references to the true worship of the God of Israel as the most important
concern of the people and its leaders. According to the Deuteronomical histor-
ical work (spanning the writings from Genesis to the Second Book of Kings), as
long as the people of Israel adhered to the true religion of God they thrived (e.g.,
1Sam.7:1–17; 2 Sam. 7–10; 1 Kgs. 8:33–34), but whenever the people turned
away from God, he delivered them to their enemies and punished them by
turning powerful nations against them (e.g., Judg. 2:2–3, 6:1, 10:6–8; 2 Kgs.
17:1–23). The biblical history of Jewish religion comes close to the Durkheimian
model of the group existing by the worship of its deity, who, in turn, represents
the group itself. The question can be raised, however, as to how far academic
theories of societies held together by religious cults (and the worship of a“big
god,”more specifically) are themselves indebted to the biblical story of ancient
Israel as their inspiration and most important evidence. On the one hand, it is
clear that the narrative about God and his nation in the Hebrew Bible is not a
critical study of ancient history, but a creative, ideologically laden, and politically
motivated composition (Person, 2002). On the other hand, it has been argued
that modern European historiography, rooted in nationalist ideals, significantly
contributed to the perception of ancient Israel as a quasi nation state united by
law, religion, literature, and other cultural institutions (Sasson, 1981).
On a more general level, there are important arguments against the theory
that beliefs in gods who watch and punish people resulted in moral behavior
and large-scale cooperation. First, statistical analyses of the cultural and
historical data remain inconclusive, except for the association of Abrahamic
religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) with large states in recent history
(Atkinson et al., 2015). As far as the Abrahamic religions are concerned,
factors such as universalism or the obligation to multiply, rather than the
worship of a moralizing and punishing“big god,”could contribute to their
spread. Second, the“big gods”hypothesis overlooks the cumulative develop-
ment of cooperative behavior in human pre-history. It has been argued that
small-scale societies penalized anti-social behavior, which made humans gen-
erally pro-social to start with, limiting the need for any supernatural policing
(see section 2.2.7).“Economic, political, and ecological systems [became] more
and more complex before the emergence of towns, cities, and states”(Fuentes,
2015). Third, we know that large states such as the ancient Roman Empire
relied on a number of institutions to maintain their unity and functionality,
among which religion was only one factor—and arguably not the most
fundamental. Fourth, the idea that a superhuman surveillance agency can
be the foundation of morality is contradicted by the observation that insti-
tutionalized spying on people never produced high moral standards in
any known society (Luther Martin, oral communication).^5 Fifth, it is possible
(^5) Norenzayan (2013, p. 138) mentions the“mass paranoia and distrust”of soviet-type
societies, concluding that“not all cultural or religious beliefs and practices lead to prosocial
Morality 179