Monotheism is not quite what you think it is
So, you have been told that in the Abrahamitic religions (meaing, Judaism, Christianity and Islam) there is only one God. The big one. Adonai, YHWH, Elohim, or Allah. The one big guy. Chances are, that if you are one of those people sent to a religious school or dragged to chuch, you even have been told it there. Heck, you might have learned the Ten Commandments - a version of which exists in each of the scriptures - starting out with "there is no other God but Me" (meaning the one guy).
What would you do, if I told you, that this is actually a mistranslation and that in fact the old versions of the texts do reference a variety of other gods not as demons or devils, but as just as real as the one guy?
A couple of weeks back I talked a bit about the background of Lucifer, how in the Hebrew version of the text this character was not called Lucifer but Halel. And Halel is not an angel or anything, but he is another god in the pantheon that Elohim was from. A god associated with beauty. And back when the Syrian myths were still a thing, the story went: "Halel thought he should lead the pantheon because he was more beautiful than all the other gods and for this was punished to spend some time mortal wandering the earth." While most of this myth did not survive, for some reason some parts did, with Halel not really getting explained. But yeah, he wants to overthrow Elohim and gets banished. And because the European audience for whom it was then later translated into Latin would now know Halel, the translator put in Lucifer, who like Halel was a male god associated with beauty and the morning star (aka Venus).
But this is not the only god that gets outright referenced in the text. Several others do, mostly from the Canaanite and Syrian pantheon - as those are where YHWH ended up for a long time. Some Egyptian deities also get mentioned. And no, none of them are said to be demons or devils or anything like that.
The core of this is the translation of that one sentence in the Ten Commandments. It gets usually translated as "There is no God but me", or "You shall not have another God but me". But what it more clearly says originally is: "You shall not pray to another God but me". And there is the thing. The "you" is not a "you" of "anyone", but actually means a very specific people. And for this, we need to once more go back to the origin of YHWH.
Now, mind you, given that we are talking about stuff that is about 4000 years in the past, so the sources are not capable of filling up all the questions. But we have a somewhat good idea.
See, something that in todays discussions about anti-semitism gets kinda overlooked is, that the Semites were not just the Jewish people, but a whole culture of people living in the east of the Mediterranean, which includes Akkadia, Phoenicia and Ancient Syria. Those were an "advanced civilization" too, but one that rarely gets talked about as much as Greece, Rome and Egypt - despite later Roman history being heavily connected to it and sharing several deities.
Not to put on my conspiracy hat, but I am rather convinced that part of the reason we talk little about it, is, that if everyone knew about this mythology, people would look at the Bible and go: "Oooooooh!" Because while we can absolutely see those similarities with other mythology as well, because of the common background, if you compare the old Testament to Akkadian, Phoenician, and Persian myths, there is a lot more commonality there.
But yeah, these cultures had also a lot of cultural exchange going on with both Egypt and Greece at this time - 4000 years ago. Which at the time with everyone being very polytheistic meant that alos a lot of gods god exchanged. Basically like if you are doing a trading card game. "Oh wow, you have a really cool harvest deity." - "Trade you for your fire deity." - "You got a deal!" And while we are not 100% sure, we are fairly certain that in all that a harvest and/or weather deity named YHWH got taken over by those semitic people doing their own desert civilization. Some of them had like actual cities, some were more normadic.
Either way, YHWH was taken into that pantheon and for some reason he at some point got fused with Ba'al, a war deity, who also had weather aspects. And this fused deity at some point for one tribe then also fused with Elohim, the highest of the gods. A good old typical Sky Daddy.
And then there was this one mainly normadic tribe, who at some point were like: "Yeah, actually, we do no longer care about the other gods. It is all Sky Daddy YHWH-Ba'al-Elohim for us now!" However, they did not deny the reality of the other gods, it was just that this tribe decided to exclusively pray to this one deitiy, because in their understanding, this deity had promised to protect them and what not.
Yes, this one tribe were the Israelites.
And that brings us back to "You should not worship any god but me". Because that "you" was meant for them only. The Israelites. And if you real the whole scripture - at least the Hebrew one - there is absolutely no doubt about this. Heck, even later in the Greek stuff (so Jesus-related lore) we are very clear on that. This was not a religion for anyone. This was a religion for the Israelites, and nobody else.
Jesus at one point explicitly says: "I have not come to deliver anyone BUT the Jews".
Now mind you, technically this is mainly an issue with the scripture in Judaism and Christianity. Because they mainly kept the translated versions of the old Hebrew texts, even though a lot of people who read them lack the historical context of who wrote these texts and when and why. But the fact that Jesus is very clear on who he is there for does remain.
Islam does not have this issue as much, as the Qur'an did not just take the Hebrew stuff, but basically retold all the stuff in a very shortened version. Which for the most part also keeps out the references to all the other deities - and does not involve anyone going: "This religion is for this specific group only."
To me these days it is really weird, that most of the times when I am talking to Christian religious people, they are not engaging with those parts of the bible however. Usually, if you note those parts, they will outright deny them.
Personally, given how much violence was committed in the name of the one guy who was so very much against violence, I find it almost sad that this violence was then committed by people who that one guy explicitly said he had not come for.
And the entire rivalry between religions... Back in the day, people just accepted that all the gods were real to some degree and let other people pick their favorite god in peace.
Oh, and before I forget, because a lot of Zionists get super angry about this one: Actually, Arabs are Semites too. So if we want to be really technical abotu words, anti-muslim sentiment (which tends to be just a cover for anti-arab sentiment either way) is actually anti-semitic, too. Because, yes, the term anti-semitism came from a time where it included all those semitic groups, and not just the Israelites.
