Harvard Divinity School

Yahweh and the God of the Patriarchs

Author(s): Frank Moore Cross, Jr.
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Oct., 1962), pp. 225-259
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity School
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1508722 .
Accessed: 28/09/2012 15:31
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
.
Cambridge University Press and Harvard Divinity School are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve
and extend access to The Harvard Theological Review.
http://www.jstor.org
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS
FRANK MOORE
CROSS, JR.
HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
THE modern discussion of Patriarchal
religion may
be said to be-
gin
with the brilliant
essay
of Albrecht
Alt,
Der Gott der
V~iter,
published
in
1929.1
Alt
proposed
to use new means to
penetrate
into the
pre-history
of Israel's traditions of the old time. He re-
pudiated
the methods of such earlier scholars as Robertson Smith
and
Julius Wellhausen,
who
attempted
to reconstruct the
pre-
Yahwistic
stage
of the tribal forebears of Israel
by sifting
Israel's
early
but
fully
Yahwistic sources for
primitive features, primitive
in terms of an
apriori typology
of
religious
ideas derived
largely
from nineteenth
century
idealism. Such
procedures,
Alt
recog-
nized, yielded merely
the
superstitious dregs
of Israelite
religion
at
any
of its
stages.
As
early
as
1929,
it was obvious to him that
the
archaeological
data
bearing
on the second millennium
gave
a
very
different
picture
from that
painted by
the older historians.
At least it was clear that the
religion
of Israel's
neighbors
was on
a
very
much more
sophisticated
level than that
being predicated
for the
pre-Mosaic
tribes.
Alt was no less aware than his
predecessors
of the formidable
barriers
obstructing
the historian's
approach
to the Patriarchal
Age.
Even the earliest
epic
traditions of Israel did not reflect di-
rectly
the
religious
milieu of the time of their
origin. Rather, by
oral transmission over
gulfs
of
time,
more or less uncontrolled
by
written
sources, they
were
shaped
even before
precipitation
into
literary form, by
the events which created the union of the
tribes,
and the Yahwistic cult which was the
primary ground
of
their
unity.
Nevertheless the tools for the
analysis
of the
pre-
literary history
of tradition had been
forged by
Hermann Gun-
kel's
programmatic
work in the
legends
of
Genesis,
as well as on
other
complexes
of Old Testament
tradition,2
and
by
this
path,
1
Beitrige
zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament
III,
12
(1929).
Republished
in A.
Alt,
Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel I
(Miinchen, 1953), pp. 1-78.
2See
especially
H. Gunkel's introduction to his Genesis [HzAT1 2nd ed.
(G5ttingen, 1902),
"Die
Sagen
der
Genesis," pp. XI-XCII.
226 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
especially by freeing
ancient cult names and divine
epithets
from
their
secondary (Yahwistic) complex,
Alt saw the
possibility
of
progress.
One
group
of
epithets
in the
patriarchal legends
is characterized
by
the element 'el.
Following
Gunkel and
especially Gressmann,
Alt attributed the 'el
appellations
to local
numina,
local deities tied
to Palestinian shrines or
localities,
encountered
by
elements of
Israel when
they
entered the land of
Canaan.3
He
gives
rela-
tively
little time to an examination of the "
'el
religion,"
as he calls
it,
and this
part
of his
monograph
now
appears wholly
unsatis-
factory.
Alt is much more interested in
isolating
another
group
of
epi-
thets and
analyzing
its
typology: epithets
in which the
god
is
identified
by
the name of a
patriarch.
He calls these "the
gods
of
the
fathers,"
theoi
patrdoi, originally
distinct
deities,
but all be-
longing
to a
special religious type
which in the
development
of
Israel's traditions were coalesced into a
single family god by
the
artificial
genealogical linkage
of the
Fathers,
and at the same time
assimilated to Yahweh. These were the God of
Abraham,
the
Fear
(better
Kinsman
4)
of
Isaac,
and the
"Mighty
One"
('abir)
of
Jacob,
later the God of
Abraham, Isaac,
and
Jacob.
Elohistic tradition in Exodus
3: 13-15
is crucial to Alt's anal-
ysis:
"When I come to the
people
Israel and
say
to
them,
'the
god
of
your
fathers sent me to
you,' they
will
say
to
me,
'What is his
name?' What shall I
say
to them? And God said to
Moses,
"ehye
'aser
'ehye.'
Thus
you
shall
say
to the
people Israel, "ehye
sent
me to
you'. Again
God said to
Moses,
'Thus
you
will
say
to the
people Israel,
Yahweh
the
god
of
your fathers,
the
god
of Abra-
ham,
the
god
of
Isaac,
and the
god
of
Jacob
sent me to
you;
this
is
my
name
forever,
and
by
this
(name)
I shall be remembered
always'."
S
For Alt these contacts were not so much in the
Patriarchal, pre-Mosaic
period,
as in the era of the
entry
into Canaan in "Israelite" times. In our view
this is a fundamental weakness in Alt's
point
of
view,
a
position increasingly
un-
tenable in view of our
present knowledge
of the movements in Palestine in the
second
millennium B.C. There is not
space
to debate the matter here.
However,
by
"Patriarchal" we shall mean
regularly
the elements of Israel's forebears who
moved about in Palestine before the Mosaic
age.
'Cf. W. F.
Albright,
From the Stone
Age
to
Christianity2, pp. 188 f.; n. 71,
p. 327; Alt, p. 26,
n.
2.
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 227
In this text there is a clear claim for the
continuity
between the
religion
of the Fathers and the Yahwistic faith of later Israel.
At the same time the
text, precisely
in its insistence that Yahweh
is to be identified with the
god
of the
Fathers,
discloses to the
historian that the old
religion
and the Mosaic
religion
were his-
torically distinct,
or in
any case, belonged
to two
stages
in an his-
torical
development.5
The
Priestly
tradition in Exodus
6:2-3 points
in
part
in a simi-
lar direction: "God said to
Moses,
'I am Yahweh. I revealed
my-
self to
Abraham,
to
Isaac,
and to
Jacob
as 'El
Sadday,
but was not
known to them
by my
name Yahweh'." In this stratum of tradi-
tion there is also the
recognition
of a
cleavage
between the an-
cient time and the Yahwistic
era, though again
there is the theo-
logical
affirmation of the ultimate
identity
of the
god
of the Pa-
triarchs and Yahweh. The choice of an 'El
appellation
is disturb-
ing
to Alt. He admits the
authenticity
of the
title,
but
argues
that
this stream of tradition has
merely
chosen the name of the numen
of a local
shrine,
broken it loose from its
moorings
and substituted
the name for "the
god
of the Fathers." More
fully
assimilated to
later Yahwistic institutions is the tradition of the
Yahwist,
who
simply
assumes the use of the name Yahweh in
pre-Mosaic
times
and
reshapes
his tradition in this
light.
Alt turns next to a detailed
analysis
of the
patriarchal
traditions
of the
epic sources.6
In them he finds evidence of the
religious
type,
"the
god
of the
Father,"
and
provides
clues as to the essen-
tial traits of this
religion.
It differs
radically
from the cults of the
Canaanite
'elim,
the numina of
particular holy places.
The
god
of
the Father is not attached to a
shrine,
but is
designated by
the
name of the Patriarch with whom he has a
special relation,
or
rather, according
to
Alt, by
the name of the founder of his cult.
5
Alt, p.
Io:.
"Dagegen
ist die Identitit
Jahwes
mit dem Gott der Viter nicht
einfach
vorausgesetzt,
sondern wird
sozusagen
vor dem
Auge
des Lesers erst im
Verlauf der
Erzihlung
feierlich vollzogen,
indem der erscheinende Gott auf Moses
Fragen
hin
seinen
Namen
Jahwe
mit
eigenem
Munde
ausspricht (V. 14).
Eben
darin besteht die
spezifische
Funktion dieser
Erzdhlung
im Gesamtaufbau des
elohistischen
Werkes,
dass sie dem Leser einerseits den
ganzen
Abstand zwischen
Vdterzeit und Mosezeit sub
specie
Dei zum Bewusstsein
bringt
und andererseits den
Unterschied dann doch wieder in einer h6heren Einheit
ausgleicht,
indem sie
ein
und denselben Gott als
Triger
der alten und der neuen
Gottesbezeichnung
er-
scheinen
Ilsst."
SSo-called JE.
228 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
He is not a local
deity,
but the
patron
of the
clan,
the social
group.
He
may
be described as an "historical"
god, i.e.,
one who enters
into a
kinship
or covenantal
relationship
with a
clan,7
and who
guides
the social
group
in its
peregrinations,
its
wars,
in short
through
historical vicissitudes to its
destiny.
The election motif
running through
the Patriarchal histories is native to the
religion
of the
Fathers,
and
though
nuanced
by
later Yahwistic
features,
is not a theme
simply
read back into
primitive
tradition on the
basis of
theological theory.
Alt finds
support
for his
hypothesis
on
general
historical
grounds.
The
special
traits of the
religion
of the Patriarchal
gods
anticipate
at a number of
points
the characteristics of the cult of
Yahweh,
the lord of covenant and
community.
This
provides
a
continuity
between the old
religious
forms and the
new,
an his-
torically
credible
background
for
emergent Yahwism,
and for the
development
of a
religious unity
of
apparently disparate
clans
which came
together
in the Yahwistic
league.
The
gods
of the
Fathers were
paidagigoi
to the
great god
Yahweh who later took
their
place.
Alt also seeks
support
for his historical construction
by
a com-
parison
of the Israelite
"god
of the Father" with
analogous
divine
types,
drawn from late Nabataean and related sources. Here there
is abundant evidence of
appellations
of the
form, "god
of N."
Julius Lewy
attacked Alt's
position
8 on the basis of
parallels
from the
Cappadocian (Old Assyrian)
texts of the
early
second
millennium. Here in a series of
formulae, Lewy
could show that
the
expressions
il
abika,
"the
god
of
your father,"
Ilabrat
il
abini,
"Ilabrat,
the
god
of our
father,"
and Ilabrat
(simply),
were inter-
changeable
elements. He concluded that the Amorites attached to
the
Assyrian
commercial
colonies,
while
adopting
the
high god
Assur of
Assyria,
call as well on the ancestral
god,
"the
god
of
your father,"
or "the
god
of our
fathers,"
or without further
specification, Ilabrat,'
the
proper
name of their
god.
To
Lewy
this
'It is in this context that we are to understand the
kinship
elements
particu-
larly
common in the Amorite names of second millennium
B.C.,
and in the earliest
onomastic material of Israel.
8
"Les textes
palbo-assyriens
et
l'Ancien
Testament,"
Revue de
l'histoire
des
religions
iio
(1934), PP. 29-65;
cf. A.
Alt, op. cit., p.
3I,
n. I.
9llabrat corresponds
to Sum.
Nin'ubur, messenger
and
grand
vizir of
Anu;
cf.
Lewy, p. 52,
n.
57.
Note also
iu ebbaritum,
"the
god
of the
collegium,"
and
ili
um-
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 229
appeared
to be clear evidence that
patriarchal
deities were not
anonymous,
at least in his archaic
texts,
and
suggested
that the
Old Testament God of the Fathers was a
family god
as tradition
had
it,
and that his
proper
name was
'jl
adday quite
as the
Priestly
tradition claimed. For
example,
in the old
poem
in Gene-
sis
49:25
there is the bicolon:
m'l 'byk wy'zrk,
w'<l>10
dy
ybrkk,
"from the
god
of
your
father who
supports you, 'El-kadday
who blesses
you." Certainly
in this tradition
they
are identified.
In effect the
patriarchs brought Sadday
into Palestine with
them,
and there met the "national" Canaanite
deity,
'El
'Elyon,
and as
the Amorites served
Assur, says Lewy,
so Abram served the new
god along
with his
tutelary deity Sadday.11
12
Alt
protests
that the
people
of
Lewy's
texts were
already
inte-
grated
into the
Kulturland,
and that in
any
case the
formula, god
of
N does not
appear,
and we
may add, why
the
variety
of titles:
'abir
ya'qob,
etc.?
It must be
argued further, however,
that even the Nabataean
and
Palmyrene
evidence which furnished Alt's
principal analogy
with the
religion
of the Patriarchs
supports
his
interpretation
less
clearly
than
originally suggested, especially
in
light
of new data.
meiniya, "god
of
my principal" [Lewy, p. 53,
n.
59;
,CAD
VII, p. 971
which re-
place
Ilabrat. On
Ningubur,
see most
recently,
D.
O.
Edzard,
WSrterbuch
der
Mythologie,
ed. H. W.
Haussig, p. I13.
[Thorkild Jacobsen suggests
that
"Il(i)-abrat (is)
most
likely
a shortened
ap-
pellative
form of
il(i)abritim, 'El/god
of the
people/folks'" (private
communica-
tion).
Cf. W. von
Soden,
Orientalia 26
(1957),
p.
314.]
1
Correcting
the usual text
slightly
on the basis of the Hebrew
MSS, Sam.,
Syr.;
cf. LXX.
n Lewy
is far less
convincing
in his
attempt
to
identify
'El
'Elyon
with Salem.
See below in the first section for an alternate
analysis.
"1Compare
also the
phrases
in the Bir-Rikib texts:
wrkb'l
b'l byt (Panammu II,
22);
and
'lhy
byt 'by,
"the
gods
of
my
father's house."
(line 3
of the text
pub-
lished
by
H.
Donner, "Ein Orthostatenfragment
des
K6nigs
Barrakab von
Sam'al,"
Mitteilungen
des Instituts
fiir Orientforschung III
[I9551,
PP. 73-98).
Cf. the
Nabataean text
[Jaussen I, 59
=
Alt6]
61 Imr byt' 'lh
t[ymw?],
"to the lord of
the
family,
the
god
of T
..."
