Origins of Yahweh / Jehovah / YHWH / Yahu / Yah
Preface
The origin of the name of God “Yahweh”, or Jehovah, has been unnecessarily obscured. The reasons for this will immediately become clear once we start to dig. Most linguists who know Egyptian, Hebrew and Akkadian have long recognized this problem. Since an understanding of the languages is required to see the problem clearly, I have attempted to make it as accessible as possible without being overly technical. There are some very technically brilliant people who have studied the ancient materials used in this post.
The Torah traditionally connects Yahweh to the verb “to be”, a sort of self proclamation of Yahweh when He tells Moses “I am what I am”, in Hebrew Ehyeh asher Ehyeh. And in a more primitive sense it was probably connected to the first words spoken by God in the Torah “Let there be light”, in Hebrew Yehyeh Or, where the first Word spoken was apparently “be”, hence it was understood that the holy Name was the first utterance of God.
YHWH
Pronunciation
In the ancient text there were no vowels, only consonants. Vowel pointing, a system of dots around the consonants that provided the vowels to be read between the consonants, didn’t enter the textual tradition until around 1000 AD, nearly 2000 years after the original text was penned. The scribes that introduced this vowel system were a group of Jewish scribes in Egypt, who provided two of the greatest textual crowns to the modern world: The Leningrad Codex and the Aleppo Codex. So without the vowels in the original ancient text, all we have are the consonants YHWH, traditionally called the tetragrammaton, or “the four letters”. I’m not going to go into the modern vowel pointings that developed post-1000 AD, because it’s long and involved. The only point I want to stress is that as a language passes through time its sounds mutate rather rapidly from generation to generation. It’s not difficult to recognize a British accent, from an American accent, or even from an Australian accent, and these developed over only a couple hundred years. Had they developed over a longer period entire words would have changed pronunciation and meaning; but in our case mass communication has stabilized the situation some. But a simple example of pronunciation shift as languages evolve over time can be seen in the following words: mega, magna, and big. Mega is Greek, magna is Latin, and big is English. These words all developed from a single word in the ancient past (M and B are both labial, or lip, sounds and shift frequently as languages develop).
Sample from Aleppo Codex
So, back to YHWH. Without the actual vowel pointings, it would seem difficult to reconstruct. However, without complex linguistic analysis, which usually leads to a quagmire, we are actually in a very good situation within this tradition because the name’s pronunciation was preserved in personal names from the era. For example:
- IsaYAH (Isaiah)
- JeremYAH (Jeremiah)
- AbiYAHU (Abijahu)
The list of names is actually quite long with almost hundreds of examples. But the point is that in all cases, the pronunciation is always YAHU or YAH. So how does this fit into YHWH? First, think of W as a U. In Hebrew U, W, and V are all the same letter. So in this paradigm it’s YaHUH. So if we assume the first vowel is A, we come to YAHUH which corresponds to the YAHU preserved in names from the era. Therefore, the pronunciation of Jehova, or YHWH, was YAH or YAHU. Hold on to this fact, because it will play a part later in this story.
Key Numbers in the Torah
There are two primary numbers that occur over and over in the Torah: 7 and 12. The 7 is claimed to derive from the creation 6 day cycle followed by a 7th day of rest for the divine. The number 12 is seen as deriving from the 12 sons of Jacob and the resulting 12 tribes of Israel. But we find these numbers everywhere in the Torah. 7 and 12 are so ubiquitous one can’t really read a book without encountering multiple references to these numbers. Again, hold on to this fact that 7 and 12 are all over the Torah, and don’t forget the pronunciation of the name YAHU.
Creation Stories
Keep in mind, that before the 1800’s Egyptian hieroglyphs were a mystery, as were all of the other ancient languages of the middle east. In the 1800s we cracked almost every language from the region, which flooded our knowledge of the ancient middle east. Also, one should remember that the biblical text represents copies of copies of copies of copies ad infinitum. With these new languages as tools scholars could pull a 4000 year old clay tablet out of the ground and read it, without having it pass through the copying process. This meant we could read pure thoughts from the ancient world without scribes inserting changes or errors. With that in mind, let’s take a look at one of the most important finds as it relates to understanding the origin of the Torah from a 3000 year old tablet containing a myth from Babylon called Enuma Elish “When on High” (5th tablet):
What should stand out is that we have in this Babylonian text the moon god creating horns for 6 days and then it reached a 7th day at half moon, and continues on until the moon is full at which point the Babylonian text uses the word “Shabbatum”, or Sabbath. So we have 6 days followed by a 7th, with the word Sabbath describing the full moon. The lunar phases from December 2008 illustrate how the moon takes 7 days to move from new moon to half moon, and roughly another 7 days to reach full moon.
