Did Israelite Monotheism Evolve?

Smith, Mark S.  The Early History of God:  Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel.  Eerdmans, Grand Rapids;  Dove, Dearborn.  2nd edition.  2002.  The book that set out the modern evolutionary model:  Israel's religion began with El, Yahweh, Asherah and Baal, Yahweh absorbed the others' features ("convergence") and then rejected some of them ("differentiation"), and monotheism was voiced in the exile.  The second edition keeps the 1990 text with a new preface.  The copy read has no printed page numbers, so claims are located by chapter and section.

1. 1a.

   Chapter 1, section 2, Yahweh and El:  “As J. C. Greenfield notes, almost every line of this passage contains an element familiar from descriptions of El”.  “Like El, Yahweh is the father (’ab) who establishes (kwn) and creates (*qny).” ↩

2. 1b.

   Chapter 1, section 2, Yahweh and El:  “Later biblical texts continued the long tradition of aged Yahweh enthroned before the heavenly hosts.”  “The depiction of the satan in Job 1-2 and Zechariah 3 has been traced to neo-Babylonian or Persian bureaucracies.” ↩

3. 1c.

   Chapter 3, section 6, Excursus:  Gender Language for Yahweh:  “Like Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1, Genesis 1:26-28 utilizes the traditional language of the divine council, as manifest, for example, in the use of the first common plural for divine speech in Genesis 1:26, a feature found also in Genesis 3:22; 11:7; and Isaiah 6:8.” ↩

4. 1d.

   Chapter 1, section 2, Yahweh and El:  “The original god of Israel was El. This reconstruction may be inferred from two pieces of information. First, the name of Israel is not a Yahwistic name with the divine element of Yahweh, but an El name, with the element, *’ēl. This fact would suggest that El was the original chief god of the group named Israel.” ↩

5. 1e.

   Chapter 1, section 2, Yahweh and El:  “It also suggests that Yahweh, originally a warrior-god from Sinai/Paran/Edom/Teiman, was known separately from El at an early point in early Israel. Perhaps due to trade with Edom/Midian, Yahweh entered secondarily into the Israelite highland religion.”  "It" is Deuteronomy 32:8-9. ↩

6. 1f.

   Chapter 1, section 2, Yahweh and El:  “The priestly theological treatment of Israel’s early religious history in Exodus 6:2-3 identifies the old god El Shadday with Yahweh.”  “This passage reflects the fact that Yahweh was unknown to the patriarchs. Rather, they worshiped the Canaanite god, El.” ↩

7. 1g.

   Chapter 1, section 2, Yahweh and El:  “One indication that Yahweh and El were identified at an early stage is that there are no biblical polemics against El.” ↩

8. 1h.

   Chapter 1, section 2, Yahweh and El:  “The names with the element of the name of El historically reflect the identification of Yahweh and El by the time these names may appear in the attested inscriptions. Just as no cult is attested for Anat (and perhaps Asherah) in Israelite religion, so also there is no distinct cult attested for El except in his identity as Yahweh.” ↩

9. 1i.

   Chapter 1, section 7, Israel and Its Neighbors:  “The national god of Edom was Qaws, attested in inscriptional material from Qitmit and the writings of Josephus (Antiquities 15.253).” ↩

10. 1j.

    Chapter Introduction, section 1, The Question of Understanding Israelite Religion:  “The distribution of “theophoric” elements — that is, forms of divine names — in proper names lends credence, however, only to the notion that Yahweh was Israel’s most popular god, its national deity.”  “Indeed, as D. Pardee has observed, the names of deities contained in proper names are little proof of devotion to those deities. For example, Ugaritic texts rarely, if ever, have proper names with the theophoric element of the goddess Asherah (’atrt). However, Ugaritic ritual texts indicate this goddess was venerated at ancient Ugarit. Similarly, although Tannit was the most popular goddess in the Punic west, Punic names likewise rarely contain tnt as a theophoric element.” ↩

11. 1k.

    Section Acknowledgments (First Edition):  “I wish to make special mention of my teachers of matters Canaanite and Israelite: Frank Cross, Aloysius Fitzgerald, Jonas Greenfield, Marvin Pope, Franz Rosenthal, and Robert Wilson.” ↩

12. 1l.

    Chapter Introduction, section 1, The Question of Understanding Israelite Religion:  “In early Israel, the cult of Yahweh generally held sway. However, this statement does not fully characterize pre-exilic Israelite religion as a whole. Rather, Israelite religion apparently included worship of Yahweh, El, Asherah, and Baal.”  “Convergence involved the coalescence of various deities and/or some of their features into the figure of Yahweh. This development began in the period of the Judges and continued during the first half of the monarchy. At this point, El and Yahweh were identified, and perhaps Asherah no longer continued as an identifiably separate deity.” ↩

13. 1m.

    Chapter Introduction, section 1, The Question of Understanding Israelite Religion:  “The second major process involved differentiation of Israelite cult from its “Canaanite” heritage. Numerous features of early Israelite cult were later rejected as “Canaanite” and non-Yahwistic. This development apparently began first with the rejection of Baal worship in the ninth century, continued in the eighth to sixth centuries with legal and prophetic condemnations of Baal worship, the asherah, solar worship, the high places, practices pertaining to the dead, and other religious features.” ↩

14. 1n.

    Chapter 6, section 4, The Exile:  “Texts dating to the Exile or shortly beforehand are the first to attest to unambiguous expressions of Israelite monotheism. Second Isaiah (Isa. 45:5-7) gave voice to the monotheistic ideal that Yahweh was the only deity in the cosmos. Not only are the other deities powerless; they are nonexistent.”  The 1990 first edition reads "Texts dating to the Exile are the first";  the second edition adds "or shortly beforehand." ↩ ↩

15. 1o.

    Chapter 6, section 5, Israelite Monotheism in Historical Perspective:  “Monotheism was hardly a feature of Israel’s earliest history.” ↩

16. 1p.

    Chapter Introduction, section 1, The Question of Understanding Israelite Religion:  “According to this view, Israel had always been essentially monolatrous; Israel worshiped only Yahweh, although it did not deny the existence of other deities.”  “This view of Israelite religion has been expressed in part or in full by European, American, and Israeli scholars with otherwise widely diverging views, including W. F. Albright, Y. Kaufmann, H. Ringgren, G. Fohrer, G. W. Ahlström, and J. Tigay.”  Smith is describing the view he argues against. ↩

17. 1q.

    Chapter Introduction, section 1, The Question of Understanding Israelite Religion:  “these poems, including Genesis 49, Judges 5, 2 Samuel 22 (= Psalm 18), 2 Samuel 23:1-7, and Psalms 29 and 68, appear to be older than the poetic compositions in the prophetic books and therefore date at least to the first half of the monarchy; some of them may be older.” ↩ ↩

18. 1r.

    Chapter 6, section 5, Israelite Monotheism in Historical Perspective:  “In other words, the “Yahweh-only party” may not have developed as a purely prophetic position (cf. Exod. 20:3; 22:19; 2 Sam. 22 [Ps. 18]: 32).” ↩ ↩

19. 1s.