On the divine name
rkb'l,
see now the names
(in
cuneiform texts from
Ugarit):
bin ili-ma-rakub and bin rakub-ba'l. In
Canaan,
rkb seems to have been used in
epithets
of
Ba'l-Haddu, e.g.,
rkb
'rpt (68:io, etc.),
"the Cloud-rider." At Zin-
cirli rkb'l seems to have had lunar characteristics: he is called
ba'l
harran,
is listed
alongside
Sams
in a series which includes Hadad and 'El
(Panammu I, 2-3, 11, 18;
II, 22),
and in the "Scribe's Orthostat" is
represented by
what
appears
to be a lunar
symbol.
On the
pronunciation
of Bir-Rikib see
J. Friedrich,
"Das bildhethitische
Siegel
des Br-Rkb von
Sam'al," Orientalia,
26
(1957), PP. 345-47.
230 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
In his
analysis
Alt
posits
a
simple evolutionary
scheme for the
divine
epithets
of the
inscriptions.
As nomadic clans entered
civilized
country, they brought anonymous gods
of the
type, "god
of
N,"
and after
acculturation, slowly began identifying "god
of
N" with
Dfi-Sard,
the national
god,
or
Ba'l amen,
the "Landes-
gott,"
or
ZevT 'AvLKrTOs.13
One
may
ask
seriously
if
Dz~-$ard
is not native to the Nabataean
tribes;
he is unknown earlier in the
Transjordanian country;
one
must also ask if the
great gods
of the Arabian as well as the Ara-
maean
peoples
were unknown to the
Nabataeans,
or to
newly
settled
people.
Alt attributes a
strange primitivism
to the Naba-
taeans
(and
mutatis mutandis to
Israel)
in view of what we now
know of their forebears'
religion,
even in North Arabia. It is
quite
true that an
invading people identify
old
gods
with new. Near
Eastern
polytheism
is most
syncretistic
in
every period.
Canaan-
ite and
Babylonian
deities
were,
of
course, systematically
identi-
fied,
as were the Canaanite and
Egyptian pantheons,
and so
on."4
In the Nabataean
inscriptions
we have a number of overt iden-
tifications:
'1h
(mr'n')
rb'l
with dw3'r'
("r' dy
bbsr')
(Alt
Nos.
5-II);
1
b'limn
with
'1h
mtnw
(Alt
No.
12),
b'limn
with
'lh
S'ydw (Alt
No.
I5),
OEb AiCov,
with
OE0
'AAVLKrOgo
and
AL~
'AVLKrjv HXlov;
16
and
perhaps '1h
qSyw
with
b'l
'mn. 7
The first
mentioned,
since it is the
god
of
Rab'el, presumably
Rab'el
II,1s
king
of the
Nabataeans, may properly
be called a
special
case.
But Alt is too
facile, perhaps,
in
describing
the
formula
OEE9
AV/ov
as
primitive,
since it
occurs,
in the earliest
(second century
of the Christian
era) inscriptions
of the
series,
ALO
'"AVLKro70V
cHXOV
Oeo0)
Ai4ov the late form
(third-fourth centuries),
while
Oe6B
Aiwov
in the latest of the
series,
is described as a survival of the
archaic form."9 We now know that the oldest of the formal
"
Alt, op.
cit.
pp. 68-77.
"See further below. The Nabataean-Arab
goddess,
'El-Kutb&'
presents
an in-
teresting study
in
syncretism.
See
John Strugnell,
"The Nabataean Goddess Al-
Kutbd' and Her
Sanctuaries,"
BASOR
156 (1959), pp. 29-37.
"1
To this series add Milik
2,
"Nouvelles
inscriptions nabat6ennes," Syria
XXXV
(1958),
p.
231.
The new
inscription
reads .
.. Idwsr'
'lk
rb'l.
:lAlt,
Nos.
33-45.
'7Alt,
Nos.
13, 14.
The latter reads '1
qsyw
l'lhhm b'llmn],
"the clan of
qsyw
to their
god, Ba'lsamen,
the former:
l'lh qsyw.
1
On the date of the 'lh
rb'l
series
(Rab'el II),
see
Milik, op. cit., pp. 233
f.
'9Alt,
No.
45.
On the
identity
of Nabataean Zets
'HXiov
and
Ba'l
Samern,
see
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 231
Nabataean
inscriptions,20
that of
AslaIh
(Alt,
No.
3)
from ca.
95
B.C. is to be read . .. Idwfr'
'lh
mlktw
(written mnktw)
.
. .2
The
"Dfi-Sara',
god
of
Malikat6"
of this
inscription
then must be
identified
presumably
with the
OEET MalXEaXrOV
of Alt's
inscrip-
tions No.
51
and
52,
from A.D. io6 and
175.
This is to reverse
Alt's line of
evolution,
unless we
persist
in
arguing
that the earliest
inscription
is late
typologically
and vice versa.
Finally,
we must ask
concerning
the
legitimacy
of the
analogy
between the Nabataean Arabs and ancient Israel. The time
span
is,
of
course,
formidable. Much more serious is Alt's tacit as-
sumption
that
Israel,
like the
Nabataeans,
infiltrated Palestine
from the desert as
simple nomads,
untainted
by
the civilzation of
the settled
country.
One
may question
the
validity
of this con-
ception
of Northern Arabs in the Hellenistic
age. Certainly
it is
an untenable view of Israel. The era of the Patriarchs must be
placed
in the Middle and Late Bronze
Age,
the era of the Amorite
movements from North
Mesopotamia,
not at the end of the Late
Bronze
Age
in the time of the
conquest
of Canaan
by
Yahwistic
clans. The
patriarchs belonged
to an
age
of
donkey-nomadism,
moving through
settled
lands,
and to an
age
when a cultural con-
tinuity
stretched from
Canaan, during
much of the
period
an
Egyptian dependency,
into the
Delta, especially
in the area of
the Wddi Tumil~t.22
Our examination of Alt's
analysis
of Patriarchal
religion
has
raised a number of
questions.
We have not dealt with the Gunkel-
Alt notion of local numina which will
occupy
us in the
following
section. We should not
deny
that
Alt
performed
an
extremely
significant
work in
distinguishing
a
special type
of
deity among
the conflate
deity
Adad-and-gamag in the new
"pantheon
list" from
Ugarit (refer-
ences in n.
35).
The solar character of
Ba'l
Iamem is underlined
already by
Philo
Byblius, Eusebius, Praep.
evan. I.
0o.
'
On the
chronology
of the
early
Nabataean
inscriptions,
see F. M.
Cross,
"The
Development
of the
Jewish Scripts,"
The Bible and the Ancient Near
East,
ed. G.
Ernest
Wright (New York, 1961), p. 161,
and notes
o103-1os;
J. Starcky,
"In-
scriptions archaique
de
Palmyre,"
Studi Orientalistici in onore di
Giorgio
Levi
della Vida II
(Roma, 1956), pp. 520-527.
.
On this
reading,
see
Starcky, op. cit., p. 523,
n.
3,
and on the
interchange
mlkw/mnkw, mlktw/mnktw,
see also
Milik, op. cit., pp. 228, 234;
and "Nouvelles
inscriptions semitiques
et
grecques
du
pays
de
Moab,"
Studii Biblici
Franciscani,
Liber Annuus IX
(1958-59), PP. 354 f.
'
Cf. W. F.
Albright,
"Abram the
Hebrew,"
BASOR
163 (October,
196i),
pp.
36-54.
232 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
the multitude of
tutelary gods
of
nations, dynasties, classes,
and
persons represented,
in Near Eastern texts. We doubt that the
Patriarchal
god
was
typically nameless, except
for
designation
by
the
eponym
of the clan
and/or
his cult founder. Insofar as
these Patriarchal deities
belong
to a
pastoral
or
migrant folk,
no
doubt
they
were
"foreign"
or
imported,
ancestral
gods
rather than
the
gods
of
popular
sanctuaries in the lands of Patriarchal
sojourn-
ings. However,
there seems to be no reason to
doubt,
in view of
our evidence that these clan or "social"
gods
were
high gods,
and
were
quickly
identified
by
common traits with the
gods worshipped
under various
liturgical
titles in sanctuaries in the new
land;
in
the case of
Israel,
with a Canaanite
high god
or
gods.
In the case
of the
Nabataeans,
the
"gods
of the Fathers" seem to have been
connected with the old Arab
god,
later national
god
of the cara-
van
state, Dii-Sarra,
and identified with Aramaean
gods
of the
Kulturland, notably Ba'l
Samen.23
Sometimes these
gods
of Pa-
triarchal
type
seem to have been
minor,
"mediator"
gods,
some-
times the
great figures
of the
pantheon.
In either
case,
the move-
ment is from an old culture to a
new,
an old
pantheon
to a
new,
not
from
anonymous gods
to named
gods,
nor from a cultural blank
into first contacts with civilization.
I. THE 'EL EPITHETS
In the Patriarchal narratives of
Genesis,
there is a series of
names or
appellations
of
deity beginning
with the element
'jl
combined with a
substantive, among
them
'l
'61ddm,24 'jl
'ely*n,25
'71
adday,26 '7l
'e8lh yiSrd'l,27
and
'lW
bit-'e1.28
In the case of
SAs a matter of
fact,
Ba'l lamen
may
have
penetrated
into Arabia
long
before
Nabataean
times,
as did Nabi
(=
han-'aktab
/ al-kutbd').
Cf. W. F.
Albright,
BASOR
1956 (December, 1959), PP. 37
f.
a
Genesis
21:33.
As
generally recognized yhwh
is
secondary
here.
*
Genesis
14:18
ff. In
v. 22,
omit Yahweh with LXX and
S,
as well as for
traditio-historical reasons.
*
Genesis
17:1,
and
passim.
'
Genesis
33:20, "El, god
of
(the Patriarch)
Israel." Cf.
[ ]'jl 'e'lh 'abikd,
Genesis
46:3, "El, god
of
your
father." The article is to be omitted in the latter
epithet,
since in
any case,
it
developed
after the loss of inflectional
endings
in
Canaanite
including Hebrew, probably
at the
beginning
of the Iron
Age.
The first
examples
of the true article fall in the tenth
century,
and even in
inscriptions
of
this
period
it is not used
systematically,
and is
quite
late in
invading poetic and/or
liturgical language.
In
Ugaritic prose,
hnd and hnk
may
contain a demonstrative
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 233
'0l 'dlam,
'
l 'elydn,
and '71
adday,
the
epithet
is
capable philo-
logically
of two or more
interpretations.
We
may
read the ele-
ment
'el
as the
generic
term
"god"
in
apposition
with a divine name
or with a substantive in a
genitive relationship; alternatively
we
may
read the first element as the
proper
name
'El,
the second ele-
ment as an
appellation
of the
deity
'El
arising
out of a
liturgical
or
mythological
cliche. Thus
'jl
'dlam,
for
example,
is
capable
of
being interpreted
as "the
god 'Oldm,"
or as the "God of
Eternity"
in the one
instance,
or as
"'El,
the Eternal
One,"
29
in the second
instance.
The choice of one of these alternate
interpretations
has been
determined
by general
views of the
history
of Canaanite and Pa-
triarchal
religion. Usually
the choice in one instance has de-
termined the choice in all or most of the others. Thus under the
influence of the
theory
that the
gods
of Canaan were local
genii,
one school has
consistently
read the element
'el
as an
appella-
tive.30 On the other hand scholars with different views of Canaan-
ite
religion
have arrived at much the same conclusion as to the
correct
philological analysis
of the
epithets. Perhaps
the most
powerful argument
for
reading
"the
god
N" lies in the fact that
each of the three names listed above
appears
in the Old Testa-
ment 31 and in the extrabiblical sources 32 without the element
particle
which
specialized
later as the article. Cf. M.
Dahood,
"The
Linguistic
Position of
Ugaritic
in the
Light
of Recent
Discoveries,"
Sacra
Pagina,
ed.
J.
Coppens
et al.
(Paris, 1959), pp. 271
f. and
references;
and W. F.
Albright, "Speci-
mens of
Ugaritic Prose,"
BASOR
150 (April, 1958), pp. 37 f.,
n. ii.
-
Gen.
31:13; 35:7.
The
epithet
raises
special problems
in view of the later
hypostatization
of Bethel which we cannot deal with
fully
here. The material has
been collected and discussed
by O. Eissfeldt,
"Der Gott
Bethel,"
Archiv
fiir
Reli-
gionswissenschaft
28
(1930), pp.
1-3o;
A.
Vincent,
La
religion
des
judeo-arambens
d'Tl6phantine (Paris, 1937), esp. pp. 562-592. Other, parallel appellations
are
'7l ro'i
(Gen. 16:13)
and
'el
b6rit (Judg. 9:46)
both of which also raise
special
problems requiring
discussion on another occasion.
~
I.e.,
'El with a
genitive adjunct (Eissfeldt)
or as El with an
appellation
in
apposition.
Cf.
tr
'i,'il,
mlk, Itpn
'il d-p'id, etc.; b'l zbl,
zbl
ym; 'al'iyn b'l, etc.,
etc.
The
appositional
construction is awkward with
'61dm
unless we
suppose
that an
expression
'il di
'dlami,
or the
like,
stands behind it. On the other hand the
ap-
positional
construction
is
quite suitable, e.g.,
with '1
'lywn qnh . .
."'El,
the most
high,
creator
...
."
o
The
classical,
critical statement of this view is that of A.
Alt;
U. Cassuto de-
fends with modern tools a modified form of the traditional view
(La questione
della Genesi
[Firenze, 1934,1 60-82).
r
On
'Sadm
as a divine name in the Old
Testament,
see F. M. Cross and D. N.
