But first i will leave you with all this scholarly documentation from western scholars who opine Yahweh to be a pagan deity. Please note yo will not find this article on google as i am the author:
Numerous sources reveal that many western scholars are inclined to the position that the god of the bible evolved from earlier paganism of ancient Mesopotamia. The Sumerians and Akkadians worshipped many gods and goddesses. Enlil, Anu , Utu, Ea, Enki, Baal, Seth are the names of a few out of many.
Yahweh, according to these sources, was transformed by taking all of their characteristics, attributes and even the heroic stories found in Sumerian clay tablets and then combining them together to make the one true monotheistic god.
The oldest known divine name for Yahweh was El. Before the name Yahweh became known, Yahweh revealed himself to Abraham as “El” (Genesis 17:1). In the Ras Shamra and the Ugarit texts, El is described as the supreme god “father of the gods,” and the lord of the heavens. He was the head of the Canaanite pantheon. Asherah, Athirat, and Anat were his wives and Baal and Hadad were his sons.
However the book of Hosea 2:16 informs us that El was also called Baal. This apparent contradiction can only be explained using the ideology of the Trinity. It is most likely that the idea of a triune god also derived from this pagan concept. El was the “father of the gods” and also “the son” – Baal and possibly under a different guise with a different character such as Ea the Sumerian god of the waters. El It is how these western scholars mention that they all became one!
El was also known as “Bull” or “Bull-El.” Could “Bull-El” have been the golden calf that the Israelites worshipped? The western scholar, Walter Reinhold tends to propagate this view by saying “Yahweh was worshipped as a golden calf by Israel.”
Other western scholars differ as to who or what “El/Yahweh” As you will see in the following section where I provide lengthy documentation, you will see that some scholars opine that Yahweh is a moon-god, some opine that Yahweh was a sun-god, others argue he was a thunder and rain god – the sky god of the storms as outlined in Psalms 29 and others identify Yahweh as being a mountain-god. Either way it is generally accepted by western authorities that Yahweh was a pagan deity.
2.1 Documentation
“…El is the oldest known name for the deity; it was used in varying forms by almost all Semitic peoples as a proper name for God. The Canaanites are known to have worshipped a god whose name was linked with various local sanctuaries (e.g., El-bethel). The patriarchs who also worshipped El, recognized Him as the one true God identified with Elohim and Yahweh who revealed Himself in different ways…and who was the author and guarantor of the promises made to them…El is a point of contact between Israel and polytheism. In the Phoenician pantheon described in the texts of Ugarit, El appears as the supreme god; he is the father of the gods, and the lord of the heavens, the chief and the utterly transcendent one, of moral and benign character
- New Catholic Encyclopaedia, Vol. 5, p. 236.
“El was the head of the Canaanite pantheon. El’s consort was Athirat and his dwelling was said to be “at the source of the two rivers at the confluence of the two deeps,” possibly a site in central Lebanon. El (can., ilu) can also generically mean “god.” in the past thirty years, a large number of monographs have been written addressing the apparently contradictory images of El presented in the two major sources available. In the history of Phoenicia written in the sixth century BCE by Sanchuniathon (which has been partially preserved via Philo Byblius in Eusebiusis praeparatio evangelica) El appears as a fierce warrior god who totally dominates the pantheon. however the many cultic and mythic texts written in the thirteenth century BCE from Ugarit in Syria, El, while he still retains such epithets as “creator of creatures,” “kings,” and “father,” seems to play a background role, and it is Baal who is the warrior par excellence. Some earlier efforts to reconcile this seeming inconsistency proposed that the Sanchuniathon account and the Ugaritic epithets are remnants of a more ancient stage of Canaanite religion, and that eventually El had in effect been dethroned by his son Baal. A parallel would be the succession in the Greek mythology from Ouranos to Kronos to Zeus. More recent scholarship, however, points to the different perspectives of the sources themselves. Sanchuniathon account is theogonic; it addresses the question of the origin and the relative position of the gods, and thus El’s prominence. The Ugaritic myths are cosmogonic; they pertain to the process of the ordering of the world, wherein Baal fights Yamm (“sea,” i.e., the primeval sea and chaos) and not mot (“death”) to gain supremacy over the cosmos, but not over the pantheon. Even in these texts, El sits supremely above all this “busy work,” and Baal must seek El’s permission in matters pertaining to the order of the cosmos and to kingships, even Baal’s own.”
