You're listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God ordained podcast on the internet.

I'm Pete N's.

And I'm Jared Baez.

On today's episode of the Bible for Normal People, we're talking about the many gods of Israel with Mark S. Smith.

Mark is a professor of Old Testament and exegesis at Princeton Theological Seminary,

and he's authored or co-authored more than 20 books and monographs on ancient Israel

and major themes of the Hebrew Bible.

And we're going to see some of those books today.

Very interesting.

So let's jump into the episode.

We want our monotheism pristine and from day one for all the challenges or

difficulties that are posed by all this kind of information and it seems like we're totally

reconstructing everything, which in a way we are, once you start to realize what's there,

it's not as foreign to the Bible itself as one might think.

Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run, and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions

that actually save you time, from startups to scaleups, online, in person and on the go. Shopify's

made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup.

Mark, welcome to the podcast. It's good to have you. Thank you. Absolutely. So, we're going to jump right in.

When you say Israel had a polytheistic background, that might be new for some people to hear.

So what do you mean by that?

And what kind of concrete evidence would you point people to?

So by Israel's polytheistic background, I'm referring to early or older evidence in the Bible for multiple deities,

...