Freedman,
"The
Blessing
of
Moses," JBL 67 (1948), 209,
n. 85.
In addition to
Dt.
33:27,
cf. Isa.
40:28, Jer.
io:Io.
234 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
'Al,
so that it seems that the formula with
prefixed
'il has been
leveled
through
the material in the later
development
of tradi-
tion.33
The view that these names are
epithets
of the
god
'El has been
given
new life
by
the
appearance
of the Canaanite
mythological
tablets from
Ugarit
as well as the
general expansion
of our knowl-
edge
of Amorite and Canaanite
religion.
We know now that
'il
in
Canaanite texts is
regularly,
or rather in a
majority
of
cases,
the
proper
name of the cosmic
deity
'El,34
father of the
gods ('abu
bani
'ilima),
head of the
pantheon.35
Yet
despite
some
attempts
to find
a
tendency
toward an 'El monotheism or
pantheism
in
Ugaritic
religion,"
it seems clear that no later than the fourteenth cen-
tury
B.C. in north
Syria,
the cult of 'El was
declining, making
room for the virile
young god Ba'l-Haddu.37
At all
events,
Canaanite 'El has
emerged
from our texts as a central
figure
of
the
pantheon,
and there is evidence that in south Canaan his cult
was
especially popular
in the second millennium
B.C.38
In this
light
it has become
tempting
to see the
epithets
'El
'Olm, etc.,
as titles of Canaanite
'El, epithets
drawn from
liturgical
names of
the
king
of the
gods
as he was
worshipped
in the chief Palestinian
sanctuaries.39
When we read such a title as
'il
'1'lljh
yisrd'rl, "'El,
the
god
of
(the
Patriarch
Jacob-) Israel,"
it seems
necessary
to
suppose
that the older
god
of the
Fathers,
the tribal or clan
deity
Father Mitchell Dahood has called
my
attention to Psalm
75:10o,
where he
reads,
no doubt
correctly, w'ny
'gf-dl-1
'lm/'zmr l'lhy y'qb,
"I shall
magnify
the Eternal
one/Sing
to the
god
of
Jacob."
32The extrabiblical occurrences will be discussed below.
'
See most
recently
M.
Pope,
El in the
Ugaritic
Texts
(Leiden, 1955), 14
f.
34Pope,
op. cit., 6; Eissfeldt,
El im
ugaritischen
Pantheon
(Berlin, 1951), 29-
53.
As the reader will
note,
these
volumes, especially
that of
Pope,
have done much
to
shape
the
present essay.
3
On the
special problems
of the
"pantheon lists,"
one
published,
one
unpub-
lished,
see the
report
of
J. Nougayrol
and comments of E.
Dhorme,
CRAIBL
1957,
77-85.
For a third text of this
type,
see C.
Virolleaud,
Le
palais royal d'Ugarit
II, 4 (13 f.),
and C. F. A.
Schaeffer,
xiii-xiv. Until there is full
publication
of the
syllabic text,
RS
20.24,
it is
perhaps
not
judicious
to discuss the
epithet
il-abi
(?).
36 Cf. R.
Dussaud,
Les decouvertes de Ras Shamra
(Ugarit)
et
l'ancien
Testa-
ment,
2nd. ed.
(Paris, 1941);
and
especially O. Eissfeldt,
El im
ugaritischen
Pan-
theon;
and "El and
Yahweh," JSS I (1956), 25-37.
7 Pope op. cit., 82-I04. However, 'El
is not
yet
a deus
quiescens.
3
See further below.
3
This position
has been most
eloquently
defended
by
O.
Eissfeldt in the work
cited
above,
n.
36.
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 235
or deities of the Patriarchal stock was
early
identified with the
Canaanite
'El.40
The epithet
"[ ]'El
'
h"lh
abikd,
"'El, the god of
your father, similarly
seems to be a
transparent
reference to
'El.41
Does it not follow then that '7l
'o61m,
'
l 'adday, etc.,
are variant
cult forms of 'El?
On
methodological grounds,
I do not believe that the
interpreta-
tion of the several divine names can be solved
by general religio-
historical constructions. To be sure we can no
longer speak
of the
'elim of Canaan as "local numina." The
great gods
of the Ca-
naanite
pantheon
were cosmic deities. There is to be
sure,
a
double movement
clearly
discernible in
Syro-Palestinian religion.
A
great god
such as 'El or 'Asherah
appears
in local manifesta-
tions in the cult
places,
and
gains special titles, attributes, hypos-
tases.
In the
process,
one cult or title
may split apart
and a new
god emerge
to take his
place
beside 'El or 'Asherah in the
pan-
theon. On the other hand there is a basic
syncretistic impulse
in
Near Eastern
polytheism
which tends to
merge gods
with similar
traits and functions. A minor
deity, worshipped by
a small
group
of
adherents, may
become
popular
and
merge
with a
great deity;
major
deities in a
single
culture's
pantheon may fuse;
or deities
holding
similar
positions
in
separate pantheons may
be identified.42
It must be
maintained,
after
all,
that the formula
'Wl
'1Odm
is
ambiguous, capable
of
being
read "the
god
'dlaim"
or
"'El
the an-
cient one." For
example,
from the
Ugaritic
texts we have the fol-
lowing
formulae: 'il
milk, rasp milk,
and
'il haddu.
The first
ap-
pellation
is
always
used of
'El,
and we
may suitably translate,
"'El the
King." Similarly rasp
milk must be translated
"Ra'p
the
King."
But the third
name,
a title of
Ba'l-Haddu
as its context
certifies,
is "the
god
Haddu." It
may
be
noted, however,
that the
latter construction is less
frequent among
the divine
epithets
which
proliferated
in
Ugaritic myths
and
liturgies.
At all
events,
if we are to
identify
'
l
'1ldm
with the head of the Canaanite
pan-
'o
Cf.
Pope, op. cit., 15.
"
Gen.
46:3; on
the omission of the
article,
see n.
27.
* See A. Bertholet's
essay, Gitterspaltung
und
Gittervereinigung (Tiibingen,
1933), now
somewhat
antiquated.
An
extraordinary example
of cross-cultural
assimilation is found in Kumarbi
myths published by
H. G.
Giiterboch,
Kumarbi
(Istanbul, 1946).
Another old but still
interesting
collection of bizarre instances of
both
hypostatization
and fusion can be found in W. F.
Albright,
"The Evolution
of the West-Semitic
Divinity 'an-'anat-'att&," AJSL 41 (1925),
73-IOI.
236 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
theon, 'El,
we must do so on the basis of evidence that
'la^m
is a
characteristic
appellation
of 'El. And the same holds true for each
of the
epithets
under
consideration;
we must establish the iden-
tity of
the
god
on the basis
of
evidence other than that
of
the
biblical
formula itself.
I. 'el '61,dm
The data
bearing
on the
meaning
of the
epithet '0l
'3l1m
in-
clude several biblical
passages.
In
Deuteronomy 33:27
we read
me'ond 4
'lohn qe'dem/
mittahtdw
zero'ot '
l5m,
"His
(Jeshu-
run's) refuge
is the God of
Old/
Under him are the arms of the
Ancient One
('01dm)."
A divine name is
expected
after
ze'r'6t,
to
parallel 'llhe
qddem.
On the other hand it
may
be
argued
that
zero'
is often the
hypostasis
of the divine
power
and hence
may
make an
adequate
parallel.4
But "ancient arms" is a
grotesque
expression,
and the former
interpretation
is
preferable.
In
Jere-
miah i
o: i
o,
Yahweh is
given
a series of
epithets including
melek
'61m,45
"the
ancient or eternal
king,"
which reminds one imme-
diately
of
'El's
epithet
milk 'abi
ianima, "king,
father of
years."
46
One
suspects
that an old
'Wl epithet
is used here in
Jeremiah,
but
the
question
must remain
open.
Outside the Old Testament the divine name
'61dm
appears,
probably
in the
place-name
bt
'rm(m) (i.e.,
bet
'61dm)
in the
Shishak List
47
of towns
allegedly conquered
in his famous cam-
paign
in the late tenth
century
B.C. It also
appears
in the Phoeni-
cian
cosmogony
of Mochus
reported by Damascius,
in the late
Phoenician form
OvXWoI(og),48
but this
late, muddy
tradition
tells us little more than that
'l1dm
was an
important
Canaanite
appellation
of
deity.
We
may
note also that in the
Karatepe
in-
44
m'nh is,
of
course,
the
early orthography
for
mJ' n6
as well as
mer'nd.
"4Cf.
the
song
of the "Arm of
Yahweh,"
Isaiah
51:9
ff.
5
The
expression mlk
'Im is used as a title for
Amenophis
III in an
unpublished
Ugaritic
text. See
provisionally,
C.
Virolleaud,
CRAIBL
1955, 74
f. See below on
Pharoah's
title,
Jamal
ddritum,
"the eternal
sun,"
n.
51.
4
This rendering
has often been
disputed,
but no
good
alternate can be
sug-
gested.
The term 'nm is not the normal
plural
of
tnt, "year"
at
Ugarit,
but in
view of double
plural
formations of this and other similar terms in
Canaanite,
it is not
a serious
objection
in the case of a "frozen cliche." Cf.
'attiq
y6^mn,
"Ancient of
Days," probably
in
origin
an 'El title
(Daniel 7:9).
Cf. Isa.
40:28; 26:4.
47No. 36.
4
Damascius,
De
primis principiis (ed. J. Kopp), 125.
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 237
scription
of the late
eighth century B.C.,
the
following
curse is
found:
49
"and
may
Ba'l amem
and
'El,
creator of the earth
('1
qn
'rs)
and 'am' '61am
(w-Smi 'im,
"the eternal
sun")
and all
the
gods
of the
pantheon (ddr
'lrm)
destroy
that
king.
. ."
We
shall return below to
'El's
epithet.
The
designation
sam
'llam
is
significant.
That it is used here as an
appellative following
the
proper
name of a
deity
is a
warning
that
'l1am
need not be a di-
vine name in Canaan. Hence the fact that
'61am
appears
alone is
not sufficient evidence that
'jl '1dm
must be read "the
god
'51dm."
Actually,
the
Ugaritic
texts
provide ample
evidence that
descriptive epithets may
be used alone or with the name of
deity.
In an
unpublished
text from
Ugarit
there is a much earlier se-
quence
of divine names
including 'aphu 'dlami,
"the eternal sun." 50
The Akkadian
appellation
of Pharaoh found in Amarna texts of
the fourteenth
century B.C.,
daamal ddritum,51
reflects the same
Canaanite cliche to
judge
from the fact that
gama', "sun,"
is con-
strued to be
feminine,
thus
showing
more
respect
for Canaanite
grammar
than for Pharaoh.52
The incantation text from Arslan Tash
(seventh century B.C.)
contains what
appears
to be an
epithet quite parallel
to
'0l
'6lam;
unfortunately
the
reading
and context is not
wholly
certain. Fol-
lowing Albright
3
and
Jenni,54
I should read: krt. In. 'it
'lm
'r
<t
> krt
In.,
"Elat the Eternal One has made a covenant with
us,
Asherah has made a covenant with us." Elat is an alternate
name
(the goddess
kat'
exochin)
of
Asherah,
and the
title, paral-
"
B
III,I8-IV
(margo).
See most
recently
on the
passage,
S.
Gevirtz,
"West
Semitic Curses and the Problem of the
Origin
of Hebrew
Law,"
VT XI
(1961),
142-143;
cf. F. M. Cross and D. N.
Freedman, Early
Hebrew
Orthography (New
Haven, 1952), 12,
n.
5,
and Ernst
Jenni,
Das Wort 'Oldm im Alten Testament
(Berlin, 1953)
for
bibliographical
references.
"
See C.
Virolleaud, op.
cit.
(n. 45), 74.
51Knudtzon,
Die El-Amarna
Tafeln, 146; 6,7; 155:6,
etc. Cf. S.
Gevirtz, op.
cit., 143, n.
5.
52Arthur Darby
Nock has called
my
attention to
CEMECIAAM, probably
for
CEMCOAAM Hebrew
'emem
'61cdm
in the
magical papyri:
K.
Preizendanz, Papyri
graecae magicae (Leipzig, 1928), II 169/70; IV, 591, 18o5;
V
351, 366,
etc. These
papyri
are full of archaic
elements, e.g., EPECXII'AA, presumably
Sumerian
Ere'kigal II, 34;
nevertheless it is
interesting
to find a Canaanite
epithet
in
Egyp-
tian documents of the fourteenth
century
B.C. and of the fourth
century
A.D.
~
"An Aramaean
Magical
Text in Hebrew from the Seventh
Century B.C.,"
BASOR
76 (1939),
5-11.
1
Op. cit., (n. 49), 13
f. Professor
Jenni kindly
reminded me of this
reading
when
my paper
was read at the Old Testament
Congress
in Oxford in
1959.
238 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
lel to that of
'El,
would be
appropriate.
In view of
difficulty
of the
reading, however,
no
great weight
can be
placed
on the
parallel.
