Who invented God? When, why, and where? Thomas Romer seeks to answer these questions about the deity of the great monotheisms--Yhwh, God, or Allah--by tracing Israelite beliefs and their context from the Bronze Age to the end of the Old Testament period in the third century BCE.

That we can address such enigmatic questions at all may come as a surprise. But as Romer makes clear, a wealth of evidence allows us to piece together a reliable account of the origins and evolution of the god of Israel. Romer draws on a long tradition of historical, philological, and exegetical work and on...