The Hebrew God is in fact El, a pagan God?

         According to the Netflix or BBC documentary on the Bible, God has a consort called Asherah. Yes, I suppose all of you reading this right now are going…Whaaaa??? The problem with this, is the documentary had no proof, besides one clay tablet found in an ancient site. The Bible is hen pecked for references on God and anything that mentions Asherah. The first half of the documentary focuses on the concept of God being the God El, which again the host uses the proof that Ancient Hebrews called God El. While she discredited a Rabbi, who tried to explain to her the use of the word El.

So, who is this God El? El is a northwest Semitic word that means God or deity, or it could refer to many other deities. It seems that the word was a generic word for any god. The word Elohim means “powers” is the plural version of El. The Hebrew texts is interpreted as being singular for God. The text people use as proof that the Jews worshipped more than one god comes from Exodus 6:2-3 when God tells Moses “I revealed myself to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as Ēl Shaddāi, but was not known to them by my name, YHVH.” There is of course Psalms 29 which uses “God of glory thunders” and the rest of the text uses Lord. Which they seem to forget Psalms 30 which says, “Lord my God”. Which indicates that God and Lord are one in the same thing, even though the writing might seem confusing. El (the God) was not a storm God but Ba'al was a God. Ba'al interestingly enough was El’s son. That would mean that the Ibrahimic God hates its own son, if Ba'al was the son of El. Would Jesus be Ba'als brother then, in the Christian perspective? ( note when I say Baal I mean Ba'al the God or the God of Thunder in the foe of God in the Bible, Not Baal which was used as an honorific title.) There is no mythology, which I could find, on why the god El would hate the god Ba'al. Perhaps the Hebrews where a cult that specifically liked the god El? The word Ba'al was an honorific title and refered to many Gods, and was even used for the Hebrew God.

               Exodus 15:11 says “Who among the gods is like you, O’Lord”…who are these gods that the Bible is talking about? This isn’t the first brief mention of gods in the Bible either. Some point out the use of “sons of God” as being other gods, but we know in theology these sons of God are angels (Greek word). The argument these…..monotheistic deniers?...make is that the ancient Hebrews wouldn’t of thought the word “sons of God” as angels but instead would of understood it too mean actual Gods like Ba'al. We can look at Psalm 82; “God presides in the great assembly; he gives judgement among the gods: “How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked? Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless….”I said, “You are gods” you are all sons of the Most High”” Perhaps this bible verse gets overlooked because the English translation has quotations around the word “gods”, like the writer didn’t actually believe these words meant “gods”.

I have to admit, even reading the Bible I have been confused with some random sentence here and there that do mention more than one God. My opinion is that angels are mentioned as god with lowercase g, and God is mentioned with capitalized G. In the original source, the words are not the same. We do know, with the Bible’s help, that Israelites did manage to worship more than one god, all the time. We know this because it pissed God off. We also know God had any statue destroyed that showed a figure of any type of God or Goddess. Destroying idols is a repeated process through out the book, we know Abraham destroyed idols and so did is wife Sarah. So why would Abraham destroy El’s statue? We also know that the Israelites put together a golden calf and worshiped it, neither a symbol of El or his consort Asherah. Some scholars think the golden calf represent Baal worship, but Baal was a thunder god not a god of agriculture. Who knows? The Asherah pole that was set up in God’s holy of holies was destroyed and God made sure to destroy any of Asherah’s symbols. It seems that the Israelites started to worship her alongside of God and even placing her into his temples. We know this isn’t instructed upon the Israelites because the Bible gives blue prints to how to build the ark of the covenant and the temples to God.