Fresh and decisive evidence of the
proper interpretation
of the
name'
'3l
'Odm has come from Proto-Canaanite
inscriptions
of the
fifteenth
century
B.C. In
1947,
W. F.
Albright during
his cam-
paign
at
Serabit el-Ihdem, recognized
that the miners of Sinai in
their
proto-Canaanite
texts used
appellations
of the Canaanite
deities identified with the
Egyptian gods Ptah,
creator
god
of
Memphis,
and
Sehmet,
his
consort,
as well as
HIathor,
called
ba'lat(u) gubli, "Lady
of
Byblus,"
as Alan Gardiner
pointed
out
in
1915.55
In his
decipherment
of the
texts, published
in
1948,56
Albright
read dt
btn,
"the
Serpent Lady,"
an
epithet
of
Qudiu-
Asherah,
the
great goddess
of
Canaan,
consort of
'El.57
In
1957,
in an
unpublished study,
he
recognized
a
parallel
title d
tb,
"the
Merciful
One,"
an
epithet
almost identical with the
Ugaritic ap-
pellation
of
'El,
dzi
pa'idi,
"the
Compassionate
One." Since the
Egyptian
texts and
representations
at
Serabit carry
the name and
iconography
of
Ptah,
and it is well known that
Ptah
and 'El were
identified and fused in the
Egypto-Canaanite syncretism
of this
period,
it seemed clear that the cult of the Canaanites of Sinai
centered around the
figures
of 'El and his
consort(s).58
In
1958
the writer
recognized
that a mine
inscription, owing
to
a
faulty facsimile,
had been misread and hence had remained in-
decipherable.59
From the
photograph,
it was obvious that the
inscription
read
'I
d 'im. . .
,
'il
dzi
'l1ami,
"'El,
the ancient
(or
Eternal)
One."
60
This
phrase
is
incapable
of
being
misconstrued.
5
"The
Egyptian Origin
of the Semitic
Alphabet," JEA
(i916),
1-16.
W
"The
Early Alphabetic Inscriptions
from Sinai and Their
Decipherment,"
BASOR 110
(1948),
6-22.
7
On Asherah-'Ilat's cultus in thirteenth
century Lachish,
see F. M.
Cross,
"The
Evolution of the Proto-Canaanite
Alphabet,"
BASOR
134 (1954),
20 f.
'On the
temple
of
Ptah (-'El)
at Ascalon in the Late Bronze
Age,
see
John
Wilson in The
Megiddo
Ivories
by
Gordon Loud
(Chicago, 1939), 11-13.
9
The Mine M
inscription (No. 358)
was
published by
Romain F.
Butin,
S.
M.,
in "The Serabit
Expedition
of 1930,"
Harvard
Theological
Review
25 (1932), 184-
185,
and
P1.
XXVII.
Monsignor
Patrick W. Skehan has
kindly
written to me
reporting
that Butin's
squeeze,
in the collection of the Catholic
University
of
America,
conforms to
my reading.
~ See
Figure I. The bottom stroke of the
'alef (ox-head)
is
broadly cut,
as are
the two horizontals of the d. Between is an
ordinary
lamed
(ox goad),
with the
loop
downward as in the second
lamed,
and the final letter of column 2
(most of
which has
split off).
This first lamed of column
I
was read as the fish
sign (Butin's
samek, Albright's dalet).
It is like no other fish
sign
in the
inscriptions. Compare
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 239
It is
necessarily
the
appellation
of the
god 'El,
and would
naturally
pass
into later Hebrew when the force of
dz
as a demonstrative
particle
was
lost,
as 'El
'6lam.6l
It is also
noteworthy
that
Ptah
has the
epithet,
nb dt or nb
nhh,
both
meaning
"the lord
(or one)
of
eternity."
62
Confirmation of the
reading 'jl
di
'lami
in Proto-Canaanite
came more
quickly
than
expected.
In the latest volume of the
Lachish excavations,63
a prism
is published bearing on one face
the name of
Amenophis
II
(c. 1435-I420 B.C.),
on another face
a
representation
of
Ptah,
and an
inscription
beside
Ptah
in
proto-
Canaanite letters identical in date with
the
Sinai
script.64
On
re-
ceipt
of the
volume, Albright immediately recognized
the
epithet
dzf
gitti,
"lord of the
Vintage (wine-press),"
an
appellation
he had
already
discovered at
Serabit,'6
and reconstructs
"r'El,7
Lord of
the
Vintage."
Aside from the confirmation of the
dating
of the
Sinaitic
inscriptions,
and the identification of
Ptah
with Canaanite
'El,66
the
inscription
shows that in south
Canaan,
the cult of 'El
for
example,
the
sequence
did . . .
beginning
the
right column,
and the
'l
...
sequence
of the
sphinx inscription,
No.
346 (top).
'
In the Old Testament the
usage survives,
with a
noun,
in ze
sinay,
older zf
[<dii] sinay,
in
Judges 5:5,
and as a relative before verbs
sporadically e.g.,
z12
qdnitd,
"whom thou didst create." This
usage is,
of
course,
well known in Phoeni-
cian [cf.
J. Friedrich,
"Zur
Einleitungsformel
der
iltesten ph6nizischen
Inschriften
aus
Byblos," Melanges
Dussaud
(Paris, 1939), 37-47].
The use of di in divine
epithets
is
frequent
in Old
Canaanite,
and
ubiquitous
in South Arabic. We shall
have occasion to cite several below.
Interestingly,
the formation also
appears
not in-
frequently
in Amorite
personal
names:
zi-batni, zi~-sumim,
etc. See the discussions
of I.
J. Gelb,
"La
lingua degli Amoriti,"
Atti della accademia nazionale dei Lincei
XIII
(1958), 152;
and W. L.
Moran, S.J.,
"The Hebrew
Language
in its Northwest
Semitic
Background,"
The Bible and the Ancient Near
East, 61.
62See
Papyrus Harris, ? 308 (Breasted,
Ancient Records of
Egypt IV, 163);
the
Memphite Theology, passim (see John Wilson, ANET, 4-6
and
bibliography);
etc.
~
Lachish IV: The Bronze
Age, by Olga Tufnell,
et
al., Text,
128
(Diringer)
P1. 38, 295.
Cf. the
Amenophis
II
seal,
Rowe S.
37 (A Catalogue
of
Egyptian
Scarabs
[Cairo, 19361),
which bears a
representation
of
Ptah.,
and a
hieroglyphic
inscription, Pth.
"On
the evolution and
chronology
of the Proto-Canaanite
script,
see F. M.
Cross, op.
cit.
(n. 57), 15-24; Albright,
"The
Early Alphabetic Inscriptions. .. ,"
9-13.
'Albright
in
correspondence
dated
7th November, 1958.
The Sinaitic text is
No.
353, col. 3.
On the
epithet,
"lord of
Vintage,"
he
compares
that of
Dionysus,
"lord of
vintage"
(1rporpb7yacos),
worshipped
at
Tyre
in Roman times. Of
course,
the title could be taken as "lord of
(the city)
Gath."
"Cf. the
provocative
name of the Mandaean
genius
Ptahil
(= Ptah-'il?);
compare
Tawril in
Mandaean, Ugar.
tr
'il,
and
Qabbalistic Jry'l.
On the
latter,
240 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
was
widespread,
and that
liturgical epithets
of the
type
'il dii
'l1ami,
'il
dfi
pa'idi,
were characteristic of the
period.
In this new
light
the
interpretation
of the biblical
epithet
'jl
'1ldm
as a
liturgical
title of 'El becomes
highly likely
if not certain.
We must understand it
(however
it was
reinterpreted
in Israelite
tradition)
as
meaning originally "'El,
lord of
Eternity,"
or
perhaps
more
properly, "'El,
the Ancient One." 67 The
mythological
tablets of
Ugarit portray
'El as a
greybeard,
father of the
gods
('ab
bn
'ilm)
and father of man
('ab
'adm).6"
His
appellation
'abfi
sanima "Father of
years,"
is reminiscent of
Ptah's
"lord of
years,"
and can be
scarcely separated
from
attiq ydmin,
"ancient of
Days
(Daniel 7:9)
and
may
be
compared
with 'jl
gibbbr
'dbi
'ad,
"El
the
Warrior,
Eternal
Father,"
a
phrase
from a
"liturgical"
sentence
name or
protocol
of a
king (Isaiah 9:5). Finally
we must com-
pare
a difficult
passage
of Text
76:
III
5-7
of the
Ugaritic corpus.
Im k
qnyn '1[m]
k
dr(dr) dyknn []
69
". ...
our creator
70
is eter
[nal]
Indeed from
age
to
age
he who formed us"
The
phrase, qdniyunf 'dla [mi],
"our creator is eternal" is
reminiscent of the standard
appellation
of 'El as
baniyu bnwt,/'
"Creator of
(all) creatures,"
and of
qdniyatu 'ilima,72
"Procrea-
tress of the
gods,"
an
epithet
of
El's
consort
Asherah-'Ilat.
In
turn these
bring
to mind the
epithet
of 'El:
see
Pope, p. 35
and
references;
on the Mandaean
genii,
see
Albright, AJSL 53
(1936),
12 and references.
'
Reading [yhwh]
'1
d(z)
'im or the like as the
phrase underlying
the tradi-
tional
yhwh 'I 'wlm. -
'
Cf.
Pope's
discussion of 'El's "seniority
and
senility," 32-35.
69 This
follows the reconstruction of H. L.
Ginsberg,
Orientalia
7 (1938),
I-II.
Cf.
Eissfeldt,
El im
ugaritischen Pantheon, 55; Pope,
5I.
70 There is no
longer
the
slightest
reason to doubt this
meaning
of the root
qny
in Canaanite. To be sure it
may
stand closer in
meaning
in this and other contexts
to
"procreating"
than
"creating"
in a medieval or modern sense. See most
recently
S.
Gevirtz, op. cit., 143,
n.
4;
W. A.
Irwin,
"Where Shall Wisdom Be Found," JBL
80
(I96I),
133-142; Pope, 51-52;
K.
Galling,
"The
Scepter
of
Wisdom,"
BASOR
119 (1950), 17.
'
Texts
49: III, 5,
II;
51: II, II;
sI:
III, 32;
2
Aqhat I, 25.
72 Texts 51: I, 23; III, 26, 30, 35; IV, 32.
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 241
t6ru 'ilu 'abfihfi
'ilu milku dfi
yakdninuhi
73
"Bull 'El his father
King
'El who created him
(Ba'l)"
The
appellations
"eternal" and
"creator,"
and "eternal or ancient
creator" are thus characteristic
designations
of the
great god
'El
in Canaanite
myths
and
liturgies.74
2.
'el
'ely6n
'El as the ancient creator
brings
us to our second biblical
epithet: 'Wl 'elyon q6ne ~dmdyim wa'dreq,
"'El
'Ely6n,
creator of
heaven and
earth,"
in Genesis
14: 8,
and in its shortened form
'
yl 'elydn
in Genesis
14:
18. The title
may
be construed as mean-
ing
"the
god
'Ely6n,
creator. . .
,"
or
"'El
the Most
High,
crea-
tor.
..
,"
or
"'El-'Ely6n,
creator. . ."
(i.e.,
a double divine name
of a familiar
type
in the Canaanite
pantheon).
In the last-named
instance,
the divine name
'Ely8n may
be taken as
secondary
in the
formula,
the result of a fusion of
originally separate deities,
or it
may
be taken as an alternate name of 'El
deriving
from certain
Canaanite circles where
'Elyon
was not
distinguished
as a
separate
deity.
In
Sakkunyaton's theogony
cited
by
Philo
Byblius,75
'Elyon
(')XLovv)
is treated as
belonging
to one of the
"cosmogonic pairs,"
specifically
as father of Heaven and his consort-sister
Earth,
the
parents
of
'El,
as well as
Dagon
and other "effective" deities. This
complicates
the
problem
of
identifying 'Ely8n.
Whether in
Philo,
in
Hesiod,
in the
Babylonian god
lists which enumerate the cos-
mogonic pairs,
or in the Creation account in Enlima
elig,
and so
on,
we
regularly
find that the
gods
before the
generation
of 'El in
Canaanite
mythology,
Kronos in
Greek,
Anu
(sometimes Enlil)
in
Babylonian,
stand in a series of abstract or natural
pairs,
often
with
rhyming names,
and do not
appear
outside
cosmogonic
myths.76
The
gods
with
living cults,
who
figure significantly
in the
hierarchy
of the divine
council,
and who
appear
in
personal names,
"
Texts
51:
IV, 48;
'nt
V, 43,
44.
" On F-'- ilu dfi
yaqniyu
t/dadi-mi,
I
Aqhat 219-220,
see below.
5 apud Eusebius, Praep. evan. I,
Io.
"
On
the divine
generations
and
god lists,
see D.
O.
Edzard, op. cit., 74 f.;
and
H. G.
Gilterboch, Kumarbi,
1oo-115,
and references.
242 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
begin
with
Kronos, El, Anu, Kumarbi,
and so on. The lists of
gods having
cults from
Ugarit,
for
example, begin
each one with
'El as we have seen.
Sometimes,
of
course,
the theoretical head of
the
pantheon
recedes to become a deus otiosus:
Anu, Kronos,
and
to a lesser
degree
'El. But in
any case,
the more remote cosmo-
gonic pairs
are
typologically separate
from the
gods
of the cults.
Moreover,
to
complicate matters,
on occasion Philo in
reporting
Sakkunyaton,
mixes
gods
of
living
cults
(e.g., ba'l Jamem)
into
the
cosmogonic series,
sometimes he
splits
a
deity originally
single: e.g., samem-rzlm (
=
vovpdvwoq),
and
o;pavo'r.
'Elyon,
or Phoenician
'Ilyfin,
as well as Ba'l-?amem
may
have been in-
troduced
secondarily
either
by
Philo or his sources. In
short,
the
epithet
'Ely6n,
which
appears
in the Old Testament and in the
inscriptions applied
to a "cult
deity,"
cannot in likelihood be
identical
originally
with
El's
cosmogonic
forebear.76a
The mention of
'ElyOn
in the Sefire I
inscription 77
is more
pertinent
to our discussion. There is a
long
series of
gods
called
upon
to witness the
treaty
recorded in the
inscription,
listed for
the most
part
in
pairs, usually
a
god
and his consort. The
pattern
then shifts
slightly,
and we read
". .. [and
before Hadad of
H1a]lab (Aleppo)
and before Sibit and before 'El and
'ElySn
and
before
Heav[en
and Earth and before the
Ab]yss
and
Springs
and before
Day
and
Night.
