
Yahweh *''Yahwe'', was the
national god of ancient
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
and
Judah. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...
, and likely to the Late
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing
Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a langu ...
if not somewhat earlier, and in the oldest
biblical literature he possesses attributes typically ascribed to
weather and
war deities, fructifying the land and leading the
heavenly army against Israel's enemies. The early
Israelites
The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East
The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern I ...
were polytheistic and worshipped Yahweh alongside a variety of
Canaanite gods and goddesses, including
El,
Asherah and
Baal. In later centuries, El and Yahweh became conflated and El-linked epithets such as
El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone, and other gods and goddesses such as Baal and Asherah were absorbed into
Yahwist religion.
Towards the end of the
Babylonian captivity, the very existence of foreign gods was denied, and Yahweh was proclaimed as the
creator of the cosmos and the
one true God of all the world, giving birth to
Judaism
Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in t ...
, which has 14–15 million adherents today. During the
Second Temple period, speaking the name of Yahweh in public became regarded as
taboo
A taboo or tabu is a social group
In the social sciences, a social group can be defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups c ...
, and
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation
A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture an ...
instead began to substitute other words, primarily ''adonai'' (, "my Lord"). In Roman times, following the
Siege of Jerusalem and destruction of its Temple, in , the original pronunciation of the god's name was forgotten entirely.
Yahweh is also invoked in ''Papyrus Amherst 63'', and in Jewish or Jewish-influenced Greco-Egyptian magical texts from the 1st to 5th century CE.
Name
The god's name was written in
paleo-Hebrew as ''𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄'' ( in
block script),
transliterated as
YHWH; modern scholarship has reached consensus to
transcribe this as Yahweh. The shortened forms "Yeho-" and "Yo-" appear in
personal names and in phrases such as "
Hallelujah!" The sacrality of the name, as well as the
Commandment against "
taking the name 'in vain'", led to increasingly strict prohibitions on speaking or pronouncing the term in writing. Rabbinic sources suggest that, by the
Second Temple period, the name of God was pronounced only once a year, by the high priest, on the
Day of Atonement.
History
Periods
Philip King and
Lawrence Stager place the history of Yahweh into the following periods:
* Late Bronze: 1550–1200 BCE
*
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...
I: 1200–1000 BCE
* Iron Age II: 1000–586 BCE
* Neo-Babylonian: 586–539 BCE
* Persian: 539–332 BCE
Other academic terms often used include First Temple period, from the construction of the
Temple in 957 BCE to its destruction in 586 BCE, exilic for the period of the Exile from 586–539 BCE (identical with Neo-Babylonian above), post-Exilic for later periods and
Second Temple period from the reconstruction of the Temple in 515 BCE until its destruction in 70 CE.
Late Bronze Age origins (1550–1200 BCE)

In the earliest Biblical literature Yahweh is a storm-god typical of ancient Near Eastern myths, marching out from a region to the south or south-east of Israel with the heavenly host of stars and planets that make up his army to do battle with the enemies of his people Israel:
There is almost no agreement on his origins. His name is not attested other than among the Israelites and seems not to have any plausible etymology, ''ehyeh ašer ehyeh'' ("
I Am that I Am"), the explanation presented in
Exodus , appearing to be a late theological gloss invented at a time when the original meaning had been forgotten. One scholarly theory is that he originated in a shortened form of ''ˀel ḏū yahwī ṣabaˀôt'', "El who creates the hosts", but this phrase is nowhere attested either inside or outside the Bible, and the two gods are in any case quite dissimilar, with El being elderly and paternal and lacking Yahweh's association with the storm and battles.
