Yahweh, The Beginnings

Great Debates
1

Originally, the Israeli people were Canaanites. Their gods were largely the gods of Canaan, and their language was simply a dialect of Canaanite. The name “Israel” is a reference to El and Yahweh is a sub-deity or son of the main god, El (Smith, p. 32).

Yahweh was traditionally linked with the region of Southern Canaan or Transjordan (Smith, p. 25 / Green, p. 236). He was most likely a warrior and storm-god (Smith, p. 32).

El, the principal deity of the highlands, had his consort, Asherah. Baal was a fellow sub-deity as was, possibly, Anat (Smith, p. 30-33). The Canaanite god, Resheph, is shown as a subordinate to Yahweh (Green, p. 245).

As Yahweh was moved to a position of prominence, he overtook El, taking on the name as a title (Smith, p. 33-34 / Green, p. 246 / Day, ch. 1), and gaining Asherah as his own consort in the process (Day, ch. 2). Where formerly, El had been known as the great, grey bearded patriarch, Yahweh now became described in this way (Smith, p. 34-37). The epithets that had formerly been used for El became Yahweh’s (Smith, p. 41). Asherah and Anat appear to have possibly transformed into Astarte (Day, ch. 5 / Smith, 53-54).

But where Yahweh was able to insert himself into El’s shoes, the god, Baal, storm and warrior god, was too similar. Thus there was some battle between these two xeroxed deities, with Yahweh eventually taking on all of the traits of Baal and supplanting him thereby (Smith, p. 47 / Day, ch. 3-4 / Green p. 258-275).

Starting around the 8th century BCE, aniconic (a movement against iconic depictions of deities) and monotheistic tendencies started to work their way into Israel (Smith, 57-58).

And…unfortunately, that’s where the Google previews end.

But we can infer that at some point Yahweh picked up his status as creator of everything. Baal was dropped from the pantheon, and later Astarte was as well, creating a monotheistic religion. References to the Canaanite pantheon, inherited from old stories, were re-written to refer to them as the “holy assembly” or such–making them angels or other non-deities (Smith, p. 37). The Moses legend appears to be talked about some in Green’s book, but it is skipped by the preview. Pages 234-235 describe how Moses post-dates the local following of Yahweh as a storm-warrior god in the Southern region.

2

There’s a funny sketch in the overall excellent series History Bites that touches vaguely on this, presented as a TV interview in 1200 BC with a vapid host talking to the author of a new book - the Torah. The host casually comments that the “God” character is clearly Zeus and this “Noah” guy is obviously Deucalion.

The author is annoyed.

3

And thousands of years before, the Neanderjews were forbidden to eat wooly mammoth.

Debate topic? I have read very similar scenarios of the origins of El-Yahweh, plausible enough, but by neccesity sketchy, the written record being what it isn’t. If there is some advanced archeological debate on this, I’d be interested, but really, how often are there newsworthy events in this area of conjectural history?

4

I’d be most interested if there is archaeological debate about it. So far as I can tell, each of the three sources I cited are based upon direct archaeology of remnant literature and art, and each come up with similar timelines and events, which seems decent evidence that this is more than sketchy conjecture. But of course popular historic thought can waver over the ages–and I have no idea whether this is simply a body of literature riding the crest of a wave or not.

But at worst, you can consider this thread as “witnessing”, or a basic chronicling for the sake of having something concise to link to in the future, when the topic arises, so I don’t have to rewrite it all over.

5

I saw on the history channel that Yahweh was most likely an extraterrestrial.

6

He landed at Nazca in Chile in an aeroplane.

7

hehehe.

Awesome!

8

uh…ok?

9

Aside from the suspect and ridiculously inbred sourcing you’re using, the idea that the Israelites and Canaanites were originally identical is highly dubious. Secondly, most of the deities you name predate any other known record of Israel, and appear to have been chiefly deities of other peoples. Not that the primitive Jews were terribly organized or very clear thinkers on matters of religion.

10

Gimme that old-time religion
Gimme that old-time religion
Gimme that old-time religion
It’s good enough for me

My own favorite’s Astarte
A lusty wench and hearty
Taught them Hebrews how to party
And that’s good enough for me!

11

Specifically, he was Jehovah-1, that Alien Space God from some Corporate Sin Galaxy! Details here.

