The early Israelites were henotheists

Henotheism is a word used to describe the worship of one god without denying the existence of other gods. The people of Israel believed in and worshiped Yahweh as their God, but they also acknowledged the existence of other gods.


Several gods are mentioned in the Old Testament. These gods were associated with people who lived in the various nations that composed the world of the Bible. Some of these gods were worshiped by the people of Israel. According to the biblical writers, the apostasy of Israel was the reason the people went into exile.

Below is a list of some of the gods mentioned in the Old Testament:

1. Adrammelech (2 Kings 17:31)

The name of one of the gods the people of Sepharvaim worshiped. The Sepharvaim were a group of people the Assyrians settled in Samaria after the fall of the Northern Kingdom.

2. Anammelech (2 Kings 17:31)

Another god of the people of Sepharvaim. The people of Sepharvaim worshiped their gods by sacrificing their children by burning them.

3. Ashima (2 Kings 17:30)

A god worshiped by the people of Hamath who settled in Samaria after the fall of the Northern Kingdom.

4. Ashtoreth (1 Kings 11:5)

Ashtoreth was the goddess of the Sidonians. Ashtoreth is the name by which the Canaanite goddess Astarte is called in the Old Testament. She was the consort of Baal, the Canaanite storm god.

5. Baal (Numbers 25:3)

Baal was the Canaanite storm god. Baal was also associated with the fertility of the land. The word “Baal” means “lord,” “husband.” Many people in Israel worshiped Baal in his different manifestations. The earliest mention of Baal in the Old Testament is in Number 25:3 when the people of Israel yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor.

6. Bel (Jeremiah 51:44)

The name by which Marduk, the god of the Babylonians, is called in the Old Testament. Bel appears in the Apocrypha, in the addition to the book of Daniel.

7. Chemosh (1 Kings 11:7)

The national god of the Moabites to whom Solomon built a temple in the mountains east of Jerusalem. The writer of Kings calls this god “the abomination of Moab.” The Moabites were called “The people of Chemosh” (Numbers 21:29).

8. Dagon (Judges 16:23)

Dagon appears in the Old Testament as the god of the Philistines. The nature and characteristics of Dagon are not very clear. Some scholars have identified Dagon as a “grain” god while others have identified him as a “fish” god. It seems that the Philistines adopted the cult of Dagon after they settled in the land of Canaan.

9. Kaiwan (NRSV) or Kiyyun (ESV; Amos 5:26)

Amos calls Kaiwan “your star-god.” Kaiwan was an astral god worshiped by some people of the Northern Kingdom after they became vassals of the Assyrians. This god is associated with the planet Saturn.

10. Milcom (1 Kings 11:5)

Milcom is known as “the abomination of the Ammonites.” He is also known as Molech. Jeremiah says that the Israelites offered their sons and daughters as a sacrifice to Molech by burning them. The meaning of the name is not clear. Probably, the meaning of the name is derived from the word “melek,” the Hebrew word for king.

11. Molech (Jeremiah 32:35)

Molech is the same god as Milcom above. The name Molech comes from the consonants of the word “melek,” “king” and the vowels of the Hebrew word “bosheth,” a word that means “shame.”

12. Nebo (Isaiah 46:1)

The name of a Babylonian god that appears only in Isaiah. The name of this god appears in the name of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

13. Nehushtan (2 Kings 18:4)

This was the bronze serpent worshiped by some people in Judah in the days of Hezekiah. This deity was associated with the serpent Moses made in the wilderness (Numbers 21:8-9).

14. Nibhaz (2 Kings 17:31)

The name of a god worshiped by the Avvites, a people brought to Samaria by the Assyrians.

15. Nisroch (2 Kings 19:37)

The Assyrian god worshiped by Sennacherib, king of Assyria. According to the biblical text Sennacherib was worshiping his god when he was killed by his sons.

16. Rimmon (2 Kings 5:18)

A Syrian god. After Naaman was cured from his leprosy and proclaimed his faith in the God of Israel, he recognized that he would still have to bow down to Rimmon because he served the king of Syria.

17. Sakkuth (NRSV) or Sikkuth (ESV; Amos 5:26)

A Babylonian deity associated with astral worship. In the book of Amos, Sakkuth appears together with Kaiwan.

18. Succoth-benoth (2 Kings 17:30)

The name of a god worshiped by the people of Babylon who lived in Samaria after the Assyrians conquered the city of Samaria in 722 B.C.

19. Tammuz (Ezekiel 8:14).

A Mesopotamian god whose cult has been associated with the cycle of the harvest. The weeping for Tammuz is a reference to the death of the god, which in turn was associated with the agricultural calendar

20. Tartak (2 Kings 17:31)

The god worshiped by the Avvites, a group of people brought to Samaria by the Assyrians after they conquered the Northern Kingdom.

21. The Queen of Heaven (Jeremiah 7:18).

The name of an unidentified goddess worshiped by the people of Judah in the days of the prophet Jeremiah (7th and 6th centuries B.C.). The Queen of Heaven appears only in the book of Jeremiah (7:18; 44:17, 18, 19, 25). This goddess has been identified with the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar and with the Canaanite goddess Ashtoreth, also known as Astarte.

Genesis 1:26 a proof-text for the trinity?

Let’s take Genesis 1:26:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. (KJV).

Who is the "us" in that verse?

Most of Christianity is trinitarian. When a trinitarian reads Genesis 1:26 they take it as proof of the doctrine of the trinity. God is three, yet one. However, Genesis was written several thousand years after the events recorded in the book. Some suggest it was written by Moses but many scholars question this assertion and quite frankly we can not be sure who wrote Genesis.
Genesis 1:26 was written upwards to 2,000 years before the birth of Christ so therefore, the early Israelites knew nothing of Jesus. There was no Church and no Christian scripture. All that the readers of the day had were the various Old Testament books, none of which remotely teach anything about God being a Trinity.
When a Jew read the book of Genesis and came to Genesis 1:26 where God says Let us make man in our image…….after our likeness…….what do you think their conclusion would have been? Certainly they would not have had any inkling that God was a Trinity, three in one, as Christians assert.

A poem I read that speaks to me.

The Potter and the Clay

When I once looked into the heavens
And into the starry lit sky
I thought I could see your wonder
And thought I could never deny
That you were the Rock of Ages
The potter, and I the clay
That you were my creator
For whom I could only obey
That on the Cross you suffered
Died and rose again
My burden was yours to bear
The sorrow, the grief, the pain
But despite all that you did for me
I still could not see your face
In the shadows you remained hidden
From every conceivable place
I then cried out to youI gave you my soul, my all
But all you gave me was silence
Silence to my desperate call
When I now look into the heavens
And into the starry lit sky
I now know you are not there
Looking down from up high
For you do not live amongst the stars
But only within my mind
For I shaped you in my image
Within my head you are confined
Because I now know the truth, Yeshua
And I’m sorry to say
That I am in fact the potter
And you are the clay

© Kevin Parry, 2008

A Look Back

Why didn't I see it sooner? It seems so very obvious now. All those countless prayers. But all I was doing was talking to my imaginary god. I was just talking to myself for all those years. Years of studying the scripture. Years of trying to get to know you better. Years of offering up thanks and blessing. Years stolen from me by the strong delusion of my imaginary god.