Talk:Yahweh

Not an improvement

Isambard Kingdom (no Brunel?), I really don't see why you keep reverting this edit of mine. Ok, so it's a mass- edit covering multiple points. I'll go through them one by one: • Yawheh as a pagan deity (hat-note). Yahweh was the God of the Old Testament, therefore by definition not a pagan deity. He was also the national god of Israel and Judah, according to what the article says a little further down.

• "In the oldest written lore" - you want to have this instead of "in the oldest Bible texts", but what written lore outside the Bible does he appear in? (Answer: none).

•You want to have "The origins of his worship are mysterious", instead of the simpler "His origins are mysterious"; ok, granted, "origins of his worship" is the wording in the source, but I think what the source actually means is his actual origins, not just how he came to be worshipped. Simpler is always better so long as it preserves the meaning of the source.

Anyway, I submit this for your consideration. PiCo (talk) 10:45, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

PiCo, first, I didn't know that was you. You seemed not to be logged in. I also thank you for these detailed explanations, which are appreciated. I was reacting, most, to the your wanting to substitute "Bible texts" for "written lore". I was under the impression that there is some surrounding written record concerning Yahweh, possibly from neighboring civilizations, that inform this point. I accept what you say. Thank you. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 13:39, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

All good. Yes, YHWH is mentioned in some non-Biblical texts, possibly in those Egyptian inscriptions and certainly in the Meshe stele, but those don't tell much about him. It's in the Bible that he appears as a warrior-god, storm god, leader of his people.PiCo (talk) 03:26, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Misuse of Dever

I've got Dever's book in front of me. He doesn't suggest the "cult" as he calls it originated in the southern Transjordan, he says that that is where some biblical texts place it. And at least that page shouldn't be used in relationship to Amenhotep as he doesn't mention Amenhotep! Similar problems with Anderson, etc. Doug Weller talk 13:50, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Repeated reversions

@PiCo:, you've reverted numerous others' edits more than once with the edit summary "older version was better." I think you need to explain that thinking more thoroughly here and gain consensus. You don't WP:OWN this article. Toddst1 (talk) 22:56, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

I cannot answer for him, but I trust his judgment and agree with him. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:34, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Sure. The version I reverted to was stable for perhaps 2 years. Very recently there has been a wholesale re-writing which has degraded the quality. For example, the article now begins "YHWH, often rendered as Yahweh..." This is incorrect on two counts. The article is about Yahweh (a god), not YHWH (the written form of the name of that god in the Hebrew bible). We already have a separate article on YHWH, it's mentioned in the hatnote; this article isn't about the name YHWH, it's about the god Yahweh. Nor is YHWH aften rendered as Yahweh - it's never, never, rendered at all. This is a basic fact about Judaism. The errors go on and on. So, I'd like to see these changes to the established and stable version of the article defended.PiCo (talk) 00:37, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

And, yet, the edits of ‎Gonzales John continue. PiCo's points seem worthy of discussion. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 02:30, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I restored the higher-quality details of the old version per PiCo (talk). And, for my defense, it is not I but a random IP user who inserted "Yahweh is the name of God in Judaism" in the lead in the first place. And Isambard Kingdom (talk), I'm sure that many of my edits are nowhere near disruptive. Gonzales John (talk) 02:34, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Frankly the result of Gonzales John's edits is a seriously worse article than the original.PiCo (talk) 04:37, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Lead image.

I think we seriously need an image with higher resolution than the one on the lead now.Gonzales John (talk) 02:25, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I think Gonzales John's new lead image is a mistake, and gives a misleading expectation to the reader as to what the article is going to be about. Overwhelmingly, this article is about how YHWH was perceived in the Iron Age, not in subsequent periods. An image of an Iron Age artefact is therefore appropriate, not an image from the 18th century. Jheald (talk) 16:40, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Actually, I thought that too, but I couldn't find any Yahweh artefactacts other than the coin, and, according to the image's description page, the deity depicted on the coin may not even be Yahweh.I suppose now, however, that the coin is still the best image to use for the lead.Gonzales John (talk) 06:55, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Because Yahwism was aniconic, there are no images of Yahweh. The coin may or may not show Yahweh, but it's relevant because its very rarity illustrates the aniconism. PiCo (talk) 10:34, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Recent removal of content

This article seems to have an extremely troubled history, so maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't see why the "rise of monotheism" section needed to be cut down to a third of its size, or why the etymology stuff needed to be scrubbed from the article entirely. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 16:47, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

How Yahweh became God deserves a deeper description, but if there are other articles on the subject, I understand it. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:08, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

There isn't really any one article that talks about it in depth, though. Information on this seems to be just kind of split between Yahweh#Yahweh and the rise of monotheism, Origins of Judaism#Monarchy (centralized religion), and History of ancient Israel and Judah#Iron Age Yahwism, and none of those sections are more detailed or prominent than the others (well, this one was, until it was condensed a year ago and then again just now). Maybe PiCo has something in mind for the removed material (which seems to be essentially his in the first place), but for now I'm going to try to restore some of it. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 16:52, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

I restored the part about the proposed hwy etymology, the longer "rise of monotheism" section, and the lede's mention of the transition to monotheism. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 17:36, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me. Doug Weller talk 18:00, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

My apologies for coming late to this, since my name is mentioned, but I didn't realise this discussion was going on.

