god of the gods

Starting with the semantic question first, there's no real difference between god and deity except that one is gender-specific and the other isn't. "Deity" is just a Latin-derived word that covers the same ground as three Anglo-Saxon-derived words: "god", "goddess" and "godhood". English has a lot of examples like that because of the different linguistic influences that gave birth to it or were incorporated along the way. That doesn't make the rest of your ideas invalid, though.

On the more substantial theological question, well, it's possible. Haitian Vodou in its most traditional form sees it a bit like that, except that it considers its "gods in the plural" to be more like ancestral spirits or saints than like gods (but that probably derives partly from a need to make slaves' religious practices appear as innocuous as possible to their Catholic owners, back before the Revolution; some of the African religions it drew on were more of the "High God and a court of subsidiary gods" type). I don't see it that way myself, though. I don't find the Jewish G-d particularly admirable, and at the same time I don't think it's my place to tell Jewish people that they've misunderstood him. And since I don't think I need a messiah, it would be blasphemy for me to claim that my gods and goddesses do.

I don't think you'll find many polytheists who do see it the way you suggest. It doesn't personally bother me that you see it that way - everyone's relationships with the deities are different, and they may accept something from you that I don't think they'd accept from me - but just so you're prepared, you're likely to find that some polytheists take exception to it. The boards here tend to be quite well-mannered, but there are some polytheist places where you probably shouldn't say this kind of thing unless you have excellent flameproof underwear on ;-)

Hi! I would like to point out that, intellectually, I find your idea interesting, but also to be one that can be very offensive. From a monotheistic perspective this can be difficult to understand, because it is so much taken for granted that there is 'obviously' going to be a being/spirit/entity above all others. Not so for polytheism. Polytheists (in my experience) tend to take great pride in the uniqueness and powers of their divinities, and this idea (while attempting to encompass other divinities) feels like an attempt at putting them down as less than the monotheistic deity. I do not take offense and am not trying to be aggressive, I just want to gently warn you.
Also, I've studied some of the Hebrew Bible in my degree at University, so I'm interested by some of your points, and would like to politely argue against them.

For the 'god of the gods' translation- could you source this please? I haven't heard of this before. Which translation is it from? In my experience, the word 'elohim' that is used often by certain writers of the hebrew bible was plural so it would literally would be "godS", meaning a godly court/what some today would refer to as a pantheon. Could this be what you're referring to?

As for the Yahweh of the bible being the greatest... it's hard to imagine when he gets squarely defeated by the other deities in the hebrew bible. In one instance the city defending against Yahweh's army performs a human sacrifice, and 'cause them to flee in disgust' which is an embellished form of defeat.

As for Jesus being the savior of gods (arguing as a scholar, do you have any textual evidence for this?) as a polytheist I'd have to ask- from what? In the Hebrew Bible, there is no evidence of hell, or of a terrible afterlife. Considering the early beginnings of Christianity (where Christians were very aggressively offensive towards Roman polytheists which in turn brought about punishment) I find it hard to think of Jesus as a peace-keeping figure amongst the deities. Your concept seems based very much upon modern conceptions of Christianity and I have researched (slightly) the beginnings of Christianity, so for me this is all very conflicting. Hell, though it was not part of jewish (speaking the era of early/beginnings of Christianity or around Christ's time of life) beliefs at the time, was certainly there in Christian theology as evidenced in the Apocalypse of Peter.

From a more personal perspective, I understand what you're getting at. Myself, having a Wiccan base for my spirituality, I believe in a Great Mother that loosely oversees the deities, but that is different from your notion of a "god of the gods" in the sense of the power dynamics and the differences. What you will often see in the pagan/neopagan/Wiccan movement is a higher deity that acts as head, but is made of the same stuff as the other deities, or is more of a family figurehead that gave birth to the other dieties. It does not have the same power level implications, nor engender the same relationships between the deities and this higher figure, as one where the deities would pray and venerate their own 'god'. So maybe this exact relationship is what puts your view apart from others in this community? Not that this is bad at all! But if you were wondering, that's what I see as making it so very different even though it is still a polytheistic worldview.

Again, I have to disagree on you about the notion for hell being only a tool. Christianity/Islam were not the only ones who had a hell. Zoroastrianism did as well, and Kemetic beliefs did have the potential destruction of the soul. Rather, the notion of hell can be seen as a counterbalance to the bliss of heaven, which was a relatively new concept. Few other religions has such a 'tadaaa! Awesome ecstatic afterlife!' as Christianity professed to give. Consider the Sumerians, who could never drink or eat once dead and lived in a dusty world (according to some myths) It was not hell, but certainly not heaven either!

As for Jesus, I personally do not think much of him, though I really do enjoy the New Testament (love it!) and many Catholic Christian figures. I would suggest you read some academic books on the different authors of the New Testaments' versions of Jesus. Some writers, through subtle details as whether jesus goes up the mountain (more on high) or down the mountain (to be with the sick and crippled) in one specific story try and protray different versions of him. So this may be very useful for you in understanding what face of Jesus you're tapping into- or which books of the bible to look to for inspiration. You may also like to read up on some scholarly articles on Metatron and the Jewish angels, as this gives a notion of different levels of deities and how the jews saw interactions with the divine. In some beliefs, angels were so pure that if you were impure you'd die! So it's very interesting!

All in all, your views are interesting and fun food for thought! I do not mean to sound aggressive, it just itched at me and I wanted to give you a well-thought out answer, but I tend to sound offensive when trying to explain myself. Good luck with everything!