YHWH another pagan god

by homme perdu 24 Replies latest watchtower bible

Narkissos

On the (imo wrong) connection of Yhwh with Ugaritic yw, cf. http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/62692/1.ashx
Back to homme perdu's question, the very concept of "paganism" can be traced back to Josiah's "reform" in the late 7th century BC, which provided a new foundation (the "book of the Law," probably the core of Deuteronomy) for the exclusivistic worship of Yhwh in Jerusalem's temple. This reform was highlighted in the next century by the Jerusalem golah (exilees, returnees) which built a new Jewish (= Judean) religion against the old Israelite religion as still practiced by the "people of the land" (= "pagans"), i.e. those Israelites who never went into exile and whose administrative centre was Samaria (cf. Ezra-Nehemiah). As this "reform" was retrojected on Israel's past by Judean Deuteronomistic "historians", most of Israelite religion (which already used the name Yhwh) retroactively appeared as "pagan". Of course this implied a theological selection within Israel's religious legacy: the worship of Asherah, for instance, was rejected as "pagan", whereas the worship of Yhwh was ascribed to the "pure" Mosaic origin. But actually both belonged to the same old Israelite religion.
Bottom line: describing Yhwh's origin as "pagan" is accepting the artificial post-exilic Jewish principle of distinction between (1) "Mosaic revelation" and (2) "Canaanite paganism," while rejecting the contents of this distinction: Yhwh falls in (1) in Jewish tradition but we (half-critically) ascribe it to (2). I find that intellectually unsatisfying.
As to Hosea 14:9 (8 in most English Bibles), I guess it is worth quoting:
O Ephraim, what have I to do with idols?
It is I who answer (`aniti, cf. Anat) and look after him ('ashourenu, cf. Ashera).
I am like an evergreen cypress;
from me your fruit (peri, pun on "Ephraim") is found.
Robert K Stock

The March/April 2005 issue of Archaeology magazine has an article presenting evidence that the ancient Israelites worshipped Ashoreth as Mrs. YHWH.
Leolaia