              There are seven names of God traditionally these are the tetragrammaton (Yahweh, Lord), El, Elohim, Eloah, Elohai, El Shaddai, and Tzevaot. With the addition of the name Jah. The most common name used in the Bible is YHWH and is known in Greek as the tetragrammaton. This name is forbidden to be spoken out loud. The exact way to pronounce the name is unknown. Ruth spoke the name, but it seems to be unspoken by the Second Temple Judaism period. El, the name that YHWH says was his old name, appears in Ugaritic, Phoenician, and other 2^nd and 1^st millennium BC text that are used as a generic “god” and as the head of a divine pantheon. El does appear alone but usually is attached with an epithet, so it can be understood as a generic god. Gabriel means strength of God, Michael means who is like god, Daniel is god’s judgment, and etc.  Elohim is grammatically singular in the Bible and the conjugate is the Ugaritic where it is used for the pantheon of Canaanite gods. In Deuteronomy God is called the “God of gods”.

                 So, Abraham came from what we assume is the Meso-area into the land of the Canaanites because God told him that this land will be his. We know that Abraham’s father had an idol shop, we do not know if that bothered God or not. We do know God promises the land of Canaan to Abe’s descendants. So how did a none Canaanite suddenly know a Canaanite god name? Again, El was a generic name. The Bible was written by more than one person and stayed relatively as an oral tradition up until the second temple age. The Jews did worship more than one God multiple times and lived alongside pagans. So, it would be no wonder that they started to use iconography and wordings that the culture around them already adopted. We do know, from the Bible, this pissed God off to no ends. To the point that God kept punishing the Jews every ten seconds. Perhaps some of this…..idol ideology got into the scriptures.

                 The problem is when you take religious scriptures and literalize them, we run into a problem. The Bible is no different, it was written by man and it was rewritten multiple times that the original vein has been lost to history. We could say God was not the only God to the Jews, because of some passages of the Bible make it out to be that way. If Jews firmly believed in a pantheon of Gods, then Christianity and Islam wouldn’t exist as they do now. Jews did worship more than one God, because the Bible tells us that they did. It also tells us that they even put idols into the temples meant for God. We can look at God’s abilities in the Bible to try to figure out what kind of God, God is. El is a good comparison to the Hebrew God though.  Though he was represented sometimes as the Bull God. He and his son Ba'al were often represented with the bull and with bull horns. Perhaps it wasn’t so crazy for the Jews to create a golden calf to worship, maybe they were worshiping El. El might even started out as a dessert God, and the Jews did wander in the dessert for forty years.

God is angry at this golden idol worship, and God doesn’t even like idols. So, if El had idols and El does not, then El is not El. Similar to the Islamic saying “No God, but God.” In modern imagery of God, I say Modern, but I really mean since the birth of Islam, God in Judaism and Islam isn’t a gender, or a concept human can understand. This is why Moses veils his face and Elijah does as well, because God’s might is too powerful. Even the names attributed to God do not fully describe God. I think these Bible scholars are hen pecking the meaning of God in the Bible to satisfy some desire to discover something profound. It isn’t profound to say Jews were not monotheistic because the Bible clearly describes how the people were in fact not, and this kept pissing God off.  So, in conclusion does the Bible prove that the ancient Jews worshiped more than one God? Yes, yes, they did. Was God El? No, God was not El but El. Perhaps you as the reader have your own opinions on whether or no the Bible concludes God is El, but I believe that there is not enough evidence to support God is El. There isn’t enough similarities or mythologies to compare the two. Honestly saying Jews stole monotheism from Zoroastrianism makes more sense, as the parallels between the two religions are striking. So much so that Muslims considered them worshiping the same God at various points in history.
              There is no way of know if El is El or El is a different El but similar to El. Even if El is El, why should it matter? It is obvious the God we worship or I worship or Islam worships or Judiasim now worships is not the same God these people worshiped. My God is more like Brahman in Hindu Literature, a genderless entity. The Ein Sof in the Kaballah is my God. Not some El. The Bible is fascinating piece of literature but it can not be considered a full hisotrical account, if it does then my interpretation is that while there were Jews who worshiped more than one God, the Prophets God chose or some of the Kings God choose did not represent El or worship El, they worshiped God. All I know is there is no God but God.