Talk:Yahweh (Canaanite deity)

Article explanation

Article about the Canaanite deity, as opposed to the God of Israel whose name was written "YHWH" but who was not called "Yahweh" (any more) but rather Adonai, HaShem, Elohim, besides a number of other names.

This is intended as the article about the god who was actually called "Yahweh" and who was not yet identified with monotheistic God, or Elohim, but simply a storm god of the Levant who tended to appear to people from clouds, on mountaintops, or from burning bushes.

The primary academic references for this is the "Yahweh" article in the DDD (cited). This should be more than enough to establish notability of the concept and provide content, but obviously any number of other academic sudies can potentially be added. --dab (𒁳) 11:09, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Right but DDD article is about the Hebrew god, the articles states that there is only peripheral evidence for a Canaanite deity called, maybe, Yahwi or maybe Yahu, so not really a good base for an article about the god who was actually called "Yahweh", since the god, if it existed, wasn't called YahwehIn ictu oculi (talk) 19:39, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

This whole article needs remove and deleted, it's all just a bunch of conjecture. --Teacherbrock (talk) 14:00, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Yahweh was clearly a wargod. While Baal represented a stormgod. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.245.61.80 (talk) 08:01, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are only valid when they present unbiased encyclopedic accounts, not disputed, contentious hypotheses presented as fact. At best, this hypothesis should put forth as a sentence that states that a certain author's belief is such-and-such. But if Wiki articles are to do that, there are countless authors with dubious postulations that can be included. With such scant evidence, as presented here, this article is best removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.198.138.69 (talk) 08:39, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Cfork

This article looks like a strightforward WP:CFORK of the material already at Yahweh.

Unless you can show some support at Talk:Yahweh for this article's continued independent existence, I intend to nominate it for deletion. Jheald (talk) 11:28, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Jonathunder (talk) 06:27, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

More straight duplication that a fork. AfD.In ictu oculi (talk) 06:10, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree, I want this deleted. --Teacherbrock (talk) 14:00, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Removal of sources and citation tags for unsourced

207.59.144.57 deleted modern scholarly references, and tags where sources were requested. Reverted.In ictu oculi (talk) 23:13, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

"(nonsense, this is completely undisputed.)"

DBachmann, this edit was unacceptable. As the author of most of this article, which appears to me to contain a certain amount of (a) POV, (b) outdated 19thC/early20th archeological sources, you do not just get to come along, without discussion on the talk page, click revert and leave a note "(nonsense, this is completely undisputed.)" in the edit history list. If you have changes to make, and can support them with recent (post-war) academic references, then please raise them here. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:04, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Anthony Appleyard, thank you for restoring above. In particular thank you for restoring the OR tag on commons image Tetragrammaton in Phoenician placed by User:Zappaz in commons media. It'd be interesting to know the source since it gives the impression that YHWH has been discovered in a Phoenician text. Did it come from a book? Did Zappaz do it on his/her laptop? Either way it barely belongs in the article even labelled (as I have done) "hypothetical". Propose delete. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:11, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

This article needs some serious renovation.

This article poses an interesting theory: was Yahweh a Canaanite deity prior to becoming an Israelite one? The problem with the article is it gives little evidence for it's arguments. In fragmented and almost completely unreadable ugaritic texts a tiny part that references a 'yw' is in no way proper evidence, and this article seems to pivot on that kind of thing. Maybe a paragraph at the end explaining that the article has no conclusive evidence . Ofwould of work, or does this admittance of no conclusion would make Ulf article pointless, and therefore a candidate for deletion? I'm sorry for spelling and grammar mistakes, my phone is being very eratic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grammarbishop8 (talk • contribs) 10:43, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

There is no reason to have a conclusion, if you read WP:NPOV you'll see that our articles should simply represent all significant points of view put forward by sources we consider reliable per WP:RS and WP:VERIFY. Dougweller (talk) 11:31, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Fair point. But this article still needs to have more substantial arguments before it can start to sound as certain about its self as it does at the moment. Grammarbishop8 (talk) 16:35, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

This is the problem with perception vs reality. Current popular understanding of history is based on the biblical account which posits that Canaanites and Israelites were different people with different origins entirely. However, Israelites were canaanites ethnically, geographically and culturally. It is almost impossible to tell canaanite archeological sites from Israelite ones. Imagine if the Spartans adopted their patron god ares as the only god, but associated many of his stories with other common greek stories, then rewrote their history to say their god was unique and lineage unique, when in effect it was not. Their version of the myth would still be greek, even if they say it isn't. They would be greek, even if their religion records them as not greek. By default, their religion would be greek religion.

