You’re conflating later Second Temple Judaism with earlier Israelite religion, what would some call Yhwism. Monotheism (the belief in one God) was dogma after the exile: what the various groups which sprouted at the time of the second Temple - the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, etc. - disagreed with is only in the matter of “how to be a Jew,” i.e. how to practice ‘Judaean customs’ (= Judaism). No Jew at that time would seriously claim that there are multiple gods: that is - as you know - blasphemous and a repudiation of Judaism.
Which of course wasn’t the case with ancient Israelite religion before the Exile, as even the Bible attests. While ‘official’ orthodox Yhwism as practiced in the Jerusalem Temple by its priests and preached by the Biblical prophets is monotheistic, folk beliefs - the kind practiced on the popular level and the one condemned by the prophets - tended to be more open and syncretic (what some would call
‘Yhwistic paganism’). Yhwistic paganism is midway between the foreign pagan practices and the pure monotheism of orthodox Yhwism and represents a sort of fusion between the two. While some of the kings of Judah (such as Hezekiah and Josiah) made efforts to centralize the monotheistic cult in Jerusalem, we must conclude by looking at the archaeological evidence that they were less than 100 percent successful. Indeed, until the Babylonian destruction of Judah and the end of the Israelite monarchy in 586 BC, pagan Yhwism was common even in Jerusalem, to say nothing of the rest of Judah.
The Hebrew Bible implies that there were many shrines both in Israel and in Judah, coexisting with the temple in Jerusalem, something which archaeology also attests to. Aside from the state-sponsored cultic centers at Dan and Bethel, there were probably also religious activity in places like Gilgal, Beersheba, Lachish, Shiloh, Shechem, Samaria, Hazor, Gezer, Nebo, Arad, Hebron, and Beersheba.
The thing about ancient religion is that there are different levels of cult (a particular group’s enactment of their beliefs and customs), and to some extent this is also true of Israelite religion. First off you have the
domestic cult. Although there aren’t too many of them in the archaeological record, some homes had a modest household shrine, perhaps one equipped with simple paraphernalia like miniature altars, lamps, clay figurines or a ‘standing-stone’ (
maṣṣebah) which the family members tended with care and regularity to ensure the family’s well-being. Family and clan tombs (for the Israelites, burial - “to be gathered to one’s fathers” - like most anything was a family affair) could also serve as places of ritual and reverence.
A
local cult, meanwhile, is one that is maintained by a community - say, a village or several villages, or neighborhoods in urban areas. Worship sites for local cults seem to have been the
bamoth (“high places”), open-air shrines located upon a natural or an artificial raised area (for example, a hill or a man-made mound or platform) outside a village, where villagers gathered for religious and communal festivals and other events (there was no clear distinction between the two in those days), perhaps equipped with nothing more than an altar (some may have a number of
maṣṣeboth standing erect). A regional cult served an area larger than just a few villages, perhaps a tribal territory; we do not know much about them just as less is known materially about tribes than about villages in ancient Israel.
At the top stands the
central cult, in particular the state cult. The temple of Jerusalem and the sanctuaries of Dan and Bethel are two examples of this official, centralized form of religion. The central cult provides us an example of the interweaving of religion and politics (there was no “separation of Church and State” in the ancient world): Jeroboam sets up official sanctuaries in Bethel and Dan, two sites hallowed since ancient times, because he feared that his subjects would switch their allegiance to Judah if they were to go to Jerusalem. Hezekiah and Josiah both enact their religious reforms (centralizing - ‘restoring’ - Yhwistic orthodoxy by removing all unauthorized worship centers) as part of political actions: one can say that both kings ruled in rather politically-troubled times.
