First, on the naming, I concur with Zev wholeheartedly: don’t switch things around. Lots of Hebrew names refer to God: Samu-el, Jo-el, Ezeki-el, etc. None of these people are gods. Their names reference to God, but shouldn’t be switched around. Uri-el is “Light of God” not “God of Light.” There is a diff.
Second, Tom, please note that we can refer to Queen Elizabeth II, just plain Queen Elizabeth, Her Majesty, The Queen, ER (Elizabeth Regina), Liz, etc. It doesn’t imply that England has multiple sovereigns. The argument of different names of God can be used effectively as one grammatic point (among many) to suggest that there were multiple authors of the early Bible texts, but it cannot be used effectively to argue that early Judaism was polytheistic. ((DIGRESSION: An alternate reading is that the different names of God refer to different characteristics – when God’s mercy is predominant in the verse, one name is used; when God’s justics is predominant, another name is used. This theory is self-consistent, and is an alternative interpretation to the multiple author theory… but I digress.))
The Torah text does refer to other gods, but the context is usually such that those verses are easily interpreted as lower case-g gods. We refer today to the gods of the Greeks, for instance, or the Norse gods, as having existence within literature and within the culture of those peoples. Thus, when the book of Exodus speaks of the gods of the Egyptians (and God triumphing over them), it doesn’t mean that those gods had physical existence. It was used metaphorically, in the same way that an historian might say that the Christian God triumphed over the Norse gods when Christianity conquered Europe.
On the verse “Let us make man in our image”, there are several interpretations, of course, ranging from the Christian notion that this is the Trinity talking to itself, to the royal “we”, to the editorial “oui”.
And let me amend Zev’s comments slightly. While it is fairly clear that MAINSTREAM Judaism was monotheistic since Abraham, there are some side lines that seem not to be. Rachel stealing her father’s household gods, for instance. The golden calf. So there are certainly instances in the Torah of people who DO believe in other gods, but the Torah itself (mainstream Judaism) clearly does not accept such notions. The Torah is, however, remarkably tolerant in allowing other peoples to worship whatever gods they choose: only the Israelites are prohibited from recognition of other gods.
Again, this does not mean that the Torah acknowledges the existence of other gods, aside from the sense of “things that people worship as gods.”
[Edited by CKDextHavn on 11-17-2000 at 07:48 AM]