This is a small extract from my book (the notes and references are, however, sometimes incomplete or occasionally refer to content that is only covered in the book). This subchapter can be summarised in one sentence:
The problem with the other gods was never a religious one, but always an ethical one. ​
And here's why:

The biblical world of gods

Most readers of this book are probably – if theists – monotheists. In our language use, this means that there is only one God. Biblically speaking, however, there is not just one God, but many. The word “God” in Hebrew is in the plural (Elohim), so it would have to be translated literally as ‘gods’. For this reason, it is sometimes only the context in the Old Testament that allows the Hebrew reader to distinguish between “God” (Elohim) and ‘gods’ (also ‘Elohim’ – both are written the same[1]). What distinguishes God from gods is that he is ‘greater than all gods’ (Ps 135:5). More specifically, the biblical world of gods is not monotheistic but henotheistic. In contrast to monotheism, henotheism acknowledges the existence of other, lower deities and supernatural beings (seraphim, angels, demons, etc.). The faith of Jews and Christians is strictly speaking henotheistic. ​
Concretely: In Exodus 12:12, God wants to ‘bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt’. In Jeremiah 43:12 he leads them into captivity. In the Book of Job (2,1) ‘the sons of God’ come together, and among them was even ‘Satan … to present himself’ before the Lord. And (not only) the book of Ezekiel is teeming with supernatural beings; some have four faces and four wings (chapter 1 and others), seraphim (derived from the Hebrew verb ‘to burn’) even had six (Isa 6:2 and others). Cherubim guarded the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:24 and others) and their representation later the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies of the tabernacle, and later in the first temple, until the Babylonian captivity. We also find angels. However, they only have wings in Hollywood, in our imagination and in church representations. Whoever looks for winged angels in the Holy Scriptures will search them in vain. Among these heavenly – often anonymous – messengers, two are mentioned by name, namely Michael and Gabriel (both in the book of Daniel and in the New Testament).
In the Orient, the power of the gods was measured by the military success not only by the pharaohs. The same principle is also clearly anchored in the Bible. The boldness of the prophet Jeremiah is hard to comprehend when we read his speeches of judgment on the pagan gods in a comfortable armchair. During his lifetime, Jeremiah had to watch one Judean city after another being conquered by the Babylonians and finally even Jerusalem was destroyed by the world power of the time in the last of three successive sieges (586 BC). Contrary to the obvious conclusion that the God of the Jews was inferior to the gods of other peoples, Jeremiah claimed that the exile was the consequence of Jewish infidelity to their God. At a time when everything seemed to prove the contrary, Jeremiah spoke judgments not only about Amon, the chief god of the city of No (Thebes) in southern Egypt (Jer 46:25 ff.), about Chemosh the Lord of the Moabites (Jer 48:1 ff.) or about Molek the deity of the Ammonites (Jer 49:1 ff.), he even dared to claim that it would be the God of the Bible himself who would put an end to the Babylonian deities. Not only the Babylonians, not only their rulers, even their gods Bel and Marduk and the idols representing them would go into exile themselves (Jer 50:2 ff.).
The Spirit of God Himself is only one of several spirits we encounter in the Bible. A misleading term is the word ‘demon’. While we read in Psalm 96:5 that ‘For all the gods of the nations are idols’, the Septuagint translates literally as ‘For all the gods of the nations are demons.’ The Greek word ‘demon’ (daimonion[2]) is in fact nothing more than a diminutive. The suffix ion is a diminutive form like the ‘lein’ in German. With it we can turn a ‘garden’ into a ‘little garden’, a ‘woman’ into a ‘young lady’ and a ‘man’ into a ‘little man’. In English this phenomenon is not so frequent, but it does exist. Thus, if you add ‘let’ to ‘stream’ you get a very small stream, i.e. a ‘streamlet’. So, a demon was nothing else but a lower form of a deity, a ‘little god’. When Paul spoke of Jesus in Athens, some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers wondered whether was ‘advocating foreign gods.’ (Acts 17:18). Luke needs the Greek word ‘demons’ here. So, our modern Bibles translate this term differently depending on the context, which can easily lead the reader to false conclusions. I grew up in an ecclesiastical context where ‘demons’ were depicted as satanic beings, that some of us might imagine with black tails, red eyes, a fork and fiery breath. Linguistically, however, the Greek term was neutral at first and was not related to Satan. It is noteworthy in this context that in Matthew 25:41 Jesus does not refer to the servants of Satan as ‘demons’ but as ‘angels of the devil’. Only in the course of church history did demons become devilish. Interesting is also the fact that the great church father Augustine, in his Latin work City of God’, still in the fifth century of our era, regarded the terms ‘demon’ and (lesser) ‘god’ as interchangeable[3]. Demons in the Bible are not evil, they are unclean. More on that later.
​Back then the gods were:
  1. National:
    • ‘Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they rescued Samaria from my hand? Who of all the gods of these countries have been able to save their lands from me? How then can the Lord deliver Jerusalem from my hand?’ (Isa 36:19-20)
    • ‘Has a nation ever changed its gods?’ (The answer to this purely rhetorical question is ‘no’ – Jer 2:11)