    Chapter 1, section 6, Convergence in Israelite Religion:  “as well as denials of other gods (Deut. 32:39; 1 Sam. 2:2)”.  “presumably these features helped to mold ideas of monolatry early in Israel’s history.”  Smith is listing, after P. D. Miller, features that may have accented monolatry, including polemics against "other gods" (Exodus 20:3) and "new gods" (Judges 5:8). ↩

Day, John.  “Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan.”  Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 265.  Sheffield Academic Press.  2000.  A study by an Oxford Old Testament scholar of each Canaanite deity the Hebrew Bible mentions (El, Asherah, Baal, Astarte, Molech and others) and of how YHWH related to each.  Day argues that El and YHWH were once distinct gods that merged, and that absolute monotheism first appears in Isaiah 40-55.

1. 2a.

   Page 14:  “I conclude, therefore, that El and Yahweh were originally distinct deities that became amalgamated.”  “It is interesting that the Old Testament has no qualms in equating Yahweh with El, something which stands in marked contrast to its vehement opposition to Baal”. ↩

2. 2b.

   Page 228:  “Over against the above extreme views I would argue that it is clear that there was indeed a monolatrous party already in the pre-exilic period, though it was not as dominant as Tigay supposes, and absolute monotheism was first given explicit expression by the prophet Deutero-Isaiah in the exile and became fully operative in the post-exilic period.”  “throughout history monotheists have not felt belief in angels to be incompatible with monotheism.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

Gnuse, Robert Karl.  “No Other Gods:  Emergent Monotheism in Israel.”  Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 241.  Sheffield Academic Press.  1997.  A survey of how scholars since about 1980 have come to date Israelite monotheism late, with Gnuse's own model of monotheism emerging in bursts, borrowed from the biologists' theory of punctuated equilibria.

1. 3a.

   Page 16:  “The expression ‘emergent’ is used in conjunction with the term ‘monotheism’ to reflect the basic thesis of this work, that, generally speaking, monotheism developed over the course of many centuries in the ancient world and is evolving even today, and that these developmental stages often come in ‘bursts’ in response to particular social and religious crises.”  Page 69:  “This position seems to mediate between Albright’s idea of early revolutionary monotheism and Wellhausen’s gradual evolutionary model by suggesting a series of intellectual revolutions over a period of years which culminated in the exile, the time originally proposed by Wellhausen.” ↩

Smith, Mark S.  The Origins of Biblical Monotheism:  Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts.  Oxford University Press, New York.  2001.  A study of how the Ugaritic texts illuminate the gods of early Israel, by a leading specialist in Ugaritic.  It argues that El was Israel's original god, that Yahweh was a southern warrior god later identified with El, and that biblical monotheism is a rhetoric of the seventh and sixth centuries rather than a separate stage of religion.

1. 4a.

   Page 143:  “More helpful is the text of the Septuagint and one of the Dead Sea Scrolls (4QDeutj) for Deuteronomy 32:8-9, which cast Yahweh in the role of one of the divine sons, understood as fathered by El, called Elyon in the first line”. ↩

2. 4b.

   Page 157:  “From the perspective of this older theology, Yahweh did not belong to the top tier of the pantheon. Instead, in early Israel the god of Israel apparently belonged to the second tier of the pantheon; he was not the presider god but one of his sons. This older picture, assumed in Deuteronomy 32:8-9 and criticized in Psalm 82, presupposes the model of roughly equal national gods for all of the seventy nations of the world, a notion reflected also in the Ugaritic motif of the seventy sons of El and Athirat (CAT 1.4 VI 46).”  “the Masoretic change in Deuteronomy 32:8-9 marks a shift to a monotheistic reading”.  Smith says nearly the same on page 49. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

3. 4c.

   Page 143:  “If El was the original god of Israel, then how did Yahweh come to be the chief god of Israel and identified with El? We may posit three hypothetical stages (not necessarily discrete in time or geography) to account for the information presented so far”. ↩

4. 4d.

   Page 49:  “The author of Psalm 82 deposes the older theology, as Israel’s deity is called to assume a new role as judge of all the world.”  “he was not the presider god, but one of his sons.” ↩

5. 4e.

   Page 9:  “Chapter 9 examines the monotheistic theologies in the priestly work of Genesis 1, the wisdom of Proverbs 1-9, and the apocalyptic of Daniel 7.” ↩

6. 4f.

   Page 144:  “If El was the original god of Israel, then his merger with Yahweh, the southern divine warrior, predates the Song of Deborah in Judges 5, at least for the area of Israel where this composition was created.”  “Many scholars place the poem in the pre-monarchic period”. ↩

7. 4g.

   Page 9:  “Within the Bible, monotheism is not a separate “stage” of religion in ancient Israel, as it is customarily regarded. It was in fact a kind of ancient rhetoric reinforcing Israel’s exclusive relationship with its deity.” ↩

Keel, Othmar, and Christoph Uehlinger.  Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel.  Fortress, Minneapolis.  Translated by Thomas H. Trapp.  1998.  A history of Israelite religion from the images on seals, amulets and other small objects, by two Swiss specialists in ancient iconography.  It traces a shift from goddess and astral imagery to images of YHWH alone across the Iron Age.

1. 5a.

   Page 205:  “It is probable that both elements, yw- and bʿl, refer to the same deity, namely Yahweh, who was worshiped also as Baal in Iron Age IIB Israel”. ↩

2. 5b.

   Page 407:  “But these few biblical correlations have shown that the external evidence confirms neither the view that there was a fully developed Mosaic monotheism nor the popular view that late and even very late dates for the literature are justified.” ↩

NET Bible.  Biblical Studies Press.  2.1 edition.  2019.  A modern evangelical English translation with extensive translators' notes.  The article quotes its wording for most biblical texts.

1. 6a.

   Verse Deuteronomy 32:8:  “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided up humankind, he set the boundaries of the peoples, according to the number of the heavenly assembly.” ↩

2. 6b.

   Verse Deuteronomy 32:6:  “Is this how you repay the Lord, you foolish, unwise people? Is he not your father, your Creator? He has made you and established you.” ↩

3. 6c.

   Verse Deuteronomy 32:12:  “The Lord alone was guiding him, no foreign god was with him.” ↩

4. 6d.

   Verse Deuteronomy 32:17:  “They sacrificed to demons, not God, to gods they had not known; to new gods who had recently come along, gods your ancestors had not known about.” ↩

5. 6e.

   Verse Deuteronomy 4:19-20:  “When you look up to the sky and see the sun, moon, and stars—the whole heavenly creation—you must not be seduced to worship and serve them, for the Lord your God has assigned them to all the people of the world. You, however, the Lord has selected and brought from Egypt, that iron-smelting furnace, to be his special people as you are today.” ↩

6. 6f.

   Verse Psalm 82:1:  “God stands in the assembly of El; in the midst of the gods he renders judgment.”  Verse Psalm 82:6-7:  “I thought, ‘You are gods; all of you are sons of the Most High.’ Yet you will die like mortals; you will fall like all the other rulers.””  Verse Psalm 82:8:  “Rise up, O God, and execute judgment on the earth! For you own all the nations.” ↩

7. 6g.

   Verse Psalm 89:6-7:  “For who in the skies can compare to the Lord? Who is like the Lord among the heavenly beings, a God who is honored in the great angelic assembly, and more awesome than all who surround him?”  Psalm 89:7-8 in the Hebrew numbering. ↩

8. 6h.

   Verse Psalm 29:1:  “A psalm of David. Acknowledge the Lord, you heavenly beings, acknowledge the Lord’s majesty and power.”  The Hebrew of "heavenly beings" is bene elim, "sons of gods." ↩

9. 6i.

