Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Lloyd Barre <barre AT c-zone.net>]

Dear Fellow List Members:

Please permit me to be perhaps unjustifiably triumphant as I attempt finally 
to unload my "burden" with regard to my current research interests.  In 
short, I am calling for an assessment of my proposition that El and Yahweh 
are historically the two gods of two distinct peoples.

This proposition has one peculiar feature.  Upon inspection,  it is 
self-evident.  Its discovery emerges as one of detecting an academic blind 
spot.  Simply no one has given the issue much thought.  The undetected 
assumption that was in place comes for the Elohist's and Priestly Writer's 
tales that Yahweh did not tell patriarchs his "real" name, but that he and El 
are the same god under different names.  What has happened is that this view 
seems to have been uncritically adopted that presumes that Yahweh was no 
mythological god like the other  ancient Near Eastern deities, but in fact a 
real historical agent.

As I see it, these traditions show that the two religions were distinct 
because the intention of the text is syncretistic.  The two religions are 
here being deliberately identified with one another.  Interpreted from a 
literary point of view, these traditions demonstrate the historic existence 
of two religions, of two peoples, whose religious identities were being 
fused.  Thus, the driving syncretistic intention behind these traditions 
establishes the presence of a religion of El, and of a religion of Yahweh.

Thus, the very texts that has informed the consensus turn out to virtually 
demonstrate that its premise rests upon a very weak case.  It appears to have 
simply accept the traditions are historically factual, and with Yahweh as an 
real agent.

Otherwise there is much evidence that Elism and Yahwism once were distinct 
religions.  First of all, they have different names, and the distinctive 
features of the two religions may be described and compared.  There are also 
the El sanctuaries, Bethel and Peniel, in whose structures who would 
certainly be worshipping El perhaps among others.  The names of the 
sanctuaries alone should convince us that El was the high god of Israel.  It 
seems to me that the Israelite version of El worship was, like Canaanite 
mythology, a cultural variation of Mesopotamian religion.  In two texts (Deut 
32:8-9; Psalm 82), El is seen to be presiding over his divine sons, who are 
assign a portion of the world to administrate.  Each son is to become the god 
of a separate nation.  Together under the administration of El, this divine 
family administrates their world rule.  It appears to have ultimately arrived 
with the Jacob tribe who had migrated from Aram. Yahwism, on the other hand, 
has local associ!
ations with Edom and the surrounding desert regions.  Sinai was apparently a 
pilgrimage shrine (cf. Elijah).  Yahweh was essentially a war god.  His name, 
his deeds and his cultus are dominated by a military theme.  Yahwism was 
apparently an ancient Bedouin religion that were extremely warlike.  They 
made their god a warrior.  This is not the religion of El.

Thus, the adoption of my proposition has some far-reaching ramifications 
which I have here tried to illustrate.  It is these considerations that would 
have me challenge the academic community to consider the basic proposition 
that El is not Yahweh.  

Discuss it among your friends.

Thank you very much,
 




Lloyd M. Barre, Ph.D.

barre AT c-zone.net
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/AncientIsrael

"Do I dare
 Disturb the universe?"

T.S. Eliot from, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." (1917)