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Physical Evidence of Yahweh Found

The editors of Encyclopedia Judaica stated confidently in 1970 that

"There is no evidence of any physical representation of God in Jewish history. In archeological excavations no images of the God of Israel have been unearthed. Biblical Hebrew is the only fully developed language which has no specific term for the notion "goddess. (10)".

In 1975 and 1976, five years after these words were printed, archeologist uncovered a collection of artifacts at Kuntillet Ajrub, an ancient way station in the wilderness of northern Sinai. (11) The station was also a religious center, for many inscriptions bare the name El and Yahweh (YHWH). The most startling of the artifacts discovered are two pithoi or vase jars found inside the center. One contains a woman seated and playing a lyre. A male figure, whom the scholars identify as the Egyptian god Bes is in the center.Another make deity is on the left. The inscription written across the top of the representation reads, "May you be blessed by Yahweh and is Ashera." The man on the left is the Hebrew God Yahweh and the woman playing the lyre is his "Ashera" or "wife." (12). Another representation of the God Yahweh is on a fourth century B.C. Canaanite coin (figure 10). The Hebrew God is shown as a man sitting on a winged throne. Above his head is his name Yah or Yahweh.(13).

The Supreme God of the pre-Mosaic Hebrews was called `El, the same as the Canaanite God. (14) Karen Armstrong, in her best seller, "A History of God", notes:

"It is highly likely that Abraham's God was El, the High God of Canaan. The deity introduces himself to Abraham as El Shaddai (El of the Mountain), which was one of El's traditional titles. Elsewhere he is called El Elyon (The most High God) or El of Bethel. The name of the Canaanite High God is preserved in such Hebrew names as Isra-El of Ishma-El. (15)"

The Biblical "Eloheim" is the plural is El. We find this name ascribed to God again in Psalm 82:1. Until Moses' time, El was the only God the Hebrews knew. (16). This God was an elderly Man with a white beard. F.M. Cross in "Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic", describes an ancient Canaanite relief depicting the God El:

"From Ugarit comes a relief of a male god, with long beard, sitting on a throne with his right hand raised in a gesture of blessing. On his head is a high conical crown below which bovine horns protrude prominently; above is a winged sun disk." (17).

When Yahweh introduced himself to Moses, he identified himself as one and the same God'El. He says in Exodus 6:2-3,

"And God spoke unto Moses and said unto him, I am the Lord: and I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, and unto Jacob, BY THE NAMWE OF EL SHADDAI, but by my name Yahweh was I now known to them.

`El Shaddai' means "God Almighty" or "El Almighty." He is the same God `El just using a different name.

Yahweh was an Egyptian God before he was a Hebrew God. In Ex. 3:14, God identifies Himself to Moses as Eheyeh asher Eheyeh" or I AM THAT I AM." T.W. Doan, in "Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions" observes,

"The Egyptian name for God was `Nuk-Pa-Nuk' of I AM THAT I AM. This name is found on a temple in Egypt…The name Jehovah (YHWH) which was a name adopted by the Hebrews, was a name esteemed sacred among the Egyptians. They called it Y-HA-HO or Y-AH-WEH…None dare enter the temple of Serapis, who did not bear on his breast or forehead the name JAO, or J-HA-HO, a name almost equivalent in sound to that of the Hebrew Jehovah, and probably of identical import; and no name was uttered in Egypt with more reverence that this IAO." (18).

The God is Israel was a Black God. And in Egypt, Yahweh was a Black God. Gerald Massey, in his monumental work, "Book of Beginnings", says of this "Negro god":

"To this origin of the Negro god, and this line of descent through the black star god, the black-and-golden Sun-and Sirius god, and the black god who was the sun of the darkness, the Typhonians (white in Egypt) remained devoutly attached, no matter whether they worshipped Sut-Nahsi in Nubia, or Sutekh in Syria…or Jah (Yahweh) in Israel." (19)

Indeed the Hebrews believed in an anthropomorphic theophany* of God all the way up until the time of Jesus and beyond. Gedallahu G. Stroumsa, in "Forms(s) of God," sates,

"It must be pointed out JEWISH ANTHROPOMORPHISM SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN NOTORIOUS IN THE FIRST CENTURIES C.C." (20)

The Church Father Justine martyr, writing in the second century, said in "Dialogue with Trypho" that the Jewish teachers "Imagine that the Father of all, the unengendered God, has hands, feet, fingers and a sour, just as a composite being." (21).

Origen (A.D. 185-253), (22) Basil of Cesarea (A.D. 330-379) and Arnobious of Sicca all charge the Hebrews of so-called anthropomorphism. (23). An example of how the Hebrews viewed God in the fifth century can be found in the "Genesis Rabbah, ca.A.D. 400- 450. R. Hoshaiah says in it

"When the Holy One (Yahweh), blessed be he, came to create the first man, the ministering angels mistook him [for God, since man was in God's image,] and wanted to say before him, Holy, [holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.]" (24)

There is a legend among the Jews that when the High-Priest Simon the Just on his last Day of Atonement was ministering in the Temple, his usual companion, an old man adorned in white, entered the Holy of Holies with Simon, yet did not leave with him. This raised an eye of surprise in the circle of Rabbi Abbahu, for it is written in Leviticus xvi. 17 that no one could be in the Tent of Appointment during the time when the High priest is atoning in the Sanctuary. Not even one of the angels. Rabbi Abbahu concluded that surely that venerable old man that entered the Holy of Holles with Simon was no mere mortal-He was God. (25

edited by Toto for formatting