This article pertains to Yahweh before he became the monotheistic god of second temple Judaism and subsequent religions. The article does need a significant rewrite however. I'll keep working on improving it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.245.61.80 (talk) 07:59, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Good stuff. I'm not arguing that Yahweh WASN'T a Canaanite deity, just that this article doesn't give any good evidence that he was. --Grammarbishop8 (talk) 20:30, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

sigh, the Israelites were a subset of the Canaanites. So if Yahweh was an Isrealite deity, he was a fortiori a Canaanite one. The thing is just that his worship was more widely distributed at first, but he was fully "Israelized" by the 7th century.

Who has ever come close to confirming that the "Israelites were a 'subset' of the Canaanites?" The Israelites were a mix of many peoples from three continents, including "Canaanites." They were, in the main a "Semitic" people, but "Semites" were found in the ANE from Mesopotamia to Arabia and Africa, and the "Canaanites" traditionally referred to spoke Semitic languages (usually) but, located at the littoral of the eastern Mediterranean, were an ethnic mix. The first known mention of "Ywh" ("Jehovah" in the NT) is found on Egyptian inscriptions at Soleb, ca. 1375, during the reign of Amenhotep III. Thereon is the phrase "Shasu of Yhw." The Shasu- "those who go on foot," i.e. Bedouin- roamed the desert wastes south and southwest of "Canaan," and could not be called "Canaanites," unless they are so called because the extreme North of their range was barely the southern and eastern edges of "Canaan." By the same reasoning, to call Yahweh a "Canaanite deity" is to make a pronouncement with, at best, meager evidence. To title an article as such is to make a fact out of pure speculation. Possibly, the best evidence for calling Yahweh a "Canaanite Deity" is a depiction of "Ywh and his Asherah" at Kunitllet Ajrud (ca. 10th century) near the Wadi El Arish i.e., "the river of Egypt" in the Bible- the border between Judah and Egypt and the eastern edge of the Sinai, which is not in "Canaan." "His Asherah" might possibly be linked to the Canaanite goddess, Astarte, but Asherah is an old Semitic goddess and her appearance in the Canaanite Pantheon is linked to older traditions. It is also inaccurate to claim that "(Yahweh) was fully "Israelized" by the 7th century." Traditions about Yahweh were written during the 8th-7th centuries, but critical examination of the Old Testament can confirm that Yahweh was worshipped in Israel in the 9th century and, most likely, hundreds of years before that. Using a geographical definition of "Canaan" to barely and rarely fit Yahweh in as a "Canaanite deity," would make "Canaan" include all of Western Asia in an area bounded by Syria on the North, the Mediterranean sea on the West, the Arabah /Gulf of Aqaba/Red Sea on the South and all of Transjordan to the empty deserts in the East. That definition of Canaan would, however, be useful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.31.22.88 (talk) 04:43, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Now, what is this idea of doing "one article per century"? Do we have Christian God (15th century) as opposed to Christian God (14th century)? "Yahweh" should be the article on the god prior to Second Temple Judaism, where his name became taboo. The problem is that the Yahweh article is infested with religionist editors who think the page should be a duplicate of God in Judaism or even Monotheism. But Yahweh was the name used from, say, 900 to 500 BC, and the article should just cover that period, including origin questions, and ignore the later history of Judaism, which is fully and repetitively covered elsewhere (YHWH, God in Judaism, etc.). --dab (𒁳) 10:20, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

What is it with the bit about the Baal Cycle?

To most readers of this article, a section with constant brackets, square brackets, dollar signs and question marks does not make any sense. Not only do I think this section's 'evidence' (linking a couple of reference to a 'yw' to the god 'YHWH') is weak, but it is badly written and presented. Just have a look at the section and you'll see what I mean. --Grammarbishop8 (talk) 11:04, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Merge

It has been suggested that this article be merged with Yahweh. (Discuss) Proposed since July 2013.

