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In fact, they were proper names of different deities. Unlike El, Yahweh was envisioned as a storm god in the early literature, one among many Canaanite gods and
by Maursault 5y ago
In fact, they were proper names of different deities. Unlike El, Yahweh was envisioned as a storm god in the early literature, one among many Canaanite gods and goddesses including El, Asherah and Baal. Eventually, Yahweh and El were conflated, and became chief among gods. But Yahweh/El was not the only god worshiped, not until Elijah rose to prominence. For a very long time, Yahweh/El was not the only God, just the only one that had any sympathy for the Israelites.
- ars 5y agoYah, I read the same Wikipedia article, but if you dig into the details the actual evidence for this is so flimsy as to be almost non-existent. There's not a lot of independent records from back then, so archeologists try to create stories from whatever they have, starting from the assumption that the religious text is wrong, and then creating a narrative from there. If you don't use "religious text inaccurate" as your initial assumption then there's basically no evidence for this theory. It doesn't help that they conflate Canaanites and Israelites so what one does is attributed to the other. However if you assume the Bible is correct and they are different people, with the Israelites railing against the practices of the Canaanites then the entire pantheism argument evaporates.
- phonypc 5y agoWiki seems to mostly cite books by a Mark S. Smith on this topic, who seems to be a professor of Biblical Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. I'm not sure you could characterize him as an archaeologist inventing a narrative from the starting position of "Bible wrong".