I've been reading that YHWH was originally a storm god from Midian and that his name comes from the south semitic verb "HWY" meaning "he blows" indicating that he was a warrior storm god like Baal. The later etymology given in the Pentateuch is a later folk etymology derived from the west semitic interpretation of this root but not the original meaning of the name.
Because YHWH was a storm god like Baal there were some, like Elijah, who saw his cult as incompatible with Baal and this is the start of the monotheism in Israel which was originally monolatry (worship of one god without denying the existence of others) and it wasn't until the end of the babylonian exile that the YHWH cult became monotheistic. There were other gods YHWH was seen as compatible with though, such as the Ugaritic El, who he was combined with from a very early period after his cult entered into Canaan from Midian and Edom. Basically today Abrahamic religions worship YHWH (originally a storm god) but now combined with elements of the Canaanite god El.
What is to be made of this? Was YHWH really just another storm god at first?
Nothing. He was always the sole God. If people didn't understand that it didn't change the truth. If anything the reverse is true when the apostate Hebrews tried to fit Him into a pantheon of other gods, even going as far as to blasphemlusly give Him a wife.
YHWH is more etymologically related to "ehyeh" which is "Is" in ancient Hebrew, and the answer which was given to Moses from the burning bush (ehyeh asher ehyeh). Also, the Egyptians in records there are references made to a land of the "people of yahu" which was followed by a determinative symbol for a divinity.
Daniel Mitchell
But scholars say this is a later folk etymology of the Pentateuch and that the name originally meant "he blows" from the south semitic root "hwy" indicating he was a storm god. Also if you read some of the earliest literature in the Hebrew Bible such as Judges 5 and Psalm 68 as well as Psalm 29 he is clearly depicted as a storm god similar to Baal.
Ryan Collins
Most scholars are obstinate contrarians who insist on believing the opposite of what Scripture says purely for the sake of doing so. The etymology of "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh" makes more since than "Hooey", and it is more reasonable to assume that the Canaanite and Midianite pagans adopted their mythology from the truth.
Brody Myers
>(((scholars)))
You could just as easily make the argument He is an earth god or a sea god, too, since there are countless references to His manipulation of these, too. That would be pointless, however, since He is the One God.
And that conclusion is based on the presupposition that the bible is false and God is a lie Any evidence? Or maybe He is the everything God and storms are in the category of everything. The best way to tell the etymology of the word is to examine the attributive emphasis in the Old Testament. If YHWH is emphasized to be anything that distinguishes Him from other gods, it is that He, and He alone, has always existed, or to put it more Hebraicly, that He is "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh".
Nolan Long
Can you guys just give me real arguments instead of genetic fallacies… please I'd appreciate it here.
Andrew Johnson
Seriously, what do you want us to say? How can you accuse us of genetic fallacy when you then turn up with "scholars say …" authority fallacy?
Liam Lee
That's not what I'm using to argue though, that's exactly why I actually presented their arguments so that maybe someone here who's knowledgeable enough in this field could examine these arguments and present evidence that points to something else.
Brandon Turner
It's people like you though who make my faith feel more challenged. So thanks.
Julian Roberts
"Scholars" is a bad argument to use since so much of modern scholarship is deliberatley used to undermine the sacrality of the Bible, and also brushes past what is directly presented in the Bible to come up with stretches based on pure supposition (like HWY you mentioned, when YHWH is literally in the Hebrew text). I remember reading an article, for example, a short while back, in which some archaeological dig revealed evidence of continued habitation of Israel by Canaanites long after they were supposedly expunged by the Hebrews, which "raised questions" about the veracity of the Scriptural account, despie the fact that the Bible literally says the Hebrews deliberately failed to destroy them all as commanded by God.
As for God being a storm god, I already mentioned this in my first post, since apostate Hebrews tried to diminish Him by making Him just one god amongst others (or at least, the most important God out of many others) to better reflect their neighbouring gods. This again is all contained in the Bible, when it talks about how the Hebrews started walking after the customs of pagans by bringing in other gods like Astarte and Baal and Moloch and commiting abominable sacrifices to them.
What is your faith? Genuinely, are you a Christian?
Please accept our apologies for the tone, but "scholars" gets our backs up a bit here.
John Butler
And that conclusion is based on the presupposition that the bible is false and God is a lie And there you go. Read the replies next time.
Carson Rodriguez
Those scholars are wrong. The tetragrammaton comes from "I am", God is the unmoved mover. He was not created, he simply exists and that is what his name means.
Exactly. Secular scholarship is worthless to a Christian because they start with the presumption that the Bible is simply myth. For example they'll date Mark to after 70AD. Why? Because Jesus predicts the temple being destroyed and they say it's impossible for it to be a prediction so they say it must have been written after that.
But here is the thing, it makes way more sense for Mark to have been written around 50-60AD. Think about it. All modern scholars say Luke and Matthew draw parts of their narrative from Mark. If Mark was a source for Luke then Mark had to be written before Luke. But Luke wrote Acts at the same time and Acts doesn't mention Pauls martyrdom in 68AD, meaning it had to be written prior to that. So if Luke was written before 68AD that means Mark had to be written before that too.
