ABSTRACT
This concluding chapter argues that the idea of a supreme, invisible, disembodied cosmic Creator, commonly proposed by Greek philosophers, first appeared among the Jews and Samaritans in the “first creation account” of Genesis 1, drawing on Plato's Timaeus. Genesis also adopted Plato's conception of the traditional anthropomorphic local deities as the sons of the supreme God. Plato's philosophy involved a divine ethics that saw the peaceful coexistence of a supreme creator and his earthly divine offspring. This ideal of benevolent polytheism in Timaeus was also seen in the sons of God living throughout the world in the Primordial History, and arguably throughout the remainder of Genesis. But the peaceful coexistence of the multiplicity of national gods in Genesis was superseded in Exodus–Joshua by a new theology in which the supreme Creator of Genesis 1 was conflated with the local terrestrial deity Yahweh, and in which benevolent polytheism was replaced by strict monolatry. The elevation of the local cultic deity Yahweh to cosmic status constituted an overthrow of Plato's theology by conservative religious elements and eventually led to a true Jewish monotheism later in the Hellenistic Era.
