The Project
Stratified Monotheism is an independent research project that proposes two interrelated contributions to biblical theology. The first is a method: fossil text analysis, the recovery of earlier theological structures preserved within the editorial layers of the Hebrew Bible. The second is a theology: Stratified Monotheism, the claim that the God of Israel possesses an internal structure—a hidden, transcendent source and an active, relational presence projected outward from Him into creation—that the later editorial merger of El Elyon and YHWH obscured but did not erase.
The project draws on the work of scholars including Frank Moore Cross, Mark S. Smith, Margaret Barker, Alan Segal, and Michael Heiser, among others. It builds upon their historical and exegetical findings but makes a theological move that most historical critics do not: it takes the recovered structure seriously as a claim about the nature of God, not merely as evidence of historical development in Israelite religion.
This site serves as the public home for the project’s essays, resources, and ongoing work.
The Author
Jonathan Wood is an independent theological researcher. His background is in engineering, where he spent four decades in machine design—an experience that informs a preference for systematic, mechanistic reasoning applied to complex interpretive problems. He came to faith at fifty-three and has since pursued seven years of private, self-directed theological study.
His research bridges the precision of engineering analysis with the depth of biblical scholarship, applying structural and diagnostic thinking to the layered texts of the Hebrew Bible. The fossil text method emerged from this approach: treating the editorial layers of scripture not as problems to be solved but as data to be read.
Jonathan is also the author of The Fossil Texts and the Hidden Signal of PKD: God, the Demiurge, and the Signal Hidden in Scripture, which connects the fossil text framework with the metaphysical system of Philip K. Dick. Further details are available at fossiltexts.com.
AI Transparency
This project makes extensive use of AI as a research and drafting collaborator. The theological ideas, interpretive framework, and arguments are the author’s own. AI tools have been used to assist with research, drafting, editing, and the production of documents and this website. This transparency is offered in the spirit of intellectual honesty.