Talk:Yahweh

Visible and Invisible

There are passages in the Old Testament describing Yahweh's physical appearance (likely a male) and footsteps. My favorite is: Deuteronomy 23:12-14. Yet this entry contains nothing but a questionable physical portrayal on a coin. I would like to see some improvement. I would also like to know about Yahweh being visible and invisible. Miistermagico (talk) 18:50, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

What changes are you wanting to be made to the article? Please be more specific. Right now it is unclear (to me at least) what "improvements" you think the article requires. If you are hinting that there are other extant representations of Yahweh from ancient times with better veracity than the Yehud coin, I can say that, to my knowledge, there are none of the sort that have been conclusively verified. The cult of Yahweh seems to have been largely aniconic, even from an early stage. The Israelites, of course, saw Yahweh as anthropomorphic and there are descriptions of him as such in the Tanakh, but all of them are extremely vague and no surviving representations have been determined beyond a doubt to be intended to represent him. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:35, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Anthropomorphism

The ancient Israelites regarded all their gods, including Yahweh, as anthropomorphic. This is evidenced by the large number of descriptions throughout the older sections of the Tanakh that describe Yahweh in clearly anthropomorphic terms. Obviously, modern Jews and Christians do not regard their God as anthropomorphic in any sense, but rather as an incorporeal being (which is the third of Maimonides's thirteen principles of faith and a core tenant of Christian theology). I do not know if anthropomorphism in the ancient cult of Yahweh needs to be mentioned in the lead or not, but if we do mention it, we certainly need scholarly sources, not just any random sources off the internet. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:24, 30 November 2017 (UTC) Katolophyromai (talk) 14:24, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

A quick search on Google Books turned up these sources, which, if we decide to mention anthropomorphism, would be good ones to use: [1], [2], [3], [4], and [5]. They are all from reliable, scholarly publishers and would be useful in providing more information. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:37, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

My only issue is conflating anthropomorphic descriptions with actually being anthropomorphic. Just because there are occasional anthropomorphic depictions doesn't mean the object in question is actually anthropomorphic. That being said, I'm not saying Yahweh wasn't anthropomorphic, I'm just saying we oughta find something that actually pegs him as anthropomorphic as opposed to citing an anthropomorphic representation (ex. the 'hand of God' is anthropomorphic, but obviously God's hand =/= God himself) יבריב (talk) 16:43, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Another verse suggesting anthropomorphism may be the one where he walks in the garden (which could be considered symbolic or not)... I'll copy below a discussion that should ideally have occurred on this talk page. —PaleoNeonate – 03:32, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Dear PaleoNeonate, How about a little help on anthropomorphic Yahweh. Can you offer any suggestions? jewishvirtuallibrary/anthropomorphism. Perhaps this will work.Miistermagico (talk) 07:14, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

@Miistermagico: Normally per WP:BRD you should not restore the same edit by reverting when it is contested, but first discuss it to reach WP:CONSENSUS. But thanks for communicating, that's the most important part. The Jewish Virtual Library is indeed a secondary source, and has previously been discussed at the reliable sources noticeboard (WP:RSN) (one of the discussions being this one). It seems to be usable, I recommend to use it along with the Biblical verse ({{Bibleverse}} can be used to cite the verse. We'll then see if other editors accept or contest it. If you want to pursue this discussion further, it should be done at the article's talk page for others to see and participate (consensus is not one or two editors, obviously). Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 11:14, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate: Thanks for updating us on the missed conversation. I still would prefer the academic sources I have supplied above over using jewishvirtuallibrary.com, since I suspect the latter will be more likely to discuss modern Jewish conceptions of God rather than ancient Israelite conceptions of Yahweh. Furthermore, I think it is always better to use academic sources when they are available, especially in cases such as this where it is a subject that seems to attract so much controversy. --Katolophyromai (talk) 04:06, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes I agree that the Jewish Library source is considered less reliable (that RSN thread mentions that it is very variable). —PaleoNeonate – 04:10, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

If man is made in the image of God, then God is also in the image of man. God is the chief of the Tribe of God (one way of translating beni-elohim), the other members of which, the angels, are consistently described as human in form. PiCo (talk) 00:47, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

On the other hand of course, Yahweh is also a bull. PiCo (talk) 00:48, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Interesting point about God smelling the pleasant odour of burnt offerings. The odour was the spiritual essence of the sacrificed animal. (Flowers also had this spiritual essence, but flower-offerings don't seem to be a Middle Eastern thing. The essences of living things were breath (the odour of burning was associated with that), blood, and flesh/clay. All this got lost when Judaism became intellectualized in the rabbinic period.PiCo (talk) 00:53, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

On 2nd temple Yahweh

On the (non)-pronunciation of the Name, this might be useful (unfortunately someone has copied it upside down). Blenkinsopp is a highly regarded scholar.

