The notes that follow are still in process of preparation.
יהוה
1) The Name, and the Pronunciation
The official name of the Yisra-Eli deity.
It is known as the Tetragrammaton, "the four-letter word", because nobody is quite sure how it should be pronounced, or even if. The latter stems from Exodus 20:6 (7 in some translations), where taking the name of YHVH "in vain" is formally prohibited - though it is not obvious how or why pronouncing it correctly would achieve that: the problem is that, because we don't know what is correct, then, if we do pronounce it incorrectly, we can be said to have taken the correct name in vain. As a secondary support for the superstition, Leviticus 24:11 is cited, where a woman both blasphemes the name and then curses - again, it is not obvious what in this leads to the deduction as we do not know in what manner she performed the blasphemy.
Then what is the correct pronunciation? Based on standard Yehudit precedents, and using the rules employed by the Masoretes when they added "pointing" to the unvocalised text, it could be Yeho'ah, or possibly Yehovah, though Yahveh and Yahvoh are both viable, Yahavoh and Yehu'a break no rules but are unlikely, and given that Arabic and Aramaic tend to soften the Vav, Yahveh as Yahweh is entirely reasonable.
YHVH may very well be an acronym or abbreviation of Eheyeh asher eheyeh (אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה) in Exodus 3:14: "I am whoever I am", from the verb LEHIYOT = "to be". There are two problems with this however:
a) that there are two verbs in Yehudit, LEHIYOT ("to be") and LECHIYOT ("to exist"), for which see my detailed explanation in the page on Yah;
b) that the name Eshet (Isis) claims exactly the same explanation in Egyptian.
There is also the possibility that the Vav (ו) is an error for a Yud (י), which is a commonplace scribal problem throughout the Tanach. If it were the case, it would once again reflect Eh'yeh asher eh'yeh (אהיה אשר אהיה) from Exodus 3:14 (the exact pronunciation of this phrase is also disputed; I have given the other version above); the only difference being that YHVH would require Yeheyeh asher yeheyey, which would place it in the future tense rather than the present: "I will be whoever I will be".
But that simply takes us back to b) in my problems, above, because it would also allow the name of the moon-goddess Yah to be doubled into divinity (Yah-Yah, unpointed, is indistinguishable from Yehiyeh - יהיה), in perfect echo of the Egyptian form for her Egyptian counterpart Eshet (Isis): Ishah-Ishah = "Woman of Women", in the same way that "Shir ha Shirim" means "Song of Songs". Engraved jewels found in the graves of Egyptian gnostics confirm this version of her name.
Given that Yah as moon-goddess was the sister-consort of Ephron the sun-god in some of the earliest of the myths associated with Chevron (Hebron), but that the sun-god of Chevron was known as YHVH both in the accounts of David's reign there in the historical and prophetic writings, and references throughout the Hebronite Psalms, we clearly, in trying to work out who YHVH might have been, and how the name evolved, have to work in parallel with the page on Yah; much of what is written there will need to be written here as well, but I shall try to save the doubling by cross-referencing as much as possible.
First, though, I need to introduce a second Egyptian element. Yah and YHVH as queen and king of the heavens are mostly of Phoenician origin, and Hittite before that, but they also has a strong Egyptian base, through one of the lesser known Egyptian deities, Yah, or Yahu. Before you read any more of this page, click this link and read the whole of the page on which you land; it will surprise you, but it is also essential to our attempt to understand this. The probability is that Yah was introduced to Egypt from Kena'an by the Hyksos - adding weight to the growing certainty that the story of Yoseph is the story of the conquest of Egypt by the Hyksos - and masculinised into Yahu at some later point, just as it would be by the Beney Yisra-El in the Hasmonean period.
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Returning to problem a), one key element in our understanding of the name lies in the difference between LEHIYOT (להיות) and LECHIYOT (לחיות), the former meaning "to be", the latter "to exist", though it isn't always obvious which is which, or even what the difference is. As explained on my Yah page, the former yields the names YHVH and Yah, with EHEYEH ASHER EHEYEH, while the other yields CHAVAH (Eve), the first Human Woman, but also a goddess in her own right across the Middle East (usually known as Hebe), and always epitheted as "the Mother of All Living Creatures" (Em Kol Chai - אם כל חי; cf Genesis 3:20, 4:1), which is the apotheosis of fertility by any definition. Clearly the ancients made a distinction between essence and existence, long before Søren Kierkegaard or Martin Buber or Jean-Paul Sartre.
