Big God, Little god

In Exodus 23:32-33 there is reference to other gods as there is throughout the Old Testament as I am sure you have noticed if you have been reading at all.   In Sunday school we were always taught that the Jews believed in just God alone and no others, sure they would stray from time to time and build a golden calf or two, but for the most part it was just God, right?  Well apparently not.  Polytheism was rampant in ways I do not think that we can begin to imagine.  This is weird for me.  On the one hand in Genesis you have “we made man in our image” with God speaking pluraly and these polytheism beliefs would buy very well into the theory of “divine council” as part of that plurality in God’s language.  But that is what troubles me I suppose.  There is always mention of other gods, but the Jews and God almost speak as though these gods actually exist, like they acknowledge their existence and it just so happens that God is far and above all of those in comparison.  Okay fine, but then God loosely takes on a Zeus like role or more closely to home in Exodus a Ra like role in that sure all these other gods exist but they are far below and subject ultimately to God.  I think God ultimately proves to us that these gods don’t exist with the whole scene in I Kings 18 with Elijah and the priests of Baal and God’s continual defeat in other “competitions” against other so-called “gods”, but the Jews continue to have this language of the pluralness of all the gods and then God!  I have no real answer for this other than maybe that it just took them so long to transition into just One God and really they never got out of that transition until long after the fact as we see that the Jews have continual boats with other idols and gods.  Is it more comfortable to rely on made up gods?  Do these gods actually exist or better yet what is the people’s understanding of a “god”?  It is common for man to see another man do something miraculous or amazing, even unexplainable and see that as “god-like” and from that begin to worship them or even look up to the sky and see the massive thing of fire that we call the sun and say something so immense and powerful has to be a god itself.  If this then is the case then that would absolutely simplify and explain why they speak as though these other gods exist.  It, like many things is a still mystery ultimately though.  I guess my only real point that you can take home with you is that the Jews of the Old Testament were not as monotheistic as we all thought they were.  I still love my Sunday school teachers though ha ha.

Kalos Elpis

Kelly M. Doolittle