Yes, Atenism was the first burst of Monotheism in a major way, and most influential to the Yahwehist

[PSOL]

The Atenist revolution was the most important influence to what would become the Abrahamic standard of worship. The standard of personal revelation of the Moses and Jesus movements began with the Pharaoh Akhenaten giving the first example to millions of his subjects to follow as someone directly inspired by the divine. The standard of a personal and direct relationship to god, something bordering on to a familial relation of an all powerful and moral god, began with Akhenaten.

When you take out the middlemen as Akhenaten tried to do and have a direct line in facilitating religious decrees, that in itself is a major red flag. The attempted imposition of Aten over the other gods is almost 1-1 with the later opposition to the Golden Calf and polytheism among the Jews. The specific opposition to the priestly class is comparable with the opposition to the Pharisees.

The sort of downplaying of all these characteristics in inspiring the Jews of Palestine to worship Yahweh under the same standard, especially with the close proximity, is an injustice to one of the greatest influences to our modern world.

[HillGoose]

was this back in the ancient egypt days like with the pyramids and all that

[Statilius the Epicurean]

The Amarna period was about 700 years before Israelite monotheism became a thing during and after the Babylonian Exile, so it's rather difficult to draw a line of direct influence. It may be that New Kingdom Egypt was the origin of an ideology of monarchical identification with sun gods that was adopted over much of the Ancient Near East, but at any rate the influence would be diffuse and it's not clear with the sources we have how it relates to the development of Yahweh.

The interesting parallel to Yahweh IMO is the increasing prominence of national gods like Assur in Assyria and Marduk in Babylon over the same period as the development of Israelite monotheism.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The interesting parallel to Yahweh IMO is the increasing prominence of national gods like Assur in Assyria and Marduk in Babylon over the same period as the development of Israelite monotheism.

This point was emphasized in my Hebrew Bible/Old Testament classes in grad school and I've found it fascinating ever since.