One God Or Many?

Book excerpt: This book is the precipitate of a conference convened in 1997 to explore concepts of divinity as both one and many in ancient Assyria, Egypt, Greece, and Israel. The five original and provocative essays that resulted engage issues as diverse as the advantages and disadvantages of polytheism; different concepts of deity held by these closely related societies; the possibility that plural nouns may denote singular beings and vice versa; the many definitions of monotheism; and how to decide whether an ancient author in referring to a god as one was characterizing that god as numerically singular, best in quality, or simply first to appear on the cosmic stage.