Polytheistism, the God Meme, and the Ugarit Text

The Biblical word for God is “EL” and that word is not Jewish in origin, but rather it traces back to older Levant (Canaanite) religion. The patriarch Abraham is known as the father of the world’s three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. For centuries his faithfulness to one god (at a time when people worshiped many deities) has been regarded as a monumental break with the society around him. However, an archaeological discovery known as the Ugaritic texts is opening a window onto a different cultural context for Abraham’s story and it is turning most assumptions about “god” on their head.

According to the Hebrew scripture, Abraham first encounters EL (or rather a priest of EL Elyon) in the city of Jerusalem, which was known in antiquity as Salem. In the Book of Genesis, Abraham rescues his kidnapped nephew, Lot, from the Mesopotamians, and on returning from battle he meets Melchizedek, king of Salem, who gives him bread and wine and blesses him in the name of El Elyon (“God Most High”). Until the Ugaritic texts were decoded, it was just assumed this was the same God to whom Christian pray–but was it? Or was this EL the Canaanite ”Father of gods” and YHWH one of his many sons who the Jews would later claim as their own nationalistic deity?

Question: Why did Abraham worship EL? Was it because Melchizedek sold him on the idea that this was the "God Most High" that he was seeking? It turns out that that while EL was called the “creator god” it was believed this “father of all gods” had as many 52 sons, Baal and Dagon being chief among them. Then were were the lesser gods, Mot, Ashtar, Astarte, Lotan, Melqart, Resheph, and others. Most shocking of all is the name Yahweh. This son of El does more than make an appearance in the Hebrew scriptures, he become the central character. However, 100 years before Abraham was born EL and Yahweh were written about by pantheist and preserved in clay at Ugarit.

My Basic Premise: The idea of God is an evolutionary idea--the supreme meme. One which has had a cultural progression from polytheism to monolarity in various places throughout human history, from Kemet (Egypt) to Levant (Canaan). The religion of ancient Israel is a product of this same process. They borrowed not only their neighbor’s architecture but the name of their god as well, then the nature of this tribal deity changed over time.

All this was mere speculation on the part of a few “conspiracy theorists” until eighty years ago. Before that, and even to this day, the vast majority of Christians look to the Hebrew scripture as their authority and thus their single source of faith. Even those who uphold the authoritativeness of “Holy Writ” will admit polytheism in Israelite history had a long run until under Hezekiah and then later Josiah destroyed the temples, idols and altars of other gods. Josiah’s reign is one of monolarity pushing towards monotheism which doesn’t fully take root until after the Jewish exile.

To summarize: There is much evidence that the Israelites were originally polytheistic and Yahweh was only one of the gods in their pantheon, but being their national god he became the prominent figure and eventually the only one to survive the God meme developed. There is much to talk about here, and I welcome discussion. Again, please bring in some of your own sources as well to enrich the topic.

Cool thread!

I've been posting along the same lines for about a week now. Must be something in the air!

I posted this here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Yahweh was not the only god and he wasn't even the greatest of the gods, but, it seems that he wanted his people to think that.

The Song of Moses: Deuteronomy 32:

7 Remember the days of old;
consider the years of many generations;
ask your father, and he will show you,
your elders, and they will tell you.

8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.
9 But the LORD's portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.


According to the Dead Sea Scrolls "Most High" translates "El Elyon," the sons of God translates "Beni Elohim", literally "sons of god" and "LORD" translates "YHVH", "Yahweh". So what we see here is that the author of Deuteronomy considered El-Elyon to be a different god than YHVH, and that also that YHVH was just one of many gods. Perhaps he called "dibs" on Israel when nations were being handed out, or maybe he wasn't happy with his assignment.

The chapter follows with Yahweh finding "him" in the desert and caring for and nursing "him" until he got fat and spoiled. Then we see Yahweh devolve into frustration, rage, vengence and back to frustration.

10 “He found him in a desert land,
and in the howling waste of the wilderness;
he encircled him, he cared for him,
he kept him as the apple of his eye.


15 “But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked;
you grew fat, stout, and sleek;
then he forsook God who made him
and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.


23 “‘And I will heap disasters upon them;
I will spend my arrows on them;
24 they shall be wasted with hunger,
and devoured by plague
and poisonous pestilence;
I will send the teeth of beasts against them,
with the venom of things that crawl in the dust.
25 Outdoors the sword shall bereave,
and indoors terror,
for young man and woman alike,
the nursing child with the man of gray hairs.


