Concept

Yahweh

Overview

Yahweh was an ancient Semitic deity in the southeastern ancient Levant that became the national god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel-Samaria and Judah. Although there is no clear consensus regarding the geographic origins of the deity, most modern scholars favor a southern origin hypothesis. The worship of the deity goes back to at least the early Iron Age and apparently to the late Bronze Age.

In the oldest biblical texts, Yahweh possesses attributes that were typically ascribed to deities of weather and war, fructifying the Land of Israel and leading a heavenly army against the enemies of the Israelites. Many scholars think that the Israelites probably engaged in polytheistic practices that were common across ancient Semitic religion, because the Israelite religion was a derivative of the Canaanite religion and included a variety of deities from it, including El, Asherah, and Baal. Yahweh likely became conflated with El in later centuries, taking his place as the head of the pantheon in the Israelite religion. El's consort Asherah became associated with Yahweh, and El-linked epithets, such as ʾĒl Šadday (אֵל שַׁדַּי), came to be applied to him alone. Characteristics of other deities, such as Asherah and Baal, were also selectively absorbed in conceptions of Yahweh.

As Yahwism eventually developed into Judaism and Samaritanism, and transitioned from polytheism to monotheism, the existence of other deities was denied outright and Yahweh was proclaimed the creator deity and the sole deity worthy of worship.

According to a pious interpretation, Jews began to substitute other Hebrew words—primarily ăḏōnāy (אֲדֹנָי‬, lit. 'My Lords')—in place of the name Yahweh during the Second Temple period. By the time of the Jewish–Roman wars following the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the concomitant destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the original pronunciation of the name of the deity was forgotten entirely.

Additionally, Yahweh is invoked in the Imperial Aramaic-language Papyrus Amherst 63 from ancient Egypt, and also in Jewish or Jewish-influenced ancient Greek-language Greek Magical Papyri in Roman Egypt dated to the 1st to 5th centuries CE.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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But when he drew near, the circumambient air being more rarefied and the colors fading, the basin lost all of its surpassing beauty except its whiteness. He then saw three daemons sitting together in a triangle, mixing the rivers with one another in certain proportions.
Plutarch, Plutarch on the Delay of the Divine Justice
States what Yahweh is; the author is tied to Yahweh in the knowledge graph.
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For Neptune himself is called the Breeder. And the race of Hellen sacrificed to Neptune as the first father, imagining, as likewise the Syrians did, that man rose from a liquid substance. And therefore they worship a fish as of the same production and breeding with themselves, in this matter being more happy in their philosophy than Anaximander; for he says that fish and men were not produced in the…
Plutarch, Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3
States what Yahweh is; the author is tied to Yahweh in the knowledge graph.
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Fourthly, from the Plague of Darknesse inflicted on the Egyptians, of which it is written (Exod. 10.23.) "They saw not one another, neither rose any man from his place for three days; but all the Children of Israel had light in their dwellings;" the place of the wicked after Judgment, is called Utter Darknesse, or (as it is in the originall) Darknesse Without. And so it is expressed (Mat. 22.13.) where the King…
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
States what Yahweh is.
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Philosophers who discussed Yahweh

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Gnosticism

Place in the tradition

Part of Gnosticism.

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