Yahweh & El

Kingdom of Judah temple at Arad w/two altars and standing stones.

In setting up this post, I shall have to give some background to the discipline of Ancient Near East studies (ANE). ANE encompasses history, linguistics, archaeology, and geography. As such, ANE makes use of these “sciences” in order to reconstruct a dynamic picture of the world within which the Biblical narrative takes place. When dealing with a “science” certain presuppositions or biases are in existence before study even takes place. These presuppositions are essentially humanistic and Enlightenment in origin. They are as follows:
•    Human reason is the final and only authority. If it cannot be touched, read, or reproduced in an experiment, then it is not real. Faith is placed in man, his intellect, and his scientific tools.
•    The supernatural or paranormal are simply pieces of human imagination and mythologies. Thus, there is no God, nor were there any ANE gods, in existential fact. The people only believed that there were gods.
•    Therefore, supernatural or miraculous events are denied as being rational explanations for historical events (thus the Exodus, as recorded in the Bible, never happened that way or at all).
•    Religious texts (such as the Bible) are never to be trusted to give an accurate picture of historical events or life. In the ANE, politics and religion were inseparable. So, religious texts are simply political propaganda (there are no gods). The information within them is to be handled with care and with suspicion. They are only accurate inasmuch as mankind is able to ascertain with his reason and scientific methods.

I, as a beginning student of ANE, have several fatal flaws that I must confess up front. 1) I am a confessing Christian. As such, I believe not only in a God, but also in what I deem to be the God. 2) I also confess that I believe that the Bible is the one God’s communication, on paper, of His activities and interaction with Creation and humanity. Thus, I trust that the Bible is giving us data that can and should be trusted as reliable, even before mankind gets around to affirming it. Those are my “fatal” biases. The dirty little secret in scholarship is that all scholars have biases, no matter how much they say their discipline or work is “objective” or “unbiased”. The data that is collected is just that: data. It is the interpretations that are subjective and biased.

The problem of the relationship of Yahweh and El has been bandied about for decades, probably going back to the late 1800s. Genesis refers to God as both Yahweh and as Elohim or El + another name (e.g. El Shaddai). These references are included in both narrative accounts (e.g. “and Yahweh did/said”), direct address (e.g. “O Yahweh Elohim…” Gen. 15:2), or in self-description (e.g. “I am Yahweh”, Gen. 15:7). So far it simply looks as though God has a multiplicity of names. But, we come to Exodus 6:3 where God tells Moses, “and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but by My name, Yahweh, I did not make Myself known to them.” This, on the surface, contradicts all of the Genesis accounts of the Patriarchs interacting with Yahweh, using that name, and hearing God refer to Himself as Yahweh. This is part of the reason why the JEDP Document Hypothesis says there are different textual traditions that create the Old Testament, one being the “Yahwistic” tradition (God = Yahweh) and another being the “Elohistic” tradition (God = El). So, according to JEDP, these two strands were synthesized (with other traditions) to create the OT.

At the same time, archaeology was unearthing lots of texts written on stone and clay tablets in Lebanon, Syria, as well as Israel. These texts, from ancient Byblos, Ugarit, and Emar, describe the Canaanite religious pantheon. The chief deity in this pantheon is, guess who, El. Many of the descriptor El names found in the OT, have similar or exact replicas in Canaanite religion: Olam, Shaddai, Elyon. What was to be made of this? Even more puzzling were the parallels of Hebrew poetry about Yahweh (e.g. Ps. 29) that almost word-for-word mimicked Canaanite poetry describing Ba‘al, son of El.

Scholars (e.g. Albrecht Alt, 1883-1956) began to theorize that maybe the Israelite god was one of the Canaanite gods.[1] Or maybe the Israelite god was a blending of El and Ba‘al. This led to some scholars suggesting that the Israelites were really just Canaanites who intermarried with some nomadic desert tribes (revolting peasant?). Regardless, since “Israel” was living in the ANE, and in Canaan in particular, the Israelite deity was simply an amalgamation of Canaanite deities. This interpretation was reinforced as archaeology revealed inscriptions dedicated to “Yahweh and his Asherah”. Thus, some scholars concluded (interpreted) ancient Israelite religion was just another ANE polytheism that was heavily influenced by the Canaanite religion around it .[2]

What is a believing Christian to make of all this chaos? Does this mean that the Bible is a mess, or that the Christian God is/was simply a variant form of Canaanite El? Well, if your bias is that there is no God and the Bible is propaganda, then the answer must be yes. However, since my bias is that God is and that He has spoken through the Bible, I think the answer is definitively no. By keeping God in the equation, and accepting what the Bible says (including the New Testament), the Christian has access to answers that the scholar who rejects God from the equation has denied himself.