The Encyclopaedia of Religion Vol.5, p.73, Macmillan and Free Press.
“El (“God”), the name of the chief deity of the West Semites. In the ancient texts fom Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit) in Syria, El (El the Bull) was described as the titular head of the pantheon, husband of Asherah, the father of all other gods except Baal. Although a venerable deity, he was not active in the myths, which primarily concerned his daughters and sons. He was usually represented as an old man with a long beard and, often, two wings. He was the equivalent of the Hurrian god Kummarbi and the Greek god Cronus. In the Old Testament, El was used both as a general term for “deity” and a synonym for Yahweh.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th Edition, Vol. 1, page 823.
“Elohim, the plural of the Hebrew word eloha, “god,” a lengthened form of the Canaanite word el (Aramaic alaha; Arabic ilah) , most frequently used for the God of Israel in the Old Testament. A plural of majesty, the term Elohim – though sometimes used for other deities, such as the Moabite god Chemosh, for the Sidonian goddess Astarte, and also for other majestic beings such as angels, kings, judges (the Old Testament shofetim), and the Messiah – is usually employed in the Old testament for the one and only God…
Though Elohim is plural in form, it is understood in the singular sense.. Thus, in Genesis the words, “In the beginning God (Elohim) created the heavens and the earth,” Elohim is monotheistic in connotation, though it is polytheistic in terms of its grammatical structure. The Israelites probably borrowed the Canaanite plural noun Elohim and made it singular in meaning in their cultic practices and theological reflections.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th Edition, Vol. 1, page 863.
“…God revealed Himself to the patriarch’s not as Yahweh but as El Shaddai – an epithet (of unknown meaning ) …”
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th Edition, Vol. 10, page 303.
“Despite the prominence of name elsewhere among the Semitic peoples, the god Il (El) appears to play a comparatively minor role in the South Arabian inscriptions. Some modern scholars have sought to explain this circumstance by equating Il with the moon god, but this opinion has not prevailed…Among the peoples around the northern perimeter of Arabia, “god,” in the most generic sense, was El, or in a longer form of the same name, Ilah. His veneration at a very early stage is attested by His appearance in theophoric names, that is, personal names of which one element is a divine name (the Biblical name Gabriel is and example). Among nomadic tribes in particular, a residual sense of El as being the god par excellence remained until the time of Islam.
- Encyclopedia Britannica Vol.1, pg. 1058, 15th Edition.
ELOHIM (Plural of Eloah) One of the Hebrew names for God, of frequent occurrence in the Bible. Elohim is used speaking both of the true God and of false gods… The plural form of Elohim has caused a good deal of controversy among critics. By some it has been considered as containing an allusion to the doctrine of the Trinity, others regard it as the plural of excellence, while others hold it as establishing the fact of a primitive polytheism.
- The Popular Encyclopaedia, Vol. V, pg. 146.
Elohim … A divine name for the God of Israel, the plural form here being purged of its polytheistic meaning, and used as a plural of majesty. There are over 2500 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible, making it one of the most common divine names therein, but it still could be applied to other gods, angels, or even figures such as Moses.
- The Cambridge Encyclopedia, pg. 373, third edition.
El, a Canaanite deity, was referred to as the “Father of the gods”. He caused the rivers to flow, thus making the land fertile, and made his home near the seashore. Sometimes referred to as the “Creator of the Earth”, he was also known as “Bull” or “Bull-El”, to signify his strength and powers of fertility. His name is usually translated as “Mighty One” or “First One”. In 1929, stories about El were found on clay tablets at Ras Shamra in Syria, the site of the ancient city of Ugarit. The tablets dated from the 14th Century BC. Although El was usually regarded as the consort of Asherat, one myth found at Ras Shamra tells us how he had intercourse with two women, probably representing Asherat and Anat. The women subsequently gave birth to the deities Shachar, “Dawn”, and Shalim, “Dusk”. According to the story recorded on the clay tablets, El walked along the shore, then plunged into the waves. His hands reached out like the waves, and he made his wives fruitful. He kissed their lips, which tasted as sweet as grapes, and in the kiss, and the conception and the embrace, Dawn and Dusk were born. El went on to father many more deities. He was depicted as an old man, sitting on a throne and wearing bull’s horns.
