Is Yahweh an ancient storm/warrior deity?

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Historian of religion, Daniel Boyarin, writes in “Daniel 7: Intertextuality and the History of Israel’s cult”,
The ancient southern theophanies of Y’, especially at Sinai and the Sea, are (as shown by Cross) too Baal-like for us to see Baal as a later incursion (dressed up as Y’, as it were) into the divine economy of Israel. My best guess is that El was the general Canaanite high divinity while Y’ was the Baal-like divinity of a small group of southern Canaanites, the Hebrews, with El a very distant absence for these Hebrews. When the groups merged and emerged as Israel, Y’, the Israelite version of Baal, became assimilated to El as the high God and their attributes largely merged into one doubled God, with El receiving his warlike, storm-god characteristics from Y’. Thus, to restate the point, the ancient El and Y’ - a southern Hebrew equivalent in function (with the paradigm of relations between El and a young warrior-god) to the northern Baal - merged at some point in Israelite-Canaanite history and apparently quite early.
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Further, Alberto Ravinell Whitney Green, who is a scholar of the ancient near East, writes in “Coastal Canaan: A Land Bridge between the Continents”,
“In sum, at this early stage in the developing religion of Israel, the Storm-god motif is the most logical and natural vehicle through which the confederation could identify Yahweh. All of the samples of archaic poetry from the twelfth through the tenth centuries B.C.E. reflect this concept. Yahweh has assumed every functional activity, characteristic, and title of Baal. When the descriptions of Baal from extrabiblical sources are compared with those of Yahweh in the Hebrew Scriptures, it is hard to tell these deities apart. Baal is the Storm-god par excellence of the Canaanite region, equipped with the specific functions necessary for human survival. Within the same cultural and ecological Canaanite-Israelite milieu, it is reasonable that the functions and attributes of Yahweh inevitably paralleled those of Baal.”
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According to many scholars and historians, Yahweh is the Israelite version of Baal who probably originated in Midian and was transported north into Israel. This explains why the Baal cult and the Yahweh cult were very antagonistic towards each other since both deities were competing storm gods. How can we reconcile this with our faith?
 
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YHWH_Christ said:
How can we reconcile this with our faith?
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Does it need reconciliation?

From my reading of the academic literature, very few scholars fix the origin of Yahweh in Baal. It is more that they shared common attributes, largely because they emerged - most likely independently from one another - in the same approximate cultural and geographical context. Note too that the storm deity motif was hardly isolated to ancient Levant: Zeus is an archetypal storm deity.
 
I realize that most scholars do agree Baal and Yahweh began independent (although some think that Baal and Yahweh might be variations of Hadad) yet doesn’t this raise some questions about uniqueness? Isn’t our religious tradition supposed to be unique since it’s revealed? Yet historians seem to think our faith tradition fits neatly in the context of the ancient near east. If Baal and Yahweh were originally regarded as equals/rivals then how do we form a proper epistemology of each deity in a monotheistic context?
 
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YHWH_Christ said:
I realize that most scholars do agree Baal and Yahweh began independent (although some think that Baal and Yahweh might be variations of Hadad) yet doesn’t this raise some questions about uniqueness? Isn’t our religious tradition supposed to be unique since it’s revealed? Yet historians seem to think our faith tradition fits neatly in the context of the ancient near east. If Baal and Yahweh were originally regarded as equals/rivals then how do we form a proper epistemology of each deity in a monotheistic context?
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Why should it be a problem or why should one feel this needs to be reconciled? While I’m not convinced that Yahweh was an analogue for Ba’al in the same way Zeus is an analogue for Jupiter, one can hold on to the hypothesis (I do) that pre-exilic Israelite religion was henotheistic but monolatrous. That is to say, they accepted that other gods existed, but they were to worship only their national god.

There is no need to impose a criterion of “uniqueness”. One can easily accept, without doing violence to one’s Christian faith, that God’s revelation could have been gradual, working with people according to their understanding and growth. He would start with imposing monolatry while tolerating henotheism. A violation of the monolatric law would mean prophetic warnings then punishment.

Then the merging of the gods Yahweh and El took this another step in the direction that regarded Yahweh as a supreme god (and not merely a national god; El was the supreme god of the Canaanite pantheon).

Then later during the Exile, God allowed in his providence the understanding of the exiles to develop further, perhaps allowing influence by the truths already accepted by the Zoroastrians, leading to the development of what would become Second Temple Judaism, a strictly monotheistic religion.
 
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There is a lot to say on the imagery of the Old Testament in Israel’s human representation of God, and why certain themes were chosen.
 
YHWH_Christ said:
According to many scholars and historians, Yahweh is the Israelite version of Baal who probably originated in Midian and was transported north into Israel. This explains why the Baal cult and the Yahweh cult were very antagonistic towards each other since both deities were competing storm gods. How can we reconcile this with our faith?
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By recognizing that though the two share a common linguistic history (both being semitic languages) the Hebrews and Canaanites naturally shared some common terms though having vastly different contexts and meanings. So while the Canaanites worshipped a pantheon of gods, one of which being El, the Hebrews believed in a single God over all creation. Since they share the same linguistic family, they both used the word El as a proper name for a specific deity, but also as a common term for deity generally. This would not be that different than how Christians refer to God as a proper name for the Truine God acknowledged by Christianity, while using the word god to reference any general deity. Another example of this is the use of the word baal in Hebrew and Canaanite languages. Baal could refer to a specific god (Baal Hadad or Baal El) or it could refer to a title (meaning lord or master). You are also missing the fact that throughout the OT the Hebrew deity El or YHWH is differentiated from the gods of the nations surrounding them. So for example, God constantly differentiates himself from other gods worshipped by the Canaanites by saying things like, I am the god (el or Elohim) of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, or other descriptive terms.
 
