ABSTRACT
According to the accounts in both Jewish and Greco-Roman literature, the Jews had a unique concept of the deity. Jewish people were seen as being different in many ways from their neighbors, but one of the main distinctions lay in the way the Jews depicted their God. In case the issue seems to be a simple one of monotheism versus polytheism, however, it should be said that the picture is considerably complicated by current ideas on how Israelite religious thought developed, eventually leading to the view that there was a complex spirit world which included angels, demons, and souls, as well as God. This chapter is organized around the topics of the deity, the spirit world (including angels and demons), and the figure of Wisdom and the Logos. To avoid repetition, the sources are treated under each heading rather than separately. For this chapter, the Hebrew Bible is rather more central than for most other topics treated in this book.