12

So that’s why we drive on parkways and park in driveways.

13

The idea that the Hebrews came out of Egypt and conquered Canaan is even more dubious. See The Bible Unearthed, by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman.

14

A quick glance through several pages isn’t showing the names of the other authors in the footnotes, but I’d have to do a more thorough check to verify that. But so “inbred” seems a bit dubious. The principle cites are directly into the Bible, or to Ugaritic or Egyptian texts.

A quickie check:

Hebrew is a Canaanite language
The location of Canaan is surprisingly similar to the location of Israel

Except, the Bible itself records the Jews as having worshiped them. For instance:

"Through the Moabites, the Israelites became involved with it as the “Baal of Peor” (Numbers 25:3, Deuteronomy 4:3), which they worshiped along with the pagan Ashtoreth, until the time of Samuel (1 Samuel 7:4). Later, the northern ten tribes of Israel became corrupted by it in the time of Ahab (see Kings of Israel and Judah) and Jezebel (1 Kings 16:31-33, 18:19-22). The southern kingdom of Judah also was guilty of it (2 Kings 8:27, 11:18, 16:3, 2 Chronicles 28:2) until their defeat and exile (Zephaniah 1:4-6) by King Nebuchadnezzar.

The priests of Baal were in great numbers (1 Kings 18:19), and of various classes (2 Kings 10:19) throughout the land. Their fraud was exposed however in a great contest with the prophet Elijah on Mount Carmel. Out numbered hundreds to one, Elijah, with the power of God, destroyed them all (1 Kings 18:16-40)"

15

I would rather say that “Originally the land we call Israel today was called Canaan. Then the hebrews came and conquered it assimilating much of Canaanite religion and culture.”

The Canaanites got conquered by invading hebrew nomad tribes. I can hear them turning in their graves, being called Israeli.

:o

16

Firstly, there’s no evidence of any such battle (see chapters 3 and 4). Secondly, the winners set the language, not the losers. Why would the victors drop their own language and take up the language of Canaan? If their own language was already Canaanite, then how exactly are you distinguishing them from being something other than Canaanites themselves?

17

No, they didn’t. They were always there. See link in post #13.

18

I remain sceptical.
At first glance a lot depends on the assumption that the conquest happened during the 13th 12th century. It might however have been quite a bit later, maybe a revision is in order taking into account that interpretation of Egyptian kinglists is faulty . Placing the Sea-peoples, and thus Philistines, in the 9th century.

Interresting read, I will study this further.

19

None of which are very reliable, either, as far as early Hebrew history. Their origins were somehat mysterious even to themselves. In any case, I was referring to your cites to Smith. A few pages tossed off from one source do not support a good argument, even if your source is a legend in his field.

The entire argument (which even the authors themselves “kinda-sorta” admit) is based on “we think this is a plausible interpretation in the absense of much evidence”. When an author gets done telling me as Smith does, that he has scant evidence and is relying for what he has on texts he doesn’t believe and doubts is accurate, he has already undermined his own argument. I do not say he is neccessarily wrong therefore. I say he has no case to argue at all, and is engaged in the practice of poor historians, of making shit up.

Yeah. And? The Israelites and Canaanites were definitely in close contact with each other. But so were a lot of tribes, and language use spreads or contracts in many ways. I speak a Germanic tongue heavily influenced by Latin via French. And many peoples have dropped languages

Secondly, “Canaan” and “Canaanite” are almost wholly meaningless terms. What it says, and all it says, is that there were some semitic peoples more or less living in a general area, but with some distinct cultural differences. But it’s definitely not known if the Israelites came from there or elsewhere. Their own texts suggest they were not native to the area, but were a desert tribe with an inflated ego. They seem to have come a bit late to the party, while various other related cultures were already building major cities and expanding overseas. Certainly the Hebrews thought of themselves as being very different, with a cultural wall no other Semitic people would erect.

This cite, if anything, supports my statement. The Israelites saw the Moabuites not only as “the other”, but some Israelites had to deliberately adopt a foreign deity.

20

Well here, let’s say that we both agree that the Bible makes a case for the Israeli people worshiping more than one god at the same time, which it does do. It also paints the portrait for Yahweh to fight his way through into becoming the single remaining deity.

