Elsewhere, Paul simultaneously
sounds the biblical tropes of denial and defiance when speaking of these gods.
Thus, at 1 Cor 8:4–6, instructing his ex-pagan gentile assembly, he states: “We
know that ‘an idol has no being in the world’ and that ‘there is no god but
one.’ 5 For even if there are so-called gods either in heaven or on earth—as
indeed there are many gods and many lords—6 yet for us there is one
God, the Father, . . . and one lord, Jesus Christ.” Verse 6 does not deny the
truth of verse 5, which plainly acknowledges the theological congestion of the
first-century cosmos. Rather, it situates Paul’s hearers within their newly Judaized
cosmos: the existence of these many gods and other deities (κύριοι)
notwithstanding, Paul’s people are to adhere solely to Paul’s god, enabled to
do so through the spirit of that god’s son, the messiah (χριστός) (Paula Fredriksen,
“Philo,
Herod, Paul, and the Many Gods of Ancient Jewish ‘Monotheism’,” Harvard Theological
Review 115, no. 1 [February 2022]: 15)