Magic Primate

Is there any real evdence for Yahweh being Vedic?

premjan

other than the name yahvah which does have something to do with trees shooting up into bloom and appears in the rig veda which is the oldest text?

I wasn't claiming there was good proof, but their is this little bit of circumstantial evidence. take it or leave it.

the other theory I heard was that Yahweh was the volcano God of the Midianites. That makes sense to me, with all the fire and brimstone.

Magic Primate

OK, thankyou.

premjan

a better theory is that YHWH written in Hebrew calligraphy looks like a picture of a big guy above and a small guy below (God and man). This is the most likely theory to my mind. Moses meditated hard and came up with just the right symbolism.

Celsus

Magic Primate wrote or quoted:
Biblical scholars do not agree on how the Pentateuch was put together. The consensus theory you cite there fell apart in the 1980s.
Not to poison the well or anything, but... David Rohl is a nutcase trying to forcefit his Egyptology with the Bible. You may want to search some of Vorkosigan's posts on him here in BC&H. I suggest you give up on the Internet, where trawling for good research is seriously impossible, and try some real scholarship, especially (if you can afford it, and are seriously into archaeology), Ziony Zevitt's The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches).

Joel

Magic Primate

More information regarding the relationship between YHWH and El (thanks to Damian Walter at http://www.thehallofmaat.com for this :

From Mark S. Smith's The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel:

"The original god of Israel was El. This reconstruction may be inferred from two pieces of information. First, the name of Israel is not a Yahwistic name with the divine element of Yahweh, but an El name, with the element, *'el. This fact would suggest that El was the original chief god of the group named Israel. Second, Genesis 49:24-25 presents a series of El epithets separate from the mention of Yahweh in verse 18 (discussed in section 3 below). Yet early on, Yahweh is understood as Israel's god in distinction to El. Deuteronomy 32:8-9 casts Yahweh in the role of one of the sons of El, here called 'elyôn:

When the Most High ('elyôn) gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he separated humanity,
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples
according to the number of divine beings.
For Yahweh's portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.

"This passage presents an order in which each deity received its own nation. Israel was the nation that Yahweh received. It also suggests that Yahweh, originally a warrior-god from Sinai/Paran/Edom/Teiman, was known separately from El at an early point in early Israel [1]. Perhaps due to trade with Edom/Midian, Yahweh entered secondarily into the Israelite highland religion. Passages such as Deuteronomy 32:8-9 suggest a literary vestige of the initial assimilation of Yahweh, the southern warrior-god, into the larger highland pantheism, headed by El; other texts point to Asherah (El's consort) and to Baal and other deities as members of this pantheon. In time, El and Yahweh were identified, while Yahweh and Baal co-existed and later competed as warrior-gods. As teh following chapter (section 2) suggests, one element in this competition involved Yahweh's assimilation of language and motifs originally associated with Baal.

"One indication that Yahweh and El were identified at an early stage is that there are no biblical polemics against El. At an early point, Israelite tradition identified El with Yahweh or presupposed this equation. It is for this reason that the Hebrew Bible so rarely distinguishes between El and Yahweh. The development of the name El ('el) into a generic noun meaning 'god' also was compatible with the loss of El's distinct character in Israelite religious texts. One biblical text exhibits the assimilation of the meaning of the word 'el quite strongly, namely Joshua 22:22 (cf. Pss. 10:12; 50:1):

'el elohim yhwh God of gods is Yahweh,
'el elohim yhwh God of gods is Yahweh.

"The first word in each clause in this verse reflects the development of the name of the god El into a generic noun meaning 'god'. In this verse the noun forms part of a superlative expression proclaiming the incomparable divine status of Yahweh. The phrase 'god of gods' may be compared to other superlative expressions of this type in the Bible such as 'king of kings' (Dan. 2:37; Ezra 7:12), the name of the biblical book 'Song of Songs' (Song of Songs 1:1), and the opening words of the first speech in Ecclesiastes, 'vanity of vanities' (Eccles. 1:2).

"The priestly theological treatment of Israel's early religious history in Exodus 6:2-3 identifies the old god El Shadday with Yahweh. In this passage Yahweh appears to Moses: 'And God said to Moses, "I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as El Shadday, but by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them"'. This passage reflects the fact that Yahweh was unknown to the patriarchs. Rather, they worshipped the Canaanite god, El. Inscriptional texts from Deir 'Alla, a site north of Jericho across the Jordan River, attests to the epithet shadday. In these inscriptions the shadday epithet is not applied to the great god, El. The author of Exodus 6:2-3 perhaps did not know of or make this distinction; rather, he identified Yahweh with the traditions of the great Canaanite god, El.

"J. Tigay's recent study of inscriptional onamastica is compatible with the historical reconstruction of the identification of El with Yahweh in early Israelite tradition. Tigay lists all proper names with theophoric elements. Found in Israelite inscriptions, all dating after the beginning of the monarchy, are 557 names with Yahweh as the divine element, 77 names with *'l, a handful of names with the divine component *b'l, and no names referring to the goddesses Anat or Asherah. The few proper names with the divine names of Anat and Asherah do not reflect a cult to these deities; Baal may be an exception. THe names with the element of the name of El historically reflect the identification of Yahweh and El by the time these names may appear in the attested inscriptions. Just as no cult is attested for Anat (and perhaps Asherah) in Israelite religion, so also there is no distinct cult attested for El except in his identity as Yahweh.

