Did the idolaters of Biblical times believe that the idols they worshipped were actually gods or spirits, or did they believe that their idols only were representations of said gods or spirits? The Bible does not make this clear, and thus apparently outlaws such practices and beliefs in either form (according to some interpretations).
Yehezkel Kaufman (1960) has suggested that when God, the author of the Hebrew Bible, wrote about the accused idolaters He meant it to be understood in its most literal form: according to the Bible, most idolaters really believed that their idols were gods, and holds that an error in assuming that all idolatry was of this type, when in fact in some cases, idols may have only been representations of gods. Kaufman writes that "We may perhaps say that the Bible sees in paganism only its lowest level, the level of mana-beliefs...the prophets ignore what we know to be authentic paganism (i.e., its elaborate mythology about the origin and exploits of the gods and their ultimate subjection to a meta-divine reservoir of impersonal power representing Fate or Necessity.) Their [the Biblical author's] whole condemnation revolves around the taunt of fetishism."
However, Kaufman holds that in some places idolaters worshipped gods and spirits that existed independently of idols, and not the forms of the idols themselves. For instance, in a passage in 1 Kings 18:27 [8], the Hebrew prophet Elijah challenges the priests of Baal atop of Mount Carmel to persuade their god to perform a miracle, after they had begun to try to persuade the Jews to take up idolatry. The pagan priests beseeched their god without the use of an idol, which in Kaufman's view, indicates that Baal was not an idol, but rather one of the polytheistic gods that merely could be worshipped through the use of an idol.
Orestes Brownson asserts that the pagans in the Hebrew Bible did not literally worship the objects themselves, so that the issue of idolatry is really concerned with whether one is pursuing a false god or the true God.[citation needed] Brownson may have been correct,[1] However, Brownson's theory contradicts the understanding of the Ancient Hebrews, whose culture was contemporary with others that practiced "idol worship." The Book of Daniel, Chapter 14,[2] illustrates the Hebrew understanding. In Daniel 14, Cyrus, king of the Persians, worships two deities, a deity named Bel and a dragon. Daniel 14 characterizes the king and some of the Babylonians as believing, literally, that Bel and the dragon are living gods:
