In the Masoretic Text and the Samaritan Pentateuch, reports how God set the borders of the peoples according to the number of "the children of "Israel"." In a Qumran scroll (4QDeutj) and the Septuagint, however, it is the number of "the children of "God"", whom Martin Abegg Jr., Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich suggested may mean the divine beings who would serve as protectors for the various nations. Professor Robert Alter argued that this phrase appears to reflect a very early stage in the evolution of biblical monotheism. Alter suggested that it caused later transmitters of the text theological discomfort and probably provoked these transmitters deliberately to change it in the interests of piety. In Alter's interpretation of the older world-picture, a celestial entourage of subordinate divine beings or lesser deities surrounded the supreme God. In Alter's reading, the original assumed that God, in allotting portions of the earth to the various peoples, also allowed each people its own lesser deity.