The Birth of Yahweh

[Magus]

Hebrew is a dialectic form of Phoenician and written in the Imperial script of the Persian empire.

When the Achaemenids extended their rule westward, they adopted this language as the vehicle for written communication between the various regions of the vast empire with its different peoples and languages. The use of a single official language, which modern scholarship has dubbed Official Aramaic or Imperial Aramaic, can be assumed to have greatly contributed to the astonishing success of the Achaemenids in holding their far-flung empire together for as long as they did

YHWH (Hebrew) is a dialect form of IEVE ( Phoenician ) and in Ancient Greek it is IEVS.

5th Century BCE - IEVS

The name 'Zeus' in ancient Greek is pronounced 'Zefs'
Ieus - 'Yehf ' ( Iahv ) ( Yahve / Jove),
Ieue ' Yehf

There is a word in Linear B, 'Yav etos' , in Greek it is 'Iap'etus' and it exists in Hebrew as Yehf'eth -יֶפֶת- , here the 'Ph' or 'F' sound is preserved.

In theory, the correct pronunciation is then 'Yehf', or 'Yef'

 

[Brickjectivity]

Have you ever heard of the Jacob Bryant's mythography? It demonstrates the problem with etymological clues. It is like the strange rhyme between ground and round. Does this rhyme demonstrate that those who invented the term ground knew the world was a sphere? It depends on whether you assume that they did or not.

Jacob Bryant - Wikipedia

Here is his tragic book available for free on the Alphabet Google book server: An Analysis of Antient Mythology MDCCCVI by Jacob Bryant

Its an example of how falsely affirmative it is to build history out of etymological clues. You have to first substitute in your own version of how things happened to make sense of clues, so your conclusions tend to bear out your assumptions. Literally you can make sense of things that do not make sense for themselves, and this is falsely affirmative. So for example if you first presume that Yahweh appears in a culture then you can look for and probably find some linguistic structure that approximates it, but it doesn't mean anything. This is the problem with Mythography.

 

[Repox]

I believe the real God didn't come until later, after many false deities. It was when God decided to intervene in human affairs. I believe the OT is accurate, God made Jews His chosen people. It was then when God revealed himself. It is possible that Satan in many different guises attempted to cultivate human interest in a deity. I know this is far out there, but it seems as if the Jewish God didn't appear until after "early civilizations" emerged.

 

[blü 2]

Are God's cultural constructs? Undoubtedly. Are they then mere fictions? I don't believe so. An analogy can be made with the concept of "self". It is [...] a highly constructed entity for each of us. Yet very little can be more subjectively real than this "I" or as objectively important as the foundations of individuality, rights etc.

This gets me back to the stages of infant development, a field in which my wife had great knowledge and experience. Indeed we learn the basics of who we are from outside, because at the start that's what we've evolved to do.

Also just because Gods are built up through culture does not necessarily imply that there is no phenomenology and experiential foundation beneath it.

Do you mean that people explain unknown phenomena by means of gods? Do you mean Jayne's hypothesis that the mental experience of one's own conscience and realizations was explained by the ancients as the voices of gods, eg as in Homer? Or what?

 

[blü 2]

First off, there is no possible way to pronounce or write the word “yahweh” in the Hebrew language.

Interesting. Thanks.

But that's not a problem. The only problem is to give him a clear identifier in English, like the other gods (eg Chemosh, mentioned in those quotes I gave).

My next point is: even though your personal translations may say “no other gods,” [... i]t does not mean that there are any other gods,

If you say so, but the other quotes look like they do. And why would we expect anything else in that era? The emergence of Jewish monotheism is generally dated to the 5th or 6th century BCE, isn't it?

 

[sayak83]

This gets me back to the stages of infant development, a field in which my wife had great knowledge and experience. Indeed we learn the basics of who we are from outside, because at the start that's what we've evolved to do.
Do you mean that people explain unknown phenomena by means of gods? Do you mean Jayne's hypothesis that the mental experience of one's own conscience and realizations was explained by the ancients as the voices of gods, eg as in Homer? Or what?

In the interests of keeping to the thread topic, I will for now refrain from discussing about the nature of mystical and meditative experiences.

