Much scholarship on anything Biblical is driven by the fact that anything that even seems to be advocating for a theory that “changes traditional interpretation” automatically gets tons of headlines and attention and therefore grant money. The fact of that matter is, many “theories” are out there but for every theory that takes one piece of evidence here or there out of proportion there are other theories that counteract it and say the opposite. The fact of the matter is we just don’t know so much about these things and part of the reason is because most scholarship behind it is being performed for an agenda (whether pro or against any claim of scripture or tradition) rather than just looking at the facts. The Catholic Church is doctrinally silent on all these matters so it’s really up to individual interpretation of the evidence… which is why everyone in this thread is giving their personal interpretation of these matters and doing a very good job of it, in my opinion.
Did the Israelites borrow the “Yahweh” of the Canaanite pantheon? Maybe the name. That’s about it. What matters is not so much whether or not that they borrowed anything but just how much of what they believed was different from all their neighbors. The fact that this one small group of people took the beliefs and ideologies of literally every culture surrounding them and didn’t just carry them but literally turn them right on their head is a fascinating reality that just can’t be ignored.
Consider what the first sentence of Genesis implies… “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and empty and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said Let there be light, and there was light…” …etc.
- Unlike all their neighbors, one God creates everything for seemingly no reason.
- Unlike all their neighbors, God did not need to defeat any other gods/creatures in the “primordial waters” in order to form man.
- Unlike all their neighbors, God orders even the sun and the stars (no astrology!).
- Unlike their neighbors, God simply “speaks” [insert everything] into being. Very simply.
…etc.
Basically they couldn’t get more opposite from everything their neighbors were doing theologically and philosophically. One has to wonder why that would be. The Israelites were not the only “shasu” (migrant workers) living in the delta region of Egypt and being exploited (it’s debated whether the “Shasu of Yhw” were indeed the Israelites), so to assume that they adopted their contrarian position merely as a response to being exploited by Egypt isn’t enough, although what we do see in the 10 Commandments and the Law itself is a repudiation of “slavery” in all its forms. In fact I’ve even read a “theory” (once again, just a theory) that Pharaoh Akenaten might’ve had his brush with “monotheism” after encountering the Israelites, or at least, perhaps had his brush with the same ideas that the Israelites did.
As many have labored to show in this thread, obviously what the Israelites did was they were profound skeptics for their age. The concept of the Abrahamic “God” was an idea that boiled everything down to its simplest form and tossed out a lot of “mythology” to do so. It’s seen primarily in its utter insistence that “God” is to be worshiped alone. Other cultures usually tolerated or allowed for the existence of other “gods”… but for the Israelites, theirs was one of exclusion. They rejected all “gods” … they rejected all human sacrifice… they rejected and rejected and rejected so much of the abominable things their neighbors were practicing, and boiled it all down to something very fundamental and reasonable… 1. There must be one “true God” that is being, from which all things that exist have their “being”… this God is “I Am” (“the God that is”)…etc. 2. This one God, who is existence, must’ve created all that exists and therefore given it it’s being… 3. why? we rejected the other Gods for God to be “jealous of” (interestingly) so this “one that is” must be something that desires all good things to exist… and therefore must be generous and giving (for having no reason to give one thing but that gave all things that exist for no other reason than its own good pleasure to do so…) …etc.
In their way of thinking what we see is the Jews incorporating some of the ideas of their surroundings but boiling them down to an extreme simplicity and trying to arrive at some “universal truth” of existence that would apply to everyone, everywhere, but then especially to them later on.
