Is the Egyptian god Seth related to Adam's son Seth?

[rakovsky]

There is a common theory that other religions may not have the full truth, but that they have pieces of truth or that they have picked up elements from other religions. One hypothesis is that the Egyptian god Seth was an Egyptian version of the Biblical story of Seth. Another hypothesis could be that it is an Egyptian perception of Israelite religion. Years ago on the forum's World Religions section, someone suggested to me that the Egyptian Seth seemed to him to be the closest figure to the Israelite concept of God.

- Baal as the Canaanite counterpart of Seth and the Israelite Jehovah as possibly sharing Baal's typology in Exodus 15.

In his essay "Earliest Israelite Religion: A Study of the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:1-18)," Peter Craigie sees Baal as the Canaanite counterpart of Seth and sees the Israelite Jehovah as having Baal's typology in Exodus 15.

He writes:

Among [the] forces in Egyptian thought both during andafter the Hyksos period, were the tendencies to worship Asiatic gods in their national shrine abroad and also to introduce the Asiatic gods into Egyptian domestic religious life. The reason for the former tendency was probably related to the belief that an Asiatic campaign could not be won without the help of the Asiatic gods. The latter tendency was apparently well under way by the fourteenth century. The following extract from J.A. Wilson's remarks makes the point which is significant for the present purpose:

• From the end of the Eightsonth Dynasty on (14th century B.C.), there is an abundance of evidence on Asiatic gods worshipped in Egypt. The most frequently mentioned deity was Baal. As the god of the heavens, the mountain tops, and of thunder-- the Semitic Baal-Shamaim -- who is the counterpart of the Egyptian god Seth, and his name was used in figures of speech relating to the pharaoh in battle:- 'His battle-cry is like that of Baal in the heavens.' In this terrorizing capacity the texts equate him with the Egyptian war-gods Montu and Seth. Baal had his own priesthood in Egypt from the late Eighteenth Dynasty on.

The Egyptian typication of Baal is presumably along the lines of the current Canaanite conceptions. This is likely to be the case in vlew of the fact that the 'storm-god and the war-god are closely related concepts (see the Hittite example above). Hence there are good grounds to affirm that the Cannanites conceived of Baal as a war-god, among other aspects of his character. But there are two points of significance which emerge from Wilson's observations. First, the presence of a Baal priesthood in Egypt, when taken with the apparent presence of a Canaanite Baal temple, gives further weight to the earlier thesis that the Hebrews could have known of the Baal myth. But second, the quotation concerning the pharaoh is of particular interest ("his battle cry is like that of Baal in the heavens"). It calls to mind verse 3 of the Song of the Sea. where it was suggested that "Yahweh is a Man of War" may have been a battle-cry. In the Canaanite pattern which is present in the Song, the equivalence of Yahweh with Baal in the typology is all the more marked in the light of the warlike character of Baal which is known from the Egyptian religious texts.

- The Israelite Patriach Joseph's rule as Vizier of Egypt as a possible allusion to the rule of the Sethian Hyksos, or as preceding the Hyksos invasion.

One theory goes that the story in the Bible of Joseph becoming Pharaoh's Vizier alludes to the Semitic Hyksos conquest of Egypt in the 2nd millenium BC. The Hyksos were associated with the Egyptian god Seth. On the other hand, Paul J. Ray Jr. theorizes in his article "The Duration of the Israelite Sojourn in Egypt" that Joseph's fath-in-law was an Egyptian priest of the Egyptian god Ra, and that this implies that Joseph came to Egypt before the Hyksos invasion. Ray writes:

Joseph's marriage to the daughter of a priest of On (Heliopolis), as arranged by the Pharaoh (Gen 41:45), is also significant. On was the center of worship of the sun-god Re, and Joseph's father-in-law was no doubt a priest of Re. Although the Hyksos did not suppress the worship of Re, they venerated Seth, who was their primary deity. If Joseph had lived during the Hyksos Period, he probably would have received a wife from the family of a priest of Seth, rather than of Re.