 

[blü 2]

Doing some homework on Owens and Coleman's TEDx on the Phaistos disk, I find that -

1. The word said to represent Yahweh is in their transcription wa-je. I assume that the "j" is a "y" sound (as in eg German, or IPS), giving wa-ye (but if that's wrong then it's wa-dzhe and irrelevant to Yahweh there and then).

2. They say the disk is a hymn to the Mother Goddess. So

a. if those signs indeed stand for the sounds wa-ye (which appears to be disputed by the claim that no one can yet say what they stand for) and

b. if those sounds refer to the same god as Canaan's Yahweh, which is not obvious given that ─

i. we think we're looking for something like ya-we and not wa-ye, and

ii. if I read Yohanan ben Yaaqov's post aright, in his view ya-we would be the wrong sounds for the Canaanite god anyway, though he doesn't say what the right sounds would be),
​

THEN what's Yahweh doing in the hymn anyway?

So I'm presently not persuaded we can say that the Phaistos disk contains clues useful to this thread but I thank Sayak and Brickjectivity for the reference.


Next, the Online Etymological Dictionary gives this origin for Latin "Jove":

Roman god of the bright sky [...] from Latin Iovis, [Iouis, pron, yowis] from PIE [Proto-Indo-European] root *dyeu- "to shine," in derivatives "sky, heaven, god" ...
​

That's a completely different etymology to Yahweh, whether 'I am' or other Semitic.


Third, the CryptoZoo has reminded me that the Australians have either a cryptocritter or a spirit called the yowie. Now if we could make that stick, wow, we're back 60,000 years!

 

[blü 2]

YHWH (Hebrew) is a dialect form of IEVE ( Phoenician ) and in Ancient Greek it is IEVS.
5th Century BCE - IEVS

The name 'Zeus' in ancient Greek is pronounced 'Zefs'
Ieus - 'Yehf ' ( Iahv ) ( Yahve / Jove),
Ieue ' Yehf

There is a word in Linear B, 'Yav etos' , in Greek it is 'Iap'etus' and it exists in Hebrew as Yehf'eth -יֶפֶת- , here the 'Ph' or 'F' sound is preserved.

In theory, the correct pronunciation is then 'Yehf', or 'Yef'

I can't find any ancient Greek word, or god named, IEVS. I think the word on the pot is Zeus, the diagonal of the Z being written upright.

In classical times 'Zeus' was pronounced perhaps Zde+w+s (like Zd + 'else' if you replace the 'l' with a 'w') which might remind you of Latin 'deus' ('god'), 'Zeus' has the same etymological root as Latin 'Iovis' (in my previous post) and 'deus'. (Greek 'theos' has a slightly different PIE root.)

Both Greek and Latin are Indo-European languages, whereas Semitic is an entirely different language family. Of course words can cross from any language to any other language, but in this case Yahweh has its own etymology, quite different from dyeu / Zeus / Iouis.

('Zefs' is the modern Greek pronunciation of 'Zeus' where 'eu' is pronounced 'ef' in general.)

 

[Magus]

Language is subject to dialects, which is why 'Zeus' 'Deus' 'Ieus' Yeus' 'Iove' ' Ieue' or Yhwh' are the same, different parts of the Greek speaking world had there own dialects, I have found Indo European words in the Old Testament, Phoenician were known as 'Sea merchants' they travelled all over the Mediterranean , the Greek Alphabet is based on the Phoenician alphabet , which is based on Linear B and A .

Words of trade are usually the same, the Linear B word for Sesame is 'SA-SA-MA ' , Linear A SU-SA-ME in Hebrew שׂוּמשׂוּם -Sesame-.

People like to believe Hebrew is an alien language cos it's the language of the Old Testament, the Arabic word for Cube, 'Kaba' , that word is Indo European and it's also the name of the Ark of Noah.

 

[blü 2]

Language is subject to dialects, which is why 'Zeus' 'Deus' 'Ieus' Yeus' 'Iove' ' Ieue' or Yhwh' are the same, different parts of the Greek speaking world had there own dialects,

Zeus is Greek, an Indo-European language.
Iovis is Latin, an Indo-European language.
deus is also Latin.

