Quote:Min; didn't YHWH start out as a minor Sumerian (?) desert god?
If memory serves....always dangerous at our age, Pad...there is a vague reference in Egyptian literature ( either a papyrus or an inscription) to Yah or Yaw as a volcano god of Midian. That it was incorporated into the Canaanite pantheon (headed by El) is obvious and the fact that he was later inflated into some sort of superior god is equally obvious as you have said.
The argument is about when all of that occurred and it is the heart of the dispute between the centrists ( like Finkelstein and A. Mazar) and the Minimalists ( like Davies, Thompson and Lemche.) The Maximalists ( those who think the bible is actual history) have been dismissed for the kooks they are.