26 I would have said, “I will cut them to pieces;
I will wipe them from human memory,”
27 had I not feared provocation by the enemy,
lest their adversaries should misunderstand,
lest they should say, “Our hand is triumphant,
it was not the Lord who did all this.”’


Here we see Yahweh set back in frustration. If he carries out is vengeful plan of wrath his enemies will think that they have done it, that they have won, and won't believe that his people's destruction was his (Yahweh's) plan, and they will claim victory over him.

Who are Yahweh's enemies? The other sons of God and their nations, IMHO.

I also added the same concept to this thread www.abovetopsecret.com..., by Akragon.

He wanted to destroy the people whom he was charged with, but was afraid that his enemies would take the credit and presume to have defeated Yahweh, rather than acknowledge the fact that he kicked down his own sand castle in frustration, on purpose!

Clearly he wasn't lying when he said:

39 See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.

40 For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever.


This is where Yahweh denounces the "Most High" GOD. There is actually a lot of commentary that suggests that Yahweh and Satan are the same deity.

With a friend like Yahweh, who needs enemies?

Interesting idea and a new one for me but I think its just a matter of semantics? Abraham was a a couple of generations after the flood and he was from Ur as well so we know that people had gone back to pagan or polytheistic ways. Perhaps it was just a name for the unknown name of God and was a localized concept? Kind of how the term God is used, its not really a name but more of a descriptor but people have now used it as a name or concept/idea. I don't know many people who refer to God as YHVH honestly. Perhaps this national deity was replaced but the name was kept as a descriptor? The point still doesn't change the things that God showed Abraham and the promises and prophecies that followed.

This is just my interpretation on things and I will have to study it more but great topic. I am looking forward to the other responses.

You do realize of course that Abraham was a contemporary of the Canaanites?

You do realize that although the Hebrew scriptures/history was written down by Moses about 1500 BC...
...that he recorded history that occurred before the Canaanites existed?

A simple point first,

... the vast majority of Christians look to the Hebrew scripture as their authority and thus their single source of faith.

Protestants have never been a majority of Nicene Christians worldwide, and are about one-third today. Even within that third, the largest denomination, the Anglican Communion, rests on Tradition and Reason, as well as Scripture - just like the older, non-Protestant churches.

A second point is that there is no archeological basis for Abraham as an actual person. He is an object of faith, like Adam and Eve, Moses or Jesus, who is encountered only in scripture, scripture written after his death, if he ever lived. There may be as little purpose, therefore, in reconciling Abraham's biography with archeology as aligning Adam's with evolutionary biology.

It is reasonable to reconstruct a progression of religious ideas, at the end of which, a distinctive Canaanite people acquires a national identity based on the worship of one god, Yahweh. However, the written record has a curious feature: it was heavily redacted in the post-exilic period (a historical situation), at which time, the Northern Israelites were dispersed (having been defeated long before the Southeners, whose descendants returned under Persian rule, the first "Jews" in any modern sense.)

History in this case was not written by the victors, but rather by the survivors. Any Northern viewpoint, then, may be underrepresented, or represented only in a distorted form. There is no "post" exilic period for them; they're just gone.

It is entirely possible that the Northern Israelites,devotees of Yahweh, were monolatrous, side by side with a Southern radical monotheism, throughout the entire period of Israelite independence. That would seem to be the gist of the complaints in the Old Testament about Yahweh-ists who also recognize the neighbors' gods as gods like Yahweh, but not as "ours."

In that case, the monolatry wasn't displaced by monotheism in a contest of ideas, but rather because the monolatry flourished in a more desirable place to conquer and occupy than the monotheists' southern deserts. If so, then the "evolutionary" analogy isn't going to help much, because the progression in the supposed "meme" isn't an adaptation to anything.

It is easy enough to see monolatry flourishing within polytheism today in India. "Personal gods," people choosing to be devoted to one god among many, is a popular religious path. Conversely, some Christians come very close to accusing other Christians as practicing a poly-something in the devotion to "patron saints" within monotheism. The idea of monolatry doesn't seem to require special pleading to explain its emergence or survival within other approaches.

