Early biblical texts reflect polytheism — Elohim is grammatically plural, Genesis 1:26 has God say 'let us make man in our image,' and comparative Canaanite/Ugaritic religion suggests Yahweh originated as one storm-god among many, with El as a separate, senior deity, implying Israelite monotheism was a late development retrojected onto earlier polytheistic material.

Elohim is morphologically plural but consistently used with singular verbs and adjectives when referring to Israel's God (e.g., Gen 1:1, bara is singular, 'Elohim created,' not a plural verb) — a well-attested 'plural of majesty/intensification' in Biblical Hebrew grammar (GKC §124g), not evidence of intended plurality of referents. Genesis 1:26's 'let us make... in our image' is genuinely debated even among conservative scholars: options include (a) a plural of self-deliberation, (b) address to a subordinate heavenly/angelic council (paralleled at Isa 6:8, 1 Kings 22:19-22, Job 1:6's 'sons of God,' Ps 82) — a real feature of Israelite cosmology in which a singular High God presides over subordinate spiritual beings, categorically different from polytheism's peer deities — or (c) the patristic/traditional Christian reading as a retrospective adumbration of Trinitarian plurality-in-unity (Basil, Augustine), a legitimate sensus plenior rather than the text's demonstrable original-audience meaning. On 'Yahweh was originally a Canaanite storm-god distinct from El': this reflects a genuine line of critical scholarship (Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God; Van der Toorn) reconstructing, from Ugaritic Ras Shamra texts and onomastic/archaeological evidence, a hypothesized pre-history in which Yahweh-worship emerged from a broader Canaanite polytheistic milieu — worth acknowledging honestly. But this is a reconstruction of a hypothesized pre-history behind the text, not a claim the received, redacted biblical text itself asserts; even its earliest strata (the Song of the Sea, Exod 15, among the oldest poetic material) already assert Yahweh's incomparability, and other serious scholars (Richard S. Hess, Israelite Religions) argue for earlier, more consistent Israelite Yahwism than the evolutionary model assumes, contesting how confident that reconstruction should be. Even granting some real historical development in Israel's articulated theology (a legitimate, live question in OT scholarship), that bears on the ANE religious history behind the text, not on whether the canonical Torah as redacted teaches polytheism — every strand asserts Yahweh's singularity (Deut 6:4). Full depth on the monotheism question is treated in the dedicated Monotheism sheet; this is deliberately a brief treatment here.

The 'divine council' motif, properly understood as a monotheistic High God presiding over creaturely spiritual beings rather than peer deities, coheres with, and is retrospectively clarified by, Trinitarian theology — a God whose inner life is eternally an 'us' (Father, Son, Spirit) without ceasing to be the one God gives Genesis 1:26's grammar a fuller resonance in light of the whole canon.