Winfried Corduan - In the Beginning God: A Fresh Look at the Case for Original Monotheism

Were the first religions in the world polytheistic or monotheistic? As someone who has spoken on college campuses for decades, I can attest to the fact that most faculty and students would select the first option rather than the second. Win Corduan provides a service to scholarship on religion by making the case for the second option. Many start with an evolutionary assumption that naturally leads them to the conclusion that the first religion was animism or polytheism. But early on in the book Win Corduan makes the case that no matter what view you have about the origin of human beings, you cannot escape the fact that the first religion was monotheism. As the title says, in the beginning was God, a monotheistic God. This book deserves a hearing and a wide audience. I commend it to you.

Kerby Anderson

President of Probe Ministries

Host of the Point of View radio talk show

In the Beginning God deals with an immensely important topic in an in-depth and thoughtful manner. It is well researched and deals with all of the relevant sides in the scholarly discussion concerning the origin and development of humanitys religious quest. Building on the work of Wilhelm Schmidt and others, the book adds a new and powerful voice in support of the belief that the human races original spiritual focus was on one all-powerful and morally inclined creator God. I highly recommend it for any and all who are interested in the topic of our pursuit of the sacred.

Michael J. Caba

Dean of faculty

Kilns College

What is the origin of religion? I recommend In the Beginning God to students of religion who seek to hear from all sides in this important conversation. In it, Win Corduan guides you through a fascinating exploration of the evidence for original monotheism in language, culture, and world religions. He challenges naturalistic theories in the field of religious studies and provides a fresh angle for apologists seeking to make the case for the Christian worldview.

Mikel del Rosario

Speaker and trainer (www.apologeticsguy.com)

Adjunct professor of World Religion and Christian Apologetics

William Jessup University

This book is one of the most important contributions to religious apologetics in the last generation by the most qualified religious apologist on the topic within evangelicalism. It is a must read for every Christian apologist.

Norman Geisler, Ph.D.

Professor of Apologetics

Veritas Seminary

In the Beginning God is a paradigm-shifting work. Dr. Corduan has penned a persuasive and masterfully argued case for original monotheism. All future research on the origin of religion will need to take seriously and interact with Dr. Corduans argumentation.

Dayton Hartman

Adjunct professor of Religious Studies

Judson College

Dr. Corduan has provided readers with one of the most unique and most sorely neededapologetics works that has come along in years. Having addressed this topic on many a university campus myself, I can say that to assert that humanity's original religion was monotheism draws disagreementif not ridicule. In this impressively researched book, Corduan lays out a riveting history of monotheism, and persuasively defends Christian theism, and refutes the common tendency to interpret religion through an evolutionary lens. Many apologetics books are being released these days, but this one is a must have.

Alex McFarland

Christian apologist

Host of Exploring the Word radio program

A fascinating journey through the history of language, cultures, and morals. Professor Corduan provides an exhaustively researched argument for the early existence of monotheism in many cultures. Moreover, he offers a sound apologetic that counters evolutionary theories of religion that scholars such as Wellhausen popularized and used to dehistoricize the Bible. I enthusiastically recommend his book.

Ravi Zacharias

Author and speaker

In the Beginning God, Digital Edition

Based on Print Edtion

In the Beginning God:

A Fresh Look at the Case for Original Monotheism

Copyright 2013 Winfried Corduan

B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-0-8054-4778-1

Dewey Decimal Classification: 231

Subject Heading: MONOTHEISM \ GOD \ RELIGION

Scripture quotations marked HCSB are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible, Copyright 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Holman Christian Standard Bible, Holman CSB, and HCSB are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

To

Daniel and Mary Muppidi

and

Paul and Nancy Reid

A lthough I do not remember the exact day on which the idea for this book first became a reality, I remember the circumstances well. Just that morning, as I was leaving the house for my daily teaching duties, I remember remarking to my wife, June, that I would really like to start focusing on writing only technical books. Specifically, I said words to the effect that if it isnt about modal logic or Sanskrit, I dont think I want to write about it anymore. A little later that day I received an e-mail from Steve Bond of B&H Publishing Group, asking me if I would be interested in writing a complete book on original monotheism. I had devoted a short amount of time and space to that topic off and on in some previous books and articles. In a review of my A Tapestry of Faiths (InterVarsity Press, 2003), someone had suggested that it would be nice if I were to write an entire monograph treating the subject. Steve thought that was a good idea.

Obviously the entire picture of what I would or would not like to write immediately changed upon receiving a direct note of encouragement from a publisher. Still, I was just a little reluctant to agree to the project, though my reluctance did not last more than a day or so at best. I was fully aware of the fact that writing an entire book on this topic would be a lot different from writing a few paragraphs or even a chapter in a more general book. I would have to immerse myself in the literature of anthropology to a much larger degree than I had before. The only way I could see giving the topic any further treatment was to attempt to engage the experts in the field on their own level. Actually, few of the main participants in this story, other than the Americans in the twentieth century, had formal academic backgrounds in anthropology, and so I joined the many figures coming to the field from the outside, in my case with an M.A. in philosophy of religion and a Ph.D. in religious studies. I spent the next few years buying books and reading massively in the areas of ethnology and the anthropology of religion, particularly in connection with the phenomenon of monotheism. I realized that in some of my own earlier expositions, I had made some of the same mistakes I will point out in the writings of others over the course of this book. Slowly I started to feel that I was beginning to get a handle on this topic in the context of the debate that began more than 150 years ago and on its place in the current discussion within its anthropological context. My older son, Nicholas S. Corduan, who, among the many hats hanging from his rack, has one labeled anthropologist and archaeologist, has been of invaluable help to me in pointing out important details and connections. Even more importantly, he kept me from moving into one of the many fantasy worlds into which anthropology loves to entice researchers.