The evolution of Yahweh-Elohim
The evolution of Yahweh-Elohim
Origin's of the name Yahweh
DEITY CONCEPTS AMONG THE SEMITES
96:1.1
"The early Semites regarded everything as being indwelt by a spirit. There were spirits of the animal and vegetable worlds; annual spirits, the lord of progeny; spirits of fire, water, and air; a veritable pantheon of spirits to be feared and worshiped. And the teaching of Melchizedek regarding a Universal Creator never fully destroyed the belief in these subordinate spirits or nature gods.
96:1.2 The progress of the Hebrews from polytheism through henotheism to monotheism was not an unbroken and continuous conceptual development. They experienced many retrogressions in the evolution of their Deity concepts, while during any one epoch there existed varying ideas of God among different groups of Semite believers. From time to time numerous terms were applied to their concepts of God, and in order to prevent confusion these various Deity titles will be defined as they pertain to the evolution of Jewish theology:
96:1.3 1. Yahweh was the god of the southern Palestinian tribes, who associated this concept of deity with Mount Horeb, the Sinai volcano. Yahweh was merely one of the hundreds and thousands of nature gods which held the attention and claimed the worship of the Semitic tribes and peoples.
96:1.4 2. El Elyon. For centuries after Melchizedek's sojourn at Salem his doctrine of Deity persisted in various versions but was generally connoted by the term El Elyon, the Most High God of heaven. Many Semites, including the immediate descendants of Abraham, at various times worshiped both Yahweh and El Elyon.
96:1.5 3. El Shaddai. It is difficult to explain what El Shaddai stood for. This idea of God was a composite derived from the teachings of Amenemope's Book of Wisdom modified by Ikhnaton's doctrine of Aton and further influenced by Melchizedek's teachings embodied in the concept of El Elyon. But as the concept of El Shaddai permeated the Hebrew mind, it became thoroughly colored with the Yahweh beliefs of the desert.
96:1.6 One of the dominant ideas of the religion of this era was the Egyptian concept of divine Providence, the teaching that material prosperity was a reward for serving El Shaddai.
96:1.7 4. El. Amid all this confusion of terminology and haziness of concept, many devout believers sincerely endeavored to worship all of these evolving ideas of divinity, and there grew up the practice of referring to this composite Deity as El. And this term included still other of the Bedouin nature gods.
96:1.8 5. Elohim. In Kish and Ur there long persisted Sumerian-Chaldean groups who taught a three-in-one God concept founded on the traditions of the days of Adam and Melchizedek. This doctrine was carried to Egypt, where this Trinity was worshiped under the name of Elohim, or in the singular as Eloah. The philosophic circles of Egypt and later Alexandrian teachers of Hebraic extraction taught this unity of pluralistic Gods, and many of Moses' advisers at the time of the exodus believed in this Trinity. But the concept of the trinitarian Elohim never became a real part of Hebrew theology until after they had come under the political influence of the Babylonians.
96:1.9 6. Sundry names. The Semites disliked to speak the name of their Deity, and they therefore resorted to numerous appellations from time to time, such as: The Spirit of God, The Lord, The Angel of the Lord, The Almighty, The Holy One, The Most High, Adonai, The Ancient of Days, The Lord God of Israel, The Creator of heaven and Earth, Kyrios, Jah, The Lord of Hosts, and The Father in Heaven.
96:1.10Jehovah is a term which in recent times has been employed to designate the completed concept of Yahweh which finally evolved in the long Hebrews experience. But the name Jehovah did not come into use until fifteen hundred years after the times of Jesus.
96:1.11 Up to about 2000 B.C., Mount Horeb was intermittently active as a volcano, occasional eruptions occurring as late as the time of the sojourn of the Israelites in this region. The fire and smoke, together with the thunderous detonations associated with the eruptions of this volcanic mountain, all impressed and awed the Bedouins of the surrounding regions and caused them greatly to fear Yahweh. This spirit of Mount Horeb later became the god of the Hebrew Semite, and they eventually believed him to be supreme over all other gods.
96:1.12 The Canaanites had long revered Yahweh, and although many of the Kenites believed more or less in El Elyon, the supergod of the Salem religion, a majority of the Canaanites held loosely to the worship of the old tribal deities. They were hardly willing to abandon their national deities in favor of an international, not to say an interplanetary, God. They were not universal-deity minded, and therefore these tribes continued to worship their tribal deities, including Yahweh and the silver and golden calves which symbolized the Bedouin herders' concept of the spirit of the Sinai volcano.
