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The Gods of the Bible

Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.

Yahweh The personal name of Israel's God, printed as LORD in most English Bibles.
El The ordinary word for god in the region, and also the name of the chief god of Israel's neighbors.
El Elyon A title meaning Most High, used in the verse where the nations get handed out to different gods.
El Shaddai An old title for Israel's God, translated Almighty, whose actual meaning is disputed.
Yahweh Tzevaot A battle title: the God of armies, meaning heavenly ones rather than Israel's soldiers.
The Angel of Yahweh A messenger who shows up speaking as God himself, and gets treated as God by the people who meet him.
The Commander of Yahweh's Army An armed figure who meets Joshua outside Jericho and refuses to take a side.
The Son of Man A human-looking figure in Daniel's vision who arrives on the clouds and is handed authority over everything.
Bene elohim Sons of God: a group of lesser divine beings who show up at God's throne.
The elohim of Psalm 82 A psalm where God stands up in a room full of gods and sentences them to death.
The host of heaven Two things at once: God's heavenly army, and the sun, moon and stars Israel was told not to worship.
Seraphim Six-winged beings around God's throne in Isaiah's vision, described with a word that elsewhere means burning serpent.
Cherubim Winged composite creatures that guard and carry God's throne, nothing like the babies in later art.
Ophanim The wheels full of eyes in Ezekiel's vision, which later tradition turned into a class of angel.
The Watchers of Daniel 4 Heavenly figures in one chapter of Daniel who announce a king's downfall.
The morning stars Stars that sing at the creation of the world, set in parallel with the sons of God.
Michael The angel assigned to Israel, and the only figure the Bible calls an archangel.
Gabriel The angel who explains visions and announces births, named four times in the Bible.
The princes of Persia and Greece Spirit figures in Daniel who rule nations and can hold up a messenger from God for weeks.
The satan of Job The accuser in Job, a job title in God's court rather than a personal name.
The lying spirit A spirit who volunteers at God's throne to deceive a king's prophets.
The destroyer The killing figure of the Passover night, later seen again with a drawn sword over Jerusalem.
Angels A word that means messenger and describes a job, not a species of being.
Archangel A rank that appears twice in the New Testament and belongs to Michael alone.
The holy ones A name for the beings who make up God's court.
Raphael An angel who works as a physician and demon-binder in Tobit, a book outside the Protestant Bible.
Uriel, Sariel, Phanuel Angels named in 1 Enoch that readers go looking for in the Bible and never find.
Baal The storm god of Canaan, Israel's most persistent religious rival, and Elijah's opponent on Mount Carmel.
Baal-zebub / Beelzebul A Philistine god whose name Israel deliberately misspelled into lord of the flies.
Baal-peor The local version of Baal tied to an incident where Israel ate meals offered to the dead.
Baal-berith Lord of the covenant, worshipped at Shechem, whose temple funded a coup.
Hadad / Rimmon The Syrian storm god, named when a foreign general asks to be excused for bowing in his temple.
Asherah A goddess and also the wooden object that stood for her, one of which sat in the Jerusalem temple.
Ashtoreth / Astarte A goddess of war and love whose Hebrew name was deliberately mispronounced to mean shame.
The Queen of Heaven A goddess whose cakes the women of Judah baked, and who told the prophet life was better when they did.
Anat A violent warrior goddess, prominent among Israel's neighbors and never once named in the Bible.
Chemosh The god of Moab, and the one foreign god a battle in Scripture is read as going to.
Molech The god associated with child sacrifice in a valley outside Jerusalem that gave us the word Gehenna.
Milcom The god of Ammon, a different god from Molech though English Bibles have blurred them.
Dagon The god of the Philistines, whose statue falls and breaks in front of Israel's ark.
Nisroch The god in whose temple an Assyrian king was murdered by his own sons.
Nergal A Mesopotamian god of plague and the underworld, brought into Samaria by resettled foreigners.
Nebo The Babylonian god of scribes, shown being hauled out of town on pack animals in Isaiah's parody.
Bel / Marduk The chief god of Babylon, named in the prophets as a god about to be humiliated.
Tammuz A dying shepherd god whose women mourners Ezekiel sees weeping at the temple gate.
Adrammelech and Anammelech Two gods of resettled foreigners, named in the one verse that says their people burned children to them.
Ashima, Nibhaz, Tartak, Succoth-benoth Four imported gods named once each and never mentioned again.
Sikkuth and Kiyyun / Rephan Star gods carried in procession, where the Greek Bible and the Hebrew give different names.
Gad and Meni Fortune and Destiny, two gods most readers never notice are in the verse.
Zeus The chief Greek god, whom a crowd mistakes Barnabas for.
Hermes The Greek messenger god, whom the same crowd mistakes Paul for because he did the talking.
