{"id":3847,"date":"2014-03-16T06:16:54","date_gmt":"2014-03-16T06:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/?p=3847"},"modified":"2015-07-26T16:38:16","modified_gmt":"2015-07-26T16:38:16","slug":"the-problem-with-yahweh-3-reply-to-jayman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/2014\/03\/16\/the-problem-with-yahweh-3-reply-to-jayman\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem with Yahweh #3 (Reply to Jayman)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jayman, occasional Christian commenter here has replied to my post,\u00a0The Problem with Yahweh #2<\/a>. That itself was a second part to the series started here<\/a>. As a result of Jayman’s comments, I have critiqued his criticisms.<\/p>\n

\n

In Deut 32:7-9 we have evidence that Yahweh was one of many gods. . . . The god most high gives the 70 nations (as they believed) to his divine sons, or council, of which Yahweh is a member.<\/p>\n

The Bible equates Yahweh with El Elyon (Gen. 14:22; 2 Sam. 22:14; Pss. 21:7; 83:18; 91:9; 92:1) so it is not possible to maintain that the deity El Elyon gives a separate deity, Yahweh, a nation. The divine council consists of heavenly beings but they are not equals with Yahweh (e.g., Ps. 29:1; 89:6-7).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, this is pretty much the point of the original post. The question is this: What would you expect to see if you saw a religion evolve and assimilate rival religions around it? Exactly what we see in my posts about Yahweh. This is not what we would expect to see if the Judeo-Christian understanding of the Old Testament, as set out in the Bible, were true in the sense understood by biblical literalists or maximalists. After all, Yahweh does not appear until Exodus and, strangely, the god Baal is entirely absent in Genesis (which must raise questions as to why these issues arise in different books and at different times, confusingly). \u00a0The two have much in common since, as with Yahweh’s name, the real name of the Canaanite Baal (Hadad) must not be spoken. Prof. Herzog of Tel Aviv University reaches the conclusion that ISH.KUR = Hadad = El Shaddai = Baal = Yahweh \u2013 the evolution is evident within the Bible itself, as well as piecing together actual evidence from archaeology.<\/p>\n

As one commentator\u00a0states<\/a>\u00a0in analysing the work of Prof. Herzog:<\/p>\n

\n

This indicates, as does Herzog’s work, that the Jewish people evolved from polytheism to monotheism with the promotion of a god who had been known by a variety of names, into one supreme God, Yahweh (whose real name must not be spoken), and that they adopted for this purpose, not the supreme God of the Pantheons, El, but his son – ISH.KUR, Baal, Hadad, El-Shaddai, an entity who was in open revolt against his father El, and ultimately aided in this revolt by his mother and consort, Asherah, (also known as Baalat, Ashteroth, Elat).<\/p>\n

This female entity was later merged by Greek and Roman traditions into Aphrodite and Venus, and known earlier to the Egyptians as Isis.<\/p>\n

Once we understand this, the etymology of the name Israel – Is (either Isis or tomb) Ra (Head of the Egyptian Pantheon) El (Lord – Baal) – makes far more obvious sense than the convoluted “Yisrael” yarn from the Hebrew faith.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0The idea is that Yahweh had co-opted for him Ba’al stories. Daniel Sarlo in his essay “The Storm God versus the Sea<\/a>” states:<\/p>\n

\n

In a number of biblical passages, Yahweh is described as a typical\u00a0ANE storm\u00a0deity.\u00a0The most notable comparisons have been drawn to the Canaanite god Baal known from the\u00a0texts at Ugarit.\u00a0Like Baal, Yahweh\u00a0is a warrior\u00a0who descends from his mountain-home riding\u00a0a chariot of\u00a0clouds.\u00a0His voice is\u00a0thunder and his weapon is lightning; the earth quakes and the skies\u00a0release rain\u00a0at his\u00a0command.\u00a0In primeval times he asserted his authority by\u00a0defeating the sea, becoming the ruler of the skies.<\/p>\n

