Documentation:
“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”
(Yahweh-Elohim's Historical Evolution (Pre-Biblical)
Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld )
"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).