So, where did all of this come from? Well, that all depends on what you choose to believe. You may believe that which is widely viewed as truth but has been proven to be false or you can use that which is considered myth but has NEVER been proven to be so. In fact, the opposite. If we go by the latter, we will find that a character in the bible actually created all other religions however I would imagine that it was not his intention to do so. In the book of Genesis, there is a man named Nimrod and he was considered to be a mighty man and was very much against God. Now, diving deeper into Babylonian history, we find that King Nimrod did exist, as the Bible says, and that he was against the Hebrew God in the sense that he felt that he, himself was stronger and that he could prove it given the chance. He met a prostitute named Semiramis and they fell in love. It was soon after that she began to help him rule Babylon. She was very cunning due to her being a prostitute and actually was essentially the pimp or madam, if you prefer, to the ladies in Babylon as apparently you had to be in those days. She realized that if she used manipulation that she could rule benevolently even with malevolent intent. This manipulation grew until she had made all of Babylon see her and Nimrod as gods. To solidify this Nimrod build his castle upon a ziggurat, like the mayan temples, that way he could see everyone as the Hebrew God could. This is where we get the concept of the "all seeing eye". It was the all seeing eye of Nimrod. A good representation of this would be Sauron from Lord of the Rings as he is an all seeing eye atop a tower. Now, while Sauron was not a god, he was essentially obeyed and worshipped as one. He, much like Nimrod, ruled his people with his power and his government authority. Babylon was a city after all and even though the people now worshipped their king as a god,it wasn't enough. He had to be greater.
Semiramis knew that if the people worshipped their govenment that they would be easy to rule but in order to be greater in their eyes the people needed reasons to worship. A church state still needs a reason to be and that is why people started giving praise due to the attributes that they associated to Nimrod and Semiramis. If the harvest was good it was because of Nimrod's kindness to make the harvest plentiful. If the waters were filled with fish it was because of the fact that Semiramis had given many fish to the waters. New names came from this and with them more and more attributes. From all that came reasons to believe that Nimrod and Semiramis were not just gods but king and queen over a pantheon of gods that grew from their attributes. This is where the idea of many gods came from.
Soon after, Semiramis became pregnant and was called the blessed mother. She gave birth to Tammuz who was also considered a god. Now we have the unholy trinity: the father, the blessed mother, and the son. Sound familiar? It really should Catholics(egyptians, greecians, etc...).
Anyway, it was good for a time until Nimrod found out that Tammuz wasn't his and plotted to kill him. If I remember correctly, Semiramis had him poisoned because if he killed Tammuz then their whole god thing could be in jeopardy. After Nimrod's death, Semiramis told the people that his life would live on in Tammuz and that Tammuz was now the king of gods. She, still being the queen, decided to marry her son to keep the game going. To the best of my knowledge, while Semiramis and Nimrod knew that they were never gods, Tammuz did not. I imagine that he would have grown up believing this blatant lie because he really had no reason not to. It's pretty sad really. Anyway, it was before the death of Nimrod, if I'm not mistaken, that the tower of Babel was beginning to be constructed. Following the Nimrod line of thinking, that if given the chance he could prove better than Yahweh, the tower of Babel was to be built in order to prove that very point. Nimrod said that God was hiding in his kingdom and that Nimrod would prove his might once he got up there. The plan failed and God confused the languages rather than killing. The best solution is often the simpilest
. With the languages confused, the kingdom split up into groups and what was once a mighty kingdom became a tiny shell of it's former self. With this split, however, came more kingdoms as the differently speaking people gathered with those that spoke the same language. With these kingdoms came similar structures as they had in Babylon as well as the same gods that they had however the names had been changed and as the culture changed, due to the surroundings, as well as the way people viewed those gods. Cultures grew and changed and thrived and died but the concept of many gods, specifically the structure given in Babylon, remains to this day. Now while it was a kingdom all it's own, Babylon only had one god to compete with: YHWH (El Shaddai, God, Jehovah, etc...
). In competing with Him, they found that they were more believable as gods if they simply became what they knew Him to be. He is all seeing, Nimrod set atop his castle to do that. He lived in the heavens, Nimrod built his castle high. He was to have a savior come in the flesh, Nimrod said that this was Tammuz (Eve thought it was Cain but perhaps a different discussion
). This is why there are similarities in many religious views but also why the Judeo-Christian view is still very different.