Truth Unites - How Did Monotheism Really Begin?

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Most ancient people were polytheistic, believing in many gods. Today, most people, most human beings on planet Earth, are monotheists, believing in one god. That's because Islam and Christianity have gotten so huge. Fascinating question comes up from this. How and when did this human transition from a pantheon of deities to a single solitary deity take place? Did monotheism hit human history suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, or did it grow up

slowly like a weed. Is monotheism an evolution or a revolution in the human story? I find this question so fascinating. I've been reading and exploring about this, reading about Native American religions and Aboriginal Australian religions and of course Egyptian and Mesopotamian and others. And in this video, I want to highlight the role of ancient Israel in this process. And the proposal I'm going to argue for is that careful attention to the definition of terms suggests that it's reasonable to interpret the emergence of monotheism in Israel as the product of divine revelation. I'll put my thesis on screen so you can know exactly what I'm trying to argue here. Note that I'm not saying that such a view is required by the data.

I'm just saying it's one reasonable way to interpret the evidence. And we'll put the focus especially on Israel, but we'll look at other places as well. First, some backstory. I got interested in this topic when I first stumbled across a video by Dan McClellan, and I'll just put up the first four seconds of that video so you can hear his thesis clearly. There is no monotheism anywhere in the Bible. So that got my attention and I started studying this and I just got interested in this topic. We've had some back-and-forth videos which I thought was really productive.

I enjoyed the back-and-forth exchange. And then this came up, our back-and-forth exchange came up several times in Dan's discussion about this with Alex O'Connor. And I would quite like to have someone on the show to defend. monotheism in the Bible. I know you've had a back and forth with Gavin Aughtland about this recently. Yeah. In fact, I owe him a response, I think, but I would be open to sort of going back and forth. Or maybe the two of you, again, I don't know if you like debates in the sense of being together. Maybe I should talk to the conversation. I think a conversation of discussion is, I'm perfectly happy to do that, even if it gets a little

debatee, but the idea of a formal debate, that's what I'm kind of allergic to. But yeah, I would love to talk with Gavin about this because he's brought up some stuff that I need to respond to. But yeah, I think he makes a thoughtful and a sincere case for his position. But yeah, I still think it is motivated by protecting the dogmatism, the monotheistic belief. So I would love to have a discussion with either Dan and or Alex. My answer is, standing answers, yes, if either or both of them want to talk this through. That would be an honor for me. I think it would be fun. And I think it would be productive. I am absolutely committed to trying to maintain positive relationships across our differences. So I would go into a discussion like this and I would just expect it to be

positive, productive, just a good discussion. We could all bring our beverage of choice and title the video, a Baptist, a Mormon, and an agnostic walk into a conversation about monotheism just to defy some stereotypes or something, try to make it fun and just keep it lighthearted. Or it can get intense too. I don't care. But I would love to talk. In the meantime, as I'm keep studying this issue over the last several months. I want to address three topics that are fresh in my mind. First, is Dan's position representative of the scholarship on this question? Second, why I'm convinced that some biblical rhetoric is accurately characterized as explicitly monotheistic. And third, most important question, the million dollar question, I hope you stick around for. How does monotheism progress and develop

organically within ancient Israel? That's the tough question. Spoiler alert, I don't really have a clear, precise answer, but I have some principles that we can work at. I hope you'll stick for that. That's the most important question of all. First, let's talk about the role of scholarship in these YouTube disputes we have. Sometimes the way the dialectic is framed is the scholars versus the apologists. So the scholars are motivated by the data, and the apologists are motivated by dogma. I'm not accusing anyone of saying this directly in terms of trying to shape this, but you just see this general impression, you read it in comments. But what I would basically want to say is, in the social media world, we also find what I would classify as counter-apologetics,

