Why Yahweh Became the World's Dominant Deity

Why bother comparing the god of the Bible to a god of an older, previous dead religion from Mesopotamia? The reasons involve another deity that hits closer to home for the ancient Israelites. That deity is Ba'al. Ba'al was one of the chief deities of the Canaanite religion, and this religion was the precursor to Yahwism and Judaism. Canaanites and Israelites are genetically linked and at some point, a group migrated away from Canaan to found Israel and Judah. It’s reasonable to conclude that they took the myths of Canaan along with them, evident by their worship of the Canaanite pantheon early on.

Ba’al’s name directly translates to LORD, which sees significant usage in The Bible. Israelites worshiped numerous deities from the Canaanite pantheon, among these may very well have been Yahweh, which is heavily implied in The Bible, because it was Yahweh that was ‘given’ to the children of Israel to be their patron god. Given by whom? Who holds authority over Yahweh? El, the Most High, of course.

Deuteronomy 32:8–9

When the Most High apportioned the nations,

when he divided humankind,

he fixed the boundaries of the peoples

according to the number of the gods;

the Lord’s own portion was his people,

Jacob his allotted share.

Jacobs people are the Israelites. Thus begins the Yahwist cult within Israel. Over centuries as the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah expand in power and influence, Yahweh eventually climbs to the supreme position in the pantheon, becoming syncretized with El and Baal. The transition from Yahwism to Judaism culminates in the culling of worship of these many other deities entirely during King Josiah’s reign (a Yahwist). But the stories relating to these other gods don’t just disappear; they become syncretized into Yahweh. Their stories and characteristics become attributions of Yahweh, which help lay the final path for monotheism.

The importance of this syncretization requires a fundamental understanding of what preceded it. Baal, for example, is directly influenced from the even older religion along the fertile crescent region. That religion holds home in ancient Mesopotamia to the east of the Levant. Ba’al has strong similarities to the deities of Babylonian religion, primarily Marduk. Babylonian deities also eventually underwent syncretization into a single god known as Bel. Bel also means lord. It’s not a stretch to consider that Babylonian Marduk, Bel and Canaanite Ba’al are different representations of the same deities worshiped by similar cultures.

Thus the route from Marduk > Bel/Baal > Yahweh is established. All of these deities share myths, powers, positions and attributes. But the differences, primarily between the “origin” deity Marduk, and the end result of the chain, Yahweh are most worthy of discussion. Why did the long chain of religions in the fertile crescent move towards monotheism after thousands of years of polytheism? The answer is within the shared narratives, specifically, how these deities solve their conflicts.

Marduk had to fight to gain control. Yahweh accomplishes his goals through sheer will. Yahweh does not merely create existence; he commands the very fabric of reality. The idea of a god that has to fight to control reality is a god with no true control over it. Marduk is weaker. Ba’al and Bel are weaker. Yahweh becomes more attractive as an option for belief because Yahweh is not the god that fights his enemies because he has no enemies rivaling his power. This deity doesn’t toil, or struggle to meet his goals. Yahweh, unlike Ba’al and Marduk is no longer just a deity representing agricultural providence and war. This revolutionary idea of a single deity commanding existence represents a shift in thinking in the near-east.

In a world filled with tales of polytheistic divine struggle, combining those gods into a single, powerful, unified deity represents stability and security; order amongst chaos. The chaoskampf motif is central to Mesopotamian religion and its later Canaanite descendant. It even makes a brief albeit subdued appearance within the Abrahamic mythos of Genesis.

In the turbulent time for Israelites, who had faced decades of war, captivity in Babylon and the loss and destruction of their temple and homeland, chaos is precisely what they wished to avoid. Israelites sought order. They needed the assurance of an all-powerful god who grants its followers guaranteed victory and a refrain from turmoil. What they wanted was a wish-maker. They wished for a new fatherland, one that holds strong and unshakeable foundations. And so they took the familiar chaoskampf motif, central to previous beliefs that lasted for thousands of years and turned it on its head. No longer was the supreme deity of their religion engaging in fierce battle with chaos to create the world. Now he commanded chaos with nothing more than his breath and will. What rival god stands a chance against Yahweh?

In a world where cities, countries and cultures were represented by the deities they worshiped, after all Marduk is to Babylon as Yahweh is to Israel, a god with the supreme power of Yahweh might have been viewed as unstoppable. Unbeatable. The originality of the concept inspired the sort of fervor capable of pushing a nation to success. With that victory comes the merging and assimilation of cultures and the spread of the new viral idea.

This article was originally published by me on Medium.