(Note added: "progression" can be deceiving. Anarchism is not a refinement of monarchism, although they are "conceptually close," in that they differ by only one ruler, and both contrast markedly with republican democracy.)

In any case, although Christians and Muslims emphasize God in his role as the sole world-creator, the Jewish scriptures don't depict Yahweh playing that card so much. Often, when he wants to make an emotional claim to a Hebrew or Jewish audience, he identifies himself as the God "who led your ancestors out of Egypt." That, too, of course, lacks much of any archeological basis, and is another object of faith, encountered only in scripture.

What happens in that scripture is the founding of a nation, based on an allegedly historical collective revelation of Yahweh at Sinai, with a covenant that reads like a treaty. Shortly before that, Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, says to Moses that his ancestors worshipped Yahweh as "El Shaddai," the god of the high places.

It is tantalizing that just before his covenant is made (which is Genesis 15, so we're at the end of 14, 17ff), Abram interacts with a priest of "El Elyon," the most high God, described as the creator of heaven and earth, which formula Abram repeats back. The rabbi Jesus will be depicted as drawing heavily on this incident for his own "new covenent."

But how does God speak of himself in the covenant scene? He says he's the one who led Abram out of Ur and gave him his own land, and no more. This, then, is the truly distinctive trait of the One God, the land-giver to the wanderer. Was that a chief epithet of any of the other Canaanite Elohim? If it was, and this is found in some inscripion, then that would be a find.

Originally posted by NihilistSanta

Abraham was a a couple of generations after the flood and he was from Ur as well so we know that people had gone back to pagan or polytheistic ways.

Didn’t only 8 people survive the flood?

So after a couple of generations there would be about 30 people at most – right?

reply to post by racasan


No. God always leaves a remnant. We know also that decendents of the nephilhim survived as well.

reply to post by NihilistSanta


Ok so the flood tale is about all life on earth being drowned – except for 8 people and some animals on a boat, oh and a lot of other people and some nephilim – well I’m glad you cleared that up because otherwise the whole flood thing just sounds silly

NEXT

Originally posted by NihilistSanta
reply to post by racasan

 

No. God always leaves a remnant. We know also that decendents of the nephilhim survived as well.

That sounds as plausible as your avatar looks

reply to post by eight bits

In any case, although Christians and Muslims emphasize God in his role as the sole world-creator, the Jewish scriptures don't depict Yahweh playing that card so much. Often, when he wants to make an emotional claim to a Hebrew or Jewish audience, he identifies himself as the God "who led your ancestors out of Egypt." That, too, of course, lacks much of any archeological basis, and is another object of faith, encountered only in scripture.

What happens in that scripture is the founding of a nation, based on an allegedly historical collective revelation of Yahweh at Sinai, with a covenant that reads like a treaty.

Except that right in the middle of the Exodus version of the 10 words treaty you find:

Ex 20:8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 You shall labor six days, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. You shall not do any work in it, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your stranger who is within your gates; 11 for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy.

He claims, or the claim is made for him, that he is the creator.

The primary, or at least a major argument for a progression, or regression to monotheism is the post-exilic 2nd Isaiah claims.

Isaiah 44:24
24 Thus says Yahweh, your Redeemer,
and he who formed you from the womb:

“I am Yahweh, who makes all things;
who alone stretches out the heavens;
who spreads out the earth by myself;

or pre-exile, but after Assyrian rule?

Isaiah 37:15 Hezekiah prayed to Yahweh, saying, 16 “Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, who is enthroned among the cherubim, you are the God, even you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.

What does my avatar have to do with anything? I gave a condensed explanation because I was on my phone. I thought since the claim is that YHVH is just one of many Gods and then cite the bible and extra biblical sources that the person making the claim was well versed in the bible.

reply to post by wasaka

being their national god he became the prominent figure and eventually the only one to survive the God meme developed.

Interesting that you use meme. The word was coined by Richard Dawkins (to some an infamous atheist) in 1976. In such a short period of time meme has already become an important meme.

"an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.
en.wikipedia.org...

Take the word God. Anywhere in the Western World, it seems that 97.7% of people hearing the word immediately associate the word as referring to Yahweh of the Old Testament. How did a perfectly good Old English word, derived from a primitive Germanic root, which very well could have referred to a burial mound, either the dirt poured onto it, or the spirit immanent in it, come to mean something completely different? Through the spread of the meme monotheism.

