Yahweh: True Origin?

by New Castles 16 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  New Castles

  I have been researching a little on this topic and wanted to share some information I found. Its interestingly noted in the info below that Israel it seems believed in several gods and not just one.

  "The distribution of the god El therefore extends from 3rd century Akkadian culture eastward through Aram and Phoenicia and downward through northern Palestine to Jerusalem. Yahweh, with his home in the deserts of southern Levant, traveled north with the migration of the Hebrews to come into competition with or displaced Baal as El's traditional vizier, illustrated most clearly by Psalm
  29 where Yahweh, originally a bedouin war god of the desert is here portrayed as a storm
  god and the functional equivalent of Enlil=Hadad=Baal. The most probable time for the
  incorporation of Yahweh into El's pantheon is with the emergence of Israel in the 13th
  century when the peoples of northern and southern Palestine formed a political alliance and
  forged a new collective identity that finally failed with Jeroboam's session. At this time El and
  Yahweh became alienated (Ps 82) and returned to their own people reassuming their original
  autonomy. While popular Yahwism continued in the North, the official religion was the
  traditional worship of El and Baal until the destruction of the nation in 722 BCE at which
  time Elohistic traditions, particularly the Elohistic Psalter, was redacted and the divine names
  El and Yahweh were made synonymous."

  I was also reading that Israel while in captivity in Egypt worshipped El or Elohim (plural). Moses was introduced to the worship of one god by his adoptive Egyptian family and during his time in the desert became a worshipper of Yahweh (suppousedly the God of the desert at that time) Moses returned and convinced the israelites that Yahweh and El were one and the same, therefore fusing both deities into Yahweh-El, Israels one God after that. Anyone else read about this?? Any thoughts, comments??
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  Leolaia

  I've written quite a lot on this subject. There are two books I highly recommend you to check out....these exhaustively cover the subject in detail and are very scholarly and up-to-date. The first is by John Day called Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (2000), and the other one is by Mark Smith called The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities in Ancient Israel (2002, second ed.). An older book that is also quite good is Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic by Frank Moore Cross (1973). John Day also has some other great books on the god Moloch and the chaos dragon.

  I also have some posts on this subject that you might want to check out:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/68098/1.ashx
  (This is about Yahweh's battle with the chaos monsters Leviathan/Yam/Rahab, and how this arose from Canaanite mythology about Baal and Lotan/Yamm, how it is directly related to Greek myths about Hercules and the dragon Ladon, and how this contributed to later Jewish and Christian apocalyptic thought)

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/67843/1.ashx
  (How biblical concepts of Mount Zion, Mount Zaphon, Mount Hermon, and so forth are directly linked with the holy mountains of Canaanite mythology, specifically the cosmic mountainous abodes of El, Baal, and the divine assembly)

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/73244/1.ashx
  (This discusses Yahweh's wife Asherah and how she became demythologized as both Eve and the Tree of Life, as well as her association with snakes, and it further explains why her worshippers in the Temple ritually clothed her idol with clothes and how Eve/Asherah was expelled from the Garden of Eden/Temple)

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/71230/1.ashx
  (This discusses how the worship of Moloch in the Valley of Hinnom led to the later Jewish and Christian concept of Gehenna)

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/68224/1.ashx
  (This explains how the biblical legends of the Rephaim and the Nephilim combine two originally separate traditions: Canaanite mythology about Rapha, the ruler of Sheol, and the Rephaim inhabitants of Sheol, and vague historical reminiscenes of the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Canaan. The earlier Canaanites had a similar conflation of historical memory and mythology, identifying the Rephaim with the "assembly of the Didanites" and the Didanites were an Amorite tribe of the third millenium BC, and whose memory is also possibly preserved by the Greeks as the Titans).

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/67655/1.ashx
  (This post goes into how the traditions of Enoch and Noah can be traced to Sumerian and Akkadian mythology, including the Epic of Gilgamesh)

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/69401/1.ashx
  (In the Book of Giants in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is closely related to the Enochian literature, guess who shows up as one of the giants -- none other than Gilgamesh!)