where, and in actual practice, this can be just as ideologically slanted as apologetics, just in the opposite direction. And I think we need to appreciate that counter-apologetics and scholarship can be pretty different. In this dispute, Dan's proposal that there is no monotheism in the Bible. I think he dates it to around the second century. A.D. or C.E., he would say. From everything I can tell, that is significantly outside the scholarly center of gravity. And such a view would depend, that basically the definition of monotheism is doing the work there so far as I can tell, because this is going to define monotheism so strictly that not even Second Temple Judaism would qualify. And I don't think that framing is representative

of the scholarly literature. Let me document this for a moment. I think you'll see why this is important to work through. Starting with Mark Smith's book, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism. This is a good book, a respected book in the field, published by Oxford University Press in 2001. And it demonstrates that the broader scholarly discussion is generally about when monotheism emerges in ancient Israel, not whether it does so during that span of time. And of course, how it does so as well, of course. Because some Old Testament texts are generally taken in the scholarship as monotheistic. Smith's own position is that monotheism emerges in ancient Israel in the 6th or 7th century BC, perhaps somewhere in that span of time prior to the Babylonian exile. And at the beginning of the book,

he describes the Bible's own outlook, which is essentially that when God revealed himself to the patriarchs and then to Moses and the people of Israel on Mount Sinai, this was a central moment in world history, and he says, such a view can be found today, not only in the general culture, but also in scholarly circles as well. In chapter 8, he starts off by giving a summary of the scholarship on this question, and he envisions two primary positions. Let's call them the ancient view and the exile view, just my terms here. First, he describes the ancient view, quote, many scholars claim great antiquity for biblical monotheism. Then he lists a bunch of such scholars, especially older scholars and says these and others have viewed monotheism as an original feature of Israel,

at least from Mount Sinai onward. Then he mentions other newer scholarly defenses of this view that detect monotheism during the monarchy and often suggest the possibility of an earlier date prior to that. Now, Smith is not persuaded of that view himself. He writes, this argument appears weak, not simply because one might sense possible Christian or Jewish apologetics behind such claims. Indeed, this is in itself no objection. That is an important point. Something can be apologetically motivated and still, in fact, correct. Come back to that later. But Smith gives his own objections, his own reasons for objecting to this view, and then he concludes,

basically it's hard to put monotheism prior to the 7th century. That's his view. Then he discusses the second view, the exile view, and he references some scholars in this tradition of thought, and he gives a really perceptive narration of how much of the dispute between these older two camps of scholarship simply has to do with the definition of terms. That's the point we're going to come back to in the third section of this video. What do we mean by monotheism? Remember that. Flag that away. We're going to come back to that, and even that scholar Meeks, or who was it, Meek? Yeah, T.J. Meek. Him and Versus Albright, we're going to talk about that a little bit in the definition of terms. The point for us now is just to say, when Mark Smith pauses

to give a portrait of the scholarly discussion, he considers two options, the ancient view and the exile view. That doesn't mean you couldn't find any other outlier views out there, but again, the scholarly discussions seems to be more focused on when monotheism comes into the picture along the course of ancient Israel's history, not whether it is present at some point in that history and reflected in some texts. Now, why is that the scholarly discussion? Because, according to Smith, at least, some biblical texts clearly reflect monotheism. One page after this, he cites biblical passages containing the rhetoric of exclusivity, similar to many of the ones that I have pointed to, including the final verse he puts up,

I'll put up on screen, First Chronicles 1720, there is none like you, oh Lord, and there is no God beside you. There's lots of verses like this in the Bible. And Smith's conclusion is, one must be careful for terms of exclusivity need not always represent the existence of only one God. However, I accept the generally accepted view that these terms of divine exclusion represent monotheism. So just to be clear here, Mark Smith is saying that generally

accepted view, that verses like these contain language that expresses monotheism. That's what I've been arguing in the dispute I've been having back and forth with Dan. Now, Mark Smith is not eccentric on this point. Take another book, leading text in this field and leading figure in this field, Jan Osman in his text of God and Gods. He argues that what first emerges in ancient Israel is this sharp distinction between true and false religion. He calls this the mosaic distinction. And he says, this precedes the later emergence of what he characterizes as a revolutionary and exclusive monotheism that he dates somewhere in the ballpark of the 7th and 6th centuries culminating during and after the Babylonian exile. I'll give a passage on the screen. You can see he's using

