Yahweh

Yahweh is the name of the god of the ancient Israelites, a name comprised of four Hebrew consonants (YHWH, known as the tetragrammaton) which the great prophet Moses revealed to his people. Yahweh was a desert god who, according to the Biblical Book of Exodus, lead his chosen people from captivity in Egypt to the 'promised land’ of Phoenician Canaan. Interestingly, there was a minor deity in the Phoenician pantheon of the gods (which pre-dates the accepted date of composition of Exodus in 1440 BCE) also known as 'yahweh’ who was cup-holder to the mighty Phoenician god Baal.

The meaning of the name 'Yahweh’ in referencing the Hebrew deity has been interpreted as “He Who Makes That Which Has Been Made” or “He Brings Into Existence Whatever Exists” and, through the efforts of the Masoretes who sought to maintain the Hebrew scriptures, came to be changed to 'Jehovah’, a name still in use today.

Like all gods of antiquity, Yahweh was a specific deity of a people and of a place (in this case, the desert through which the Israelites traveled) but once the conquest of Canaan was complete under the Israelite General Joshua, the worship of Yahweh as the single supreme deity was instituted throughout that land. It was commonly accepted in antiquity that every deity was only accessible in that region over which the deity presided. Isis of Egypt was not accessible in Athens, Greece and so an Egyptian traveler to Athens would simply pay homage to Athena there instead of Isis; the followers of Yahweh disregarded this belief and practice. Canaan, populated by the Phoenicians at the time of the Israelite invasion, worshipped the many gods of their own pantheon and the entirety of the scripture known as The Tanakh can be read as a struggle between the imported monotheism of the followers of Yahweh and the polytheistic religion of the indigenous people.

Yahweh, as the actual name of the supreme being, seems to have remained in use from the time of the conquest of Canaan until the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BCE. At that time King Nebuchadnezzar II attacked and defeated Israel (as the northern kingdom of what was once Canaan came to be called) and carried off approximately 35,000 of the aristocratic and elite to Babylon. These captives were the intellectuals and artists, the doctors, teachers and the priests of the people. Once in Babylon, instead of turning their worship to the gods of that region, they remained true to their god, Yahweh, but the name, now uttered in a foreign land, and in captivity at that, was regarded as too sacred to be spoken or written and was replaced in the rituals by the Hebrew word 'Adonai’, which means 'My Lord’, making Yahweh a personal god of each individual but at the same time a universal God (in that he had power in Babylon as he had also had in Israel) of all human beings. Instead of the temples in which Yahweh had been worshipped back in their home, the Hebrew priests gathered their people together in what became known as a synogogue (a Greek word meaning 'to bring together') where they would discuss the supreme being, receive religious instruction and, for the young, practice their native language. In this way the culture of the Israelites was preserved throughout the Exile and this very revolutionary view of a single deity who is the only 'true God' and who has power and dominion over the whole earth, and not just a single locale, would eventually change the world's understanding of the concept of God upon its adoption by the early Christians and, later, by the followers of Islam.

Written by Joshua J. Mark, published 02 September 2009.