The Origin and Development of the Hebrew God
Link: http://people.vanderbilt.edu/~jack.m.sasson/Adams_Lecture.htm
My question is where did Abram get El Elyon/Elohim who later became YHWH?
We know that Allah was the Moon god.
We know that Abram's family was polytheistic.
Under which god did Abram travel under?
Not much info about that...
The Hebrews did not invoke God only as YHWH; rather, they called on him by several names, a few so obscure that their meanings continue to resist solution. Elohim, a plural noun literally meanings "gods," actually stands for invested godhood and so normally translates as the singular "God." But we also read, among others, about El-Elyon, "The Loftiest God," El-Olam "Eternal God," Shaddai, "The Almighty," and YHWH Sebaoth, "The LORD of Hosts." These many names for the Hebrew God seemed to betray multiple inspiration and so launched the first queries about God’s nature. Researchers first sought their evidence within the Hebrew Bible itself. Already in the late eighteenth century, so even before the decipherments of records from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan, it was suggested that the two most commonly used names for God, YHWH and Elohim, betray the presence of two distinct modes of conceiving of God. From this germ, scholars developed an elaborate scheme, eventually labeled the Documentary Hypothesis, that allocated the Five books of Moses to at least four discrete circles, active during as many centuries and produced in a specific sequence, the oldest of which cites YHWH as God.
But there is more interesting stuff about YHWH:
To be perfectly honest about it, the archaeological and epigraphic evidence has muddled our knowledge of YHWH and of his origins. We have so far found no credible information about the worship of a god by the same name outside of Israel’s borders. And while we have names of people with components that sound like "YHWH," they tell us nothing about what kind of a god is at stake.
In contrast, we have over 50 extra-biblical mentions of a YHWH who is clearly the god of Israel. The earliest such mention comes from the 9th century, ironically enough, when a king of Moab praises his own god for besting YHWH. These references to the Hebrew YHWH, however, show that monotheistic faith was soft, with acceptance of additional gods among a large segment of the population. But the real shock came about two decades ago. From an obscure site in the Sinai peninsula called Kuntillet Ajrud were uncovered jar fragments invoking the blessing of "YHWH of Samaria (or: of Teman) and of his Asherah," Samaria being the capital of the Northern, and more important kingdom, after the breakup of Solomon’s empire. Inked with these inscriptions were grotesque cartoons of a (possibly) sexually aroused bull ogling a cow and her calf. Behind the bull stands an attendant and a lyre-playing musician. Do these finds prove that religiously Israel of the ninth and eighth centuries BCE was a child of its time? Could Israel have had a happy couple as deities, worshiping them as bovines? Or could the site have been a refuge for renegade worshipers? Perhaps Asherah was not a goddess but the feminine manifestation of YHWH, something like the shekhinah of medieval Judaism. Or perhaps she was just an emblem for God. These differing interpretations are all current in biblical scholarship.
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