- The Ultimate Encyclopaedia of Mythology, Arthur Cotterell and Rachel Storm, p. 278
The oldest name for God used in the Semitic world consists of but two letters, the consonant ‘l’ proceeded by a smooth breathing, which was pronounced ‘Il’ in ancient Babylonia, ‘El’ in ancient Israel. The relation to this name, which in Babylonia and Assyria became a generic term simply meaning ‘god’, to the Arabian Ilah familiar to us in the form of Allah…In Arabia Allah was known from Christian and Jewish sources as the one god, and there can be no doubt whatever that he was known to the pagan Arabs of Mecca as the supreme being.
-Alfred Guillaume, Islam, p. 7
Allah, the paramount deity of pagan Arabia, was the target of worship in varying degrees of Intensity from the southernmost tip of Arabia to the Mediterranean. To the Babylonians he was “Il” (god); to the Canaanites, and later the Israelites, he was “El”; the South Arabians worshipped him as “Ilah,” and the Bedouins as “Al-ilah” (the deity). With Muhammad he becomes “Allah”, God of the worlds…
- Caesar Farah, Islam, p. 28
The god Il or Ilah was originally the phase of the Moon-god, but in early Arabian history the name became a general term for god, and it was this name that the Hebrews used prominently in their personal names, Such as Emanuel, Israel, etc…
- Carlton S. Coon, Southern Arabia, p. 399:
El, The supreme god of the pantheons of Phoenicia, Canaan, Syria , who forms a triad with his wife Asherat and his son Baal. He was a remote and all powerful god associated with the sky…El Elyon – In ancient Jerusalem, a name of El considered as the creator god.
- Guide to the Gods, Marjorie Leach, p. 31.
Yahweh – The sky god of the storms, of power, of covenants – a sovereign god who “maintains his absolute freedom” who can revoke decisions and laws…
- Guide to the Gods, Marjorie Leach, p. 230.
Astarte… in the Old Testament Bible, she appears as Ashtoreth and Solomon had a temple built in her honour near Jerusalem. Indeed, the Israelites sometimes revered the goddess as the queen of heaven and the wife of Yahweh…According to texts dating from the 14th century BC, the supreme god El took two women, generally believed to be Asherat and Anat…In one text they are described as the daughters of Neith…
- The Ultimate Encyclopaedia of Mythology, Arthur Cotterell and Rachel Storm, p. 269
Yahweh or Jahweh, was regarded by the tribes of Israel as the creator of all things and the judge of the nations. He probably originated as a mountain god and was identified with El, the supreme deity of the Canaanite pantheon…
- The Ultimate Encyclopaedia of Mythology, Arthur Cotterell and Rachel Storm, p. 329
“Yahweh is an almagam of many gods and goddesses, Mesopotamian, Hittite, Syrian, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Canaanite... Gods fused into Yahweh's persona are Enlil, Anu, Utu (Shamash), Ea (Enki),and the Egyptian Hyksos' god Baal Saphon (Baal Hadad) as well as Seth”
- Walter Reinhold & Warttig Mattfeld Yahweh-Elohim's Historical Evolution.
"The titles and attributes of many other Near Eastern deities were successively awarded to Yahweh Elohim...Prophets and Psalmists were as careless about the pagan origins of the religious imagery they borrowed, as priests were about the adaptation of heathen sacrifical rites to God's service. The crucial question was: in whose honour these prophecies and hymns should now be sung, or these rites enacted? If in honour of Yahweh Elohim, not Anath, Baal or Tammuz, all was proper and pious."
(p. 28. Robert Graves & Raphael Patai. Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis.
