The point at which it transforms into the creature responsible for so much of today’s mayhem is when Abraham, a landless, penniless nomad living in modern day Iraq, begins hearing voices in his head telling him he has been favored by a God named Yahweh who than promises him a future of wealth, land, power and superiority over all other persons, encapsulating this idea with “I will bless those who bless thee and curse those who curse thee”. Shortly thereafter, he again hears voices in his head telling him to engage in the barbarity of human sacrifice by killing his own son Isaac in worshipping this God named Yahweh. With knife at the throat of his son and a mere few seconds away from becoming a murderer, he is then prevented from doing so by an angel, and some 3 generations later, his descendents (made up by 12 tribes) come to be known as “Israelites”.
Not long afterwards an Israelite named Moses also begins hearing voices from this same god, telling him to rescue the Israelites being “oppressed and persecuted” by the Egyptians. After a series of plagues brought against the oppressors–seemingly a fulfillment of Yahweh’s promise to “Curse those who curse” the descendents of Abraham, Moses–again, under the direction of the voices he is hearing–orders the Israelites to steal all the gold and silver of Egypt and to follow him to the land “promised” them by Yahweh residing between the two great rivers, the Nile and the Euphrates. Before entering this land however, Moses instructs the Israelites that they are to kill all the inhabitants, man, woman and child–”infant and suckling” and to rob them of all their possessions. An extermination campaign is mounted, in effect a “holocaust” of the Semitic peoples in the promised land, left unfinished by Moses but taken up again by his protégé Joshua and other subsequent leaders such as Saul and David.