,

and go to the land of Moria

and there you will sacrifice him
to me.

The basis of the story

in the Old Testament and Koran

almost the same,
but different in details.

The story is that God

would like to test
the true beliefs of Abraham.

When they come there

it is clear now to both of them

that the sacrifice
is going to be the son,

the only son,

the beloved son
is going to be sacrificed.

But on the crucial moment
there is a voice from heaven.

“Don't touch the child.

“I don't want him to be sacrificed.

“You have proved yourself
to be loyal to God."

Judaism, Christianity and Islam

share a belief in Abraham

as the founding father
of their faith.

But some details of the story differ.

In the Jewish tradition
Abraham's intended sacrifice

was in Jerusalem.

Jews erected a temple here
to commemorate the spot.

It was said to be one of the greatest
buildings in antiquity.

(Person ululates)

The temple was destroyed
by the Babylonians,

rebuilt, then destroyed again
by the Romans.

The surviving western wall

is one of the holiest places
in Judaism.

Above it today
is the Dome of the Rock,

the oldest surviving Islamic building
in the world.

Muslims believe it is the site
of the Mi'raj

where the prophet Mohammad was taken
to heaven to meet with God.

In Islamic tradition the sacrifice
of Abraham took place not here

but near Mecca
in modern Saudi Arabia.

It's impossible to be precise
about Abraham.

Biblical chronology suggests
he lived nearly 4000 years ago.

But there is no hard proof
of his existence.

There's no archaeological evidence
of Abraham.

He didn't leave a monument
somewhere in the desert saying

“Abraham was here."

(FAST-PACED PERCUSSION MUSIC)

There is a growing distance
between what people think

about history of this region,
according to the Biblical text,

and what archaeology shows.

So it is extremely difficult
and tricky

to reconstruct even the germs
of history from these myths.

In recent years an incredible series
of archaeological discoveries

have revealed the real story
of the development of religion

and, ultimately, the idea of one God.

The story begins thousands of years
before the biblical time of Abraham.

Over 11,000 years ago

something extraordinary
happened here

in a place known as Göbekli Tepe

on the Upper Mesopotamian plains
of southern Turkey.

These mysterious stone pillars

give an amazing insight
into the birth of organised religion.

They were erected here
right at the dawn of civilisation

before the birth of agriculture
when man was a hunter-gatherer.

Religion springs
from the timeless human need

to understand the world,

explain natural disasters,
life and death.

Professor Klaus Schmidt,

who leads the excavation and study
of Göbekli Tepe,

believes these T-shaped pillars
represent human beings.

Here we have the proof
that the meaning of the pillars

is really a meaning
of anthropomorphic beings.

You can see it's a big arm
coming down here

and we have here the hands,
fingers like this.

These strange human-shaped
monuments

appear to represent
supernatural humans,

visitors from an imagined
spiritual world.

There is never a face depicted
on these T shapes.

They are faceless, without eyes,
without nose, without mouth.

I think it's a clear indication
they are not from our world.

They are not ancestors,
they are not priests.

They are beings from another world,

mee... gathering here
in an eternal meeting.

These structures are not done
for daily life, so...

is a sacred sphere
we have here on this mountain.

There are no houses here
at Göbekli Tepe.

This is a special place.

Man built this gathering
of supernatural beings

to make a connection
with the afterlife.

This pillar in the north
of Enclosures D

maybe is showing us what's going
on here in these enclosures,

what the purpose had been
for those enclosures.

We have here vulture,
a very big vulture,

with its wings
in such a position.

There are more birds, there are
snakes, there are other symbols,

but there is a very big scorpion
depicted here

and there are other animals

and here below
there is clearly a human

and clearly there is no head
on top of this body.

And this complete image looks like
a illustration of the netherworlds,

not of our world here,

and so maybe it's leading us
to the function of these enclosures

being made for burial customs.

Professor Schmidt believes
that in these enclosures

early man practised a ritual ceremony

to mark the passing of their dead.

(MYSTERIOUS VIBRAPHONE MUSIC)

The monumental structures
of Göbekli Tepe

are a landmark in human development.

Here, 11,000 years ago,
a revolution occurred.