   Verse Job 1:6:  “Now the day came when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord—and Satan also arrived among them.”  Verse Job 38:7:  “when the morning stars sang in chorus, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” ↩

10. 6j.

    Verse 1 Kings 22:19:  “Micaiah said, “That being the case, listen to the Lord’s message. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, with all the heavenly assembly standing beside him on his right and on his left.” ↩

11. 6k.

    Verse Genesis 1:26:  “Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness”. ↩

12. 6l.

    Verse Exodus 15:11:  “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?”  Verse Psalm 97:9:  “For you, O Lord, are the Most High over the whole earth; you are elevated high above all gods.” ↩ ↩

13. 6m.

    Verse Psalm 96:4-5:  “For the Lord is great and certainly worthy of praise; he is more awesome than all gods. For all the gods of the nations are worthless, but the Lord made the sky.”  "Worthless" translates elilim, a word play on elohim, "gods." ↩

14. 6n.

    Verse Psalm 83:18:  “Then they will know that you alone are the Lord, the Most High over all the earth.”  Psalm 83:19 in the Hebrew numbering. ↩

15. 6o.

    Verse Genesis 14:18-19:  “Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (Now he was the priest of the Most High God.) He blessed Abram, saying, “Blessed be Abram by the Most High God, Creator of heaven and earth.” ↩

16. 6p.

    Verse Genesis 21:33:  “Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer Sheba. There he worshiped the Lord, the eternal God.”  Verse Genesis 33:20:  “There he set up an altar and called it “The God of Israel is God.”” ↩

17. 6q.

    Verse Exodus 6:2-3:  “God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name ‘the Lord’ I was not known to them.” ↩

18. 6r.

    Verse Genesis 28:13:  “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father Isaac.”  Verse Genesis 12:8:  “There he built an altar to the Lord and worshiped the Lord.” ↩

19. 6s.

    Verse Deuteronomy 33:2:  “The Lord came from Sinai and revealed himself to Israel from Seir. He appeared in splendor from Mount Paran”.  Verse Judges 5:4:  “O Lord, when you departed from Seir, when you marched from Edom’s plains, the earth shook”.  Verse Habakkuk 3:3:  “God comes from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran.” ↩

20. 6t.

    Verse Exodus 3:1:  “Now Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb.”  Verse Exodus 18:11-12:  “Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods”.  “Then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and sacrifices for God”.  Verse Judges 1:16:  “Now the descendants of the Kenite, Moses’ father-in-law, went up with the people of Judah from the city of date palm trees to Arad in the wilderness of Judah”. ↩

21. 6u.

    Verse Hosea 2:16-17:  “At that time,” declares the Lord, “you will call me, ‘My husband’; you will never again call me, ‘My master.’ For I will remove the names of the Baal idols from your lips, so that you will never again utter their names!”  Hosea 2:18-19 in the Hebrew numbering.  "My master" translates baʿli, "my Baal." ↩

22. 6v.

    Verse Exodus 20:3:  “You shall have no other gods before me.”  Verse Exodus 22:20:  “Whoever sacrifices to a god other than the Lord alone must be utterly destroyed.”  Exodus 22:19 in the Hebrew numbering. ↩

23. 6w.

    Verse Jeremiah 2:11:  “Has a nation ever changed its gods (even though they are not really gods at all)? But my people have exchanged me, their glorious God, for a god that cannot help them at all!” ↩

24. 6x.

    Verse Isaiah 47:8:  “who says to herself, ‘I am unique! No one can compare to me!” ↩

25. 6y.

    Verse Isaiah 41:24:  “Look, you are nothing, and your accomplishments are nonexistent; the one who chooses to worship you is disgusting.” ↩

26. 6z.

    Verse Isaiah 40:26:  “Look up at the sky! Who created all these heavenly lights? He is the one who leads out their ranks; he calls them all by name.” ↩

27. 6aa.

    Verse 2 Samuel 22:32:  “Indeed, who is God besides the Lord? Who is a protector besides our God?”  Verse Deuteronomy 32:39:  ““See now that I, indeed I, am he!” says the Lord, “and there is no other god besides me.”  Verse 1 Samuel 2:2:  “No one is holy like the Lord! There is no one other than you! There is no rock like our God!”  Verse Exodus 22:20:  “Whoever sacrifices to a god other than the Lord alone must be utterly destroyed.”  Verse Hosea 13:4:  “Therefore, you must not acknowledge any God but me. Except for me there is no Savior.” ↩

Heiser, Michael S.  Should the Plural Elohim of Psalm 82 Be Understood as Men or Divine Beings?  Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting.  2010.  A conference paper arguing that the "gods" of Psalm 82 are divine beings, not human judges, and that recognising them does not threaten belief that YHWH is unique.  It has no page numbers, so claims are located by section.

1. 7a.

   Section 3.1:  “Psalm 89 rules out the notion that Yahweh’s council of [elohim] sons of God refers to an assembly of humans because it explicitly places that council ‘in the clouds.’” ↩

2. 7b.

   Section 2.2:  “Yahweh is an [elohim], but no other [elohim] is Yahweh. That was what an orthodox Israelite believed about Yahweh. He was not one among equals; he was species unique.” ↩

Bauckham, Richard.  Jesus and the God of Israel:  God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity.  Eerdmans, Grand Rapids;  Paternoster, Milton Keynes.  2008.  Essays by a New Testament scholar on what "one God" meant to Jews of the Second Temple period and how the first Christians placed Jesus within it.  Its second and third chapters argue that the Old Testament's God is unique in kind, not merely the only god worshipped.

1. 8a.

   Page 86:  “The essential element in what I have called Jewish monotheism, the element that makes it a kind of monotheism, is not the denial of the existence of other ‘gods’, but an understanding of the uniqueness of YHWH that puts him in a class of his own, a wholly different class from any other heavenly or supernatural beings, even if these are called ‘gods’. I call this YHWH’s transcendent uniqueness.” ↩

2. 8b.

   Page 69:  “I find his linguistic argument about the use of ’ên ‘ôd unconvincing, since it cannot apply in several other instances of this formula where YHWH is the subject (1 Kgs. 8:60; Isa. 45:5, 6, 14, 18, 22).”  Page 70:  “They need not deny that there are other gods, but will recognize the uniqueness of YHWH as the only one who can be called ‘the God’.” ↩

3. 8c.

   Page 89:  “Not all of the texts in the former category say exactly that there is no other ‘god’ besides YHWH, as 2 Samuel 7:22 and Isaiah 45:5, 14, 21 do.” ↩

4. 8d.

   Page 87:  “This example illustrates how it is not the existence of heavenly beings besides YHWH that is at stake in the ‘monotheizing’ dynamic of the texts and the canon, but the nature and status of such beings.” ↩

5. 8e.

   Page 112:  “it is hard to believe that, in its present context in Deuteronomy 32, it could ever have been read in this way (cf. YHWH’s words in 32:39, which hardly leave room for his subordination to another god).”  “Deuteronomy 32:8–9 seems indispensable to this case, since scarcely any other text in the Hebrew Bible can be read as designating YHWH a son of God.”  "This case" is Margaret Barker's argument that YHWH was worshipped as a son of the high God. ↩

OpenScriptures.  Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible:  the Westminster Leningrad Codex with morphology.  2026.  The Masoretic Hebrew text of the Leningrad Codex (AD 1008), the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, in a machine-readable edition.  The article quotes its consonants and uses it to count how often each formula about God occurs. ↩

1. 9a.