Genesis 5:1 states that before the Flood, men “began to call upon the name of Yahweh”. This hints that Yahweh/Elohim was known by man and was worshipped by man. In Chapter 6, the “sons of Elohim” come down and mate with human females and the world quickly goes awry. I have read a theory purports that the “sons of God” were fallen angels who came down 1) to pollute the bloodline of the Messiah, 2) introduce forbidden knowledge to mankind, and 3) wreck havoc amongst men and lead them astray. They seem to have been very successful given that in less than one chapter, Genesis goes from “men began to call upon the name of Yahweh” to “Then Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great” and “Yahweh said, ‘I will blot out man.’”

God hits the reset button with Noah, but things continue to head away from “calling on the name of Yahweh”. In the time of Abraham, we see God interacting as both Yahweh and as forms of El with the Patriarchs. There is not any condemnation of the Canaanites or of their religious practices. It is only after the 400+ years in Egypt that God then condemns the ways of the Canaanites. Is it possible that the Canaanites, during Abraham’s day still possessed a proper understanding of God? They did if Melchizedek is our example. By the time of the Exodus, the Canaanites had lost their understanding of God and their religion had morphed.

A final note on the name Yahweh. Frank Moore Cross stated that the name Yahweh is a causative form of the Hebrew/Semitic verb “to be”.[3] This means that Yahweh = “caused to become or to exist”. It contains implications of causing creation. Ross proposed that when Yahweh says about the Patriarchs, “by My name Yahweh, I did not make Myself known to them”, He is saying that the Patriarchs did not experience God as causing to come into being, His promise of making the Patriarchs into a nation. This does not mean that they didn’t know of or use the name, Yahweh. The Hebrew verb “to know” typically implies experiential knowledge. The best illustration of this, is its use as the verb describing sex. So, the Patriarchs experientially knew God as “God Almighty” (El Shaddai) in that He protected them, prospered them, and gave them children. But, it was their descendants in Egypt that experienced God as Yahweh in regard to His promise of making the Patriarchs into a nation.[4] Christians know of the various titles for Christ, such as Him being the Bridegroom, although the experience of Christ being the Bridegroom has yet to happen.

So, let’s start tying the loose strings together. Man originally knew God. Man decided to reject the knowledge of God (Rom. 1:21). God reveals Himself by Yahweh, El, and Elohim. During Abraham’s day, the Canaanites had a fairly accurate understanding of who God is (cf. Melchizedek, Gen. 14). Within the 400+ years that the children of Israel were in Egypt, the Canaanite religion shifted from accurate knowledge to pantheon. If you think this is a bit far-fetched, look how quickly the American understanding of the US Founding Fathers shifted from honorable, wise, and brave men to evil, racist, misogynistic men, and this within the last 10-15 years. The same is true of the American understanding of the US Constitution.

My conclusion is: Yahweh is El. The Canaanite El was a perverted form or understanding of El. Canaanite El was envisioned as more like an elderly chieftain rather than the transcendent Creator of the Universe. The same is true of the Yahweh/Ba‘al connection: Canaanite Ba‘al was a patricidal, fertility deity. Yahweh was neither patricidal nor the “impregnator” of the earth. In both cases, Yahweh’s power and actions look like El and Ba‘al, but He is existentially different. This is the battle that Elijah and the prophets after him undertook: to maintain the distinction between Israel’s Yahweh/El/Elohim, and the Canaanite copy. Ancient Israel was maintaining the true vision of God, be He called El, Elohim, or Yahweh. Yahweh/El/Elohim is different: He is the transcendent, wholly Other, Creator of the universe, who is unlike mankind, as opposed to the Canaanite gods who acted and behaved like mere mortals.

1. Hess, Richard S. (2007) Israelite Religions. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. p. 60

2. see Dever, William G. (2005) Did God Have a Wife? Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

3. Cross, Frank Moore 1973 Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 65, 66

4.Ross, Allen P. (2003) “Did the Patriarchs Know the Name of the LORD?” in Giving the Sense (ed. Howard Jr., David M. and Grisanti, Michael A.; Grand Rapids: Kregel) pp. 334-35

~ by eikonministries on March 31, 2009.