El and Yahweh

In the past, I’ve been critical of Abrahamic beliefs. Especially their monotheistic belief in a One God that’s all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful. According to Abrahamic texts (Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament), this One God is known as El and Yahweh. In Exodus 6:2-3 we read,

God spoke further to Moses and said to him, “I am Yahweh; and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as El Shaddai, but by my name, Yahweh, I did not make myself known to them.”

However, there are problems with the claim that El and Yahweh are alternate names for a singular universal God. Scholarly consensus is that evidence establishes, with confidence, that El and Yahweh were originally two distinct gods from different pantheons of the Levant region. The Abrahamic God worshiped by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is a product of centuries of complex cultural interactions and conflicts. 

 

How should we, as polytheists, see the God of the Abrahamic traditions? 

One way to view Him is as an actual god, like the syncretic Greco-Egyptian god Serapis, a fusion of Osiris and Apis. Such syncretism can occur because of the non-corporeal nature of spirits, resulting in new gods. Only the gods know whether this syncretism results in response to human needs or for some other reason.

There are problems with the idea that the Abrahamic God is real. Leaving aside the fact that He isn’t all-powerful, all-knowing, or all-loving as described in the Bible, the personality of this Abrahamic God has serious issues. The syncretism of El and Yahweh resulted in a god that exhibits signs of multiple personalities and severe narcissism. One moment, it’s all love and wanting to save humanity, while the next, it’s full of wrath and ready to destroy the world. If He exists, this would be a very unstable and dangerous god for everyone.

Another way is to view the Biblical God is as a construct rather than an actual god. The ancient Hebrew people conceived the Abrahamic ‘God’ to resolve cultural and historical challenges. It helped to forge the Hebrew people into a unified identity apart from their often-hostile neighbors. The power of this concept is evident in that it helped the Jewish people survive thousands of years of hardship.

I lean to the last option. El and Yahweh are clearly distinct gods with autonomy and their own agency. However, the One God of the Bible, the subject of worship by the big three Abrahamic religions, isn’t a true god but a construct. 

The God of Abraham doesn’t exist.