Iron is much easier to find and just needs to be combined with another common element, carbon, to produce one of the strongest metals known to man: steel. By the 9th century B. In the Iron Age, Mediterranean metal workers lost their elite status and were simply seen as skilled craftsmen rather than quasi-priests or magicians. In parallel, their gods either lost their importance in the local pantheon and were forgotten, or were transformed, acquiring different attributes and characteristics, Amzallag says.

Meanwhile, the loose coalition of Canaanite nomadic tribes who once saw themselves as descendants of the same patriarch, had morphed into a patchwork of small, centralized kingdoms, each vying for the status of regional power.

Conflict became inevitable, and indeed the Bible is filled with stories of wars between the Israelites and their neighbors, who are invariably depicted as evil. As each nation attempted to gain political and military supremacy over the other, the Israelites may have also tried to establish their spiritual superiority, depicting themselves as favored children of a powerful god, or, to use a biblical turn of phrase - a Chosen People.

Initially, God belonged to all. Ariel David Apr. Updated: Apr. Get email notification for articles from Ariel David Follow. Open gallery view. Microscopic magnification x60 of woolen textile from Timna dyed in red and blue stripes photo taken with Dino-Lite microscope. Credit: Dr. Naama Sukenik, Israel Antiquities Authority. Was Hathor's temple converted to a temple for Yahweh the metal god?

At the Timna copper mine Credit: Ariel David. Archaeologists uncover remains of an Edomite copper production facility on the so-called Slaves' Hill in Timna. The dark stones that cover most of the site are slag left over from the smelting process Credit: Ariel David. The explosive revelation on Mt.

Divination, soothsaying, and necromancy were prohibited. The individual or community could cry out to Yahweh and would receive a divine response, mediated by priestly or prophetic figures. Sanctuaries were erected in various places and were used to express devotion to Yahweh by means of sacrifice, festival meals and celebrations, prayer and praise. After the split of the kingdom into two parts, the major sanctuaries in the Northern Kingdom were at Bethel near the southern border and Dan in the north.

Certain times were set for the gathering of the people to celebrate the gifts of Yahweh and the deity's acts of deliverance and redemption. According to Miller, the moral and ethical spheres were stressed in orthodox worship of Yahweh. There were requirements for guarding the welfare of neighbors and protecting the weaker members of society. Family relationships were protected by divine law, and purity of conduct, dress, food, etc.

Everything in the moral realm was understood as a part of relation to Yahweh as a manifestation of holiness. Religious leadership resided in priests who were associated with sanctuaries, and also in prophets, who were bearers of divine oracles. The king, and his predecessor, the judge, were understood as appointees and agents of Yahweh in the political sphere.

Heterodox Yahwism is described by Miller as a mixture of some elements of orthodox worship of Yahweh with particular practices that conflicted with orthodox Yahwism or were not customarily a part of it. For example, heterodox Yahwism included the presence of cult objects rejected in more orthodox expressions, such as the asherah, which seems to have been present in different forms throughout the period of the monarchy and perhaps before.

Likewise, the pillar, rejected by orthodox Yahwism, was also used in cultic centers on occasion, as evidenced by objects excavated at some cultic sites. Even the Deuteronomistic Historian portrays the high place as acceptable prior to construction of the temple. Even a commonly accepted revelatory mechanism such as dreams could be condemned if the resulting message is perceived as false. Consulting mediums, wizards, and diviners was also regarded as practices condemned by official circles, but often employed by heterodox Yahwists on occasion.

Patrick D. Miller describes the most obvious syncretism from the ninth century BCE onwards in the monarchal period as the worship of Baal in Israel and Judah, as attested to in the Deuteronomistic History and Hosea as well as the worship of heavenly bodies sun, moon, and stars.

He attributes the rise of Baalism among the Yahwists to the influence of Jezebel and the Phoenician worship of Baal. He suggests this cult might have been introduced during the divided monarchy, suppressed under the late monarchal religious reforms Josiah, Hezekiah , then been restored under the idea that poverty, famine, and death had resulted from abandoning worship of the Queen of Heaven.

It has traditionally been believed that monotheism was part of Israel's original covenant with Yahweh on Mount Sinai , and the idolatry criticized by the prophets was due to Israel's backsliding.

Why do the Israelites sing at the crossing of the Red Sea that "there is no god like you, O Yahweh", [ Ex ] implying that other gods exist? These observations eventually overthrew the belief that Israel had always worshipped no other god but Yahweh. Israelite gods other than Yahweh in fact appear frequently, both in the bible and the archaeological record.

Respectful references to the goddess Asherah or her symbol, for example, as part of the worship of Yahweh, are found in the eighth century inscriptions from Kuntillet 'Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom, and the gods Resheph and Deber appear without criticism in Habakkuk as part of the military retinue of Yahweh.

Israel inherited polytheism from late first-millennium Canaan, and Canaanite religion in turn had its roots in the religion of second-millennium Ugarit.

In the earliest stage Yahweh was one of the seventy children of El, each of whom was the patron deity of one of the seventy nations. This is illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint texts of Deuteronomy , in which El, as the head of the divine assembly, gives member of the divine family a nation of his own, "according to the number of the divine sons": Israel is the portion of Yahweh.

