There are other gods mentioned in the Bible. Yes! I was amazed when I started reading the Bible on my own and found 'lesser' gods mentioned. I was never taught that. Of course, my pastor mentioned the Jews worshipped 'false idols' but only ever mentioned them in passing and only ever referred to the cow idol and other similar things.

For instance, God instructs his people to worship no other God than him. This may not seem like much, but some believe that this could imply the existence of other gods, but that Yahweh/Jehovah/God just wants to be worshipped alone.

Exodus 20:3 "You shall have no other gods before me."
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
"Worship no god but me."

There it is in several different translations.

Some more verses-

"Our Lord is above all gods" Psalms 135:5

Genesis 1:26 states "Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.'"

I'm curious to know who he is referring to as 'our.' In the following verse he goes on to create mankind in 'his own image.' Complete ting ditching the 'our' as used before. It could refer to Jesus and the Holy Spirit but they are all one and the same, so I'm not sure I'm convinced. He could be referring to the angels, but angels look vastly different from humans so again I'm not convinced.

In 1 Kings, Micaiah states "I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, with all the host of heaven standing beside him."
You might be thinking, well this is likely referring to the angels of heaven or Jesus. I thought so too, but the next verse I'll talk about hints at more.

Psalm 82 states "God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgement."

So God is in the midst of other gods, on a council? Psalm 89 also mentions a council of holy ones.

Perhaps the use of gods here is to say that God sits among the false gods of the Israelites and is judging them. I am completely open to this interpretation and I do think it's a possibility. But it says that God takes HIS place among the council, as if he and the others are all meant to be there, which is why I'm not entirely sold in this theory. Other interpreters believe that 'gods' refers to all of the Israelites in a possibly mocking tone. They themselves are the 'divine council.'

https://goodquestionblog.com/2018/11/02/what-is-the-divine-council-or-assembly-of-the-gods-described-in-the-bible/

Here's the link to an interesting article I read on the debate of these interpretations.

Anyways moving on.

There is a goddess mentioned several times in the Bible: Asherah. She is a goddess of the ancient Semitic religion. She is also sometimes referred to as Ashtoreth or Asherim. She was one of the three great goddesses of the Canaanite pantheon. Yahweh and Asherah were often worshipped together. Some believe that she might have been Yahweh's wife.

Inscriptions have been found with blessing's from "Yahweh and his Asherah."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna42147912

She's referred to 40ish times in the Bible. Don't believe me?
1 Kings 18:19
2 Chronicles 15:16
2 Kings 21:7
And so many more

It is believed that early authors of the Bible hated the Canaanites and slowly edited her out, turning her into a false god.

https://mythologymatters.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/yahwehs-divorce-from-the-goddess-asherah-in-the-garden-of-eden/

A god by the name of Baal is mentioned throughout the Bible as well. He was also worshipped among the Canaanites as a fertility god.
2 Kings 21:3 "He also erected altera to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done."

Baal has at least 450 prophets which are mentioned in the Bible (not by name).

There are so many other verses hinting to the existence of other gods and I couldn't list them all in this chapter. Yahweh/God seems to constantly be in competition with Baal to be the supreme god of Israel.

Other gods, such as El (Asherah's OG husband) were worshipped. Yahweh slowly took El's place and titles, according to scholars.

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2018-07-26/ty-article-magazine/.premium/when-the-jews-believed-in-other-gods/0000017f-dc52-d856-a37f-fdd222920000?_amp=true

This is a lot of information to take in and my research on this is still going. But this is what I've gathered so far. And of course I've provided links to the articles in case any of you are curious.

But I think this helped me to realize that the origin of Christianity isn't as simple as the church always taught me.