Pricklings of thought from yesterday

"Time unremembered," I said. It's time unremembered and unrememberable, but not entirely temps perdu. A century ago Proust searched his memory and largely found his own lost time, and yesterday we imagined our lost time before our history began to be recorded. We imagined that animal sacrifice predated history's recording. And, of course, there are archaeological records.

"Their God," I said, referring to the god of Arab Muslims. I realized overnight that the monotheistic god of the Abrahamic religions isn't the same "one God" for each of them. The idea that they all three have the same god had always been seductive. "I mean," one explains, "they're monotheistic religions. One god. So, of course, the same god."
    Seductive it may be, but not so.
    The original "God of Abraham" was the tribal god of a wandering people, his chosen. Yahweh (or Jehovah) was fierce and jealous and vengeful.
    The three-in-one god who emerged from all of the theological and pastoral intrigue of the early Christians was benevolent and forgiving (except of the Jews, of course, for whom the case was made that they were the murderers of Christ and deserved everything they would have coming to them).
    And Allah is..., well, a god to whom his people still sacrifice other people.

The number of possibilities when it comes to the number of gods is huge. One? Two? Three? Poly, poly? Or...zero?