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At the top of this page I described YHVH as "the official name of the Yisra-Eli deity". This is because the nature of the deity evolves through multiple transformations in the Tanach, starting with various polytheisms, and variant names for the gods and goddesses in those polytheons, with YHVH himself likewise evolving, from the Midyanite volcano god of the Sedom and Mosheh tales, to the nomadic deity of the Mishkan, transported by the Yisra-Elim to wherever they settled next, gradually sedentarised, gradually rising to the leadership of the polytheon (YHVH Tseva'ot - the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens), in which capacity he was provided with a permanent dwelling on Mount Tsi'on in Yeru-Shala'im, finally universalised as a sky-god, and then, the key moment in all of this, his absorption of all other gods and goddesses into his singular, but also multiple-plural, Omnideistic self.
YHVH also appears as YHVH Elohey Yisrael (יהוה אלהי ישראל) throughout the Book of Joshua; and as YHVH Elohey Avoteycha (יהוה אלהי אבותיך), YHVH Eloheycha (יהוה אלהיך) or YHVH Elohay (יהוה אלהי) on several occasions in Deuteronomy. He is called YHVH Tseva'ot on any number of occasions, and almost as many find him either as Adonai YHVH (אדני יהוה), or inverted as YHVH Adonai, "Adonai" meaning simply "my Lord", and used for the deity in the same way that a king would be addressed as "sire".
Various names appear to incorporate YHVH, though they could as well be said to incorporate Yah: Yehochanan (יהוחנן), a captain of the guard under King Yehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 17:15 and 23:1); Yeho-Yada (יהוידע) a priest of Shomron (Samaria) in 2 Kings 11:4; Yeho-Yachin (יהויכין) and his father King Yeho-Yakim (יהויקים) who ruled Yehudah circa 600 BCE... and various others (see Gesenius pp338/9).
The Kenite smith-god named Elat-Yahu was worshipped as the god of Wednesday, and regarded as the lover of Ba'alit (the local name for Aphrodite, the goddess of Friday). It is likely that he too became transformed into YHWH later on.
Jewish tradition reckons that there are 1000 names for the deity, none of which are the true or correct name; but 1000 in Yehudit is Eleph, as One is Aleph, so the tradition is a literary word-game rather than a literal inventory. A full-as-there-is list of all the names by which the Yisra-Eli deity is known in the Tanach can be found here.
The polytheon was known in Yehudit as Elohim, a multiple-plural noun formed from the root EL, translated as "god" but actually meaning "kinetic" or "dynamic" forward motion - the pulse of life, or the impulse of life, as you prefer - the E of Einstein's famous theorem. The amalgamation of YHVH (יהוה) with Elohim (אלהים) was part of the process of identifying the new masculine Omnideity YHVH with the ancient polytheon, and to give retroactive validity to the claim that the Beney Yisra-El had always been monotheistic, at least since the time of Mosheh; this can be found in Genesis 2:3; Exodus 9:30; 2 Samuel 7:22; 1 Chronicles 28:20 and 29:1; 2 Chronicles 1:9 and 6:41; Psalm 72:18 and 82:14; Jonah 4:6 and many others.
[Some scholars have argued that YHVH was the Yehudan name, and Elohim that of the northern kingdom of Ephrayim; the texts from after the disappearance of the northern kingdom do not, however, bear out this hypothesis, nor do those from all periods in which, as with the texts cited here, the two names are used together.]
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2) Identification of YHVH, or with YHVH
YHVH is frequently identified with specific mountains. For Chorev (Horeb), which is also known in the Tanach as Mount Sinai and Mount Paran, see TheBibleNet commentaries on the Book of Exodus. By the time of Yesha-Yahu (Isaiah) and the other prophets he has moved to Mount Tsi'on (transported there in a special Ark, the Mishkan, constructed by Betsal-El in the desert, held for many years at Beit-El, then at Shiloh (שִׁילֹה), briefly abducted by the Pelishtim, recovered and kept safe at Kiryat Ye'arim, and finally, at the second attempt, moved to Yeru-Shala'im by King David).
Post-Mosheh, he is frequently associated with Mount Tavor (Tabor) - e.g. Judges 4:6 ff in the Yisra-Eli legends, but more often in the Christian, where it is believed to be the site of the transfiguration; cf Matthew 17:1-9; Mark 9: 2-8, Luke 9:28-36. Tavor is reckoned to have been named for Atabyrius, the son of Eurynome and the grandson of Proteus, which is rather odd for a Kena'ani mountain; however, there is also a Mount Atabyria on the Greek island of Rhodos, with a shrine to him built by his mother Althaea (also known as Eurynome), the Orphic moon-goddess and lover of Dionysus with whom she begat Deianeira the betrayer of Herakles - and Deianeira may well be the key link here, her rape paralleling that of Ya'akov's daughter Dinah, at Shechem in her case, just south of Mount Tavor (Genesis 34).
As to the Orphic part of this, a knowledge of Orpheus is vital to an understanding of King David, because the two are essentially parallels, both players of the lyre, both authors of the central poetry of their people, both regarded in some way as Prophets, or at least as the precursors of Prophets, both journeyers through the Underworld, Hades in Orpheus' story, She'ol in David's, depicted in his pursuit there by the Underworld god Sha'ul - and of course the Herakles legend follows the same twelve-labour and horoscopal route. King David's star, like the star that Orpheus received from the nine Muses, is Lyra, known in Yehudit as Oreph.
Brazen bulls were dedicated to Atabyrius at Rhodos in ceremonies identical to those of the brazen bull that King Minos had made for him by Daedalus in Crete. The golden calf of Mount Chorev (Exodus 32) was presumably another such. Tavor probably became one of YHVH's shrines at the time of King David, when the cult of the Beney Yisra-El began to be centralised, most other local cults being absorbed and their god-names likewise.
Robert Graves links YHVH with Dionysus, the Dana'an white bull-god, and with Dionysus Sabazius, the barley-god of Thrace and Phyrgia, but this is probably a mistake resulting from mis-reading Sabazius as a variant of Sabbath, and then compounding the error by thinking that Sabbath is connected to Saba'oth, which is simply a bad English rendering of the Yehudit Tseva'ot, "the Hosts of the Heavens", which are the planets and the zodiacal constellations. Nonetheless he is not entirely wrong, because Sabazian Zeus and Dionysus were two names for the same son of Rhea who the Phyrgians called Attis (they also called Rhea Cybele), the Assyrians Adonis, and the Jerusalemites and Bethlehemites Tammuz.
The brazen serpent which Mosheh called Nechushtan was sacred to YHVH; Chizki-Yah (Hezekiah) destroyed it because he said it was idolatrous, in that incense was burned to it (2 Kings 18:4). The bull was sacred to Dionysus because, in the Greek cosmology anyway, he was the first to yoke oxen to the plough for agriculture.
Sabazius was torn in seven pieces by the Titans, and seven was YHVH's sacred number. Cretan Zagreus was likewise torn in seven pieces (whereas Osher was torn into fourteen). Dionysus Sabazius may thus have been a Greek name for the original god of Pesach (Passover), while Dionysus Liber served in the same way for Sukot (Tabernacles).
On this reading, YHVH becomes a barley-god, both at Pesach (Passover) and elsewhen; this is correct up to the point that the fertility god or goddess is the deity for all vegetation that comes out of the womb of earth, be it in the form of barley or corn, palm or oak trees, rose bushes or bulrushes.
A 5th century BCE silver coin found near Azah (Gaza) has YHVH in a winged chariot on one side and a bearded Dionysus on the other; the location suggests that the coin more likely belonged to the Pelishtim than the Beney Yisra-El; given that the Pelishtim were of Cretan origins, and given the further connection between the tribe of Dan and the Greek Dana'ans, these cross-fertilisations between the culture of Kena'an and that of Ionia should not surprise us.
In addition to Chorev and Tavor, snd ultimately Yeru-Shala'im, YHVH has "theophanies" at Mounts Moreh, Chevron and Ophrah (the term "mount" on each of these occasions may be Biblical hyperbole; there are low hills in each location; but "high ground" is "high ground" when raising a shrine to a sky-god!) in the form of the terebinth-god Bel, who is also the god of Thursday. At Mount Karm-El (Carmel), to use the equivalent Greek terminology for a moment, Chronos of Saturday defeats Bel of Thursday (1 Kings 18). In Mitsrayim (Egypt) YHVH is Set of Sunday; this is important to note in relation to King Sha'ul, who was clearly a worshipper of the donkey-god Set (several references between 1 Samuel 9 and 12). At Sukot he is the god of Monday. As El of the scarlet oak he is Tuesday. The Menorah links all of these into a single week, but clearly YHVH in his final, monotheistic form is an amalgamation of several deities from the era of polytheism, all ultimately identified with the Omnideity.