Replying to some points in the article Satanus posted....
Adapa, symbolizing man, has an opportunity to obtain immortality. All he has to do is eat and drink the food of the gods offered him by Tammuz and Ningishzida on behalf of Anu. Adapa refuses both on the prior advice of his god Enki, who forewarned him he would surely die if he consumed anything. So, Mankind lost out on obtaining immortality because HE OBEYED HIS GOD. Enki did not want "his servant" Adapa to possess immortality, he was willing though to give great wisdom or knowledge to Adapa
Anu actually commands Dumuzi (= Hebrew Tammuz < Akkadian Tammuzi < Sumerian Dumuzi, Dumuzid) and Ningishzida to bring the food and drink of life for Adapa to eat. Interesting detail is that Ningishzida is an ophidian deity (reminiscent of the serpent in Genesis?). The parallels with Genesis are actually closer than presented here. Enki explicitly refers to Anu's food as the "food of death" and the "drink of death"; this parallels Yahweh's characterization of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as deadly. Enki warns Adapa ahead of time not to eat the food of death, -- indeed commands him not to partake, just like Yahweh gave Adam advance warning about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Enki also says that in addition to being offered the food and water of death, Adapa would also be offered a "garment" and advises him to "put it on". The Genesis story also has a connection between putting on clothes and consuming food from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Finally, the moral of both stories is the same: man is not permitted to have both divine wisdom and immortality; or else he would be like the gods.
Yahweh-Elohim then, is a re-working and transformation of the Sumerian god of Wisdom and Knowledge, Enki, also called Ea or Ia (any relation to Iah/Yah ?).
The conjecture that "Yah" is a form of "Ea" is generally rejected by philologists. Moreover the character of Yahweh/Baal is much closer to that of Enlil, the Sumerian storm god.
Enki's residence is under the earth (which floats upon the freshwater ocean) in the depths of the Abzu/Apsu at Eridu in Lower Mesopotamia. From this place emerges a freshwater stream that is the source of all the rivers of the world. He sits upon a throne decorated with pots from which flow two streams of water, indicating he is the source of the earth's streams of freshwater. Yahweh's throne is portrayed as being over a stream of freshwater that leaves the temple in Jerusalem and travels eastward to the Dead Sea, rejuvenating it.
This is a perfect example of how Yahweh differs from Enki. Yahweh is indeed enthroned over the thwm "deep", but his residence is not under the earth but rather on the heights of the cosmic mountain (represented on earth by the Temple Mount in the Judahite tradition, or on Mount Misar/Hermon in the northern tradition), where the two deeps -- the subterranean and the heavenly -- meet and pour out to irrigate the earth (cf. Psalm 29:9-10, 42:7-8, 104:2-3; Isaiah 14:13-14; Ezekiel 28:13-14). In Jerusalem, this water flows from the Gihon spring (cf. Gihon as one of the rivers of the Garden of Eden) and from Mount Hermon, the water flows as the Jordan River. Yahweh has inherited this concept of the divine abode from Canaanite cosmology relating to El, the creator god, and not Baal who resides on a different mountain. In Ugaritic myth, El was described as residing in a paradisical palace where the Euphrates and Tigris originate, on Mount Hermon, where the two deeps meet. In Sumerian cosmology, Enki resided over the subterranean waters (the Abzu, or Apsu in Akkadian; the Greek word abbusos "abyss" originated in this name), while Anu resided over the heavenly waters.
I suspect that the animosity between Baal and Yahweh, ca. 1200-587 BCE is arising directly from the 1500-1200 BCE Ugaritic myths, and the animosity between Baal (Baal-Hadad) and his brother Yam or Yaw, to see which would become "lord of the earth."
No, this is almost surely incorrect...it has as its slender basis the title Yw applied to Yamm, but Yamm was also Yahweh's adversay in exactly the same way as he was Baal's enemy, so the proper antithesis should be between Yahweh/Baal and Leviathan/Rahab/Yamm. The evidence from the OT suggests pretty clearly that Yahweh was identified with Baal and that (as Mark Smith concludes) the adversarial relationship between the two gods arose when the Phoenician Baal-Shamem cult was introduced into Israel/Judah from the north as a competitor to Yahweh. It is this historical context in which the conflict between Baal and Yahweh arose, not in any mythological archetype since Baal and Yahweh were roughly functionally equivalent. In no sense was Yahweh a chaos monster or sea god. He was the sea god's enemy.
It is my understanding that Yahweh-Elohim is a conflation and fusing of the sea and river god Yaw (sea is Yam in Hebrew) and Baal-Hadad (Baal being asssociated with thunderclouds and Yahweh-Elohim manifesting himself as a thundercloud at Mt. Sinai)
Again, this is lacking in evidence; in no sense does Yahweh have the characteristics of Yamm or assume his mythological role. Repeatedly in the OT we encounter Yahweh as the enemy of the sea, who subdues it and puts it under his own control (cf. Job 7:12, 26:12-13, 38:4, 8-11; Psalm 74:12-15, 104:5-13; Proverbs 8:28-29; Isaiah 19:5, 27:1; Jeremiah 5:22). The crossing of the Reed Sea story in Exodus draws on this mythology, as Isaiah 51:9-10 makes clear. Yahweh is commonly associated with the clouds and with rain; I know of no associations between him and the chaotic sea, which is usually tied to evil, to nations, or to beasts associated with the sea (cf. Daniel). Even in a work as late as Revelation, we encounter a conflict myth between the "ancient dragon" having seven heads (cf. Leviathan/Lotan, which was depicted as having seven heads in Ugaritic texts, the "seven streams" associated with Yam and Nahar [Sea and River] in Isaiah 11:15, and the multiple heads of Leviathan in Psalm 74:12-15) and the divine agent for God, with the dragon depicted as violently vomiting water into a torrential river -- exactly the motif of Yamm and similar monsters (Revelation 12:15-13:2). Consistently, Yam or Leviathan is the subdued enemy of Yahweh.
The idea that Yahweh was originally a chaos monster like Yw is based on nothing more than the phonetic similarity between the name Yahweh and Yw, which occurs only in a single text, namely KTU 1.1 IV 14 (and thus was probably not a common name for Yamm). As a title bestowed through kingship, it is entirely possible that Baal was eligible to be called Yw as well. I see no reason to suppose that Yw was the exclusive property of Yamm; Wyatt, in his translation, for instance, translates it as "Lord" in the phrase "Lord of the gods" (yw 'l[]), and there is nothing necessarily Yamm-like in that phrase.
peacefulpete

I regard the YW in KTU 1.1 IV 14 as referring to a deity, a son of El, that is distinct from Yamm mentioned later. The question in my mind is whether YW is a previously unknown title here associated with Baal (Yamm's enemy in Ugarit myth) or the name Yaw, which of course is our man from later Israelite myth who also is Yamm's enemy.
Otherwise we do know from both OT reference (Judges 5:4,Deut 33:2,Hab 3:3)and archaeology that Yahweh was worshipped in Edom and Midian prior to his being imported into Palestine perhaps by Kenite merchants.

mnb77

YHWH (Jehovah)

through translation YHWH became Jehovah.

