Trendy monotheism? Ancient Near Eastern models and their value in elucidating 'monotheism' in ancient Israelite

Abstract

The article starts from the challenging theses in recent research in the field of ancient Near Eastern studies, according to which ‘monotheism’ is declared to be a well-known phenomenon in the ancient Near East. Although this assertion may be questionable, e.g., from the perspective of the science of religion, it encourages the possibility of a new approach to the study of ancient Israelite beliefs about the divine: Is it possible that the religion of the Old Testament is more closely related to ancient Near Eastern ‘monotheism,’ than ancient Israelite polytheism is related to ancient Near Eastern polytheism?