   Verse Deuteronomy 32:8-9:  “בהנחל עליון גוים בהפרידו בני אדם יצב גבלת עמים למספר בני ישראל כי חלק יהוה עמו יעקב חבל נחלתו”.  Consonants only, vowel points and accents removed.  The last two words of verse 8 are bene yisraʾel, "sons of Israel." ↩

2. 9b.

   Verse Psalm 14:2:  “יהוה משמים השקיף על בני אדם”.  Verse Psalm 53:3:  “אלהים משמים השקיף על בני אדם”.  Psalm 53:2 in English Bibles. ↩

3. 9c.

   Verse Psalm 82:1:  “אלהים נצב בעדת אל בקרב אלהים ישפט”.  Verse Psalm 82:8:  “קומה אלהים שפטה הארץ כי אתה תנחל בכל הגוים”.  Verse Deuteronomy 32:8:  “בהנחל עליון גוים”.  Psalm 82:8's tinḥal and Deuteronomy 32:8's behanḥel are forms of the same verb, nḥl, "to give or take as an inheritance." ↩

4. 9d.

   Verse Psalm 89:7-8:  “כי מי בשחק יערך ליהוה ידמה ליהוה בבני אלים אל נערץ בסוד קדשים רבה ונורא על כל סביביו”.  "Who in the skies compares to YHWH, is like YHWH among the sons of gods (bene elim), El dreaded in the council of the holy ones." ↩

5. 9e.

   Verse Isaiah 6:8:  “ואשמע את קול אדני אמר את מי אשלח ומי ילך לנו”.  "And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" ↩

6. 9f.

   Verse Exodus 6:3:  “וארא אל אברהם אל יצחק ואל יעקב באל שדי ושמי יהוה לא נודעתי להם”. ↩

7. 9g.

   Verse Isaiah 47:8:  “האמרה בלבבה אני ואפסי עוד”.  Verse Zephaniah 2:15:  “האמרה בלבבה אני ואפסי עוד”.  Verse Isaiah 45:6:  “כי אפס בלעדי אני יהוה ואין עוד”.  "Who says in her heart, I am, and there is none besides me," of Babylon and then of Nineveh;  compare YHWH's "there is none besides me;  I am YHWH, and there is no other."  The phrase ʾapsi ʿod occurs only in these Babylon and Nineveh boasts. ↩

8. 9h.

   Verse Genesis 14:22:  “הרימתי ידי אל יהוה אל עליון קנה שמים וארץ”.  "I raise my hand to YHWH, El Elyon, creator of heaven and earth." ↩

King James Version.  eBible.org.  1611 (edition of 2026).  The 1611 English translation of the Masoretic Hebrew text, quoted where the article needs the Masoretic wording of a verse that the NET Bible translates from another witness.

1. 10a.

   Verse Deuteronomy 32:8-9:  “When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the LORD’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.” ↩

Ulrich, Eugene.  “The Biblical Qumran Scrolls:  Transcriptions and Textual Variants.”  Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 134.  Brill, Leiden.  2010.  The collected transcriptions of every biblical manuscript from Qumran, with an apparatus listing where each scroll differs from the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint.  The article uses its pages for Deuteronomy 32.

1. 11a.

   Page 240:  “32:8 (14) בני אלוהים 4QDeutj 𝔊(υιων [αγγελων 𝔊ABOCdnt] θεου) ] בני ישראל 𝔐𝔖𝔗𝔖𝔙”.  The apparatus for 4QDeutʲ column XII line 14.  Read left to right:  the scroll and the Greek have "sons of God" (most Greek manuscripts "angels of God");  the Masoretic Text, Samaritan Pentateuch, Targum, Syriac and Vulgate have "sons of Israel." ↩ ↩

2. 11b.

   Page 242:  “ראו עתה כי אני אני הוא ואין אלהים עמדי”.  4QDeutq column I line 6, Deuteronomy 32:39, with the scroll's lost letters restored by the editor;  the apparatus records no difference from the Masoretic Text in this line. ↩ ↩

3. 11c.

   Page 242:  “הרנינו שמים עמו והשתחוו לו כל אלהים”.  Page 243:  “והשתחוו לו כל אלהים 4QDeutq (cf Ps 97:7) 𝔊(και προσκυνησατωσαν αυτω παντες υιοι θεου) ] > 𝔐𝔖”.  4QDeutq column II lines 6-7, Deuteronomy 32:43:  "Rejoice, O heavens, with him;  and bow down to him, all gods."  The apparatus marks the second line absent from the Masoretic Text and the Samaritan Pentateuch. ↩ ↩

Rahlfs, Alfred.  Septuaginta.  Württembergische Bibelanstalt, Stuttgart.  1935.  The standard hand edition of the Greek Old Testament, read in the CATSS electronic text.  It prints the reading of the majority of manuscripts at Deuteronomy 32:8.

1. 12a.

   Verse Deuteronomy 32:8:  “ὅτε διεμέριζεν ὁ ὕψιστος ἔθνη ὡς διέσπειρεν υἱοὺς Αδαμ ἔστησεν ὅρια ἐθνῶν κατὰ ἀριθμὸν ἀγγέλων θεοῦ”.  "according to the number of the angels of God." ↩

2. 12b.

   Verse Genesis 14:22:  “ἐκτενῶ τὴν χεῖρά μου πρὸς τὸν θεὸν τὸν ὕψιστον ὃς ἔκτισεν τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν”.  "I will stretch out my hand to God Most High, who created heaven and earth," with no word for YHWH. ↩

Tov, Emanuel.  Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible.  Fortress and Van Gorcum, Minneapolis and Assen.  2nd revised edition.  2001.  The standard handbook on how the Hebrew Bible's text was copied and how its variant readings are weighed, by the editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls publication project.  Tov treats Deuteronomy 32:8 as an example of a scribe changing a text for theological reasons.

1. 13a.

   Page 269:  “In its probably original wording, reconstructed from 4QDeutj and 𝔊, the Song of Moses referred to an assembly of the gods (cf. Psalm 82; 1 Kgs 22:19), in which “the Most High, ‘Elyon, fixed the boundaries of peoples according to the number of the sons of the God El.” The next verse stresses that the LORD, יהוה, kept Israel for himself. Within the supposedly original context, ‘Elyon and El need not be taken as epithets of the God of Israel, but as names of gods also known from the Canaanite and Ugaritic pantheon. It appears, however, that the scribe of an early text … did not feel at ease with this possibly polytheistic picture and replaced “sons of El” with בני ישראל, “the sons of Israel,” thus giving the text a different direction by the change of one word”.  Tov's table on the same page lists the Greek witnesses:  papyrus 848 and manuscript 106c read "sons of God," most manuscripts "angels of God," as does Aquila. ↩ ↩

2. 13b.

   Page 269, footnote 44:  “According to this view, the original reading El is reconstructed from the text of 4QDeutj, בני אלהים. The evidence of 𝔊 is not specific enough. On the other hand, if the longer form of 4QDeutj is accepted as original, the change in 𝔐 should be considered theological in a general sense (section ii below), and not anti-polytheistic.” ↩

Heiser, Michael S.  “Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God.”  Bibliotheca Sacra 158(629).  2001.  A journal article by an evangelical Hebrew Bible scholar arguing that "sons of God" is the original reading of Deuteronomy 32:8 and that the reading does not make Israel's religion polytheistic.  It was printed on pages 52-74 of the journal;  page numbers here are those of the author's manuscript at the address given.

