God Yahweh Allah was a volcano.

[popeyespappy]

A bunch of stuff that made sense that I couldn’t figure out how to spoil…

Aren’t most of Dead Sea Scrolls written in the Hebrew language with some in Paleo-Hebrew and a small part in Greek? If so, why would that cause problems switching between languages?

The Mesopotamian and Babylonian influence on Genesis, Noah, and even the similarities between Moses and Sargon are plain to see for anyone whose immortal soul doesn’t depend on their denial of them. As you point out much of this probably comes into the picture in the post Exile period at the direction of those sent back from Persia. However Yahweh seems to have been firmly entrenched as chief god of Israel (along with at least some of the Canaanite pantheon) well before that that period.

Inscriptions at Kuntillet Ajrud dating to the late 9th or early 8th century BCE refer to "Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah" and "Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah." Samaria was the capital city of the northern Kingdom of Israel and Teman is a place in Edom. There are also Egyptian New Kingdom temple inscriptions refer to Yah of the Proto-Arab Bedouin living around the Edom area as early as the first half of the 14th century BCE. Not a Canaanite god but one of the Arab Bedouin. So there is creditable evidence for at least a proto-Yahweh of the Bedouin during the Egyptian New Kingdom period. There are other things that tie the Egyptian New Kingdom to the Old Testament. Proverbs is full of things taken from the sayings of the New Kingdom Sage Amenemope.

So we have a story called Exodus about a bunch of people who fled Egypt then founded the nation of Israel. I think most of us can agree that at the very least the story was probably embellished at some point with a bastardization of the story of Sargon II (Moses) if it’s not a complete fabrication. But I think there may be more to it than that. There is some evidence in the story itself. The existence of people that Moses found when he first crossed the desert is confirmed by external contemporary primary sources. They were followers of what would become the god of the Bible.

We also have Pharaoh’s city of Armarna. The site of what many believe to be the first monotheistic religion. The city was built from scratch within Pharaoh’s lifetime then completely abandoned within a very short time frame of his death. Where did they go; these people who toiled to build Pharaoh’s palaces’ and temples? My theory is some of made their way across the desert and joined the Bedouin worshipers of Yahweh and introduced them to the concept of monotheism. Doesn’t mean it happened that way but it’s not totally out of the realm of possibilities.