Hunter-gathers paused

to build a special place
to commemorate the journey

from one world to the next.

The Stone Age people of Göbekli Tepe

witnessed death, the power of nature
and the changes in the seasons

and created a belief system
to help them comprehend

their bewildering world.

The whole region
is a treasure trove of discoveries,

evidence showing
that death and burial

were central to mankind's
developing beliefs.

Near to Göbekli Tepe is the ancient
settlement of Qatalhöyük.

It's a remarkable window into
our ancestors' lives and beliefs.

Archaeologists made an amazing
discovery here at Qatalhöyük.

The people who lived here
buried their dead in their own homes.

When people died, they were buried
literally under their beds.

So a hole would have been dug
through this platform

and the body placed inside.

So literally these people
were living,

sometimes 1O centimetres,
2O centimetres,

above their lost ones.

In some houses we found one,
some houses have none,

but then other houses have,
you know, 15.

The most we've found is
something like 67 in one building.

(OMINOUS MUSIC)

The dead of Qatalhöyük
were buried with great care.

The body is placed
in a crouched position,

in a foetal position like this,

so they're quite tightly contained
within the burial cut.

Bodies appeared
as if ready for rebirth.

And they were given precious items
to take into their new lite.

We find a range of beads,

stone, clay, shell and bone beads.

And these we might find

scattered in the burial
around the neck area of a burial.

But burials aren't the only evidence
emerging of early religious practice.

We are starting to get closer
to our ancestors' gods.

(SERENE MUSIC)

(FAST PERCUSSION MUSIC)

In northern Israel, compelling
evidence has been discovered

of this giant leap
in religious thinking.

I mean, there was nothing special,
just excavated,

then it came out,
you see that it's a figurine

but it was covered
with dirt and mud.

We didn't clean it
cos if you start cleaning it

it interfered, you may destroyed it.

So it was taken, you know,
as a big dirty lump of sediment

but you saw the general shape
of a figurine.

It went to the lab,
and only after the cleaning

it's turn out to be the most
beautiful figurine ever found

in their culture.

We believe that this was
a mother goddess figurine,

a kind of goddess
that the entire tribe worship.

What is really very prominent
are the eyes,

the eyes are usually
3 or 4 times bigger

than the usual eyes on human face,

so the eyes are very emphasised
on our figurines.

So it's something not natural,
it's supernatural.

Many more mother goddess figurines
have been found in Sha'ar HaGolan.

They are vital evidence of a seismic
shift in religious thought.

For the first time we can really
talk about a kind of goddess

because this is the first time
in human evolution

that you can see all
the figurines are exactly the same.

In our site we have
about 120 clay figurines.

They always has elongated head,

they have diagonal eye,
very prominent eye,

they have nose,
they have ear and earrings,

you can see the navel,
you can see fat fold.

It was probably
a central figure, a goddess,

which were worship
by this community,

and everybody when he was thinking
about this goddess

knew that she has this specific
type of eyes and specific head

and there was probably
whole mythology about it.

The people of Sha'ar HaGolan
revolutionised religion.

They didn't perceive
their mother goddess as the one God,

they were not monotheist,

but they were the first people
in history

to create a uniform idea of God.

They were the first one
to crystallise a concept

that we are worshipping
a specific figure

and not everybody can do it
as he wished.

You must do it in this way,
there was right and wrong.

The idea of a uniform image of God

came hand-in-hand with the birth
of organised established religion.

The establishment of central places
of uniform worship

was one of the first steps
in the long journey to civilisation.

As people gathered in ever greater
numbers around their temples,

they built bigger and bigger
communities to live in.

A process that began in the East

transformed the West
and the rest of the world.

Today almost every part of the world
has a place of worship -

churches, mosques, temples -
at their heart.

That was the same in the world's
first cities in Mesopotamia

when they began to emerge
around 6000 years ago.

Mari in modern day Syria
was one of the largest

and was built to a grand
and deliberate plan.

A walled circular city, with the
river Euphrates diverted through it

and at its heart a temple.

The temple and worship
were central to life

in the first cities of Mesopotamia

and the organisation of religion

had a profound and lasting
influence on society.

We have here in Mari
the first signs of a real society,

or real organised society.