Next to the true name of the Messiah, one of the most common misconceptions within Christianity is that God?s Name is ?Jehovah.? However, does it make any sense at all that the God of Avraham, Yitzhak, and Ja'acov (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) would reveal Himself to them through a name that is grammatically impossible to say in their language? That's correct: it is impossible to say the work "Jehovah" in Hebrew (or Aramaic)?the letters to create those sounds simply do not exist in either the modern or ancient language of Israel and the Jews.

Well, then, where did the word ?Jehovah? come from?

The Hebrew Scriptures (the books of the Tenakh or so-called ?Old Testament?) were originally written almost totally in the Hebrew language, plus some sections in Aramaic, neither language containing any vowels, only consonants. However, there were a few of those Hebrew letters that would indicate that a vowel sound should be used. For example, the letter a (aleph), while actually a consonant, would let the reader know to insert an ?ah? sound, and the letter w (vav), which was pronounced somewhere between the English ?V? and ?W? could also be pronounced like English ?oo?. Let's see how this works, if you pronounce "W" like "oo" and remember to insert the appropriate vowel when you see ?#?.

MWST P#PL SHWLD B #BL TW RD THS SNTNC FRLY #SLY WTHWT VWLS
Most people should be able to read this sentence fairly easily without vowels.

The Jews knew what vowel sounds to be used in the pronunciation of the words based on the construction of the sentence, the context, and their excellent memories. Since very few people could afford to have written copies of even small portions of the Scriptures, huge amounts of Scripture were accurately committed to memory.

Between the sixth and tenth century after the birth of Messiah, a group of Scribes know as the Masoretes added a system of vowel points to enable the preservation of the original pronunciation. Their version of the Scriptures is know as the Masoretic Text.

The Name by which God revealed Himself to the patriarchs and to Moses was the Hebrew word for ?I AM? or ?I AM THAT I AM? ? meaning something similar to ?The One Who exists by His own power.? This Name was spelled hwhy , the Hebrew equivalent of ?YHWH? (yod, heh, vav, heh) and was considered too sacred to pronounce. This four-letter word is also know as the Tetragrammaton (meaning ?four letters?). When reading the Scriptures or referring to the Sacred Name (HaShem), the Jews would substitute the word ?Adonay,? which means ?Lord.?

To indicate this substitution in the Masoretic Text, the Masoretes added the vowel points from the word ?Adonay? to the Sacred Name, and came up with a word that would look to them something like YaHoWaH.

Since there was no such word in the Hebrew language, the reader would be forced to stop and think about what he was reading, and thus would avoid accidentally speaking the Sacred Name aloud.

Later, some Christian translators mistakenly combined the vowels of ?Adonay? with the consonants of ?YHWH? producing the word ?YaHoWaH.? When the Scriptures were translated into German during the Reformation, the word was transliterated into the German pronunciation, which pronounces ?Y? as an English ?J? and pronounces ?W? as an English ?V? ? or ?Jahovah.? Then in the early 17th century when the Scriptures were being translated into English with the help of some of the German translations, the word was again transliterated as ?Jehovah,? and this this unfortunate accident has carried over into many modern English translations.

The term is now recognized by all proficient Bible scholars to be a late hybrid form, a translation error, that was never used by the Jews.

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary :: ?Jehovah ? False reading of the Hebrew YAHWEH.?
( ?Jehovah,? Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1973 ed. )
Encyclopedia Americana :: ?Jehovah ? erroneous form of the name of the God of Israel.?
( Encyclopedia Americana, vol. 16., 1972 ed. )
Encyclopedia Britannica :: ?The Masoretes who from the 6th to the 10th century worked to reproduce the original text of the Hebrew Bible replaced the vowels of the name YHWH with the vowel signs of Adonai or Elohim. Thus the artificial name Jehovah came into being.?
( ?Yahweh,? The New Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 12, 1993 ed. )
The Jewish Encyclopedia :: ?Jehovah ? a mispronunciation of the Hebrew YHWH the name of God. This pronunciation is grammatically impossible.?
( ?Jehovah,? The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 7, 1904 ed. )
The New Jewish Encyclopedia:: ?It is clear that the word Jehovah is an artificial composite.?
( ?Jehovah,? The New Jewish Encyclopedia, 1962 ed. )

According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, p. 680, vol. 7, ?the true pronunciation of the tetragrammaton YHWH was never lost. The name was pronounced Yahweh. It was regularly pronounced this way at least until 586 B.C., as is clear from the Lachish Letters written shortly before this date.?

