Yahweh was an ancient Semitic deity in the southeastern ancient Levant that became the national god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel-Samaria and Judah. Although there is no clear consensus regarding the geographic origins of the deity, most modern scholars favor a southern origin hypothesis. The worship of the deity goes back to at least the early Iron Age and apparently to the late Bronze Age.
In the oldest biblical texts, 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 enemies of the Israelites. Many scholars think that the Israelites probably engaged in polytheistic practices that were common across ancient Semitic religion, because the Israelite religion was a derivative of the Canaanite religion and included a variety of deities from it, including El, Asherah, and Baal. Yahweh likely became conflated with El in later centuries, taking his place as the head of the pantheon in the Israelite religion. El's consort Asherah became associated with Yahweh, and El-linked epithets, such as (), came to be applied to him alone. Characteristics of other deities, such as Asherah and Baal, were also selectively absorbed in conceptions of Yahweh.
As Yahwism eventually developed into Judaism and Samaritanism, and transitioned from polytheism to monotheism, the existence of other deities was denied outright and Yahweh was proclaimed the creator deity and the sole deity worthy of worship.
According to a pious interpretation, Jews began to substitute other Hebrew words—primarily (, )—in place of the name Yahweh during the Second Temple period. By the time of the Jewish–Roman wars following the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the concomitant destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the original pronunciation of the name of the deity was forgotten entirely.
Additionally, Yahweh is invoked in the Imperial Aramaic-language Papyrus Amherst 63 from ancient Egypt, and also in Jewish or Jewish-influenced ancient Greek-language Greek Magical Papyri in Roman Egypt dated to the 1st to 5th centuries CE.
Name The deity's name was written in Paleo-Hebrew as ( in block script), transliterated as YHWH; modern scholarship has reached consensus to transcribe this as "Yahweh".: "The strong consensus of biblical scholarship is that the original pronunciation of the name YHWH... was Yahweh." The shortened forms Yeho-, Yahu-, Yah- and Yo- appear in personal names (e.g. Joel, Isaiah, Joshua) and in phrases such as "Hallelujah!" Over time, the sacrality of the name, as well as the Commandment against "taking the name 'in vain'", led to increasingly strict Jewish prohibitions on speaking or writing the term. Rabbinic sources suggest that, by the Second Temple period, the name of their god was officially pronounced only once a year by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement.: "...the pronunciation of the Ineffable Name was one of the climaxes of the Sacred Service: it was entrusted exclusively to the High Priest once a year on the Day of Atonement in the Holy of Holies." After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70CE, the original pronunciation of the name was forgotten entirely.
The four-letter form of the name is commonly called the Tetragrammaton.
History
Periods Philip King and Lawrence Stager place the history of Yahweh into the following periods: Late Bronze: 1550–1200BCE Iron Age I: 1200–1000BCE Iron Age II: 1000–586BCE Neo-Babylonian: 586–539BCE Persian: 539–332BCE Other academic terms often used include First Temple period, from the construction of the Temple in 957BCE to its destruction in 586BCE, exilic for the period of the Exile from 586 to 539BCE (identical with Neo-Babylonian above), post-Exilic for later periods and Second Temple period from the reconstruction of the Temple in 515BCE until its destruction in 70CE.
Late Bronze Age (1550–1200BCE) There is almost no agreement on the deity's origins.
Yahweh is not attested other than among the Israelites, and there is no consensus on its etymology, with ('I Am that I Am'), the explanation presented in Exodus 3:14, appearing to be a late theological gloss invented at a time when the original meaning had been forgotten, although some scholars dispute this. Theodor Lewis connects the name to the Amorite element (ia-wi), found in personal names in Mari texts, meaning 'brings to life''causes to exist' (e.g., yahwi-dagan = "Dagon causes to exist"), commonly denoted as the semantic equivalent of the Akkadian ; though Frank Moore Cross emphasized that the Amorite verbal form is of interest only in attempting to reconstruct the verbal root of the name "Yahweh", and that attempts to take yahwi- as a divine epithet should be "vigorously" argued against.: "There has been one key objection, by Michael Streck, who reevaluated Amorite personal names as a whole in 2000 and as part of this work published the separate conclusion (1999) that all the Ya-wi- and Ya-aḫ-wi- elements in these names must be understood to reflect the same root ḥwy, "to live"....If Streck is correct that these are all forms of the verb "to live", then the Amorite personal names must be set aside as useful to any interpretation of the name [Yahweh]." But see : "While the identification of the verbal root in the Amorite names with and without the -ḫ- remains impossible to prove with certainty, the parallels with contemporary Old Babylonian Ibašši-DN and the later second-millennium parallels from the verb kwn show the viability of a West Semitic root hwy, "to be, be evident", for at least some portion of these Amorite names." In addition, J. Philip Hyatt believes it is more likely that refers to a god creating and sustaining the life of a newborn child rather than the universe. This conception of God was more popular among ancient Near Easterners but eventually, the Israelites removed the association of to any human ancestor and combined it with other elements (e.g., ). Hillel Ben-Sasson states there is insufficient evidence for Amorites using yahwi- for gods, but he argues that it mirrors other theophoric names and that yahwi-, or more accurately yawi, derives from the root hwy in pa'al, which means "he will be".