We have to remember that this article is about Yahweh, the god, not Judaism - we need to avoid going too deeply into that side of it.PiCo (talk) 01:37, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

@PiCo: Yes. That is actually exactly what I was looking for. I knew I had read that, during the Second Temple Period, only the High Priest was permitted to utter the divine name and he was only allowed to do it once in the Temple on the Day of Atonement, but I was having troubles finding a source and I could not remember where I had read it. Thank you very much for providing one.

I do realize that this article is about Yahweh, not Judaism. As I have already stated in my edit summary, the new section I added will require a great deal of editing. What is written here right now is just a baseline to start with. I will remove parts that do not pertain directly to Yahweh and will add more information specifically about him. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:40, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with Yahweh (well, not much), but I thought I'd share :) PiCo (talk) 03:54, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

And this essay from the Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel could be useful.PiCo (talk) 04:15, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Earliest possible

Katolophyromai - on this edit note you say you're "reinstating the word "recorded" since saying that it is the "earliest possible occurrence" implies that there cannot possibly have been any earlier unrecorded instances, which, of course, we cannot know." (Relates to the Egyptian reference to Shasu YHW) What the original wording meant by "earliest possible" was not that there could not be any earlier record, but this record is not a certain one - it's a "possible" reference to YHWH. I know what you're getting at, and you're right, but we have to avoid giving the impression that this Shasu-YHW is a definite reference to YHWH. I leave it to you if you want to do anything. :) PiCo (talk) 20:14, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

@PiCo: The wording I implemented in the passage states "the earliest possible recorded occurrence." All that I changed was I inserted the word "recorded." The possibility that the Egyptian reference to Shasu YHW has nothing to do with Yahweh is still left open by the word "possible," which I did not remove. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:28, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunately, “earliest possible” in the vernacular entails “impossible to be earlier thsn that.” How about “earliest purported” or “earliest assumed” instead? Just plain Bill (talk) 20:58, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

"Oldest plausible"?PiCo (talk) 05:40, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

That conveys the intended meaning adequately, IMO. Edited into the article. Just plain Bill (talk) 20:30, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Yahwism

used to be a disambig page but is now a redundant fork of this article created by יבריב, who has since been indeffed as a sock of BedrockPerson. It's pretty long, but at a glance nearly everything I'm seeing is duplicated material from this article. Is there any reason to keep it? -165.234.252.11 (talk) 19:48, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

(One portion that's unique to that article is an unsourced snippet that mentions (but does not really address) the development of Samaritanism, which would be very interesting to touch on here.) -165.234.252.11 (talk) 19:55, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I have reverted the article back to a disambiguation page like it was before. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:10, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree with the disambiguation page restoration; if that is contested we can then CSD G5, if contested, AfD... The current way allows to keep Samaritanism in the history in case it's considered useful. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 20:38, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Oh I just noticed the revert and that the article is older than I thought. We could consider a merge discussion too. —PaleoNeonate – 20:40, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Please ignore my previous remarks about having restored it to a disambiguation page; another user just reverted my edit. The article is now back. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:42, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

The article in its current state is about a month and a half old, all of the material is either copied/paraphrased from this one or is unsourced. Its prior forms (before it was turned into a disambig in 2010) bear no resemblance to its current form and aren't really relevant. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 20:58, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Merge

• Support - A lot of duplication, problematic article; My impression is that it would be best to merge any adequate material and keep the information here. —PaleoNeonate – 20:51, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support per my explanations above, at Talk:Yahwism#Samaritans, and in my edit summary, with the emendation that my edit summary was partially wrong because the complaint about the article's quality was actually from ten years ago before it was initially made into a disambiguation page. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:55, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support - it would not hurt for that page to continue as a redirect dab page while this discussion proceeds, with its history available for merging here. Just plain Bill (talk) 21:00, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Yahweh and Jehova

These shouldn't be two separate articles. These are both two different Hebrew pronunciations of the exact same word. 139.138.69.196 (talk) 04:10, 9 March 2018 (UTC)