God

O.E. god "supreme being, deity; the Christian God; image of a god; godlike person," from P.Gmc. *guthan (cf. O.S., O.Fris., Du. god, O.H.G. got, Ger. Gott, O.N. guð, Goth. guþ), from PIE *ghut- "that which is invoked" (cf. O.C.S. zovo "to call," Skt. huta- "invoked," an epithet of Indra), from root *gheu(e)- "to call, invoke." But some trace it to PIE *ghu-to- "poured," from root *gheu- "to pour, pour a libation" (source of Gk. khein "to pour," also in the phrase khute gaia "poured earth," referring to a burial mound; see found (v.2)). "Given the Greek facts, the Germanic form may have referred in the first instance to the spirit immanent in a burial mound" [Watkins].

My recommendations for reform:

1) Don't use the word God at all. It has no meaning in itself. Say rather, my god, your god, their god. Perhaps the Egyptian god Amun, or the Jewish god Yahweh, or the Christian god yet to be determined.

2) If you mean Yahweh then say Yahweh.

3) Do not substitute the word Lord for Yahweh, as in "The Lord God said to Moses..." see 2 above. Some people consider Lord as a title of respect, as in Lord Jesus, or Lord Mayor, or my Lord King.

4) Don't use "the Lord" as a name. See 2 above. If you mean Lord Jesus then say Lord Jesus. If you mean Lord Krishna then say Lord Krishna, if you mean Lord Buddha then say Lord Buddha.

pthena

He claims, or the claim is made for him, that he is the creator.

Yes. The point I made, however, was not that Hebrews and Jews didn't claim their God was the Creator. That feat is in Melchizedek's invocation of El Elyon, repeated by Abram, and discussed in my post. I was thinking about what there is about the Hebrew YHWH that you mightn't find in the antecedent Canaanite gods. It is one thing to be a novel development "based upon" El Shaddai, and something else just to be El Shaddai, but with a different name.

We have the same problem today. Is Allah just a different name for Yahweh, or is Allah a novel development based upon Mohammed's personal ideas about Yahweh?

The Biblical Yahweh is the land-giver to the wanderer, at least as much as he is the creator of Heaven and Earth. I would be curious whether another Canaanite god had the land-giver trait, "the wanderer" part being (maybe) a self-image of the Hebrew people, a recurrent theme in their literature (out of Ur, out of Egypt, out of Babylon, down to modern time's out of Diaspora).

BTW, we still hear an echo of the usefulness of combining creation and donation today. Who is Yahweh to give land to anybody? Well, don't you know, he made it all from nothing, so his land grants are legitimate titles on Earth. Modern Israel, then, ought to be Jewish. Yahweh says. (Allah seems to disagree, which would answer whether they are the same, but their authority to chime in rests on the same foundation, being the Creator)

The Greco-Roman pantheon worked fine with no world-creator. Their gods took over the world from their parents, already made. We also know that world-creation, impressive as it is to a human, does not imply leadership among the gods. See the Gnostic mythology of the demi-urge, for example. Their world-creator is a loser. Their winner divinities have better things to do.

World-creation is the quintessential temporal attribute, of disputable spiritual importance. A creator-boss god could have turned up in a religion where the Earth is sacred, but here one turns up in a religion where the registry of deeds is the holy of holies. I am proposing that that is not a coincidence, and that concern for good land title heavily influenced the Hebrew choice of godly attributes from the Canaanite pantheon. Creator is secondary to grantor, in my opinion.

Later on, Christians wouldn't get any land from Yahweh. I think it's natural, then, that "land giver to the wanderer" doesn't much resonate in Christian thought. Instead, God is concerned for their individual persons.Why? Well, because he created them, and so he loves them. That's a shaky "because;" God created the individuals on both sides in the ancient Hebrew land-laborer-and-sex-partner wars, but that's another topic, something about breaking eggs to make an omelet.

reply to post by pthena

3) Do not substitute the word Lord for Yahweh . . .
4) Don't use "the Lord" as a name.

The Septuagint (the Greek version) was "the people's old testament" back when the NT was written.
An example as to how following your rules may be difficult,

ex.15.3 κυριος [THE LORD] συντριβων [BREAKING] πολεμους [BY WARS] κυριος [THE LORD] ονομα [THE NAME] αυτω [HIS] (Joshua Dickey)

or, according to the NETS translation of the Septuagint,

The Lord, when he shatters wars, the Lord is his name.

