Agreeing with Nathan MacDonald, Deuteronomy and the Meaning of “Monotheism” that Deuteronomic monotheism was confessional and soteriological, not ontological, Bird notes that:
Even Paul’s christological monotheism
highlights the relational aspect for, despite the “many gods and many lords—yet
for us there is one God, the Father” (1 Cor 8.5-6). (Michael F. Bird, Jesus
Among the Gods: Early Christology in Greco-Roman World [Waco, Tex.: Baylor
University Press, 2022], 25 n. 38)
Elsewhere,
Bird noted that:
The ancient Jews could then on some
accounts be categorized not as abstract and absolute monotheists, but henotheists,
loyal to one specific deity above other divine beings, and characterized by an aniconic
monolatry, exclusive and imageless worship of this one deity. This is
evident from how the Hebrew Bible recognizes that Yahweh presides over the
“Hosts” of heaven, proving that other deities are out there. Even the naked
pronouncements in Deutero-Isaiah that “besides me there is no god,” are “more
like a rhetorical moment than a religious revolution” toward absolute
monotheism in the post-exilic period. This explains why Paul can say that there
are “many gods and many lords” (1 Cor 8.5) and refer to the “god of this age” (2
Cor 4.4), the “rulers of this age” (1 Cor 2.8), and various cosmic “powers”
(Rom 8.38; Col 1.16; 2.15; Eph 6.12). The early church recognized a class of
intermediary angels and ministering spirits around God’s throne, hostile powers
in rebellion against God, and for Gnostic cosmologies there were various
emanations, aeons, and archons. Jews, Christians, and sometimes “pagans”
recognized a single God as presiding over a “celestial monarchy.” Consequently,
modern ideas of an absolute metaphysical monotheism, where God is the single
and solitary divine being, do not correspond to ancient Jewish or Christian
beliefs of their God among other “gods.” (Michael F. Bird, Jesus Among the
Gods: Early Christology in Greco-Roman World [Waco, Tex.: Baylor University
Press, 2022], 25-26)