Between the eighth to the sixth centuries El became identified with Yahweh, Yahweh-El became the husband of the goddess Asherah, and the other gods and the divine messengers gradually became mere expressions of Yahweh's power.

The first factor behind this development involves changes in Israel's social structure. At Ugarit, social identity was strongest at the level of the family: legal documents, for example, were often made between the sons of one family and the sons of another.

Ugarit's religion, with its divine family headed by El and Asherah, mirrored this human reality. However, the family lineages went through traumatic changes beginning in the eighth century due to major social stratification, followed by Assyrian incursions.

In the seventh and sixth centuries, we begin to see expressions of individual identity Deuteronomy ; Jeremiah ; Ezekiel A culture with a diminished lineage system, deteriorating over a long period from the ninth or eighth century onward, less embedded in traditional family patrimonies, might be more predisposed both to hold the individual accountable for his behavior, and to see an individual deity accountable for the cosmos.

In short, the rise of the individual as the basic social unit led to the rise of a single god replacing a divine family. The second major factor was the rise of the neo-Assyrian and neo-Babylonian empires. As long as Israel was, from its own perspective, part of a community of similar small nations, it made sense to see the Israelite pantheon on par with the other nations, each one with its own patron god - the picture described with Deuteronomy The assumption behind this worldview was that each nation was as powerful as its patron god.

The crisis was met by separating the heavenly power and earthly kingdoms. Even though Assyria and Babylon were so powerful, the new monotheistic thinking in Israel reasoned, this did not mean that the god of Israel and Judah was weak. Assyria had not succeeded because of the power of its god Marduk ; it was Yahweh who was using Assyria to punish and purify the one nation which Yahweh had chosen. By the post-Exilic period, full monotheism had emerged: Yahweh was the sole God, not just of Israel, but of the whole world.

If the nations were tools of Yahweh, then the new king who would come to redeem Israel might not be a Judean as taught in older literature e. Now, even a foreigner such as Cyrus the Persian could serve as the Lord's anointed Isaiah , One god stood behind all the world's history. In contrast to the tradition of Mosaic authorship , the documentary hypothesis employs source criticism to interpret different character attributes as originating in four distinct source documents of the Torah.

Historians of the ancient near east describe worship of Yahweh as originating in pre-Israelite peoples of the Levant rather than in a divine revelation to Moses. In contrast, scholars who employ methods allowing for supernaturalism and divine inspiration continue to interpret the Biblical portrayal of Yahweh in a manner consistent with faith-based views.

Yahweh or a deity known by a similar rendering of the tetragrammaton is worshipped by several contemporary faiths, although there is considerable variation regarding which ancient texts are emphasized and how they are balanced with tradition and other historical factors in the faith and practice of contemporary religions that worship Yahweh. Though they do not usually pronounce the divine name or even render an English vocalization in writing, much of contemporary Judaism worships Yahweh as the one true God.

The name Yahweh is commonly used in secondary and tertiary sources including scholarly journal articles, Bible dictionaries, Bible commentaries, etc. Many Christians believe that Jesus and Yahweh are one, Jesus being the human incarnation of the being spoken of as Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible. This article incorporates text from the — Jewish Encyclopedia , a publication now in the public domain.

Religion Wiki Explore. Religion portals. Sunni Islam Shia Islam. Contributing Getting Started Advanced. Register Don't have an account? View source. History Talk 0. This article is about the deity Yahweh, especially as he appears in ancient Hebrew texts. See God in Judaism for conceptions of God. New York: Robert Appleton Company, The Jerusalem Publishing House pp. Bromiley, , p. The "yahu" part of Elijah does not necessarily mean "Yahweh" but is often interpreted as such in theophoric names, and this rendering is chosen as a consistent naming convention in this article rather than to imply that this is the only reasonable way to phrase the meaning of the name Elijah.

Tyndale Press, Wheaton, IL. The Jerusalem Publishing House Ltd. Outline of Contents and VI. The problem of Job, New Bible Dictionary , second edition. Also, since his power is more important than his other attributes, there is an unequal emphasis on power over his other attributes. In the end, a follower cannot know God or even be sure of the consistency of his attributes. On the other hand, because Yahweh is by nature a triune unity his attributes stem from his nature.

The eternal relationship within the Trinity promotes love within the Godhead and extends to his creation. Also, since his attributes are based on his unchanging nature rather than his powerful will, all his attributes are equal and promote trustworthiness rather than capriciousness. This means that believers can know God and be sure of his attributes.

Second, Christians understand the nature of God to be triune Father, Son and Holy Spirit , which is the only way that Jesus Christ, as the second person of the Trinity, could die on the cross to pay for our sins.

If Jesus were not God himself, then his death on the cross would be meaningless. However, Muslims deny that Jesus died on the cross and they reject the belief in his resurrection from the dead. Only a triune God, defined as one essence and three persons, could become incarnate and still remain God of the universe, and yet this is the God that Muslims reject.

For them, Jesus cannot be God nor can God be a Father, for he cannot have a son. But wait a minute, some will say. This semantic [shibboleth] strangulation can be cleared up if we remember that words have both a denotative and a connotative meaning. Denotation refers to a dictionary definition, so it would be correct to say that Yahweh and Allah both refer to the concept of God, especially for their respective language groups.

However, the connotation is determined by what a person conceives about the object of that word.