  2. Geographical:
    • ‘Their gods are gods of the hills. That is why they were too strong for us. But if we fight them on the plains, surely, we will be stronger than they.’ (1 Ki 20:23)
    • ‘You, Judah, have as many gods as you have towns …’ (Jer 11:13)
  3. Familial:
    • ‘The God of Abraham and the God of Nahor’ (Gen 31:53)
    • ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.’ (Act 16:31)
It should not be forgotten that the Bible makes a distinction between gods (or other supernatural beings) and idols. Gods were real, whereas idols were only man-made representations of powers (‘They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see.’ Ps 115:5 and many others). Men could destroy idols, but no man could destroy gods. And while prophets could make fun of idols (‘At noon Elijah began to taunt them. ‘Shout louder!’ he said. ‘Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.’ 1 Ki 18:27), gods were not to be trifled with (‘For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’ Eph 6:12).
We find an interesting reading in Deuteronomy 32:8, where it says that God ‘set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel’. But Hebrew text variants from the Qumran caves as well as the LXX speak here of ‘the number of the sons of God’, resp. according to ‘the number of the sons of the gods’, resp. to ‘the angels of God’, that is of supernatural beings[4]. Erich Scheurer is therefore convinced that Moses is envisaging gods here[5]. In Genesis 10, seventy peoples are mentioned who descend from Noah. According to this way of reading there existed 70 main gods, one per nation. We find similar ideas in Hebrew passages of the Masoretic text on which our Bible translations are based, for example in Deuteronomy 29:25, where the God of the Jews is presented to us as the highest of all gods, who has not assigned any other gods to Israel (‘gods they did not know, gods he had not given them.’)
So, it is the God of the Bible himself who has assigned the nations their gods!
The Judge Jephthah knew that much too. Therefore, he advised the king of the Ammonites to be content with what his god Chemosh had assigned to him (‘Should you not possess what your god Chemosh gives you to possess?’[6]). For Israel too had only taken those parts of the land that the God of the Jews had predestined for them (Jdg 11:24). But the belligerent king of the Ammonites did not want to know anything about the diplomatic negotiations with Jephthah, and so the war broke out and ended in favour of the Hebrews. In the book of the prophet Daniel, similar thoughts come to light. When he sees an apparition on the Tigris and an angelic being gives him insight into the invisible world, there is talk of the prince of the kingdom of Persia and the prince of the kingdom of Greece, which can only be fought by the angel talking to Daniel – is it Gabriel? – and the angel Michael (Dn 10:4-21). The different peoples are thus presided over by different divine princes, so that the wars on earth are merely the visible side of an invisible reality.
God had acquired the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt with much effort and care, with miracles and great signs. So, the relationship between God and Israel was comparable to a Suzerain-Vassal relationship, God had the supremacy or sovereignty, Israel was subordinate to him. In ancient times the Hittites had created a standardized and widespread form of contract as a norm between kings and the corresponding subject. Today this type of contract is known as the ‘Suzerain-Vassal’ agreement. It consisted of six parts[7]:
  1. Preamble 
  2. Historical prologue
  3. Provisions
  4. Curses and blessings
  5. Witnesses
  6. Clause
Exodus 20-24, where the Ten Commandments were given, is broken down exactly according to this pattern. It's these:
  1. Preamble: God's identity and sovereignty (Ex 20:1-2a)
  2. Historical prologue: Deliverance from slavery (Ex 20:2b)
  3. Provisions: The 10 Commandments and their implementation (Ex 20:3-23:19)
  4. Curses and blessings: protection and punishment by the angel of the Lord (Ex 23:20-33)
  5. Witnesses: Moses, Aaron, his sons and the elders (Ex 24:1-3 and 9-18)
  6. Clause: Conclusion of contract by animal sacrifice[8] (Ex 24:4-8)
The relationship between Israel and God is also compared several times with a marriage that a woman is supposed to have with her husband. Religious ‘cheating' is therefore repeatedly compared with ‘adultery’ (‘she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood’ Jer 3:9).
The commandment not to serve any other gods dates from the time of Moses, after Yahweh had proved with elaborate means that he was really God. The prohibition against serving other gods therefore only applied to Israel.
This commandment did not apply to other nations, for the other nations stood in similar ‘suzerain-vassal’ relationships to their own gods as Israel did to its God.
The arch-father Jacob, however, could not yet claim so much. When he had to flee from his angry brother for his life and God appeared to him in Bethel, he made a promise (Gen 28:20-21):
‘If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s household, then the Lord will be my God.’
Jacob did not ‘convert’ by reading a tract for two minutes, he did not go to the pulpit to repent after a 45-minute evangelisation. God had to become an experienced reality for him first. Many years later, when Jacob had become an important clan with 4 women, 11 children, servants and large flocks, he prayed (Gen 32:10-11):
​ ‘O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, Lord, you who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,’ I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two camps.’