• Support obviously. Talk:Yahweh In ictu oculi (talk) 03:04, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
• Nope. (Perhaps it's time to withdraw the proposal?) —Telpardec  TALK  09:07, 28 August 2013 (UTC) 09:05, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
• Support. Either that or summarize this article there and list this as the main article. I don't see any link from there to here. — kwami (talk) 00:18, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
• Support but clarify. If Yahweh is of Transjordanian extraction, which is the theory the article itself suggests, then Yahweh isn't a Canaanite deity unless we use the broadest definition of Canaan as the Levant which isn't Syria. Most of the page being a defense of the Kenite hypothesis, it might be best to merge part of the text of this page into Kenite and list that as the main article from Yahweh. Thanatosimii (talk) 07:49, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
• Support the main Yahweh article already documents the development of Yahweh into a Hebrew monotheistic deity, there is scope there to discuss in detail the supportable evidence for the previous Caananite deity as part of the Caananite pantheon.-- Aronzak (talk) 05:36, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Aronzak User:Thanatosimii User:Kwamikagami User:Telpardec thanks for comments - seems there's enough support here to go ahead. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:40, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

1. Aren't we forgetting something? Consensus works by quality of reason, not by quantity of !votes. It was not until Aronzak's "support" edit above that a quality reason was given. The reason I said "Nope" above was because no reason (rationale) for the merge was given. There was nothing for any opposers to oppose. (Disclosure: I have never edited this article, and have no vested interest in the outcome of this proposal.)

2. Is this a valid merge proposal? The {{Merge}} tag was added at 10:16 14 July 2013 by User:Dbachmann with no edit summary reason, and was dated later by User:AnomiBOT. A search of the Yahweh page edit history for July 2013 shows that there are a total of 16 edits – No {{Merge from}} notice on 14 July 2013 or any other day there, and no July edits by User:Dbachmann, who last edited that page 22:37, 5 February 2011 (per User edits at toolserver.org).

When you want to discuss a simple merge of one page into another, tag both of them:

{{Merge to|FirstPage|date=May 2024}}

{{Merge from|SecondPage|date=May 2024}}

This allows editors at both pages to see both the proposed source and target.

See also: Wikipedia:Merging and Help:Merging#Proposing a merger

3. I think Kwami's idea above to put a summary section with a {{main|Yahweh (Canaanite deity)}} tag in the other article should be done now. When or if this article gets merged, it can replace that summary then. I'm a bit in the dark about User:Thanatosimii's proposal. Thanks to User:In ictu oculi for the WP:Notifications.
Cheers! —Telpardec (talk) 08:56, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Went ahead and did that for now. If we do decide that this is detailed enough to warrant keeping the split, I think the title should be changed. Currently it sounds like a 2nd deity named "Yahweh". Maybe s.t. like "Yahweh (Canaanite era)"? But this is such a short article that a simple merge would probably be sufficient. — kwami (talk) 16:38, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

• Still needs a merge - seems like a classic case of a WP:FORK, an article about a debatable/speculative aspect of something which doesn't exist separately from the main subject. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:16, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

• Merge – PING: User:Dbachmann User:Aronzak User:Thanatosimii User:Kwamikagami User:In ictu oculi – since the editors of the destination article have also been alerted to the merge proposal and there has been no objection, I'm OK with the merge. There is currently a Kenite hypothesis link pointing to the History section of this article that will need to be redirected - possibly to the Kenite#Kenite hypothesis section of the Kenite article? an unsourced section that needs work. A lot of the material in this article is already duplicated in the Yahweh article. Who wants to box this merge proposal and shuffle things around? I don't have enough knowledge on the topic to know what to copy over and what to toss. (Were you all waiting for me to say something, or did you forget about this proposal like I did? :)
  —Telpardec  TALK  07:30, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Mainly forgot, but yes lets get on with it. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:26, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

• Support – We have separate articles for Jesus, Jesus in Christianity and Jesus in Islam, but in this case, the parent article isn't so long that a separate article is warranted. --Joshua Issac (talk) 14:13, 8 January 2014 (UTC)