1. 14a.

   Page 8:  “It is inconceivable to suppose that a scribe would have done the reverse, altering an innocuous [bene yisra'el] to a potentially explosive [bene 'elohim].”  Heiser writes the two Hebrew phrases in a transliteration font;  they are given here in Latin letters. ↩

Heiser, Michael S.  “Monotheism and the Language of Divine Plurality in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls.”  Tyndale Bulletin 65(1):85–100.  2014.  A survey of how the Hebrew Bible and the Qumran sectarian texts use elohim, "gods," for beings under YHWH, arguing that the word names a realm of being rather than a rank, so that plural elohim are not evidence of polytheism.

1. 15a.

   Page 98, footnote 44:  “Many scholars do indeed presuppose that Deut. 32:8–9 has YHWH as one among equal gods under a distinct deity, El (Elyon) and that Psalm 82 should be read in that light.”  “(1) This reading of Deut. 32:8–9 ignores the El epithets in the preceding verses (Deut. 32:6–7) that are attributed to YHWH, thus identifying YHWH with El; (2) Deut. 4:19–20 has YHWH ‘taking’ (לקח) his portion, not having it bestowed by a superior; (3) Reading Psalm 82 in light of this approach to Deut. 32:8–9 has El as the speaking voice in the psalm, which results in various points of incoherence in the flow of the psalm.” ↩ ↩

2. 15b.

   Page 90:  “The language of divine plurality persists well after the end of the exile. The Dead Sea Scrolls are perhaps the most telling demonstration of that persistence.” ↩

Stark, Thom.  “The Most Heiser:  Yahweh and Elyon in Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32.”  Religion at the Margins.  Jul 2011.  A blog essay by a critic of evangelical apologetics answering Heiser point by point and defending the reading of Deuteronomy 32:8-9 and Psalm 82 in which YHWH and El are separate gods.  Heiser's long reply is printed at the end of the comments.  Page numbers are those of the printed web page, 37 pages.

1. 16a.

   Page 15:  “But this is not at all how Yahweh is described in Deut 32:6. Yahweh is described solely as the father of Israel.” ↩

2. 16b.

   Section Heiser's reply, item 1, point 1:  “Deut 32:8-9’s use of Elyon and Yahweh. Nothing in the text says they were different deities.”  Heiser's words, in his reply printed after the comments. ↩

Frevel, Christian.  “Beyond monotheism?  Some remarks and questions on conceptualising 'monotheism' in Biblical Studies.”  Verbum et Ecclesia 34(2).  2013.  An essay by a German critical scholar of the Old Testament, written for a 2011 Society of Biblical Literature panel on whether the word "monotheism" should have a future in biblical studies.  Frevel keeps the word but splits it into finer categories, and reads Deuteronomy 32 as a post-exilic poem whose Most High is YHWH.

1. 17a.

   Page 6:  “Nevertheless, as Konrad Schmid has convincingly shown (Schmid 2006), there is no polytheistic atavism in the בני אלהים [sons of god] and it is most probable that YHWH has to be identified with עליון [the Most High, Elyon], the most high.”  “Thus Deuteronomy 32:8 cannot be regarded as a ‘polytheistic window’, as Konrad Schmid nicely and disparagingly has put the ‘atavism’.” ↩

2. 17b.

   Page 6:  “the context of the post-exilic chapter of Deuteronomy makes it much more ‘monotheistic’.” ↩ ↩ ↩

3. 17c.

   Page 1:  “it is hardly ever appropriate to use the term monotheism to describe the Jewish idea of God, that no progress beyond the simple formulas of the Book of Deuteronomy can be discerned in Judaism before the philosophers of the Middle Ages, and that Judaism never escapes from the legacy of the battles for supremacy between Yahweh, Ba‘al and El from which it emerged.”  “God is the sole object of worship, but he is not the only divine being”.  Frevel quoting Peter Hayman, "Monotheism:  A Misused Word in Jewish Studies?", Journal of Jewish Studies 42 (1991), pages 2 and 15.  Frevel mistakes Hayman's first name for John. ↩

4. 17d.

   Page 1:  “the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting in London 2011 held a panel discussion captioned ‘The concept of monotheism: Should it have a future in Biblical Studies?’, which included papers by Rainer Albertz, Bob Becking, Philip Davies, Nathan MacDonald, Diana Edelman, André Lemaire, Saul M. Olyan, Thomas Römer, Rüdiger Schmitt, Konrad Schmid, Mark S. Smith and myself.” ↩

MacDonald, Nathan.  One God or One Lord?  Deuteronomy and the Meaning of "Monotheism".  University of Durham.  2001.  A doctoral thesis, published in 2003 as Deuteronomy and the Meaning of "Monotheism," that traces the modern word back to 1660 and argues that Deuteronomy's demand is exclusive love and loyalty to YHWH, not a theory that no other gods exist.  Page numbers are the thesis's, not the book's.

1. 18a.

   Page 18:  “According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 'monotheism' was coined by the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More (1614-87).” ↩

2. 18b.

   Page 263:  “The first aim of this work has been to argue that Deuteronomy does not, at any point, present a doctrine of God that may be described as 'monotheism'. That it affirms that YHWH is one, who is unique, and there is no other for Israel is undeniable. However, this is not 'monotheism', at least not in the sense in which the term is usually used.”  Page 264:  “The demand to show exclusive loyalty to YHWH depends, for its rhetorical effectiveness, on a common recognition that other gods exist and represent a serious challenge to Israel's commitment to YHWH.” ↩

3. 18c.

   Page 104:  “It should be noted that in Deuteronomy, as also in 1 Kings 18, to call YHWH [ha-elohim] is to make a claim about YHWH's uniqueness, but it is not, however, a denial of the existence of other deities.”  MacDonald writes the Hebrew word for "the God" in Hebrew letters. ↩

4. 18d.

   Page 109:  “This claim, however, is not to be the only city in the world, but the only mistress for the world.” ↩

5. 18e.

   Page 106:  “Certain examples of the Ausschließlichkeitsformel are not monotheistic because they introduce a limitation, for example, Hos. 13.4 and 2 Sam. 7.22. The Ausschließlichkeitsformel found in Deuteronomy and Deutero-Isaiah are, however, monotheistic in a strong sense. The breakthrough to monotheism is found in Deuteronomy 4 and is thus to be dated to the exile.”  MacDonald is summarising Hans Rechenmacher, „Außer mir gibt es keinen Gott!“ (1997), whose view he goes on to dispute. ↩ ↩ ↩

Wenham, Gordon J.  “Genesis 1–15.”  Word Biblical Commentary 1.  Word Books.  1987 (edition of 2014).  A standard evangelical critical commentary on Genesis 1-15.  Its comment on Genesis 1:26 surveys every interpretation of the plural "Let us" from Philo onward.

1. 19a.

   Page 27:  “From Philo onward, Jewish commentators have generally held that the plural is used because God is addressing his heavenly court, i.e., the angels (cf. Isa 6:8).”  Page 28:  “Thus modern commentators are quite agreed that Gen 1:26 could never have been taken by the author of this chapter in a polytheistic sense.”  “The choice then appears to lie between interpretations (a) “us” = God and angels or (e) plural of self-exhortation. Both are compatible with Hebrew monotheism.” ↩

Cross, Frank Moore.  Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic:  Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel.  Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.  1973.  Essays by the Harvard scholar whose students, Smith among them, built the modern history of Israelite religion from the Ugaritic texts.  Cross argued that YHWH was in origin a cultic name of El, the creator god of the patriarchs, and that El's traits passed to YHWH.