These parallels are certainly no accident;however they are unlikely to be the result of\u00a0literary borrowing.\u00a0Rather, they are\u00a0due to the emendation of ancient texts to reflect later Israelite reforms.\u00a0In short,\u00a0Yahweh became the hero in certain myths that were not originally written\u00a0about him.\u00a0There is sufficient evidence that in the early history of\u00a0Israel, Yahweh and Baal were worshipped simultaneously.\u00a0Prior to\u00a0the first\u00a0millennium\u00a0BCE\u00a0there was no distinct \u2018Israelite\u2019 religion \u2013\u00a0it originated as one of many local variants of\u00a0the Canaanite religion,2\u00a0a polytheistic model\u00a0with Yahweh as a minor deity.\u00a0Around the time of the Monarchy, the Israelites began to develop their own unique religious identity,\u00a03\u00a0but it was not until the ninth century\u00a0BCE\u00a0that Baal worship became a concern to the\u00a0cult of\u00a0\u00a0Yahweh and kings actively sought to suppress it.\u00a0This marked the beginning\u00a0of the\u00a0Israelite trend of rejecting their heritage, and led\u00a0to the fabricated notion that their religion was\u00a0the antithesis of the Canaanite religion.4\u00a0Some biblical authors like Jeremiah linked the\u00a0worship of Baal to the fall of the Northern Kingdom in order to gain exclusive support for Yahwism.\u00a0The cult of\u00a0Baal was eventually\u00a0eradicated, but not until 621\u00a0BCE\u00a0with King\u00a0\u00a0Josiah\u2019s reform.5<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Jayman continues in looking at part of my last post by saying:<\/div>\n
\n

Eventually, these two gods get combined, and Yahweh \u2018consumes\u2019 El Elyon\u2019.<\/p>\n

Since you already admit that Yahweh is El Elyon in some passages of the Bible, how do you know Yahweh is not El Elyon in all passages of the Bible? None of your examples require that Yahweh and El Elyon are different deities. It sounds like you came up with an hypothesis to explain away the problems with your interpretation of Deut. 32.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Firstly, this doesn’t explain the plurality of gods mentioned: the council and Elohim, a grammatically plural noun (for example, Elohim states, “Let US make Man in OUR image, in OUR likeness). Let us continue to look to the Bible itself for further evidence.\u00a0\u00a0The Dead Sea Scrolls fragment of Deutoronomy 32.8-9, agreeing with the Septuagint, reads as follows:<\/p>\n

When the Most High (‘Elyon) allotted peoples for inheritance,
\nWhen He divided up the sons of man,
\nHe fixed the boundaries for peoples,
\nAccording to the number of the sons of El
\nBut Yahweh\u2019s portion is his people,
\nJacob His own inheritance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is fascinating here is that any normal grammatical reading of this piece will clearly show that El and Yahweh are separate entities. The use of “but” separates the two entities out here. The problem is that if one has to forego the rectitude of these claims in some way; if one says that the language is metaphorical or that they do have hints of cultural context, but that this does not invalid<\/p>\n

The interaction of Yahweh and his followers in the context of Ba’al is complex, and detective work is required to piece together all of the information. Tim Callahan’s voluminous\u00a0The Secret Origins of the Bible<\/em>\u00a0is a superb critical analysis of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. He states:<\/p>\n

\n

Let us now apply the evidences found in the Bible, along with preserved documents and\u00a0archaeological finds, to get an overview of the religion of ancient Israel. As a result of the\u00a0conquest of Judah by the Chaldeans, culminating in the sack of Jerusalem in 586 BCE,\u00a0many Jews fled to Egypt. Eventually, during the Persian period, some of the Jews of the\u00a0Egyptian Diaspora were settled in a military colony at Elephantine, south of Thebes near\u00a0the first cataract of the Nile. There they built a temple where they worshiped Yahweh\u2014\u00a0along with the goddess Anath and two other deities called Eshem and Herem. That the\u00a0worship of Yahweh was not separated from that of other Canaanite deities in some cases\u00a0even after the Exile is significant but hardly surprising given evidence from the Bible\u00a0itself…<\/p>\n