The oldest plausible occurrence of his name is in the phrase "
Shasu of Yhw" (
Egyptian: ''yhwꜣw'') in an Egyptian inscription from the time of
Amenhotep III (1402–1363 BCE), the Shasu being nomads from
Midian and
Edom
Edom (; Edomite: ; he, אֱדוֹם , lit.: "red"; Akkadian: , ; Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and eas ...
in northern Arabia. The current consensus is therefore that Yahweh was a "divine warrior from the southern region associated with
Seir,
Edom
Edom (; Edomite: ; he, אֱדוֹם , lit.: "red"; Akkadian: , ; Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and eas ...
,
Paran and
Teman". There is considerable although not universal support for this view, but it raises the question of how Yahweh made his way to the north. An answer many scholars consider plausible is the
Kenite hypothesis, which holds that traders brought Yahweh to Israel along the caravan routes between
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...
and
Canaan. This ties together various points of data, such as the absence of Yahweh from Canaan, his links with
Edom
Edom (; Edomite: ; he, אֱדוֹם , lit.: "red"; Akkadian: , ; Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and eas ...
and
Midian in the biblical stories, and the
Kenite or Midianite ties of
Moses, but its major weaknesses are that the majority of Israelites were firmly rooted in Palestine, while the historical role of Moses is highly problematic. It follows that if the Kenite hypothesis is to be maintained then it must be assumed that the Israelites encountered Yahweh (and the Midianites/Kenites) inside Israel and through their association with the earliest political leaders of Israel.
Iron Age I (1200–1000 BCE)

Iron Age I corresponds approximately to the Judges period of the Bible. During this period, Israel was a confederation of tribes, each of which was (by then) a territorial entity with boundaries and rights. Although the Biblical account draws a clear distinction between Israelites and Canaanites in this period, and this was followed in early scholarship, the modern consensus is that there was no distinction in language or material culture between these groups and scholars accordingly define Israelite culture as a subset of Canaanite culture.
Yahweh was originally described as one of the sons of
El in , but this was removed by a later emendation to the text.
With the notable exception of Yahweh himself, the deities worshipped by Israel were also Canaanite. These included
El, the ruler of the pantheon,
Asherah, his consort, and
Baal.
In the earliest Biblical literature Yahweh has characteristics of a storm-god typical of ancient Near Eastern myths, marching out from a region to the south or south-east of Israel with the heavenly host of stars and planets that make up his army to do battle with the enemies of his people Israel:
Iron Age II (1000–586 BCE)

Iron II saw the emergence of nation-states in the
Southern Levant including Israel, Judah,
Philistia,
Moab,
Ammon,
Edom
Edom (; Edomite: ; he, אֱדוֹם , lit.: "red"; Akkadian: , ; Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and eas ...
and
Phoenicia. Each kingdom had its own national god:
Chemosh was the god of the Moabites,
Milcom the god of the Ammonites,
Qaus the god of the Edomites, and Yahweh the god of Israel. In each kingdom the king was also the head of the national religion and thus the
viceroy
A viceroy () is an official who reigns over a polity in the name of and as the representative of the monarch of the territory. The term derives from the Latin prefix ''vice-'', meaning "in the place of" and the French word ''roy'', meaning " ...
on Earth of the national god.
Yahweh filled the role of national god in the
kingdom of Israel (Samaria), which emerged in the 10th century BCE; and also in
Judah, which emerged probably a century later (no "God of Judah" is mentioned anywhere in the Bible). During the reign of
Ahab (c. 871–852 BCE), and particularly following his marriage to
Jezebel, Baal may have briefly replaced Yahweh as the national god of Israel (but not Judah).
In 9th century and the rejection of Baal worship associated with the prophets
Elijah and
Elisha the Yahweh-religion began to separate itself from its Canaanite heritage; this process continued over the period 800-500 BCE with legal and prophetic condemnations of the
asherim, sun-worship and worship on the
high places, along with practices pertaining to the dead and other aspects of the old religion. Features of Baal, El, and Asherah were absorbed into Yahweh, El (or ''el'') ( he, אל) became a generic term meaning "god" as opposed to the name of a specific god, and epithets such as
El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone. In this atmosphere a struggle emerged between those who believed that Yahweh alone should be worshipped, and those who worshipped him within a larger group of gods; the Yahweh-alone party, the party of the prophets and Deuteronomists, ultimately triumphed, and their victory lies behind the biblical narrative of an Israel vacillating between periods of "following other gods" and periods of fidelity to Yahweh.
Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods (586–332 BCE)

In 587/6 BCE Jerusalem fell to the
Neo-Babylonians, the Temple was destroyed, and the leadership of the community were deported. The next 50 years, the
Babylonian exile, were of pivotal importance to the history of Israelite religion. As the traditional sacrifices to Yahweh (see below) could not be performed outside Israel, other practices including
sabbath observance and
circumcision gained new significance. In the writing of
second Isaiah, Yahweh was no longer seen as exclusive to Israel but as extending his promise to all who would keep the sabbath and observe his covenant. In 539 BCE Babylon in turn fell to the Persian conqueror
Cyrus the Great, the exiles were given permission to return (although only a minority did so), and by about 500 BCE the Temple was rebuilt.
Towards the end of the Second Temple period, speaking the name of Yahweh in public became regarded as
taboo
A taboo or tabu is a social group
In the social sciences, a social group can be defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups c ...
. When reading from the scriptures, Jews began to substitute the divine name with the word ''adonai'' (אֲדֹנָי), meaning "
Lord". The
High Priest of Israel
High Priest ( he, כהן גדול, translit=Kohen Gadol or ; ) was the title of the chief religious official of Judaism
Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective rel ...
was permitted to speak the name once in the Temple during the
Day of Atonement, but at no other time and in no other place. During the
Hellenistic period, the scriptures were translated into Greek by the Jews of the
Egyptian diaspora. Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures render both the
tetragrammaton and ''adonai'' as ''
kyrios'' (κύριος), meaning "the Lord". After the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE the original pronunciation of the tetragrammaton was forgotten.
The period of Persian rule saw the development of expectation in a future human king who would rule purified Israel as Yahweh's representative at the
end of time—a
messiah. The first to mention this were
Haggai and
Zechariah, both prophets of the early Persian period. They saw the messiah in
Zerubbabel, a descendant of the
House of David who seemed, briefly, to be about to re-establish the ancient royal line, or in Zerubbabel and the first High Priest,
Joshua (Zechariah writes of two messiahs, one royal and the other priestly). These early hopes were dashed (Zerubabbel disappeared from the historical record, although the High Priests continued to be descended from Joshua), and thereafter there are merely general references to a Messiah of
David
David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...
(i.e. a descendant). From these ideas,
Second Temple Judaism would later emerge, whence
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or o ...
,
Rabbinic Judaism, and
Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ...
.
Worship
Festivals and sacrifice
The centre of Yahweh's worship lay in three great annual festivals coinciding with major events in rural life:
Passover
Passover, also called Pesach (; ), is a major Jewish holiday that celebrates the Biblical story of the Israelites
The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East
The ancient Near East was t ...
with the birthing of lambs,
Shavuot
(''Ḥag HaShavuot'' or ''Shavuos'')
, nickname = English: "Feast of Weeks"
, observedby = Jews and Samaritans
, type = Jewish and Samaritan
, begins = 6th day of Sivan
''Sivan'' (Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is ...
with the cereal harvest, and
Sukkot with the fruit harvest. These probably pre-dated the arrival of the Yahweh religion, but they became linked to events in the
national mythos of Israel: Passover with
the exodus from Egypt, Shavuot with the law-giving at
Mount Sinai, and Sukkot with the wilderness wanderings. The festivals thus celebrated Yahweh's salvation of Israel and Israel's status as his holy people, although the earlier agricultural meaning was not entirely lost. His worship presumably involved sacrifice, but many scholars have concluded that the rituals detailed in
Leviticus 1–16, with their stress on purity and
atonement, were introduced only after the
Babylonian exile, and that in reality any head of a family was able to offer sacrifice as occasion demanded. A number of scholars have also drawn the conclusion that
infant sacrifice, whether to the underworld deity
Molech or to Yahweh himself, was a part of Israelite/Judahite religion until the reforms of
King Josiah in the late 7th century BCE. Sacrifice was presumably complemented by the singing or recital of
psalms
The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived ...