In the middle of the city
you have the palace

and you have the temples around,

which is clearly
the sign of a hierarchy.

You have the power,
you have the religion

and it's on the top
of this kind of pyramidal society.

Fabulous statues have been
discovered in the temples of Mari.

They bring the religion of this
ancient culture vividly back to life.

This is a statue of a worshipper.

It's a typical kind of a statue
that we found in a temple in Mari.

They are typically bald,

the beard is often represented
like this

and the eyes is also very typical.

You have this lapis lazuli disc
inside shell

and the eyebrows
are made of bitumen.

The hands are gathered on the chest,

which is a devotion,
a sign of devotion.

And so most of the time
they have an inscription

on the shoulder on the back,
where he put his name.

Now we know who he is.
His name is Shivune.

And this is the typical
representation of worshipper.

Wealthy citizens commissioned
statues of themselves

and placed them in specific temples

dedicated to particular
gods and goddesses.

Each god has a specificity

and it depends on what you want,
you will go to this god or that god.

This is why you put your statue
inside a specific temple.

Gone was the idea
oi a uniform image oi a goddess.

In Mari there was a whole host
of gods and goddesses,

each looking very different,
each with a particular role.

The gods and goddesses of Mari
were worshipped across Mesopotamia.

They are amongst the first
named gods in human history.

We know that there were
many goddess and gods.

We know them by their myths,

there's a lot of history
about those gods.

You have Ishtar, for instance,

she's the goddess of love
and also the goddess of war.

You have the sun god,
you have the god of the agriculture.

This Mesopotamian pantheon
is the beginning

of all the other pantheon of gods

and we always have the main god,
his wife,

and through the Greek, the Romans,

we have the exact same...

panel of gods.

The Parthenon -

the temple to Athena
on the Acropolis in Athens -

survives as a fabulous reminder

of the enduring power
of the ancient gods.

Many of the statues and friezes
that once adorned the Parthenon

are now in the British Museum
in London.

The Greeks thought the gods
were like humans

but just a bit bigger,
a bit brighter, a bit shinier.

Here you have Dionysus
and Selene, the god of the moon,

and Aphrodite,
the god of sexual love.

So although the Greek gods didn't
always get on with one another-

they drank a lot,
they had affairs with one another,

they had arguments the whole time -

but they were nonetheless godlike.

You have to realise
that the ancient Greeks,

gods and demi-gods and spirits
were everywhere in the world.

This was how they explained
what was going on around them.

So when they saw the tides
rise and fall,

when they saw the grain
ripening in the fields,

they knew, they didn't think,

they knew that this was
the power of a god or gods

who would make this all happen
for them.

The whole ancient world's view
of deity

was that there is
one overall force

but it's manifested, that force,

it's not a personal force
you would necessarily talk to.

It's manifested
by all the powers of nature.

So the sky, the sea,

all the different phenomena
of the world are respected.

It was seen as a positive thing,
they're respected, they're honoured.

Let's honour the powers
of the wind, of the sea.

The Romans adopted
the Greek pantheon of Gods,

adapting their names.

Zeus became Jupiter,

Dionysus became Bacchus,

Aphrodite became Venus.

The Greeks and Romans
had hundreds of gods,

one for every eventuality.

If you were sick or you were dying,

you needed health,
you need prosperity,

you're going on a journey, you need
guidance on your journey, safety.

It made sense to the Romans,
to the Greeks,

to honour that specific deity

both in terms of effectiveness

because you're going
right to the source

but also the sense
of giving respect to that god

at that temple where those priests
are concentrating

on this particular idea.

In some ways this meant it was
very exhausting being a Greek

because you had to rush around

keeping all these various gods
on side.

But it also meant you always had
a chance of success.

So if Apollo
hadn't heard your prayer

then maybe Aphrodite would.

And I think actually it encouraged
men and women to be very tolerant.

So ii they had a visitor
from Egypt, for instance,

they were quite ready to believe
that that Egyptian

might bring an Egyptian god
who also had power

and therefore became embraced
as a new cult.

The many gods of the ancient world
co-existed peacefully for millennia

until one man challenged
the idea of polytheism.