- Yahweh's connection with the Israelite Seth's grandson Enosh:

Prof. Lewis Paton theorizes in his article "The Origin of Yahweh-Worship in Israel" that the Hebrew reverence for Yahweh most go back further than Moses himself, because he think that Moses wouldn't have been able to introduce a foreign or new god to the Israelites as being their own. He notes that the Bible connects recognition of "Yahweh" by name with Seth's grandson Enosh:

The Judean Document of the Hexateuch (J), which is characterized by a constant use of the divine name "Yahweh (Jehovah)," states in Gen. 4: 26 that the cult of this god was introduced by Enosh, the grandson of Adam: " To Seth also was born a son, and he called his name Enosh; he was the first to call llpon the name of Yahweh." (So LXX and Sam. text.) A later stratum of J (Gen. :3 f.) represents Cain and Abel, children of "the man" and Eve, as bringing sacrifices to Yahweh.

He notes that modern critics don't believe that the Bible is right that Yahweh worship went back as far as a historical Seth, but that they think that nonetheless, worship of Yahweh predated Moses. He writes:

For the majority of modern critics the patriarchs are not individuals, but personifications of tribes. The stories concerning them are reminiscences of migrations before the entrance into Canaan and of experiences in the land of Canaan. They are largely mised with legends of the Canaanites. That we have an authentic record of a revelation of Yahweh to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to say nothing of Adam, Seth, and Noah, would be denied by these critics; and yet they still maintain that in some way Yahweh was a preMosaic god of Israel.

- The theory that Baal and Seth both came from an earlier Afro-Asiatic deity
The Israelites were a Semitic people, and in turn, the Semitic languages belong to the "Afro-Asiatic" family of languages. Ancient Egyptian was another language belonging to the Afro-Asiatic family, also called "Afrasan." In his essay "The Ascension of Yahweh: The Origins and Development of Israelite Monotheism from the Afrasan to Josiah," Andrew Halladay notes that Baal was associated with the Egyptian Seth and was the principle Canaanite deity around 1200 BC. He writes:

“Baal” was not his proper name however, but instead a common word in Hebrew and other Semitic languages for “master” or occasionally “husband.” His real name was Hadad, and around the fifteenth century “Baal” (master) became the preferred appellation for the deity, much as “Adonai” would supercede “Yahweh” in vernacular parlance. He was often associated with the Egyptian storm-god Seth, and the two deities may have actually derived from an earlier Proto-Afrasan deity.

- The Sethian Gnostics' dedication to Adam's son Seth and their association of of him with the god Seth:

In The Secret History of the Gnostics: Their Scriptures, Beliefs and Traditions, Andrew Phillip Smith writes that the Sethian Gnostics of the early Christian period were dedicated to Adam's son Seth. He writes:

Sethians were members of a closed society that considered its members to be the seed of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, and they were the portion of humanity that had received gnosis and could thus have a different fate to the rest of mankind who followed the pattern of Cain and Abel, murderer and victim.

Seth was also an important figure in heterodox Jewish literature around the same period, and his life story and significance is amplified and expanded in Jewish apocryphal and rabbinical literature. Sethian texts contain phrases such as 'the seed of Seth', or 'the children of Seth', or the race or 'generation' of Seth. The Sethians also referred to themselves as 'the immovable race' or 'unshakeable race', possibly meaning that, whatever the other vagaries of history, Gnostics always existed.

...John Turner, an academic who is the leading expert on the Sethians, has suggested that they, like the Mandaeans, may have originated as a baptismal sect along the lines of John the Baptist's disciples, or the Essenes.

Smith notes that Turner theorizes that the Sethians may have begun as a non-Christian sect of Gnostics in the 1st century BC and anticipated an apocalyptic return of sect. Turner theorizes that the Sethians became a Christian Gnostic sect, possibly identifying Seth with Jesus Christ. According to Turner's theory, after the orthodox Church rejected the Sethians, the Sethians accepted a classical Platonic system of philosophy.

Smith writes:

This conjectural history is not incompatible with the notion that the Sethians originated in Egypt, which had a large Jewish population and its own temple. In one of those suggestive muddles of history, Seth/Set was an Egyptian God too, who was sometimes associated with the Jewish people. (16) ... The Sethians, in contrast [to the Valentinian Gnostics], wrote sprawling epics that reinterpreted the Bible, reinterpreted Platonism, and finally reinterpreted their own interpretations.

As I understand it, the Sethian Gnostics also were dedicated to the Greek god "Typhon," who was associated with the Egyptian god Seth.

Of course, just because 1st century AD Sethian Gnostics may have been dedicated to both the Hebrew Seth and the Egyptian god Seth does not mean that those two figures were associated with each other in the 2nd millenium BC during the time of the Torah's writing.

