An excerpt from the afterword in Gods & Proxies, discussing how belief in the existence of “other gods” is not necessarily pagan, anti-Christian, or unbiblical:

There’s a famous road paved with good intentions. One good intention of theologians in centuries past was to eliminate or explain away any passage in the Bible which could be construed as supporting polytheism.

The Bible clearly portrays Yahweh (El Elyon/El Shaddai/”The God of Many Names”/etc.) as the One True God; but it also documents that He judged the gods of Egypt (Exodus 12:12). In the Commandments we are warned not to put other gods before Him (Deuteronomy 5:7). The Adversary, called “the devil” and “Satan” in English, is referred to as “the god of this world” or “the god of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4) depending on translation (or “prince,” which is also how the messenger* in Daniel 12:1 referred to the Archangel Michael).

Acknowledging that the ancient pagans were worshiping living entities, and not just the idols formed to represent them, is not polytheistic. It is simply biblical.

Those of us who learned the Bible from an English translation (or worse yet, from “preacher talk”) have inherited many assumptions about our Creator. For instance, we assume that “God” is His name.

One of the Commandments forbids us to misuse His name (Deuteronomy 5:11). Well, what exactly is His name? Most Gentiles have no idea, except for the cryptic statement given to Moses via the burning bush (Exodus 3:14). But where our English translations call him simply “THE LORD,” the original text used one of His names.** How many times have we seen references to His name in our English translations, without actually seeing His name in the text? Those translations also use the word “God” as if it is a name (hence we assume “God” is his name), but the word “el” that is translated “god” was a more generic term in Hebrew for a supernatural being that is not necessarily the Creator God. Many of us were taught that the word Elohim, which includes the word for “god” with a Hebrew plural suffix, is a reference to the Trinity–one God in three persons. But some Hebrew scholars insist it refers to a pantheon, the Divine Council, or Heavenly Assembly.*** (Not that they deny the Trinity, as there is textual evidence of that concept elsewhere in Scripture.)

*The word angel means “messenger,” but, in our lexicon, has come to refer exclusively to created celestial beings. Certainly the word often refers to those; but sometimes a human being can be an “angel,” and sometimes the Messiah Himself plays the role of a messenger, or “angel.”

**That is, the “Tetragrammaton.” This has been pronounced “Yaweh” or “Jehovah,” historically, though exact pronunciation is not certain because there were no vowels in the original Hebrew. It’s like an acronym formed from the Hebrew phrase the Creator used to answer Moses: “I am that I am.”

***Psalm 82:1 “God has taken his place in the Divine Council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” Deuteronomy 32:8-9 “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided up humankind, he set the boundaries of the peoples, according to the number of the Heavenly Assembly.” Job 1:6 and 1 Kings 22 also give us a fleeting glimpse of this Heavenly Assembly.

Another phenomenon mentioned in Gods & Proxies is “spiritually charged objects.” This sounds like a pagan or Wiccan concept, but it’s also Biblical. In the New Testament, certain people were healed and/or delivered merely by physical contact with aprons and handkerchiefs touched by Paul (Acts 19:11-12).

If the Holy Spirit (working through Paul) could spiritually charge an inanimate object, then it’s entirely possible that evil spirits could supernaturally charge objects as well–such as the items in Jericho that the Israelites were forbidden to take as plunder (Joshua 6:17-18, 7:1).

Those who like to deny the supernatural also insist that witchcraft is nothing more than a myth perpetuated by tricksters and illusionists. But the author(s) of the Bible saw it much differently. God considers witchcraft a serious manifestation of evil, not to be dismissed as harmless Halloween stories.  The Bible also documents how Pharoah’s magicians, and the witch of Endor accessed some sort of actual power that no huckster could ever duplicate.