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This topic merits a very long treatment, but I just have a few notes.

(1) Not to disparage the scholarship as it is a method of how we do things, but it is an attempt to speculatively reconstruct history. Speculative doesn’t have to mean just guesswork, there’s a method. But let’s also remember what it is.

(2) The Bible itself is upfront about the polytheism of the tribes of Israel, their syncretism with the Canaanites and others around them. This syncretism is seen as a major part of the theological explanation for Israel and Judah being conquered by Assyria and Babylon.
 
ok time for this the theory of

Yahweh’ is a shortened form of the phrase ˀel ḏū yahwī ṣabaˀôt , ([Phoenician] “El who creates the hosts”, meaning the [heavenly host accompanying El, the chief god of the Canaanites . has numerous weaknesses, including, among others, the dissimilar characters of the two gods El and Yahweh, and the fact that el dū yahwī ṣaba’ôt is nowhere attested either inside or outside the Bible

in terms of the strom dieity

The current scholarly consensus is that Yahweh was originally a "divine warrior from the southern region associated with [Seir] , of Edom, Paran, and Teman

The oldest plausible recorded occurrence of his name is in the phrase “land of [Shasu of yhw]”, in an Egyptian inscription from the time of Amenhotep II

In this case a plausible etymology for the name could be from the root HWY , which would yield the meaning “he blows”, appropriate to a weather divinity

if anything yhw is not a copy of baal , but more like a jupiter zeus thing, note these are not jews who are worshiping yhw with the pantheon of cananite gods , the jews dont exist yet , but the cannite group or groups that latter became isrealities
 
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because it implies that YHW is not a true god , just a god that the cananites worshiped with a pantheon and later became monothiest ie the old testament is a lie
 
I have brothers and sisters who were taught, as I was, in our faith.
In adulthood some of them departed from the practice of their faith and now have strange understandings of God and who he is and how he is and whether he is.

YaHWeH has always been known by all.
At one time “all” was Adam and Eve. Then “all” was Noah, his wife, 3 sons and their wives.

But over time, with sloth and selfishness, etc., their offspring invented and imagined variations and deviations of the understanding of YaHWeH.

The correct knowing of YaHWeH has only ever come from Himself, from the encounter with Him (via The Angel of YaHWeH).
The knowing of YaHWeH was never culturally developed; only the un-knowing of YaHWeH was culturally developed and warped and substituted with other names to seek power over those deities.

All the earth knew of YaHWeH (remember Balaam?). But all the earth is like those family members and relatives who have long ago left the Church - they have no clue of what you know, who you know, at Mass as you receive Him.
 
John_Martin said:
YaHWeH has always been known by all.
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Umm… no?

Moses had to ask God what His name was, so that he could identify Him to the Israelites in bondage in Egypt.

Others may have known that there was a God of the Semites / Hebrews / Israelites… but that doesn’t mean that He “has always been known by all.”

“All” wasn’t just “Noah, his wife, 3 sons and wives.” There were many who perished in the flood, presumably because they didn’t know God.

My take on this whole tempest is that it’s possible to reconstruct the pagan deities of the ancient cultures… but none of these (since, after all, they’re simply academic accounts) then says “and then God revealed Himself and His true nature to His people, and they began to worship Him – previous deities notwithstanding.”
 
YHWH_Christ said:
According to many scholars and historians, Yahweh is the Israelite version of Baal who probably originated in Midian and was transported north into Israel. This explains why the Baal cult and the Yahweh cult were very antagonistic towards each other since both deities were competing storm gods. How can we reconcile this with our faith?
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These sound like the people who put Our Lord at #3 on the list of most influential people in the history of Christianity: that is, people on the outside looking in who remain really really unclear on the whole concept.
 
Gorgias said:
Others may have known that there was a God of the Semites / Hebrews / Israelites… but that doesn’t mean that He “has always been known by all.”
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All these were descended from the sons of Noah, all descended from Adam. Therefore all their idolatry, plus their defective knowing of ‘I AM’, was a DE-volution of knowing ‘I AM’.

Time does not necessarily bring “improvement” of understanding; it can also bring corruption - willful defect.

Time brought a turning away, a forgetting, of ‘I AM’. That is the Progression of religion and invention of replacement deities (and our generation’s addition of atheism to the devolution of Truth).
 
John_Martin said:
Time does not necessarily bring “improvement” of understanding; it can also bring corruption - willful defect.
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This is even true of concepts such as “real estate values sometime go down.” Of course it is true of anything more abstract yet.
 
Q: Why do you spend irreplaceable time on such revisionist tripe?
Q2: Is it not strange that all of this nonsense cropped up only very recently in human history?
Q3: Do you not see the anti-Semitism in their claims?
Q4: What did “Baal” ever write about other gods…???
 
John_Martin said:
All these were descended from the sons of Noah, all descended from Adam. Therefore all their idolatry, plus their defective knowing of ‘I AM’, was a DE-volution of knowing ‘I AM’.
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That doesn’t mean that they knew Him. Their ancestors did, perhaps, but that doesn’t prove they did.
John_Martin said:
Time brought a turning away, a forgetting, of ‘I AM’.
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And therefore, that means that there were those who did not know, because their ancestors had forgotten.
 
  1. because one has to know the arguments to know how to defender the faith .
  2. arqueológical fundings say that the canantes adored YHWH along with the other gods.
  3. nothing no antisemetisim.
  4. the original claim is that the proto isrealites (cananites) chose YHWH the baal thing is an extra observation
 
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