Artemis of the Ephesians A local goddess whose souvenir trade started a riot against Paul.
The Dioscuri Twin gods who protected sailors, carved on the ship that carried Paul to Rome.
The unknown god An Athenian altar hedging against offending a god nobody could name, which Paul preached from.
The python spirit A fortune-telling spirit named after the oracle at Delphi, cast out of a slave girl.
Mot Death as a figure with an open throat that is never full.
Yam The sea as an opponent God fights, not just water.
Leviathan A sea monster God crushes in one poem and plays with in another.
Behemoth A huge land beast in Job that nobody has been able to identify.
Rahab A chaos monster God cuts to pieces, and also a nickname for Egypt.
Tannin Sea monsters, which Genesis pointedly lists among the things God made and called good.
Resheph A plague god reduced in the Bible to a word for disease, who still walks at God's feet in one poem.
Deber and Qeteb Pestilence and Destruction, named in a psalm in a way that sounds like a list of beings.
Shahar and Shalem Dawn and Dusk as divine figures, one of whom is the father of the shining one in Isaiah 14.
The Watchers (Enochic) Angels who, in 1 Enoch, come down to earth, marry women, and teach humanity things it should not know.
Shemihazah The leader who talks the other Watchers into the descent and binds them to an oath.
Asael The Watcher who teaches weapons and cosmetics and gets buried under rocks until judgment.
Azazel The name on the second lot at the Day of Atonement, where the other lot says God.
Nephilim The giants of Genesis 6, born from the sons of God and human women.
Gibborim The mighty men of old, a word used of ordinary warriors too.
Rephaim A people of giants in some texts and the shades of the dead in others.
Anakim The giant clan at Hebron whose size made the Israelite spies call themselves grasshoppers.
Emim, Zamzummim, Zuzim What Moab and Ammon called the same giants everyone else called Rephaim.
Og of Bashan A giant king whose iron bed was thirteen feet long.
Goliath and the sons of Rapha The giant David killed, and the relatives of his who show up later in the same books.
The ghost of Samuel The dead prophet called up by a medium, in a scene that terrifies the medium herself.
Satan (ho satanas) The name the New Testament gives the chief adversary, a role that had become a name.
The devil (diabolos) The Greek word for slanderer, used interchangeably with Satan.
Beelzebul The name Jesus's opponents used for the ruler of demons when they accused him.
Belial / Beliar A Hebrew word for worthlessness that hardened into a name for the enemy of God.
Daimonion The New Testament word for demon, borrowed from a Greek word that was morally neutral.
Shedim A Hebrew word for the beings Israel sacrificed to, translated demons in Greek.
Se'irim Goat demons, banned as objects of sacrifice and pictured haunting ruins.
Lilith A night demon named once in Isaiah, in a list of creatures living in a ruin.
The dragon The beast of Revelation, identified there as the serpent, the devil and Satan all at once.
The ancient serpent The talking serpent of Eden, which the New Testament identifies with Satan though Genesis never does.
The beast from the sea The empire-beast of Revelation carrying the famous number.
The beast from the earth / the false prophet The second beast of Revelation, which looks like a lamb and talks like a dragon.
The man of lawlessness An end-times figure Paul describes and refuses to explain.
The ruler of this world John's title for Satan, conceding real authority and announcing its end.
The prince of the power of the air Paul's title for the ruling evil power, with the air meaning contested territory overhead.
The god of this age Paul calls the blinder of unbelievers a god, and translators have to decide what case to use.
Archai, exousiai, thronoi, kyriotetes Paul's vocabulary for ranks of cosmic powers: rulers, authorities, thrones, dominions.
Stoicheia A word meaning basic elements that Paul uses for something people can be enslaved to.
Legion The demon who gives his name as a number, in the story that ends with the pigs.
Abaddon / Apollyon A word for the place of destruction that Revelation turns into an angel over the abyss.
Death and Hades Death and the grave, treated in Revelation as figures who ride and get thrown into fire.
The four angels of the Euphrates Angels tied up at a river and released on schedule to kill.
Lucifer Not a name and not Satan: a Latin word for the morning star, used of a Babylonian king.
Satan the worship leader The belief that Satan ran music in heaven, built on one obscure verse about stone settings.
Mammon An Aramaic word for money that Jesus personified, later mistaken for a demon.
Jehovah Not a name anyone in the Bible used, but a misreading of God's name produced centuries later.
The third of the angels The claim that a third of the angels fell with Satan, which no passage actually reports.
Lilith, Adam's first wife A medieval story, not a biblical one.
The Nephilim as extraterrestrials The claim that the giants of Genesis were aliens, which rests on mistranslated Sumerian.
Dagon the fish god The belief that the Philistine god was part fish, which comes from medieval wordplay.
Easter from Ishtar The claim that Easter is named after a Babylonian goddess, which fails as word history.