the revolution, not evolution kind of language. He doesn't see this. He's very, that's his interest, it seems like, is the nature of this evolution or this development, not evolution, a revolution. Now, this idea of a progression from a kind of radical and unique focus on one God into a later monotheism proper raises a question I'm going to return to in the third section of this video, namely how we understand the development and progress of biblical revelation. But for now, the point is simple that Osman interprets biblical rhetoric of exclusivity as suggesting biblical monotheism. You know, he's drawing from this language about there is no other and so forth to arrive upon that roughly around the exile date of the emergence of what he calls biblical monotheism. Now, let me be clear about what I'm trying to do in this section of the video. My point is not to criticize either apologetics or counterapologetics.

I take the view, if you believe in something, defend it, okay? Whether it's your religion, your politics, your love of a sports team or whatever, just give your arguments. totally fine. I take the view that both apologetics and scholarship are legitimate efforts in principle. And I actually find that discourse between the two is fruitful in both directions. I myself do both scholarly writing and apologetics work, but I just try to distinguish between the two. Just as I also distinguish both of those from a third register in which I also speak, namely a pastoral one, a sermon that I preach is neither scholarship nor apologetics. And all of those modes of discourse are acceptable. The key is to distinguish them and then be clear about what we're doing.

So I would never point to a YouTube video of mine and say that that is scholarship or something like that. I also try to be honest about my biases when I'm doing apologetics. I think the best thing we can do is just put our biases and our agenda on the table, put it on the chopping block and let it come under review. And so we're just trying to be honest about here's where I'm coming from. What I object to is apologetics or counter-apologetics either that assumes a kind of scholarship. authority when in fact it's not representative of mainstream scholarship. And it gives the judgment of motive for the other side, as though the other side is motivated by the dog buzz and with the implication that this side isn't. And I think that obscures the extent to which both sides in these

religious disputes have their own kinds of dogmatic bias. And so the proposal I would make for a better way forward is let's put less focus on motives altogether, be they apologetical motives or counter-apologetical and just more focus on the arguments. So doing that now, second section of the video, what is the truth about this question? I mean, if that's where the scholarship, I never, I get, actually I get a lot of pushback when I appeal to scholarship in other contexts.

And, you know, people often, I don't know, they react in interesting ways to that. So the appeal that I often will make is, we don't appeal to scholarship to settle something, but scholarship is tremendously valuable. And we have to take it seriously. And so it provokes us to now ask the question. You know, why does the scholarship do this?

Let me explain why I'm convinced with that passage I cited from Smith, that the Bible does have many passages that affirm what can be called and should be called monotheism. Dan tends to interpret this language as rhetoric. You know, for example, it might be indicating that the God of Israel or later the God of Christians is the only God who really matters for us, a metaphor that came up in our previous discussion, he's saying, this is kind of like someone saying that Denver Broncos are the only real football team, the Raiders are nothing, it's this kind of rhetoric. But one of the reasons I'm not persuaded of that is that the Bible depicts the God of Israel as creating the other gods. I think that's

implicit in some texts, like Genesis 1 even, and explicit in others like Nehemiah 9-6, where the host of heaven are created by the Lord and also worship the Lord. And what I've pointed out previously is You know, the Denver Broncos can make various claims over the Raiders, but they didn't create the Raiders, and the Raiders don't worship the Broncos. It starts to break down, but think of it like this. This is the way I put it in my previous video. If one God creates all the other gods, then if you simply rewind the clock far back enough, you get monotheism.

Here's how I put it in my previous video. You could say, just conceptually for the sake of argument, suppose that the God of Israel created the first other angel or God or whatever term you use in the year 1 million BC. I know that's not correct, but just for the sake of this. And suppose that he created time before that. Then you could go back to 1 million and 1 BC and you'd have monotheism. There'd only be one God. Or you could go back to 2 million BC or 3 million BC and so on and so forth, and there would be monotheism.

