Yahweh among the Gods

The Divine in Genesis, Exodus, and the Ancient Near East

What this book really is

Yahweh among the Gods is a book about ancient ideas of divinity, but more specifically it is a book about how misleading our modern categories can be. Hundley begins by pointing out that many scholars and general readers alike still expect the god of the Bible to behave like a later philosophical or theological deity: invisible, immaterial, unique in an absolute sense, clearly separated from lesser beings, and at home in a tidy monotheistic system. He argues that the texts themselves do not fit that expectation very well. Instead, they belong to a world in which divinity is flexible, plural, embodied, rhetorically varied, and often context-specific.

That means this is not simply a book about “what the Bible says about God.” It is a book about what ancient texts thought gods were, how gods related to one another, how they appeared, and how humans accessed them. Hundley’s three guiding questions are very clear: What is a god? What is the relationship between gods? How do gods interact with humans? The whole book is built around answering those questions first in the wider ANE and then in non-Priestly Genesis and Exodus.

The larger argument

The central argument is that the biblical texts in view are not best described as fully monotheistic. Hundley says that the texts are resolutely polytheistic in the sense that they imagine a world with multiple gods, yet they advocate monolatry, meaning exclusive worship of one deity, Yahweh, without denying the existence or powers of others. This is the book’s most important claim, and it is what gives the study its sharp edge. It challenges a very common habit of reading later monotheism back into earlier biblical materials.

Hundley then adds a second major argument: gods usually rise not by becoming conceptually isolated from others, but by absorbing the names, attributes, manifestations, and powers of others. This is where his famous business analogy comes in. Just as a modern megastore becomes more attractive by offering in one place what smaller outlets offer separately, so major deities become more compelling by accumulating functions that once belonged to other gods. He applies that model to Marduk, Aššur, Amun, and finally Yahweh.

Why Part I matters so much

Part I is essential because Hundley does not want the Bible to look exceptional simply because it is read in isolation. The chapters on Mesopotamian, Hittite, Egyptian, and Levantine gods establish a much wider grammar of divinity. The cover description already hints at the scale of the book’s ambition: ancient texts could consider everything from deified diseases and doors to major cosmic deities as divine. This is exactly the kind of reminder the study needs. It expands the category of “god” far beyond modern expectations.

The most useful thing about this first half is not that it proves all divine systems are identical. It is that it reveals repeated patterns. Gods can be singular in one context and distributed across multiple aspects in another. They can overlap, share names, absorb qualities, and appear differently by genre. In some texts the god is tightly unified; in others the god looks more like a constellation of manifestations or roles. By the time Part I is finished, the reader is prepared not to panic when biblical texts do something similar.

The book’s theory of divine rhetoric

One of the strongest things in the book is that it does not just compare data; it compares rhetorical goals. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, major deities such as Marduk, Aššur, and Amun are promoted toward supremacy. Their publicists want them to be seen as kings of the gods, best among many. Hundley stresses that this usually does not mean eliminating other gods from the conceptual field. It means presenting one god as more useful, more comprehensive, more sovereign.

When he turns to Yahweh, Hundley says the biblical goal is more ambitious still. Yahweh does not merely need to be the best. He needs to be the god who can meet all the needs of his people, because if he cannot, they will turn elsewhere. That is why the biblical rhetoric must become universalizing even before it becomes philosophically monotheistic. Yahweh has to become a kind of total-provider, a one-stop-shop god, in order to justify exclusive worship.

Part II: Yahweh in Genesis and Exodus

Part II shifts from backdrop to focus. Hundley first profiles Yahweh himself, then studies the wider cast of divine beings in Genesis and Exodus, then places Yahweh “among the gods,” then turns to access, communication, and objects. This structure is very good because it does not treat the biblical God as a standalone figure from the start. Instead, it gradually rebuilds the biblical divine sphere.

One of the most striking moves appears in Chapter 7, where Hundley insists that Genesis and Exodus contain multiple other divine beings and that readers often hide them by shuffling them into the safer later category of “angels.” The examples he cites are strong. The “us” in Genesis 3:22 is most plausibly divine plurality, not a majestic singular. The texts explicitly mention plural gods in multiple passages. Praise texts such as Exodus 15:11 and 18:11 exalt Yahweh above other gods, but they still acknowledge them. Prohibitions in Exodus against other gods, other names, and other cult images likewise make sense only if rivals are assumed to exist.

