(Note that other sources will give slightly different dates) With the destruction of the Temple, the name was no longer used in any liturgy, and its pronunciation was forgotten by the 5th century CE. Rabbinic sources suggest that, by the Second Temple period, the name of God was pronounced only once a year, by the high priest, on the Day of Atonement, though it is more than likely that this is an exaggeration, and that in fact, the name was pronounced daily in the liturgy of the Temple in the priestly benediction of worshippers, after the daily sacrifice whereas outside the Temple and in the synagogues, a substitute (probably "Adonai") was used. The sacrality of the name, as well as the proscribed Commandment against " taking the name 'in vain'", led to increasingly strict prohibitions on speaking or pronouncing the term in writing. This argument has been criticized as having numerous weaknesses, including the dissimilar characters of the two gods El and Yahweh, Yahweh's association with the storm (an association never made for El), and the fact that ʾel zū yahwī ṣabaʾôt is nowhere attested either inside or outside the Bible. Biblical scholar Frank Moore Cross has proposed that Yahweh derives from an epiphet of El: ḏū yahwī ṣabaʾôt, "he (El,) who creates the hosts" (contracted from ʾel zū yahwī ṣabaʾôt), perhaps the epiphet of El as patron deity of a Midianite league. Ehye ašer ehye (" I Am that I Am"), the explanation presented in Exodus 3:14, appears to be a late theological gloss invented at a time when the original meaning had been forgotten. This name is not attested other than among the Israelites and seems not to have any plausible etymology. The shortened forms "Yeho-" and "Yo-" appear in personal names and in phrases such as " Hallelujah!" 2.5 Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods (586–332 BCE)Īncient Hebrew was written without vowels, so that the god's name is written in paleo-Hebrew as ???? ( יהוה in Modern Hebrew), transliterated as YHWH modern scholarship has agreed to represent this as Yahweh.Outside of early Judaism, Yahweh was frequently invoked in Greco-Roman magical texts from the 2nd century BCE to the 5th century CE under the names Iao, Adonai, Sabaoth, and Eloai. During the Second Temple period, speaking the name of Yahweh in public became regarded as taboo Jews began to substitute the divine name with the word adonai ( אֲדֹנָי), meaning " My Lords" but used as a singular like " Elohim", and after the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE the original pronunciation was forgotten. Towards the end of the Babylonian captivity, the very existence of foreign gods was denied, and Yahweh was proclaimed as the creator of the cosmos and the one true God of all the world.
In the oldest biblical literature, he is a storm-and- warrior deity who leads the heavenly army against Israel's enemies at that time the Israelites worshipped him alongside a variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses, including El, Asherah and Baal in later centuries, El and Yahweh became conflated and El-linked epithets such as El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone, and other gods and goddesses such as Baal and Asherah were absorbed into the Yahwist religion.
The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age.
Yahweh was the national god of ancient Israel and Judah.