Not Abraham,

but the ruler of one of the oldest
civilisations of the ancient world -

Egypt.

Egypt was polytheist,
a land that seemed full of gods.

At the top of the Egyptian pantheon

Ra the sun god
headed a group of nine gods

known as the Great Ennead.

But 3500 years ago

Pharaoh Amenhotep launched
a revolution in thinking.

Egypt's many gods
and the idea of polytheism itself

were under attack.

As far as we can tell,
Amenhotep is the first Egyptian

to be able to look critically
at the religion of his own society,

to step outside it and to judge it.

And he seems to have judged it
as being very largely empty.

Instead, he could see
only a single god,

a single source of power,

which is what you can see up there
in the sky, the sun,

and that's all that matters,
that's all there was.

Amenhotep's revolutionary idea

was to dismiss Egypt's many gods

and worship just one -
Aten the sun god.

He wanted to honour
the immediate power of the sun

as it is after all the only source
of non-terrestrial energy and power

that you can actually see,
everything else is imagination.

And that seems to have been
his drive towards simplicity.

Nothing matters except the immediacy
of the experience of the sun

as it appears in the horizon
and warms you

and brings, obviously brings life
to everything.

Amenhotep's devotion to his new god

and his commitment to change
Egypt's centuries-old polytheism

made him change his name.

He began his reign
with the name Amenhotep,

a name that honours
the traditional god of Thebes.

But the king changed his name
to Akhenaten,

which honoured the disc of the sun,
the Aten.

Akhenaten even built a whole
new city to honour the one god

and moved his entire court there.

He called it Akhetaten,
meaning “the horizon of the sun...

This is the mansion of the Aten,

one of the two main temples,
places of worship.

In some respects, the temple
was laid out quite traditionally.

It's a series of courtyards
arranged along a central axis.

But what is most distinctive

is that there are
no roofed buildings inside.

The courtyards are open to the sky
because they're there

so you can appreciate
and make offerings and prayers

to the visible disc of the sun.

The statement that Akhenaten
is trying to make

is that God, the divine essence,
is visible,

the power of the sun is up there

and it's there directly
to be appreciated.

You don't need the elaborateness

of enclosed temples
with their many statutes.

Akhenaten's devotion to one god

was quickly taken up
by his royal entourage.

This is the tomb of one of the most
powerful figures at the court.

His name is Aye,

he's the fan bearer
on the right hand of the king,

and behind him is shown his wife,
her name is Tey,

and they're both kneeling
with their arms raised

in adoration to the rising sun

and above them comes
the columns of hieroglyphs

of a long hymn,
which is directed at the Aten.

It celebrates the rising of the Aten
each day.

MAN: You created the earth
by your will.

You alone existed.

You set every person in his place.

The Hymn of Aye is a remarkable
statement of Akhenaten's monotheism.

For him there is only one god.

There's no reference to other gods.
Akhenaten sweeps all that away.

There's no interest
in the other forms of divinities

who you might imagine
are actually parts of the sun.

So it's a great simplification.

They're not damned,
they are just excluded.

Akhenaten died in 1336 BC

believing he'd changed religion
in Egypt for ever.

But an archive
of nearly 400 cuneiform tablets

discovered here in the 19th century

reveal his experiment with monotheism
died with him.

When he died Egypt returned

to the traditional worship
of Amun Ra at Thebes

and all the other many divinities
of local places.

Akhenaten's son, Tutankhaten,
meaning the living image of the Aten,

came to the throne.

During his short reign,

the worship of the Aten declined

and older gods like Amun
were restored.

To recognise this reversal
Tutankhaten changed his name...

to Tutankhamun,

the living image of Amun.

Egypt's brief experiment
with monotheism was over.

Polytheism was too deeply rooted

in the religious culture
of the ancient world

to be swept away so lightly.

The modern belief in one god,
monotheism,

would have to overcome massive
resistance if it were to succeed.

The idea of one true god

would have been an extraordinary
and shocking idea.

Because how can you have
just one god

when these men and women
have known for thousands of years

that the world was inhabited
by many spirits

and gods and demi-gods.

Would have been
heart-stoppingly radical.

But monotheism wasn't finished.