The words are all derived by each language from Proto-Indo-European dyeu-.
theos is Greek, but derived from a different PIE word, dhes-.

I had a search and found no Greek word or name Ieus or Yeus. I think the name on the pot is Zeus. If you have a citation confirming ancient Greek Ieus or Yeus, I'd be grateful if you'd show it to me.

YHWH is Hebrew, as you say, descended from Phoenician. Hebrew is not an Indo-European language. It's one of the Semitic languages. The stock of root words for each language group has very few overlaps.

In the Tanakh, the name of the Jewish god is transcribed into English as YHWH. It has no standard pronunciation. Tyndale in his bible used 'Jehovah' from RCC Latin of the day (the "J" pronounced "Y" back then). As Yohanan mentions, 'Yahweh' was devised later. It assumes YHWH comes from the Hebrew verb hawah, 'was' and means 'the one who is', but that's a guess. The point is that we have no reason to think the origin of YHWH is connected in any way with Indo-European languages.

People like to believe Hebrew is an alien language cos it's the language of the Old Testament,

It's one of the Semitic languages, as I said.

The Arabic word for Cube, 'Kaba' , that word is Indo European and it's also the name of the Ark of Noah.

The word used for 'ark' in the Noah story in Genesis is 'tebah', a box or coffer, from Egyptian dbet 'box'. Ancient Egyptian is an Afroasiatic language, a different family again. (The Septuagint translates it into Greek as θῖβις 'basket woven from papyrus'.)

 

[Magus]

John Allegro traced both the name 'Yahweh' and 'Zeus' to a Sumerian root IA U

Thus the principal gods of the Greeks and Hebrews,
Zeus and Yahweh (Jehovah), have names derived from Sumerian meaning "juiceof fecundity",spermatozoa, "seed of life".' The phrase is composed of two syllables, IA (ya, dialectally za),"juice", literally "strong water", and U, perhaps the most important phoneme in the whole of Near Eastern religion. It is found in the texts represented by a number of different cuneiform signs, but at the root of them all is the idea of "fertility". Thus one U means "copulate" or "mount", and "create"; another "rainstorm", as source of the heavenly sperm; another "vegetation", as the offspring of the god; whilst another U is the name of the storm-god himself.

The Septuagint word for Ark , is 'κιβωτὸν' ( Kibotos ) , from 'Kybos' meaning Cube or Six sided Die, this is the root word for the English word 'Cube'

The pie root is 'keu(b)- 'to bend, to turn'
/k/ and /x/ interchange in certain linguistic context

Keub > Teub ( Tebah) and the Latin 'Tubus

I wrote a bit more on the Hebrew pro board on this subject.

Genesis 2:11
Pison: - compasseth - Land-Havilah

The Hebrew word for compass is 'Kabab' which means 'Make a round, or to Turn' , it as the same meaning with the PIE root 'Keu(b). and in the Septuagint, it is translated as 'κυκλῶν' ( KUKLO- ) , the KUK suffix in this word appears in the Hebrew as ' -חוּג' (KUG ) meaning 'Circle / Make round) , 'Cakram' is the Sanskrit word for 'Circle'

The PIE root of 'KUKL', is ''kwelə ( to revolve, move around) and another
word in Hebrew from this root, is 'KUL' (חוּל') meaning 'Dance/Twirl' and this is the root word of 'Havilah' .

The Hebrew word 'Kabab', sounds similar to 'Kebab' ( a swirling on meat ), not a coincidence, it derives from Aramaic 'Kbaba' ( To burn )

The Hebrew word for 'Coal', is 'KUKEL' ( In GK, KUKLO means Circle/Round), 'Kuklo' also forms the name 'Cyclops'( round-eyed) (Mythological blacksmiths of Colchis)

Khalkeus (Χαλκεύς) is the Greek word for coppersmith , similar to the name 'Colchis' (cognate with Havilah - KVLHA/Qulha )

'Chaldee' means 'Smelted Iron'

Charcoal means 'Turning coal' ( KUR - KUL )
pie root Kur ( Skur) - To Turn/to burn.