The reference to the “bull-calf Yah” at Samaria is particularly\u00a0interesting for a number of reasons. First let us consider the name. Since Semitic\u00a0alphabets did not originally have vowels, the name Yahweh was written, if transliterated\u00a0into Roman characters, as YHWH. This is the Tetragrammaton, the unspeakable name\u00a0of God. In fact, the name as it usually appears in Judah is YHW, or Yahu, and this is how\u00a0the community at Elephantine wrote it. In Israel it is found as YH, read either as Yo or\u00a0Yah. In other words, the golden calves (or more properly young bulls) set up by Jeroboam\u00a0I\u2014the act so excoriated by the Deuteronomist historian in 1 Kgs. 12:26-33\u2014were representations\u00a0of an aspect of Yahweh. It was common to add “Yah” or “Yahu” to the end of\u00a0proper names in ancient Israel and Judah. The fairly common name Abdi, recently found\u00a0on a seal identifying its owner as the “servant of Hoshea,” the last king of Israel (see\u00a0Lemaire, 1995) would have been in full “Abdiyo” or “Abadyahu,” which is rendered in\u00a0Protestant Bibles as Obadiah (“servant of Yahweh”), the name of both a courtier of King\u00a0Ahab and one of the minor prophets.<\/p>\n

That Yah was not only represented as a bull-calf but that the god was not solely the\u00a0god of Israel is attested to by a number of ancient artifacts and records. Among these is\u00a0the inscription by Sargon II of Assyria dating from 720 BCE that he had captured Ya-ubi’di,\u00a0king of Hammafh, an Aramean city north of Damascus. Ya-u-bi’di means ” [God]\u00a0Yah is my help.” Thus Yah was being worshiped outside of Israel and Judah. Since we\u00a0know from both the Bible and history that one of King Ahab’s contemporaries was the\u00a0Aramean king of Damascus, Ben-Hadad3 whose name means “son of Hadad” and that\u00a0Hadad was a storm god of the western Semitic pantheon, it is obvious that Yah was one\u00a0of many gods worshiped by the Arameans and part of the pantheon worshiped by the\u00a0Arameans and possibly Canaanites. In fact in 2 Kgs. 8:7-15 the Yahwist prophet Elisha is\u00a0consulted in Damascus by Hazael on behalf of Ben-Hadad to see if he will recover from\u00a0an illness. Elisha instead tells Hazael that Yahweh has shown him that Ben-Hadad will die\u00a0and that Hazael will be king in his place. Hazael acts to help fulfill the prophecy by\u00a0smothering Ben-Hadad with a damp blanket. The Amorite city of Mari on the Euphrates\u00a0also has inscriptions of such personal names as Yahu-Ili and Yahwi-Haddu. These names\u00a0probably do not have anything to do with the worship of Yahweh, however, since his\u00a0name means roughly “he who brings into existence.” Thus Yahwi-Haddu could mean\u00a0“the god Haddad causes (this child) to be.” But the same cannot be said of place names,\u00a0and an Egyptian list of place names in Edom south of ancient Israel, dating from the\u00a0reign of Amenhotep III (1417-1379 BCE), includes the name YHW, which would probably\u00a0read out as Ya-h-wi. In fact the worship of Yahweh seems to have originated in areas\u00a0south of Israel, whence it was brought by whichever tribes actually did take part in the\u00a0Exodus (and these were far fewer than the 12 tribes of the initial confederation).\u00a0Perhaps the most striking evidence of Yahweh being worshiped by others than\u00a0the Jews and being part of a pagan pantheon is an artifact which, like the temple at\u00a0Elephantine, demonstrates a late survival of the way in which Yahweh was viewed before\u00a0the Exile. It is a coin from fourth century BCE Gaza which depicts Yahweh, with the\u00a0inscription YHW, as a bearded man holding a hawk and sitting on a winged wheel, much\u00a0the way Sumerian and Babylonian deities were portrayed (see fig. 1). These gods were\u00a0essentially exalted humans much like the Olympians of ancient Greece. Further, the\u00a0Sumerians had a rather technological view of how the gods could do miraculous things.\u00a0How did the gods fly? Unless they were specifically represented as having wings\u2014and\u00a0most of them were not\u2014they could not do this by themselves. Instead they had winged\u00a0chariots. The graphic short-hand for a winged chariot was a winged wheel on which the\u00a0god sat. The Canaanite gods were themselves often variants of Sumerian and Babylonian\u00a0deities. Ashtart (Astarte) is the western version of Ishtar, and Baal is the western version\u00a0of Bel. Again, this coin is a late survival of the way the Jews had viewed their god\u00a0before the Exile. We must remember that Gaza was a Philistine city and that the\u00a0Philistines had, even during the period of the Judges, accepted the Canaanite pantheon.\u00a0Since they were not exposed to the pressures of the Exile, which forced the Jews to transform\u00a0their view of God, the Philistines depicted Yahweh as he was originally viewed by\u00a0the Canaanites, although the way in which the figure was dressed indicates a Greek influence.\u00a0This is not surprising, since there was both kinship and political interaction\u00a0between the Philistines and the Ionian Greeks. Some scholars say mat the Hebrew characters\u00a0on the coin have been blurred with age and that it actually \u00a0transliterates as YHD\u00a0or Yehud, the Persian province of Judah, rather than YHW. However, the posture of the\u00a0figure is that of a Greek god, and the winged wheel remains a graphic shorthand for a\u00a0flying chariot. Thus, even if the inscription reads “Yehud” rather than “Yaw” what is\u00a0clearly represented on the coin is a deity, and the most likely identity of that deity is Yahweh,\u00a0the god of the Jews. (Callahan, pp.18-20)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In relation more precisely to what Jayman was claiming, Callahan continues:<\/p>\n

