JOURNAL 1

Title of the Article: YAHWEH, the Canaanite God of Metallurgy?

About the Author: Nissim Amzallag

Bibliographic Data: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Volume 33.4 (2009): 387-404

Outline of the Article:

1. Introduction
2. Yahweh, an Edomite God
   1. Edom qualified the land of wisdom
   2. The worship of Yahweh in Edom is explicitly
   3. Esau-Edom and not Jacob-Israel had to inherit Yahweh’s benediction from Isaac.
3. The Metallurgic Dimension of Yahwism
   1. Yahweh’s a  Kenite God
   2. Yahweh and Copper Smelting
4. Homology between Yahweh and other Gods of Metallurgy
   1. The Mysterious Great God
   2. The Bronze Serpent
   3. Fighting the Gods
   4. The Over-extended Domain of Yahweh

What is the Article all About:

Many scholars have emphasized the occurrence of a crisis of the polytheism during the second half of the millennium BCE in Egyptian, Canaan and Mesopotamia. The rising up of a clan-deity and his transformation into a ‘national god’ is considered as a common feature in the history of religion. By analysis of biblical text, some scholars assumed for a long time that Yahweh was formally worshipped in the South Canaan. The claim that ‘Yahweh comes from Seir’ has been strengthened by discovery of Canaanite inscriptions evoking ‘Yahweh of Teman’, but also Egyptian writings mentioning Negeb and northern Senai as ‘the land of Ywh’. The idea of the Edomite origin for Yahweh maybe of crucial importance for discovering his former identity, because the south-eastern part of Canaan was known from the earliest times as a very important place for copper metallurgy. At Punon(Feynan), the most important centre of metallurgy in the Arabah, archaeologists have estimated that between150,000 and 200,000 tons of slag resulted from copper metallurgy in the period from Chalcolithic to the Iron Age. First, Edom is qualified as “the land of wisdom’ in Jer.49:7 and Obadiah 8. Second, the worship of Yahweh in Edom is explicitly mentioned in Isa.21.11. Third, according to the book of Exodus, Esau-Edom and not Jacob-Israel had to inherit Yahweh’s benediction from Isaac (Exod.27.2-4). The intimate link existing between Yahweh and the Kenites is strengthened by the following observations: 1. The first mention of Yahweh in the book of Genesis is related to the birth of Cain: 2. Enosh is mentioned in Genesis as the first man who worshipped Yahweh: 3. The Kenites had a sign on their forehead.4. The book of Jeremiah confirms the existence of a Kenite worship of Yahweh. Interesting evidence of the essential link between Yahweh and copper metallurgy is provided by the story of the first ‘encounter’ between the Moses and Yahweh on Mt Horeb, near the ‘burning bush’ (Exod.3). it is very interesting to observe that, in the Bible, Yahweh is not exclusively link to Israel. The over-extended domain of Yahweh should not be regarded as the consequence of a rapid diffusion of the Israelite religion during the First Temple Period.