1. 20a.

   Page 44:  “Some have suggested that the expression ‘ădat ’El in Psalm 82:1 be taken as “the council of ’El,” and the poem read to mean that Yahweh (revised to ’ĕlōhîm in the ’Elohistic Psalter) stood in ’El’s council. I doubt that this is so and would place the passage among those in early poetry where ’El is clearly regarded as a proper name of Yahweh.” ↩

2. 20b.

   Page 44:  “’El is rarely if ever used in the Bible as the proper name of a non-Israelite, Canaanite deity in the full consciousness of a distinction between ’El and Yahweh, god of Israel. This is a most extraordinary datum.” ↩

3. 20c.

   Page 264, note 193:  “Despite strong arguments offered by Eissfeldt, Albright, and others for an eleventh-century dating of the hymn, I am not inclined to date it earlier than the ninth century B.C.” ↩ ↩

4. 20d.

   Page 98, note 28:  “In Ugaritic, the colon represents a classical Gattung: “the address to the divine assembly.” The writer has discussed this literary type in another connection in “The Council of Yahweh in Second Isaiah,” JNES, 12 (1953), 274-277. The address in plural imperatives, especially in repetitive form, is characteristic.”  Isaiah 40:1 opens with the repeated plural command naḥamu naḥamu, "Comfort, comfort." ↩

Counted in the Westminster Leningrad Codex by the script research/elohistic-psalter.ts, which tallies every word tagged with Strong's number 3068 (YHWH) or 430 (elohim) in each block of the Psalter.  Psalms 1-41:  YHWH 278, elohim 48.  Psalms 42-83:  YHWH 40, elohim 245.  Psalms 84-150:  YHWH 369, elohim 69.  The count includes elohim used of other gods, which is a small share of the uses.  The output is in research/elohistic-psalter.out. ↩

Højgaard, Christian Canu et al.  The Samaritan Pentateuch, Text-Fabric edition.  2023.  A machine-readable transcription of the Samaritan Pentateuch from manuscript Dublin, Chester Beatty Library 751, based on Stefan Schorch's critical edition.

1. 22a.

   Verse Genesis 14:22:  “הרמתי את ידי אל ה אלהים אל עליון קנה שׁמים ו ארץ”.  "I raise my hand to God (ha-Elohim), El Elyon":  the Samaritan text has ha-Elohim where the Masoretic Text has YHWH. ↩

Kennedy, Titus.  “The Land of the šȝsw (Nomads) of yhwȝ at Soleb.”  Dotawo:  A Journal of Nubian Studies 6:175–192.  2019.  A re-examination, with new photographs, of the Soleb temple inscriptions naming nomad groups east of Egypt, by an archaeologist who argues elsewhere for an early date of the Exodus.  It corrects the transcription of the name to yhwȝ and dates the list to Amenhotep III's reign.

1. 23a.

   Page 184:  “Therefore, the correct transcription of this hieroglyphic phrase on Column IV at the Soleb temple is tA SAsw yhwA.”  “The above criteria demonstrate that the translation should be the “land of the nomads of Yahweh,” not “Yahweh in the land of the nomads,””.  The Amarah West list, a thirteenth-century BC copy, is discussed on page 177. ↩ ↩

2. 23b.

   Page 188:  “placing the date of the conquest lists from about 1409–1385 bce.”  Page 189:  “both Column IV N4 a2 and Block 69 from the Soleb temple contain, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, the earliest reference to the name yhwA around 1400 bce.” ↩

3. 23c.

   Page 180:  “a reference to the deity Yahweh, known from the 9th century bce Mesha Stele and many ancient Hebrew inscriptions and texts.” ↩

Redford, Donald B.  Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times.  Princeton University Press.  1992.  A history of Egypt's relations with Canaan and Israel by a leading Egyptologist who was skeptical of much of the biblical history.  It reads the Soleb entry as the divine name and draws a southern-origin conclusion from it.

1. 24a.

   Pages 272–273:  “and if this be the case, as it undoubtedly is, the passage constitutes a most precious indication of the whereabouts during the late fifteenth century B.C. of an enclave revering this god. And while it would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that “Israel” as known from the period of the Judges or the early monarchy was already in existence in Edom at this time, one cannot help but recall the numerous passages in later Biblical tradition that depict Yahweh “coming forth from Se‘ir” and originating in Edom. The only reasonable conclusion is that one major component in the later amalgam that constituted Israel, and the one with whom the worship of Yahweh originated, must be looked for among the Shasu of Edom already at the end of the fifteenth century B.C.” ↩ ↩ ↩

Cooke, G. A.  A Text-Book of North-Semitic Inscriptions.  Clarendon Press, Oxford.  1903.  A standard edition of the early Moabite, Hebrew, Phoenician and Aramaic inscriptions with text, translation and commentary.  Its first entry is the Mesha Stele.

1. 25a.

   Page 3:  “And Kemosh said to me, Go take Nebo against Israel.”  “And I took thence the .. of Yahweh, and I dragged them before Kemosh.”  Lines 14 and 17-18 of the inscription.  The word before "of Yahweh" is damaged;  later editions restore it as "vessels." ↩

Na'aman, Nadav.  “The Inscriptions of Kuntillet ʿAjrud Through the Lens of Historical Research.”  Ugarit-Forschungen 43.  2011.  A review by a Tel Aviv historian of the inscriptions from the eighth-century way station at Kuntillet ʿAjrud in Sinai, their date and what they show about the worship of YHWH.  Na'aman reads the "YHWH of Samaria" and "YHWH of Teman" blessings as regional forms of the god.

1. 26a.

   Page 304:  “The reference to YHWH of Samaria in Pithos A, as well as the personal names based on the theophoric form Yō, indicate that the visitors were from the kingdom of Israel. Pithos B and other inscriptions mentions YHWH of Teman – that is, the god of the south Palestinian regions.” ↩

2. 26b.

   Page 313:  “Radiometric data dates the site between the beginning of the eighth century and the Assyrian conquest”.  “Ceramic comparisons suggest the site dates to approximately the first half of the eighth century BCE”. ↩

3. 26c.

   Page 304:  “Clearly, then, in the eighth century BCE, YHWH was not yet perceived as a universal god, master of the entire land, but as a god associated with a specific region: ‘YHWH Shomron’ was the god of the Samaria region, ‘YHWH Teman’ was the god of the south Palestinian regions, and the ‘God of Jerusalem’ was the god of the highlands of Judah”.  “Following the discovery of inscriptions at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, several researchers have suggested that the famous verse of Deuteronomy 6:4 – “Hear, O Israel: YHWH our God is one YHWH” – was conceived specifically to counter the situation depicted in eighth-century inscriptions of this sort”. ↩

Tigay, Jeffrey H.  “You Shall Have No Other Gods:  Israelite Religion in the Light of Hebrew Inscriptions.”  Harvard Semitic Studies 31.  Scholars Press, Atlanta.  1986.  A count of every theophoric personal name then known from pre-exilic Hebrew inscriptions, by a Jewish Bible scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, with the salutations, prayers and oaths in the same inscriptions.  It is the standard statement of the onomastic argument and states its own limits.

