StarryNight

On another forum someone has suggested that Yahweh is a plagiarised form of Anu. I don't know what to think.

I looked up Anu in wikipedia and found this:"It was believed that he had the power to judge those who had committed crimes, and that he had created the stars as soldiers to destroy the wicked."

I instantly recalled this verse from the Koran:
"Allah made the stars as missiles to throw at devils" 67:5

Do you think that there is any historical connexion?

Cheerful Charlie

No, Anu was a Sumerian God who preceeded Yhwh by 2000 years. Yhwh
definitley had a connection to El, the God of earlier Semites, of whom Baal was one of 70's sons. In the early OT, god is often refered to as El. And see Job 1 and Genesis 6 for sons of God. Many civilizations thought of stars as divine beings, Anaxagoras was forced to leave Athens in the 6th century BCE for suggesting the stars were merely hot rocks. In the old testament, "hosts of heaven" is a phrase used to describe older gods, which Yhwh has demanded Israel no longer worship. Yhwh is depicted as being angered by continuing worship of these hosts of heaven.Ywhw is depicted in other verses as leading the hosts of heaven. no telling how all of this came exactly to be in the OT as it is.

I have seen claims that Yahweh may mean creator, as in El dzu Yahweh, El the creator, who was indeed a creator god, I have no idea how likely this is or not. It may well be that early Israelites did start calling El by this honorific to divorce Yahweh from older El mythology, much of which is embaressingly silly.

Yahu is also an early name for Yhwh, and the name by which the Elephantine Island Jews knew Yhwh.

No telling where that came from.

Asherah, El's warrior wife was part and parcel of Israelite life until her sacred groves were and worship were stamped out by the Yahwehists about 700 BCE. Part of the hosts of heaven we are not to worship any more, along with Baal, her son? Most prominent gods of early religions were associated with important stars and plantets.

By700 BCE,Yahweh had been promoted to the soverign of the sky and the heavens and leader of the host of heaven, the lessor gods, the biblical "council of gods".. Later merely his sons.

The problem is,we see only bits of older mythology peaking through here and there in the OT.

Definitely there is a connection to El, Asherah, and Baal. Baal in Semitic myth nearly displaced El as chief God, stopped only by Asherah's intervention. Embarressing to have your chief God castrated by his son in a heavenly palace revolt. You can see why people wanted to ditch those parts of the myth, much as Xenophanes objected to Homer's stealing, raping, arrogant gods.

CC

jess

Moving thread to BC&H because I think it'll get more action there.

Fasten your seatbelts, and remember any landing you can walk away from is a good landing...

Rich Oliver

I've heard it claimed that Al-lah is an evolved form of the word El. I've also heard it claimed that Israel means fighter for El.

Cheerful Charlie

Allah means The God. Which god that is is not mentioned. Al Lah had three daughters. El had 70 sons. See Genesis 6 and Job 1 for sons of El, God.
Al Lah was probably not derived from El. Not directly anyway.

Israel means, He who strove with God (El). Jacob wrestles with God and is renamed Israel. His descendents become the Israelites. See Genesis 32.

CC

Rich Oliver

So is the Hebrew version of Judah thought to be related to Yahweh?

maxq

Isn't YHWH more like that Cannanite Yam or Yahu? Unless I am mistaken...

The arabic counterpart of YHWH is Hua-al-Hayy (He Is) as explained in the Quran.

Secondly, I've done some digging on the origin of the name Allah, and it seems it sprang from al-Ilah. since we see the counterpart Allat to have originiated as al-Ilat from some of inscriptions (Hoyland: Arabia and the Arabs (or via: amazon.co.uk)) ... there is no direct or first-hand evidence for the derivation chain for the word Allah as far as I know.

Ilah may have very well been derived from the Hebrew Eloh or perhaps directly from the Babylonian El, in which case the source for both Arabic and Hebrew are the same. The former is more likely in my view.

Arabised forms of Herew words such as Isra'el sound like Israa'eel and seem to have been introduced before Islam. Southern Arabian language Sabaean which is very a close cousin of Arabic (so close that spoken Sabaean would be understood by Arabs and vice versa) already had many Judaeo-Christians words like "MaseeHah" (Messiah) incorporated as early as 552AD (Abraha Inscription)...

As for 67:5, the Quran seems to have drawn from a variety of sources so it may not be a direct chain match in terms of inheritance of attributes.

Allah means "The God" and may have similar connotation as the concept of Jahovah (father, son and Holy Spirit) for the pagan Arabs.

Lastly, Allat, Uzza and Manat were not three distinct daughters as far as I can understand, but names of the same deity in different regions, so there is a big discrepency in Islamic tradition (I seem to think it is on purpose) since archaeological evidence reveals things otherwise...

Roger Pearse

Perhaps something by way of evidence for connection and derivation could be produced at this point? If not, let us please toss this one down the drain.

Atlantis cultists tell us that pyramids in Egypt and pyramids in Mexico 'proves' connection and thus the existence of Atlantis. In reality it indicates only that people with blocks of stone to heap up can't think of very many different ways to pile them in heaps.

Using loose parallels, could we perhaps 'prove' connection or derivation between Einstein and some mashed potato, given a bit of ingenuity?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

gstafleu

To follow up on what Roger said, calling Yahweh a "plagiarized" form of An is indeed not very useful. However, the Sumerian, Babylonian and Hebrew mythologies are a continuum in that they share a common line of development. So in that sense there is a connection between An and Yahweh, but it is rather long and convoluted. Just saying that one mythology is, or is not, derived from another doesn't really work here, it is more a migration of ideas as a result of contact between the peoples of the area.

A bit more detail will show the length of any connection between An and Yahweh. First of all, An was the son of Nammu. Yahweh, at least the transcendent monotheistic version we are used to, was nobody's son. Nammu was the primal sea from which everything was created. You can find her in Genesis 1 as the waters over which god's spirit was hovering.

Nammu then was split into two parts, An (sky, male) and Ki (female). We find the idea of splitting a united male/female being into its parts in Genesis as well, but in a quite different form: Adam and Eve were not gods, they were just humans, as was the splittee Adam+Eve.

So yes, there are commonalities, but the path from one to the other is not a simple copying process.

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

Well, never mind Atlantis. But the question here is: why were these people piling stones into heaps to start with? Seems like a lot of wasted effort if there is no good reason, surely?

Gerard Stafleu