Quote:While Yhwhs cult was certainly important in the early First Temple period, it was not exclusive.
Jeremiah speaks about the many gods of Judah, which are as numerous as the streets of a town. There was certainly worship a female deity, Asherah, or the Queen of Heaven, Rmer told Haaretz. There was certainly also the worship of the northern storm god Hadad (Baal).
The plurality of deities was such that in an inscription by Sargon II, who completed the conquest of the kingdom of Israel in the late 8th century BCE, the Assyrian king mentioned that after capturing the capital Samaria, his troops brought back the (statues of) gods in which (the Israelites) had put their trust.
As the Yhwh cult evolved and spread, he was worshipped in temples across the land. Early 8th-century inscriptions found at Kuntillet Ajrud probably refer to different gods and cultic centers by invoking Yhwh of Samaria and his Asherah and Yhwh of Teman and his Asherah. Only later, under the reign of King Josiah at the end of the 7th century BCE, would the Yhwh cult centralize worship at the Temple in Jerusalem.
Nor, in ancient Israel, was Yhwh the invisible deity that Jews have refrained from depicting for the last two millennia or so.
In the kingdom of Israel, as Hosea 8 and 1 Kings 12:26-29 relate, he was often worshipped in the form of a calf, as the god Baal was. (1 Kings 12:26-29 explains that Jeroboam made two calves, for the sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan, so the people could worship Yhwh there and wouldnt have to go all the way to Jerusalem. Ergo, in northern Israel at least, the calves were meant to represent Yhwh.)
In Jerusalem and Judah, Rmer says, Yhwh more frequently took the form of a sun god or a seated deity. Such depictions may have even continued after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian Exile: a coin minted in Jerusalem during the Persian period shows a deity sitting on a wheeled throne and has been interpreted by some as a late anthropomorphic representation of Yhwh.
Rmer even suspects that the Holy of Holies in the First Temple of Jerusalem, and other Judahite sanctuaries, hosted a statue of the god, based on Psalms and prophetic texts in the Bible that speak of being admitted in the presence of the face of Yhwh.
Not all scholars agree that the iconography of Yhwh was so pronounced in Judah. The evidence for anthropomorphic depiction is not strong, says Saul Olyan, professor of Judaic studies and religious studies at Brown University. It may be that anthropomorphic images of Yhwh were avoided early on.
The God of the Jews
In any case, many scholars agree that Yhwh became the main god of the Jews only after the destruction of the kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, around 720 BCE.
How or why the Jews came to exalt Yhwh and reject the pagan gods they also adored is unclear.
We do know that after the fall of Samaria, the population of Jerusalem increased as much as fifteenfold, likely due to the influx of refugees from the north. That made it necessary for the kings of Judah to push a program that would unify the two populations and create a common narrative. And that in turn may be why the biblical writers frequently stigmatize the pagan cultic practices of the north, and stress that Jerusalem alone had withstood the Assyrian onslaught – thereby explaining Israel's embarrassing fall to Assyria, while distinguishing the prominence and purity of Judahite religion.
Religious reforms by Judahite kings, mainly Hezekiah and Josiah, included abolishing random temple worship of Yhwh and centralizing his adoration at the Temple in Jerusalem, as well as banning the worship of Asherah, Yhwhs female companion, and other pagan cults in the Temple and around the capital.
The Israelites don't keep the faith
This transformation from polytheism to worshipping a single god was carved in stone, literally. For example, an inscription in a tomb in Khirbet Beit Lei, near the Judahite stronghold of Lachish, states that Yhwh is the god of the whole country; the mountains of Judah belong to the god of Jerusalem.
Josiahs reforms were also enshrined in the book of Deuteronomy – whose original version is thought to have been compiled around this time – and especially in the words of Deut. 6, which would later form the Shma Yisrael, one of the central prayers of Judaism: Hear, O Israel, Yhwh is our God, Yhwh is one.
But while Yhwh had, by the dawn of the 6th century BCE, become our national god, he was still believed to be just one of many celestial beings, each protecting his own people and territory.
This is reflected in the many biblical texts exhorting the Israelites not to follow other gods, a tacit acknowledgement of the existence of those deities, Romer explains.
For example, in Judges 11:24, Jephtah tries to resolve a territorial dispute by telling the Ammonites that the land of Israel had been given to the Israelites by Yhwh, while their lands had been given to them by their god Chemosh ("Will you not take what your god Chemosh gives you? Likewise, whatever Yhwh our god has given us, we will possess.")
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