, but again the details are scant.
Prayer played little role in official worship.
Temples

The Hebrew Bible gives the impression that the Jerusalem temple was always meant to be the central or even sole temple of Yahweh, but this was not the case. The earliest known Israelite place of worship is a 12th-century BCE open-air altar in the hills of
Samaria featuring a bronze bull reminiscent of Canaanite
Bull-El (El in the form of a bull) and the archaeological remains of further temples have been found at
Dan on Israel's northern border, at
Arad in the
Negev and
Beersheba
Beersheba or Beer Sheva, officially Be'er-Sheva ( he, בְּאֵר שֶׁבַע, ''Bəʾēr Ševaʿ'', ; ar, بئر السبع, Biʾr as-Sabʿ, Well of the Oath or Well of the Seven), is the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel ...
, both in the territory of Judah.
Shiloh,
Bethel,
Gilgal
Gilgal ( he, גִּלְגָּל ''Gilgāl''), also known as Galgala or Galgalatokai of the 12 Stones ( grc-gre, Γαλαγα or , ''Dōdekalithōn''), is the name of one or more places in the Hebrew Bible. Gilgal is mentioned 39 times, in particul ...
,
Mizpah,
Ramah and Dan were also major sites for festivals, sacrifices, the making of
vows, private rituals, and the adjudication of legal disputes.
Portrayal
Yahweh-worship was famously
aniconic, meaning that the god was not depicted by a statue or other image. This is not to say that he was not represented in some symbolic form, and early Israelite worship probably focused on
standing stones, but according to the Biblical texts the temple in Jerusalem featured Yahweh's throne in the form of two
cherubim, their inner wings forming the seat and a box (the
Ark of the Covenant) as a footstool, while the throne itself was empty. There is no universally accepted explanation for such aniconism, and a number of recent scholars have argued that Yahweh was in fact represented prior to the reforms of
Hezekiah and
Josiah
Josiah ( or ) or Yoshiyahu; la, Iosias was the 16th king of Judah (–609 BCE) who, according to the Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (; late in the monarchic period: to quote one study, "
early aniconism, ''de facto'' or otherwise, is purely a projection of the
post-exilic imagination". Other scholars argue that there is no certain evidence of any anthropomorphic representation of Yahweh during the pre-exilic period.
Yahweh and the rise of monotheism
It is unclear when the worship of Yahweh alone began. The earliest portrayals of Yahweh as the principal deity to whom "one owed the powers of blessing the land" appear in the teachings of the prophet
Elijah in the 9th century BCE, and was likely well established by the time of the prophet
Hosea in the 8th century BCE, in reference to disputes between Yahweh and Baal. The early supporters of this faction are widely regarded as being
monolatrists rather than true
monotheists; they did not believe Yahweh was the only god in existence, but instead believed he was the only god the people of Israel should worship. Finally, in the national crisis of the exile, the followers of Yahweh went a step further and outright denied that the other deities aside from Yahweh even existed, thus marking the transition from monolatrism to true monotheism. The notion that Yahweh is "to be venerated as the creator-god of all the earth" is first elaborated by the
Second Isaiah, a 6th-century exilic work, though the case for the theological doctrine again rests on Yahweh's power over other gods rather than independent monotheistic reasoning.