Christian theologians often ascribe Rachel's untimely death to the fact that she had stolen her father's household idols (Gen 31:34) – a Christian conclusion that puts church thinking back into the first book of the Bible. Jacob's wife's interest in her family's household idols was an expression of her fear of God – not her godlessness. Rachel's only unethical act was her theft, which her husband Jacob – in ignorance of her stealing – cursed (‘But if you find anyone who has your gods, that person shall not live.’ Gen 31:32). Jacob's decision to separate himself from other gods was taken later (Gen 35:2). Even Abraham had feared that King Abimelech could have no fear of God. However, he did not attribute the possible lack of fear of God to other gods, but to their unethical actions, which he measured against (un)humanity (‘Abraham replied, ‘I said to myself, ‘There is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.’’ Gen 20:11). And when God promised Abraham to make a great nation out of him, he let him know at the same time that his descendants would first be strangers for 400 years before they would come back from Egypt to Canaan. Only then would the Hebrews take possession of the promised land. God also indicated the reason for this delay (Gen 15:16):
‘For the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.’
So, the problem was not the gods of the Amorites, it was their moral corruption.
​
When more than 1,000 years later the Aramaean army commander Naeman was healed of leprosy by the prophet Elisha in the Jordan, the general decided that in future he would only serve the God of the Jews. As a servant of the king, however, he was obliged in his position to go with his master to the temple of the god Rimmon to accompany him at the sacrifices. When he asked Elisha for permission to do so, the prophet replied, ‘Go in peace!’ (2Ki 5:19) – another Old Testament passage that is met with incomprehension and criticism by Christian theologians. As an evangelical Christian, I would never have dared to enter a mosque or a Hindu temple in my past.
At the feast of tabernacles, which lasted seven days, 70 bulls were sacrificed at a time in accordance with Mosaic regulations (Num 29:12-34). The rabbis connected this number with the 70 names in the table of nations in Genesis 10. ‘The teachers of Israel now declared that the sacrifices of the 70 bulls were offered for the benefit of the nations of the world’, Roger Liebi comments[9]. Universalism is expressed in the canonical writings in various places. Already Abraham was promised by God ‘and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me!’ (Gen 22:18). The prophet Isaiah elaborated on this thought (Isa 2:2-4):
‘In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.’ The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.’
We will devote our attention to the fundamental role of this thought in the first Christ movement in more detail later on, when we will consider why the ‘turning’ of the nations towards the Jewish God cannot mean a ‘conversion’ of the peoples in the sense that this term expresses in our time. But before we turn to the universalist ideology of the early Christians, it is necessary to examine the New Testament context from various other perspectives. To do this, however, we must first dwell a little on the Old Testament:
One of the most preached prophets is Jonah. Amazingly, he is also one of the most criticized men of God in the Bible. This short book, consisting of only 4 chapters, is apparently one of the simplest prophetic books in the Bible. Already in Sunday school children get to know him. Jonah is one of the few prophets from Israel's Northern Kingdom with its capital Samaria. God had commissioned him to lead the inhabitants of the city of Nineveh – a Mesopotamian metropolis in today's Iraq – to repentance. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire of that time. When he received this order, he did not hesitate, went to Joppa to the port, and took a merchant ship to Tarshish, a port on the Iberian Peninsula (today's Spain), which for that time was on the other side of the earth, in the diametrically opposite direction to Nineveh. The prophet hoped to be able to flee from God's commission with it, since according to his own statement he feared God (Jn 1,9) and therefore did not stay at home in Israel. But a great storm – a clear sign that the gods were angry – upset his plans. When the lot fell on Jonah, the man fleeing from God had to explain his disobedience to the sailors and asked them to throw him overboard alive, a desperate gesture that the crew could not escape in the end. But a big fish swallowed him alive and saved him from drowning. Three days later the Prophet was spat ashore by it. Against his will, Jonah finally had to warn the Ninivites of God's wrath that the city would be destroyed 40 days later. And what the prophet feared most happened: The Ninivites repented and so did God: ‘When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.’ (Jon 3:10). Jonah is one of the strangest prophets. He predicts the destruction of an indestructible city, and – what a miracle! – it is not destructed!
‘But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, ‘Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.’ Jonah 4:1-2