There's only one God that actually is anywhere in reality because he hasn't created the other ones yet. And in that video, I drew attention to New Testament text as well, where God is portrayed as the singular source for all reality. And I pointed out that, you know, one God who matters for us is simply a different claim than one God from whom are all things. To be the one God who matters for us, and to be the one God from whom are all things, are different kinds of claims. One is a statement of personal relevance and allegiance. The other is a statement of ontological exclusivity. Now, I do agree that the general idiom of the Bible is more covenantal than philosophical. So it really is easy to read biblical language in light of later categories. So we do need to be

careful here. When you have these repeated declarations in Isaiah 44, in Isaiah 45, and elsewhere in that span of Isaiah, that beside me there is no God, and I'm the first and the last and other things like this. We need to be careful with this because the driving concern of these passages is what this means for Israel. But I would just say the covenantal and the philosophical are not totally separate. Such covenantal language has philosophical implications. And it's a meaningful appeal to be made here. If indeed this does reflect a monotheism, if indeed you are saying, God is the first and the last, and he created every other God and so on and so forth, then that will ground the appeal that he is uniquely capable of saving you. He is uniquely capable of covenant worthy of covenant loyalty and so

and so forth. So that idea, monotheism would not be totally foreign to the covenantal concerns here. It is true that false gods can ape this language and also say there is no God beside me, but I would say, so what? They're simply wrong in making that claim from the vantage point of the biblical text, which immediately subverts that claim. I also referenced power. I also referenced passages that seem to collapse the distinction between pagan deities and the physical statues that represent them. I'll put two examples of this on the screen. And one of Dan's responses is that, well, all that's being denied here is that the physical statues are gods. Dan says they were denying real deity to the idol, not to the deity it was supposed to index. And in my previous video,

I gave three arguments for why I think that reading is implausible. First, this distinction is not in the text. The text doesn't say the physical statues are not gods. It says the gods are the physical statues. And so, I'll put it up again. I mean, this is the basis for the destruction. Note the word therefore here on screen. I'll leave this passage up for a moment here. You can just try to think through the logic here. The collapsing of the deity into the physical representation of that deity is the explicit language and basis for the action being described, none the destruction. Could paraphrase it, oh, those gods aren't actual gods. What they actually are is just the work of men's hands.

That's why you can destroy them. That seems to be, that's how I'm reading the verse. I mean, that just looks like what it explicitly says to me. A second concern I have with Dan's interpretation is that it renders biblical rhetoric utterly inane. Take Psalm 115, for example. If this, I mean, this is one of several. verses in this Psalm is sort of deriding the gods of the other nations. If it's just talking about

their statues, that would hardly be cutting rhetoric, right? Of course the statues don't feel things with their hands and walk around on their feet and talk back to you with their throat. But if the rhetoric is talk is actually equating the gods with the statues, then it is quite fitting. The third argument that I gave is from biblical narrative. And I looked at passages like First Kings 18, for example, and I just pointed out, you know, when the prophets of bail on Mount Carmel are crying out, the whole point seems to be that no one hears them. It is not that bail is inferior or unresponsive or less relevant. The whole point of Elijah's mocking them, you know, he's saying maybe Bail's traveling, maybe he's relieving

himself, this kind of thing. The whole point seems to be Bail is not just inferior. He is utterly absent. He's not, no one is paying any attention to you. So on top of those three concerns, let me add a fourth concern that I have with denying any monotheism in the Bible at all. And that is, such a hermeneutic seems unfalsifiable. I mean, it seems, in other words, this appeal to rhetoric seems like you could say this about any verse. So let's make up a fake verse, for example. Genesis 101, the God of Israel is the only true God before anything else existed, he alone was. Now, on its face, that sounds pretty monotheistic.

