I’m reading through Alberto R. W. Green’s book The Storm-God in the Ancient Near East, and I came across a rather lengthy footnote that brings together representative publications addressing the question of the origin and meaning of the name Yhwh, and the emergence of Yahwism. Anyone interested in the topics might find something helpful in the footnote, even though many of them are pretty early (obviously some of the items have already been cited in Green’s book, so their shorter citations appear):
H. O. Thompson, “Yahweh (Deity),” ABD 6.1011-13; de Moor, The Rise of Yahwism, esp. pp. 108-36; T.N.D. Mettinger, In Search of God: The Meaning and Message of the Everlasting God (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988); M. S. Smith, The Early History of God; G. W. Ahlström, Who Where the Israelites? (Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1986), 59-60; E. A. Knauf, “Yahwe,” VT 34 (1984): 467-72; Z. Zevit, “A Chapter in the History of Israelite Personal Names,” BASOR 250 (1983): 1-16; Cooper and Pope, “Divine Name and Epithets in the Ugaritic Texts,” 337-42; C. E. L’Heureuz, “Searching for the Origins of God,” in Traditions and Transformations: Turning Points in Biblical Faith (Frank Moore Cross Festschrift, ed. B. Halpern and J. D. Levenson; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1981), 33-44; idem. Rank among the Canaanite Gods, 49-70; M. Görg, “Jahwe: Ein Toponym? BN 1 (1976): 7-14; Cross, CMHE, 44-75 ;R de Vaux, “El et Baal, le Dieu des peres et Yahweh,” Ugaritica IV, 501-17; Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, 168-72; J. P. Hyatt, “Was Yahweh Originally a Creator Deity?” JBL 86 (1967): 369-77; W von Soden, “Yahwe, er ist, er erweist sich,” WO 3 (1944-66): 177-87; A. Finet, “Iawi-ila, roi de Talkayun,” Syria 41 (1964): 117-24; Hyatt, “The Origin of Mosaic Yahwism,” in The Teacher’s Yoke (Waco, Tx.: Baylor University Press, 1964), 85-93; J. Lindblom, “Noch einmal die Deutung des Jahhwe-Names in Ex. 3:14,” ASTI 3 (1964): 4-14; H. Kosmala, “The Name of God (YHWH and HU’),” ASTI 2 (1963): 103-20; O. Eissfeldt, “Jahwe der Gott der Väter,” TLZ 88 (1963): cols. 481-90; idem. “‘aheyah ‘asar ‘aheyah und ‘El ‘Olam,” KS 4.193-98; Cross, “Yahweh and the God of the Patriarchs,” HTR 55 (1962): 250-59; S. Mowinckel, “The Name of the God of Moses,” HUCA 32 (1961): 121-33; R. Abba, “The Divine Name Yahweh,” JBL 80 (1961): 320-28; D. N. Freedman, “The Name of the God of Moses,” JBL 79 (1960): 151-56; R. Meyer, “Der Gottesname Jahwe im Lichte der neuesten Forschung,” BZ 2 (1958): 26-53; M. Reisel, The Mysterious Name of Y.H.W.H. (assen: Van Gorcum, 1957); M. H. Segal, “El, Elohim, and Yahweh in the Bible,” JQE 46 (1955): 98-115; A. Murtonen, A Philological and Literary Treatise on the Old Testament Divine Names ‘l, ‘lwh, ‘lhym, and yhwh (StudOr 18; Helsinki: Sociatas orienstalis Fennica, 1952).
January 8th, 2013 at 3:46 pm
So, how do your handlers in the Mormon cult feel about this?
January 8th, 2013 at 4:00 pm
My “handlers”? Carol, you know I don’t have “handlers.” Also, Ive been around the block enough times with you about “cult” that you should know better than to think you can defend your use of it.
January 21st, 2013 at 3:47 pm
Your Mormon?? i should learn to read the about me pages before entering a discussion.
January 21st, 2013 at 3:49 pm
Oh and of course, the meaning and origin of the name YHWH come from God Himself.
January 21st, 2013 at 4:00 pm
You mean the cryptic folk etymology given in Exod 6:3? The one where the author explains, in contradiction to the current form of the book of Genesis, that the name YHWH was unknown to the patriarchs?
January 22nd, 2013 at 9:56 pm
Yes because God may have used a different name with them. Doesn’t mean there was a different author of the books of the Bible it simply means that God chose to identify Himself in a different manner to them.
Take for example a person with nicknames, some people know the real name while most only know the person’s nickname. Doesn’t mean that there are two different people or two different authors writing about that one person it just means that some people were introduced one way and others another.
You, like most scholars, are reading far too much into the different names of God and have no textual or physical evidence to support your ideas.
January 22nd, 2013 at 10:03 pm
The only problem is that Exod 6:3 directly contradicts numerous portions of Genesis where the patriarchs explicitly call upon Yhwh’s name. The presupposition of univocality causes numerous problems with understanding the Bible.
January 22nd, 2013 at 10:03 pm
as anaside and very off topic your blogroll is greatly out of date. the jim west link goes to a page that says he has deleted his account and I accessed his current site just this morning. (unless he decided to repent and is mending his ways throughout the night)
I hope you will take the time to update it so people won’t waste their time when they click on a link.
January 22nd, 2013 at 10:07 pm
I am not very active on my blog these days, so I hope you’ll forgive me for not updating the blogroll.
January 23rd, 2013 at 2:52 pm
It doesn’t contradict anything, using a different name is not negating the fact that they called upon God.
oh and that is not an excuse for ignoring bad links when someone tells you you have a problem with it.
January 23rd, 2013 at 2:54 pm
But they didn’t use a different name. You don’t seem to understand what I’m saying. Exod 6:3 specifically names Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as “fathers” who did not know the name YHWH. Abraham Isaac, and Jacob, however, explicitly say YHWH’s name numerous times in the book of Genesis. Which is it? Did they know YHWH’s name or not? Either Exod 6:3 is wrong or the book of Genesis is wrong. They can’t both be right. Which is it?
As for the bad links, if it’s no excuse, feel free to report me to the authorities. I will be punished for my heinous crime.
January 24th, 2013 at 1:37 pm
You have yet to cite specific examples from Genesis to support your case but neither are wrong.
as for your attitude about your links, all i did was report that they were out of date and you came up with a lame excuse for having a bad website. the fact that you do not care about how good your service is for others tells me a lot about you and that you can’t handle the explanation for exodus 6:3.
January 24th, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Genesis 15:2, 7, 8; 18:14; 22:14; 27:20, 27. Please explain how neither can be wrong when Exod 6:3 states unequivocally that Abraham didn’t know Yhwh’s name, and the texts above show Abraham explicitly using Yhwh’s name.
When I have the time to sit down and update my website, I will of course update my links. When an antagonistic and naive fundamentalist comes on my blog to bark at me for being a Mormon and then instructs me on how to run my website, I don’t feel particularly compelled to give them the benefit of the doubt. If you want people to to take your feedback seriously, you need to start with not being a pseudo-academic and sectarian jerk to them initially. If you can do that, you’ll find people are magically a lot less curt with you.
January 26th, 2013 at 4:25 pm
Have you heard of Nick Wyatt’s proposition, that the tetragrammaton derives from Hurrian ‘yau’?
January 26th, 2013 at 11:55 pm
Yes, I have read it, most recently in his contribution to Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah. We’ve also talked about YHWH’s origins a couple of times. I find a lot of his conclusions to rest on less secure ground than I am comfortable with.
January 28th, 2013 at 1:36 pm
Howdy!
@theologyarchaeology: you point out Daniel’s outdated web-links, but it’s clear that your own views on scripture are much more outdated by hundreds of years. Might want to catch up on information that has been well-known among Biblicists – even conservative ones – for ages. Moving on…
@Daniel: Good posts and articles!
Have you read D. Schwemmer’s online “The Storm-Gods of the Ancient Near East: Summary, Synthesis, Recent Studies” (2007), which is an update (and synthesis, obviously) of his ” Wettergottgestalten Mesopotamiens und Nordsyriens” (2001)? Though his update does not deal with Yahweh in any way, it seems to provide some helpful critiques of Green’s work (which did not take advantage of Schwemmer’s work). It’s unlikely that it will help much with the Southern tradition of Yahweh’s Name, but it has some very interesting comments, nonetheless.
Anyways, I look foward to reading your Thesis some day and reading more interesting posts.
January 28th, 2013 at 3:03 pm
Matthew-
Thanks for your comments, and yes, I have both parts of Schwemmer’s articles. I have done a cursory reading and made some notes of the more serious differences, but I plan to sit down and look a lot more closely at both authors’ claims in the future. I don’t know if I’ll ever finish my thesis at this rate, though. I just get so engrossed in every new topic I start up!
January 28th, 2013 at 5:35 pm
It’s the never-ending rabbit hole of following references and finding even more interesting things. I’m following some of the ones you posted above currently!