Monday, September 18, 2023

Michael F. Bird on the Ontological Existence of Other "Gods" in the Bible

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)