The Middle East was still to play
a central role

in the story of its growth.

The next radical transformation
a short distance from Egypt

in Canaan.

Polytheism was deeply rooted
in this part of the world

for many millennia.

Well, this in fact
exemplifies the whole thing.

I am standing
on the steps to the altar.

This altar was constructed
in the third millennium BC,

early Bronze Age,

and it served the temple,

which is on the right-hand side
and behind us.

Canaan was the Promised Land the
Bible says God promised to Abraham

but scholars today
look beyond the Bible

for evidence of Abraham's people,
the early Israelites.

When we get to the formative period
in Israelite history

archaeology
is the queen of the battle

and archaeology is the centre

because archaeology provides you
with real-time evidence.

If I take a spade now
and in front of the camera,

you know, start excavating here,

in this same very moment
I am into the real historical layer,

archaeological layer,
whatever you wanna call it.

This is not the case
with the Biblical text.

So we all need to remember that.

The excavations here in Megiddo
in the centre of Canaan

seem to show
that the early Israelites

continued to worship
the same polytheistic gods

as the Canaanites.

When we we speak about
the transition from Canaanite life,

let's say in the second millennium,

to Israelite in the late second

and beginning
of the first millennium BC,

I think from the cultic point
of view nothing happened.

There is continuity.

Other sites also point to the
worship of many gods in this region.

7O kilometres away archaeologists
are excavating Tel Hazor,

the ancient capital of Canaan.

It is the largest site
in the country, more than 200 acres,

with a population
of some 15-20,000 people,

which makes it comparable to Paris,
London, New York of today.

It's a major site.

There is clear evidence here
of the many gods of Canaan.

We are in a place of worship
of the Canaanite period.

You can see first of all
by the standing stones,

which were worshipped.

We have the names of the different
gods and their functions

and this and that and the other,
like Ado - he is the weather god -

was a very, very important god
here at Hazor.

He was definitely not the only one.
The god Sin was worshipped.

The moon god was worshipped,
the god El was worshipped.

The Canaanites worshipped
a pantheon of gods headed by El,

his wife Asherah and Baal.

And when the Israelites emerged
in Canaan

they appear to have worshipped
the same Canaanite gods.

The chief god of the Canaanites
is called El,

so is called the chief god of the
Israelites, is called El or Elohim.

There is no question that
a lot of cult practices and ideas

were taken over.

The Bible confirms

that the Israelites
worshipped these Canaanite gods.

The prophets keep complaining,

why are you worship this god,
why are you worship Baal,

this, that and the other,
you're not supposed to do it,

you're supposed to stay away
from Canaanite,

you have to separate yourself
from the Canaanite people

as well as the Canaanite religion
and so on and so forth.

The early books of the Bible
are full of the struggle

for the hearts and minds
of the Israelites,

a battle
between the old pagan Canaanite gods

and the one God
who revealed himself as Yahweh.

(MAN READS IN HEBREW)

MAN READS IN ENGLISH:
I am Yahweh, your God.

You shall have no other gods
before me.

It's the first
of the Ten Commandments

given to Moses by God
on Mount Sinai.

So this is what we have
in the time of Moses.

A commandment of worshipping the One

without negating
the existence of the others.

The Israelites had Yahweh
as their god

but they didn't yet conceive of him
as the only god.

Despite the Commandments and the
warnings of Moses and other prophets,

the Israelites still persisted
with the worship of other gods,

including females...

This little clay figurine was found
in my excavations in a site,

a large site in northern Israel
south of the Lake of Galilee,

called Tel Rehov,

a place not mentioned in the Bible
but yet it was a very important city

during the 10th and 9th
and 8th centuries BC.

In the field, one of our volunteers
just picked her up

and ran and showed it to me.

I was very pleased, you know,
it's always a pleasure.

The figurine
is nearly 2900 years old.

It's an example of thousands
of female figurines

discovered throughout the region
in the Israelite period.

She's holding here a young baby,

she's holding a baby.

So she is a mother,
she's a mother goddess in this case.

We think that this is Asherah,

this is one the nice examples
of this type of figurines

from around 900 BC

when Israelite religion
was not yet completely monotheistic,

that's for sure.