*the special and significant name (not merely an appellative title such as Lord
[adonai]) by which God revealed himself to the ancient Hebrews (Ex. 6:2, 3).
This name (YHWH), the Tetragrammaton of the Greeks, was held by the later Jews to be
so sacred that it was never pronounced except by the high priest on the great
Day of Atonement, when he entered into the most holy place. Whenever this name
occurred in the sacred books they pronounced it, as they still do, "Adonai"
(i.e., Lord), thus using another word in its stead. The Massorets gave to it
the vowel-points appropriate to this word. This Jewish practice was founded on
a false interpretation of Lev. 24:16. The meaning of the word appears from Ex.
3:14 to be "the unchanging, eternal, self-existent God," the "I am that I am,"
a convenant-keeping God. (Comp. Mal. 3:6; Hos. 12:5; Rev. 1:4, 8.) The Hebrew
name "Jehovah" is generally translated in the Authorized Version (and the
Revised Version has not departed from this rule) by the word LORD printed in
small capitals, to distinguish it from the rendering of the Hebrew _Adonai_ and
the Greek _Kurios_, which are also rendered Lord, but printed in the usual type.
The Hebrew word is translated "Jehovah" only in Ex. 6:3; Ps. 83:18; Isa. 12:2;
26:4, and in the compound names mentioned below. It is worthy of notice that
this name is never used in the LXX., the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Apocrypha,
or in the New Testament. It is found, however, on the "Moabite stone" (q.v.),
and consequently it must have been in the days of Mesba so commonly pronounced
by the Hebrews as to be familiar to their heathen neighbours.

*modern reconstruction of the ancient Hebrew ineffable name of God ( Yahweh ).

Leolaia

I regard the YW in KTU 1.1 IV 14 as referring to a deity, a son of El, that is distinct from Yamm mentioned later.

Unfortunately the text is fragmentary, but the overall scene is apparently an enthronement scene of Yamm. In Wyatt's translation: "El appointed his son regent, Bull [El placed him on the throne??]. Then the Wise One, the perceptive god, spoke: "[Yamm] is the name of my son, yw of the gods [is Nahar], and he proclaimed the name 'Yamm', [and pronounced the name 'Nahar'??]. They [the "assembly of the gods" in line 4?) responded to him: 'You shall indeed invest him, [...] You shall proclaim him 'Lord', [And El replied:] 'I am the Wise One, the [perceptive] god. Over my hands I pronounce [...], Your name is 'Beloved of E[l...]" [I shall give you] a house of silver, [a palace] out of [gold], from the hands of Valiant Ba[al], since he has scorned me [], drive him from the throne [of his kingship]...El gave a feast [], he proclaimed his son []..." (KTU 1.1 IV 11-29). Then the next scene, we encounter Kothar-and-Hasis who is commanded to "[const]ruct a palace for Ruler Na[har] ... build a palace for Prince Yamm" (KTU 1.2 III 7-9), and still later Shapsh tells Athtar that "Bull El your father [has sh]own favor to Prince Yamm, to Ruler Nahar" and Athtar replies that "Bull El my father [has tak]en [kingship] from me, I have no house like [the] gods" (1.2 III 15-20). And furthermore, in KTU 1.3 III 39, Yamm is clearly called "the Beloved of El".
On this view, yw would be one of the titles accorded to Yamm-w-Nahar, alongside 'dn "Lord" and mdd 'l "Beloved of El," which fits well with Yamm being El's son.
peacefulpete

reconstructions are everything aren't they. The usual translation/reconstruction hardly resembles Wyatt's does it? Could it be that his opinion about YW has colored his translating?
love11

The Bible is plagiarised!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Leolaia

I used to have Mark Smith's translation but I had to return it to the library (the volume is $200 and I badly want it), but I think it is one of the best because he gives images of the tablets themselves, then a narrow transcription of the consonants, then a vocalized text, and then a line by line analysis of the lacunae and finally a translation. Very detailed and thorough. I'll try to get ahold of the translation when I go to the library tomorrow. :))
Daunt

From all this text I have read it pretty much answered my question. But, I just want a cold hard answer. Did Jesus ever say anything close to YHWH or Jehovah, or a name for God at all? Have been wondering this for forever. Always see proof for old timey jewish text that had YWHW and the actualy dead sea scrolls. But... wouldn't the name jehovah be everywhere in the history books if Jesus said it?

YHWH another pagan god

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