. .
." The
pair
'El and
'Elyin
comes
after the main
tutelary gods, immediately
before the
great
natural
pairs summarizing
the
powers
of the cosmos. What are we to
make of the
pair?
One
may argue
that since the
pairs
of
gods
and their consorts feature
separate deities,
'El and
'Elyon
are
here
distinguished.
On the other hand their association in a
pair
in such a
series,
and followed
by
natural
pairs, suggests
that
they
must be
intimately
associated. It is
possible
to
interpret
the
pair
as a double name of a
single god
as often at
Ugarit,78 using
the
biblical references for
support:
'El-'Elybn.
The chances
are,
how-
76a
[See now the excellent article of Remi
Lack,
"Les
origines
de
Elyon,
le Trbs-
Haut,
dans le tradition cultuelle
d'Israil,"
CBQ 24 (1962), pp. 44-64.
Unfortu-
nately
it came into
my
hands after
my essay
was in
proof.]
77A:
10--I2.
See most
recently
A.
Dupont-Sommer
and
Jean Starcky,
Les
inscriptions
arameennes de Sfire
(Paris, 1958); J.
A.
Fitzmyer,
"The Aramaic In-
scriptions
of Sefire I and
II," JAOS
81
(1961), 178-222;
M.
Noth,
"Der his-
torische
Hintergrund
der Inschriften von
Sefire,"
ZDPV
77 (1961), 118-172.
7
Cf.
Fitzmyer, op. cit., 192-193.
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 243
ever,
that
'Ely6n,
early
an
epithet
of
'El,79
has
split apart
into a
separate cult,
and hence 'El and
'Ely6n may
be
paired
as
separate
deities.80 This would
support
the view that
'Ely6n
is
correctly
used as an
appellation
of 'El in
Genesis,
and
later, interchangeably
with 'El as an
epithet
of Yahweh.
Since there is at least an element of
ambiguity
about the term
'Elyon
in the biblical 'El
'Ely6n,
we must determine the
identity
of the
god
of the
Jerusalem
cultus from the
liturgical
formula
"creator of heaven and earth."
Fortunately
there are
ample
data.
That 'El was the creator
god par
excellence of
Ugarit
and
Canaan is
patent
from the texts
already
cited. There is more di-
rect
evidence, however,
from later Canaanite
inscriptions.
At
Karatepe
in the
eighth century B.C.,
we find the title
'Nl qjnj 'ar?,
"'El,
creator of the
earth,"
and the same formula
crops up again
in a Neo-Punic
inscription
of
Leptis Magna,
and in a
Palmyrene
bilingual.81
Levi della
Vida,
followed
by Pope,
has insisted that
this is the
original appellation,
with omission of
"heaven,"
and
that 'El here and elsewhere is to be
regarded
as a chthonic
deity.
We shall touch on this
point later;
it is sufficient to
say
here that
'El's
occasional chthonic associations
by
no means
disqualify
him
from the full
title,
"creator of heaven and
earth,"
and that to
judge
from
parallels,
the
longer
title has
every
claim of
being origi-
nal. In a seventh
century
Aramaic
papyrus,82 unfortunately
dam-
aged,
there is the
phrase, ending "[ ]
of heaven and
earth,
and
Ba'liamayn.
. ." where we
may tentatively
read
"
['El/
or 'El
'Elyon/ creator]
of heaven and
earth,
etc."
83
We
may compare
also Akkadian
epithets:
bdni
Samg
u
ergeti,84
"creator of heaven
Cf. the South Arabic
epithet,
'1
t'ly, "El,
Most
High,"
G.
Ryckmans,
Les noms
propres sud-simitiques,
I
(Paris, 1934),
2.
80This
would also account for Philo's
alleged
confusion.
atSee
L. della
Vida,
"El
'Ely8n
in Genesis
14: 18-20," JBL 63
(I944), I-9.
On
the Hittite
Ilkunirsa,
consort of
AMertu (Asherah),
see
Otten,
"Ein
kanaan~iischer
Mythus
aus
Bogazkiy," Mitteilungen
des Instituts
fiir Orientforschung, (1953),
125-150;
and the discussion of M.
Pope, 52-54.
To his discussion we should add
only
that the
god
kinner now
appears
in the
god
list from
Ugarit (RS
20.24;
cf.
Text
17,
I.
io where knr is to be
read; Nougayrol,
CRAIBL
[19571, 83.).
'Published
by
A.
Dupont-Sommer,
Semitica I
(1948), 43-68;
Cf. H. L.
Ginsberg,
"An Aramaic
Contemporary
of the Lachish
Letters,"
BASOR
iii
(Oct.,
1948), 24-27.
3 Ginsberg, ibid., 26,
n. 8.
' Knut
Tallquist,
Akkadische
GStterepitheta
(Helsinki, 1938), 69, 366.
244 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
and earth"
(Marduk);
bil Jamj u
erseti,s8
"lord of heaven and
earth"
(Anu, Enlil, Marduk, Samas);
abu
samj
u
erseti,s6
"father
of heaven and earth"
(Enlil);
bdndt
ame~
u
erseti,s7
"creatress of
heaven and earth"
(Mah),
bilit "amj u
erseti,ss
"mistress of
heaven and earth"
(chthonic Damkina, Inanna, IStar), etc.8s
In
summary,
we must take the formula
q6ne amdyim wa-'dres,
"creator of heaven and earth" as a
liturgical sobriquet, originating
in the cult of Canaanite 'El.
We are enabled to
establish, therefore,
on the basis of extra-
biblical
evidence,
that at least three
liturgical epithets
in the Pa-
triarchal narratives connect the Patriarchs with the cult of Ca-
naanite 'El: 'El
god
of
Israel-Jacob (Shechem),
'El
'Olm
(Beer-
sheba),
and 'El
['ElyOn],
Creator of Heaven and Earth
(Jeru-
salem).
3.
el
adday.
The most
frequent,
and
unfortunately
the most
enigmatic
of
the
epithets
of the
god
of the Patriarchs is 'el
Jadday.
This is the
favorite
designation
of the Patriarchal
deity
in
Priestly
circles.
In Exodus
6:2,
the
Priestly
source
explicitly
identifies the
god
of
Abraham, Isaac,
and
Jacob
as 'El
Sadday,
and notes in
agreement
with one stream of
Epic tradition,
that the name Yahweh was
introduced first in the Mosaic era.
It is no
longer possible
to doubt that the
Priestly
tradition rests
ultimately
on historical memories
preserved
in conservative cultic
materials. Genesis
49:25, belonging
to
extremely early tradition,90
utilizes the
epithet
in full form
'l
"adday, according
to the best
textual
tradition,
and the element
'adday appears
in
Priestly
lists
of
personal
names attributed to the Mosaic
Age, which,
whatever
their
history, actually
reflect characteristic formations of the
onomasticon of the second
millennium.Y1
One extrabiblical oc-
5 Tallquist, p. 54.
sTallquist, p.
2.
87
Tallquist, p. 71.
s
Tallquist, p. 64.
~
Compare
also
Ugaritic ba'l
'arsi (of Ba'l Haddu)
Text
49: I, 14-15;
etc.
"
The
Joseph blessing occurring
in
widely variant,
but
ultimately
identical form
in Gen.
49,
and
Deuteronomy 33: 13-17,
must be dated in the era of the
Judges,
probably
in the eleventh
century
B.C. See F. M. Cross and D. N.
Freedman,
"The
Blessing
of
Moses," JBL 67 (1948), 205,
n.
41.
1
See the lists of the
neif'im
in Num. 1:
5-15;
2:
3-29;
etc.
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 245
currence is
certain,
one
possible,
both from the fourteenth
century
B.C.:
sad(d)8-'am(m)i
or
sad(d)ay-'am(m)i,92
and
Ugaritic
tdy.93
The element
'adday appears
to derive from a root
tdw/tdy,
as
shown most
persuasively by
W. F.
Albright
in
1935."4
This
etymology
alone fits the West Semitic evidence."
Probably also,
"
See M.
Burchardt,
Die
altkanaan~iischen
Fremdwiirte und
Eigennamen
im
Aegyptischen II,
No. 826: sa-di-'-mi
(following Albright's system
for
Egyptian
syllabic orthography);
cf. W. F.
Albright,
The Biblical Period
(Pittsburgh, 1950),
7, 56, n.
20.
8C. Virolleaud,
Le
palais royal d'Ugarit
II
(Paris, 1957),
No.
58.
I.
I8
tdy;
cf.
J. Nougayrol,
Le
palais royal d'Ugarit
III
(Paris, 1955),
I5.
42,
i.
15
f
ia-da-ya.
'
"The Names Shaddai and
Abram," JBL 54 (1935), I73-193.
The latest
study,
and in most
ways
a
superb one,
is that of Manfred
Weippert, "Erwligungen
zur
Etymologie
des Gottesnamens 'El
Saddaj,"
ZDMG NF
36 (1961), 42-62.
'
Control of the sibilants in Canaanite
depends primarily
on the evidence of
the
Egyptian transcriptions. Fortunately
the
Egyptian equations
are
remarkably
consistent. The
following equivalences
hold
throughout
the material.
Proto- Amarna
Jerusalem
Canaanite
Egyptian
Canaanite Canaanite Amorite
Ugaritic
t
s
g B
s
(t)
s
s s s
S s
s
It will be noted that Canaanite in the Amarna letters is listed in two
columns,
one for the main series of Canaanite
letters,
one for anomolous
transcriptions
from
the
Jerusalem
Amarna letters. The
Jerusalem transcriptions,
as is
generally
rec-
ognized, probably
do not reflect a different
dialect, unique
in the Canaanite
group,
but rather a
peculiarity
in the scribe's use of the
syllabary:
see
Goetze,
"Is
Ugaritic
a Canaanite
Dialect," Language 17 (1941), 128,
n.
15;
W. L.
Moran,
op. cit., 59 n. 42.
It
may
be noted also that the Proto-Canaanite
inscriptions
from
Sinai also reflect the distinction between 9 and
9, following
the
pattern
of
Egyptian
and Amarna data: W. F.
Albright,
BASOR
iio
(1948), 15,
n.
42. Thus,
the writ-
ing
ga-de4-e in
Jerusalem
Letter
287, 56 probably
was
pronounced 'adi;
in
any
case there is a consistent distinction between 9 and 9 in the
Egyptian transcriptions,
in the Akkadian
transcriptions including
even the anomolous
Jerusalem group,
where the values are reversed. There can be no
doubt,
therefore that in South
Canaanite,
as well as later
Hebrew,
the sibilants 9 and
'
had not fallen
together
in the Amarna
Age.
In Phoenician the shift
9>9
took
place
before the
development
of the conventional
alphabet, probably
in the thirteenth
century (when Ugaritic t
shifted to
';
see C.
Virolleaud,
GLECS VIII
[I96o],
72-73)
or in the twelfth cen-
tury
B.C. At all events it must be insisted that the failure of the Phoenician
alpha-
bet to
distinguish t, 9,
and
9,
has no
bearing
on the shift of the sibilants in other
dialects. In both
Hebrew
and Old
Aramaic,
notation of the sibilants is
incomplete,
because scribes
adopted,
under influence of Phoenician scribal tradition an
alphabet
not devised for their
phonemic system.
In no case can it be held that the Proto-
Canaanite
alphabet developed independently
in
Palestine,
Phoenicia and
Aram;
the
palaeographical
data will not tolerate such a view.
It must be
argued
on the basis of the
Egyptian
evidence
(sa-di-'-mi),
that the
name
sadday
has as its
sibilant,
Canaanite t or 9. Since Hebrew
gadday requires
either t or
9,
an
etymology
with t is
required
if we follow normal
equivalences,
as
methodologically
we must.
Moreover,
since both Hebrew
Sade "steppe,"
and
246 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
we should combine West Semitic
tdw/tdy
with East Semitic
'adfz/
<tadwum, "mountain," despite
some
difficulties."6
Whether this
equivalence proves
to be correct or
incorrect,97
the Northwest
Semitic evidence is determinant for the
etymology
of
'adday.
In
any case,
the
epithet 'adday
seems to mean "the mountain one."
98
While the
morphological analysis
of the name
ladday
has
long
been
disputed,
it
appears
to the writer that the formation cannot
be
separated
from the series of West Semitic divine
epithets
known from
Ugaritic sources, Pidray, Tallay,
and
especially
'Arsay.
The vocalization of the
morpheme -ay (or -ayyu)
in these
Jerusalem
Amarna 'a-de4-e reflect Canaanite
',
an
etymological
connection with
Sadday
is excluded
(pace Weippert).
The
Ugaritic
names
tdy, 'a-da-ya
thus fit our
analysis,
and
perhaps
we should
add tdtb, tad-tadb(a)
like
Ili-rdm, 'ammu-rdma, comparing
tb'm and
tb'l.
On the
formation,
see
Gelb, op. cit., ?
3.3.8.2.4,
and
compare
the
epithet
of 'El:
ddi-tdb
(Sinai).
SThe
development
of the sibilants in Akkadian is still not clear. The data for
the
etymology
of
sadfi
is found in Old Akkadian. There are two recent treatments
of this
material, J. Aro,
"Die semitischen Zischlaute
(t) s,
'
und s und ihre Vertre-
tung
im
Akkadischen,"
Orientalia 28
(1959), 321-335;
and I.
J. Gelb,
Old Akka-
dian
Writing
and
Grammar;
2nd
(enlarged)
ed.
(Chicago, 1961), esp. 35-39;
and
A.
