HEBREW HENOTHEISM
For the most update resources on this question, see Mark Smith's The Early History of God (Harper & Row, 1990) and The Triumph of Elohim, ed. Diana V. Edelman (Eerdmans, 1995).
God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.
– Ps. 82:1
It seems clear enough...that Moses was not a monotheist. Yet, to call him a polytheist seems inaccurate too. We can conclude that Moses stood somewhere between totemism and monotheism. A term to describe this position is henotheism.
– H. Keith Beebe1
The Israelite tribes were heirs to a religious tradition which can only have been polytheistic.
– Yehezkel Kaufmann2
The Principle of Theistic Evolution is derived from the fact that some of the world's religions have developed through stages from polytheism to a monotheism. We can see this most clearly in the Vedic tradition were the many gods of the Vedas eventually reduce to the triune deity of Krishna, Brahman, and Paramatma of the Bhagavad-Gita. It is clear, however, that our principle is not a law, for scholars have now noted a theistic devolution in the return to polytheism in the originally monotheistic Zoroastrianism. One of the transitional stages from polytheism to monotheism has been called "henotheism, a situation in which there are many gods but one God prevails as the king of gods or the God of gods. The Vedas contain a form in henotheism with Varuna standing out as the ultimate ruler and judge – the one who infuses grace, forgives and punishes sin.
As a descriptive study in the history of religion, this article makes no judgment about whether monotheism is better than polytheism. Observers of the practice of Hindu polytheism could say that the recognition of many gods leads to greater religious tolerance. Monotheistic gods also tend to be more remote and less accessible to the life of faith. One might also argue that the exclusive worship of one God leads to intolerance of other religions.Just as biological evolution has not necessarily led to the best species, theistic evolution has not necessarily led to the best theology.
The final editors of the Hebrew canon were fervent monotheists, but a remnant of the polytheistic basis of the pre-Mosaic religion can still be detected. Albrecht Alt has shown that divine titles such as 'El Bet' el (Gen. 31:13; 35:7); 'El 'Olam (Gen. 21:33); and 'El Ro'i (Gen. 16:13); 'El 'Elyon (Gen. 14:18); and 'El Saddai (Gen. 17:1); all later taken to be one God (Yahweh) after Moses, were all originally separate gods worshipped by the early Hebrews.3 The Catholic scholar Bruce Vawter concurs with Alt. According to Vawter, none of the available English translations does justice to the original Hebrew of Genesis 31:13, which quite simply reads "I am the god Bethel" ('El Bet'el), who was a member of the Canaanite pantheon along with the rest of the above.4 The original meaning is therefore quite different from the traditional understanding: this god at Bethel is not the universal Lord who appeared at Bethel but just one god among many – a local deity of a specific place.
In the mutual swearing of Jacob and Laban (Gen. 31:51f) it is clear that two distinct gods are referred to.5<