Yahweh

This article is about the ancient Levantine deity of Israel and Judah. For the modern Judeo-Christian conception, see God in Judaism and God in Christianity. For other uses, see Yahweh (disambiguation).

A coin showing a bearded figure seating on a winged wheel, holding a bird on his outstretched hand
The God on the Winged Wheel coin, minted in Gaza City, southern Philistia, during the Persian period of the 4th century BCE. It possibly represents Yahweh enthroned on a winged wheel,[1][2] although this identification is disputed among scholars.[3]
Deities of the ancient Near East
Ancient Egyptian
Arabian
Eblaite
Elamite
Hurrian and Hittite
Levantine
(Canaanite and Ugaritic)
Mesopotamian
Religions of the ancient Near East

Yahweh[a] was an ancient Levantine deity who was venerated in Israel and Judah.[4][5] Though no consensus exists regarding his origins,[6] scholars generally contend that he is associated with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman,[7] and later with Canaan. His worship reaches back to at least the Early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age, if not somewhat earlier.[8] While the Israelites held him as their national god, their religion—known as Yahwism, involving the worship of Yahweh among a broader Semitic pantheon—was still essentially polytheistic or, according to some accounts, monolatristic.[b] However, during and after the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BCE, the Israelite religion gradually evolved into Judaism and Samaritanism, which are both strictly monotheistic and thus regard Yahweh as God in the singular sense—that is, as the supreme being of the universe and without any equals.

In the oldest examples of biblical literature, Yahweh possesses attributes that were typically ascribed to deities of weather and war, fructifying the Land of Israel and leading a heavenly army against the nation's enemies.[9] The early Israelites may have leaned towards polytheistic practices that were otherwise common across ancient Semitic religion, as their worship apparently included a variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses, such as El, Asherah, and Baal.[10]

In later centuries, El and Yahweh became conflated, and El-linked epithets, such as ʾĒl Šadday (אֵל שַׁדַּי‎), came to be applied to Yahweh alone.[11] Some scholars believe that El and Yahweh were always conflated.[12][13][14] Characteristics of other deities, such as Asherah and Baal, were also selectively "absorbed" in conceptions of Yahweh.[15][16][17]

Over time, the existence of other deities was denied outright, and Yahweh was proclaimed the creator deity and the sole divinity to be worthy of worship. During the Second Temple period, openly speaking the name of Yahweh in public became regarded as a religious taboo,[18] and Jews instead began to substitute other Hebrew words, primarily ăḏōnāy (אֲדֹנָי‬‎, lit. 'My Lords'). By the time of the Jewish–Roman wars—namely following the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the concomitant destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE—the original pronunciation of Yahweh's name was forgotten entirely.[19]

Additionally, Yahweh is invoked in the Aramaic-language Papyrus Amherst 63 from ancient Egypt, and also in Jewish or Jewish-influenced Greco-Egyptian magical texts from the 1st to 5th centuries CE.[20]

  1. ^ Edelman 1995, p. 190.
  2. ^ Stavrakopoulou 2021, pp. 411–412, 742.
  3. ^ Pyschny 2021, pp. 26–27.
  4. ^ Miller & Hayes 1986, p. 110.
  5. ^ Niehr 1995, p. 54-55.
  6. ^ Fleming 2020, p. 3.
  7. ^ Smith 2017, p. 42.
  8. ^ Miller 2000, p. 1.
  9. ^ Hackett 2001, pp. 158–59.
  10. ^ Smith 2002, p. 7.
  11. ^ Smith 2002, pp. 8, 33–34.
  12. ^ Lewis 2020, p. 222.
  13. ^ Cross 1973, pp. 96–97.
  14. ^ Cornell 2021, p. 18.
  15. ^ Smith 2002, pp. 8, 135.
  16. ^ Smith 2017, p. 38.
  17. ^ Cornell 2021, p. 20.
  18. ^ Leech 2002, pp. 59–60.
  19. ^ Leech 2002, p. 60.
  20. ^ Smith & Cohen 1996b, pp. 242–256.


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