the great religions of western civilization, judaism and those that followed, are all monotheistic: they claim that the God they worship is the only god there is. The Bible is an important source of this conception, but the scriptures of ancient Israel actually offer a more complicated picture.

That picture can begin with an intriguing diplomatic exchange said to have taken place around 1100 BCE. The people of Israel and the neighboring people of Ammon were locked in dispute over a certain border territory. This territory had previously belonged to neither group, but the Israelites had seized the land from the original Amorite inhabitants in the process of conquering the Promised Land. The Ammonites (a different people with a regrettably similar name!) wanted this land as well, on the ground that the Amorites had previously stolen it from them, but the Israelite leader Jephthah rejected this claim:

In this brief response Jephthah expresses a view that was widely held at his time. According to this view, every nation has its own guardian deity that watches over it in a land it has received as an inheritance.