96:1.13 The Syrians, while worshiping their gods, also believed in Yahweh of the Hebrews, for their prophets said to the Syrian king: "Their gods are gods of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them on the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they."
96:1.14 As man advances in culture, the lesser gods are subordinated to a supreme deity; the great Jove persists only as an exclamation. The monotheists keep their subordinate gods as spirits, demons, fates, Nereids, fairies, brownies, dwarfs, banshees, and the evil eye. The Hebrews passed through henotheism and long believed in the existence of gods other than Yahweh, but they increasingly held that these foreign deities were subordinate to Yahweh. They conceded the actuality of Chemosh, god of the Amorites, but maintained that he was subordinate to Yahweh.
96:1.15 The idea of Yahweh has undergone the most extensive development of all the mortal theories of God. Its progressive evolution can only be compared with the metamorphosis of the Buddha concept in Asia, which in the end led to the concept of the Universal Absolute even as the Yahweh concept finally led to the idea of the Universal Father. But as a matter of historic fact, it should be understood that, while the Jews thus changed their views of Deity from the tribal god of Mount Horeb to the loving and merciful Creator Father of later times, they did not change his name; they continued all the way along to call this evolving concept of Deity, Yahweh." UB 1955
Most interesting is the evolution of 'Yahweh', is that such a name (if derived from 'ahayah') is self-subsisting as the One who 'IS', or meaning 'He Is'....denoting Self-existing Deity, he who exists apart from time, and in all time...."he who is, was and is to come" since the "I AM" is consciousness recognizing itself, in the eternal Now, yet seeing all past and future as intertwined in the present, so that
God-Presence will always be there for his creation, to 'be' and 'be-come' whatever his creation desires for the inherent good and joy of their prosperity, since the Creator lives to care for and sustain its creation. "I will be for them whatever I will be", "I Shall be their provider". "I Am, and because I Am, I am all"
The tetragrammaton in itself is most interesting, 'YHWH' (4 consonants), and the name Moses got while inquiring what name to tell the Israelites who sent him, was 'Ehyeh asher Ehyeh' ('I Am', 'I WIll Be'), so is this really a 'name' or a 'description' of the elohim of the Jews, furthermore the coumpound of Yahweh-elohim (Lord God) is sometimes used. The name itself is regarded so holy as not to be uttered and replaced with the word 'Adonai' (Lord) or 'HaShem' (the Name),...so again here, how do we differentiate the real name of 'God' from various descriptions and 'titles' that are given to this 'God'? In any case, the evolution is peculiar and 'names/titles' are more 'man-made' in nature, per his own description.
In a primary Gnostic tradition, 'YHWH' is thought to be the 'Demi-urge', and not the true Most High God,...being a creator-demi-god who made an imperfect creation (this world) who actually believes he is 'God' (boasting "I am God and there is no other") imposing upon man a religious system of heavy burdens and rules (Mosaic law and rule system), but also some good principles (10 commandments, wisdom sayings).
In the fullness of time the 'Living Father' (the true Most High God) sends down his Son Jesus, a true divine eon or luminary of the Father's light to give man the true gospel of the kingdom of based on love's law.... gathering in a
brotherhood of mankind under the
Fatherhood of the
One True God. There are variations of this theme of course, and the UB revelation agrees that the The Universal Father allowed a time for a renewal of knowledge and revelation to come in writing illuminating Jesus true character, his ministry and Lordship of our world as Our Creator Son and his place within the celestial hierarchy.
Furthermore, the UB indicates that 'God' the Universal Father has never revealed his 'name' to any of the inhabited worlds of the cosmos, but has revealed his 'nature', whereby sentient beings then gave 'God' various names and titles they saw fitting for their concept or understanding of Deity.
1:1.1 Of all the names by which God the Father is known throughout the universes, those which designate him as the First Source and the Universe Center are most often encountered. The First Father is known by various names in different universes and in different sectors of the same universe. The names which the creature assigns to the Creator are much dependent on the creature's concept of the Creator. The First Source and Universe Center has never revealed himself by name, only by nature. If we believe that we are the children of this Creator, it is only natural that we should eventually call him Father. But this is the name of our own choosing, and it grows out of the recognition of our personal relationship with the First Source and Center.
More
here in Paper 1 on The Universal Father.
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