Yahweh

Yahweh was an ancient Semitic deity in the southeastern ancient Levant that became the national god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel-Samaria and Judah. Although there is no clear consensus regarding the geographic origins of the deity, most modern scholars favor a southern origin hypothesis. The worship of the deity goes back to at least the early Iron Age and apparently to the late Bronze Age. In the oldest biblical texts, Yahweh possesses attributes that were typically ascribed to deities of weather and war, fructifying the Land of Israel and leading a heavenly army against the enemies of the Israelites. Many scholars think that the Israelites probably engaged in polytheistic practices that were common across ancient Semitic religion, because the Israelite religion was a derivative of the Canaanite religion and included a variety of deities from it, including El, Asherah, and Baal. Yahweh likely became conflated with El in later centuries, taking his place as the head of the pantheon in the Israelite religion. El's consort Asherah became associated with Yahweh, and El-linked epithets, such as ʾĒl Šadday (אֵל שַׁדַּי), came to be applied to him alone. Characteristics of other deities, such as Asherah and Baal, were also selectively absorbed in conceptions of Yahweh. As Yahwism eventually developed into Judaism and Samaritanism, and transitioned from polytheism to monotheism, the existence of other deities was denied outright and Yahweh was proclaimed the creator deity and the sole deity worthy of worship. According to a pious interpretation, Jews began to substitute other Hebrew words—primarily ăḏōnāy (אֲדֹנָי‬, lit. 'My Lords')—in place of the name Yahweh during the Second Temple period. By the time of the Jewish–Roman wars following the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the concomitant destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the original pronunciation of the name of the...