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How interesting, I was reading about this last night. In fact, El was a god worshipped by early Israelites, hence the -el in Israel. Yahweh was a god and worsh
by jwdunne 6y ago
How interesting, I was reading about this last night.
In fact, El was a god worshipped by early Israelites, hence the -el in Israel. Yahweh was a god and worshipped at the time. But over time, Yahweh became the single worshipped god, who became “the god”. El became a generic name for a deity much like our god vs God. In fact, other gods were acknowledged to exist for a time, until eventually they too were denied to exist.
I too am interested in the same question. More generally, how a polytheist belief system transforms into a monotheistic one.
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoGod is plural. The ‘Elohim’ as in Genesis. It literally translates to ‘sons of El’ El was the high god of the Canaanites and Hebrews most certainly were from Canaan. El was ‘god of gods and hosts of hosts’ Yahwehs were the 70 sons of El. There were 70 Yahwehs. Each Yahweh had dominion over a holy mountain they possessed and they each led their own tribes. Their mother was the consort of El aka Asherah. One of the Yahwehs ...who had dominion over one of the Canaanite tribes made the covenant and smashed the idols and prohibited idol worship and worship of all other Yahwehs. And now you have the old testement of the Hebrews. It was around the first Iron Age that the Hebrews slowly started moving away from the Babylonian polytheistic fold. The original Hebrew faith was incredibly syncretic with Akkadian and Egyptian texts and myths. And then it evolved by Iron Age of Babylonian captivity in 5th and 6th BCE.