Wasn't Yaweh just one of the many Sons of El?

Question

Wasn't Yaweh just one of the many Sons of El?

Answer 1

No. In the Bible, Yahweh is *repeatedly* described **as** "El". There is no doubt, though, that neighboring cultures *also* worshiped Yahweh and gave him a relationship to the other deities in their pantheons such as you describe.



However, you assume that Yahweh *is* a son of the Ugaritic El. Instead, Yahweh is the only true God and the people of Ugarit included him in their pantheon as they did with many of the supposed deities of neighboring cultures.





You wrote:

In fact, these Psalms were most likely originally Ugaritic or

Canaanite hymns to El which were simply adopted by Israel, much like the

American National Anthem was set to a beer hall tune by Francis Scott Key.



a) the analogy is not at all apt

b) what evidence do you have supporting the claim that this is "most likely"? It seems to me "most likely" that this is your unsubstantiated and unsupportable opinion.





You wrote:

Other deities worshipped at Ugarit were El Shaddai, El Elyon, and El Berith. All

of these names are applied to Yahweh by the writers of the Old Testament. What

this means is that the Hebrew theologians adopted the titles of the Canaanite

gods and attributed them to Yahweh in an effort to eliminate them.



Clearly, that is NOT "what this means". Rather, that is what you, personally, have chosen to believe is true without employing logical deduction.





You wrote:

What is of great interest here is

that Yam is the Hebrew word for sea and Mot is the Hebrew word for death! Is

this because the Hebrews also adopted these Canaanite ideas as well? Most likely

they did.



You imply (very strongly) something without evidence. The Hebrew language is closely related to Canaanite languages. Is it your contention that the Canaanite and Hebrew words for "death" and "sea" were derived from the names of the Canaanite deities of those things? Isn't it far more likely that the names of the deities were derived from the proto-Canaanite words for those things - just as the Hebrew words for those things were derived from the proto-Canaanite words for those things?

Answer 2

(continued from BR)





You wrote:

Thus, for many in ancient Israel, Yahweh,

like Baal, had a consort.



Though probably true, this conclusion does not follow logically from the premises. More importantly: the Bible repeatedly describes episodes in which kings or religious leaders attempted to stamp out worship of Asherah, and only in one or two instances did kings allow altars to other deities (such as Asherah) to be set up in the temple (the singular temple) of Jerusalem. The Bible makes it clear that there were Jewish people who worshiped Asherah during the kingdom period, and also it makes clear that normally this was not approved by the Levitical priesthood or the kings of Judah, and at various times it was not even tolerated. In other words: throughout nearly all of the history of Judaism, Asherah worship was not approved and was not included in the official worship of Yahweh. The worship of Asherah as the consort of Yahweh by the Jewish people was carried out by the non-priestly class (probably commoners) and done in violation of the existing Jewish religious principle forbidding such worship.





You wrote:

Although condemned by the prophets, this aspect of the

popular religion of Israel was difficult to overcome and indeed among many was

never overcome.



Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that this *has* been overcome.





Jim, http://www.bible-reviews.com/

Answer 3

That was great, you are right on the mark.



There's lots of examples, and of course, someone reading the very first books can see it clearly.



Genesis 1:26 And God said, let us make man in our image.



Genesis 3:22 And the Lord God said, Behold, then man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.



Us... our...



And what about the 10 commandments? Thou shalt have no other gods before me?



But wait a minute... if god is one, how can you have other gods? The irony is hilarious, to see this fact cross every christian's face every day that christianity in its foundations was as polytheist as any other of that time, like egyptian, greek or roman.

Answer 4

Yahweh is El. Specifically El Elyon--God Most High. Think about it: His name means I Am that I Am. He is all there is. He is the first and last, the beginning and the end. He was and is and is to come. All that is summed up in His name. There are no gods before Him and no gods after Him. He Is. He Is God Most High. He Is God Almighty (El Shaddai). Any splitting and rearranging of His names and titles for application to lesser deities by the Canaanites is totally illogical. After all, how can you have one god who is almighty and another god who is most high? And how can a god who is infinite be a chronologically-born son of another god?



Asherah is a goddess of slavery. Molech is a god of infanticide. Ba'al is the offspring of both, and embodies both of these evils. That's why the Canaanite gods must be done away with.



Edit: the name El originates from a Chaldean/Phoenician word meaning "power." God is all-powerful by definition. Therefore He is El. The Canaanites wrongfully divided power between false deities in order to cut God down to something they could understand and manage. But even though God's names are wrongfully assigned to wood and stone, that does not change His nature. Yahweh, El Shaddai, and El Elyon are identical in nature, and as being separate deities would cause their very names to conflict, they must be the same God. Abraham recognized this, and allowed Melchizedek to bless him in the name of El Elyon.



Human language cannot even begin to summarize all that God is. In fact, the name He gave us to identify Himself, YHWH, does not even begin to scratch the surface of His essence. If the human mind is too small to comprehend God, then how is it supposed to come up with a name for God that defines His entirety?

