To bring the topic to this thread, the purported reason given by some is that the Jews made it plural to show importance. The Jews did do this, occasionally, but there is no record that they ever did it with that word for God. But, The Muslims, who did not pluralize select nouns to show importance, record the same stories and often have near identical usage, and it's plural there too, in the Qur'an. My personal opinion is that there were seven, including Yahweh, and they were the last generation of full deities describe in Greco-Roman lore. Whether they actually existed is a point of debate, and what they actually were (deities or egotistical powermongers, I usually go with the latter) is another debatable point too. Where they would have come from depends on the answers of the rest of those points... I tend to think that they were higher beings, but not divine in that they did not create, and were subject to evil deeds as well as good... Of course, I sometimes tend to think they didn't exist at all. It depends on my mood.