 

[Strong in Him]

The title of this thread is "Is the Egyptian's god Seth related to Adam's son, Seth?"

That would mean that the Lord caused Eve to give birth to an Egyptian god and that Jesus was descended from this god, Luke 3:38.
Aside from the fact that there is only one God, I hardly think this is likely.

 

[rakovsky]

The title of this thread is "Is the Egyptian's god Seth related to Adam's son, Seth?"

That would mean that the Lord caused Eve to give birth to an Egyptian god and that Jesus was descended from this god, Luke 3:38.
Aside from the fact that there is only one God, I hardly think this is likely.

Thanks for replying.
I tried to say in my introduction that there are different ways to interpret this hypothesis of a connection. For example, Eve could give birth to a famous forefather in agreement with the Biblical view, and then the Egyptians interpreted it later as if this forefather (Seth) were a god. Such an explanation would be the kind of thing that Christian theologians have hypothesized on other topics (eg. Babylonian flood legends being based on a great flood that the Bible would depict better).

Or one could hypothesis about the converse.

 

[Ceallaigh]

Nope. They have entirely different genealogies.

 

[Strong in Him]

Thanks for replying.
I tried to say in my introduction that there are different ways to interpret this hypothesis of a connection. For example, Eve could give birth to a famous forefather in agreement with the Biblical view, and then the Egyptians interpreted it later as if this forefather (Seth) were a god.

I suppose it's possible that some Egyptians later decided that Eve's son, Seth, was either going to be their god or they were going to call their god after him.
But as Christians believe there is only one God, what does that interpretation have to do with us?

 

[rakovsky]

I suppose it's possible that some Egyptians later decided that Eve's son, Seth, was either going to be their god or they were going to call their god after him.
But as Christians believe there is only one God, what does that interpretation have to do with us?

You are right, Strong- just because Egyptians thought there was a god named Seth doesn't mean that there was one. The issue that I'm getting at is more about shared features between Judaism or Christianity on one hand and other religions on the other hand, like how flood stories are shared between ancient cultures. It's like looking for traces of the Biblical Exodus in the Egyptians' history or whether the Babylonians recorded evidence of the Jews' Babylonian exile.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

I'd be careful just going by names. Set looks close to Seth in English, often even written the same - but the Egyptian hides a transliteration of a Sutekh or something like that, and Seth is also transliterated from Sheth, meaning the names aren't really that similar.

You see a similar thing in other figures; like Freiia in Germany really being the equivalent of Frigg and not Freya in Norse, in spite of the superficial similarity; or the way that Ra got inserted into Osiris' third syllable in later times. The extreme example of this would be people like the British Israelites that equate the Danes and the tribe of Dan on no other grounds.

 

[rakovsky]

I'd be careful just going by names. Set looks close to Seth in English, often even written the same - but the Egyptian hides a transliteration of a Sutekh or something like that, and Seth is also transliterated from Sheth, meaning the names aren't really that similar.

Right, I'm not just going by names' similarities. There's long articles related to the topic and it gives me a "tl;dr" moment. For example, there's a theory about the Israelites coming from the Baal/Seth worshiping Hyksos invaders of Egypt, and this long Egyptian tradition that perceives the Israelites and the Jews as worshipers of the Egyptian god Seth.

As to the issue of the names' similarities, I read that Sutekh was a form of the original name, but then it became Set, although I'm not sure when. I guess that it was around the time when the Torah was written in c. 1300 BC, which would mean that its Hebrew translation resembled the Hebrew name for Seth.

In Hebrew, the letters for S and T is the same as the ones for Sh and Th. So I don't know how we know that the Hebrew forefather Seth was never pronounced like "Set" in Egyptian, or for that matter that the Hebrew Torah was not "Thorah," outside of tradition telling us these things; I believe that it was Torah and not Thorah based on Tradition. Maybe one difference in the two Seth names is in the vowels and that the Hebrew Seth was pronounced as Shayth.

This leads to the question of what the Egyptian god Seth would have been pronounced like in Hebrew. The famous verse of Numbers 24:17 says:

I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth.​

In this verse, Sheth is written the same in Hebrew as the forefather Seth except that the medieval Masoretic vowel pointing could be different. The Hebrew word in Numbers 24 is שֵׁת

There are three common Christian theories on who or what Sheth is in this verse:
1) the Egyptian Seth (I think that this is most likely, based on what I've read),
2) the forefather Seth (this was Augustine's theory), or
3) a rare Hebrew word for tumult, as opposed to a person.

