I could not disagree with the first sentence more. Is the connection between monotheism and universalism so weak as not to be seen? A socio-cultural examination of the history of monotheism is needed to rectify this mistake (my next post will provide a lengthy chronology with commentary on this topic), because otherwise we will repeat it. But I must ask: what period and place and proportion of the ancient world was “fairly cosmopolitan”? Such a view is too literary, because most people lived out of cities in their regional homelands practicing agriculture. And it was the city-dwellers who always innovated and sought to profit from their new ideas. It saddens me that the author goes at great lengths to pass off coping with imperialism (to avoid further misery) as evidence of diversity…So, the Roman Empire conquers Egypt and subjugates its people, but then the worship of Isis, carried by earlier imperializing Greeks, spreads to Rome and to Britain—surely we can’t complain because Egypt should be proud and Isis, great mother as she is, would approve to see her native people as impoverished subjects while she acquires more generous, numerous and wealthy worshippers abroad?