Jan Assmann, “Monotheism and its Political Consequences”
This border, the distinction between true and false or good and evil with regard to religion is the proper innovation of monotheism… There were no idols and heathen in the realm of tribal religion and polytheism. The construction of paganism is the single achievement of monotheism, based on the distinction between true and false. Monotheism, therefore, is a religion that blurs boundaries, the boundaries that are expressed or represented by the divinities of polytheism between cities and countries, tribes and nations, day and night, land and sea, love and war, good and evil– but that also erects a boundary: between true and false, religion and idolatry. Monotheism is, at the same time, exclusive and universalistic. Both tendencies, the exclusive and the universalistic, have political consequences.