Goetze,
"The Sibilants in Old
Babylonian,"
RA
52
(I958),
137-149 (called
to
my
attention
by
Thorkild
Jacobsen).
In Old
Akkadian,
*Sadwum
appears
written SA.TU and
ga-du-(im).
The
latter
writing
is
expected,
since
etymological
t
normally
is written
9a, Si, su,
etc.
The
writing
SA normal with
etymological
1/S,
also occurs with
etymological t
in the normative
phase
of Old
Akkadian,
and so
frequently (see Gelb, op. cit., p.
36)
that its occurrence in SA.TU can
certainly
not
surprise.
"7The
only
real
argument
for
identifying
Hebrew
Sadd,
"plain, steppe"
and
Akkadian
gadi
"mountain,
hill
country"
as
cognate
has been on the basis of
meaning. However,
their
only
common
ground
if we
may put
it so is
upland
steppes
or lowland hills. As for their nuclear
meanings,
Sade is to har as
S?ru
is to
Jadf,
and their
etymological identity
can
only
be
argued
on the
principle
of what
the Arab
lexicographers
call
didd (literally, "contrary/similar").
98
The
primitive meaning
is
obviously "breast,"
Arab.
tdy,
Heb.
Sad, Ugar. td,
etc.
However,
the
secondary meaning developed
for
transparent
reasons
(cf.
the
American Grand Teton
range), presumably
in
Akkadian,
and as we shall
see,
in
Ugaritic.
Note also in Genesis
49:25,26,
that after the mention of
"your
father's
god,"
and its
parallel
'El
gadday, blessings
are listed from Heaven
(Jamdyim),
Deep
(thihdm),
Breasts
(saddyim)
and Womb
(rdhkam),
and
finally
mountains.
There seems to be a
play
on words here between
Sadday
and
Saddyim,
and it is
just possible
that in the
fertility
cliches behind the
present composition,
there is
also
knowledge
of the
epithet
of
'El's consort:
RaFmay.
We
may
also observe the
association between mountains and the breasts of Tiamat in the creation account.
See the lines of
Enzfma
elis
published by Gurney
and
Finkelstein,
the
Sultantepe
Tablets I
(London, 1957),
No.
12,
lines
8'-9',
now combined with older
material,
B.
Landsberger
and
J.
V. Kinnier
Wilson,
"The Fifth Tablet of
Enfima eli,,"
JNES
XX(I96I),
154-179, esp.
i6o,
175.
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 247
names is now established in cuneiform
transcription."9
It is no
doubt the West Semitic
adjectival
suffix found in Amorite
gen-
tilics as well as in
hypocoristic
formations. The
pattern,
"the one
of. . ." and an element of
nature, mist, dew, earth,
or
mountain,
is
wholly
suitable.
'Arsay,
"the one of the earth" must be taken
to mean "the one of the Underworld."
100oo
Similarly,
we should
assume that the
epithet 'ad(d)ay
refers to the cosmic
mountain,
the
Weltberg.
The
question may
now be
asked,
is the
appellation
'El
?adday
a cult name of the Canaanite 'El? The earliest
poetry
of Israel
uses
Sadday
in
parallelism
with
'El,
and with
'Ely6n.lo0
But the
identification of these Patriarchal
epithets
with Yahweh has no
doubt
already
taken
place.
I am not sure that there is
yet
sufficient
evidence
to demonstrate the thesis that
'adday
is an
appellation
of 'El. For one
thing,
we are embarrassed with the
plenitude
of
deities associated with mountains in the Canaanite and Amorite
pantheons.
The dominant
figure
in Canaanite
mythology,
at least
in
Ugaritic traditions,
is
Ba'l
Sap6n,
Haddu of Mount Cassius.
Moreover,
the elements
har, "mountain,"
and
sur,
"crag
or moun-
tain" are
frequent
in Amorite names of the second millennium. It is
not
impossible
that
'adday is,
after
all,
an
epithet
of
Ba'l-Hadad.
In this
case, however,
it is difficult to
explain,
as Eissfeldt has
argued,'02
how in Israelite
tradition,
'El
Sadday
or
Sadday
could
be used
blandly
as an orthodox
epithet
of Yahweh. It is somewhat
easier
to
suppose
that
Sadday
was the
designation
of an old Amor-
ite
deity,
one of the
gods, perhaps
identical with
Har,
introduced
into Palestine
by
Patriarchal
peoples.
In this case
?adday
would
be an
appellation
of an old clan or covenant
deity, secondarily
identified with 'El.
There
is, however,
some evidence which lends
plausibility
to
the notion that
Sadday,
whether Canaanite or Amorite in
origin,
was a cult name of 'El.
Eissfeldt and
especially Pope
have
greatly
advanced our under-
gSee J.
T.
Milik,
"Giobbe
38,
28 in
siro-palestinese
e la dea
ugaritica Pdry
bt
ar,"
Rivista biblica
3 (1958), 252-254.
To his evidence we should add the
reading
d
pi-id-ra-i (Nougayrol
d
bi-it-ra-i)
in
17.116, 3:
PRU
IV, 132.
'o
This is confirmed in the
pantheon
list
by
her identification with Allatum.
'o In the Balaam Oracles: Numbers
24:4,
i6. On the
antiquity
of this
piece,
see W. F.
Albright,
"The Oracles of
Balaam," JBL 63 (1944), 207-233.
"o
"El and
Yahweh," JSS
I
(1956), 25-37.
248 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
standing
of the abode of
'El, by
their
analysis
of two
passages
which
repeat
in
Ugaritic
texts.'0
The crucial lines are the fol-
lowing, roughly
vocalized:
'idaka la-tattina
panima
'im 'ili mabbika naharemi
qirba 'apiqi
tihdm
(a)
temi
tagliyu
tadi 104 'ili
wa-tibd'u
qarsa
malki 'abi anima lo
Then she set
(her)
face
Toward 'El at the source of the
Rivers,
In the midst of the
Double-deep,
She
penetrated (to)
the mount of 'El and entered
The shrine of
King,
Father of Years.
'idaka
layatti [na panima
'im
lutp]ini
'ili
di-pa'idi
t6k hurga
[ni
yagliyu
tadi
'i[li
wa-yibd'u
qarsa malki]
'abi
anima
lo5a
Then he set
(his)
face
Toward
Lutpan,
'El the
Compassionate.
To the midst of the cosmic mount . . .
He
penetrated (to)
the mount of 'El and entered
The shrine of
King ('El),
Father of Years.
El's abode here is
designated by
two
terms, hurian, "Weltberg"
and
d/tad 'El,
which we have translated "mount." The location of
the mountain is at the source of the
Double-deep,
the cosmic
source of waters. This is the
Elysium
of Canaanite
mythology.
Pope
locates both the cosmic
source,
and the mountain of El in
the Underworld.
Perhaps
it would be better to
say
that the cosmic
mount is the locus where heaven and hell
merge,
where the cosmos
comes to
focus.'06
It seems
likely
also that the biblical
expressions
108 Eissfeldt, 30,
n.
4; Pope, 61-72.
0
On
d/tadf,
see below.
06
2 Aqhat VI, 46-49; 49: 1, 4-8; 51: IV, 20-24; 129, 4-5;
'nt
pl. vi:V, 13-16.
"a 'nt
pl.
IX:
III, 21-24;
cf. 'nt
pl.
ix:
II, 23.
'O
We
may compare
the
mythological
motives in Enoch and in the Aramaic
Testament of Levi which localize the
gates
to heaven and to
hell,
at the
pinnacle
of Mt. Hermon and at the
springs
of Banias. See
J.
T.
Milik,
RB 62
(1955), 398-
406; esp. 404-5
and n. 2.
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 249
'adat
' l 107
and
har m
26'd,l0s
the "council of
El,"
and the
"moun-
tain of the
(divine) assembly"
refer to the same locale. We
may
compare
also 'idk
pnm lytn/
tk
gr
<'i>l
/
'm
phr m'd,o09
"(the
messengers)
set their
face/
To the midst of the mountain of
<'E
>1/110
Towards the
meeting
of the
(divine)
council."
From these
data,
it is
abundantly
clear that 'El is associated
with the cosmic
mountain,
the seat of the divine
council,
and that
an
appellation
"the One of the
(cosmic) mountain,"
would not be
inappropriate.
With some
risk,
we
may proceed
one more
step.
In
parallelism
with
hursan,
and
alternating
with
guru
<'E>I(?)
is the
expres-
sion
d/td
'il which we have translated "Mount of 'El." While a
number
of scholars have
suggested
this
translation,
no
plausible
etymology
of the term
d/td
has been
proposed.
E. A.
Speiser upon
the
discovery
of the
Ugaritic
abecedaries
correctly analyzed
the
origin
of the first
sign,"'-
in Canaanite d.
In the
Ugaritic
texts the
spirant
d
normally
has shifted to
d,
though
the shift is
obviously recent,
and
archaizing spellings ap-
pear.
Thus in Text
77:45,
df is written
dzf;
in
62:4
and in
77:45
dp'id,
da
pa'id;
in
67:
VI: 20 durd' is written
durd', "arm";
and
most
striking,
in two Amorite
names,
dimri-ba'l
and dimri-haddu.112
This
analysis
leaves several terms
unexplained, however, chiefly
dd, "breast," dbl,
a
place-name, drt, "vision,"
and above all the
term
dd,
"mountain." The solution comes in the
recognition
that
etymological
t stands behind each of these:
tadf,
"breast" is the
regular spelling;
dbl
scarcely
can be
separated
from Amarna
?abilu,
bibl.
sobal, Ugaritic (place-name) 'a-bi-il
(?),
N. Arab.
tbl; d/trt,
Heb.
Swr,
"to
see,"
Amarna
Nirti;
113
and
finally d/td,
which we now must take to be td or
tdw, cognate
with
'adday.
The reason for the use of
this
grapheme
to
represent
not
only
"7Psalm
82:I.
10
Isaiah
14:I3.
109137:I9-2I; cf. 137:13-15.
UOReading
'il for the
apparent U; cf. Pope, p. 69.
m"A
Note on
Alphabetic Origins,"
BASOR
121
(1951), 17-21.
m Compare
the element
zimri-
in
Mari
personal names;
the
Ugaritic
warrior
class, dmr;
bibl. zmrt in Exodus
15:2
and II Sam.
23:1
and South Arabic dmr. See
F. M. Cross and D. N.
Freedman,
"The
Song
of
Miriam," JNES
I4(I955),
243,
n. b.
m
On
"irti,
"I have been
betrayed,"
see W. F.
Albright,
BASOR
89 (1943), 13,
n. 13.
250 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
/d/,
its
original value,
but also
/t/
is
immediately apparent.
It
has been
long recognized
that
etymological
t at
Ugarit, normally
indicated
by
the
sign "t", actually
has
already
shifted in
pro-
nunciation, probably
to
something
like
/s/ by
the time of our
texts,
and that the shift will continue until in the latest
texts,
probably
of the thirteenth
century B.C.,
t as well as S has fallen
together
with
.114
The
change
from the sound t to s or the
like,
can be shown
by transcriptional materials, Hittite, Egyptian,
and
Ugaritic.115 Therefore,
to
express
the
spirant /t/,
in archaic or
archaizing
or dialectal
words,
the scribe used the
sign
for the
nearest available
spirant, namely
the voiced
equivalent d,
itself a
sound all but lost in normal
usage.
By
this line of
analysis
we are led to read tadli
'il,
"mount of
'El,"
and to
recognize
an
etymological
relationship
between
Ugarit-
ic
td/tdy
and the divine
epithet
of the
god
of the fathers 'El
Sad-
day, "'El,
the Mountain
One."
We are not
yet
able to establish
certainly
whether
(i) adday
was an old Amorite
deity
who was
early
identified
by
the
Fathers
with Canaanite
'El,
or
(2) adday
was another
epithet
of Ca-
naanite 'El in its
original
cultic
setting.
On
the one hand the
tie
with
Ugaritic
td
'il suggests perhaps
that 'El
?adday
like
the
other cult names we have examined
belonged
to Canaan. On
the
other
hand,
'El
kadday
is not attached in biblical lore to a
sanc-
tuary.
It
may
even be that
kadday
is an
epithet
of Amorite
'El,
in which case our alternates tend to dissolve.
II. YAHWEH AND 'EL
The discussion of the
meaning
and
origin
of the name
Yahweh
constitutes a monumental witness to the
industry
and
ingenuity
'U
Provisionally
see C.
Virolleaud,
GLECS VIII
(I96O),
72-73
for remarks on
a new
retrograde text,
and references to the older ones. In these texts
several
phonemes
have
merged, including etymological
t and '. The
script
is
highly
de-
veloped (or degenerate) typologically
from that of the normal texts. Both the
de-
veloped phonemic
structure and
script suggest
an advanced
date.
115
Egyptian
s and Hittite cuneiform
'
were
pronounced /s/,
as is well
established.
Cf. W. F.
Albright,
The Vocalization of the
Egyptian Syllabic Orthography (New
Haven, 1934), 13,
n.
51,
and references. For
example, Egyptian
sutat
appears
in
Hittite as
sutak; Tes'up appears
in
Egyptian
transcription
as Ti-su-pi, and
in
Ugaritic
as
Ttb.
In
Ugaritic
we
find 'alty,
in cuneiform mat a-la-'i-ya,
in Egyptian
transcription
'A-ra-sa. Cf.
Ugaritic tpllm, Suppiluliuma
(Hittite cuneiform 9up-
piluliuma);
Egyptian
Mu-ra-si-ra,
1Iursilis,
Ha-tu-si-ra,
Hattusilis, etc.,
etc.
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 251
of biblical scholars.
Fortunately,
there is no
space
to review it
here."" Several new lines of evidence have
emerged
from
epi-
graphic materials, however,
which
promise
to advance the dis-
cussion.
