the first religions had many gods

The first archeological evidence of religious worship was found in northern Spain where a shrine was found in El Juyu cave and dated 12,000 BC.

Before the idea of one God was first established c. 1850 BC by Abraham - the founding father of both the Jewish and the Moslem peoples - the mode of worship was similar in all parts of the world. There was no organized religion per se other than polytheism - otherwise known as Paganism.

In India, polytheism evolved to form the religion of Hinduism (or Brahmanism) which dates from the Bhagavad-Gita of 3102 BC in which, according to tradition, the god Krishna defined the rigid caste system that, despite democracy, still permeates Indian life.

Polytheism, or Paganism, is the worship of many gods - relating to fertility, manhood, harvest, riches and protection from ills. Similar idols relating to each type of god or goddess were found in the shrines of disparate civilizations. That the gods were fashioned from human or animal forms - and were similar in civilizations separated from each other - is understandable. To ascribe to a god a human form is, apparently, a human trait.

The female idols - the goddesses - were more numerous than those of animals depicting the strength or phalluses of manhood. This may indicate that religion was primarily a pastime of women but, on the contrary, because much of it was highly erotic - and men have traditionally had more time on their hands than women, who were burdened with bearing, nursing and raising small children - religion was mostly a male pastime.

The Canaanite idols worshipped were principally Baal, represented either by a bull or a phallic stone, his consort Astarte, the fertility goddess and Moloch, the child-devouring god. Similar to religious practices all over the ancient world, burnt offerings and sacrifices were made to these gods in return for power, riches, prestige and victory. One of the ancient Canaanite and Sumeric gods, Tammuz, the god of the dying, curiously remains with the Jewish religion in the form as a month in the Jewish calendar.

The practice of human sacrifice was common to most ancient religions, but infant sacrifice was particularly common. Even Abraham, back in c.1790 BC, was 'commanded' by God to sacrifice his son; in the 9th century BC, when Ahab was the King of Israel, he and his wife Jezebel sacrificed two sons on the altar of Baal; and both King Ahaz and King Manasseh (who sawed the Prophet Isaiah in two during his reign 687-642 BC) ritually sacrificed children to Moloch in the Valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem.

Modern religions may have abolished human sacrifices, but blood still plays an important part in worshipping God. Childless Abraham started the Jewish practice of circumcision as a Blood covenant with God in return for the promise of children - which the Jews still follow, as do the Moslems, and a lot of Christians adopted, too - but the Christian Church initiated another practice, the Eucharist, drinking the blood and eating the body of Christ - a rite that causes many to consider it a cannibalistic religion.

did islam prolong paganism in england?

Rome's grand plans for England in 597 - mass conversion to Christianity under rule of the Roman Pope - did not eventuate due to something entirely unexpected. The unexpected event was, of course, the birth in 622 of the new Moslem religion in the Middle East.

By 638, the Moslem Arabs had conquered Jerusalem and their impending conquest of Spain (achieved by 715) had so threatened Rome that many Roman priests fled to Ireland - an incredibly poor and backward country that had been thoroughly Christianized by St. Patrick 200 years before - and as a result of this Ireland, not England, became the cradle of western civilization and the safe haven for Roman Christianity.

Having been under Roman rule from 54BC to 407AD, England in 638 was a far more civilized country than Ireland. Also, as a result of invasions between 410-442 by fierce north European tribes - the Jutes, Angles and Saxons - England in 638 also had a far more polyglot ethnic mix than Ireland's Celts. England, of course, had its ancient Britons and Celts, but it now included Jutes, Angles and Saxons - most of whom, in 638, were fiercely Pagan - and after 787 it also included the Danes (who arrived on raids from north Europe and eventually settled in England).

Although Christianity eventually filtered through to England - and the knights of England made history in the Crusades against the Moslem Arabs - Christianity was not only never as strong in England as it was in Ireland but it was also never as Roman influenced as it was in Ireland. This is also true of the north European countries from whence a large part of both English ethnicity and the Protestant movement - which took hold in the 1500s, leading to the establishment of the Anglican Church in 1563 - is derived.

England did not reject Christianity, but it most certainly came to reject Roman rule of the new religion, especially the Pope's refusal to allow the English language to supplant Latin in services and literature.

The particular ethnicity of England - and its civilized state by 638 - may have mitigated against Roman Catholicism ever taking 100% control of England as it did in Ireland, but the threat to Rome of the Moslem Arabs that turned its attention away from England towards Ireland most definitely prolonged paganism in England and changed the course of English history.