Word: yahweh
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...into even more movies than the eight Harry Potters. Well, the Old Testament has, by some counts, 46 books, including some internal sequels (1 Kings, 2 Kings). Granted, down around Obadiah, the opportunities for special effects get pretty slim. But who's a greater or more intimidating wizard than Yahweh? He's Harry, Dumbledore and Voldemort rolled into...
...Josiah, too, driven by a zero-sum worldview in which the worshippers of gods other than Yahweh looked like enemies...
...following, but they had trouble winning consistent support from Israel's leaders. So in the early part of the 7th century B.C.E., decades after Hosea issued his sermons, Israel was still awash in religious pluralism. The Jerusalem Temple itself, according to the Bible, was home not just to Yahweh but also to Asherah, a goddess who, scholars increasingly believe, was Yahweh's consort. And there were "vessels made for Baal," the Canaanite...
Apparently, but in his case the enemies included Israelites - domestic political rivals - not just foreigners. In ancient times, political power flowed from the divine. Prophets who could claim to speak for a god with a large following thus had influence. If that god was Yahweh, these prophets would be concentrated in the King's court, since Yahweh was Israel's national God. But prophets of other gods were less amenable to the King's control and so a threat to his power...
...monolatrist, not a monotheist. But within a few decades of his death, true monotheism would finally emerge. In 586 B.C.E., Israelite élites were exiled to Babylon after conquest by the neo-Babylonian Empire. In passages from Isaiah that are thought to have been written during the exile, Yahweh says unequivocally, "Besides me there is no god." Does this extreme intolerance of other gods - the denial of their very existence - flow from a zero-sum view of Israel's environs...