The Greek word translated as "breaking" is a participle, so why it ends up, "he who shatters".

My solution is, where the Septuagint says Lord, I put into a post, The Lord, like that, with bold and caps to indicate it is a translation of the Greek word, κυριος.

The NRSV version of the verse is,

The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name.

with the Lord being a translation of YHWH, which is in the Hebrew version of the old testament. I personally see any translation from the Hebrew as being rather ad hoc, except for maybe the Septuagint, which was done a long time ago, probably when there was still a current memory within living people as to what it meant. (Maybe YHWH actually just meant Lord, way back when, or what if YHWH did not even exist in the original writings that the OT is based on, and was added later?) Just my opinion and why I like to look at what the Greek has to say.

reply to post by jmdewey60

I'm basically referring to normal everyday speech. Quoting verses would be a different case.

(Maybe YHWH actually just meant Lord, way back when, or what if YHWH did not even exist in the original writings that the OT is based on, and was added later?) Just my opinion and why I like to look at what the Greek has to say.

So basically, since the oldest translations are the Greek, and it is known that the current Hebrew MT was still being worked on well after the A.D. 70 destruction of the temple, there's nothing to have prevented insertions of YHWH into the MT text where perhaps Ba'al or Adon had been.

The Greek doesn't seem to make any special note of kurios to designate any proper name. The translators would have translated both Ba'al and Adon as kurios

Actually, you would know better than I would if there were places in the Greek that were meant to designate a proper noun.

reply to post by eight bits

the registry of deeds is the holy of holies. I am proposing that that is not a coincidence, and that concern for good land title heavily influenced the Hebrew choice of godly attributes from the Canaanite pantheon. Creator is secondary to grantor, in my opinion.

I concede the point, grantor is the most important attribute of the Judean deity, as far as I can tell.

"Baʿal" can refer to any god and even to human officials. In some texts it is used for Hadad, a god of the rain, thunder, fertility and agriculture, and the lord of Heaven. Since only priests were allowed to utter his divine name, Hadad, Ba‛al was commonly used. Nevertheless, few if any Biblical uses of "Baʿal" refer to Hadad, the lord over the assembly of gods on the holy mount of Heaven, but rather refer to any number of local spirit-deities worshipped as cult images,
Ba'al

The concept of Ba'al as lord or owner, possessor of a hill, or town seems rather compelling. The possessor can grant or give.

reply to post by pthena

Actually, you would know better than I would if there were places in the Greek that were meant to designate a proper noun.

The verse I quoted, " . . . the Lord is his name.", in the Greek means a proper name (specifically the word translated here as name).

I think I realized what you meant in your earlier post, just before I read the one I am responding to now, that you were really talking about words you use in general speech. I am of the opinion that Christians should never refer to God as Yahweh, unless referring specifically to a character in the OT. Up until fairly recently, I never heard Christians refer to the NT god using OT terminology, except for Jehovah's Witnesses, that I did not think anyone took seriously and only saw that sort of speech as an aberration.

reply to post by jmdewey60

I am of the opinion that Christians should never refer to God as Yahweh, unless referring specifically to a character in the OT.

What is at stake is differentiating. All the Trinitarians begin with the assumption that OT Yahweh is the only god. After that assumption is made, they then must engage in no end of mental gymnastics to come up with a three in one.

Maybe Trinitarians should refer to there God as Trinity, if not, then go ahead and use Yahweh, since that's the assumption they start with.

Here's an example of how Yahweh-ist Christian thinking works:

Question: Did Jesus forbid swearing oaths?
"33 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time: Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths. 34 But I say unto you: Swear not at all; neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; 35 nor by the Earth, for it is his footstool; neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. 37 But let your communication be: Yea, yea; nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." ( Matt 5:33-37 )

But the Christian answer man turns right around and says "No, Jesus didn't forbid swearing, he couldn't have because in ( Dt 6:13 ) it says "Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name."

What the ****? The OT has priority? Even if Jesus says, "You have heard...but I tell you..." Where did the fiction come from that Jesus never contradicted the Old Testament? Seems to me that Jesus is calling the following of Torah commands a thing coming from evil.