Now, the two theories are that:

  1. Yahweh was a (fictional) storm deity among a pantheon of other deities, that evolved over time, taking on aspects of the other deities, until emerging as the sole deity. Then, this progression was rewritten for, largely political reasons, to portray it as that the other gods were false and Yahweh had never been among their number.

  2. Yahweh was a (real) creation deity who revealed himself to Moses and the Jewish people via a series of massive miracles and spectacles, and so doing proved that all of the other deities which were believed and had caused similar miracles before other peoples were simple fictions or liars. He was the only -real- deity, or at least the only one worthy of worship since he is the only one who created the world, and the only one who doesn’t intend to lead them towards a life of sin.

To evaluate the likelihood of these two theories, we’ll consider them on the following points:

A) Plausibility.
B) Archaeological data (scarce as it may be).
C) Whether expected outcomes occur(ed).

To do the evaluation then:

1A) Plausible. For instance, can deities evolve over time? If we look at (randomly) Apollo from the Grecian pantheon, we see that he started out as a plague/disease god but eventually became a healing deity with sidelines as a god of music and victory. Can new deities overtake older ones? Several examples are given on pages 337 and 338 of this book (Wars Among the Gods), showing a similar example where the old gods are quite literally demonized after the affair is done. Do humans write their gods for political and/or self-serving reasons? The existence of ethnic religions makes a strong case this. Certainly we can’t all be special.

1B) As Mr. Dever’s book shows, the various people and towns and whatnot that were supposedly slaughtered and ransacked (respectively) do not appear to have even existed during the ages that they are meant to have. They existed as contemporaries with the Biblical authors in the ~8th century BCE. Given that those events are supposed to have occurred something like 500-700 years previous, and involved an unfeasibly high number of people (~10 million) surviving in a land that appears to have been unable to support anything but the barest nomads, it all seems rather unlikely that we’re dealing with an actual historic record when it comes to the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan.

1C) If Yahweh adapted and evolved over time, we would expect to see the trappings of older, “foreign” deities associated with him. We would see him referred to using the same epithets and descriptions as older deities (like, those formerly ascribed to El). We would expect to see him performing similar feats as other deities (for instance, fighting a leviathan that represents chaos). We would expect to see similarities between rituals and worship (like idolizing a bull as a representation of El/Yahweh). We would expect a regional interest, possibly centered on a particular place of interest (Mt. Sinai for Yahweh, Mt. Olympus for the Greek gods). We might expect the deity to be inextricably linked with a certain group of people (Yahweh with the Jews, Greek pantheon with the Greeks, Shinto pantheon with the Japanese, etc.). We would expect the deity to be unable to provide specific knowledge that would be inaccessible to the people of that time and place (that big body of land across the Atlantic, Darwinian evolution, etc.) These are precisely what we see.

2A) Implausible. There’s any other number of creation gods. El being just one of them, and of course all (or at least all that I know of) have creation mythologies even if they don’t have an individual deity which did all the work. There’s no obvious reason to prefer Yahweh over other deities/pantheons given that they all share equal traits and visible output. And so far no has been able to conclusively prove that magic, miracles, nor deities exist. And it seems very unlikely that all those other gods were demonic influences, as the Bible has it, given that the Chinese and Japanese, and plenty of the native peoples of the Americas lived equally sinful/sinless lives as the Jews. It also seems odd that a deity which commanded the genocide of the Canaanite people would be all that concerned with freedom from sin.

2B) So far there is no archaeological evidence to support things like the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan (overview available in Mr. Dever’s book above). The genocide of an entire people, stretching across the entire area of Israel/Canaan, leaving no mark seems implausible. Yes, the archaeological record is imperfect, and so possibly the evidence just hasn’t been found yet, but overall it seems better to bet with the evidence we currently have.

2C) Overall, what we would expect is consistency. We wouldn’t expect the names of old gods ending up as demons (Baal/Beelzebub) or aids to Yahweh (Rasheph). We wouldn’t expect people who had seen vast, impressive miracles with their own eyes and then told “Worship no idols!” to turn around and worship a golden calf the very next day. We wouldn’t expect the learned king of the Jewish people to set up asherah poles around the temple. We wouldn’t expect the deity to prescribe meaningless rituals and dietary restrictions. We wouldn’t expect him to be unaware of the history of the universe. Unfortunately…