Dean Anderson

You have a good point. The first Elohim could be a gloss replacing the name of a god other than Yahweh.

It could also just be the standard use of the word Elohim to refer to Yahweh by title rather than name as used by the 'E' author (I'm not saying the author of this psalm was the 'E' writer - just that he might have been using the word in the same way).

I'm not sure there is a bulletproof argument either way.

Xrikcus

Well, poetic licence (or so I'm told by my LDS colleagues...)

Naphtali Jones

I remember reading about Melchizedek from my bible college days. Then it was claimed that he was a Christophany (appearance of Christ). Was Melchizedek one of the sons of El in the Caananite mythology? For that matter, how strong is the case for Yahweh being a Caananite god? I would like to have this nailed down with references before I start spouting off about it in public.

~Nap~

Sheshbazzar

Well Pervy, here is another example of what I was writing about before, and you protested, Loomis has again used the tactic of evading the fact that that the Name YHWH is to be found within the text from Gen.2:4 forward in at least sixty three instances, to make his claim that the Name YHWH was "inserted into an older story about EL" If that is the correct view regarding this verse, the implication is that it also had to be inserted into each and every preceding verse in which it also appears, including specifically Eve's speech in Gen. 4:1.
And a similar idea is again being expressed by Loomis in his post just above, so there is a little problem here with Loomis's understanding of The Documentary Theory versus Pervy's understanding of the same.
So what is your position? was the Name YHWH actually written within the original text of the Torah as Pervy states that the DH holds, or is Loomis correct in his views that The Name YHWH was latter substituted into the text.
I have no doubt about what I believe to be true with respect to this question.

Dean Anderson

You are generalising too much. According to most proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis, Genesis 14 (which rudely interrupts the flow of text from Genesis 13 to Genesis 15, and is written in a different style) is not from one of the 'standard' authors who wrote most of the rest of the Torah.

There are a small number of such stories and poems/hymns dotted throughout the text - another example is most of the 'Book of Records' which makes up Genesis 5. These external sources appear to have been edited into the text by the same editor who merged the Jahwist and Elohist texts (and probably at the same time) but have different authors (and ages).

As such, Loomis may be right about this story originally being about El and having Yahweh inserted into it. He may be wrong about it.

However, since this story is an anomaly anyway; if it has been changed, that says nothing about the rest of the 'E' and 'J' texts, which were written at a different time and come from different authors.

The 'implication' that you see (and the 'tactic' you see Loomis using) is just in your interpretation of things.


I have no idea what Loomis's understanding of the DH is, so I don't know how it compares with my own.

Having said that, the passage that Loomis is talking about above is from one of the Psalms. That has nothing to do with the Documentary Hypothesis - which only talks about the Torah and the Deuteronomic History.

I think probably both. The main authors of the Torah wrote 'Yahweh' as they wrote their texts. These main texts were edited together along with a small number of other texts. The other texts may or may not have originally talked about other gods whose names got replaced with 'Yahweh' at some point. If that happened, then it may have been done by the same editor who merged them with the main texts or it may have happened independently.

The problem seems to be that you are thinking of the Torah as a unified whole - therefore when I talk about the majority of it, and Loomis says something different about a small part of it, you imagine that we are contradicting each other, when the reality is that the small part that Loomis is talking about is different to the majority that I am talking about.

Dean Anderson

Since the Hebrews themselves were Canaanites, Yahweh was definitely a Canaanite god! (Note - it's 'Canaanite', not 'Caananite')

If you are asking about the other Canaanites, then there are inscriptions depicting Yahweh and Asherah (his sister/wife according to the Canaanites).

Interestingly, Yahweh is depicted there as a humanoid figure with a bull's head - in a similar manner to El (the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon).

I don't have links to these inscriptions, but I am sure someone around here will know which inscriptions I am talking about and be able to dig some up.

Sheshbazzar

Thank you Pervy for the explanation, Yes I do confess that I think of and accept the Torah as a unified whole, at least in the sense that I presented earlier, that the composition was read into the ears of all the people, and all of the people accepted it by saying "Amen" at its public reading, whereupon it quite literally became their "Constitution" and "Code of Law".
Given the nature of the debates that Loomis and I formerly engaged in, and the overall sense that has been presented by him in many, many post on this forum, I am of course going to be interested in how, or whether he will be amenable to accepting your analysis of the situation viz the use of the name YHWH within the original text of Genesis.

mens_sana

If YHWH were a Canaanite god, then there should be some mention of his membership in El's pantheon — as there is of Baal. I've never run across such a reference.

rob117

The inscriptions about Yahweh and Asherah are from around 800 BC and appear in material contexts that are clearly Israelite. Yahweh does not appear at Ugarit either, and at Ugarit Asherah is El's consort. However we do have some pre-Israelite references to Yahweh from Egyptian texts that associate him with certain placenames in the southern shasu land- roughly, Edom and Midian- "Yhw in the land of the shasu" is used in a list of placenames-all in the Edom-Midian area- dating to the reign of Amenhotep III (1390-1352 BC). The worship of Yahweh in Israel seems to have been imported from the south during the early Iron I period (beginning around 1180 BC). The Israelites themselves, who were more northerly shasu ("shasu" is a generic term used in Egyptian texts for any linguistically Canaanite highland nomads), probably worshipped a pantheon headed by El, and as Yahweh rose in importance, he was increasingly syncretized with El.

Loomis

But what’s really funny is if it originally WAS Yahweh and an “Elohim worshipper” came along later and scrubbed him out!

Not bulletproof. But the possibility is attractive because it explains the inconsistent use of the word elohim.

By the time the tweaker tweaked it the word evolved from “the gods” to “God.”