In any case, due to the fact that theologians at least entertain #1 as a real possibility and others endorse it, I suppose that the Egyptian god Seth is written at least consonantally / in the ancient form of Hebrew the same as the Hebrew Seth.

 

[rakovsky]

There's a lot of information on the topic of possible relationships between the Egyptian god Seth and the Israelites.

In "The Red Lord Seth: The Egyptian God of Thunder," G. B. Marian writes about similarities between Yahweh and Seth, like considering them to be both "Thunder Gods," but it's not really a close enough similarity in my view that Marian draws for them to be really identified with each other. Marian also writes about the Hyksos' worship of Seth. ([PDF] The Red Lord Seth: The Egyptian God of Thunder - Free Download PDF)

Tommy Baas writes in “'For Every Shepherd is an Abomination unto the Egyptians': Re-examining the Hebrew-Hyksos Connection":

To the Egyptians, Set was the mortal enemy of the great Egyptian god Osiris and his son Horus. 55 To the Semites, Set could be identified with Seth, Adam’s son who pro-generated the redemptive purer race of mankind (Gen. 5) after Cain killed Abel (Gen. 4). In the Egyptian legend of “The Quarrel of Apophis and Sekenre [the Theban vassal king],” which depicts the former Hyksos’ king demanding that the latter vassal king in Thebes subdue the rebellious clamor of the native Egyptians, the Hyksos King Apophis worships no other gods but Seth, 56 just as good Hebrews vow to worship no other god but that worshipped by their ancestors, descended from Seth.

https://dc.uwm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=rsso

 

[rakovsky]

Set looks close to Seth in English, often even written the same - but the Egyptian hides a transliteration of a Sutekh or something like that, and Seth is also transliterated from Sheth, meaning the names aren't really that similar.

I checked, and the conversation that I mentioned in my first message in this thread was with you in another thread, where you talked about the similarity between Yahweh and the Egyptian Seth/Set in the stormy image:

The earlier conceptions of God descending from Seir and being represented by storms and thick cloud perhaps point to similarity with Set (as YHWH was later associated with Baal and El in the Northern Kingdom and Baal was associated with Set, especially amongst semitic peoples in the delta). Set was seen as a bringer of plague, sterility and the desert, but was basically a storm god who can also withhold these things. As the Egyptians had little use for rain, this aspect was not emphasised too much. It is only in the late period and end of the New Kingdom that Set was demonised in Egypt, as can be seen from pharoanic names like Seti that invoke him.

SOURCE: Which Egyptian god most resembles a Supreme Original Lord?

You also wrote:

My strategy was to look at God's characteristics in the Old Testament and equate them with known Egyptian gods and Set came quite high on my list. I offered the association of Set with Baal and El to show that the Egyptians and Canaanites would also see a similarity.

Set doesn't descend from Seir, but was a god of the lonely desert mountains, which is similar to Seir.
Set and YHWH are similar in early forms of Israelite religion, I would think, not the more developed Monotheistic form of the Prophets, I agree.

You also made a good point about the Egyptian Seth's association with donkeys on one hand and the Egyptian perception of the Israelites as revering donkeys:

In Against Apion, Josephus mentions a Greco-Roman belief that an Ass's head was placed in the Holy of Holies. Obviously, Josephus refutes this...
This belief was quite widespread and was mentioned by Tacitus, Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus, but is likely just a slur.
But then:
Exodus 13:13 - And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck: and all the firstborn of man among thy children shalt thou redeem.
Only Asses and Humans are redeemed from the firstling sacrifice as well.
Plutarch also directly says some associated the Jewish God with Set (here written in Interpraetio Graeca as Typhon):
"Those who say that Typhon fled from the battle on an ass for seven days, and having been saved produced sons, Hierosolymus and Judeaus, are at this point clearly dragging Jewish issues into the story."
We see Moses venturing to Egypt on an Ass, an Ass is mentioned as an example of a desirable object in Numbers and Jesus entered Jerusalem on one.
Philo also associates the Golden Calf made by Aaron with Typhon/Set:
"For when the prophet, after having been called up to the loftiest and most sacred of all the mountains in that district, was divinely instructed in the generic outlines of all the special laws, and was out of sight of his people for many days; those of the people who were not of a peaceable disposition filled every place with the evils which arise from anarchy, and crowned all their iniquity with open impiety, turning into ridicule all those excellent and beautiful lessons concerning the honour due to the one true and living God, and having made a golden bull, an imitation of the Egyptian Typhos, and brought to it unholy sacrifices, and festivals unhallowed, and instituted profane and impious dances, with songs and hymns instead of lamentations."