Graeco-Roman syncretism
Yahweh is frequently invoked in
Graeco-Roman magical texts dating from the 2nd century BCE to the 5th century CE, most notably in the
Greek Magical Papyri, under the names
Iao,
Adonai,
Sabaoth, and
Eloai. In these texts, he is often mentioned alongside traditional
Graeco-Roman deities and
Egyptian deities. The
archangels Michael,
Gabriel,
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance
In art history, the High Renaissance was a short period of the most exce ...
, and
Ouriel and Jewish cultural heroes such as
Abraham
Abraham, ; ar, , , name=, group= (originally Abram) is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism
Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising ...
,
Jacob, and
Moses are also invoked frequently. The frequent occurrence of Yahweh's name was likely due to Greek and Roman folk magicians seeking to make their spells more powerful through the invocation of a prestigious foreign deity.
A coin issued by
Pompey to celebrate his successful conquest of Judaea showed a kneeling, bearded figure grasping a branch (a common Roman symbol of submission) subtitled ''BACCHIVS IVDAEVS'', which may be translated as either "The Jewish
Bacchus" or "Bacchus the Judaean". The figure has been interpreted as depicting Yahweh as a local variety of Bacchus, that is,
Dionysus. However, as coins minted with such iconography ordinarily depicted subjected persons, and not the gods of a subjected people, some have assumed the coin simply depicts the surrender of a Judean who was called "Bacchius", sometimes identified as the Hasmonean king
Aristobulus II, who was overthrown by Pompey's campaign. In any event,
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars.
The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...
,
John the Lydian,
Cornelius Labeo, and
Marcus Terentius Varro similarly identify Yahweh with Bacchus-Dionysus. Jews themselves frequently used symbols that were also associated with Dionysus such as
kylixes,
amphora
An amphora (; grc, ἀμφορεύς, ''amphoreús''; English plural: amphorae or amphoras) is a type of container with a pointed bottom and characteristic shape and size which fit tightly (and therefore safely) against each other in storag ...
e, leaves of ivy, and clusters of grapes, a similarity
Plutarch
Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority o ...
used to argue that Jews worshipped a hypostasized form of Bacchus-Dionysus. In his ''
Quaestiones Convivales'', Plutarch further notes that the Jews hail their god with cries of "
Euoi" and "
Sabi", phrases associated with the worship of Dionysus. According to Sean M. McDonough, Greek speakers may have confused
Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated i ...
words such as
Sabbath,
Alleluia, or even possibly some variant of the name Yahweh itself, for more familiar terms associated with Dionysus. Other Roman writers, such as
Juvenal,
Petronius, and
Florus, identified Yahweh with the god
Caelus.
[ Florus, ''Epitome'' 1.40 (3.5.30): "The Jews tried to defend ]Jerusalem
Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
; but he '' ompeius Magnus' entered this city also and saw that grand Holy of Holies of an impious people exposed, Caelum under a golden vine" ''(Hierosolymam defendere temptavere Iudaei; verum haec quoque et intravit et vidit illud grande inpiae gentis arcanum patens, sub aurea vite Caelum).'' Finbarr Barry Flood, ''The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies on the Makings of an Umayyad Visual Culture'' (Brill, 2001), pp. 81 and 83 (note 118). The ''Oxford Latin Dictionary
The ''Oxford Latin Dictionary'' (or ''OLD'') is the standard English lexicon of Classical Latin, compiled from sources written before AD 200. Begun in 1933, it was published in fascicles between 1968 and 1982; a lightly revised second edition ...
'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982, 1985 reprinting), p. 252, entry on ''caelum'', cites Juvenal, Petronius, and Florus as examples of ''Caelus'' or ''Caelum'' "with reference to Jehovah; also, to some symbolization of Jehovah."
See also
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
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Further reading
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{{Authority control
Conceptions of God
Creator gods
Deities in the Hebrew Bible
Judeo-Christian topics
Reconstructed words
Religion in ancient Israel and Judah
Sky and weather gods
Tetragrammaton
War gods
West Semitic gods
Names of God
Children of El (deity)