The Israelites
were still worshipping

the Canaanite goddess Asherah.

They imagined her as the wife
of their god Yahweh.

We have, for example,
inscriptions on jars

which say, “To Yahweh...

“and his Asherah."

Okay, so there is Yahweh and is you
want to say, Mrs Yahweh, Asherah.

The Israelites worshipped many gods,

unlike what is more or less
common belief

that all Israelites
worshipped Yahweh.

So there is clear evidence

that Yahweh had to fight
for a long time

and quite a fierce battle

until he was accepted
as the one and only.

It took several centuries
before the Israelites

finally embraced Yahweh
as the one and only God.

And to make that happen
needed a catastrophe.

(MEN SHOUT, WEAPONS CLASH)

2600 years ago

Jerusalem is attacked by the
Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar.

The city is sacked,

the House of Yahweh, the temple,
is destroyed

and thousands of Jews
are taken as slaves into exile.

Yahweh seemed defeated.

It was a theological catastrophe

because the simple fact
was that the god of Israel

was defeated
by the god of the Babylonians.

This was the way
people looked at it at that time

and they had to explain
what had happened.

They had either to yield
and forget all about this

and be part
of the Babylonian culture

or they had to come up
with this, with an explanation.

In captivity in Babylon

the Israelites developed
a revolutionary explanation

for the defeat of their god Yahweh.

And they came up with an amazing,
you know, way of...

philosophical idea, explanation
of what exactly had happened

and how it came about
that the god of Israel

was supposedly defeated,
but in fact he won, you know.

They say well,
let's think about this.

The god of Israel is so powerful

that he is universal,

that he rules everything,
that he decides everything,

that he sent the king of Babylonia.

The king of Babylonia
was no more than a little pion

in the hands of the god of Israel
to be sent to punish

the apostasy of the Israelites,
no more than that.

The winning god
wasn't the Babylonian god.

He was Yahweh, using the Babylonians
to punish the Israelites.

So Yahweh
is not just the Israelites' god,

he's the Babylonians' god,
he's everyone's god.

An unknown prophet
given the name Isaiah

created the first defining statement
of monotheism

and changed the course
of human history.

(MAN RECITES INDISTINCTLY
IN HEBREW)

There is no other god besides me.

I am the creator of good and evil.

I am the creator
of light and darkness.

There is no one beside me.

(MUSIC CLIMBS TO CRESCENDO)

it's absolutely
a watershed moment in history.

There's a sense in terms of religion

that it's maybe the greatest idea,

if you judge greatest ideas

by the ideas
that really had lasting impact.

The Persians under Cyrus the Great
conquered Babylon

and allowed the Israelites
to return to Jerusalem.

They took their new idea of one
universal God back with them.

But the Jews didn't spread
their brilliant new idea

to the rest of the world.

That was the work
of another religion

built on the foundations of Judaism.

(Priests chant)

Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem.

The Church of the Nativity
marks the spot

where it's believed he was born.

At the Jewish festival of Passover

Jesus came to preach in Jerusalem.

(Monk speaks in Latin
through microphone)

Seen as a threat to the Roman peace,

he was arrested, tried
and sentenced to death.

Today pilgrims still walk the route
Jesus is supposed to have taken

to his crucifixion.

MAN: The Third Station.
Here Jesus falls the first time.

(Crowd chants)

Here Jesus meets the holy women
of Jerusalem.

A great crowd of people
followed Him,

including women who beat their
breasts and lamented over Him.

The route ends at the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre,

the traditional site
of his crucifixion and burial.

Weep for yourselves
and for your children...

(Crowd sings) Hallelujah.

2000 years later, Christianity
has two billion followers.

But how did the Christian version
of monotheism

finally overcome polytheism

to be the largest religion
in the world?

Jesus Christ himself
didn't invent a world religion.

He lived a life
and he was an exemplar of his faith.

It was others who came after him
who developed his ideas,

the personal relationship

that he was said to have had
with his father, God,

into a belief system,
into a world faith.

Jesus didn't spread Christianity
and monotheism.

That was the work of another man -

Saul of Tarsus.

Blinded by a vision of Jesus,
then miraculously healed,

Saul took up the faith
and changed his name to Paul.