\n

That Yahweh’s worship had its orgiastic aspects is not its only tie to Canaanite paganism.\u00a0Yahweh is also referred to in the Bible as El, or its plural Elohim. The name El can\u00a0merely mean a “god,” or can mean the specific deity. Along with being called Elohim,\u00a0God is also referred to in Genesis as El Shaddai (“God Almighty” or “El the almighty” or\u00a0“the god Shaddai”) and El Elyon (“God most high” or “El the most high” or “the god\u00a0Elyori”). It was this latter name that was used by Melchizedek, the Canaanite priest-king\u00a0of Salem who sacrificed to him on Abraham’s behalf. El was a sky god, creator and the\u00a0gray-bearded patriarch of the Canaanite gods. However El was also sometimes referred\u00a0to as “Bull El” in Canaanite texts. Thus we see another tie to Canaanite religion, since\u00a0“Bull-calf Yah” could be equated with “Bull El” and both could be considered variants of\u00a0Baal, who was also associated with bulls. Baal’s sister\/lover was Anath, one of the deities\u00a0associated with Yahweh at Elephantine. She is represented in Ugaritic texts as slaughtering\u00a0the enemies of Baal and wading in their blood. She was also called Astarte or Ashtart\u00a0in her role as a fertility goddess who was associated with Baal. Given that Anath was worshiped\u00a0with Yahweh at Elephantine, and that Tammuz was the lover of Astarte, it is not\u00a0surprising that women were weeping for Tammuz at the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

The myth of Ishtar and Tammuz was transferred to Greek mythology as the myth of\u00a0Aphrodite and Adonis. The Greek name Adonis was actually a variant of another name\u00a0for Tammuz, Adon or Adonai, which simply means “My Lord.” In fact, when Abraham\u00a0and other biblical personages refer to God as “Lord” the word often used in Hebrew is\u00a0Adonai.4 The Adonai version of Tammuz, meaning Lord, is not the only name of a\u00a0Canaanite god that has a general meaning that could be appropriated by any deity. Just\u00a0as El could mean simply “god,” the name Baal could also be variously interpreted as\u00a0“master,” “husband,” “lord,” or “prince.” In 2 Kgs. 1:2 the Israelite king Ahaziah sends a\u00a0messenger to inquire of Baal-zebub (or Beelzebub, literally “lord of the flies”), the god of\u00a0Ekron, whether or not he will recover from an accident. The name is most likely an\u00a0insulting distortion of the god’s actual name, which would have been Baal-zebul, either\u00a0“Lord of the divine abode” or “Princely Lord.” Thus it is more accurate to refer to the\u00a0Baals or Baalim than to one god called Baal, and though the term is used in biblical texts\u00a0to refer to foreign gods, the generality of the term could as easily encompass the god of\u00a0the Jews. This is illustrated in the name of Saul’s youngest son, Ishbaal. This can be translated\u00a0as “man of Baal,” but, considering that Saul was a worshiper of Yahweh, it probably\u00a0means “man of the Lord,” referring to that deity and not to Baal.<\/p>\n