Yahu makes his final appearance in Egypt in the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE, as a title of Set. This is also the origin of the Greek name Iacchus, who is Dionysus Lysius the wine god in the Greek mysteries (the Dionysus Liber of Sukot is also known as Dionysus Lysius, "he who frees from guilt").
In Sumerian Yah means "exalted" and "Hu" means dove; as does the Egyptian hieroglyph Hu. This may be the source of the confusion in the Tanach, and especially in later Judaism, over whether the Yah of the Psalms (as in Hallelu-Yah = "let us praise Yah") is a male or a female deity.
Jesus' goddess-mother is also associated with the dove (click here), as was No'ach in the latter part of the flood tale (Genesis 8:6 ff) - a fuller catalogue across the ancient world can be found here. When the dove descends on Jesus' baptism, it is a reflection of the coronation of the Pharaohs: the descent of the sun-god Ra in the form of a hawk.
One of the epithets of Eshet is "she who weeps", because the moon scatters dew, and because Eshet as mater dolorosa wept for Osher (Osiris) when Set killed him: the name connects with Mor-Yah - "the bitter tears of Yah" - which is Mount Mor-Yah, adjacent to Mount Tsi'on in Yeru-Shalayim and the site of King Shelomoh's Temple; it was there that the women wept for Tammuz at the north gate of the Temple (Ezekiel 8:14), and where Mother Mary wept for Jesus on Calvary. The golden moon-cow Io was her original form, and we have to presume from his name - Yedid-Yah - that the ever-dying ever-reborn son of Io and Ephron would have been named David, with the original Psalms as the liturgy of Chevron.
Yahu thus combines the exalted dove with the cow, both of which are feminine, both of which encourage the conclusion that Egyptian Yahu, like the Beney Yisra-El, was a late masculinisation. Plutarch says that the mid-winter rites included Eshet (he calls her Isis) as a golden moon-cow (another version of Aharon's golden calf) circling the coffin of Osiris seven times to commemorate the seven months from solstice to solstice: the same circumambulation that we find when Yehoshu'a besieges Yericho, when a Hajji makes pilgrimage to Mecca, when a bride stands under the canopy with her groom, and during the Hakaphot of Simchat Torah.
An orgiastic oak-cult ceremony connected to the dove-goddess took place at the summer solstice (possibly the origins of the barley-festival which became Shavu'ot?). Thus Yah[u] rules the whole solar year as moon-goddess. Set claimed such a title, but the child Hor (Horus - who was also known as Egli-Yahu, "cow-Yahu" among the Egyptians;) overcame Set each year and assumed the title. Hor is the Egyptian equivalent of Cretan Dionysus (later Iacchus) and Kena'ani Bel (known in Egypt as Yahu-Bel). Are Welsh Hu Gadarn and Guernsey Har Hou also variants of this? Most probably.
All of which traces the sources, or some of them, but we are in search of YHVH; what we can now conclude with confidence is that the change from Yah to Yahu in the later Biblical texts reflects the same masculinisation that absorbed all the gods and goddesses, male and female, into the Omnideity. So the final version of YHVH also rules the solar year as a combination of... of all of the above.
One of the key methods for we in the modern world who are trying to fathom the gods of they of the ancient world, is through their representation as trees and flowers, fish and fowl, birds and animals, as noted with the doves and cows above. But the Beney Yisra-El alone, unlike any other nation on the planet, did not represent their deities as nature (they understood that Nature was the manifestation of those gods, and therefore did not require humans to add a secondary layer of representation), except on two occasions: a) when they were absorbing the myths and legends of other nations into their own, and b) through the foods they ate on special occasions, or never ate on any occasion. And these are best identified through the sacrifices.
Thus, for example, Numbers 19 has red heifer sacrifices, which appears to define the earliest known metaphysical deity, the god of repentance and atonement who would later become the Azaz-El or scapegoat, and then for the same goal and purpose the Christian Jesus, though in Talmudic Judaism the act of Kapparot involving a rooster serves rather better.