There are 2 articles that cover very similar material, this one and YHWH. Once, years ago, they covered exactly the same material, (i.e. they were a fork), and so it was decided that YHWH would focus on the name and Yahweh on the ancient history of the god. So YHWH talks about the meanings of Hebrew trilateral roots and this one the two scholarly opinions on how the name might have originated.

I'll look again at the deleted material and see if it belongs here or in YHWH. But I very rarely edit YHWH, since my interest is more in the history of religion.

I deleted the "rise of monotheism" section because it seems out of place - the article is about a period in history when Yahweh was part of a polytheistic pantheon. The right place would be Second Temple Judaism, which is when monotheism arose. That's just thinking of the articles on Judaism as a historical sequence - this one is the first, describing Bronze/Iron Age Yahwism, then Second Temple Judaism, then I guess Rabbinic Judaism, when the religion changed again.

Anyway, that's my explanation of what I've done and how I'm thinking, but of course I'll accept the view of the community.PiCo (talk) 10:18, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

I get what you're saying, but I think most people who read the article are just going to be curious about Yahweh -- they won't be reading it side-by-side with the Tetragrammaton article or as part of a series with Second Temple Judaism, they're just going to expect a complete package along the lines of Isis or Moloch.

I definitely agree that this article is about the period in history when Yahweh was part of a polytheistic pantheon, but the end of that period is of particular importance, and at the moment I think detailed information on that transition would be more at home here than in any of the other articles linked in this discussion. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 16:48, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

This Yahweh and the Present-day Yahweh

Should we consider the Edomite Yahweh and the present-day Yahweh the same, especially since lore about the polytheistic ancient Yahweh (Exodus, etc.) is understood by followers to about the monotheistic present-day Yahweh they worship. If we consider them the same deity then "His origins are mysterious" is non-neutral.Gonzales John (talk) 05:42, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

The scope of this article is Yahweh in Bronze/Iron Age Israel and Judah. That Yahweh isn't the same as the modern God of Israel, because gods change and evolve over time, especially over a period as long as three thousand years.

If by "Edomite" Yahweh you mean the name mentioned in the ancient Egyptian inscriptions, the answer is that nobody has any idea what that god was like - all it amounts to is the phrase "Shasu of YHW", with YHW apparently a place-name, not the name of a god.

Modern Jews do regard the scriptural YHWH to be their God, the God who brought them out of Egypt and continues to hold them before all mankind as his own people, but the scope of our article is YHWH as he was conceived in the two Iron Age kingdoms for the space of about 500 years between 1000-500 BCE. Even in that space of time the way he was conceived changed, from a warrior god with his shrine at Shiloh leading Israel against her enemies to a god who adopted the King of Jerusalem as his son. At that earliest stage the Exodus story wasn't important in Judah - there's no trace of it in the earliest southern prophets, only in the northern ones - and it was only after the Exile that the Exodus story became central to Jews. In other words, YHWH has been constantly changing, and the YHWH we're talking about in this article had little in common with the YHWH of a thousand years later.PiCo (talk) 10:30, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

PiCo (talk), okay, I guess I'm satisfied now.Gonzales John (talk) 07:22, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Wicked people

Yahweh is going to judge. Wicked people here on Wikipedia. You KNOW that Yahweh is the Name of Elohim of the Bible yet you want to make it out that he's some commonly devised Mighty One. You Jews make me sick. O, you don't want to use the Name because it's too sacred!!!! Yet how many Jews have been responsible for creating this trash site of a page. This is Yahweh's Name!!!! You better put this article right. Yahweh hasn't had anypone to stand up for him for a long time and He is not happy with you!!! So listen to what I have to say. All of you. You put this article right now!!!! Yahweh IS the Name of the Elohim of the Bible! You idiots. You think you can mess around with Yahweh? Just because he doesn't have anyone to stand up for him? Well now he does. GET TO IT! I want this article corrected by Wednesday!!!!! Do you understand? Maybe you should listen to this:

https://soundcloud.com/lovetheword/the-lion-of-judah-written-by-david-braithwaite-for-the-glory-of-yahweh-and-yahshua?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=facebook

And visit my profile in the next 5 minutes.

Hypocrites. All of you.

In Citer (talk) 17:17, 10 June 2016 (UTC)