The origin of people, this planet, and the universe has mystified people since the dawning of conscious thought. Early tribal peoples had in common similar concepts of a "creator." Those myths and beliefs evolved slowly over the eons. Native Americans and the ancient Hebrews each developed a creation story that included the modern concept of a single God.
The Old Testament reveals the evolution of the Hebrew God in a series of God concepts including Yahweh, The Most High El Elyon, El Shaddai, Elohim, and The Supreme Yahweh, a God separate and apart from them. Their God was an all-powerful, distant king, who was revered, worshipped, feared, and appeased. This Man-god was a mysterious, invisible super-person who affected their lives, and who was responsible for the fortunate and the unfortunate events they experienced. Their concept depicted God as the ultimate tribal leader, a Man-god who expressed the full nature of a king who ruled over all the earth and all existence. He was all-powerful and could organize the forces of nature on earth and in heaven to the Hebrews' advantage or disadvantage according to His mood. Therefore, it behooved Hebrew believers to attempt to please Him.
Their concept of God was the highest, ultimate concept of a deified human, a humanized deity who occupied the most powerful position of their culture. This monarch even had power over good fortune and bad, and life and death. He was a personage of such power that the fate of their nation could be arranged at will by this King-god. He could command legions of followers, vanquish enemies, and provide abundance in their fields. He was a corrector of faults, a stern lord of the lands who chastened those who fell into bad ways of living. He was seen as a provider and caretaker, much as a paternalistic king whose behavior is personal and emotional.
Their god had super-human emotions, needs, and wants. God was described as angry, wrathful, emotional, vengeful, loving, an all-provider, and the slayer of enemies, but also a God who could be cajoled, wheedled, and seduced by prayerful and worshipful believers. This God's anger could be appeased by human sacrifice, then later by animal sacrifice.
Over time, the Hebrew God-concept became so enmeshed and institutionalized in religious rules that it could not mature along with the growing intellectual and spiritual growth of its most God-conscious and spiritually insightful members. Hebrew prophets revealed newer God-concepts and newer truths about the nature of God that were often at odds with the older, institutionalized God-concept. What the prophets provided were new spiritual paradigms of the God-concept that required believers to think in new ways about the nature of God and God's relationship to them. Consequently, many prophets were stoned to death or exiled.
By the time Jesus arrived, the religious laws of the Hebrews had become so rigid and extensive that they inhibited the spiritual growth of individuals. Obligatory religious rituals got in the way of developing a personal relationship with God. To the individual, God had become obscure and remote. It is no wonder that Jesus was assassinated by the Sanhedrin: The Good News of a loving Presence of God within each of us that Jesus revealed was radically at odds with the Hebrew's traditional and institutionalized concept of God that was outside of believers.