All these words are relating to blacksmiths, the earliest blacksmiths were the Hittites and Armenians, situated around the black sea and mythology puts them in Colchis ( West Georgia) (Biblical Havilah) and Ethiopia ( in the myth of Perseus) , where Prometheus stole Fire, where all the giants and cyclops live.

 

[blü 2]

John Allegro traced both the name 'Yahweh' and 'Zeus' to a Sumerian root IA U

Allegro had a maverick reputation, not by accident, and he was a bit stuck on fertility cults, as his 'Sacred Mushroom' book shows, I don't see anything in his argument that would make me doubt the etymologies I gave.

 

[Magus]

Allegro had a maverick reputation, not by accident, and he was a bit stuck on fertility cults, as his 'Sacred Mushroom' book shows, I don't see anything in his argument that would make me doubt the etymologies I gave.

Every ancient cult was about fertility, they seem to be a dissonance between a 'Creator God' and a 'Fertility God' today, they are identical in ancient times, Zeus and Jehovah are identical as Jove and Zeus are identical.

Latins IOVE
Phoenicians IEUE
Greeks ZEUS

These names all retain a tetragrammaton , the pronunciation are subject to dialects, Z / Dy / Y / I , they interchange between each other.

 

[Magus]

The language difference between 'Latin & Greek' is as different between 'Greek & Phoenician'

The Latin god ' Iove ' ( Yahve ) , since this name does not begin with a Z , then you could argue this name developed independently from 'Zeus' and since Latin is so alien and different compared to Greek, then it must not be of the same language family as Greek, is that a valid argument?

Are you aware of the Pyrgi Tablets, found in central Italy
Pyrgi Tablets - Wikipedia

'The Pyrgi Tablets, found in a 1964 excavation of a sanctuary of ancient Pyrgi on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy (today the town of Santa Severa), are three golden leaves that record a dedication made around 500 BC by Thefarie Velianas, king of Caere, to the Phoenician goddess ʻAshtaret. Pyrgi was the port of the southern Etruscan town of Caere. Two of the tablets are inscribed in the Etruscan language, the third in Phoenician. '

There was contact between 'Phoenicians' and ancient Italians, the Latin alphabet derives from the Phoenician alphabet , how can one claim 'Jahve (Jove) and 'Jahve( YHWH ) is impossible to be identical or based on one or the other.

 

[blü 2]

Every ancient cult was about fertility, they seem to be a dissonance between a 'Creator God' and a 'Fertility God' today, they are identical in ancient times, Zeus and Jehovah are identical as Jove and Zeus are identical.

Latins IOVE
Phoenicians IEUE
Greeks ZEUS

These names all retain a tetragrammaton , the pronunciation are subject to dialects, Z / Dy / Y / I , they interchange between each other.

The Latin is actually Iovis (or Iouis if you prefer) - Yowis,
Iove / Ioue is the ablative singular.
And Jove is the standard English.
The etymologies of Zeus and Iovis are understood; and not shared with YHWH.

 

[blü 2]

Every ancient cult was about fertility, they seem to be a dissonance between a 'Creator God' and a 'Fertility God' today, they are identical in ancient times, Zeus and Jehovah are identical as Jove and Zeus are identical.

Latins IOVE
Phoenicians IEUE
Greeks ZEUS

These names all retain a tetragrammaton , the pronunciation are subject to dialects, Z / Dy / Y / I , they interchange between each other.

The Latin is actually Iovis (or Iouis if you prefer) - Yowis, Iove / Ioue is the ablative singular. And Jove is the standard English. The etymologies of Zeus and Iovis are understood; and not shared with YHWH.

 

[Magus]

Why can't Zeus, Iove and Ieue share an etymology? Cos everyone are too religiously sensitive, how can a 'sacred name' be related to a 'Pagan' god? Indo ( India) European (Europe) and what is between India and Europe?

'Semite', is SHEM a place ? Shem is mythology and for some reason 'Canaan' is the son of Ham, does that mean Canaanite is a Khemitic Language, they seem to believe that the Language of the Old Testament was created in space by a God and as NO relation to any other language at all.