In the first
place,
the form Yahweh has been established as
primitive by
its
appearance
in
epigraphic
sources. In extrabiblical
materials which date before the
Exile,
it is the invariable inde-
pendent
form. This is not to
say
that the
jussive
form
yahik
is
not
early;
in fact it is
surprising
that
yahkf
as an
independent
name does not
appear
before the fifth
century
B.C.117
At all
events there seems no valid reason to doubt that Yahweh is a
primi-
tive divine
name,
or at least an element in a
liturgical epithet
or
sentence name. It
appears
as
yhwh
in the seventh
century
Lachish
letters. It
appears
also in an
unpublished
seal from the
eighth
century
B.C.
recently acquired by
the Harvard Semitic Museum.
The seal reads
interestingly enough lmqnyw/
'bd .
yhwh,"8
"Be-
longing
to
Miqneiah,
the slave of Yahweh." In non-biblical sources
of the
early
first and late second
millennia,
the
independent
divine
name
appears certainly
in the
MeSa'
Stone
(ninth century B.C.),
and
very probably
in an
unpublished
list of South Palestinian
place-names
from thirteenth
century Egypt.
The name is
spelled
y-h-w3.119
No other
suggested
occurrences seem to withstand
close
linguistic scrutiny.
" A review of recent research until
1957
can be found in R.
Mayer,
"Der
Gottesname
Jahwe
im Lichte der neuesten
Forschung,"
Biblische Zeitschrift NF 2
(1958), 26-53.
To this we should add the
following
selected items of recent date
not to be found in
Mayer's paper:
A.
Murtonen,
A
Philological
and
Literary
Treatise on the Old Testament Divine Names
'1, 'lwh,
'lhym,
and
yhwh (Hel-
sinki, 1952);
M. H.
Segal, "El, Elohim,
and YHWH in the
Bible," JQR 46 (1955),
89-115;
M.
Reisel,
The
Mysterious
Name of Y.H.W.H.
(Assen, 1957);
David
Noel
Freedman,
"The Name of the God of
Moses," JBL 79 (1960), 151-156;
R.
Abba,
"The Divine Name
Yahweh," JBL
8o
(1961), 320-328;
S.
Mowinckel,
"The
Name of the God of
Moses,"
HUCA XXXII
(1961), 121-133.
n7 yahfl apparently
was selected as the
combinatory form, yahweh
as the inde-
pendent
form
quite early
in wide circles.
"
The
seal, shortly
to be
published along
with the Museum's
fairly
extensive
collection,
is
exquisitely designed
and
engraved,
on one side in the
positive,
on
the other side in the
negative.
No doubt it
belonged
to a
Temple
official of
Judah.
The element
-yaw
<
-yahfi
is
expected
in
early Judah
as well as Samaria.
After about
700 B.C., despite
a
continuing general tendency
to
syncope
of inter-
vocalic
h, spellings
reverted to the historic
-yhw, only
to shift
again
to
-yw
by
the fifth
century.
.n.The reference is
reported by
W. F.
Albright
in
JBL 67 (1948), 380.
The
list is to be
published by
H. W. Fairman of
Liverpool
in the near future.
252 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
We must
begin
in
any analysis
of the
name, therefore,
with the
form
yahweh (as
well as the form
yahki).
This should have been
recognized
earlier
by
historical
linguists
on the basis of
parallels
in related Near Eastern material. West Semitic names
normally
begin
in
transparent appellations
or sentence
names,
and shorten
or
disintegrate. They
do not
begin
in numinous
grunts
or shouts
and build
up
into
liturgical
sentences or
appellations.
Again
new evidence for the
morphological analysis
of the name
Yahweh
has
appeared
in Amorite
personal names, notably
in the
Mari texts. There are now at least a score of names which follow
the
pattern: ya-wi-DINGIR
/Yahwi-'I1l/,
ya-wi-i-la /Yahwi-
'IJd/, ya-wi-dIM /Yahwi-Haddu/.
A much more restricted
group
is
represented by
the
following:
Ya-ah-wI-DINGIR
/
yahwi-'I1l/,
or
/Yahwi-'I1l/; la-ah-wi-ba-lu
/Lahwi-Ba'lu/
from
/*La-yahwi-Ba'lu/
or
Lahwi-Ba'lu/
from
/*La-yahwi-Ba'lu/, la-ah-wi-DINGIR
/Lahwi-'I1/
or
/Lahwi-
I1/, la-ah-wi-ma-li-ku /Lahwi-Maliku/
or
Lahwi-Maliku/.
Fi-
nally
there are two
interesting
names:
ya-lhi-DINGIR
/yahi-'Il/
and
ya-u-i-li /yahii-'Ili/.
These several formations document a series of characteristic
verb forms used in Amorite. Since
h
is
represented by
h
in these
transcriptions
in a
very high percentage
of its
occurrences,
and
conversely, h
is
represented
in a low
percentage (but
is occasion-
ally represented by
h),
it seems certain that
Yahwi-N
is
usually
to
be read in the
first, largest group.
In the small second
group, prob-
ably
Yahwi-N
or Lahwi-N is the dominant
form,
but we cannot be
sure of the
laryngeal.
The final two forms are
interesting
as
shortened or better
apocopated jussives: yahi-z120
and
yahk-.
The forms
represented
here
yahwi-
and
yahkf
are
transparently
causative
(Hif'il) imperfects,
the latter the
apocopated jussive.
The G-stem
(Qal)
in the
imperfect,
stative-intransitive,
would be
*yihway,121
Heb.
yihye
. The
meaning
of the names is also trans-
a2Again,
without more
forms,
we cannot be certain of the
laryngeal.
On the
analysis
of these
forms,
see I.
J. Gelb,
"La Lingua degli amoriti,"
ad.
loc.
121This is
posited by
the
Barth-Ginsberg
law
(so-called),
which
operated
throughout
the Canaanite dialects
including Ugaritic,
and
widely
in
Amorite,
al-
though
there are some unsolved
problems
in the
pattern
of
qal imperfect
forms
among
the Amorite dialects.
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 253
parent,
"The
god
N creates
(or produces),"
or
"may
the
god
N
create."
122
This material
strongly supports
the view that the name
Yahweh
is a causative
imperfect
of the Amorite-Proto-Hebrew verb
kwy,
"to
be."
123 124
Moreover,
the evidence
suggests
that
yakwe
is a
~
In his article cited in note
116,
S. Mowinckel asks how one
explains
the
form
yahki
if
yahwe
is taken to be a
finite, imperfect
verb form. As a matter of
fact the
necessity
of
explaining
both forms on the basis of documented historical
changes
is one of the reasons
why yahwe
must be
analyzed
as an
imperfect
of the
causative stem. In the
early
Canaanite
dialects,
the
imperfect
of the causative is
yaqtilu (indicative), yaqtil (jussive).
In tert.
-yod
verbs the forms
appear
as
yaqliyu
and
yaqli;
in verbs both med. waw and tert.
yod,
the forms are
*yahwiyu
> yahwi (indic.)
and
yahwi > yahi~ (jussive).
These forms are not
theoretical
projections,
but are based on
patterns
in Canaanite and Amorite verb
forms which
actually appear
in vocalized
scripts (cuneiform, Egyptian syllabic
orthography,
and roots in
'alef
in
Ugaritic).
Hebrew reflects late
stages
of the
parallel development
of
imperfects
and
jussives
in other stems:
yihy1/yjhi,
yizhye/yehi.
The 't-stem
(causative-reflexive)
of
hwy
in Hebrew
(and Ugaritic)
also
supplies
an
analogy: yiktahdwe (imperfect indicative); yistadhf4 (jussive, 3.
m.
sing.).
Mowinckel also
argues
that
Neo-Babylonian transcriptions
of
Jewish
names
ending
in
-ya-a-ma
indicate a
pronunciation yahwa (sic!)
of the divine name in
these combinations. Since this notion seems to survive
among
Hebraists in
spite
of all advances in our
knowledge
of
Neo-Babylonian orthography,
a comment
is in order. Final short vowels were lost in
Babylonian
well before the Late
Babylonian era,
but the
syllabary designed
to show these vowels continued in
use. ma in the final
position
in
transcriptions represents
w
(only); ya-a-ma
is the
normal
way
in Late
Babylonian
to
represent -yaw.
This
-yaw
is the same as that
of fifth-fourth
century alphabetic
texts
-yw
for
-yaw
<
yahii.
See the fundamental
work of
J.
P.
Hyatt,
The Treatment of Final Vowels in
Early Neo-Babylonian
(New Haven, 1941).
For a new series of names in
-yw,
see Y.
Aharoni,
Excava-
tions at Ramat
Rahel (Roma, 1962), passim.
mOccasionally
one hears a
protest
even from a
distinguished scholar,
that a
verb
meaning
"to cause to be" is too abstract or
philosophic
a
concept
to be
predicated
of an ancient Proto-Israelite
deity.
The
problem may
be
semantic,
and
solved
by translating "create, procreate, form,
make."
Certainly
I can see no
ground
for
supposing
that causatives of verbs "to be"
imply ontological specula-
tion on the
part
of the
mythopoeic peoples
of the Near East. In
any
case
causatives of verbs
meaning
"to be" in the sense
"create,"
as well as other terms
most
easily
translated
"create," predicated
of
deity,
are
ubiquitous
in Near Eastern
onomastica: Akk.
usabsii,
Canaanite and/or Amorite
yahwi > yahwe, yakin, ya-
kdnin
(ye`k6non), yaqni (qal), yabni (qal),
etc. As a matter of fact this is to be
expected.
In Canaan and
Mesopotamia,
the
epithets
of the
gods
describe
them,
male and
female,
as creators of heaven and earth
(see above),
father or creatress
of all
creatures, gods
and
men,
formers or
progenitors
of the world. As a matter
of
fact, fertility, order,
and creation are bound
together
in the old
myths;
the
cosmogonic myth
was at the heart of Canaanite and Near Eastern religion, and
the drama of creation central to its cultic life.
Indeed,
the radical novelty
of
Israel's
early
faith was its
attempt
to shift this center from creation to historical
redemption
in the cultic life of the nation. But the new forms of "historical"
religion
were in full
continuity
with Israel's
past
and
contemporary environment,
including pre-Mosaic
Yahweh. This is evident in the recrudescence of creation
254 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
shortened form of a sentence name taken from a cultic formula.
An
ample
number of
parallels
is to be found in which West Semitic
divine names are the first
element, frequently
a verbal
element,
of a sentence from a
litany
or cultic
cliche.
These names evolve
just
as
hypocoristic personal
names
develop
from sentence
names,125
often
leaving only
the initial verbal
element,
with or
without a
hypocoristic ending.
From Canaanite sources we
may
list
'al'iyu
qarrddmac,
"I
prevail
over the
heroes,"
126 and the
typical
hypocoristicon, 'al'iydnu,
once
'al'iyu
ba'l.127 Other
examples
are
Yagarri',
"He drives
out,"
and
'Ay-yamarri, "Ho,
he
routs,"
names
given
to the divine clubs fashioned for
Ba'l's
combat,
'atirat
('atirat> 'dierd),
a stative verbal element from the fuller
name
'atirat
yammi,
and the
appelation Rdkib,
shortened from
rakub
'arapdti
128
or
rdkib
'arapdti.
29 From Mari
comes the
interesting
name of a
patriarchal deity
of the
Amorites, dyakrub-
themes in the
royal cultus, and,
of
course,
in the
apocalyptic,
where the
typology
between creation and
salvation,
Urzeit and Endzeit
is full blown.
1UC.
Virolleaud has
recently signaled
the
appearance
of the verb
hwy
in
Ugaritic (GLECS
VIII
(1959), 66).
He writes that in a
quadrilingual (so!)
lexicographical
text from Ras
Shamra,
"on lit a-wi en face des mots
sumbrien,
akkadien et hourite
qui signifient
'etre.'
"
Unfortunately,
I cannot
accept
Virolleaud's identification. The
spelling
i
does not
represent h,
but hu. See Cross and
Lambdin,
"A
Ugaritic Abecedary
and
the
Origins
of the Proto-Canaanite
Alphabet,"
BASOR i6o
(I960),
21-26; esp.
24 f.
Of course the
PI sign
can be read in a
variety
of
ways.
I think the most
likely reading
is u-wa
/huwa/,
to be understood as the
pronoun huwa,
"he."
The use of the
pronoun
as a
copula
in Canaanite is well known. For
example,
in the name
hw'il/ huwa-'il/,
the element huwa means in effect "He
is,"
and the
full
name,
"He is
god (or 'El);"
cf.
Hiya-abna (PRU II: 104,7; 104, 20).
'For
example,
in Amorite
names,
note the
following
yatub'll
(ya-SW-ub-
DINGIR), hypocor. yatubum (=Heb. yds'Wb),
or
*yatubdnu (cf.
yapburdnu);
yahwi-'il, hypocor. yahwiyum (ya-wi-um).
mSee already
W. F.
Albright,
BASOR
70o (1938), 19;
and
Archaeology
and
the
Religion
of Israel
(Baltimore, 1942), 195,
n.
ii; Goetze,
BASOR
93 (1944),
18 has
queried
the
longer
sentence name
proposed by Albright: 'al'iyu qurddima
qdriyeya
ba'arsi mallzamati.
In
51:
VIII:
34, 67: II:
io,
18
the short form 'al'iyu
qarrddima
is
used;
in 'nt
III,
ii;
IV, 51
the
long
formula occurs. The matter
need not be decided for our
purposes
here. The short form
'al'iyu qarrddima
is in-
disputably
a sentence name.
1
67, V, 17.
