What is a God in the Hebrew Bible? Part I: The Divine Cast of Characters
What is a God in the Hebrew Bible? Part 2: Characteristics and Hierarchy
From Monolatry to Monotheism: The Changing Face of the Biblical Pantheon
This series is a thoughtful and wide-ranging account of divinities in the ancient Near East and in the Hebrew Bible. Well worth the read.
The series ends with the New Testament period. There's more to say about the development of divinities in the Second Temple era. Notably, there is the origin of demons as the disembodied spirits of the giants killed in Noah's Flood. These giants in turn were the hybrid divine-human offspring of the mating of the angelic Watchers with human women (cf. Genesis 6:1-4 and the story in the Book of Watchers in 1 Enoch 1-36).
The category of fallen angels, such as the Watchers (also cf., e.g., Matthew 25:41, Revelation 12:4, 7), is a different one from the demons.
I discuss the Watchers-giants-demons tradition in detail in my article introducing the ancient Book of Giants, published in MOTP2 and reprinted online here. And for some addition informed speculation about the use of ancient Near Eastern divinity traditions (about Baal) in this late period, see here.
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