14“Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the highest heavens, the earth and all that is in it. 15“Yet on your fathers did the LORD set His affection to love them, and He chose their descendants after them, even you above all peoples, as it is this day. 16“So circumcise your heart, and stiffen your neck no longer. 17“For the LORD your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who does not show partiality nor take a bribe. (Dt 10:14–17 NASB95)

“Ancient “monotheism” spoke to the imagined architecture of the cosmos, not to its absolute population. Ancient monotheism means “one god on top,” with other gods ranged beneath, lower than and in some sense subordinate to the high god. People of sufficient education who thought philosophically about relations between levels of divinity might see these lower gods as ontologically contingent on the high god; less philosophical monotheists were content simply to assert that their own god was the biggest, the most powerful, or the best god.” ¹

8When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods; 9the LORD’s own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share. (Dt 32:8–9 NRSV cf. Ex. 19:5; Dt. 14:2)

5For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, 6yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. (1 Co 8:5–6 NASB95)
12For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Eph 6:12 NKJV cf. 1 Cor.15:24-26; Phil. 2:9-11)

5From these the coastlands of the nations were separated into their lands, every one according to his language, according to their families, into their nations. (Ge 10:5 NASB95)

Land (geographic territory)
- 26and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 27that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; (Ac 17:26–27 NASB95)
- for the land is Mine; for you are but aliens and sojourners with Me. (Le 25:23 NASB95 cf. e.g., Exod 15:17; Isa 14:2, 25; Jer 2:7; Ezek 36:5; 38:16; Hos 9:3; Pss 10:16; 85:2)
Language
- 9Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth. (Ge 11:9 NASB95)
Kinship (family) (Ex. for Israel in Rom. 9:3-5) [gods are the supreme members of human kinship groups and share in the ethnicity of the peoples who worship them]²
- “gods of Egypt” (Ex. 12:12), the “gods of the Amorites” (Jos. 24:15), “the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines” (Jdg 10:6), “the gods of the nations,” “the God of Israel”
  - 1Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and speak to him, ‘Thus says the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, “Let My people go, that they may serve Me. (Ex 9:1 NASB95 cf. 5:1‘God of Israel’)
  - 22“Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD, “Israel is My son, My firstborn. (Ex 4:22 NASB95)
Custom (worship / protocols for showing respect to gods)
- Allotment and the formation of customs among the nations – Dt. 4:16-19; 29:26; Rom. 1:23ff
- Jewish Ways of Worship – There is a distinction between first and second commandments – no other elohim, and secondly, no utilizing the pagan forms of idols to worship any of the elohim (YHWH doesn’t accept pagan forms of worship, even when directed towards Him [ex. Ex. 32:1, 4-5, 7-9; Neh. 9:18; Acts 7:41-42]). Also, custom includes set apart seed (circumcision – Gen. 17:10-14), Sacred Time (Sabbath – Ex.20:10cf. Gen. 2:1-3; Dt. 5:12-15), Sacred Space (Temple – Dt. 12:5-14), etc.
At the ~2,000 yr. mark, the disinheritance of the nations / allotting them to other elohim marks a fundamental shift in the way YHWH relates to His creation. Because YHWH is an elohim, but no other elohim are equal to YHWH, and through His election of Abraham, He eternally binds Himself ethnically as “the God of Abraham” and the patriarch’s national offspring: He is the Jewish God. From this point forward, all of His universal redemptive plan will be carried out through His particular covenant commitments with Israel; as the hope of all nations’ hinges on their own relation to Israel as the conduit mediating the blessing of YHWH.
- Abraham becomes both the recipient and the mediator of divine blessing (Gen. 12:1-3)

¹ Paula Fredriksen, “Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins Whose Time Has Come to Go,” 241.
² Paula Fredriksen, “How Jewish Is God?: Divine Ethnicity in Paul’s Theology,” Journal of Biblical Literature 137, no. 1 (2018): 193–212.

S5 - Abrahamic Covenant

ETHNICITY AND ELECTION

ABRAHAMIC COVENANT: ORIGIN OF THE JEWISH NARRATIVE