Some how or other, the meme that "there is only one god" really has to go.

reply to post by wasaka

There is much evidence that the Israelites were originally polytheistic and Yahweh was only one of the gods in their pantheon, but being their national god he became the prominent figure and eventually the only one to survive the God meme developed.

I remember that there have been other threads about Yahweh. Consensus seems to be building that he was a Southern god who fulfilled the same sort of functions that the Northern Ba'al did.
Once the Northern Kingdom of Israel was broken by Assyria, the Southern religion spread North also.

The Northern religion had Ba'al and Asherah (Semitic Mother goddess , Akkadian: Ashratum/Ashratu, Hittite: Asherdu(s) or Ashertu(s) or Aserdu(s) or Asertu(s), Ugaritic goddess Athirat (more accurately transcribed as ʼAṯirat).. As the consort of El, she would be the Mother of Ba'al.

The Southern kingdom had Yahweh and Asherah.

Asherah had seventy children. Very interesting!

Gen. 46:26 All the souls who came with Jacob into Egypt, who were his direct descendants, besides Jacob’s sons’ wives, all the souls were sixty-six. 27 The sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt, were two souls. All the souls of the house of Jacob, who came into Egypt, were seventy.

Exodus 24:1 He said to Moses, “Come up to Yahweh, you, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship from a distance.

So the Semitic people brought Asherah to Egypt. Then brought the ram horn god out, calling him Yahweh, along with their own native Semitic Asherah. Somebody must have erased that from the story.

Some speculate that between the 10th century BC and the beginning of their exile in 586 polytheism was normal throughout Israel; it was only after the exile that worship of Yahweh alone became established, and possibly only as late as the time of the Maccabees (2nd century BC) that monotheism became universal among Jews.[8][9] The majority of biblical scholars accept that Asherah at one time was worshiped as the consort of Yahweh, the national god of Israel.[8] The evidence includes, for example, an 8th century combination of iconography and inscriptions discovered at Kuntillet Ajrud in the northern Sinai desert[10] where a storage jar shows three anthropomorphic figures and an inscription that refers to "Yahweh … and his Asherah".[11][12] Further evidence includes the many female figurines unearthed in ancient Israel, supporting the view that Asherah functioned as a goddess and consort of Yahweh and was worshiped as the Queen of Heaven.[11]
Asherah

See also, Tel-Arad

The temple at Arad was uncovered by archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni in 1962 who spent the rest of his life considering its mysteries but died there in the mid-1970s.
This impressive temple is the only Judean temple recovered by archaeologists to date. The incense altars and two "standing stones" may have been dedicated to Yahweh and Asherah.[2] An inscription was found on the site by Aharoni mentioning a "House of Yahweh",

Besides Tel Arad house of Yahweh there is also a house of Yahweh at Elephantine, Egypt.

The Elephantine papyri are caches of legal documents and letters written in Aramaic, which document a community of Jewish soldiers, with perhaps an admixture of Samaritans, stationed here during the Persian occupation of Egypt.[3] They maintained their own temple (also see House of Yahweh), evincing polytheistic beliefs, which functioned alongside that of Khnum,.[4] The association of the God of Israel with Khnum, a Ram-headed deity, is reminiscent of the blowing the Ram horn at Rosh Hashanah.
The Jewish community at Elephantine was probably founded as a military installation circa 650 BC during Manasseh's reign, to assist Pharaoh Psammetichus I in his Nubian campaign (See Investigating the Origin of the Ancient Jewish Community at Elephantine: A Review[1]. ) The documents cover the period 495 to 399 BC.
Elepahntine

Elephantine Papyri

The Jews had their own Temple to Yahweh[1] which functioned alongside that of the local ram-headed deity, Khnum.[2] The "Petition to Bagoas" (Sayce-Cowley collection) is a letter written in 407 BCE to Bagoas, the Persian governor of Judea, appealing for assistance in rebuilding the Jewish temple in Elephantine, which had recently been badly damaged by an anti-Semitic rampage on the part of a segment of the Elephantine community.[3]
In the course of this appeal, the Jewish inhabitants of Elephantine speak of the antiquity of the damaged temple:
'Now our forefathers built this temple in the fortress of Elephantine back in the days of the kingdom of Egypt, and when Cambyses came to Egypt he found it built. They (the Persians) knocked down all the temples of the gods of Egypt, but no one did any damage to this temple."
The community also appealed for aid to Sanballat I, a Samaritan potentate, and his sons Delaiah and Shelemiah, as well as Johanan ben Eliashib. Both Sanballat and Johanan are mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah, 2:19, 12:23.[4]

Originally posted by wasaka
According to the Hebrew scripture, Abraham first encounters EL (or rather a priest of EL Elyon) in the city of Jerusalem, which was known in antiquity as Salem.

