Introduction

Summary

In the context of the Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) world where anything from diseases to doorposts could be considered divine, understanding conceptions of the gods is a difficult enterprise. Scholars tend to expect perceptions of ancient gods to conform to modern, especially Western, divine stereotypes. However, ancient and modern ideas of gods do not so easily align. For example, in accord with Christian and Jewish theology, many scholars have assumed that the god of the Bible is invisible and immaterial, despite significant biblical evidence to the contrary.¹ Similarly, many contend that the Hebrew Bible is monotheistic, again in the face of substantial counterevidence.² Even when texts from the ANE explicitly refer to certain illnesses like epilepsy as divine, some Assyriologists argue instead that they cannot be “real” gods because they lack personality.³ All of this calls into question what we mean when we use the term “god.”