There’s no evidence for your claim. And the old testament does not. Yes, it refers to other gods as concepts but not as literal Gods
Their claim does have support in so far that the early testament contains a lot of work written by polytheistic people that later in would become the monolatrists and even later monotheists that we know as Jews, further branching off into what today are Christians.
This does not mean that Christians in any sense are not purely monotheistic. Not only are they so, it’s one of the most critical parts of their beliefs, to the point where even believing that their one god has in any way shape or form some kind of tangible division is considered strict heresy from trinitarian churches which form the mainstream of Christianity and have done so for hundreds of years.
Edit: There is a great video by Alex O’Connor interviewing Esoterica on that topic in particular and they talk about the evidence that supports the viewpoints.
The first commandment is literally “you shall have no other gods before me.” If you look at different historical translations and viewpoints, it is well accepted that Judaism experienced a shift from polytheism to monotheism, and there is more evidence of that in the Old Testament. Passages referring to Yahwehs wife, waging war to defeat other gods, etc.
It’s talking about concepts, and the false gods existing as a concept. You could even have something like money, etc, be your god. What’s your source on “Yahweh’s wife” apart from the Church itself being His bride? (Which still doesn’t make the Church a god)
There’s verses in Kings, Judges, and I’ll look back over my Jewish Studies course notes from last semester for more academic sources tomorrow. Notably the worship of Baal and Asherah are present, and iirc Asherah was associated with some Israelites to be Yahwehs wife. We’re talking pre-Greek and Roman time periods where Gods were considered much more physical - as we see with Genesis with Yahweh referred to as walking in the garden.
The concepts of gods being more etherial didn’t come about for a few more centuries after, maybe by the time Christianity started popping off (again, gotta go to sleep but will check dates if ya need tomorrow). See also the Cyprus Cylinder for comparison and reference to conquering of the Israelites, orders that allowed them to continue to worship as they pleased, while still essentially talking shit and saying “Our God is stronger than yours.”
May be worth asking chatgpt. The Bible has been rewritten so many times to adjust for major cultural shifts, but there’s definitely evidence within it and other historical writings.
