Was Yahweh in a Pantheon?

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[btark]

This is why I like you. You actually care about what words mean! That's important for understanding the scriptures and not just blindly following someone's dogma or doctrines!

[samuelflores]

Without their Lies their Narrative Dies! Thanks brother for teaching these folks Truth! God bless you brother and your ministry!

[s.garabet]

That's an old one and sucked me into a crisis of faith 13 years ago, so thanks for addressing it.

[Christian_Maoist.]

I wish more Christian OT scholars talked about this. It seems other than Richard Hess and Mike Heiser, no one else wants to touch this

[arspsychologia]

When people were misunderstanding God in early stages of Christianization, they would often try to blend Him in with their other objects of worship. Ancient peoples also tried to add God into their ritual magics and things, which there is a ton of evidence behind. So yes God may have been in a pantheon but not because He was supposed to be in one.

[pseudonym]

Well, the name Yahweh means "I am" or “He Brings into Existence Whatever Exists”, so that implies that He is the supreme being above the others.

[nuanceatnoon]

First problem with the many arguments of spiritualists, gnostics, and “atheists” is that many of them are anti-religionists, or outright anti-theists.

Doesn’t matter the religion, if you believe that there is a “God” you may as well believe in the tooth fairy, because you can’t put God under a microscope.

It’s hard to make someone who actually hates “organized religion” and believes “it’s all fairy tales”, see any congruence in any of the historical theological narratives.

I.e. tell them the Bible was written by the disciples of Christ and you get “oh yeah Christianity is a death cult”.

You cannot convince people that do NOT want to be convinced. That’s a heart issue, not a fact issue.

[MichaelEllisYT]

She's mixing up Kal-el being the son of Jor-el.

[ApolloV]

The name Yahweh was known to the ancient Egyptians in the early 14th century BC. The mention on one of their temples built around that time the “Shasu of YHWH”

[fdsajfldaskjf]

I mean in some sense the Divine Council could be seen as “lesser gods” below Yahweh. This is why Yahweh is the King of kings though. The Divine Council is beneath Him and His authority. As are all things. Not to mention it’s believed many of them fell along with Lucifer.

[John-...]

Why do I feel like this isn't her own idea, and she just came fresh from reading a book with that hypothesis straight to making this video.

[guymonify]

Thank you for presenting receipts with your answers. A lot of people dont do that.

[nazareneoftheway]

YHWH was a southern semitic origin like Moab and Edoms future territory via Sinai last I checked and wasn't native to that part of the levant originally (someone please correct if I'm getting any data wrong).

So YHWH was never a native Canaanite entity in the sense of his name, this may be why the Israelites bringing the identification name of YHWH into those regions could confidently syncretize El Shaddai/El ELYON/proper name epithet-El was YHWH, or as elohist and yahwist text seem to paint a picture of, YHWH being the active facet of El Elyon within the material realm that interacts with man, in symbolic terms "YHWH is the Right hand of El."

We see similar syncretism and composite echoes theologically I think with terms and root words that are also tied to deity names general or specific like "Sedeq(another possible epithet for El ELYON, as a conceptual word righteousness used to indicate Gods "strong arm")/Bah'al(the husband-lord version not tyrant-lord variety" which we can see was common to do in the near east, however the Israelites and Hebrews in general were unique in how they used syncretism and composite form literary imagery from the Egyptians or others.

The body of God is seen very much in the spiritual realm like a conceptual version of the body of a man, which probably ties into the whole "we are made in his image" thing.

Either way these pieces of info sit objectively (with or without my subjective guesses as to their reasoning), it is clear YHWH was not native to that part and bringing him over from another portion was more than likely, and as far as I know there's no info of him being in a earlier on pantheon or belief before the period mixture of Moabite (Shemitic) and exilic israelite priesthood and the cultural story of Mt Sinai taking place, he was a deity or portion of a deity on a mountaintop and like any deity and or intercessor divine or physical, he was sought to either directly do something or to discuss with an inward (within his own self) and/or possible outward (angels, bene elohim etc) council as to what he would do and say.

[tacoricetito]

I've learned so much from you keep doing what you're doing I love you brother.

[markwilburn]

Dr. Stripling discovered a lead curse tablet at Mt. Ebal that coincides with Deuteronomy 11:39 which uses both El and YHWH in the inscription as the same entity.

[Judahkings]

So are you saying that El was not a single and individual supreme God of the pantheon. He didn't have 70 children. You are a joke brother seriously.

[nathanieltovar]

He killed all the other deities. That’s why Judaism was a new religion

[KK-bviv]

Just a correction, ancient Ugarit texts actually do mention Yahweh in the Canaanite pantheon as a god of metallurgy and as the son of El.

[PlugInRides]

Mark S. Smith, a biblical scholar, seems to disagree in his 2002 book, 'The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel". Page 7: "Rather, Israelite religion apparently included worship of Yahweh, El, Asherah and Baal" (sounds like Yahweh was part of a pantheon.)

The verse "Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?" (Exodus 15:11) is even more explicit about other gods existing alongside Yahweh.

There is also quite a bit of evidence that while the royalty and high priests of Israel subscribed to the "One True God" dogma, the average Israelite held on to the older, polytheistic pantheon.

"After the high priest, Hilkiah, re-discovered the Book of the Law in the Temple in Jerusalem in the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign (in 624BC), King Josiah called the elders of Judah together to renew their covenant with the LORD. All the articles associated with Baal and Asherah worship were removed from the Temple and burned in the Kidron Valley outside the city."

Asherah was often portrayed as Yahweh's wife.
The REAL Israelite Religion: Interview with Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou

[Joleyn-Joy]

IIRC the scholarly consensus is that El and Yahweh were different deities which were slowly syncretized.