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kudzu
05-06-2018, 04:42 AM
Archaeologists uncover remains of an Edomite copper production facility on the so-called Slaves' Hill in Timna. The dark stones that cover most of the site are slag left over from the smelting process Credit: Ariel David



Jewish God Yahweh Originated in Canaanite Vulcan, Says New Theory

The cult of YHWH as god of metallurgy originated among semi-nomadic copper smelters between the Bronze and Iron Age, suggests biblical scholar: And he was not worshipped only by Jews

By
Ariel David | 
Apr 11, 2018


TIMNA – Around 3,200 years ago, the great empires around the Mediterranean and the Middle East suddenly imploded. The Egyptians retreated from Canaan and the copper mines of Timna in the Negev, skulking back to the banks of the Nile. And in the arid wastes of southern Canaan, a new power arose.

The Timna mines were taken over by semi-nomadic tribes, which set up a mining operation that dwarfed the previous Egyptian industry.

This new desert kingdom would leave its mark on the main building at Timna: the Egyptian temple of Hathor, protector of miners. The new masters smashed the effigy of the Egyptian deity – leaving the fragments to be found by archaeologists more than 3,000 years later – and set up over the ruins of the temple a tent sanctuary, judging by the remains of heavy red and yellow fabric found in the 1970s.



There they worshipped a new god, one that had no apparent name or face.

That miners' god was none other than the deity known by the four Hebrew letters YHWH, who would become the God of the Jews and, by extension, of Christians and Muslims, claims Nissim Amzallag, a biblical studies researcher at Ben-Gurion University.




Tough fabric found at Timna, that may have come from a tent Credit: Clara Amit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

According to Amzallag, long before becoming the deity of the Israelites, Yahweh was a god of metallurgy in the ancient Canaanite pantheon, worshipped by smelters and metalworkers throughout the Levant, not just by the Hebrews. His theory is not exactly widely accepted, but has recently been gaining traction.




Woolen textile from Timna decorated with stripes of red produced from dyers’ madder and blue made from a plant-based indigo that probably derived from woad. Credit: Clara Amit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority




Roughly from the 19th century, biblical scholars began looking at scripture less as records of divine revelations and more as historical and literary documents. This has led, for example, to the so-called “Documentary Hypothesis,” which considers the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, to be a compilation from multiple sources, each produced by different authors with their own beliefs and agendas.




Microscopic magnification (x60) of woolen textile from Timna dyed in red and blue stripes (photo taken with Dino-Lite microscope). Credit: Dr. Naama Sukenik, Israel Antiquities Authority

But mysteries remain: where did the YHWH cult originate? Who were the first people to worship him? And how did he end up being the sole deity of a group called Israel, who, as their very name says (in Hebrew), didn’t even start out as a Yahwistic people, but as followers of El, the main god of the Canaanite pantheon?

Fire and brimstone

Most scholars already believe that the cult of Yahweh first emerged somewhere in the southern Levant, partly based on Egyptian texts from the late second millennium B.C.E. These documents describe groups of Canaanite nomads collectively known as Shasu, including one tribe named Shasu Yhw(h) – perhaps the first recorded Yahweh worshippers in history.

The Bible itself may contain a memory of this southern origin of Yahweh, as it tells us explicitly that God “came from Teman” (Habbakuk 3:3) or that he “went out of Seir” and “marched out of Edom” (Judges 5:4-5) – all toponyms associated with the area ranging from Sinai to the Negev and northern Arabia.


Was Hathor's temple converted to a temple for Yahweh the metal god? At the Timna copper mine Credit: Ariel David

“Everybody recognizes these southern origins of Yahweh, but most scholars stop there,” Amzallag says. “This forms the basis of my theory as well, but I take it a step forward.”

Reading between the lines, the Bible contains clues pointing to an original identity for Yahweh as a metallurgical deity, he says.

In the Bible, Yahweh’s appearance is usually accompanied by volcanic-like phenomena. When he descends upon Mt. Sinai to reveal the Torah to the Jews, the mountain erupts in fire, spewing lava and billowing clouds accompanied by earthquakes and thunderstorms (Exodus 19:16-19).

In antiquity, metallurgical deities like the Greek Hephaestus or his eponymous Roman equivalent, Vulcan, were associated with volcanic descriptions - which closely mirror the smoke, fire, black slag and molten red metal produced in the smelting process, Amzallag says.