Leviticus 14 has various kinds of birds used for different sacrifices. In 14:2 the generic term Tsiparim (צִפֳּרִים - Tsipur is the generic word for "bird") is used for the leprosy-cleaning rites, interesting mostly because Mosheh's wife is named Tsiporah (צִפֹּרָה), from the same root, and Mir-Yam, his sister, will later be stricken with leprosy (Numbers 12) and there is no suggestion that this superstition was used to cure her. Verse 22 infers that a less-than-common bird would have been used, as it now allows a poor man to bring two turtle-doves (shtey torim - שְׁתֵּי תֹרִים) or two pigeons (shney beney yonah - שְׁנֵי בְּנֵי יוֹנָה) instead.
The hare and pig were both taboo in ancient Britain. According to Robert Graves, Isaiah tells us that the Yeru-Shala'im Canaanites held a pig-feast at mid-winter, consuming the boar's head in particular - I will need to find and cite the text to confirm that. Certain fish were also taboo is Britain, as they were in Egypt, as were various birds.
The taboo dolphin was used as a covering for the ark of the covenant. The taboo whale was sacred to Pelasgian Greece and Scythia. There is a very strong sense through all this that "taboo" - or "tabu" if you prefer - does not actually mean "prohibited" in the case of eatables, but is a variant of "sacred"; where sacred was constant, taboo only applied at certain times.
As with the fauna, so with the flora. The willow was the key to YHVH worship in Yeru-Shala'im, especially at Sukot, a fire and water ceremony also called the Day of Willows. I have a decades-old note that tells me that in Yehudit the willow and the alder are regarded as the same; I am not convinced by this; in my dictionary the willow is the Aravah - עֲרָבָה - and the alder the Almon - אַלְמוֹן. The purple osier, the same note continues, (references of this sort must be from Robert Graves; probably "The White Goddess") was used in the lulav (unless the osier is a variety of the date palm, this is another error); quince (aspargal - אַסְפַּרְגֵל) and willow were carried during the feast. The alder was also used in the rites of Astarte and her son the fire-god; they were therefore banned at Sukot. The lulav originated in the Canaanite tabernacle ceremonies. Bel defeated Belili (a variant of Ba'al) and became the supreme lord of the universe, establishing a patriarchy where a matriarchy had previously ruled, making himself god of light, father of both sun and moon gods and creator-god. Marduk later made the same claims and the two became one, Bel taking on Marduk's godhood of spring and thunder as well. The Phoenicians took this god up and brought him to Europe. Beli was originally a willow god but added light. YHVH as Omnideity clearly took his precedent from here!
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The seven days of creation = seven the days of the week, which were originally linked, one each, to the gods and goddess of the seven days (which also explains some of the oddities on the Genesis version of the tale, such as Light being created on the first day, but the light-givers only on the fourth: Sun = Light; Moon = division of waters; Mars = Dry land, pasture and trees; Mercury = heavenly bodies (and seasons, because he was the god of astronomy); Jupiter = sea beasts and birds; Venus = land beasts man and woman; Saturn = repose. The names vary by culture and language, but essentially the functions and order remain the same, reflecting their importance in the sky (sun, then moon), and afterwards their perceived proximity to the Earth (the ancient did not possess telescopes!). For a fuller account of the Biblical calendar, click here.
The Genesis story was obviously written later, and with due deference to the gods. The 5th day makes sense as the day of the creation of the birds because the god of the oak cult is a son of the sea-goddess to whom the dove, eagle etc are sacred; he himself takes the form of the sea-beast Tahamat. "Go forth and multiply" likewise belongs to Friday, which is the day of Venus, the "nymphet" aspect of the triple-female. Rest for Saturn because he is high noon, at which rest is advisable: the siesta; thus also the seventh year is the jubilee.
Thursday is Bel-Marduk, Aramaean Juppiter (as differentiated from Roman Jupiter with one 'p', or Irish Phádraig) and Paeonian Apollo's day.
Midsummer Day was a water as well as a fire festival, linked to baptism. The Hemero-Baptists were a sect linked to the Pythagorean Essenes, who worshipped YHVH as the sun. The Thracian goddess Cotytto had mystagogues called Baptists.
Midrashim suggest that the burning bush of Exodus 3, the one from which YHVH gave his name as "I am that I am", was an acacia, though how they deduce this from the text is quite beyond me. Nonetheless, it is inferred, had he done so from an oak tree, it would have described a different god; the acacia is the tree of Sunday, the first day, and there are no other gods before Sunday! Robert Graves says that the month named Uath in the Celtic tree calendar was the one in which the terebinth fair at Chevron took place; all sexual congress and vanity was taboo in that month, which belongs to the acacia; it was the month of purification of the temples in Greece, Italy and throughout the near east.
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