1. 27a.

   Page 12:  “In this corpus, 557 individuals bear names with YHWH as their theophoric element. 77 others bear names with the theophoric element ʾēl, “God/god/the deity El,” or ʾēlî, “my god.””  “Only 35 seem clearly or very plausibly to refer to deities other than YHWH.”  Page 15:  “With these 35 pagan names there would be a total of 592 theophoric names in the corpus (excluding those whose names contain ʾēl or ʾēlî). The 557 individuals with Yahwistic names would constitute 94.1% of the total, and those bearing pagan names would amount to 5.9%.”  Tigay's table on page 13 lists six Baal names among the 35.  With the El names counted, YHWH is 557 of 669 names, 83%, and El 77, 11.5%. ↩

2. 27b.

   Page 15, footnote 46:  “In the corpus of names found in controlled archaeological excavations 213 (91.4%) are Yahwistic and 20 (8.6%) are likely to be pagan.” ↩

3. 27c.

   Page 37:  “the low representation of pagan deities in Israelite names and inscriptions indicates that—so far as our evidence goes—deities other than YHWH were not widely regarded by Israelites as sources of beneficence, blessing, protection, and justice.” ↩

4. 27d.

   Page 14:  “Five names in the Samaria ostraca clearly contain this element. In all the rest of the corpus only one further name clearly contains this element”.  “They stem from a single region within a brief period.” ↩

5. 27e.

   Page 18:  “The ratio of Yahwistic names to pagan names is 94.1% to 5.9% in the inscriptions and 89% to 11% for all pre-exilic periods represented in the Bible. For the periods from which inscriptional names are known— those of the Divided Monarchy and Late Judah—the ratio in the Bible is 96% to 4%. The similarity of these ratios suggests that, at least for the periods of the Divided Monarchy and Late Judah, censorship in the Masoretic Text, though it undeniably occurred, did not significantly distort the actual picture.” ↩

6. 27f.

   Page 17:  “On the other hand, the high percentage of Yahwistic names does not necessarily point to an equal percentage of monotheists or monolatrists. Even polytheists could give some or all of their children Yahwistic names if Yahweh was one of the gods they worshipped.”  “What we learn from the statistics is not the percentage of monotheists or monolatrists in the population—at least not directly—but how rarely Israelites chose to invoke other deities when naming their children.” ↩

7. 27g.

   Page 20:  “An analogous explanation of the onomastic evidence from Israel would mean that the popular, private religion was almost exclusively Yahwistic and that, with few exceptions, other deities were worshipped only in the state religion when royal policy dictated it.”  “In any case, it is clear that onomastic evidence does not always give a complete picture of the gods worshipped in a society”. ↩

8. 27h.

   Page 41:  “Since the inscriptional evidence sets in for the most part in the eighth century, our conclusions apply mainly to the period beginning then. The evidence does not directly argue against the greater prevalence of polytheism earlier.” ↩

Albertz, Rainer, and Rüdiger Schmitt.  Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant.  Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake.  2012.  A study of the religion of Israelite families from archaeology and inscriptions.  Albertz's chapter counts 675 Hebrew personal names from 2,922 inscribed records, sorts them by type and divine element, and argues that names show the piety of families, which differed from the religion of the state.

1. 28a.

   Page 340:  “By omitting secular names and hypocorisms, we tally 404 Hebrew theophoric personal names from the 1,978 epigraphic records”.  “Names containing these units amount to 13.1% of all theophoric names”.  “The El-names constitute a similar 13.1% of all Hebrew theophoric names and 11.1% of all occurrences. The third and largest unit refers to the Israelite national god, Yawu; 59.4% of all names in the present sample contain this reference, which are 67.6% of all instances.”  “it is a small unit of only 11 names represented in 20 instances (or 2.8 and 1.0% of the total, respectively).”  “these names together compose a fifth unit, which constitutes 8.2% of all names and 6.1% of instances.”  “These form a sixth unit that includes 1.7% of all theophoric names and 1.2% of all instances.”  The first unit is names built on kinship terms, the fourth Baal, the fifth other West Semitic gods with the titles melek and ʾadon, the sixth Egyptian gods. ↩ ↩

2. 28b.

   Page 245:  “J. Tigay (1987: 177) used the large proportion of epigraphic names containing YHWH to make a broad inference about general religious history”.  “General conclusions such as these are highly questionable; in the latter case, for example, it is entirely possible that Ahab considered the realms of state religion and his own personal belief to be two distinct realms.” ↩

Golub, Mitka R.  “The Distribution of Personal Names in the Land of Israel and Transjordan during the Iron II Period.”  Journal of the American Oriental Society 134(4):621–642.  2014.  A study of 799 personal names from excavated inscriptions at 66 sites, mapping each name's divine element by site and century.  Golub restricted the count to excavated objects to avoid forgeries from the antiquities market.

1. 29a.

   Page 621:  “The use of god names other than Yahweh in ancient Israel was very limited.”  Page 636:  “The distributions at the four Judean sites are remarkably uniform: the dominant element is yhw (86%-67%), followed by ʾl (16%-9%) and divine appellatives (12%-5%). At all four Judean sites, the element bʿl is absent.” ↩ ↩

2. 29b.

   Page 636:  “In contrast, the distribution of theophoric elements in Samaria is totally different from that of the Judean sites: yw is the dominant element (49%), followed by bʿl (27%). The elements yhw and yh are absent.” ↩

3. 29c.

   Page 631:  “the combined group of the three yahwistic theophoric elements, yhw, yw and yh, increases substantially from 53% of the total in the early centuries to 69% of the total in the later centuries.”  Page 639:  “may indicate the spread of yahwism”.  Golub's early group is the tenth to eighth centuries and her late group the seventh and early sixth.  In her Table 4, names of Baal and other gods are 15 of 103 early and 9 of 273 late. ↩ ↩

4. 29d.

   Page 637:  “we may suspect that the onomasticon does not equally represent all social strata in the area”. ↩

Counted for this article from Golub's April 2025 data file by the script research/theophoric-count.ts, using Golub's own tags for each name's divine element ⁴⁰.  "Names naming a god" excludes names with no divine element and names built only on kinship words.  Judah, 817 records:  YHWH 315, El 56, Baal 1, the titles mlk "king" and ʾdn "lord" 5, other named gods 6, so 383 names naming a god, of which YHWH is 82.2%, El 14.6%, Baal 0.3% and the titles and other gods 3%.  Dropping the records Golub flags as repeats gives 81.2% YHWH.  Israel, 126 records:  YHWH 32, El 8, Baal 10, titles 1, other gods 2, so 53 names naming a god, of which YHWH is 60.4%, El 15.1%, Baal 18.9%.  Eight of the ten Baal records are from the Samaria ostraca.  Ammon, 69 records:  32 names naming a god, of which El 26, Milkom 1, and Yareah, Shemesh, Anat, ʾdn and Baal one each.  Edom, 12 records:  Qaus 4, El 1, mlk 1.  The output is in research/theophoric-count.out. ↩ ↩

Tigay, Jeffrey H.  “Israelite Religion:  The Onomastic and Epigraphic Evidence.”  Ancient Israelite Religion:  Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, 157–194.  Fortress, Philadelphia.  Edited by Patrick D. Miller, Paul D. Hanson and S. Dean McBride.  1987.  Tigay's essay version of his 1986 count, on the 738 Israelite names published by 1979, with a longer discussion of the objections.