The serious call at the latest at the end of the sermon not to run away from God, in contrast to Jonah, is missing in no church litany. The prophet's attitude that he did not want to avert God's judgment on Nineveh under any circumstances is met with incomprehension. The whole explosiveness of this book is lost because the prophet himself makes only a vague allusion to the context in which one has to place the story. An explicit explanation of the preceding events was probably not necessary at the time of the writing of this book either, because everybody knew back then in which politically highly explosive time this happened. An Assyrian invasion of Israel can be dated back to the year 805 B.C., when Jonah was probably still a child. Adad-Nirari III left a description of his expedition to Israel in the fifth year of his reign, when according to the stele of Tell-al-Rimah, he subjugated Joas of Samaria to his rule[10]. According to biblical accounts, God saw ‘how bitterly everyone in Israel, whether slave or free, was suffering’ (2Ki 14:26) and, according to Jonah's prophecy, the subsequent Israelite king Jeroboam II ‘restored the boundaries of Israel.’
What was so bitter about it is not written in the Bible, but it is found in history books. The cruelty of the Assyrians was known and raged for several centuries. H. R. Hall gives us a detailed description of the war procedure of the Assyrian king Assur-Nasirpal II (883-859) in his book The Ancient History Of The Near East[11]:
‘His usual procedure after the capture of a hostile city was to burn it, and then to mutilate all the grown men prisoners by cutting off their hands and ears and putting out their eyes; after which they were piled up in a great heap to perish in torture from sun, flies, their wounds, and suffocation; the children, both boys and girls, were all burnt alive at the stake; and the chief was carried off to Assyria to be flayed alive for the king’s delectation. To Ashur-nasir-pal and his son Shalmaneser II was due the military organization of the Assyrian state which soon made it mistress of Western Asia.’
It is possible that Jonah, as a child, had to witness the proverbial cruelty with his own eyes, when perhaps even friends or family members were drawn into the wars. This would also explain why he was so unhappy from his own success with the Ninivites – the city repented and was not destroyed. When I began to understand the context of this prophet, Jonah became really likeable to me for the first time in my life.
But the reason why I am talking about Jonah here at all is the following: When God instructed Jonah to go to Nineveh – the capital of the Assyrians – in person, he also gave the reason: ‘because its wickedness has come up before me!’ (Jon 1:2). It is easy to overlook the fact that there is no mention here of God's ‘competition’. The Ninivites did not have to turn away from their gods, but from their wickedness. The Assyrian gods were not the problem, the cruelty of the world power of that time was. And now we have come to the crux of the matter:
The biblical problem of the other gods is their inhumanity!
It is not religion that is in focus, it is ethics.
So the idea that in the Old Testament all people of all nations, with the exception of the Israelites, went directly to hell because they did not serve the God of the Jews, is absurd. Enoch, Noah and Job, for example, were not Jews themselves. When the widowed Naemi returned from Moab to Bethlehem, she urged her two Moabite daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpa, to return (Rut 1:8): ‘Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home.’ And she wished them God's blessing:
‘May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me.’
So, God was supposed to show kindness to Moabite women – i.e. foreign women who had other gods and offered sacrifices to other deities. Had Naomi believed that Moabites would go to hell because they had ‘another religion’, she would have had to urge her daughters-in-law to accompany her to Israel.  ​
‘Your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her,’ (Ruth 1:15) Naomi insisted on her request to Ruth as she refused to go back. Naomi was obviously convinced that decent Moabites don't go to hell and neither do honest Jews. Therefore, she blessed both (also widowed) daughters-in-law, although only one of them converted to Judaism: ‘Your people will be my people and your God my God.’ explained Ruth (v. 16). I insist: Religion was not the issue, the often associated inhuman ethics was. The following Bible passage illustrates this: When the Hebrews were about to enter the promised land, they were admonished by Moses (Ex 12:29-31):
​‘The Lord your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.’ You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.’
But it is Psalm 82 that accuses the other gods most bluntly:
‘God presides in the great assembly; he renders judgment among the ‘gods’: ‘How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked? Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. ‘The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing. They walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken. ‘I said, ‘You are ‘gods’; you are all sons of the Most High.’ But you will die like mere mortals; you will fall like every other ruler.’ Rise up, O God, judge the earth, for all the nations are your inheritance.’
What the NIV translates here ‘in the great assembly’ is in Hebrew literally ‘in the assembly of God’. Thus, in the first verse God and the gods appear three times[12]. It is precisely because the gods are immoral and do not save the poor from the hands of the wicked that all the foundations of the earth are shaken. What the NIV translates twice in this Psalm as ‘wicked’ (rasha` in Hebrew) could be translated as ‘impious’. Therefore, because gods do not judge those who are impious, God will let them die like impious. And so the circle is complete: People of other religions are not impious (that is godless) when they serve other gods, they are godless (that is impious) when they do not dispense justice. So, inhumanity is an expression of impiety and impiety is an expression of inhumanity.
Having now looked at the biblical world of gods in general and the God of Israel in particular, we must now turn to the gods of the nations that shaped the context of the New Testament.
Footnotes:

