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?
