@@TheEsotericaChannel I'm sure they'd say the same about Catholics if we had fragmented ruins of their saints and handful of texts reciting their prayers.
The deities of Ancient Canaan being local to their shrines is so interesting to me because that's just how it is here in Japan, where the kami is basically only present in the shrines dedicated to them. There is something nice and cozy about it honestly, like every once in a while I'll just take a different side street than usual while strolling in the city and come across a shrine I've never been to before, and I get to learn about what kami resides at that shrine and see what kind of prayers people do there, and of course make an offering of my own and do a prayer as well. Like the other day I just randomly found a shrine dedicated to a kami of love, where most of the wooden plaques of wishes people had left there were about relationships and marriages. This kind of spiritual landscape is quite nice honestly. I imagine that in Ancient Canaan, this was likely how it was like too.
That's beautiful. My son has been obsessed with Japanese culture for most of his life. He's just turned 18 and is heading there on holiday soon. I'll be sure to let him know to keep an eye out for such shrines.❤️
It really is surprising how seemingly all things that reproduce are subject to evolution by selection. We have a tendency to imagine that the creatures and ideas we have today survived because they were the strongest, when really what endures are the organisms that were adaptable enough to survive when things got bad. Monotheism wasn’t some inevitability, it was the desperate survival strategy of a religion that was in danger of becoming extinct. Just like how human sapience wasn’t the inevitable triumph of evolution, but rather a last-resort adaptation that let our ancestors to survive as arboreal apes who were forced to eke out a living on the open savanna.
@Uhshawdude You can't know this for sure. It's a statement of faith like any other. I will agree with you that special pleading Monotheism or human intelligence is on dodgy epistemological ground, but so too are your "just" statements.
@@alaricgoldkuhl155 “Statement of faith” lol no, its a hypothesis. An explanation for a set of observations. All Im really doing is applying the Copernican Principle to religion. The difference between that and faith is that if I find contradictory evidence, I will change my hypothesis, rather than stubbornly clinging to faulty ways of thinking.
@@UhshawdudeYou seem to be ascribing conscious intent to evolution, when it is a random thing. Things don’t choose to develop new traits, it just happens by mutation.
@@NoobslayarI’m actually saying the opposite. People tend to think of humans as the endpoint of evolution, that we are “more evolved” because we are more intelligent than most other animals. Their justification for this is pointing to how successful humans are, and how we’ve dominated the planet. But evolution cannot plan ahead, nor act intentionally as you said. The reason other animals haven’t achieved sapience/ human level intelligence is because it simply wouldn’t be useful to them. Our huge, calorically expensive brains would actually make the vast majority of creatures less fit for their environments. Ive seen convincing arguments that human levels of intelligence, rather than being the pinnacle of evolution, is so uncommon because it’s actually a rather janky strategy, which was only selected for in our ancestors because they lacked any physical adaptations for life in the Sahara as rainforests disappeared millions of years ago. They had a unique mix of ancestral traits (hands, flexible shoulders, sociality, tool use, lack of claws/fangs, slow ground movement) adaptions (bipedalism, loss of fur, smaller jaws), and environmental pressures to encourage the development of advanced tool use and language, which eventually gave us culture. That ended up allowing us to conquer the world, but in its beginning it was just the only thing our ancestors could evolve in a short enough timescale to allow them to survive the transition. Intelligence only looks like the peak of evolution with the benefit of hindsight. Im arguing that the same can be said for monotheism. From our point in history, the rise and dominance of monotheistic Abrahamic religions seems like a natural progression. Religion goes from animism-> polytheism -> monotheism in a nice line of progress. But that’s teleological thinking, and reality is a lot more complicated. As the video shows, Jews didn’t become monotheistic because monotheism is the most advanced and strongest form of religion, they did so because it was the only way to survive as the fringe religion of an small, persecuted minority. The religion evolved much like a species does, individual sects had variability between them, and the ones that made it to the present day were the ones that were most effective at reproducing into the next generation and avoiding extinction. Jewish monotheism just barely avoided extinction, and now its descendants are the largest religions in the world. Meanwhile the religions of the countless powerful empires that dominated and persecuted the Jews are all shadows of their former selves, if not outright extinct.
