Viewing posts from May, 2026

Other Gods? In My Monotheistic Bible?

by James Duguid | May 17, 2026

Recently I have had some discussions on social media about the language of other “gods” in Deuteronomy 32. This was spurred by an essay by Rick Wadholm Jr. analyzing and critiquing Michael Heiser’s book, The Unseen Realm. At the same time, I was due to work through Heiser’s paper on monotheism.Heiser, “Monotheism, Polytheism, Monolatry, or Henotheism? Toward an Assessment of Divine Plurality in the Hebrew Bible,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 18.1 (2008), pp. 1–30 In light of these discussions, it seemed good to me to try to clarify some of my thoughts around “monotheism” in Deuteronomy and Isaiah 40-48. The short story here is that I find Heiser’s argument a lot more compelling for Deuteronomy than I do for Isaiah 40-48. The long story is this rather long blogpost below. I’m still working my way through the vast literature on the problem of “monotheism” in the Bible as part of my ongoing research on ontological language in Isaiah 40-66, but what follows is an attempt to crystallize some of my thoughts so far.