God/Gods

Yahweh God

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Yahweh God as imagined by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel.

Yahweh is the god of Israel, the god of the Bible. The word YHWH is considered his proper name; the exact meaning is open to interpretation—it may mean He is or He shows himself as God. It may mean He causes to fall (as rain, lightning, enemies) or He blows (as wind).

Like the names of many ancient gods, YHWH has long been considered too holy to pronounce except by a high priest on the rarest of occasions; Orthodox Jews still never pronounce it. YHWH is written without vowels, but scholars say it is probably properly pronounced Yahweh.

The Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, tells us exactly who Yahweh himself said he was:

Exodus 6:2 And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the LORD:
3 and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty; but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them.

To understand these verses, it helps to know that the words the LORD in a Bible mean YHWH, which means Yahweh. The LORD is how the word YHWH has commonly been translated, so as not to defile the name of God through frequent use.3 So, the LORD means Yahweh.

The word JEHOVAH in a Bible also means Yahweh.4 JEHOVAH is a later word (probably circa 1100 CE) that, like the Lord, was spoken to mean Yahweh without actually saying his name.

And the words God Almighty in a Bible have been translated from the words El Shaddai,5 one of the Judaic names of God. El is a Semitic word for God; Shaddai was a city of the Amonites (a tribe of ancient Canaan) on the Euphrates River. So El Shaddai suggests a tutelary deity, a protector god—the God of the City of Shaddai.6

The translation of shaddai is uncertain; it could mean mountain or open wastes or even breasts, but, more likely, it means that which overpowers, or destroyer7, in which case, El Shaddai means Destroyer God. The well-known Hindu god Shiva is a destroyer god, as is the semitic god Amurru/Martu (who may be the same god as El Shaddai, or the same as El Shaddai s arch-rival god, Ba‘al Hadad.8)

So, according to the verses of Exodus 6:2 and 3, above, God told Moses: I am Yahweh [He shows himself as God or He blows]: I appeared to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob [400 years ago] [going] by the name El Shaddai [the God of the City of Shaddai], but I wasn't known to them [then] by my [current] name Yahweh—[He shows himself as God or He blows].

The well-respected academic reference book, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, suggests that in pre-Israelite days Yahweh was a storm god (sometimes called a thunder god or sky deity) in competition with the main Semitic god, Ba‘al.9 (As we will see, thunder was a feature of Yahweh's appearances to humans.) Friedrich Delitzsch, a 19th-century professor of Assyriology, asserted that Yahweh was worshipped in Babylonia before 2000 BCE, pre-Israelites, under variant names.10

Yahweh reportedly was one of the 70 “children” of the supreme god in the Levantine pantheon, El, who divided the world into “nations” and assigned a nation to each “child.” Yahweh got Canaan as his territory, the Israelites as his people (see Divine Councils).

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Ancient Gods

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Kamadhenu is a Hindu bovine goddess, the source of all prosperity.

It was easy for ancient religion to take root, both because authentic experience (however oddly interpreted) makes for enthusiastic converts and proselytizers, and because religion indeed fills some human needs. Ancient people expected to deal with the normal troubles of life on their own, but, as Rodney Stark writes in Discovering God, they hoped that the gods would help them with the forces beyond human control:

[P]rimitive peoples … call upon the supernatural for rain, for help in finding game, and for safe voyages. In doing so, they acknowledge the fundamental principle that the supernatural is the only plausible source of many things that human beings greatly desire. Therein lies one key to the universality of religion—its capacity to overcome the generic limitations of human power by invoking entities or forces that transcend nature. Whether it is a Bantu priest in Nigeria chanting that Awwaw grant a good harvest, or a Baptist congregation in Georgia singing, “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear,” religion offers an alternative means to achieve greatly desired ends, when direct methods fail or do not exist.

The earliest religions—lost in prehistory and based, perhaps, on real experiences—were more sophisticated than most of the religions they later spawned, and they were more morality-based than later versions. Most stories about gods show them as wrapped up in their own lives, giving little or no thought to the welfare of humanity or individual humans, or to humans' morality or lack of it. Exceptions are the “bringers of civilization,” deities or demigods whose role is to help, such as Oannes (see Divine Teachers).

The failure of humans to pay proper tribute to the gods—such as neglecting to make sacrifices—gets attention, but instead of striking deficient humans dead, the gods tend to destroy the whole city (much as a few annoying ants might encourage us to take out a whole anthill).

Gods and goddesses around the world have usually been thought of as a lot like humans, except with superpowers and immortality. They have humanlike needs and desires, and display the whole range of emotions and behaviors, for better and worse. Often, the gods are depicted as human or humanoid forms, with perhaps a pair of wings and eagle head and talons to show they can fly.

Since creation stories of many societies state that humans were made from divine matter—often the blood, spit, or semen of a god or gods — deities that look more or less like us are not necessarily reflecting a lack of imagination on the part of those depicting them; it would be reasonable for ancient gods to look a lot like humans, and in ancient stories, including Bible stories, they are able to pass as human when visiting Earth. Homer writes, “The gods, likening themselves to all kinds of strangers, go in various disguises from city to city, observing the wrongdoing and the righteousness of men.”

But it's obvious when looking at depictions of gods that the ancients sometimes had a hard time figuring out what they were seeing, or hearing described. “It's a bird, it's a plane….” Of course, planes were beyond the understanding of ancient people, as were machines generally. If it moves, it's a human or other animal. If it flies, it has to be a bird, but, wait, it's long like a snake, and omigosh it's breathing fire! If it's operating a weapon, it must have hands. If it makes loud noise, it must have a mouth.

Descriptions of the gods are often at least partly descriptions of the vehicles in which the gods travel (see Divine Chariots) —leading to some odd-looking gods, and perhaps leading to the invention of gods with multiple aspects, avatars—magically transforming from fiery serpent to human form as they step out of or slide off of their fiery serpent, or thunderbird, or silver eagle, or flying elephant.

In another realm from most gods and goddesses is the high god, or creator god, a feature of many ancient religions. The high god creates the universe and/or Earth. In many cases, he or she or they afterwards withdraw into remotest heaven, leaving “down-to-Earth” gods to take on the day-to-day work of running the worldly creation.

Almost without exception, societies that emphasize high-god beliefs feature many gods, who are all subordinate to the high deity. Adherents seemed to find the lesser gods more real, more relevant and accessible compared to the abstract and omnipotent high gods. The monotheist religion of high god Yahweh required that the various gods who were originally in his pantheon be downgraded to divine beings, such as angels and demons, since there could only be one god (see Yahweh’s Roots in Polytheism).

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