But no, secular scholars won't accept that because "muh prophecy can't be real!" and so they stubbornly date it later, which makes people think the gospels were written further from the events of Jesus ministry than they actually were. Do not listen to secular scholars, they're simply ideologues making poor guesstimates based on incorrect presumptions
Noah Cox
It's not that much of a stretch when you consider the available evidence that there are numerous passages in the Hebrew Bible pointing to the fact that YHWH is not native to Israel but was imported from the south Levant and Arabia, for example:
The evidence heavily suggests YHWH is from the south Levant and Arabia, probably originating specifically in Midian but Edom and Moab have also been suggested with Midian being the most likely candidate. It's then perfectly fits the data that YHWH comes from the south semitic verb "hwy" meaning "to blow" combined with the prefix "y" to indicate a name meaning "he blows". Actually a verbal name was very common in Arabian deities, for example the god "Ya'uq" meaning "he protects".
There's even more data but it's far too much to list here.
Yes that's why I came here, to see if anyone has sources or information to the contrary that I might examine.
Eli Perez
I don't think that's compatible with Exodus 3. It's also worth noting that people also say Christianity was a gnostic sect, when the whole NT epistles are basically Paul BTFOing gnostics on one side and judaizers on the other.
Zachary Phillips
Almost everything you've listed there is circumstantial and relies on a bunch of secular presuppositions. "God makes rain and wind and therefore is based on a storm god from another pantheon" is very tenuous reasoning.
This is outright false and I don't know why you keep proposing it when it's been pointed out several times that YHWH comes from "I am that I am"
Yes very believable. "I'm a christian guys, I'm just 'curious' over these debunked atheist talking points equating the Christian God of the Bible with a canaanite storm god, trust me"
Wow the fact that you would even suggest I'm not a Christian tells that you certainly aren't right with God. Reported for breaking rules 2.
Jaxon Ward
Ok so it's pretty obvious to me at this point that you're just a concern trolling atheist, but I'll shoot down your "points" before I hide the thread anyway We could conclude that either A. The bible narrative is true, or B. The Old Testament authors were trying to subliminally signal us that everything they were writing was lies they stole from levantine gentiles So? Almost as if scripture presents one God who wears many names Or like the God of the bible Proofs? No thanks, next time cite a primary source "Two texts" is not a source Maybe they were the ones copying
Luis Powell
Also if you actually read the arguments I posted you would know that the arguments are explicitly against YHWH being Canaanite in origin.
Hudson Ward
God isn't native to Israel. He's native to nowhere. That's something other nations couldn't grasp at all.
Since the Hebrews themselves came from the south, this isn't surprising at all. In fact even following the (((scholarly))) view, this still holds up, since even they view the Kenite/Midianite "YHWH" as being carried north by these tribes.
I don't see why this is relevant.
I'm sorry I don't know what point you are making here.
Smith doesn't say this at all. He says the imagery here is similar but not the same, and even goes on to say that this is reflective of a wider semitic context on how "warrior gods" were portrayed.
This is the one I mentioned where it says He had a wife which is clearly wrong, and is a pagan(ised) interpretation of God.
It comes form "ehyeh" (be/is/am) - He that Is. This is kind of like arguing that the English word "God" comes from the same root as "Good", (because God is clearly good), when in actual fact it comes from a completely different origin altogether.
To be honest none of this really comes close to the fact that the Hebrews clearly didn't grasp who He was. If they did they wouldn't have kept falling away from Him or reducing Him to the level of ither deities.
Grayson Ramirez
Just in case the OP still believes that YHWH came from the second Tetragrammaton from another century, here is a video detailing why that is wrong.
Caleb Collins
Also the same OP made another thread about EL and YHWH, i'm not accusing the OP of anything but it was debunked.
What are you talking about? It's literally oral tradition…
Well that shows he was not considered a part of the Ugaritic pantheon. A whole bunch of gods show up in there - El, Asherah, Dagan, Yam, Baal, Anat, etc. Not one trace of YHWH though. He's clearly not a part of this pantheon. He's in opposition to much of it.
Sure. The Biblical writers seem to identify El with YHWH.
Yeah…?
I posted a resource.
Moving the goal post.
Moving the goal post. This is archaeology too.
Maybe. But the data suggests the other way around. And it's not "copying" it's simply transmission of religion and oral traditions. It's a continuation.
Justin Watson
That's not me, but I saw this same thread not too long ago which is why I started reading up again.
Carson Stewart
From Wikipedia
>The oldest plausible recorded occurrence of Yahweh is as a place-name, "land of Shasu of yhw", in an Egyptian inscription from the time of Amenhotep III (1402–1363 BCE),[19][20] the Shasu being nomads from Midian and Edom in northern Arabia.[21] 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.[22][23][23] There is considerable but not universal support for this view,[24] but it raises the question of how he made his way to the north.[25] The widely accepted Kenite hypothesis holds that traders brought Yahweh to Israel along the caravan routes between Egypt and Canaan.[26] The strength of the Kenite hypothesis is that it 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.[25] However, while it is entirely plausible that the Kenites and others may have introduced Yahweh to Israel, it is unlikely that they did so outside the borders of Israel or under the aegis of Moses, as the Exodus story has it.[27][28]
It looks like what OP is talking about is a popular hypothesis among scholars with "considerable" but not "universal" support.
Brayden Rivera
Just because the words sound the same, doesn't mean they have the same origin. And the Hebrews already had a language before Mosaic law. I don't get why that implies anything.
Jackson Russell
Dr. Aaron J. Shekelberg says that you fap to shota every night. If you question this source or ask for a better one, you are moving the goal post.
Jackson Perez
Don't post revealing Anime pictures here, where they have cleavage in their collar bones.
Lincoln Cooper
I don't understand why the tetragammaton deriving from a word meaning "He blows" would make God a storm deity. The bible repeatedly describes the Lord's breath as a life giving action.
Jacob Morgan
Hey, stop poking holes in a strenuous connection made biblical scholars who, apparently, have never read the Bible.