1. 31a.

   Page 171:  “The Ammonite onomasticon is overwhelmingly dominated by El, and if one assumes that the Ammonites were polytheists, this would indicate that other important deities could go largely unmentioned in the onomasticon of their worshipers. However, startling as it may be to contemplate, we do not know that the Ammonites were polytheistic, and from their onomasticon one might conclude that they were no more pluralistic in religion than were the Israelites.” ↩

Counted in the Westminster Leningrad Codex with a search of the consonantal text ⁹.  The phrase ʾen ʿod, "there is no other," occurs in seventeen verses;  in eleven God is the subject:  Deuteronomy 4:35, 4:39;  1 Kings 8:60;  Isaiah 45:5, 45:6, 45:14, 45:18, 45:21, 45:22, 46:9;  Joel 2:27.  The other six (2 Kings 4:6;  Ecclesiastes 9:5;  Jeremiah 48:2, 49:7;  Malachi 2:13;  Psalm 74:9) are about oil, wages, Moab's praise, Teman's wisdom, an offering and prophets.  The phrase YHWH hu ha-elohim, "YHWH, he is God," occurs in five verses:  Deuteronomy 4:35, 4:39;  1 Kings 8:60;  1 Kings 18:39 (twice);  2 Chronicles 33:13. ↩

Block, Daniel I.  “How Many Is God?  An Investigation into the Meaning of Deuteronomy 6:4-5.”  Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47(2):193–212.  2004.  A study of the grammar and context of the Shema by an evangelical Old Testament scholar, arguing that "one" there means "alone" and that the verse is a call to exclusive loyalty rather than a statement about how many gods exist.

1. 33a.

   Page 211:  “should not be taken out of context and interpreted as a great monotheistic confession. Moses had made that point in 4:35, 39”.  “This is a cry of allegiance, an affirmation of covenant commitment in response to the question, “Who is the God of Israel?””  “Yahweh our God! Yahweh alone!” ↩

2. 33b.

   Page 210:  “Translated into its original context on the plains of Moab, this is precisely the sort of thing that Moses could have said”. ↩

Wolff, Hans Walter.  “Hosea:  A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Hosea.”  Hermeneia.  Fortress, Philadelphia.  Translated by Gary Stansell.  1974.  The standard critical commentary on Hosea, translated from the German of 1961.  Wolff dates each "scene" of the book from its historical allusions and treats chapter 13 as the prophet's own words.

1. 34a.

   Page 224:  “Accordingly, the sayings from this scene were very probably proclaimed around the year 724.”  The scene is Hosea 13:1-14:1, which includes 13:4. ↩

2. 34b.

   Page 226:  “In the style of the traditional proclamation of divine law, Hosea solemnly announces to his audience in direct address that Yahweh is the only God Israel knows; that besides him she has no helper. This verse does not repeat a demand upon Israel, but rather praises the God who alone is her savior (cf. Is 43:11; 45:21).” ↩

Cross, Frank Moore, and David Noel Freedman.  “Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry.”  Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 21.  Scholars Press, Missoula.  1975.  The 1950 Johns Hopkins dissertation of two of Albright's students, reprinted with a postscript, dating the oldest Hebrew poems from their spelling, grammar and verse forms.  In the postscript the authors call dating by spelling "a precarious enterprise" that "at best may confirm other typological evidence."

1. 35a.

   Page 128:  “The present writers hold that the poem as a whole was written down in substantially its present form not later than the ninth-eighth centuries B.C.”  Page 183:  “The attempt to date a document by survivals of archaic orthographies is a precarious enterprise, and orthographic analysis at best may confirm other typological evidence”.  The poem is 2 Samuel 22 = Psalm 18. ↩

Harper, William Rainey.  “A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Amos and Hosea.”  International Critical Commentary.  T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh.  1905.  A critical commentary of the older liberal school by the first president of the University of Chicago.

1. 36a.

   Page 397:  “It may not be assumed that Hosea believed in the existence of only one God. At all events, this expression does not show this. He says, however, that no other god has exerted his power on behalf of Israel.” ↩

Lang, Bernhard.  Monotheism and the Prophetic Minority:  An Essay in Biblical History and Sociology.  Almond Press, Sheffield.  1983.  Essays by a German critical scholar arguing that Israel was polytheist until a minority "Yahweh-alone" movement, beginning with the prophets, won out in the exile.  It is one of the classic statements of the evolutionary model.

1. 37a.

   Page 11:  “The religion of the Yahweh-aloneists, the first clear evidence for which is found in the Book of Hosea (ca. 750), can be called Proto-Judaism”.  Page 19:  “Actual influence of the monolatric idea is not attested before the 9th century B.C. when it is advocated by the prophets, Elijah and Elisha, in the northern kingdom, and by the reforms of kings Asa and Jehoshaphat in the south.”  Page 46:  “This final step was taken in Israel and in other places, and mainly so in the sixth century B.C.” ↩

Hess, Richard S.  Israelite Religions:  An Archaeological and Biblical Survey.  Baker Academic, Grand Rapids.  2007.  A survey of the archaeological and textual evidence for Israel's religion from the Bronze Age to the exile, by an evangelical Old Testament scholar and archaeologist.  Hess accepts real religious diversity in Iron Age Israel alongside an exclusive Yahwistic strand.

1. 38a.

   Page 270:  “Before the monarchy there is no extrabiblical evidence for names compounded with “Yahweh” or its abbreviated form.”  “However, no explanation is certain.” ↩

2. 38b.

   Page 350:  “A third point is the gradual evolution and change in ancient Israel. Although the texts and archaeology indicate a diversity of religious practice present from the beginning until the end of the period, there are clear signs that as the centuries progressed this people became increasingly devoted to Yahweh alone and to his religion as attested in the biblical texts.” ↩

3. 38c.

   Page 270, note 106:  “While the extreme position of total monotheism can hardly be demonstrated (from neither the Bible nor the extrabiblical inscriptions) the Yahwistic element of the personal names is significant.” ↩

4. 38d.

   Page 163:  “The law itself does not require a philosophical monotheism, but rather demands that only Yahweh be recognized as deity by his followers.” ↩

Hurtado, Larry W.  One God, One Lord:  Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism.  Fortress, Philadelphia.  1988.  A study by a New Testament historian of how Jews of the Second Temple period honoured angels and other exalted figures while worshipping God alone, and how early Christian devotion to Jesus arose inside that pattern.  Hurtado judges monotheism by whom people worshipped, not by which beings they believed in.

1. 39a.

   Page 14:  “The judgment about whether monotheistic commitment was significantly modified will be settled basically by discernment as to whether, in a specific case, another figure was given corporate cultic reverence in actions normally reserved for God. But if the ancient Jews whose writings we examine regarded themselves as still safeguarding the uniqueness of God, and if their religious devotion seems to have been essentially directed toward this unique God, then whatever honorific status they accorded to other beings will have to be taken as examples of the way ancient Judaism was able to include additional heavenly figures without ceasing to be exclusivist monotheism.” ↩

Golub, Mitka R.  Onomasticon.net:  Personal Names from the Iron II Southern Levant.  Apr 2025.  Golub's online database of 1,081 personal-name records from excavated objects, each tagged with its site, kingdom and divine element. ↩