Archaeologists uncover remains of an Edomite copper production facility on the so-called Slaves' Hill in Timna. The dark stones that cover most of the site are slag left over from the smelting process Credit: Ariel David

Poetic metaphors throughout the Bible describe Yahweh as a fiery deity who makes the mountains smoke (Psalms 144:5) and melts them down (Isaiah 63:19b), just like smelters melt down ore to obtain copper and other metals, the researcher notes. In fact, in Psalm 18:18 Yahweh is depicted as anthropomorphized furnace: “smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it.”

To ancient people, the process of melting down rocks to extract metal would have “appeared completely preternatural and required a divine explanation,” Amzallag told Haaretz.

Yahweh’s metallurgical attributes were also on display in the pillar of fire and smoke by which he guides the Hebrews in the desert (Exodus 13:21) and the cloud that accompanies his visits to the Tent of Meeting (Exodus 33:9-10), a simpler version of the Tabernacle in which Moses speaks face to face with God.

The description of this tent bears remarkable similarities to the sanctuary in Timna, further suggesting that 3,000 years ago, this place may have been dedicated to the worship of Yahweh, Amzallag maintains.

Yahweh, god of the Edomites?

But wait a minute - the Bible and most archaeologists agree that after the collapse of the Egyptian empire in the 12th century B.C.E., Timna was taken over by the Edomites, not the Israelites. https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium-davidian-era-textiles-found-at-timna-1.5408868

While the Bible goes to great lengths to describe Israel’s neighbors – such as the Edomites, the Midianites and the Moabites – as dastardly pagans, the text also betrays that Yahweh was worshipped by these nations too, possibly even before the Israelites did so, Amzallag notes. Genesis 36, for example, makes it clear that the Edomites are descendants of Esau, Jacob’s brother, and lists Edomite monarchs who ruled “before any Israelite king reigned” (Genesis 36:31).



The Ammonites and Moabites are listed as descendants of Lot (Genesis 19:37-38), the nephew of Abraham and pious Yahweh-believer who escaped the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

In other words, the genealogies of the Bible contain the memory of an ancient confederation of Canaanite peoples, who may have considered themselves all descendants of Abraham and who all worshipped Yahweh alongside other gods, Amzallag posits.

We should trust the Bible on this, he says, because its editors wouldn't have wanted to admit that the cult of Yahweh was not exclusive to Israel. "So, if they reference it, it must be true,” Amzallag concludes.




The explosive revelation on Mt. Sinai imagined in an early 20th century illustration Credit: the Providence Lithograph Compan

Further biblical evidence of this broadened base of worshippers can be found in the Book of Exodus, where a key role is played by Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, who lives near the mountain of God (alternatively called Horeb and Sinai).

It is Jethro who indirectly leads Moses to his first meeting with Yahweh at the burning bush. And it is he who inaugurates the Tent of Meeting with a sacrifice and proclaims that “Yahweh is greater than all other gods” for having freed the Hebrew slaves from Egypt (Exodus 18:7-12).

But Moses’ father-in-law is not an Israelite: he is described alternatively as a Midianite priest (Exodus 3:1) and a Kenite (Judges 1:16).

Now, according to Bible, the Midianites were descendants of Midian, another son of Abraham, which again supports the idea of the existence of an extended family of Yahwistic peoples. The Kenites, on the other hand, are a tribe descended from Cain and described as living among all the peoples of the Levant and specializing in crafts and metalworking, which, according to Amzallag, is further evidence that Yahweh’s first incarnation was as a smelting god.

Note that the so-called Midianite-Kenite hypothesis goes back to the 19th century, when biblical scholars saw Jethro’s story as evidence that these groups introduced the Israelites to the worship of Yahweh. Amzallag seems to be the first to stress the metallurgical side of this hypothesis and link Yahweh specifically to the rites and cults of ancient miners and smelters.


An 1890 illustration of the Tabernacle, with the presence of Yahweh signalled by a cloud of dark smoke. Credit: Holman Bible

Copper mining at Timna and at other remote sites like Faynan, today in southern Jordan, was central to the region’s economy, employing not just miners and smelters, but blacksmiths, traders and other workers in every town and village of Canaan. These people, identifiable as the biblical Kenites, would have been held in high regard and seen as being close to the divine because they possessed knowledge about the secret and mysterious process of copper smelting, Amzallag says.

Or maybe the god of storms

“There is no doubt that at least for the Edomites, and possibly for their neighbors, religion had to go hand in hand with what was their most important activity,” says Erez Ben-Yosef, an archaeologist from Tel Aviv University who leads a team excavating at Timna. “They depended on the success of these operations and they definitely would have felt they needed the help of a god in the complex smelting process and in organizing these mining expeditions to distant, arid areas.”




Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau, by Rubens. The biblical story of the two brothers and forefathers of the Israelites and Edomites is a sign of the close links between the two peoples. Credit: Schleißheim State Gallery

We have no direct proof that the metallurgical god, worshipped at the Edomite sanctuary in Timna from the 12th to the 10th century B.C.E., was Yahweh: there is no inscription invoking his name. But the kinship described in the Bible between the Israelites and the Edomites, and the metallurgical attributes of Yahweh in the holy text, are “compelling arguments” supporting Amzallag’s theory that this god was worshipped by multiple peoples as a deity connected to metallurgy, Ben-Yosef concludes.

There are skeptics.

“The theory is interesting but I don’t think there is enough evidence to say that the first worshippers of Yahweh were metallurgists,” says Thomas Romer,

kudzu
05-06-2018, 04:48 AM
Archaeological excavation indicates that the copper mines in Timna Valley were probably part of the Kingdom of Edom and worked by the Edomites, described as biblical foes of the Israelites,[4] during the 10th century BCE, the period of biblical King Solomon.[5] Mining continued by the Israelites and Nabataeans through to the 1st and 2nd centuries CE during the Roman period, and then, after the 7th-century Arab conquest, by the Ummayad Caliphate, until the copper ore became scarce.[6]

The copper was used for ornaments, but more importantly for stone cutting, as saws, in conjunction with sand

PostmodernProphet
05-06-2018, 06:41 AM
another of your "most religious scholars"?......

curious though.....you are on record as saying Abraham was a fictional character, yet you are now saying that the Edomites were the descendants of his son, Esau.......does that mean Esau had a miraculous birth from a fictional person?.....

kudzu
05-06-2018, 07:04 AM
another of your "most religious scholars"?......

curious though.....you are on record as saying Abraham was a fictional character, yet you are now saying that the Edomites were the descendants of his son, Esau.......does that mean Esau had a miraculous birth from a fictional person?.....

I think Abraham probably was fictional, but according to scripture he had 3 wives and many children, including 6 sons by his Arab wife Keturah.

The copper mines were certainly real, but they didn't belong to Solomon.

PostmodernProphet
05-06-2018, 12:04 PM
are think your biblical studies are fictional....

kudzu
05-06-2018, 12:32 PM
are think your biblical studies are fictional....

I think that you aren't interested in the Bible, ancient history or archaeology.

http://sidneyrigdon.com/drb/begin/timnax.jpg

PostmodernProphet
05-06-2018, 12:35 PM
I think that you aren't interested in the Bible, ancient history or archaeology.

http://sidneyrigdon.com/drb/begin/timnax.jpg

and a map of the area proves what?....

kudzu
05-06-2018, 12:37 PM
and a map of the area proves what?....

Do you know how important copper was?

PostmodernProphet
05-06-2018, 12:42 PM
Do you know how important copper was?

ok.....important.....and somehow you believe this proves what?.......that God was invented by a copper miner?......lol.....

kudzu
05-06-2018, 12:49 PM
ok.....important.....and somehow you believe this proves what?.......that God was invented by a copper miner?......lol.....

Miners also worshipped God, you dumbass.

PostmodernProphet
05-06-2018, 12:51 PM
Miners also worshipped God, you dumbass.

I'm sure many of them did......and others, such as yourself, worshipped false gods.......still not seeing what you think you are proving......please be specific as I suspect you are rambling at the moment.....

Leonthecat
05-06-2018, 12:54 PM
All that concerns PP is that he thinks he will live forever.
:truestory:

PostmodernProphet
05-06-2018, 01:07 PM
ah bucKKKleon....we're all going to live forever......its just that some of us are going to enjoy it.....

kudzu
05-06-2018, 01:07 PM
THE COPPER MINES OF EDOM

INTRODUCTION
It would be difficult to overemphasize the importance of copper in the Ancient Near East, from the days before the Giza pyramids were built (pre-Bronze Age), all the way down to the emergence of Israel (early Iron Age). Egypt's rise to power at the southern end of the Fertile Crescent was based largely on her control of the local mineral wealth: gold in Nubia, gold and copper in her Eastern Desert, and copper and turquoise in the Sinai. Gold and turquoise were very important in the production of luxury items for the upper classes and "money" for internal commerce and international trade. Copper was the metallic backbone of the earliest civilizations, indispensable in war, industry, construction, and trade. Egyptians were not the first in the area to mine, refine, and utilize the metal however.

continued

http://sidneyrigdon.com/drb/begin/mines.htm