Answer 5

It is wrong to claim that when Jews affirmed faith at Sinai they were worshipping one of the deities of the Ugaritic pantheon in praying to Elohim. Elohim, when referring to God means literally "Supreme Deity" or "Greatest Deity". This is a LONG q requiring a LONG answer, see this past A of mine for some of it https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20101027003536AAw8kkM I have sometimes seen claims that Judaism is nothing original or that it is only “Egyptian”, “Sumerian”, “Babylonian”, “Zoroastrian”, etc, and so the Jews aren’t really monotheistic. Texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the beliefs of Akhenaton, or references to other works are then quoted to refer to the polytheistic beliefs of people prior to the existence of the covenant of Israel. Every one of those peoples claimed certainly influenced the Jewish people in some manner. This does not mean that the monotheism of Judaism or its eternal covenant of law with God is not unique to the Jewish people. The History of the Jewish people begins in Ur, which is now in southern Iraq. The monotheism of Abraham arose in a world where virtually everyone was polytheist. The religious practices of the ancient Levant revealed an obsession with preparation for death, and appeasement of their deities with human sacrifice. The language and terms of the early Hebrews who began as a family, then tribe, then grew to an eternal covenant nation people surrounded by polytheism on every side, reveal a people who replaced their ancestors former beliefs/concepts with those of the covenant between God and Yisrael. It isn’t a surprise that the terms and titles used to refer to God in Torah were those that would be understood by the people in that part of the world, the covenant of Abraham, Isaac and Yakov redefined them and claimed there was only one God and the others were impotent and false. Judaism is a world and life-affirming religion to its very core. A contextual reading of the Exodus story alone in contrast to the Egyptian Book of the Dead shows exactly how one religion will turn similar concepts topsy turvy from another. The Book of the Dead revealed that the many Egyptian deities focused on death and an afterlife. The Torah reads as a replacement theology to the Book of the Dead, ironically in much the same way that the New Testament reads as replacement theology to the Tanakh, with its return to focus more on the afterlife than this life or lives to follow our own. The Torah led the Hebrews from a system of worship of more than one deity who was represented on earth in the forms of mangods/Pharaohs/savior kings and whose religions focused more on the afterlife than this life, to a covenant of faith that is monotheistic in nature. This monotheism of Torah directly forbids the worship of any man as god and primarily focuses on life rather than death. Torah = The Book of Life, Egyptian man/god's and polytheistic idolatry = The Book of the Dead. Our English word God has a very similar path to meaning of deity. The ancient Visgoth's, a Germanic people worshipped Gott as their *primary* deity. Gott became a synonym for deity, and then became the word God for English speakers. In German, the word Gott still means God. When a German today prays to Gott or an English speaking person prays to God we are no more praying to that Visgoth deity than the ancient Hebrews of the covenant of Israel were praying to the Sumerian deity or to any pantheon of Canaanite deities. From the time of Abraham, the defining nature of the covenant of Israel is dedication to ONE God exclusively.EDIT The NT St. Peter is as irrelevant to Torah as the Egyptian texts, no matter what you want to call them in English( I've read 2 different translations )

Answer 6

Yahweh yes. God no. God was Yahwehs son so he is the Grandson of El.

Answer 7

Your question is too long. I will answer the first part. Yahweh and El mean the same. Both refer to God Almighty. There was no one before Him.

Answer 8

In large text? I think so

Answer 9

Nice question.

Answer 10

Atarah wrote: “Yahweh is El.”



Or, Yahweh became EL, due to a process of convergence and differentiation—as claimed by Mark S. Smith (biblical scholar).



The bible presents a finalized, narrow version of events written by the followers of YHWH. It’s rather pointless—with all due respect—in reminding everyone that the EL and Yahweh are viewed as the same by religion today, or by the finalized theological outlook the Israelites established.

What’s not clear, however, is how this developed historically, and why there are certain passages in the bible placing Yahweh as a subordinate to EL—especially when it’s done in a council setting reminiscent of EL within the old pantheon of Canaan.

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Excerpt from “Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan” by John Day (Fellow and Tutor in Theology; Professor of Old Testament Studies; Dean of Degrees - Oxford University):



"It is in connection with the Canaanite god El and his pantheon of gods, known as the ‘sons of El’, that a direct relationship with the Old Testament is to be found. That this is certain can be established from the fact that both were seventy in number. At Ugarit we read in the Baal myth of ‘the seventy sons of Asherah (Athirat)’ (sb’m. bn. ‘atrt, KTU 1.4. VI.46). Since Asherah was El’s consort, this therefore implies that El’s sons were seventy in number. Now Deut. 32.8, which is clearly dependent on this concept, declares, ‘When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of men, he fixed the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God’. The reading ‘sons of God’ (bene ‘elohim) has the support of the Qumran fragment, 4QDeut, the LXX, Symmachus, Old Latin and the Syro-Hexaplaric manuscript, Camb. Or. 929. This is clearly the original reading, to be preferred to the MT’s ‘sons of Israel’ (bene yisra’el), which must have arisen as a deliberate alteration on the part of a scribe who did not approve of the polytheistic overtones of the phrase ‘sons of God’."



…



“Finally, it is interesting to note that the Old Testament never refers to the heavenly court as ‘the sons of Yahweh’. As we have seen above, apart from one instance of bene ‘elyon, we always find the ‘sons of God’, with words for God containing the letter s ‘l (bene ha ‘elohim, bene ‘elohim, bene ‘elim). This finds a ready explanation in their origin in the sons of the Canaanite god El.”



“Eventually, of course, the name El simply became a general word for ‘God’ in the Old Testament, and so it is found many times.”