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/71569/1136654/post.ashx#1136654
  (This post shows how the Canannite "ancient" gods Shamem and Arets (Heaven and Earth), from the first generation of gods, survived in Israel as legal witnesses in lawsuits, and it also discusses how the legends about Shamen and Arets are related to the Greek myths of Uranus and Gaia. If Philo of Byblos is to be believed, the creator god El was actually originally the son of Shamem and fought a war against him for kingship and his wife Asherah was actually sent to assassinate him. Baal was actually the son of Shamem but raised by Dagon as his own son)
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  New Castles

  Awesome, thanks so much! Great info....
• 

  Stefanie

  This discusses Yahweh's wife Asherah and how she became demythologized as both Eve and the Tree of Life, as well as her association with snakes, and it further explains why her worshippers in the Temple ritually clothed her idol with clothes and how Eve/Asherah was expelled from the Garden of Eden/Temple)

  Awsome! That blew me away!

  Intresting topic Castles.
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  Leolaia

  Stephanie.....That was a massive post I did on Asherah and if it is hard to follow, here are the main points distilled down:

  • In Canaanite mythology, Asherah was the wife of El and the creatress of the gods. El dwelt on a cosmic mountain in a paradisic garden at the head of the great rivers. Asherah was also the source of healing, wisdom, and was frequently associated with snakes and serpents, including the ophidian god Horon (who lives in the underworld) who was also a healer. One healing spell mentions Horon going to the garden near the Tigris (one of the rivers of Eden) and taking material from the Tree of Death. Asherah was frequently called "Serpent Lady" and in one Phoenician inscription her title is Lady Chawat (= Eve).
  • The Temple was believed to be a reflection of the divine abode and temples in the ancient Near East were usually planted with elaborate gardens to simulate the divine garden in which the gods dwell. Often times, a Tree of Life (usually a date palm or other fruit-bearing tree)was planted in the center of Temples. The same idea appears in Psalm 92:12-14. In Ezekiel 28:13-14, the Garden of Eden was located on the "holy mountain of God" -- exactly the Canaanite notion of El's mountainous abode.
  • The Garden of Eden in Genesis 2-3 closely recalls the plan of the Jerusalem Temple, with the cherubim guards in the east and the rows of menorahs resembling the various trees of the garden, and the Gihon spring underneath. The story itself concerns Eve, or Hebrew Chawwah -- a name that is identical to Phoenician Chawat and means the same thing: "Serpent (Lady)". The story also explicitly associates Eve with a serpent, as well as with the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The book of Proverbs also refers to Wisdom personified (described in traditional Asherah language) as a "tree of life" (3:13, 18). Eve is also called the "mother of all living" (similarly, Asherah is called "Mother of All" in Canaanite myth) and she says she has "created (qnh) a man" when she gives birth to Cain (Genesis 3:20, 4:1); this is the same unusual word that is applied to Asherah in Canaanite myth.
  • Worshippers of Asherah represented her in Canaanite and Israelite art as the Tree of Life, sometimes shaped like a menorah, and other times simply as a pole. Often, individual trees were used as Asherah trees to heal sickness, but eating the fruit of such trees was strictly forbidden. People would place clothes on such trees to transfer the curative powers to themselves; this practice is still done today in Israel and Syria. If represented as a healing pole, the image sometimes included a snake or snakes twisted around the pole. The modern caduceus, used as a symbol of medicine and healing, is partly derived from the Phoenician and Punic caduceus of the goddess Tannit (< tannintu "Lady of the Dragon/Snake"), who was a late Punic version of Asherah.
  • The books of 1 and 2 Kings, giving the "official" Yahwistic view of Israel's and Judah's history, present the early kings of the Divided Kingdom as wicked idolators. They indicate that for some time, the Judahites worshipped an Asherah pole that had twisted around it a bronze snake called the Nehushtan (2 Kings 18:4; Numbers 21:9). Considering what was later said about the Asherah cult in Jerusalem, the Nehushtan was most likely placed inside the Temple where devotees came to be healed from their various illnesses.
  • The Yahwistic reformer Hezekiah then tried to destroy this cult; he "cut down the Asherah poles and broke in pieces the bronze snake Moses had made" (2 Kings 18:4). This drove the Serpent Lady (Eve) and the snake from the Temple (that is, the Garden).
  • Then Hezekiah was followed by the idolatrous king Manasseh who "placed the carved image of the Asherah which he had made in the Temple" (2 Kings 21:7). Manasseh also established a house of sacred prostitues "in the Temple of Yahweh and where the women wove clothes for Asherah" (2 Kings 23:7). This is reminiscent of Eve, who was originally naked and subsequently became clothed in the Garden. One healing spell that concerns Horon and Asherah describes the act of healing as putting "a garment ('rm)" on the healed person; 'rm is related to the same word for "naked" that occurs in Genesis 2-3. Ezekiel 16:16 similarly says that "you have taken your embroidered clothes and put them on the images".
  • Then the reformer king Josiah tried to reverse the actions of Manasseh and "removed all the cult objects that had been made for Baal, Asherah, and the whole array of heaven; he burnt them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron....From the Temple of Yahweh he removed the sacred pole right out of Jerusalem to the wadi Kidron, and in the wadi Kidron he burnt it, reducing it to ashes and threw its ashes on the common burying-ground" (2 Kings 23:4, 6). Again, Asherah is expelled from the divine Garden.
  • So though the story of the Garden of Eden certainly draws on very old Caananite mythic material (which I speculate as concerning the god Mot, the god of death, tricking Asherah to give him the lives of humankind through death -- it is thus an etiological myth explaining why there is death in the world), one could detect an anti-Asherah polemic....parodying the rituals of putting clothes on her idol and parodying her expulsion from the Temple -- as well as evoking the belief that fruit from living sacred trees were strictly forbidden.
• 