"In Israel the characteristics and epithets of El became part of the repertoire of descriptions of Yahweh. In both texts and iconography, El is an elderly bearded figure enthroned, sometimes before individual deities [...], sometimes before the divine council [...], known by a variety of expressions; this feature is attested also in Phoenician inscriptions. In KTU 1.10 III 6 [KTU refers to texts from Ugarit] El is called drd<r>, 'ageless one', and in KTU 1.3 V and 1.4 V, Anat and Asherah both affirm the eternity of his wisdom. His eternity is also expressed in his epithet, ab šnm, 'father of years'. In KTU 1.4 V 3-4 Asherah addresses El: 'You are great, O El, and indeed, wise; your hoary beard instructs you' (rbt 'ilm lhkmt šbt dqnk ltsrk). Anat's threats in 1.3 V 24-25 and 1.18 I 11-12 likewise mention El's gray beard. Similarly, Yahweh is described as the aged patriarchal god [...], enthroned amidst the assembly of divine beings [...].

"The Canaanite/Israelite tradition of the divine council derived from the setting of the royal court and evolved in accordance with the court terminology of the dominant royal power. During the Israelite monarchy, the imagery of the divine counil continued from its Late Bronze Age antecedents [...]. Some biblical innovations in terminology of the heavenly court in the postexilic period may have been modeled on the court of the reigning Mesopotamian power [...].

"El and Yahweh exhibit a similar compassionate disposition toward humanity. Like 'Kind El, the Compassionate' (ltpn 'il dp'id), the 'father of humanity' ('ab 'adm), Yahweh is a 'merciful and gracious god', 'el-rahum wehannun (Exod. 34:6; Ps. 86:15), and father [...]. Both El and Yahweh appear to humans in dream-visions and function as their divine patron. Like El [...], Yahweh is a healing god [...]. Moreover, the description of Yahweh's dwelling-place as a 'tent' ('ohel; eg, Pss. 15:1; 27:6; 91:10; 132:3), called in the Pentateuchal traditions the 'tent of meeting' [...] recalls the tent of El, explicitly described in the Canaanite narrative of Elkunirsa. The tabernacle of Yahweh has qerasim, usually understood as 'boards' [...], while the dwelling of El is called qrs, perhaps 'tabernacle' or 'pavilion' [...]. Furthermore, the dwelling of El is set amid the cosmic waters [...], a theme evoked in descriptions of Yahweh's abode in Jerusalem [...].

"The characteristics of Yahweh in Deuteronomy 32:6-7 include some motifs that can be traced to traditional descriptions of El [...].

"Like some descriptions of Yahweh, some of Yahweh's epithets can be traced to those of El. Traditions concerning the cultic site of Shechem illustrate the cultural process lying behind the Yahwistic inclusion of old titles of El, or stated differently, the Yahwistic assimilation to old cultic sites of El. In the city of Shechem the local god was el berit, 'El of the covenant' (Judg. 9:46; cf. 8:33; 9:4). This word 'ilbrt appears as a Late Bronze Age title for El in KTU 1.128.14-15. In the patriarchal narratives, the god of Shechem, 'el, is called 'elohe yisra'el, 'the god of Israel', and is presumed to be Yahweh. In this case, a process of reinterpretation appears to be at work. In the early history of Israel, when the cult of Shechem became Yahwistic, it inherited and continued the El traditions of that site. Hence Yahweh received teh title 'el berit, the old title of El. This record illustrates up to a point how Canaanite/Israelite traditions were transmitted. Israelite knowledge of the religious traditions of other deities was not due only to contact between Israel and its Phoenician neighbors in the Iron Age. Rather, as a function of the identification of Yahweh-El at cultic sites of El such as Shechem and Jerusalem, the old religious lore of a deity such as El was inherited by the Yahwistic priesthood in Israel. Ezekiel 16:3a proclaims accordingly: 'Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites'. Israelite inclusion of Yahweh into the older figure of El was not syncretistic insofar as El belonged to Israel's original religious heritage. If syncretism was involved, it was a syncretism of various Israelite notions, and one that the prophets ultimately applauded. B. Vawter remaiks: 'The very fact that the prophets fought Canaanization would make them advocates of the "syncretism" by which pagan titles were appropriated to Yahweh'. Yet even this 'Canaanization', to use Vawter's term, was part of Israel's heritage [...]" (pp. 32-43).



Footnote:

[1] For discussion of Yahweh's original people, his importation from Edom and his secondary adoption into the highlands religion, see K. van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 266-315, esp. 281-86; and "Yahweh", DDD, 910-19, and Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism, 135-48. See below n. 82. The background of the name of Yahweh is disputed. For a present discussion of the form, see J. Tropper, "Der Gottesname *Yahwa", VT 51 (2001): 81-106. For earlier proposals, see K. van der Toorn, "Yahweh", DDD, 913-16. For a recent defense of Yahweh as a title of El, see M. Dijkstra, "El, de God van Israel - Israel, het volk van YHWH. Over de van het Jahwisme in Oud-Israel", in Een God alleen ...? Over monotheisme in Oud-Israel en de verering van de godin Asjera, ed. B. Becking and M. Dijkstra (Kampen: Kok, 1998), 59-92; and his article, "El, YHWH and Their Asherah: On Continuity and Discontinuity in Canaanite and Ancient Israelite Religion", in Ugarit: Eine ostmediterranes Kulturzentrum in Alten Orient. Ergebnisse und Perspektiven der Forschung; Band I: Ugarit und seine altorientalische Umwelt, ed. M. Dietrich and O. Loretz, ALASP 7 (Munster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995), 43.73. Like earlier advocates of this view, Dijkstra has not marshalled evidence for the identification of Yahweh as a title of El. A plausible case for the Midianite-Edomite background of Yahweh has been made by K. van der Toorn, but the argument for the importation of Yahweh-cult undeer Saul due to his Edomite background is speculative. See van der Toorn, Family Religion, 266-86.