From pluriformity to unity
In a sense, belief in YHWH stands at the beginning of the people and religion of Israel, but all three of them, people, religion and belief in YHWH originate more or less simultaneously on the soil of Canaan. Different manifestations of the Canaanite patriarchal deity El are in evidence, one of whom as El YHWH, the ‘El who is present, who makes himself manifest’, would shortly become known as YHWH. El was the original god of Israel, who in the process of divergence from other El deities, would become venerated as the jealous El YHWH[1].
There thus seems to have been an older substratum in Israel’s religion, in which YHWH as an outsider was adopted in the Canaanite pantheon of El[2], and though a powerful and major deity in the heavenly regions, it seems as if YHWH was still subordinate to the divine patriarch El, the King and most High in the heavenly council and family of the gods, for example Ps 82.1: “YHWH presides in the assembly of El. He gives judgment among the gods”; and Ps 89.6-9a: “The heavens praise your wonders too, O YHWH, your faithfulness, in the assembly of the holy gods”.
Like Baal son of Dagan himself, YHWH would have been adopted into the pantheon of El and would have risen to his high position in Israel in a process of syncretism[3] excluding the other gods[4]. Such a process of syncretism presupposes that the religions of Canaan and Israel were two independently developed religions that came into contact and fused in greater parts of Palestine into a new religion. Or, more specifically, the cult of YHWH coming out of the desert regions of Sinai, Edom and Midian merged with the local Canaanite cults of El and his entourage. But there is also a form of syncretism whereby two or more deities merge with one another inside one and the same religion. This version presupposes continuous change without visible delimitation of the nature and potency of the gods. As an example, the Canaanite goddesses Asherah, Anat and Astarte increasingly resembled each other in Ugarit and elsewhere.
In contrast to Baal, Asherah and others, the name of YWHW is missing in the myths and legends of the gods, in the myths and other kinds of religious records of the ancient Near East before Iron I (c 1150 BCE). Furthermore, the cluster of consonants YHWH was originally one of the many epithets of the god El, which, during the emergence of Israel, developed into an independent divine name and deity.
In other words, the religion of early Israel was rooted in the soil of Canaan. It did not arise in a religious vacuum. It was not a counter-religion, an independent and unique religious phenomenon in the ancient world. Increased knowledge about the Canaanite religions, especially of the pantheon around the Canaanite senior deity El and the various local cults in Syro-Palestine, contributes to a better understanding of early Israelite religion [5].
A new refinement
We noted recently the 2019 discovery of an inscription on one of a number of smashed storage jars stored in a building in a tel called Abel Beth Maacah, an ancient settlement at the northern tip of the Galilee. The inscription itself cannot be carbon dated but archaeologists are confident that these kinds of jar are from the 9th century, maximum the very beginning of the 8th century BCE. If the inscription dates to 2,900 to 3,000 years ago, it is one of the first appearances of a Yahwistic name in the archaeological record and may throw some light on the question, when and how did the ancient Israelites come to abandon paganism and become worshippers of YHWH?
In the Bible, they are described as a monotheistic people since the time of Moses, centuries before the birth of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Only in biblical chapters that are set from the 9th century B.C.E. onwards do Yahwistic names become a common motif. Archaeologically, the first certain extrabiblical mention of the god YHWH himself occurs in the Mesha stele, a Moabite inscription dated to the late ninth century B.C.E. In other words, until the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E., the Hebrews were not monotheists. They adopted a belief system focused on a single, universal god only after the exile in Babylon, during the Second Temple period.
All this of course happened centuries after the death of Benayau, the author of the inscription, but the discovery of his name in Abel Beth Maacah, so far from the heartland of the Israelite nation, is certainly powerful testimony to the slow but inexorable spread of Yahwism, which, for reasons still unknown, probably began to pick up not long before his own lifetime. The conclusion: The theophoric component of Benayau’s name further strengthens the link between Abel Beth Maacah and ancient Israel, while still not being enough to clinch the argument that this was an Israelite town, say the archaeologists behind the find.[6]
[1] Exodus, 20:4; 34.14.
[2] Psalms 82.1; 89.6-8; Deteronomy 32.8-9.
[3] Syncretism: the contact and mixture of religions that were originally distinct from one another culturally and historically. Deities differing from one another and their distinctive cults coalesce into a new deity with a new cult.
[4] Dijkstra, op cit, 95-97.
[5] Dijkstra, ibid, 93.
[6] Ariel David, "Hebrew description on a 3,000 year old jar could redraw boundaries of ancient Israel",
https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-hebrew-inscription-on-a-3-000-year-old-jar-could-redraw-borders-of-ancient-israel-1.8376971/