When I was an undergraduate, I remember an essay we had to write which had the title something like, “was Moses monotheist?” so reading around for the essay, we came across terms like henotheism, the idea that there may be many Gods but my God is the only one worshipping.
And we also looked at the existential crisis for the Jews in the Babylonian exile, alluded to in psalm 137, “ how can we sing YHWH’s song in the strange land” because it was believed that the worship of a deity was limited to the territory from which it dwelt They concluded that they could worship their God in a strange land, which meant to them that their God was no longer limited to a particular locality. And I think the monotheism develops from this experience. However, I concluded in my essay, but if I were able to go back in time and ask Moses whether or not he was a monotheist, then I’m not sure he would’ve understood the concept. As Bede Griffiths points out, words like monotheism, polytheism, pantheism, and so on are all words of Greek origin, and they therefore carry concepts that may make sense to a Greek but not necessarily to an early Hebrew.
I think for me, the major difference between polytheism and monotheism, is the difference between the local and the universal. It has been argued by people like Ronald Hutton that the word pagan is derived from the Latin pagus, meaning locality, and therefore the Gods of polytheism are manifold because they come from many local deities. Contrast that with a Catholic understanding of God, (catholic coming from a Greek expression meaning according to or pertaining to the whole, ie the universe/cosmos).
I think the religion that arises from the biblical tradition, begins as a kind of paganism in so far as it worships the God of a particular locality. It’s only when it becomes impossible to worship their  God in its locality that conceptually this God becomes the God of the universe, and there is a move from polytheism conceptually to  monotheism.

Studying the religions around the Levantine area where the Israelites came from is so fascinating. Specifically Baal and Asherah

That wavy cupboard in the background is pretty hard to deal with when you're watching this stoned

"I am and there is no other". Sounds very much like a work situation I found myself in (and I suspect others do too) where two people higher up the management chain thought they had authority over me. The one who was on paper my line manager said almost exactly that.

Tie this with debates on if Christians and Muslims worship the same god and you have yourself one hell of a never ending argument there..

2:30 I am not proud to say I flinched

This is awesome to have both you and Dan!

I have a serious Christian fatigue from Alex. There's a world out there from Greece to China.

I don’t think it has ever been a (historical) Christian concept that YHWH is the only god in the Bible.

There are clearly other gods in the Old Testament. The Old Testament clearly, on multiple occasions, says that the Israelites began worshipping this god or that god instead of YHWH.

An obvious reading puts early Judaism into a Henotheist or Monolatrous category.

The big shift is around Second Temple Judaism. Christianity has always referred to itself as a revealed religion. Revelation has to come from God as there are things humans cannot know.

By the ST period, Christians would argue that it was revealed that, what was originally thought to be gods or such, were actually demons, angels, etc.

Dr Michael Heiser talked about the divine council and how the Bible is more Henothesistlc than monotheistic. Henotheism is the idea there are many lower g gods but only one big G God and that these lower g gods are what known as principalities and can include other heavenly beings like angels, demons and even humans. Lower g gods are powerful but not all powerful, not all knowing, not eternally uncreated and so on but still cosmically powerful. Even the stars of heaven and leviathan and behemoth fall into the category of lower g gods. lower g god is like a power level or authority level but God is called the most high God so he is supreme.

Wouldn't it make sense that Deuteronomy 32:39 almost follows from verse 8 & 9?  We're told in verses 8-9 that the Most High divvied up the peoples between his sons and Yahweh gets "Jacob."  After that announcement, El Elyon steps away from the podium and turns it over to his designated son, Yahweh, who, addressing the descendants Jacob, says, "Now, I am your god.  There is no other."

+1 for more gavin dan discussion

Alex O’Connor I was debating atheists trying to use the “yhwh pantheon storm god and his father is el” argument

As an animist, polytheist, and practitioner of magic who is interested in jungian psychology. I found this really insightful.thank you.

Love you guys ❤

For me one of the problems of this discussion is that both those who question the presence of monotheism in the earliest literary traditions within the Hebrew Bible, and those who believe it is present there, both are using terms like monotheism and polytheism in an anachronistic way. These are terms that emerged in a different linguistic and philosophical culture and in a much later period. It seems the first use of the term Monotheism was in England in 1660, by Henry More an Church of England Clergyman and a Cambridge Platonist who using the term to describe the Christianity of his day. That's a Christianity with 16 centuries of history of development in thought. So I would argue that monotheism as we now conceptualise would have been an entirely alien concept to the religious thought of the ancient Levant.

now it make sense why the church always say christian don't follow the old covenant or the old testament. bt they love to use old testament to justify the new testament, which isn't the hebrew bible or the torah.

18:00 I genuinely appreciate the fact that Alex cares about having someone who thinks the opposite of his viewpoint has representation.

You cannot go past MICHAEL HEISER concerning the meaning of „elohim“ (which isn‘t „God“), JHWH, the Sons of God, the Council of God and especially Dtn 32:8+9. He helps understand this passage  within the meta narrative of the rebellions (!) of mankind, as well as other „elohim“ against God and the consequent judgement. Heiser deals with the question of the identity of the other gods. See his book „The unseen realm“ or numerous videos here on yt.

This is certainly a conversation that will be appreciated by "the most high".