Hebrew Myths Read Online Free PDF Page A

translated as ‘Lord’) and regarded as an abbreviation of the full name
Yahweh asher yihweh
, ‘He causes to be what is’ (Exodus III. 14). In personal names, this was further shortened into
Yeho
(e.g.,
Yehonathan
, or ‘Jonathan’), or
Yo
(e.g.,
Yonathan
or ‘Jonathan’); or
Yahu
(e.g.,
Yirm’yahu
or ‘Jeremiah’); or
Yah
(e.g.,
Ahiyah
). That
Yahweh
in
Genesis
is given the divine surname
Elohim
, shows him to have become a transcendental God, credited with all the great feats of Creation.
    The titles and attributes of many other Near Eastern deities were successively awarded to Yahweh Elohim. For instance, in the Ugaritic poems, a standing epithet of the God Baal, son of Dagon, is ‘Rider of Clouds’;
Psalm
LXV. 5 awards it to this Hebrew God, who also, like Baal ‘The God of Saphon’, has a palace in the ‘farthest north’ (
yark’the saphon
), imagined as a lofty mountain (
Isaiah
XIV. 13;
Psalm
XLVIII. 3).
    19.
Moreover, many of the acts attributed in Ugaritic mythology to the bloodthirsty Goddess Anath are attributed in the Bible to Yahweh Elohim. The Ugaritic description of how Anath massacres her enemies:
    She plunged knee-deep in the blood of soldiers,
    Neck-high in the gore of their companies.
    Until she is sated
    She fights in the house…
    recalls the second Isaiah’s vision of God’s vengeance upon Israel’s enemies (
Isaiah
LXIII. 3):
    Yes, I trod them in Mine anger,
    And trampled them in My fury;
    And their lifeblood sprinkled upon My garments,
    And I have stained all My raiment…
    Prophets and psalmists were as careless about the pagan origins of the religious imagery they borrowed, as priests were about the adaptation of heathen sacrificial rites to God’s service. The crucial question was: in whose honour these prophecies and hymns should now be sung, or these rites enacted. If in honour of Yahweh Elohim, not Anath, Baal or Tammuz, all was proper and pious.

2
THE CREATION ACCORDING TO OTHER BIBLICAL TEXTS
    (
a
) According to others, God created Heavens, complete with Sun, Moon and stars, by a single word of command. Then, clad in a glorious garment of light, He stretched out the Heavens like a round tent-cloth, exactly cut to cover the Deep. Having confined the Upper Waters in a fold of His garment, He established His secret Pavilion above the Heavens, walling it with a thick darkness like sackcloth, carpeting it with the same, and resting its beams upon the Upper Waters. There He set up His divine Throne. 3
    (
b
) While performing the work of Creation, God would ride across the Deep upon clouds, or cherubs, or the wings of the storm; or catch at passing winds and make them His messengers. He set Earth on immovable foundations: by carefully weighing the mountains, sinking some as pillars in the waters of the Deep, arching the Earth over them and locking the arch with a keystone of other mountains. 4
    (
c
) The roaring waters of the Deep arose and Tehom, their Queen, threatened to flood God’s handiwork. But, in His fiery chariot, He rode the waves and flung at her great volleys of hail, lightning and thunderbolts. He despatched her monstrous ally Leviathan with a blow on its skull; and the monster Rahab with a sword thrust through its heart. Awed by His voice, Tehom’s waters subsided. The rivers fled backwards up the hills and down into the valleys beyond. Tehom, trembling, acknowledged defeat. God uttered a shout of victory, and dried the floods until Earth’s foundations could be seen. Then He measured in the hollow of His hand what water was left, poured it into the Sea Bed, and set sand dunes as its perpetual boundary; at the same time making a decree which Tehom could never break, however violently her salt waves might rage—she being, as it were, locked behind gates across which a bolt has been shot. 5
    (
d
) God then measured out dry earth, fixing its limits. He allowed Tehom’s fresh waters to rise as valley springs, and rain to fall gently on the mountain tops from His