This is one of the book’s most valuable contributions. It shows how much later readers flatten the divine world of the text. If the text says “Who is like you among the gods?” then the easy modern move is to reinterpret “gods” into something harmless or poetic. Hundley argues that this move is not demanded by the text itself.

Monolatry and covenant

The chapter on “Yahweh among the Gods” appears to be the conceptual center of Part II. Here Hundley argues that Genesis and Exodus are both mono-Yahwistic and monolatrous. Mono-Yahwism means the text works hard to unify the various names, forms, and manifestations of Yahweh into one deity. Monolatry means that this one deity demands exclusive worship. Neither term is identical with later monotheism.

Hundley’s treatment of covenant is especially persuasive. He argues that in Genesis exclusivity is more implicit, but still present: Abram’s call, Abraham’s obedience, and Jacob’s putting away of foreign gods all move toward singular commitment. In Exodus the matter becomes explicit, because the covenant becomes national and constitutional. “No other gods before me” is thus not a metaphysical treatise but a contractual demand. The comparison to monogamous marriage is blunt but effective: the text acknowledges other gods while requiring exclusive loyalty to Yahweh.

Divine access, mediation, and objects

Another strong late section is Chapter 9, where Hundley studies how humans encounter the divine and how objects mediate presence. This matters because one of the usual modern assumptions is that the biblical God is radically anti-object and immaterial. Hundley complicates that assumption. He does not argue that Yahweh is simply represented like any ANE cult image, but he does show that objects, places, pillars, stones, staffs, and other material mediations have a more ambiguous and potentially charged role than later theology often allows.

The discussion of angels and surrogate presence is also very helpful. Angels, cherubim, fiery manifestations, and other subordinate or mediated forms can provide distance when Yahweh would otherwise seem too physically close or too directly involved. This lets the text manage both divine presence and divine transcendence at once. In that sense, angels are not just cute messengers. They are part of a larger strategy of divine rhetoric and divine management.

The ending: monolatry and the path to monotheism

The final synthesis is where Hundley’s overall thesis comes together most clearly. He argues that the biblical difference from wider ANE rhetoric lies mainly in goal. Marduk, Aššur, and Amun are promoted to supremacy. Yahweh is promoted toward exclusive worship. In order for that to work, the text expands Yahweh’s profile while shrinking and depersonalizing the rest of the divine world. That process eventually has an unintended consequence: later monotheism.

This is one of the smartest parts of the book. Hundley does not say monotheism drops out of heaven fully formed. He says it emerges when monolatry is radicalized and the god category is redefined so that formerly divine beings are pushed into subordinate categories like angels and demons. That is an elegant historical explanation because it keeps continuity and change together.

Strengths

The book’s biggest strength is conceptual clarity. Even when dealing with very slippery material, Hundley keeps asking manageable questions and gives memorable explanatory models. The one-stop-shop analogy could have been gimmicky, but it actually helps explain divine accumulation surprisingly well.

A second strength is comparative discipline. He does not use the ANE merely as background wallpaper for the Bible. He treats those traditions seriously in their own right and then uses them to illuminate the biblical texts more sharply.

A third strength is that the book explains the Bible’s distinctiveness without resorting to a simplistic exceptionalism. Yahweh is distinct not because Genesis and Exodus suddenly deny the existence of every other divine being, but because the texts redirect the entire divine field toward exclusive commitment.

Limits

The main limitation is that this is a dense scholarly book. It asks readers to move across multiple ancient cultures, genres, and theoretical frameworks. That gives it real value, but it also means it is not a quick or popular-level read.

A second limitation, though perhaps unavoidable, is that the book’s large comparative method requires synthesis. Any synthesis risks smoothing over local variation. Hundley openly acknowledges this problem, but it remains part of the cost of the project.

Final judgment

My judgment is strongly positive. Yahweh among the Gods looks like a serious, original, and important study because it reframes the biblical divine world without flattening it into either orthodoxy or skepticism. Its strongest achievement is showing that Genesis and Exodus make the most sense not when they are isolated from the ANE, but when they are placed back inside it and read as a bold program of monolatrous divine rhetoric.

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