  Narkissos

  Leolaia probably mentioned it in one of her threads, but a very interesting book is Margaret Barker's The Great Angel, which shows how many of the old polytheistic views of Israel, although repressed, made their way into the beliefs of Jewish and Christian monotheism.

  Here's the link to Robert M. Price's review:

  http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/rpbarker.html
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  Stefanie

  Worshippers of Asherah represented her in Canaanite and Israelite art as the Tree of Life, sometimes shaped like a menorah, and other times simply as a pole. Often, individual trees were used as Asherah trees to heal sickness, but eating the fruit of such trees was strictly forbidden. People would place clothes on such trees to transfer the curative powers to themselves; this practice is still done today in Israel and Syria. If represented as a healing pole, the image sometimes included a snake or snakes twisted around the pole. The modern caduceus, used as a symbol of medicine and healing, is partly derived from the Phoenician and Punic caduceus of the goddess Tannit (< tannintu "Lady of the Dragon/Snake"), who was a late Punic version of Asherah.

  OMG
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  Leolaia

  My original post had pictures which have since disappeared due to linkrot. I couldn't find the original picture of the Lachich Ewer, but here is one from another website:

  I think the amateurish translation should be ignored (I don't think it is accurate), but the name "Elat" is clear in the inscription, and this is one of the main titles of Asherah in Canaanite literature. It meant simply "goddess" ('el is the word for "god," and El the name of Elat's consort). Interestingly, the word in Hebrew, as 'elah, is used to mean "oak tree" and oaks were the favored sacred trees in El temples in northern Israel, as indicated by the traditions of the "oak of Shechem" in Genesis 35:4 and the "oak of Bethel" in Genesis 35:8, and Isaiah 1:29 declares that "you will be ashamed because of the sacred oaks in which you have delighted". Note that in the drawing, the tree is menorah-shaped, it is flanked by two deer and it has the word "Elat" written over it.

  Another important image is the Tanaach Cult Stand (tenth century BC):

  

  On the second level down, there is a stylized tree of life motif which is flanked by two animals. This is a very common motif in ancient Canaanite and Israelite art. The bottom level is thought to be paralleled to the second because the same monsters appear at the two corners. Instead of the tree, it is replaced by a female figure....because of the parallelism, it is thought that both represent aspects of the same deity. And here is one of the Qudshu images (c. twelfth century BC):

  

  Here she is flanked by two animals that she is holding in her hands and criss-crossing her hips are two snakes. In other images, she is holding snakes, one in each hand.
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  Wallflower

  Leolaia, you rock!
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  New Castles

  Definitely, Leolaia this is great info...

  Thanks so much!!