God and the Other Gods: The Hebrew Bible's Double Foundation

By Mark Glouberman

God and the Other Gods offers a reinterpretation, focused on monotheism, of the Hebrew Bible's worldview.

Beneath the Bible's theologized story of the creation, Mark Glouberman finds a system of categories. Central to the Bible's teachings about the world are two types of non-general things. Of the first type, associated in the biblical presentation with the other gods, the core treatment is chapter one of Genesis. To this type, the members of the species humankind belong. They, like the members of the species bearkind and of the species treekind, are ineluctably of the natural world. Of the second type, introduced in Genesis 2, individual persons are the only instances in the creation. The portrayal of the first man ("Adam") as uniquely among creatures enlivened with God's breath of life is the Bible's way of saying that each person is what no bear is and what no tree is. Each person is, as God is, a "one."

The rehabilitation of the other gods has critical implications for standard interpretations of the Bible as well as for Western religion and religiosity.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1049810147
• ISBN13: 9781049810140
• Release Date: March 2027
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher