YHWH

Paul Wallace: "King Hezekiah initiated a reformation, removing standing stones and altars to focus worship on Yahweh.

By the 6th century BCE, it was rewritten to appear as a seamless story of God, using Yahweh uniformly.

Yahweh, one of the Elohim, is depicted ordering genocides in Joshua and First Samuel, actions incompatible with divine morality.

Viewing Yahweh as a violent leader among many Elohim, rather than God, resolves these moral contradictions.

Deuteronomy 32 and Psalm 82 reveal Yahweh as a junior Elohim assigned to Jacob’s family by Elyon, the commander.

This family, landless and nomadic, was guided by Yahweh to conquer territory, not as a universal God but a regional governor.

Israeli archaeology, including the eighth-century BCE Yaho Ezer seal near Temple Mount, supports biblical narratives.

The debate over their superiority mirrors the Cain and Abel story in Genesis, though the Sumerian tale ends in reconciliation, with Inky favoring grain, unlike Yahweh’s preference for Abel’s offering.

On that reading, Elohim is a plural word for many individuals, and Yahweh is one of them.

He says he counts at least 23 Elohim in the Bible, and that Yahweh is one of them.

Yahweh (YHWH)

He reads Elohim as a group of powerful beings and Yahweh as one of them, in charge of the family of Jacob.

Biglino says El, Elohim and Eloah do not mean "God", and that nobody knows what the name YHWH first meant.

He reads the Elohim as a more advanced civilization that split the peoples of the earth into groups, with Yahweh given the sons of Israel.

Yahweh

Yahweh and Asherah

Words like Elohim, El Shaddai and Yahweh are turned into God, so readers miss how the beings act in the stories.

He says the New Testament never uses the name Yahweh for God, and that Jesus kept his distance from that figure.

Wallis says words like Elohim, El Shaddai and Yahweh should be left untranslated, so readers can watch how each being behaves.

He says Yahweh's acts, such as the 70,000 deaths after David's army count, do not match the God Jesus taught about.

He points out that Jesus and the New Testament writers never call God Yahweh.

Yahweh (YHWH)

Jesus and Yahweh: a deliberate misunderstanding

Yahweh in a single assault killed 70,000 people.

neither Jesus nor anyone who writes for him ever uses the word Yahweh as a word for God.

Questioning Yahweh's Character

So how is it that for the best part of 2000 years, Christianity has run with the idea that the Yahweh character in the Hebrew scriptures is a portrayal of God, and that that is the God that Jesus worshiped?

Samuel said to Saul, "I am the man whom Yahweh has sent to anoint you as king of his people Israel.

Then Yahweh sent a message to Samuel: "I regret having made Saul king, since he has fallen short of obedience to me and has not carried out my precise instructions." Samuel was appalled and cried out to Yahweh all night long.

When Samuel reached Saul, Saul said, "May you be blessed by Yahweh; I have carried out Yahweh's orders." Samuel replied, "Then what is this bleating of sheep in my ears and the lowing of cattle that I hear?"

Saul said, "They have been brought from Amalek, the people having spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice them to Yahweh your God; the rest we have consigned to the curse of destruction."

Let me tell you what Yahweh said to me last night.

Yahweh anointed you as king of Israel.

When Yahweh sent you on a mission, he told you: 'Go and put those sinners, the Amalekites, under the curse of destruction and make war on them until they are exterminated.' Why then did you not obey Yahweh's voice?

Why did you fall on the booty and do what is wrong in Yahweh's eyes?"

Saul replied to Samuel, "But I did obey Yahweh's voice.

I went on the mission which Yahweh gave me.

And from the booty, the people have taken the best sheep and cattle and what was under the curse of destruction only to sacrifice them to Yahweh your God in Gilgal."

To which Samuel said, "Is Yahweh pleased by burnt offerings and sacrifices or by obedience to Yahweh's voice?

Because you have failed Yahweh's instruction, he has rejected you as king."

Saul then said to Samuel, "I have sinned, having broken Yahweh's order and your instructions.

Please forgive my sin and return with me so that I can bow down and abase myself before Yahweh."

Samuel said to Saul, "I will not come back with you, since you have failed Yahweh's word, and Yahweh has rejected you as king of Israel."

Samuel then said, "Bring me Agag, king of the Amalekites." Agag came towards him unsteadily, saying, "Truly, death is bitter." Samuel then butchered Agag in the presence of Yahweh at Gilgal.

That is not the character of Yahweh in the Hebrew scriptures, what we call the Old Testament.

This behavior that we read about in 1 Samuel 15 is the same character revealed by Yahweh whenever he is an active character in the Hebrew scriptures, from start to finish.

Just like Samuel, the spokesperson for Yahweh, executes this brutal slaughter, so Moses does the same.

Now note that when Yahweh rejects Saul, he is rejecting Saul because he isn't brutal enough.

So on what basis do we consider genocide the worst crime against humanity, and yet we excuse it if the Yahweh character does it?

And how is it that Christianity, for the best part of 2000 years, has run with the idea that the Yahweh character of the Hebrew scriptures is a portrayal of God, and that that is the God that Jesus worshiped?

What I argue in The Eden Conspiracy is that although Yahweh later became used as the holy name for God, originally Yahweh referenced an entity which colonized our Hebrew ancestors and governed over them with brutality.

And that Yahweh was not a portrayal of God and was certainly not the God whom Jesus called Father.

The idea that Yahweh was in fact originally a violent colonizer is emphasized by another name that Yahweh identifies with himself, and that's the name El Shaddai.

However, you go to the root meanings of those words, and what you reach is "the powerful one," "the destroyer." And Yahweh says in a later text that he introduced himself to Abraham as the powerful one, the destroyer.

And when Yahweh El Shaddai hears this, he becomes so furious, and he says, "I'll show them." And what he shows them the next day is a total extermination, proving that he's not the powerful one of the mountains or the plains; he's the powerful one, the destroyer.

If Yahweh's character is so abominable, why is it that for so long Christians have identified their concept of God—a transcendent, loving God—with the character of Yahweh in the Hebrew scriptures?

By the time Jesus came on the scene, Yahweh was being used as the holy name for God; it was the name for the Jewish God.

And yet, when you read the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels and referred to in the New Testament, Jesus never once uses the name Yahweh, and neither does anyone who writes for him.

In fact, Jesus distances himself from the Yahweh character.

When he does refer to the Yahweh character, it is disparagingly.

Could he really be saying that about Yahweh?

On another occasion, Jesus completely mocks the idea that Yahweh could be considered any kind of father.

But he mocks the idea that Yahweh was any kind of father, and you can find it in Luke 11 and Matthew 7.

This is a scenario well known to anyone who knows the Yahweh stories, because there did come moments when the people of Israel were starving and thirsty in the desert.

And when they cried out for water, Yahweh provided them with a stone and said: "You can get water from there; I'll show you how you can find water from the stone."

Well, after a while, the tribes of Israel become tired of that provision: "We can't go on living like this; we're hungry, we're thirsty; we want to go home." And they put their complaint to Moses, Yahweh's deputy.

Yahweh is furious that these people are complaining about his provision, and so he sends snakes or serpents to attack them and kill them, and many die and many are made ill.

And Jesus in Matthew 7 and Luke 11 says: "What kind of father would treat his children like that?" He makes a mockery of the Yahweh stories as if they were depictions of the God whom he called Father.

Now, when Jesus spoke disparagingly of Yahweh, he was speaking in the tradition of ancient Judaism.

They spoke slightingly of Yahweh their powerful one, and they built themselves high places wherever they lived, from every watchtower to every fortified town.

They rejected the commandments of Yahweh their powerful one.

But they remembered being colonized by Yahweh as a very negative thing, and they had rejected Yahwism as their religion and as their law.

Now there's only the Jerusalem Temple honoring Yahweh.

There's the king and his God Yahweh; all the others will be forgotten.

So when Jesus speaks slightingly of Yahweh and rejects his laws, he is speaking in the tradition of primitive Judaism.

Yet in the early church, it was unclear whether Jesus really had repudiated the laws of Yahweh.

It took a while for the idea to bed down that Jesus really had rejected Yahwism and repudiated Yahweh's laws.

They put an end date on the laws of Yahweh.

Could Jesus really be saying that the moment was coming when we can completely forget about Yahweh and all his laws and move on to something better?

Well, this was the debate that the apostolic church had to have, because what it boiled down to as Christianity got going was: to become a Christian, do you have to obey the laws of Yahweh?

Do you have to believe in the Yahweh stories to be a Christian?

And they address this question: what do we do with the stories and the laws of Yahweh?

Yahweh's law is at an end.

But they were clear: Jesus had fulfilled—put an end to—the era of Yahweh.

Acts 15 is a very clear repudiation of Yahweh's law, because the apostles understood: Jesus never spoke in Yahweh's name; he never used the name Yahweh.

Whenever he referred to Yahweh, it was always to repudiate his laws or disparage his stories or mock the idea that Yahweh was any kind of father.

Now they knew Yahweh very well; they were Yahwists.

Of course, this echoes what Jesus had told the Jewish leaders in John 8, where he said: "You don't know me and you don't know my Father." So there is a dis-equation of Yahweh and the Father of Jesus.

So they pared it down to get rid of the paleo-contact aspect, so that people would forget about the seba' hashamayim, the sky armies, and the elohim, the council of powers, and remember only Yahweh.

So by the time we have the reconstruction of the temple and Ezra the senior priest overseeing that, we now have a set of scriptures teaching Yahwism: there's only one God, and his name is Yahweh.

The problem with gluing them together is that it sends the signal that this God whom we call Yahweh is the same God whom Jesus worshiped and taught about.

Though Yahweh came to be used as the holy name for God, originally it referred to this colonizing entity—this experience of colonization and brutalization by other non-human powers.

And that we do not consider the Yahweh figure of the Hebrew stories as God.

And in The Eden Conspiracy, I go into the root meanings of key words to show that Yahweh is just one of a number of non-human demographics with whom our ancestors had to deal in the deep past.

We have Yahweh, El Shaddai, Elyon, all the Elohim, the elohim adah—they are stories of paleo-contact, not of "Almighty God," which turns out to be an invented translation altogether.

Yahweh was all about: "You worship me and nobody else because I'm a jealous God." And Jesus said: "I didn't come to be served; I came to help you."

Yahweh believes that he can micromanage us to the point of telling us what we can eat and not eat, whereas in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus declares all foods clean.

Yahweh is unforgiving and will not be reasoned with, and Jesus says: "Your sins are forgiven."

Yahweh is all about: "You follow my orders to the letter even if they don't make sense to you." And there comes a moment when his king, King David, is nearing the point where he might question Yahweh's orders.

But for Yahweh, that's just too close to weighing up his instructions.

You do not think for yourself; you do not use your own mind; you do not trust in your own judgment; you trust in Yahweh with all your heart.

And as a punishment for thinking for himself, Yahweh slaughters 70,000 of David's troops.

Jesus didn't teach Yahwism; he didn't talk about Yahweh; and he certainly didn't worship him.

Our ancestors wanted us to know about what happened under Yahweh.

Yahweh came for slaves; Jesus came to set the prisoners free, so that you and I could have a better human experience.

The word translated as "Lord" (number 3068) refers to Yehovah or YHWH.

So, verse 1 can say: "The humans saw the presence of a distinguishing mark on Eve when the hybrid became pregnant and delivered the presence of the distinguishing mark on Cain and said: I have gotten a human servant from YHWH." This makes sense because in Genesis 2 and 3, YHWH created the hybrid by taking a cell from the humans and made the hybrid beautiful so the humans would marry them.

So, it is true that the hybrid has a human child because of YHWH.

So, Cain brought his offspring of the territory as a tribute to the Lord (YHWH).

Verse 3 can say: "And after a time, Cain (the possessor of the spear) brought his offspring of the territory as a tribute to YHWH."

So: YHWH looked at Abel’s offering (tribute).

And YHWH looked at Abel’s tribute."

So, the end of verse 4 into verse 5 can say: "And YHWH looked at Abel’s tribute and Cain’s tribute they looked at, and Cain was very grieved because his appearance fell short."

As a side note, YHWH refers to more than one person because in Genesis 11:6-7, it says the YHWH said, let us go down.

If YHWH are a group, they should be referred to in the plural.

The YHWH looked at both tributes, which were their children, and the tribe of the spear (Cain) was grieved because their appearance fell short.

Verse 6: The Lord (YHWH) said.

So: YHWH said.

Verse 6 can say: "And YHWH said, Cain is grieved because their appearance fell short."

Verse 7 can say: "If we make them beautiful they will raise up and be accepted but go wrong and rest at the door longing to rule." In other words, YHWH did not want to fix Cain’s distinguishing mark.

YHWH made the hybrids beautiful in Genesis 2 and 3, but now their offspring are born not using the image and have the hybrid's distinguishing mark.

YHWH decided not to let them use the image, as it might cause them to become lazy and covetous.

Genesis 4:1-8 can read: "The humans saw the presence of the distinguishing mark on Eve when the hybrid became pregnant and delivered the presence of the distinguishing mark on Cain and said: I have gotten a human servant from YHWH.

And after a time, Cain (the possessor of the spear) brought his offspring of the territory as a tribute to YHWH.

And YHWH looked at Abel’s tribute and Cain’s tribute they looked at, and Cain was very grieved because their appearance fell short.

And YHWH said, Cain is grieved because their appearance fell short.

For example, the Genesis 3 account featuring Yahweh and the serpent is compared to older stories of Enlil and Enki found on Mesopotamian tablets such as the Enuma Elish and Atra-Hasis.

Evidence is cited of editorial layers in biblical texts, such as the retrospective insertion of the name Yahweh in narratives set long before its historical introduction.