Set was depicted with the head of the unidentified Set-animal, but is thought to maybe depict an Ass by Egyptologists and widely thought to do so by Greco-Roman writers.

I think that you are raising a good point here. For me, the stormy image of Yahweh seems so general that it doesn't seem strong evidence of a connection or association between Seth and Yahweh. But the donkey is pretty specific to both Seth and to Egyptian portrayals of Israelite worship. It's true that these Egyptian portrayals as we've found them seem to come across in a kind of polemical or distorting fashion. But the evidence still shows traces or hints of Israelite reverence for donkeys or the donkeys having a special place in the Israelite religion. Bulls, lambs, and rams also have significant statuses in Israelite religion, but the donkey's status still seems significant based on what you've pointed out, like the donkey's redemption. On the other hand, the redemption of the donkey's firstling could have a practical cause compared to other animals, in that donkeys were important as beasts of burden, rather than as food sources, so keeping them alive has a practical benefit beyond keeping some other animals like calves alive, as cows are food animals. So I don't want to overemphasize the donkey's role in the Israelite religion. In addition to what you've listed, the story of Balaam's talking donkey is also significant in terms of it showing the donkey's place in the Torah.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

I checked, and the conversation that I mentioned in my first message in this thread was with you in another thread, where you talked about the similarity between Yahweh and the Egyptian Seth/Set in the stormy image:

SOURCE: Which Egyptian god most resembles a Supreme Original Lord?

You also wrote:



You also made a good point about the Egyptian Seth's association with donkeys on one hand and the Egyptian perception of the Israelites as revering donkeys:

I think that you are raising a good point here. For me, the stormy image of Yahweh seems so general that it doesn't seem strong evidence of a connection or association between Seth and Yahweh. But the donkey is pretty specific to both Seth and to Egyptian portrayals of Israelite worship. It's true that these Egyptian portrayals as we've found them seem to come across in a kind of polemical or distorting fashion. But the evidence still shows traces or hints of Israelite reverence for donkeys or the donkeys having a special place in the Israelite religion. Bulls, lambs, and rams also have significant statuses in Israelite religion, but the donkey's status still seems significant based on what you've pointed out, like the donkey's redemption. On the other hand, the redemption of the donkey's firstling could have a practical cause compared to other animals, in that donkeys were important as beasts of burden, rather than as food sources, so keeping them alive has a practical benefit beyond keeping some other animals like calves alive, as cows are food animals. So I don't want to overemphasize the donkey's role in the Israelite religion. In addition to what you've listed, the story of Balaam's talking donkey is also significant in terms of it showing the donkey's place in the Torah.

Oh, I think the association between Set/Typhon and YHWH is strong, at least in Hellenistic sources; and keeping in mind that Set used to not be a malevolent deity, not even particularly disturbing. Caveats all around though; such as the Set animal being a donkey; or Baal being a specific deity, as opposed to conceptions like baalim lands in plural, so that the Hyksos Baal might be unrelated to Baal-Hadad of Ebla (even if we see a specific Baal from El being syncretised under Ahab); etc.

I would add here that the idea of Set and Baal being variations of a primordial Hamito-Semitic god I find very dubious. I think this is because people see the strong Indo-European mythological parallelism and try and import this concept to other extended language families. Egyptian religion was based on nomes around the river, with their own gods, and something like a Pantheon (such as the Aesir or Olympians or the like) is a later development of unity - and even here imperfectly. You see the same in Mesopotamia, with each god having a seat, like Enki for Eridu or Ishtar for Uruk, and the creating of a "shared cinematic universe" a bit of a later development. Religious themes certainly can be traced so, but this mania of importing myths from Ebla into the first Israelites, or now into Egypt, is highly conjectural.