(UPLIFTING MUSIC)

Paul believed that Jesus' message
of spiritual renewal

should be preached to Jews
and non-Jews - Gentiles.

Both could be baptised
and follow Jesus.

What Paul says is, you know,

if Gentiles, non-Jews, have faith

in the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob,

and they believe
in the Messiah, Jesus,

aren't they really children
of Abraham in a spiritual sense?

Paul's missionary journeys
took him from Syria to Cyprus

and Asia Minor to Greece.

So what he starts doing

is missionising, travelling,

first of all through Asia Minor
or Turkey,

and he goes to little towns
and villages.

He crosses over into Greece

and he preaches not to the Jews

or the syna...
often he'll go to a synagogue

but he'll end up street-preaching
or he'll rent a hall

like he does in one case,
a kind of a school,

and people come
to hear him give lectures.

Paul travelled to one of
the greatest cities on earth.

Ephesus was the capital
of Roman Asia,

the second largest city in the world.

Nearly half a million people
lived here.

It was full of buildings

celebrating the many gods
of the Greco-Roman world...

including the massive temple
of Artemis.

If Paul could convert the Greek
and Roman pagans of Ephesus

to Christianity

then the new religion
could spread through the empire.

If you think about
the achievement of Paul

and what he did in bringing
Christianity to the world,

it's just staggering
to think about it,

because when Paul lands

in every city
are dozens and dozens of temples,

beautiful buildings, edifices

to all of these gods and goddesses
of Greece and Rome and Egypt.

That's not gonna go away
very easily.

Here in Ephesus,
Paul and his fellow missionaries

wrote and preached
the new Gospels of Christianity,

a religion distinct
from its roots in Judaism

that would eventually take
the idea of monotheism

beyond its Middle Eastern home.

Paul took the Christian message
to Rome,

the capital of the empire
and the heart of paganism.

Here Christians worshipped
in secret

but soon Paul incurred the wrath
of the pagan authorities.

Paul is believed
to have been executed in Home

in the reign of the emperor Nero.

The Abbey of the Three Fountains

marks the spot
where Paul was beheaded.

So this is really the spot.

That's, the pillar's
commemorating the execution of Paul,

he was beheaded traditionally
in this spot

and the pillar not necessarily
marks where it happened

but as a commemoration
that it was in this area.

And then the three fountains

where his head,
according to the tale,

bounced and bounced
and bounced again

and God gave kind of witness
to his greatness.

(WATER SPLASHES)

Christianity continued
to be a persecuted religion

in the Roman Empire.

Christians were regularly martyred

for their refusal
to accept the Roman gods.

It would take another 250 years

and one final battle

for monotheism to triumph.

(URGENT MUSIC)

On this bridge where I'm standing,
the Milvian Bridge,

this great battle took place.

It basically had to do
with the control of Rome...

Who's going to be
the next emperor?

But looking back on it,
it really had to do

with what will be the future
of the entire western world.

There's a sense
in which you could say

monotheism hung in the balance
on this bridge.

In the year 312

two armies met here outside Rome
at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

On one side the army of Constantine,

the emperor
of Rome's eastern provinces.

Opposing him, Maxentius, a usurper.

Maxentius's army
was driven into the Tiber,

where Maxentius drowned.

In the great forum of Rome,
Constantine erected a triumphal arch

as a symbol of his victory.

The following year, the new emperor
proclaimed religious toleration

in the Roman Empire.

(CHRISTIAN CHORAL MUSIC)

7O years later

Christianity became the official
religion of the Roman world.

It's the triumph of an idea,
the belief in one God,

an idea that came
from the Middle East

and now dominates the West.

It's also an idea that has been
taken on by other religions.

In the next program we will discover

how a new monotheist religion,
Islam,

embodied and adapted
the faith of Abraham,

spreading at extraordinary speed
across the Middle East and beyond.

(Sings) Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar!

It's a continuation

of the Middle East's
extraordinary influence on beliefs.

From the earliest beginnings
in Göbekli Tepe...

through the evolution of the great
pantheon of ancient gods

to the earliest experiences
of monotheism...

right through
to the world religions of today.

Subtitles © SBS Australia 2012