But you could still say that this is rhetoric. And I'm not trying to mock that. You could legitimately hear the language like that. Just like you could say that Denver Broncos are the only real team. They've been here forever. And so, and I had another fake verse putting it home. But I don't want to seem like I'm deriding that idea. So one verse will make the point hopefully.

The question I have is, is there any thing? language that the Hebrew Bible could utilize, that could express monotheism that couldn't be written off as mere rhetoric if you wanted to. So these are some of the concerns I have just reiterating things I've already argued for why I think Dan's position, there's no monotheism anywhere in the Bible is very problematic. I don't think that's tenable. I don't think it explains the text well. But that simply leaves open the million-dollar question, and that is when do we see monotheism coming into the picture. If it's not in the second century, in the early Christian era, but it emerges somewhere within biblical history, where in that history is it? This is a tough question. Let's talk

about this a bit. In the study of world religions, it's common to explain monotheism as the endpoint to a process of evolutionary development. Often the story will go something like this. You have animism and then polytheism, henotheism, and monotry have a lot of overlap. They're not exactly identical, and then you end up with monotheism. If you want definitions of those terms, I'll put it on the screen, you can pause and read through if you want. Importantly, this way of thinking is not limited to skeptics of religion. Note what C.S. Lewis said. Monotheism should not be regarded as the rival of polytheism, but rather as its maturity. Where you find polytheism, combined with any speculative power and any leisure for speculation, monotheism will sooner or later

arise as a natural development. You see what he's saying there? If you just think long enough about polytheism, it leads to monotheism, is what he's saying. He gives Indian religions as an example where he's saying, look, the many gods frequently yield eventually into a conception of the one whose thoughts constitute all these other gods. So the question is, I'm not saying you have to have any opinion about that whatsoever. That's conceptual backdrop to ask the question more specifically. is that what we have in ancient Israel?

Is this simply another instance of a common evolutionary pattern found elsewhere throughout the ancient world? Or is Israel's movement toward monotheism better understood as the product of a genuinely divine revelation that is then unfolding and developing throughout Israelite history? Now, I am not claiming, oh boy, this is hard. This is really difficult. I know enough to know how challenging this kind of work is here because we're trying to to infer history from what often will stand behind the biblical texts rather than be what is

merely stated in them. And I am not claiming to have this figured out. It's hard to reconstruct the steps of this process. And, you know, I'm just learning. Okay. But I do want to throw on the table for others who are interested in this two considerations that I think further the plausibility of the idea that monotheism can be seen as a divine revelation. In other words, I think monotheism as divine revelation in Israel is consistent with the data and intellectually reasonable. Let me say why for two reasons. First, carefully defining our terms, and second, the category of progressive revelation. So first, we need to clarify our terms. That is like 80% of this debate, because much turns upon just what we mean when we say monotheism. So, for example, if you recall,

Mark Smith's discussion of the ancient view versus the exile view for the emergence of monotheism in Israel? Remember that? Well, one of the biggest reasons for this among the older scholars is just different definitions of terms. And he notes how one of the older exile view proponents, Meek, if you remember him, wrote a letter to one of the older ancient view proponents, Albright, don't worry if you miss these details. And he says, look, basically. our difference seems to be largely one of definition. And Smith is narrating how, yeah, that's unfolded a lot where people are talking past each other because they're using different terms. This is because there are different forms, significantly different forms, of both polytheism

and monotheism. Let's distinguish between what I will call a democratic polytheism, making up these words. That just means a polytheism in which these various gods are more equal to each other, if not totally equal, versus a hierarchical polytheism, where you have some gods that are, you know, set above the others far greater than others, and often a high god on top. And then second, let's distinguish between an inclusive monotheism in which there's one supreme God, but there's other lesser gods in some way or another, and then a strict monotheism where there is only absolutely only one God. Now, if we position these along a spectrum, we can conceptualize that there are some forms of polytheism that are further from monotheism and then others that are pretty close.

