HOW THE SMALL 'g' GODS BECAME ONE SMALL 'g' GOD, AND THEM MORPHED INTO THE BIG 'G' GOD

Thomas Romer, The Invention of God, translated from the French by Raymond Geuss (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2015) ("An examination . . . allows us to retrace the path of a god who probably had his origin somewhere in the 'South,' between the Negev and Egypt. Originally he was a god of the wilderness, of war and storms, but gradually through a series of small steps he became the god of Israel and Jerusalem. Then eventually, after a major catastrophe--the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah--he established himself as the one god, creator of heaven and earth, invisible and transcendent, who nevertheless loudly proclaimed his special relationship with Judaism. How did one god among others become God? This is the basic, and theologically fundamental, enigma that this book attempts to illuminate. Despite what certain theologians continue to assert, it is now beyond doubt that the god of the Bible was not always 'unique,' the one-and-only God." Id. at 2. Or, as I would put it, why one should read the bible as foundation myths, and not history, let alone as the word of God.).