[1] The LXX is somewhat freer than our modern Bibles when translating 'Elohim' (אלהים). Thus, the Septuagint translates 'Elohim' in Judges 16:24 – where the text speaks of the gods of the Philistines (or should I now say, 'the God of the Philistines'?) – the first time with the plural (theoi ‘gods’), the second time with the singular (theos ‘God’). In Hebrew the plural (Elohim) is used in both cases – as usual.

[2] δαιμόνιον

[3] (Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism, 2010, S. 54)

[4] We find both versions: ‘according to the number of the sons of God’ (בני אל) and ‘according to the number of the sons of the gods’ (בני אלהים and also בני אלים). The LXX also reads ‘according to the number of the angels of God’ (κατὰ ἀριθμὸν ἀγγέλων Θεοῦ).

[5] (Scheurer, 1999, S. 375)

[6] הֲלֹא אֵת אֲשֶׁר יוֹרִישְׁךָ, כְּמוֹשׁ אֱלֹהֶיךָ--אוֹתוֹ תִירָשׁ

[7] Invalid source specified. Marketing- und Vertriebsberatung International. Biblisches Basiswissen. Informationsquelle: http://marketing-und-vertrieb-international.com/jesus/geschichte-des-wortes.htm
[konsultiert am 30. August 2019]

[8] As explained earlier, at that time contracts were sealed by the death of animals. The animal sacrifice symbolized irrevocability (a dead animal does not come back to life) and at the same time indicated the punishment that would be imposed on the violating party in the event of a breach of contract.

[9] (Liebi, Der Messias im Tempel, Symbolik und Bedeutung des Zweiten Tempels im LIcht des Neuen Testaments, 2003, S. 417)

[10] (Arnold, 2004, pp. 79-80)

[11] (Hall, 1913 & 2018, S. 322)

[12] אֱלֹהִים, נִצָּב בַּעֲדַת-אֵל; בְּקֶרֶב אֱלֹהִים יִשְׁפֹּ