One scholarly theory is that "Yahweh" originated in a shortened form of , 'El who creates the hosts', which Cross considered to be one of the cultic names of El. However, this phrase is nowhere attested either inside or outside the Bible, and the two gods are in any case quite dissimilar, with El being elderly and paternal and lacking Yahweh's association with the storm and battles. Even if the above issues are resolved, Yahweh is generally agreed to have a non-causative etymology because otherwise, YHWH would be translated as YHYH. It also raises the question of why the Israelites would want to shorten the epithet. One possible reason includes the co-existence of religious modernism and conservatism being the norm in all religions.
Scholar Gérard Nissim Amzallag, from the Ben-Gurion University, has posited that Yahweh was originally portrayed as a fire deity, associated with volcanic activity and metallurgy. Amzallag explains that Gods of metallurgy in the past (Bronze Age) were revered not only as the Gods of weapons but also Gods of creation.
The oldest plausible occurrence of Yahweh's name is in the Egyptian demonym , 'YHWA [in] the Land of the Shasu' (Egyptian: ) in an inscription at Soleb from the time of Amenhotep III (1390–1352BCE), the Shasu being nomads from Midian and Edom in northern Arabia. Although it is still uncertain whether a relationship exists between the toponym yhwꜣ and theonym YHWH,: "Unfortunately, albeit the interesting analogies, the learned discussions, and the broad perspective, the evidence is too scanty to allow any conclusions concerning the exact meaning of the term YHWA/YHA/YH as it appears in Ancient Egyptian records." the dominant view is that Yahweh was from the southern region associated with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman. There is considerable although not universal support for this view, but it raises the question of how Yahweh made his way to the north. An answer many scholars consider plausible is the Kenite hypothesis, which holds that traders brought Yahweh to Israel along the caravan routes between Egypt and Canaan. This ties together various points of data, such as the absence of Yahweh from Canaan, his links with Edom and Midian in the biblical stories, and the Kenite or Midianite ties of Moses, but its major weaknesses are that the majority of Israelites were firmly rooted in Palestine, while the historical role of Moses is problematic. It follows that if the Kenite hypothesis is to be maintained, then it must be assumed that the Israelites encountered Yahweh (and the Midianites/Kenites) inside Israel and through their association with the earliest political leaders of Israel. Christian Frevel argues that inscriptions allegedly suggesting Yahweh's southern origins (e.g., "YHWH of Teman") may simply denote his presence there at later times, and that Teman can refer to any southern territory, including Judah.
Alternatively, some scholars argue that YHWH worship was rooted in the indigenous culture of the Kingdom of Israel and was promoted in the Kingdom of Judah by the Omrides. Frevel suggests that Hazael's conquests in the Kingdom of Israel forced the two kingdoms to cooperate, which spread YHWH worship among Judean commoners. Previously, YHWH was viewed as the patron god of the Judean state.
Early Iron Age (1200–1000BCE)
In the Early Iron Age, the modern consensus is that there was no distinction in language or material culture between Canaanites and Israelites. Scholars accordingly define Israelite culture as a subset of Canaanite culture.
In the earliest Biblical literature, Yahweh has characteristics of a storm god typical of ancient Near Eastern myths, marching out from Edom or the Sinai desert with the heavenly host of stars and planets that make up his army to do battle with the enemies of his people Israel:
Alternatively, parts of the storm god imagery could derive from Baal.
From the perspective of the Kenite hypothesis, it has also been suggested that the Edomite deity Qōs might have been one and the same as Yahweh, rather than a separate deity, with its name a title of the latter. Aside from their common territorial origins, various common characteristics between the Yahwist cult and the Edomite cult of Qōs hint at a shared connection. Doeg the Edomite, for example, is depicted as having no problem in worshiping Yahweh and is shown to be at home in Jewish sanctuaries.