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Yahweh [a] was an ancient Levantine deity worshiped in Israel and Judah as the primary deity of the polytheistic religion of Yahwism. [4] [5] Though no consensus exists regarding the deity's origins, [6] scholars generally contend that he is associated with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman, [7] and later with Canaan.
The Kenite hypothesis, or Midianite–Kenite hypothesis, is a hypothesis about the origins of the cult of Yahweh. As a form of Biblical source criticism, it posits that Yahweh was originally a Kenite (i.e., Midianite) god whose cult made its way northward to the proto-Israelites. The hypothesis first came into prominence in the late nineteenth ...
Earlier Yahweh was thought of as one of many gods, separate from El. Theological interpretations of the Hebrew Bible consider El as an alternative name for Yahweh. This is in contrast to the Elohist and Priestly traditions in which El is considered to be an earlier deity than Yahweh. [47] Mark Smith has argued that Yahweh and El were originally ...
El, a word meaning might, power and (a) god in general, and hence in Judaism, God and among the Canaanites the name of the god who was the father of the 70 Sons of God, including Yahweh and Baal. Yah , a shortened form of Yahweh.
Like other people of the Ancient Near East Canaanite religious beliefs were polytheistic, with families typically focusing on veneration of the dead in the form of household gods and goddesses, the Elohim, while acknowledging the existence of other deities such as Baal and El, Mot, Qos, Asherah and Astarte.
In J, Yahweh is an anthropomorphic figure both physically (Genesis 3:8, Genesis 11:5, Exodus 17:7) and in personality, as when Abraham bargained with Yahweh for the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah; or during the exodus when Yahweh threatened to destroy the unfaithful Israelites and raise Moses' descendants instead, but "relented and did not bring on ...
Worship of Baal and Yahweh coexisted in the early period of Israel's history, but they were considered irreconcilable after the 9th century BCE, following the efforts of King Ahab and his queen Jezebel to elevate Baal to the status of national god, [41] although the cult of Baal did continue for some time. [42]
The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities in Ancient Israel [1] is a book on the history of ancient Israelite religion by Mark S. Smith, Skirball Professor of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at New York University. The revised 2002 edition contains revisions to the original 1990 edition in light of intervening archaeological ...