I am so confused, if it's clear to him that Judaism was once a religion that believe in more than one god, then became monotheistic why is he Jewish? How can anyone believe a religion knowing it went from polytheism to mono?
@@bunjijumper5345I guess Judaism can be a cultural ethnicity thing. Or maybe he believes in those deities also. I'm Christian, but I take Jesus as not the same character as yahweh, since he presented a negative view on what yahweh did. Saying that a father would act differently in the same situations.
@bunjijumper5345 a good question but once you understand Yahweh was a certain tribes god and they themselves spread monotheism it makes more sense. He is absolutely right though and I love his content. His religion doesn't concern me as long as he spreads truth. I'd be curious to see if he is a Zionist or not as that's a modern movement within Judaism. Knowing what he does I'd wager he is more orthodox in that view.
@@codyrockarano5220 I just am trying to understand the logic. I am glad you understood I didnt mean any offense. I mean if a religion claims there is only one God, it seems wild that at one time they believed there were many Gods. The idea of a certain tribes God, as you say in a certain place reminds me of Hinduism because it is also specific to a place. His religion doesnt bother me either, it just seems hard to comprehend that people can literally believe in a faith, and admit that it once was polytheistic. And then still practice that same faith. Certainly the 10 commandments are good rules to live by. It's just perplexing to my brain that he wears the kippa, etc and does other things that are based on something that he basically admits is not true. Thanks for your response.
@@bunjijumper5345 Technically speaking, any "monotheistic" religion that also believes in demons and angels of some kind would just be the same kind of polytheistic as Hinduism is, the only difference with Hinduism is that worshipping the lower transcendent beings is encouraged, while in Judaism, it's a sin to worship transcendent beings other than the one most supreme, both religions acknowledge the existence of multiple "gods," but one religion makes it clear that only one God ought to be worshipped, while the other gods ought to be cleansed and simply called "demons." We have stories about specific demons and angels with names, just like Hinduism and Hellenism has about different gods, and all of these lesser beings originate from some supreme creator too, Hellenists have Gaia, Hindus have either Vishnu or Brahma, depending on who you ask, Ancient China had Shangdi, and Abrahamic religions have Yahweh, Elohim, Shaddai, and many other names. Demons are thought to have divine intelligence and supernatural powers, so if a demon were to reveal itself to a human, the only thing the human would know is that it's of supernatural origin, and would either assume it's a demon or assume it's a god, either way it's still just an assumption, and we can't really use our sense of fear to tell whether it's a demon or an angel since biblically, both demons and angels can strike fear into the hearts of men. I, as a Christian, believe that some gods of other religions could be real, but that either A. They unknowingly worship the same God as me, we just call Him different names and have different stories about Him, or B. They worship a demon.
