Yahweh

Yahweh (/ˈjɑːhweɪ/, or often /ˈjɑːweɪ/ in English; Hebrew: יהוה‎) is the national god of the ancient kingdoms of Israel (Samaria) and Judah. His origins are mysterious, although they reach back to the early Iron Age and even the Late Bronze: his name may have begun as an epithet of El, head of the Bronze Age Canaanite pantheon, but the earliest plausible mentions are in Egyptian texts that place him among the nomads of the southern Transjordan.

In the oldest biblical literature, Yahweh is a typical ancient Near Eastern "divine warrior" who leads the heavenly army against Israel's enemies; he later became the main god of the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) and of Judah, and over time the royal court and temple promoted Yahweh as the god of the entire cosmos, possessing all the positive qualities previously attributed to the other gods and goddesses. By the end of the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE), the very existence of foreign gods was denied, and Yahweh was proclaimed as the creator of the cosmos and the true god of all the world.

Yahweh (Hillsong album)

Yahweh is the first installment in the Hillsong Chapel praise and worship series by Hillsong Church, which was released in Australia on 26 October 2010 by Hillsong Music Australia in partnership with EMI. It was recorded live in the church’s Sydney chapel in March 2010. The album peaked in the Top 100 on the ARIA Albums Chart. A companion DVD was also filmed and released at the same time.

History and recording

Hillsong Chapel is an intimate and devotional collection of Hillsong songs, both recent and beloved, from Hillsong Worship and Hillsong United. Recorded live in the church’s chapel in March 2010, Yahweh, contains 13 organic and contemplative versions of top Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) songs such as "Hosanna", "From the Inside Out" and the No. 1 CCLI song sung by an estimated 40 million people every week in church services around the world, "Mighty to Save". Although having never recorded an "unplugged" version of their songs, Reuben Morgan, Jill McCloghry, Ben Fielding, Joel Houston, Jad Gillies, Annie Garratt and other Hillsong team members crafted the brand new arrangements in response to churches around the world asking for acoustic versions of their popular anthems. The album was released in Australia on 26 October 2010 in partnership with EMI.

God in Christianity

God in Christianity is the eternal being who created and preserves all things. Christians believe God to be both transcendent (wholly independent of, and removed from, the material universe) and immanent (involved in the world). Christian teachings of the immanence and involvement of God and his love for humanity exclude the belief that God is of the same substance as the created universe but accept that God's divine Nature was hypostatically united to human nature in the person of Jesus Christ, in an event known as the Incarnation.

Early Christian views of God were expressed in the Pauline Epistles and the earlycreeds, which proclaimed one God and the divinity of Jesus, almost in the same breath as in 1 Corinthians (8:5-6): "For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many 'gods' and many 'lords'), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live." "Although the Judæo-Christian sect of the Ebionites protested against this apotheosis of Jesus, the great mass of Gentile Christians accepted it." This began to differentiate the Gentile Christian views of God from traditional Jewish teachings of the time.