“Horus, the incarnation of an even greater principle, known through ancient Egypt as Heru, the male aspect of God. It is from Heru that we get the name of the holy city, Herusalem, the new city of truth”

--Tricia McCannon - Mysteries Expert

In the name Heru lies the origins of the name Jesus. Heru or the Greek Horus was converted to Huious (also Greek) which was eventually converted to Jesus (Prounounced Hey-Zus) in Latin and eventually was converted to Jesus (as in Geez-Us) in English. Jerusalem is a composite Kemetic and Hebrew word (Heru-SALEM) meaning Heru's City of Peace. This dates back to the time of Amen Hotep III father of Akhenaton who ruled this area while on the throne of Egypt. In Latin J actually has an 'H' sound, in time Heru-Salem or Heru Salaam became Jerusalem.

Heru, Freemasons, and the Great Seal

The "All Seeing Eye" is the symbol of Heru who we today call Jesus. Anthony Browder in his book titled, “Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization stated, ”The pyramid and the eye above it (which represents the eye of Heru-the son of God) clearly establishes an Egyptian link with the reverse of the Great Seal. The obverse of this seal is strikingly similar to the Nile Valley image of Heru, and the differences represent the cultural nuances which were unique to the United States. Above the eagle’s head are 13 stars which arranged in the form of the Magen David, which is also called the Seal of Solomon. This is an ancient symbol that predates Judaism and represents two pyramids. The two pyramids symbolize the two pillars of Solomon, which play significant role in ritualistic masonry.
(Reference: Anthony T. Browder: “Nile Valley Contribution to Civilization” pg. 203).

Ancient Egyptians Believed in One God

The term 'Neteru' means the “Attributes of God” as understood by those of Kemet (i.el, the Ancient Egyptians). The neteru who were called “gods” by some, were endorsed and incorporated into Christianity under a new name, “angels”. The ancient Egyptian word “neter,” and its feminine form “netert,” have been wrongly, and possible intentionally, translated as “god” and “goddess,” by almost all scholars. There is no equivalent word in meaning, to the word “neter,” in the English language. Honest translation should use the native word, if they cannot find its equivalent in their language. “Neteroo” (plural of “neter/netert”) are the Divine Principles and Functions that operate the Universe. They are all aspects and functions of the One Supreme God. The words “god” and “goddess” leave the impression that ancient Egyptians had a multitude of gods, which is absolutely untrue. An Egyptian neter/netert was not a god/goddess but the personification of a function/attribute of the One God.

Simply when reading of Osiris and Horus and Isis as well as other “neteru” or “gods of Egypt” we are not speaking of “literal historical people” or actual “competitive gods of the One God” but Divine Concepts that operate in this One God that are very real that are later personified by the Egyptian Spiritual Masters to help mankind better understand and relate to his God and Creator.

This concept is copied in the trinity of the Christian faith and few know it. This explains why "pagan" nation after nation express these same “Divine Concepts” under different names and we ridicule them as “stupid” when a proper understanding of this Divine expressed in these concepts is absolutely breathtaking when you see them as they were understood by the Ancients. Our blindness today is due to Rome who burned the worlds libraries and murdered millions to cover up the fact that their “literalization” of these “allegorical expressions of God” was a lie. They basically “literalized” the Christ within as a historical “god-man” whom we know today as “Jesus” to give validity to their Emperor as the Roman “god-man”. Today we don’t know this when reading accounts of a “literal” and a “supposed historical Jesus” but in fact the “Christ” was always real…but not a historical person but rather “persons” for God’s Christ dwells within us all as does this God Whom we love and Whom Manifests Himself as Osiris, Isis, Horus, etc. When we speak of “resurrection from the dead” we speak of the reality of Osiris. It is but a picture expressing a holy and Divine concept which tragically down through history lost its true meaning and today as Christians we truly look through a glass darkly. Tragically the Christians of todays have lost the true “gnosis” behind these concepts, we are the one's who live in a dark age and have been for over 2000 years now.