I don't see any particular grounds to connect this to Seth the son of Adam, though. That the Sethian Gnostics revered Seth and Typhon is interesting, but says very little. Gnosticism is highly syncretic, and makes no qualms about reinterpreting figures, and this post-dates already the Hellenistic slur of connecting YHWH to Typhon. I mean, Gnostics appropriated Orpheus as the Good Shepherd and connected him to Jesus. The Sethians specifically interpreted themselves as apart from the Cain/Abel struggle of the world, which I would assume they paralleled with Horus/Set? I don't know, it doesn't seem consistent to me.

On the Israelite sojourn and the Hyksos, I am sure there is some relation there. But as you noted above, Joseph doesn't marry a daughter of Set priests, but of the sun-god Ra - which is its own kettle of fish, with scarab seals from the 8th century BC in Israel akin to Khepri, and solar imagery in the Bible such as Jacob fighting an angel at Peniel. I don't think there is anything neat and tidy here, and certainly not approximations. I am unsure how the name Set evolved in Egyptian usage, but I feel more would have been made of it in Egyptological circles if its form was as close to the Hebrew Seth historically at some point, as it superficially appears in English.

 

[The Liturgist]

@rakovsky I am strongly inclined to doubt Set was named for Seth by the Egyptians considering that Set was somewhat of an evil deity to the Lower Egyptians; among the Egyptians of the Upper Nile he was popular, but it is interesting to consider that Set-worship tended to become more established and popularized whenever Egypt was invaded and conquered by Mesopotamians, by the Mesopotamians themselves as a preferred alternative to Osiris worship, and Osiris was the preferred deity in the Nile Delta when the Mesopotamian intruders were not present in Lower Egypt.

This is itself interesting and could suggest that Set was named for Seth and the worship of Set was imported by various Mesopotamian civilizations, and periodically reestablished by them, for example, most recently by the Assyrians and Chaldeans, whenever they conquered Egypt, and became adopted by the people of Upper Egypt owing to their resentment of the wealthy political elite in Lower Egypt as a form of quasi-henotheistic rebellion.

It also seems quite possible that aspects of this religion survive among the semi-Christian Yazidis, whose emanationist theology preserves traces of Mesopotamian polytheism, and among the Mandaean Gnostics.

 

[The Liturgist]

Oh, I think the association between Set/Typhon and YHWH is strong, at least in Hellenistic sources; and keeping in mind that Set used to not be a malevolent deity, not even particularly disturbing. Caveats all around though; such as the Set animal being a donkey

Actually, it was only towards the end of Egyptian polytheism that the Set animal was depicted as an ass; the scholarly consensus is that based on some of the poses assumed by the set animal, it was much more likely based on a canid of some sort. Consider, when was the last time you saw an ass assume any of these postures?

To me, it looks far more like a canid than an equid.

 

[The Liturgist]

You see the same in Mesopotamia, with each god having a seat, like Enki for Eridu or Ishtar for Uruk, and the creating of a "shared cinematic universe" a bit of a later development.

The Assyrians really need to sue Marvel...

 

[rakovsky]

View attachment 300388 View attachment 300389 View attachment 300390

The long ears and long nose in some Set pictures I've seen remind me of an aardvark:

But Seth has also been drawn as a hippo:
Ancient egyptian god seth as hippopotamus. Ancient egyptian hieroglyphic carving of the god of the underworld seth in the | CanStock

 

[rakovsky]

Good input from everyone on this thread.

 

[BobRyan]

Thanks for replying.
I tried to say in my introduction that there are different ways to interpret this hypothesis of a connection. For example, Eve could give birth to a famous forefather in agreement with the Biblical view, and then the Egyptians interpreted it later as if this forefather (Seth) were a god. Such an explanation would be the kind of thing that Christian theologians have hypothesized on other topics (eg. Babylonian flood legends being based on a great flood that the Bible would depict better).

Or one could hypothesis about the converse.

good point.

of course - not only did all mankind have the "same religion" with Adam and Eve at the start of their little family - so also did all mankind have "the same religion" as Noah and his little family stepped off the boat.

So as you point out this means that all false religions can trace back to some sort of break with Noah's religion along the path of their ancestors and it would not be too shocking to find that they started to warp/bend/wrench some facts to custom-fit a new offshoot version that just continued to grow more strange over time - perhaps helped by a bad-angel here and there along the way.