Another common appellation of a god was “king,” a word represented in the Semitic\u00a0alphabet by letters equivalent to M- L-K, M-L- Ch or M- L-C. It is part of many western\u00a0Semitic names such as Elimelech, Abimelech, and, of course, Molech (also spelled\u00a0Moloch), that dread god to whom the Phoenicians supposedly sacrificed their children.\u00a0In other variants of the name vowels were not always inserted between the L and\u00a0the Ch (C), as in Melchizedek and Milcom. The latter was the god of the Ammonites.\u00a0If Friedman is right, and the P document dates from Hezekiah’s reign (715-687 BCE)\u00a0rather than the Exile, we must assume that sacrifices of children to Molech were common\u00a0enough at that time that the author of Leviticus had to specifically condemn the act\u00a0(Lev. 18:21, 20:1-5). The admonition in Deut. 18:10 that “There shall not be found\u00a0among you any one who burns his son or daughter as an offering” shows that the practice\u00a0was still a problem in the time of Josiah (640-609 BCE). That child sacrifice was not\u00a0something clandestine and effectively outlawed in pre-exilic Judah is further attested to\u00a0in 2 Kgs. 16:3, where we are told that King Ahaz (735-715 BCE) burned his son as an\u00a0offering. Hezekiah’s son and successor Manasseh (687-642 BCE) not only erected altars\u00a0to Baal, made an Asherah and worshiped the “host of heaven,” i.e. the stars and planets\u00a0(2 Kgs. 21:3), probably as the result of Assyrian influences), but burned his son as an\u00a0offering as well (2 Kgs. 21:6). Another possibility, however, is that the sacrifices were not\u00a0for Molech as a foreign god. According to Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian from Sicily\u00a0who lived in the first century BCE, human sacrifice in the eastern Mediterranean was\u00a0limited to Kronos, the Greek equivalent of El. Thus, the god Molech, meaning “king,”\u00a0could be an epithet for El, and neither Ahaz nor Manasseh would have seen anything\u00a0wrong with the practice of sacrificing their sons to him. The condemnation of the practice\u00a0by both the prophetic party and the Aaronic priesthood can be seen as a civilizing\u00a0movement in the nation’s religion, a doctrine stating that human sacrifice did not honor\u00a0God. Indeed, Lev. 18:21 says:<\/p>\n

You shall not give any of your children to devote them by fire to Molech, and so profane\u00a0the name of your God: I am the LORD [or “I am Yahweh”].<\/p>\n

It’s not altogether clear how worshiping Molech, a separate god, would profane the\u00a0name of either Yahweh or El. If, however, Molech (King) is just another name for God,\u00a0men committing an outrage in his name would indeed profane it. The same sense of outrage\u00a0at a previously acceptable rite is embedded in the Greek myth of Tantalus, who\u00a0boiled his own son and tried to serve the meat to the gods. They drew away from it in\u00a0horror and sentenced him to eternal torment. Yet there is graphic evidence of human\u00a0sacrifice from Minoan Crete ca. 1700 BCE (see Wilson, 1985, pp. 126-127). The Minoans\u00a0seem to have been part of the same culture as that of the city of Ugarit, both sharing a\u00a0Canaanite pantheon out of which were derived both the Greek pantheon and the worship\u00a0of the God known as El, with whom the southern deity Yahweh became identified. (Callahan, pp. 21-22)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