New York. Greewich House. 1983 reprint of 1963, 1964 edition)
"Professor Hommel, the well-known Assyriologist and Professor of Semitic languages at Munich, suggests that this god Yah is another form of the name Ea..."
(p. 59. Theophilus G. Pinches. The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia. London. Society For Promoting Christian Knowledge. 1908)
"The reason of the coming of the Flood seems to have been seems to have been regarded by the Babylonians as two-fold. In the first place, as Pir-napishtim is made to say "Always the river rises and brings a flood" -in other words it was a natural phenomenon. But in the course of the narrative which he relates to Gilgamesh, the true reason is implied, though it does not seem to be stated in words. And this reason is the same as that of the Old Testament, namely, the wickedness of the world...Pir-napishtim was himself a worshipper of Ae, and on account of that circumstance, he is represented in the story as being under the special protection of that god...It has been more than once suggested, and Professor Hommel has stated the matter as his opinion, that the name of the god Ae or Ea, another possible reading of which is Aa, may be in some way connected with, and perhaps originated the Assyro-Babylonian divine name Ya'u "god," which is cognate with the Hebrew Yah or, as it is generally written, Jah...There is one thing that is certain, and that is, that the Chaldean Noah, Pir-napishtim, was faithful in the worship of the older god, who therefore warned him, saving his life."
(pp.112-114. "The Flood." Theophilus G. Pinches. The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia. London. Society For Promoting Christian Knowledge. 1908)
"It is not certain, however, that 'yahweh' was the oldest form of the name. A short form 'yah' appears 25 times in the Old Testament (Ex 15:2; and cultic cry 'hallelu-yah'= 'praise yah'). Sometimes the short form appears as 'yahu' or 'yo' as in proper names like Joel ('Yo is God') or Isaiah ('Yah is salvation')."
(p. 409. vol. 2. B. W. Anderson. "God, Names of." pp. 407-416. George Arthur Buttrick. Editor. The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. Nashville. Abingdon Press. 1962)
"Thanks to the rediscovery in recent times, of considerable portions of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hittite, and Canaanite literature, it is now possible to recognize in the Bible several traces of ancient Near Eastern mythology. These appear in three forms : (a) direct parallels; (b) allusions; and (c) survivals in figurative expressions. In all cases they are accommodated to the religion of Israel by boldly transferring to Yahweh the heroic feats of the older pagan gods..Direct parallels to ancient Near Eastern myths are represented principally by (a) the fight of Yahweh against the dragon; (b) the stories of Creation and Paradise; and (c) the tale of the Deluge...All this is simply the Hebrew version of the story told in the Ugaritic myth of Baal concerning the victory of that god over the draconic Yam (alias Nahar), the genius of the Sea and Rivers..."
(p.481. Vol. 3. T.H. Gaster. "Myth, Mythology." G.A. Buttrick. Editor. The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. Nashville, Tennessee. Abingdon Press. 1962)
"Yaw was associated with the Canaanitish Mother-goddess. `Ashart-`Anat, as we know from the name of the deity of the Jews at Elephantine, `Anat-Yaw, where two other father-mother titles of divinities occur, such as Ashim-Bethel, `Anat-Bethel, in which the titles of Astarte are combined with the sun-god Bethel. It is precisely at Gaza. where Yaw as a sun-god appears on a coin (fig. 23), that coins frequently bear the figure of this `Ashtart-Yaw, Anat-Yaw, Anat-Bethel, corresponding to the Phoenician Melk-Ashtart, Eshmun-Ashtart. Fig. 24, of the Persian period, is charcteristic of this male-female, or female-male deity, and the heads, being joined, prove that under these names was worshipped a deity who combines the attributes of both."
(p.44, fig. 24. Stephen Herbert Langdon. The Mythology of All Races- Semitic. Vol. 5. Boston. Marshall Jones Company. 1931. pp. 454)
, "the god Yawi is a newcomer, a syncretistic deity to whom his devotees claim to assimilate the local gods such as Ila/El or Adad [or Dagan]." Yawi, of course, is the same as Yahweh."
