Response to Gildhelm, et al: Yahweh is (still) not a Canaanite Storm Deity

I’m going through this article line by line. I recommend having it open in another tab to help you follow along.

“I argue that the Old Testament's historicizing of Israelite myth misleads its adherents into believing that monotheism is the default religious experience for man”

If by “default religious experience for man” it’s meant “highest percentage of practitioners across all of recorded history”, then nobody has ever said that. Christianity has been the the default religion of the smallest (by population) continent for 1000 years, or like 1/6th recorded history. It’s had limited success in importation to other cultures, despite being a global religion (another difference from the “default religious experience for man”, ethnically localized folk gods) and zealous proselytizing funded by oceans of WASP tithing. Christianity was revolutionary because it was so distinct from the sea of pantheons that were the actual global default. Also, this is odd because it gives weight to, say, the religions of the aboriginals when I assumed only European spirituality was important.

“and that the Israelites were always monotheistic from the beginning, interrupted only by impiety imposed on them by foreigners”

Styling centuries of Ancient history as mere inconvenient, temporary interruptions is to lose the rich context of the Ancient world. The Israelites oscillated between monotheism, polytheism, and blends of the two for a long, long time. No Christian scholar claims otherwise.

to the Scholastic omnis-, the God of St. Aquinas, through the subsummation of all other supernatural essences into a single being

Not quite. The wording of this implies that Yahweh is merely usurping these other foreign deities, like He’s draining them for His own power levels, or they combine like the Power Rangers to make super Yahweh or something.

Aquinas himself clarifies:

“In the demons there is their nature which is from God, and also the deformity of sin which is not from Him; therefore, it is not to be absolutely conceded that God is in the demons, except with the addition, "inasmuch as they are beings." But in things not deformed in their nature, we must say absolutely that God is.”

There is no dispute that the Abrahamic tradition begins with God announcing himself to the Hebrews as Yahweh

Yes there is, because that is incorrect. The Abrahamic tradition begins with Abraham, long before Semitic peoples like the Hebrews ever originated. This might sound like a petty critique, but this line claims that Yahweh “debuted” to the Israelites shortly before their exit from Egypt in Exodus 6- the implication being that the Israelites workshopped Him to fit their needs at the time. Actually, Yahweh was active for centuries before this, before the Israelites were ever enslaved. The genealogies and histories of the Bible itself make this quite clear- for example in the Binding of Isaac and God’s promise to Abraham that he would be the father of many peoples.

Exodus 6.3 (the passage being referenced) says this explicitly:

“I revealed myself to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as Ēl Shaddāi, but was not known to them by my name, YHVH.”

The Abrahamic tradition(s) do not begin with Yahweh “debuting” to the Hebrews because He was quite active amongst them long before they even knew the name Yahweh*.

*Revealed to Moses as a sign of God’s special trust in him, and his role in the destiny of the Israelites and mankind.

El, not Yahweh, was the original god of Israel

“El” (אל) is a generic term for “Deity” in Proto-Semitic languages. For example, the title in Exodus 6.3 above is “Ēl Shaddāi”, meaning “God [singular] Almighty”. I already discussed this in my Lightning Round post, where I compared separating “Elyon” (another form of אל) and “Yahweh” as separating “King George” and “His highness”. There is no evidence for them being separate, at all. Instead, we get passages like Numbers 12.13:

“So Moses cried to Yahweh, “Please, El, heal her!”

And Numbers 23.8:

How can I curse those whom El hasn’t cursed? How can I condemn those whom Yahweh hasn’t condemned?

As we’re about to see, there’s a loadbearing (false) interpretation of Deuteronomy 32:8 that gives unsavory scholars artistic license to reconstruct what they infer has happened.

Here’s my take on Exodus 6.3, which helps illustrate the point:

“When I was with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I was an impersonal, all-powerful Being. Now, I tell you My name: Yahweh”

The proof of this is in the name, Isra-El, and a number of cities/landmarks named after El (i.e., Bethel, El-Bireh) and the seemingly complete lack of Yahwistic toponyms from this period

This one is quite silly when we know the above context. They called Yahweh “El” because He had not yet revealed His name to them. About 400 years passed between Abraham and Moses, in which cities were constructed, wells were dug, and places were named. Keeping El in mind (as a singular deity, btw) does not invalidate the actual primary source but instead reaffirms their commitment to El (Yahweh).

In Deut. 32:8-9, Yahweh is depicted as one of the sons of El, a member of the divine council, who is assigned sovereignty over a people by El.

Already talked about this one, which is also simply incorrect. You can read what I wrote in my prior post or just the above information to see why this is false.

