It is a standard canard that Jews were always monotheists and that Christians, whose movement began with Jewish believers in Jesus, followed suit. But is this true?

First, we must clarify our terms before proceeding to look at early beliefs. “Monotheism” (or “one god-ism”) can indicate a belief that there is only one God. But in the time of Jesus, and for centuries thereafter, we should understand monotheism as representing the belief that only one god deserved to be worshipped while the other gods did not. This is patently expressed in the Bible.

Contesting with Pharaoh, God exclaimed that “on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the LORD (Ex. 12:12). Later in that same text, Jethro declared that “I know that the LORD is greater than all the gods, for in the thing in which they dealt proudly against them he has destroyed them” (Ex. 18:11). Moses affirmed that Israel’s god is “God of gods and Lord of lords” (Deut. 10:17). These references to gods other than YHWH is not limited to the Torah.

Lower divinities or gods (or “sons of God”) are mentioned in Job: “Now the day came when the sons of God (bene ha-elohim) came to present themselves before the LORD—and Satan also arrived among them” (Job 1:6). Psalm 19:1 commands them to “acknowledge the LORD, you sons of God, acknowledge the LORD’s majesty and power.”  References to other gods are not limited to the Hebrew scriptures. Other early Jewish texts make similar allusions.

Early Christ-believers adopted the Greco-Roman and Jewish belief in a heaven full of gods and divine beings. While discussing the eating of animal sacrifices offered to “idols,” Paul declared that “if, after all, there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords),  yet for us there is one God, the Father” (1 Cor. 8:4). He goes on to clarify that “I mean that what the pagans sacrifice is to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons” (1 Cor. 10:20). Paul, and other Jews as well, continued their diminution of pagan gods by referring to them as demons, a word derived from the Greek daimones meaning lesser gods or divine beings. In Paul’s day, demons were often characterized by Jews as evil in their intent. Non-Jews saw daimonia as either benevolent or maleficent depending on their individual character.

Later Christians and Jews came to understand these lower gods as either demons or angels depending on their relationship to the Father. But even in the fourth century, the terminology was still in flux. Consider these quotes by two Christian theologians.

If you say that angels stand before God who are not subject to feeling and death, and immortal in their nature, whom we ourselves speak of as gods, because they are close to the Godhead, why do we dispute about a name? … The difference therefore is not great, whether a man calls them gods or angels, since their divine nature bears witness to them. (Macarius Magnes, Apocriticus 4.21)

 If the Platonists prefer to call these angels gods rather than demons, and to number them among the gods who their founder and teacher Plato writes were created by the supreme God, let them say this if they like, for there is no need to trouble ourselves over a merely semantic issue. For if they say that these beings are immortal but created by the supreme God, and that they are blessed not in their own right but only be adhering to the one whom made them, then they say what we say, no matter what they call them. (Augustine, City of God 9.23)

[Apocriticus translation by Thomas Wilfrid Crafer, The Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes (SPCK, 1919). City of God translation by William Babcock, The City of God (Books 1-10), The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (New City Press, 2012). Both quoted in Matthew Thiessen, “Paul among the Sons of God,” pages 93-105 in Alexander Chantziantoniou, et. al., eds., Paul Within Paganism: Restoring the Mediterranean Context to the Apostle (Fortress, 2025).]