Just as there are some forms of monotheism that are way far away from polytheism and others that are much close. In fact, right in the middle, they tend to blur into each other. In both a hierarchical polytheism and an inclusive monotheism, you still have one god set above all the other gods, or you can have that. And what I first want to point out is that in the history of world religion, much on-the-ground reality lies somewhere in this mushy middle terrain, precisely where definitions become so critical. It's amazing how many ancient polytheistic contexts posit a high god or a supreme god over the other gods in some sense, often identified as a creator. So I've been reading through this really cool text, Religions of the Ancient World, published by Harvard University Press,

and the second entry is about polytheism and monotheism and know what it says. This is Osman again. He says the idea of a highest God who rules as a king over the world of gods is common to all polytheisms of the ancient world. I never know when people are tuning out in a video when they're still paying attention. For all I know, it's very different experience talking into a camera and then you listening. So I don't know if you're, you know, pause the video and read that again if the significance of that doesn't strike you for what we're trying to identify here of the importance of key terms.

Let me give an example. Another book that I've been reading is this fascinating book on Native American religions. It's an older book, but it's still useful by a Swedish scholar. Really interesting. He just, I love these books that make a dent in the scholarship. And it's still referenced because it's kind of a unique book. He's just describing all these different Native American religions. And what he notes is, I think the second chapter is on the high god.

And he notes, many Native American religions have a high god who is considered the creator. In some cases, this high god and creator is considered eternal. And you can even find some creation myths in which the universe is thought to begin with a single, solitary deity, and no preexisting matter, a concept that has some resonance with the idea of creation from nothing. Here's what the author notes. Quote, some of the North Central California, High Gods are distinctly creator figures, and their creative process may furthermore be

described as Creatio X. Ni Hilo, creation from nothing. But let's be clear, this is still polytheism, and we don't want to minimize the differences between the high god or the great spirit, as he's sometimes called in these Native American religions, and the god of a modern religion like Islam, or something like that. The point is to note how close some forms of polytheism and monotheism can really be, which makes the question of Israel's development all the more interesting and all the more tricky. Now, there are some other examples of ancient religions or ancient belief systems where the boundaries between monotheism and polytheism start to blur. Some of them are really fascinating. I was reading about the ancient Andamanese people. I have no idea whatsoever.

I should have looked it up if I'm pronouncing that word right. I've only read it, not heard about it. But these are the people who live south of India, a couple of islands, straight south of India. And ethnographers often describe them as holding to a kind of animistic monotheism. So they believe in one single supreme deity who made everything else, and yet their daily religious observance is strongly animistic, believing in spirits throughout nature and so forth. That's their ancient religion. I won't address other fascinating expressions of monotheism in world history like Zoroastrianism, but I'd be remiss not to cover, of course, the great example, of a species of monotheism outside of and before Jewish history, and that's in ancient Egypt

with a particular 14th century pharaoh, whose name I'll put up on the screen. He's famous for attempting to abolish the traditional Egyptian polytheism and advocate for an exclusive worship of a single deity. And even apart from that episode, which is very famous, John Collins notes that in various Egypt creation myths, Egyptian creation myths, you generally had one creator god who gives life to all the other gods, as well as to humanity. So the point is simply this. Depending on what kind of polytheism and monotheism we're talking about, the movement from one to the other might not involve crossing a vast conceptual distance. In many cases, it may look like a process of just subtle movement, refinement and clarification and so forth. So that brings me to my second

point here in the final section of this video, and that's about progressive revelation. You can probably see where I'm going with this. What is progressive revelation? Well, let me start with this observation, that in any relationship, you get to know the person better over time, because we're finite. So in your marriage, there are habits that your spouse has that you'll understand much better after 15 years of marriage that you didn't notice at all in the first three years of marriage.

For your next-door neighbor, once you've had 15 conversations with them, you're more likely to understand their personality than after one conversation, progressive revelation is simply the idea that the same principle holds true in our relationship with the Almighty. It doesn't mean that false information is corrected in the future. It simply means that revelation can be truthful without being exhaustive, and therefore the understanding of God grows over time as God reveals himself more fully. And that can be in lots of different forms. It can be just from sheer less information to more. It can be from implicit knowledge of something to a more explicit knowledge. It can be from mere belief to a conscious articulation of that belief against alternatives.

The idea of progressive revelation about the nature of God is embedded in the biblical text. Just to give one example, in Exodus 6, the Lord tells Moses, I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but not by the name I gave to you. In other words, he's in effect saying, Moses, you know some things that they didn't know. I'm telling you this, but I didn't tell them this, and the topic at hand, the name of the Lord, pretty important. Now, this idea of progressive revelation can help us understand monotheism and the question at hand here.

For example, when later texts mention God creating the heavenly host, this is not a contradiction of references to a divine counsel and other deities throughout scripture, like in Psalm 82, famous example. Because it's not like Psalm 82 says the God of Israel didn't create these other gods. It would only be a contradiction if it said that. This can be understood as just further information. It's like you're saying, hey, by the way, all these other gods in the divine counsel, just so you know, the God of Israel created them. Or that's progressive revelation. Or consider the emergence of the heightened rhetoric in Isaiah 40 to 55, often called Second Isaiah, Deutero Isaiah, this can plausibly be interpreted, not as new religion, but as just new rhetoric

reflecting a new context, because now you're here with the disaster of the exile, and you have all these new questions about God's power and his relation to other nations and so forth. So what I'm trying to suggest here is if we set aside the terms, monotheism, and polytheism, and look at the reality, we can recognize this striking focus on one God only from the beginning. And even scholars who question the word monotheism recognize that this exclusive focus on one God is rather unique. Here's a quote from Collins again.

While the claim of monotheism needs considerable revision, Israelite religion was focused on a single deity to a degree that was exceptional in the ancient world, and that is present right out of the gate. Israel does not gradually evolve an interest in this singular focus upon God. That's an emphasis right out of the gate, right at the beginning. All throughout the Hebrew Bible, Israel is called to be utterly devoted to this one God only,

the unique creator. And then in later texts, we get clarification about the God of Israel's authority over other heavenly beings, which I've argued now Christians call these angels. So the upshot of all this is to appreciate the unique character of the development of monotheism in Israel. If we clarify what we mean by the word monotheism, this can be read as a coherent unfolding emphasis within Israelite religion, which is consistent with the idea that it is the product of divine revelation. Much more, of course, needs to be on earth and explored before someone would decide, well,

is that actually true? What if it is, though? I mean, I love to just pose at the end of videos. I always come to come to this point where I love to pose this question, because I pose it to my own heart. And I know what it's like to doubt about these things, for those of you who watch my videos who are kind of wrestling with angst about this stuff. Just ask what if, what if there is one creator God? As I think arguments like contingency and fine-tuning plausibly suggest that basically reality funnels back to one source, and that makes a lot of sense of things. Okay, if that's true that there's one creator God, is there anything more exciting than considering the possibility that maybe he's actually showing up in human history?

And maybe the story of ancient Israel is a part of that larger picture. If nothing else, it's worth exploring more. If nothing else, it merits us working hard at the truth. No derision but arguments and coming together to talk through our differences when as occasion befits and so forth, because this could not be more important. And frankly, it could not be more interesting. That's my video.

Stay in on script so I don't ramble at the end. One final ask, if you made it to the end, consider helping me share this video to get it out there more because I worked so hard on these. Can you tell? I try to make it organized. I try to squeeze what I could ramble on for about two hours or, you know, three months of reflection. I try to squeeze it down into 40 minutes for you all. So I'm trying to get it out there to help people. If you find value in this, if you find it of interest, could you help me share it? Could you help me get it out there so that this video can reach more people? That does mean a lot to me, commenting and liking and subscribing. Of course, all that does too.

I always forget to ask for that. All right, thanks for watching everybody. Hopefully more to come. Dan and Alex, if you guys ever want to talk, not don't feel pressure about that, but if you guys want to, I would love to, and at least maybe down the road, when it can work.

Thanks for watching, everybody. God bless.