OP will then go on to cite Mark. S. Smith as a scholar who agrees with the Canaanite Storm god hypothesis. Ironically, Mark Smith explicitly disagrees with this reading of Deuteronomy 32.8:

Mark Smith: “God in Translation”

So where did Yahweh actually come from? The sum of evidence points to, rather clearly, Edom. Firstly, the earliest mentions of Yahweh point to him being from the southern Levant. The Egyptian temple of Soleb, from the reign of Amenhotep III, bears hieroglyphic inscriptions naming a “Shasu of YWHA”.

This is another example of putting the cart before the horse. On the Isrealites’ journey out of Egypt, they passed through Edom and Midian (among many other places). The indigenous people recording that the Israelites followed Yahweh is only affirming my position.

Much time had passed between the departure from the Nile and the encounter with the Edomites. That Yahweh was relevant at all only solidifies their commitment to him at this time.

The above was used in the original post. Hmm, what other ancient source depicts nomadic followers of Yahweh?

the Biblical texts explicitly say that Yahweh came from this region, and routinely depicts the south as a land of piety in arms against the rebellious and idolatrous north

This is accompanied by a passage from Judges:

Lord, when you came from Seir, when you marched from the fields of Edom, the earth trembled, the skies poured rain, and the clouds poured water. The mountains melted before the Lord, even Sinai, before the Lord, the God of Israel. (Judges 5:4-5)

Attempting to retroactively remove God’s omnipresence by citing the Old Testament is certainly… uh, bold. As discussed, the Old Testament is full of poetic language that is not meant to be interpreted literally. Using natural imagery to display God’s power over matter does not constitute an argument for God literally crawling out from Mt. Seir like a Tolkien Orc while conducting magic tricks. Let’s apply that logic to 2 Samuel 22:33:

“For who is God except the Lord? Who but our God is a solid rock? God is my strong fortress, and he makes my way perfect.

Where God is revealed to look like this:

Yahweh, circa 5000 BC. His later evolution to Wine Type Pokémon “Jesus Christ” is one of the most powerful in the game.

It gets even more ridiculous by comparing the above quotation to other OT texts like Deuteronomy 33:2 :

The Lord came from Sinai and dawned over them from Seir; he shone forth from Mount Paran. He came with myriads of holy ones from the south, from his mountain slopes.

Erm.. wtf? I thought Yahweh was from Mt Seir? Why is he “coming from Mt. Sinai”? How is He arriving from all these mountains simultaneously when the above passage just told us He’s not omnipresent?

Let’s consult Aquinas one last time for an answer to this objection approaching a millennia old:

Objection 1. It seems that God is not in all things. For what is above all things is not in all things. But God is above all, according to the Psalm (Psalm 112:4), "The Lord is high above all nations," etc. Therefore God is not in all things.

Reply to Objection 1. God is above all things by the excellence of His nature; nevertheless, He is in all things as the cause of the being of all things; as was shown above in this article.

Note that this is the only “link” given to the Storm Deity thing, and it’s quite weak.

The depiction of Yahweh as a storm-and-conquests god fits perfectly to the region of the Shasu.

Sure, people have always used the imagery they were familiar with. We see this in translations of the Gospels like The Heiland, where Jesus Christ is depicted as a Germanic warrior chieftain. The tools and language people use to understand God can change, that doesn’t mean that He’s subject to revisions by the Shasu as the Israelites merely pass through their lands. There is simply no evidence of this, ever.

A few centuries later, Yahweh was brought to the north and worshipped as a minor deity among gods such as El, Baal, and Asherah.

This is a misconstruction of Old Testament history. God selects the Israelites as a particularly rebellious people to demonstrate both His mercy in forgiving them, and His justice in punishing them when they refuse to change their ways. Eventually, the 12 tribes are subdivided further into the 10 wicked tribes of the North and the 2 righteous tribes of the South (renamed Judah). Describing what the Bible already depicts does not give access to retconning the history of prior centuries.

It is now established that Yahweh's origin comes from the southern Levant as a minor Canaanite deity, among a pantheon of Canaanite gods, who are worshipped by Canaanites well into the Iron Age.

No.

Recall that there are 3 major gods in the Canaanite pantheon prior to Yahwism - El, Baal, and Asherah

El: generic term for “god” as previously discussed. Used for lack of language surrounding monotheism, as previously discussed.

Baal: This is another misinterpretation. “Ba’al” is merely a word meaning “ruler”, “lord”, “owner”, or even “husband / patriarch”. “Ba’al worship” is likely referring to the worship of Hadad (though not always), another false god. Using it as a generic for Canaanite false-gods in general (instead of a specific god, i.e. Hadad) does not begin until the Protestant Reformation.

The bible itself also clearly distinguishes Yahweh from Ba’al(s) many times, over many centuries- directly refuting that Yahweh “absorbed” Ba’al.

