page_title: Origins of Judaism
section_title: Monarchic period Yahwism
hierarchical_section_title: Origins of Judaism / Monarchic period Yahwism
caption_attribution_description: English: Painted on a jar found in Kuntilat Ajrud in the Sinai Peninsula
context_page_description: The origins of Judaism according to the current historical view, in contradistinction to the religious account as described in the text of the Hebrew Bible, lie in the Bronze Age amidst polytheistic ancient Semitic religions, specifically evolving out of Ancient Canaanite polytheism, then co-existing with Babylonian religion, and syncretizing elements of Babylonian belief into the worship of Yahweh as reflected in the early prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible.
  During the Iron Age I, the Israelite religion became distinct from the Canaanite polytheism out of which it evolved. This process began with the development of Yahwism, the monolatristic worship of Yahweh that gave acknowledgment to the existence, but suppressed the worship, of other Canaanite gods. Later, this monolatristic belief cemented into a strict monotheistic belief and worship of Yahweh alone, with the rejection of the existence of all other gods, whether Canaanite or foreign.
context_section_description: The Iron Age kingdoms of Israel (or Samaria) and Judah first appear in the 9th century BCE. The two kingdoms shared Yahweh as their national god, for which reason their religion is commonly called Yahwism. 
  Other neighbouring Canaanite kingdoms of the time each had their own national gods: Chemosh was the god of Moab, Moloch the god of the Ammonites, Qaus the god of the Edomites, and so on, and in each kingdom the king was his god's viceroy on Earth. The various national gods were more or less equal, reflecting the fact that kingdoms themselves were more or less equal, and within each kingdom a divine couple, made up of the national god and his consort – Yahweh and the goddess Asherah in Israel and Judah – headed a pantheon of lesser gods.
  By the late 8th century both Judah and Israel had become vassals of Assyria, bound by treaties of loyalty on one side and protection on the other. Israel rebelled and was destroyed c. 722 BCE, and refugees from the former kingdom fled to Judah, bringing with them the tradition that Yahweh, already known in Judah, was not merely the most important of the gods, but the only god who should be served. This outlook was taken up by the Judahite landowning elite, who became extremely powerful in court circles in the next century when they placed the eight-year-old Josiah (reigned 641–609 BC) on the throne. During Josiah's reign Assyrian power suddenly collapsed, and a pro-independence movement took power promoting both the independence of Judah from foreign overlords and loyalty to Yahweh as the sole god of Israel. With Josiah's support the "Yahweh-alone" movement launched a full-scale reform of worship, including a covenant (i.e., treaty) between Judah and Yahweh, replacing that between Judah and Assyria.
  By the time this occurred, Yahweh had already been absorbing or superseding the positive characteristics of the other gods and goddesses of the pantheon, a process of appropriation that was an essential step in the subsequent emergence of one of Judaism's most notable features, its uncompromising monotheism. The people of ancient Israel and Judah, however, were not followers of Judaism: they were practitioners of a polytheistic culture worshiping multiple gods, concerned with fertility and local shrines and legends, and not with a written Torah, elaborate laws governing ritual purity, or an exclusive covenant and national god.
caption: Image on a pithos sherd found at Kuntillet Ajrud below the inscription "Yahweh and his Asherah",[5] depicting the two as bulls with the androgynous Egyptian deity Bes. The two standing figures are sometimes seen as a representation of the divine couple, while the seated lyre-player behind them is an entertainer.[6] Alternatively, many art historians identify the standing figures as representations of Bes, on account of their distinctively bovine faces.[6] Ziony Zevit has argued that Yahweh was represented as a Bes-figure, though there is little evidence for this.[6] It is also possible that the images on the pot have nothing to do with the inscription at all.[6]
exif: {}