Dean Anderson

I have often heard it mentioned that the Canaanites traditionally thought of Yahweh as being one of the sons of El, their chief god.

However, the only actual documented reference to this that I can find is El. KTU 1.1 IV 14, which is often translated as "The name of the son of god, Yahweh" but there seems to be rather severe doubts about this translation - as previous threads here have discussed.

Where else is Yahweh mentioned in the Ugaritic texts? And do any other of these texts connect him with El?

John Kesler

The Anchor Bible Dictionary, volume 6, page 1012, article: Yahweh, states that, "[t]he formative -yw in some personal names from Ugarit...is not a divine element and has no connection with the name Yahweh."

I think the opinion of scholars like Mark S. Smith is that Yahweh is not mentioned because Yahweh originated in the southern Levant (Judges 5 and other scriptures are cited as proof) and was conflated with the Canaanite god El, assuming some of El's and Baal's attributes. The connection of El with Yahweh comes from the Bible, in passages like Deuteronomy 32:8-9.

Steven Avery

I have never seen indication of a Tetragrammaton type-usage anywhere other than the Hebrew Bible and writings derivative from same. However, the pronounciation of "yahweh" might have some similars in pagan cultures (Egyptian, Amorite, or Roman are allusions or references that I have seen) but "yahweh" is a dubious pronounciation of the Hebrew (which I completely reject :-)

Shalom,
Praxeas
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Loomis

I’m no expert but I’ve done a lot of reading on this subject, and it looks to me like the “Canaanites� and the “Ancient Hebrews� were one and the same. The archeologists and theologians who study this can’t find anything significant to differentiate between the two. It’s like being English and British.

CANAANITES = ANCIENT HEBREWS

Apparently they were the same people. They lived in the same place, spoke the same language, did the same things, and worshipped the same gods.

Google [Canaanites “ancient Hebrews�] and you will see what I mean. Here’s a quickie from Religious Tolerance: Archeology and the Hebrew Scriptures

Loomis

Yahweh is not in the Ugaritic texts. But apparently many of the Psalms in the OT that are attributed to Yahweh were originally attributed to El. In most cases it was as simple as replacing the word “El� with the word “Yahweh.�

They did the same thing with Baal. They took out “Baal� and inserted “Yahweh.�

The god on the dollar bill is a direct descendent of the gods at Ugarit, but it looks like Yahweh was a foreign god who got assimilated later. If you read the OT carefully it is quite a mind fuck. The various authors of the various verses tried to merge Yahweh with El in contradicting and incompatible ways. For example:

• Yahweh is the only god. El is a bad evil god. (2nd Isaiah – strict Yahwism)
  
  
• El is the most high god. Gosh, who is Yahweh? (polytheistic El-worship absent of Yahwism)
  
  
• El is the only god. Yahweh and the other sons of El are evil horseshit. (El monotheism at Psalm 82)
  
  
• Yahweh is one of El’s sons, assigned to watch over the nation of Jacob.
  
  
• Yahweh is a messenger god from El or Baal. (“The Angel of the LORDâ€? = “the messenger Yahweh.â€? - as Gupan was to Baal)

The stories and religious viewpoints expressed in the OT are not the product of a unified theology. Don’t let anyone fool you. The various authors did not agree on who or what God was.

Fyi, Ugarit is named after Ugar, another messenger of Baal.

John Kesler

I'll expand on my previous post about Yahweh's origin. I now quote from John Day's Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, p. 15:

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, article: El, page 385, says this:

As scholars have pointed out, Exodus 6:2-3 is an attempt to claim that Yahweh and El were really the same god all along--just a name change occurred.

Amedeo

YHVH is a set of four consonants and nobody knows for sure how the Hebrews pronounced the word, which is primarily a vocative or invocation word. The nominative case -- the name of the god -- is Y, which has to be filled with a wowel. Hence the transcriptions: Yo, Ya, Yaw, Ye [as in Yeshua, as the Greeks heard it: Yesos, or Latin Yesus but spelled Jesus].

It is possible that in Canaan they considered Ya or Yahweh one of the sons of the Elohim [the supreme Gods]. Genesis-1 is the creation story of the Elohim; Genesis-2 is the creation story of Yahweh or "Yahveh elohim" -- the divine Yaw. In view of the two distinct creation stories, one has to doubt that the Canaanites [Hebrews included] considered Yaw a son of the Elohim. The Ebla tablets (deciphered by Pettinato) have a reference to Yawveh, to Jerusalem, and to some other Biblical terms long before the Hebrew tribe separated from Canaan (after the Tower of Babel incident) and constructed their own religion.

Yahveh must be a Levantine deity prior to the Arabian influx that formed Canaan [with El or The-god: al-Elah, Allah; and with Semitic or proto-Arabic], and, later on, Akkad and Babylonia. Prior to this pre-historic influx, the Levant had, we might say, a Graeco-Sumerian language and Gentile Gods such as Yahveh or Yohveh (spelled Jove in Latin) and many others.

Y [yah; yoh] corresponds to the Latin YO-us (spelled Jous -- attested), later contracted into JUS (which means "Right"). Normally the deity is called Jus-pater or Juppiter [the father of righteousness].

As I see it, the Canaanites, whose Elohim is the presursor of the later Biblical El, invoked by Jesus on the cross, and of the Arabian Allah, absorbed the older local regions and made Yah a son of the Elohim. The Hebrews kept the deities distinct, but after the experience with the Egyptian monotheism, they constantly confused EL [wifeless and childless] with Yah. Moses gave his people the commandment that there shall be no god before the one he sponsored (namely Yah), and that was that, until the kingdom of Isra-EL separated from the kingdom of Judah whose Yah had the temple in Jerusalem.
Jesus, a Galilean, stuck to El. The ministers of El are Micha-El, Satana-El, Gabri-El, and others, who have nothing to do with Yahveh. His auto-biographical information is revealing, too: It was Satan that tempted Jesus. So much for the Arab-culture side of the Jews.

Wallener

Ah, the No True Scotsman argument.

English and British are not equal: English is a subset of British, British is comprised of much more than just the English.

Loomis

Fine. How’s this:

Hebrew is to Canaanite as English is to British?

My point being that the only difference between a vintage Israelite and a Canaanite may be that the Canaanites are those who did not assimilate Yahweh into their pantheon, and then ultimately go monotheistic.

Wallener

Possibly. I think Scottish to Welsh might be better, but at that point we're splitting hairs.