(p. 284. Herbert B. Huffmon. "Yahweh and Mari." pp. 283-289, in Hans Goedicke. Editor. Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William Foxwell Albright. Baltimore, Maryland. The Johns Hopkins Press. 1971)
“Indeed, the Hebrew Bible itself, the great excoriator of the idolaters, owes something to the Mesopotamian world. Knowledge gleaned from Ugaritic texts has cast much light on early Hebrew. The two languages are not so very different, but the most startling discoveries relate to the development of what was to become a distinctly Jewish monotheism. Although the idea would have appalled the Prophets of Israel, it seems clear that El, the Ugaritic and Canaanite father god, displays a number of characteristics typical of Yahweh and can even be seen as the evolutionary precursor of Israel’s Jehovah. El also has much in common with Enlil, Sumer’s “king of heaven and earth.” Many other Sumerian and Akkadian themes are present throughout the Old Testament. The most obvious example being the tales of the flood …which find there way into Genesis…”
(p137 Middle Eastern Myth & Mankind – Epics of Early Civilization)
As scholars translated these texts it became clear that the character of the Hebrew god Yahweh shared much with earlier Ugaritic models. In the Judaic development of monotheism, Yahweh seems to have combined qualities of the older Canaanites deities El and Baal. However, in their eagerness to deny this connection and to emphasize the uniqueness of Yahweh, the Old Testament prophets denounced Baal as a false god of enemy tribes. The Canaanites deities also have much in common with the Mesopotamian pantheon. El who was the chief of the gods who upheld and enforced the institution of kingship.”
(Middle Eastern Myth & Mankind – Epics of Early Civilization, p97)
Yahweh claims in Exodus 6.2–3:
I revealed myself to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as Ēl Shaddāi, but was not known to them by my name Yahweh.
“…in Psalm 29, Yahweh is clearly envisioned as a storm god…”
Yahweh was called Baal bible confirms Hosea 2:16 (RSV)
"And in that day, says the Lord, you will call me, 'My Husband' and no longer will you call me, 'My Baal." For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more."
“There were many Yah gods throughout the lands of Egypt, Canaan, and Assyria. Yah is associated with the moon god in Egypt, with the heifer/cow gods of Jeroboam, and with goat gods. One thing is certain, the real God of Israel was not Yah or Yahweh as we are led to believe.” – Pastor Reckart @
Acts0412@jmfi.org
In Israel, ancient Hebrew inscriptions have been found on pottery. One translated artifact reads: "Thus says...Say to Yehalle[lel], Yo`asa and...I bless you (herewith- or: have blessed you) to/before Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah." (Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger. Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel. Minneapolis. Fortress Press. 1998. ISBN 0-8006-2789-X ).
"Some have argued that the god Yaw (Yahweh) was a moon-god but the sources both Aramaic and Hebrew indicate his identity with the rain and thunder god, Adad." (p.41, Stephen Herbert Langdon. The Mythology of All Races, Semitic. Vol.5. Boston. Marshall Jones Company 1931 / p.41, Langdon)
“…Yahweh was worshipped as a Golden Calf by Israel…”. -Walter Reinhold
El, Canaanite high god, El was identified with Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible. (p.419, Sarah Iles Johnston, Religion of the Ancient World, Harvard University Press).
The god El, worshipped by Abraham and later identified with Yahweh, was the high god of the Canaanite pantheon…the theophancies of Yahweh in the Bible (e.g., on mount Sinai: ) are described in language that is very similar to descriptions of Baal in the Ugaritic texts…Yahweh is far more often depicted as a storm god, in accordance with Canaanite imagery … In Israel, however, Yahweh was no longer worshipped primarily as a storm god, but as the god who bought the people of Israel into existence. (p.182, Sarah Iles Johnston, Religion of the Ancient World, Harvard University Press).
At first the name Baal was used by the Jews for their God without discrimination, but as the struggle between the two religions developed, the name Baal was given up in Judaism as a thing of shame, and even names like Jerubbaal were changed to Jerubbesheth: Hebrew bosheth means "shame". Zondervan's Pictorial Bible Dictionary (1976) ISBN 0-310-23560-