The idea of 'Language trees' itself is flawed, doesn't take into account things like 'Phoenicians' whom set up colonies around the Mediterranean , such as Carthage and along the Tyrrhenian Coast in Italy , or 'Merchants' or the Sea people, it seems Biblical scholars are trying to erase 'Phoenicians' from history.

'Hebrew' is like 'English, it is a mixture of different languages.

 

[blü 2]

Why can't Zeus, Iove and Ieue share an etymology?

Ieue is your Phoenician?

Another Semitic language. Very unlikely to be connected to the established etymologies of Zeus and Iovis, since that would mean the Phoenicians were influenced by the Greeks, whereas the Phoenicians were in their heyday around the Mediterranean centuries before the rise of Greece.

 

[blü 2]

So it doesn't look like Crete's Phaistos disk is relevant.

And I can't persuade myself of any etymological connection between Yahweh and 'yowie''.

Which leaves us with Jayhawker Soule's reference to Wikipedia ─

Yahweh's earliest possible occurrence is as a place-name, "land of Shasu of YHW", in an Egyptian inscription from the time of Amenhotep III (1402–1363 BCE), the Shasu being nomads from Midian and Edom in northern Arabia. In this case a plausible etymology for the name could be from the root HWY, which would yield the meaning "he blows", appropriate to a weather divinity.​

It goes on to say that this interpretation is supportable but contested. ('He blows', eh? Close call, that. Or is it a mystic nexus to Moby Dick?)

So we don't know where, if anywhere, Yahweh was before he turns up after 1500 BCE.

Could he have been in college? Or doing some other job?

Or just hadn't been thought of yet?

 

[BilliardsBall]

The earliest deity we know of in history may or may not be The Goddess, as, some say, represented by the Venus of Willendorf.

Otherwise, as far as I can tell, Sumer's Innana (a warlike Venus) is the earliest deity we know of, becoming (or becoming identified with) Babylon's Ishtar. After her come the many gods of Sumer, the many gods of the rest of (Semitic) Mesopotamia, the many gods of Egypt, and the many gods of Mycenae and Minoan culture (proto-Greek).

(I say that without bothering to check what we know about the gods of the Indus valley and of early China. And I may be being enormously disrespectful to the Rainbow Serpent, chief agent, if I understand correctly, in Creation, in the lore of Australian aborigines, whose history only recently got an incredible filip from 40,000 years since they arrived there, to over 60,000 years.)

Not until ~1500 BCE do we come across Proto-Yahweh, in Canaan, where he's one of the members of the Canaanite pantheon and has a consort Ashterah.

500 or so year later, the Tanakh leaves no doubt that he was then only one of the recognized gods available in the region. You already know 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me' (NOT There are no other gods') in the Decalog. And here are some more:

Exodus 15:11 Who is like thee, O Lord, among the gods?

Numbers 33:4 upon their gods also the Lord executed judgments.

Judges 11:23-24 So the the Lord, the God of Israel, dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel; and are you to take possession of them? 24 Will you not possess what Chemosh your god gives you to possess?

Psalms 82:1 God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.

Psalms 86:8 There is none like thee among the gods, O Lord,
nor are there any works like thine.

Psalms 95:3 For the Lord is a great god,
and a great King above all gods.

Psalms 135:5 For I know that the Lord is great;
and that our Lord is above all gods.​

Ashterah or Yahweh or both made a career choice to split, perhaps after 1000 BCE since, say the people who study these matters, there are hints of her in Kings. Yahweh then (say some) became both male and female (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, though if we're made in his image his sex life is a deep puzzle).

And as everyone knows, Yahweh's career took off, aided in no small part by the Emperor Constantine and the Prophet Mohammed pbuh.

Which brings me to my questions.

Where was Yahweh before he was one of the gods in the Canaanite pantheon circa 1500 BCE?

How can the total silence beforehand, and his visible progress through the bible from the Canaanite pantheon (Smallville) to the Monogod of Everything (Metropolis) be accounted for?

The "earliest deity in history" communed with Adam. Yahweh/Jesus.