Theological...in other words, starting back at whatever incipient beginning this belief system had (which we'll hardly know what that is due to all of the Biblical obfuscation over the centuries) and moving down through revisions in the Jewish culture due to conquest, etc, through the split-off of Christianity from this, the development of Islam based in related roots, and on and on. It really very much is like an organism...with mutations, both good and bad, over millennia.
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