OK, so that’s an extensive set of quotes from Callahan, but it is important to give more than just a flavour of the complexity of teasing apart integrated mythologies. Because that is what Yahweh is to those who do not buy into the idea that one can special plead one particular parochial god over a pantheon of others, just because, anthropologically speaking, he won out in the battle of culture and ideas. The Bible, at least to me, clearly indicates this, and to plead, as I think Jayman does here, is to take the possible over the probable;\u00a0possibiliter ergo probabiliter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Jayman continues:<\/p>\n

\n

These texts only make sense on the assumption that they (in contrast to other texts) assume there are other gods. To take the first example, Exodus 12:12, the judgment on the gods of Egypt consists of Yahweh having his way with Egypt. In other words, the gods of Egypt are no gods at all. Yahweh is God.<\/p>\n

It is also strange that Daniel 11:39 is supposed to be an example of polytheism. Even on a traditional dating this is an exilic writing. Skeptics are likely to date it to the second century BC. Such an interpretation undercuts the earlier claim that polytheism evolved into monotheism, for here we have an allegedly polytheistic text being revered by monotheistic Jews.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I do understand and broadly agree with his point on Exodus 12:12, but one point is missed I feel. Here, for Gericke to some degree, it is the use of the biblical translation of “Lord” as opposed to “Yahweh”. If one uses “Yahweh” here, there is a sense that it is a personal affront to this Warrior Storm god that there are others who need stamping out. \u00a0It may only be very nuanced and subtle, but the point is about the language used to represent God\/Yahweh which is often lost in translation into the English. This was a large part of Gericke’s point: readers simply do not realise the equivocation and word games going on in front of them, which is evident from the source texts but not so evident in the English translations.<\/p>\n

The point about Daniel is an interesting one and I will concede that, on critical (and accurate, I would posit) grounds, Daniel would have been written much later. Whether every element of polytheism had been lost by then, or not, is open to debate. As wiki\u00a0states<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The oldest writings of Judaism that survive directly date from the Hellenistic period. This includes Hebrew and Aramaic papyri with biblical fragments such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Greek documents such as the Septuagint. Scholars contend that the development of a strict monotheism was the result of cultural diffusion between Persians and Hebrews, or as a result of the contact of Israelite and Greek cultures…<\/p>\n

…the re-interpretation of the gods of the earliest recalled period as the\u00a0national god<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0monolatrism<\/a>\u00a0as it emerged in the 7th to 6th century BCE in the\u00a0Kingdom of Judah<\/a>\u00a0and during the\u00a0Babylonian captivity<\/a>, and further in terms of monotheism by the emergence of Rabbinical Judaism in the 2nd century CE.[35]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The process emerged before, but it is not an immediate one by any means.<\/p>\n

\n

That whilst these facts and claims seem to point to an obvious evolution of the Yahwistic notion of God, it doesn\u2019t invalidate it per se.<\/p>\n

We need to distinguish between the teachings of the Bible and the practices of the ancient Israelites. The Bible itself makes it clear that the ancient Israelites engaged in idolatry. This does not mean the authors of the Bible endorsed polytheism at any point in time.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yes, granted. But given understanding of the Documentary Hypothesis, in some form or another, we know that the Bible, as an eclectic collection of disparate texts, evolved in conjunction with an evolving culture. As such, this evolution from polytheism to monolatrism (the worship of one god out of many without excluding the reality of the others) to monotheism is exactly what we would expect. The Bible and its confused claim is exactly what we would expect given naturalism. The Christian understanding of the Bible, with all its issues and contradictions, takes some good deal of mental gerrymandering to retain its meaning in its ‘intended’ form. Ockham’s Razor and all that.<\/p>\n

Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Callahan, Tim.\u00a0The Secret Origins of the Bible<\/em>, Altadena, California: Millenium Press\u00a0(2002)<\/p>\n

Ze’ev Herzog, Professor of Archaelogy, University of Tel Aviv –\u00a0http:\/\/archaeology.tau.ac.il\/?page_id=1106<\/a><\/p>\n

RELATED POSTS:<\/p>\n