more liberal, popular polytheism for a long time. Finally, however, with the triumph of the “official” Yahwistic party in the late exilic and postexilic period, the answer eventually would have been a firm, “No, Yahweh alone is ‘the God,’ and other gods have no real existence at all. All so-called gods are actually nonentities.” Such a neat linear view, however, is almost certainly just that—too neat. It is far too simple to put the question (or its answer) in a simple binary form: Do other gods