Judges 3.7:

And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD. They forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth.

2 Chronicles 28.2:

Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD, as his father David had done, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even made metal images for the Baals,

And even the “Ba’al of Peor”, a regional Moabite (Not Edomite or Shasu!)

Numbers 25.3:

So Israel yoked himself to Ba’al of Peor. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel.

The “Canaanite Storm Deity” that is not omnipresent is somehow omni-presently from Edom and Moab simultaneously, where he has little to do with storms.

Asherah: It’s funny because Asherah is typically mentioned as a contemporary of Yahweh, specifically “Yahweh’s wife” (also not true). The fact she’s now invoked as “prior” to Yahweh directly contradicts this.

I mention this because even the premise of the argument itself is fallacious.

Yahweh molds with these gods in 3 steps.

First, Yahweh became El.

No.

Numbers 23.21-22:

He doesn’t want any trouble for the descendants of Jacob.
    He sees no misfortune for the people of Israel.
Yahweh their Elohim is with them,
    praised as their king.
²² El who brought them out of Egypt
    has the strength of a wild bull.

so the bible’s theological gloss of “Actually, I was El the whole time” won’t work here

Lol

The Yahwistic faction employed a tactic that is very well known to the Abrahamic tradition: inculturation. Rather than simply “defeat” the god and its religion, they instead made concessions, and adopted the imagery of one tradition into the former.

As a religion for all peoples, Yahwehism (Christianity) does have a traditional lineage that uses imagery and language from contacted cultures. Once again, the difference is that Yahweh (God) himself is not changing, it’s simply our description of Him. For example, using the language of Northern Europeans surrounding ancestor veneration to better articulate the status of Christian dead (“asleep in the Lord”). Our language and temporal tools change, God has not and literally cannot.

In the case of El and Yahweh, a divine warrior of conquest and storms is suddenly associated with that of rulership

I thought this version of Yahweh was merely an amalgamation of Canaanite deities including “Ba’al”, or literally “the Ruler”? So how does he sporadically gain rulership as a trait when usurping El when he would’ve already had it from subsuming Ba’al (despite “destroying Ba’al”)?

Interestingly, the process was so complete, it is difficult to say which god the world still worships today

Actually, the Bible is unique as a collection of primary and secondary texts from the Ancient world because of its completeness, historicity, and interconnectedness. People from centuries before us have already demonstrated the clear, straight line between the Yahweh of Ancient History and the Trinity of today.

Secondly, Yahweh destroys Baal.

The simultaneous worship of Yahweh and Baal posed an obvious problem. You can’t have two warrior gods associated with storms.

Which “Lord” (“Ba’al”) are we discussing here? The Philistine Insect/Fly Lord known as Beezlebub? Hadad? Ba’al of Peor? Not only is this not why Yahweh destroys Ba’al worship in Israel, it’s not even the right god. Yahweh destroys many Ba’als, for many reasons.

Moreover, it completely disregards Israel’s other instances of polytheism, where Ba’al is instead linked to Ashtaroth instead of Asherah, as in Judges 2.13:

They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth.

Notice the plural of Ba’al and the absence of Asherah. 1 Kings 11.5 demonstrates Ashtaroth is from Phoenicia, not Canaan:

For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians [Sidon, Phoenicia], and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

Acting as if the false gods or Ba’als of Edom/Canaan were the exclusive gods of the Israelites is incorrect.

Now that Yahweh is Baal in the most literal sense to the Israelites

Not only is this wrong, it also implies a final thrust from polytheism to monotheism, which is not what happened.

Asherah becomes the consort to Yahweh.

No, but delving into this deserves its own post.

By this point, there are only two gods in Israel. Eventually, Asherah will fade from the picture, leaving only one.

No. The Israelites will continue to find new pantheons and individual gods to worship, as they continually reject Yahweh. When Yahweh demonstrates His power by destroying the priest caste of these foreign faiths, or destroying their temples and idols, or even by openly mocking them, the Israelites will clean house and remain righteous for a time before finding a new pantheon.

It did not start or finish with the Edomite/Canaanite deities that were allegedly “workshopped” into Yahweh.

Conclusion

The “Yahweh is a Canaanite Storm Deity” meme does not have much evidence. Sure, there are biblical scholars like Mark Smith that believe this. However, acting as if there is a definitive consensus achieved for all time is wrong. Instead, there is an extremely weak connection propped up by the desire for the conclusion and working backwards.

At best, the “Canaanite Storm Deity” hypothesis is a low-quality entrance to a millennia+ old conversation regarding biblical archeology. At worst, it is a meme recited by people so desperate for a kill shot, they will abandon the truth to get it.