However! The cool word I learned was “henotheism,“ described as the faith practiced by Abraham and descendants—the belief that there are many gods, but you should only worship one in particular. In the early renditions of the Bible, both deity and people were pretty clear on there being plenty of gods about, it was just a matter of not worshipping everybody else—“You shall have no other gods before Me,” not “I’m the only God, guys, so lump it.“ The language, according to Cahill, is pretty clear—this was an environment in which there were obviously a lot of gods about, you were just supposed to stick to YHVH, because—well, y’know. (Not speaking ancient Hebrew, I can’t speak to the truth of this one way or the other, mind you.) The mental shift from that henotheism (ha! Love that word!) to the straight out monotheism of later Christianity—from “I’m the top god,” to “I’m the ONLY god,“ was an interesting sort of shift to make, and obviously had a big influence on the ultimate incarnation of Christianity. One can’t help but wonder what would have happened if things had stayed henotheistic instead of converting to the sort of pure monotheism of modern Christianity.

Vocabulary is good.