Biblical Hebrew Forum

[barre AT access1.com]

The Akkadian high god Anu ("heaven") and his vizier storm god Enlil ("Lord of 
the 
atmosphere") become manifested in the northwest Semitic deities El and 
Baal-Hadad in 
Aram (cf. he Aramean names Hazael ["El sees"] and Ben-Hadad ["son of Hadad"] 
and 
Phoenicia (cf. Ugaritic mythology) and northern Palestine, their presence 
attested by the 
ethnic name "Israel" mentioned in the Merneptah stele, the El sanctuaries 
Bethel, Penuel, the 
temple of El Berith in Shechem, the altar in the pass between Gerizim and 
Ebal named "El is 
the god of Israel," the worship of El Elyon at  Jebusite Jerusalem, the 
mentions of the same 
god with the epithet Shaddai ( Num 24:16, 4; Gen 49:25 ) the statuette of El 
from Megiddo 
(1350-1200), the twice attested mention of El by northern pilgrims at 
Kintullet Ajrud, the 
northern provenance of the Elohist and the Elohistic Psalter, with Yahweh 
performing the 
comparable role of El's vizier (Ps 29, Deut 32:8-9; Ps 82).  The distribution 
of the god El 
therefore extends from 3rd century Akkadian culture eastward through Aram and 
Phoenicia 
and downward through northern Palestine to Jerusalem.  Yahweh, with his home 
in the 
deserts of southern Levant, traveled north with the migration of the Hebrews 
to come into 
competition with or displaced Baal as El's traditional vizier, illustrated 
most clearly by Psalm 
29 where Yahweh, originally a bedouin war god of the desert is here portrayed 
as a storm 
god and the functional equivalent of Enlil=Hadad=Baal.  The most probable 
time for the 
incorporation of Yahweh into El's pantheon is with the emergence of Israel in 
the 13th 
century when the peoples of northern and southern Palestine formed a 
political alliance and 
forged a new collective identity that finally failed with Jeroboam's session. 
 At this time El and 
Yahweh became alienated (Ps 82) and returned to their own people reassuming 
their original 
autonomy.  While popular Yahwism continued in the North, the  official 
religion was the 
traditional worship of  El and Baal until the destruction of the nation in 
722 BCE at which 
time Elohistic traditions, particularly the Elohistic Psalter, was redacted 
and the divine names 
El and Yahweh were made synonymous.  The theoretical synthesis of El, Yahweh 
and Elohim 
was most likely accomplished by the publication and dissemination of the 
Priestly Writer's 
epic who taught that El was Yahweh's patriarchal alias and that both names 
are equivalent to 
the distinctively Egyptian (Levitical) concept of Elohim.  Therefore, the 
three dominant 
religious trajectories running though ancient Palestine have come to cultural 
expression  in the 
divine names El, Yahweh and Elohim and have left us three versions of 
Israel's national epic 
in the writings known as J, E, and P.





---------------------------
L.M. Barre
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/AncientIsrael
Point Loma, California