Lunar phases
The Egyptian Word for Moon
In ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs the word for Moon comes in two forms: YAH and YAHU. Both pronunciations occur in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. This matches exactly the pronunciation deduced above for the Hebrew divine name YHWH, which we have proved to have been pronounced YAH and YAHU. See wikipedia for Iah: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iah
Putting It All Together
We have ancient texts predating the Torah explaining that the lunar phases of new moon, half moon, whole moon, half moon occur in roughly 7 day cycles, even describing this progression as making horns for 6 days until it reaches half moon by day 7, and then iterating to full moon which the Babylonian text calls SHABBATUM or Sabbath. We know the word for moon in the near east was YAHU. And we also know the number 12 was extremely important to the ancient Hebrews. Why? Because there are 12 lunar cycles in a year. The reference to horns is also most likely why horns are so important in Judaism. Horns are everywhere in the sanctuary service, playing a prominent role in the altar and sacrificial system.
Altar with Horns
Cloud by Day, Pillar of Fire by Night
The nature of God in the Exodus story is “a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night”. A full moon in the middle of the day is milky white and has a cloud-like appearance. At night the moon becomes a flame of fire.
Also of interest, is that the Hebrews reckoned days by evening to morning. In other words a new day began in the evening. The reason they reckoned days from the evening is that they needed to see the lunar phase to know which day it was. If it was a full moon or half moon, it was a sabbath. So the modern Jewish practice of reckoning a new day from the evening is a residual marker that the night’s moon was required in order to determine which day it was.
Additional Evidence
In the Egyptian Book of the Dead we find references that parallel the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish where the moon god makes horns for 6 days until reaching a half moon on the 7th and then reaching SHABBATUM at full moon on the 15th day. This passage from the Book of the Dead comes from Plate XXVIII, chapter LXXX:
I have provided Thoth (another name for the Egyptian moon god) in the house of Yah, at the coming of the 15th day of the festival SMAT. I have carried off the crown. Right and Truth are in my body, and the emeralds and crystals of her months/moons. My estate is there among the lapis-lazuli in it’s furrows.
This passage echoes the passage from Enuma Elish. The word for the festival of the 15th day, SMAT, may be an Egyptian parallel for SHABBATUM, or Sabbath. Recall our example above where mega, magna, and big all derived from a single word in the ancient past. In this case, the M in SMAT would be the B in SHABBATUM, so would be the same word. Unfortunately, to my knowledge the pronunciation of SMAT is still contested. But because of the lunar context I’d argue it most likely was a word similar to SHABBATUM.
The other interesting thing to note from this passage is that each month is associated with a crystal. It seems likely that an association of gems to lunar phases most likely explains the origin of the Ephod’s breast plate which contained 12 crystals, which was later interpreted as relating to the 12 sons of Jacob and the resulting 12 tribes. The first century author Josephus confirms this view of the number 12 equating to the lunar cycles when he writes: “As for the 12 stones, whether one would prefer to read in them the moons (months)… he will not mistake [Moses'] intentions.” Again, regarding the 12 loaves of bread in the sanctuary, Josephus writes: “Again, by placing upon the table the twelve loaves, he signifies that the year is divided into as many moons (months).” - Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book III.
High Priest's Breastplate
Conclusion
The linguistic and literary evidence from the ancient near-east strongly suggests that the roots of the Hebrew faith reside in lunar worship, or at least a deity who was associated with the moon in the early stages and later was disassociated from the moon to create the later version western civilization has inherited: the “unseeable” God of the Torah. My personal view is that instead of defending one origin over another, dismissing useful data in order to defend a doctrine, or worse, slandering those who simply point out the data, I’d suggest that if you are a person of faith and feel that the data affects your faith adversely, rework your faith, not the data. Marcus Borg’s model of theology allows one to digest the historical data without having to give up your faith. While the data presented here may be troubling to some, it also has some positive effects. The data, while suggesting a lunar origin, also provides evidence of Egyptian origins of the Jewish faith, which for some may be of more value in that it supports the narratives of an exodus from Egypt. As a result, with any data presented that affects a religion, this data also affects the historicity of the Exodus in a positive way. My primary agenda is to point out historical data that isn’t being addressed in faith circles. I find it highly likely that in university libraries and seminaries there are dissertations that seek to dismantle the data presented here, but I find there are too many coincidences and correlations in the data, spread across multiple ancient middle eastern cultures to quietly dismiss these points. I think a healthy faith, one that is flexible and tolerant, can incorporate these data points to build a stronger, more resilient faith that can critically study the history of the ancient roots of religion without fear.
Links
Enuma Elish: http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm
Egyptian Book of the Dead, plate XXVIII: http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/ebod/ebod34.htm
Yahu, Egyptian word for Moon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iah
As a rebuttal to Robert Morey’s theory that Allah has some connections to a lunar deity, which is not true, M S M Saifullah, Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi & ‘Abdullah David have put together some very good data on this topic, although I do not agree with their findings on the deity SIN/SYN; I think this deity is clearly a lunar deity. Also, the Hebrew El and Allah in my opinion have roots in the same deity: the Sumerian god Ellil (or Enlil). I’ll address this in a later post. I respect the research of the “islamic-awareness.org” group. They hit the mark on many points, but because of their own religious bias they also miss the mark on other points. Nevertheless they have done some good research on this topic and it’s worth reading: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Sources/Allah/moongod.html.
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In Hebre, Isaiah is transliterated as Yeshayahu, likewise, Jeremiah was Yirmiyahu.