This is
probably
not an error for the usual
'al'iydnu ba'l,
but the
hypocoristicon
without termination: "I
Ba'l prevail . . ."
Cf. Hebrew
'ehye
in
Exodus
3:14
and Hosea
1:9.
I
Cf. the earlier discussion of the vocalization of the name: rakub(a).
A
stative
perfect
is
quite possibly original.
12Cf. Mdkin
urpdti,
and rdkib
iimi, epithets
of Adad.
Probably
the
epithet
originally belonged
to Hadad.
However, rkb'l,
named
alongside
'El and Hadad
at
Zindirli,
has
split apart, perhaps originally
as an
hypostasis,
from
Ba'l-Hadad
and/or
'El.
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 255
')l,
"El blesses."
Fortunately
there can be no doubt that Yakrub-
'El is a divine
name,
both from its context in
Mari
texts,
and from
the use of the DINGIR
sign
as
determinative.'30
The names of
appellatives
of two South Arabic deities which exhibit a similar
formation
may
be
cited; yagiut,'3' literally
"He
brings aid,"
and
dfi
yahriq,
32
"He
(the star)
who
sets," i.e.,
the
god
'Attar as the
evening
star.
Two archaic
liturgical
formulae
require re-examination
in view
of the data collected above on the cult-names of 'El and the
origin
of the name Yahweh. One is the famous crux in Exodus
3:14
'ehye
'aser
'ehy8,
the other is the
liturgical
name
yahwe
s.eb'o^t
stemming
from the Shiloh
cultus,
as
argued persuasively by O.
Eissf eldt.133
The first formula is
probably original
in the third
person
as
pointed
out
first,
I
believe, by
Paul
Haupt,'3
and
despite
the
Massoretic
pointing,
must be read in view of our
present
knowl-
edge
of the
pronunciation
of the divine
name, yahw^
'aser
yahwe.
Further,
we know that the element 'a'er
began
to
replace
the rela-
tive
particle
dai
(>
za)
toward the end of the Late Bronze
Age
in
Ugaritic, probably
later in Hebrew to
judge
from its scant use
in
early
Yahwistic
poetry.
All this
yields
the reconstructed form-
ula
*yahwi
du
yahwi.
It will be noted
immediately
that the
phrase
dai
yahwi,
is
pre-
cisely parallel
to
'El's
appellations
in
Ugaritic literature, namely
daz
yakaninu [1,
"He who creates. .
,"
r'.17l
dfi
yaqniyu,
"r'Eil
who creates .
. ."
35
and 'il milk
dai
yakdninuhli, "King
'El who
creates.
.
." One
may compare
the verse of
Deuteronomy 32:6
which
speaks
of Yahweh:
0
This name is
interesting
in view of the
suggestion
of David Noel
Freedman,
on
wholly
different
grounds,
that the curious combination
Yahwe
'8~lhim in the
primordial
stories of Genesis
goes
back to an earlier sentence name of the
god
of
Israel, namely, Yahwe^-'El,
in which the element
yahwe
still
preserved
verbal
force.
1a G.
Ryckmans I,
16.
1
Ryckmans I,
28.
18
"Jahwe Zebaoth,"
Miscellanea Academica Berolinensia
(Berlin,
I95o),
127-
I50.
As Eissfeldt
shows,
the
key passages
are I Samuel
I:3,
11; 4:4 ('rwn bryt
yhwh sb'wt y'b Jhkrbym) 15:2, 17:45 (yhwhl
b'wt
'lhy m'rkwt
ysr'l);
II Samuel
6:2, 18; 7:8, 26,27;
Psalm
24:
7-IO.
The
original
formula was associated with the
ark,
the cherubim
iconography,
and the wars of Yahweh.
'""Der Name
Jahweh,"
OLZ
1909,
cols. 211-214.
1
I Aqht 219-2o.
The context is broken and difficult. It
appears
to
say
"F'Ell
who formed the
mountain(s)."
256 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
hl' hw'
'byk qnyk
hw'
'Sk
wyknnk
"Was he not
thy father,
who created
thee,
Who made thee and brought thee into being?"
Normally
in the
longer
forms of these
formulae,
the verbal
element "to create" takes an
object:
a
god,
the divine
council,
heaven and earth. We
expect
such a concrete
object
in the
original
cultic cliches.
Probably
se'bd'6t,
from the alternate
formula,
yahw^
se'bd'St
supplies
at least one of these
objects.
On the basis of
mythological parallels,
Se'bd'ot
in this context
probably
means "the
hosts of
heaven,"
the
be'ne
'eli^m,
"sons of
god,"
or
"holy
ones."
In this case Yahweh is described as dfi
yahwi
saba'6t,
"He who
creates the
(heavenly) armies,"
a title of the divine warrior and
creator. It is thus not
greatly
different from
El's
epithets,
"Father
of the
gods,"
"creator of creatures."
Moreover,
such an
epithet
lent itself to
use,
not
merely
as a creation
formula,
but as an
ap-
propriate
name of the
god
who led Israel in her historical
wars,
as an element in the so-called
holy
war
ideology (herem)
of the
early league.
As a matter of
fact,
we must ask if the
phrase
dfi
yahwi
is not
originally
an
epithet
of
'El,
and if the
primitive
formula is not
better constructed in the
pattern
'il
dfi
yahwi
(saba'&t)
in
parallel
with the
Ugaritic phrases,
'il
milk dfi
yakdninu
.
.. ,"
'il
dfi
yaq-
niyu,
and more
remotely,
'il
dfi
'5lami,
'il
dfi
pa'idi,
etc. The
substitution of
yahwe
for
'il
in the first
position
would be
natural,
when Yahweh became the
principal
cult name.
If the construction
appears radical,
it
may
be observed that
after
all,
both Elohistic
136
and
Priestly
tradition have
anticipated
this
proposal
in
recording
the revelation of the name
yahwm,
and,
of
course, identifying
him with the
god
of the
Patriarchs,
in
Priestly tradition, precisely
with 'El
?adday.'37
Finally
we must note that there are a number of circumstances
which are best
explained
if Yahweh is
recognized
as
originally
a cultic name of
'El,
and if we
suppose
that the
god
Yahweh
split
off from 'El in the radical differentiation of his
cultus, ultimately
16 Or if one
prefers,
one strand of the
Epic
tradition.
137
If the biblical authorities are not
sufficient,
we can enlist the aid of
Julius
Wellhausen:
"Jehovah
was
only
a
special
name of El . . ."
Prolegomena
to the
History
of
Israel,
trans. Black and Menzies
(Edinburgh, 1885) 433,
n.
I.
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 257
ousting
El from his
place
in the divine
council,
and
condemning
the ancient
powers
to death
(Psalm 82).
There is
space only
to
sketch some of these elements.
i.
'El, 'Elyon, ?adday,
and 'Olam continued
throughout
Israel's
history
to be suitable names for Yahweh
despite
fierce
animosity
to
Ba'l,
the chief
god
of
Syria
in the first
millennium,
B.C. As has been
eloquently
stated
by Eissfeldt,'38
no recon-
struction of the
origins
of Yahwism can be successful which has
no
adequate explanation
of these
contrasting phenomena.
2. The
popularity
of the cult of 'El in the Semitic
community
in
Sinai, Egypt,
and
Seir, gives
some
plausibility
to the notion
that Yahweh was an 'El
figure. Moreover,
to reformulate one of
Alt's
arguments,
we contend that some
prior
cultic
unity binding
Palestinian
people
of Patriarchal
stock,
and the
disparate
ele-
ments
invading
Canaan from the
desert,
must be
posited
to ex-
plain
the
rapid
cultic unification of the diverse
peoples
who were
bound into the twelve tribe
league
around a central Yahweh
shrine.
3.
If 'El and Yahweh were related as we have
suggested, many
of the
puzzling
features of the cult of
Jeroboam
139
would have
immediate
explanation.
On the one
hand,
the "sin of
Jeroboam"
was claimed to be the chief sin of Israel
by
Deuteronomic
sources,
themselves rooted
ultimately
in Northern circles.
Moreover,
the
traditions of Aaron's sin in the matter of the bull
4o
stemmed
from the
North,
and
transparently
reveal
shaping by
the
polemic
against
the Bethel cultus.
However,
one notes that the
slogan
"Behold
your god/gods
who
brought you up
out of the land of
Egypt,"
is a characteristic Yahwistic
confession,
and that further
scrutiny
reveals that the
singular "god"
must have been
original.141
1~"El and
Yahweh," JSS I
(1956), 25-37.
1
See most
recently
on the cult of
Jeroboam,
R.
deVaux,
Ancient Israel
(New
York, 1961), 332-336,
and the literature
cited,
54o-543.
`A The
young
bull was no doubt conceived as a
pedestal
for the
god.
How-
ever,
there
were,
we
suspect, grounds
for the accusation in Exodus
32: 4 // I
Kings I2:38
that the bulls of Dan and Bethel were
worshipped.
A
god
and his
animal
"participated
in each
other,"
and while the
god might
be conceived as
enthroned or
standing
on the
bull,
in Canaanite
mythology,
he also
easily
trans-
formed himself into his animal and vice versa.
141 Obviously
the term
'eldhim, capable,
whether
singular
or
plural,
of
taking
a
plural verb,
lent itself to
retouching (in
Ex.
32:4). However,
the effect is weird.
Aaron
only
made one calf. "These
gods" belong
to Dan and Bethel.
258 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Further,
it is
impossible
to believe that
opponents
of the Bethel
establishment from the Northern
Kingdom
invented a tradition
crediting
venerable Aaron with manufacture of the double of
Bethel's
bull,
and recited a classic Yahwistic cult
cry
over
it,
unless in fact the old
sanctuary
of Bethel
possessed
a cult
legend
claiming
Aaronic
authority
for the
iconography
of its shrine. In
short,
it
appears
that
Jeroboam
did not invent a new
cultus,
but
choosing
the famous
sanctuary
of
El, attempted
to archaize even
more
radically
than the astute David
had
when he
brought
tent
and ark to
Jerusalem, transferring
the nimbus of the old
league
sanctuary
at Shiloh to
Zion.142
He
attempted
to
go
back to the
tradition of the Fathers
choosing
for the
iconography
of his
Patriarchal shrine the
bull,
animal of Tdr
'II 'abika,'43
"Bull
'El
your
father."
144
But if
Jeroboam
was
reintroducing
an 'El
cultus,
we must ask
why
there seems to have been no awareness on the
part
of those who
preserved
the
Elijah-Elisha traditions,
or
upon
the
part
of
Amos,
of the radical
idolatry
of the shrine and its bull.
Apparently, Jeroboam's
real sin was his
establishing
a rival to
the central
sanctuary
in
Jerusalem,
not in the introduction of a
foreign god
or
pagan
idol. As a matter of fact it is
wholly
im-
plausible
that an insecure
usurper,
in the
attempt
to secure his
throne and to woo those
loyal
to the cultus of Yahweh in
Jeru-
salem,
flout fierce Yahwists
by installing
a
foreign
or novel
god
in his national shrine. The
only
real solution for these several
problems,
so far as I can
see,
is to
recognize
in Yahweh an 'El
figure.
4. Many
of the traits and functions of 'El
appear
as traits
and functions of Yahweh in the earliest traditions of Israel: Yah-
weh's
r61le
as
judge
in the court of 'El
(Psalm 82);
Yahweh's
kingship (Exodus 15);145
Yahweh's
wisdom, age,
and
compassion
(yahw 'il
rah.im
wdhannfin);
146
and above
all,
Yahweh as
creator and father
(Genesis 49: 25; Deuteronomy 32:6)."47
142
Cf. O. Eissfeldt,
"Silo and
Jerusalem," Supplement
to Vetus Testamentum
IV
(Leiden,
i957),
138-147.
"1
Ugaritic
texts:
49, IV, 34; VI, 26-27,
etc.
1"'The
bull was
associated,
of
course,
with other
gods,
not least Ba'l-Haddu.
Jeroboam
did not
attempt
to introduce
Ba'l;
if he
had,
tradition should have
pre-
served the fact in vivid invective.
'5
Pope, 24-32.
"
See
Pope, 44-45.
7 Pope, 47-54.
YAHWEH AND THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 259
Our interests have been directed toward the continuities be-
tween the
god
of the Fathers and
Yahweh, god
of Israel. We have
agreed
with Alt to this
extent,
that Patriarchal
religion
had
special
features: the
tutelary deity
or deities entered into an intimate
relationship
with a social
group,
established its
justice,
led its
battles, guided
its
destiny.'48
This strain entered Yahwism. Yah-
weh was
sovereign
of the historical
community.
He revealed him-
self to the Patriarch Moses. He was leader of Israel in the
holy
wars of
conquest,
the
god
who
brought
Israel
up
from the land of
Egypt,
her saviour. There is also the second strain which entered
Israel's
primitive religion,
that of the
high
and eternal
one,
'El
the creator of heaven and earth.
ooe
lk
400,
c--------0a~p
FIGURE
I.
-
Serdbit Inscription
No.
358 (cf.
n.
59).
48
Professor
Jacobsen (who
has
kindly
read this
paper,
and aided me in more
than one
difficulty
in
dealing
with
Mesopotamian lore)
comments on the "his-
torical" character of the Patriarchal
god
as follows: "I have the
impression
that
a
great
deal of what is seen as true in Alt's view can be
very greatly deepened
by going
into the
Mesopotamian concept
of the
'personal' god
. . . The elements
of
'power
to effective decision and
acting'
inherent in the
concept
of the
'personal
god,'
and the
development
in
Mesopotamia
around the time of the First
Dynasty
of
Babylon
which has the
'personal' god
turn
away
from his
prot6g6
in
anger
at
cultic and moral offences
leaving
him
open
to attack
by evil,
all seems to me to
have relevance here."