This is a solid and concise summary of the origins of biblical monotheism. As someone who’s read and studied both of Mark Smiths books on the subject as well as John Day’s, Frank Moore Cross’s and the Ugaritic mythologies I can say Dr Sledge is truly painting as clear and objective of a picture as I’ve seen of such an amazingly complex and fascinating subject that I have been obsessed with for years Thank you kindly sir
@@DavidWalls-sr1pg It sounds a bit like you’re referring to the something similar to the Midianite-Kenite hypothesis maybe? I have read theories that try to place Yahweh’s origins in the ancient volcanic regions of the levant. I’ve also read Nissim Amzalags Yahweh and the origins of ancient Israel which essentially suggests that Yahweh was originally a cult god of the miners and smelters. It could be argued that there is some volcanic language used to describe the theophany of Yahweh in scripture but I would say it’s far less convincing than the scholarly consensus that it’s mostly storm language used…There is certainly a fraternal relationship between ancient Israel, Edom, Moab, and Ammon in the bible and extra biblical sources as well as a potential for Amorite influence on the region we sometimes refer to as Canaan. Just curious, what are your sources to say outright that Yahweh is a Moabite god and a volcanic one at that? I’ve always known Chemosh to be the chief god of Moab and I’m not aware of any reliable information that Yahweh was a minor deity in Moab let alone a volcano god. Thanks for your response
@@PESSIMYST1C ignoring the volcanic imagery, one can't ignore the tabernacle. Archeological evidence shows us that it is most likely an arabic syle tent temple. Also the ark of the covenant was an Egyptian bark. I feel these must be explained and never are. As far as imagery goes: in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth. To a contemporary audience this would have obviously been about two well known gods and a young upstart named yahweh. "The earth was without form and void" is fighting words. They just said the sacred goddess was baren. "God moved upon the face of the waters and said let their be light." The primordial waters too were powerless and uncreative. This is a direct attack on the sumerian religion and all mesoptamian religions that it cane from. Reading it with sumerian and Egyptian imagery in mind one can clearly see the influence, but it was argumentative and mocking. Yahweh rides the clouds can be seen as plagiarism to academics, but to believers living at the time it would have been highly offensive.
@@DavidWalls-sr1pg hmm…maybe take a few minutes and research how similar the description of the tabernacle is to the war tents of the ancient Egyptians in the battle of Qedesh against the Hittites…and how the holy of holes would have occupied the same space as where the pharaoh would have resided…Then look into how the Ugaritic high god El also dwelt in a tent…then simply research how much older the Egyptian civilization is compared to Moab and how much older still the Ugaritic civilization was…
As someone who was raised as a Fundie Christian, I can't say how much I appreciate your videos! I'm very excited for a YHWH series, your videos have helped me deconstruct so much while also embracing my love and appreciation for mysticism, history, theology and the occult. It's been very freeing learning everything from the point of view of mysticism and how that's historically shaped society as we know it today (for better or for worse), versus how I was raised to believe in everything being the Absolute Truth. Very much looking forward to future videos 😄
SAME. As a deconstructing exvangelical for the last 15 years or so, Dr.Sledge's educational videos have filled in many gaps and answered so many of the questions I've had that helped me get out of christianism. I hope that all who seek truth find Dr.Sledge's channel.
I’m the odd man out in my Fundie family, but it’s fun to throw out little tidbits now and then like “Yahweh was a minor storm god until he got a promotion for political reasons.” They just love it. Thanks Dr. Sledge.
Should check out the lord of spirits podcast sometime. Fascinating breakdowns of pagan and 2nd temple Jewish, as well as early Christian theology. Definitely blows my mind several times an episode.
LOVE this series on Yahweh. I cannot wait for you to cover Ashera. I have always thought that the Holy Spirit somehow evolved from her. I feel like it was originally a female or female coded. Idk. I can't wait to find out! Thank you SO MUCH for all your hard work and putting hard scholarship into language I can understand as a non scholar.
@@DavidWalls-sr1pg you are using a trandltion made with the purpose of fitting into monotheism why do you think that's productive. In orginal translstion, elohim did the action. Elohim translates to council of el.
1)I can see a kind of "they are dead to me" defiance towards foreign gods, much like a parent might say about children they are ashamed of, would lead to a tradition of no gods but the one worthy of respect (Yahwey). 2) Interesting coincidence that after the more-or-less banishment of Asherah from Judaism, Proverbs 1-9 (4th century BCE) and Sirach 24 and 51 (185 BCE), begin praise of Lady Wisdom who is called the Tree of Life. She is later identified with the Spirit of God in the Book of Wisdom/Wisdom of Solomon (c. 1 CE).
@@Reso-pn7kr It's like I watched a podcast where there were a bunch of people sitting around a table and the subject of astrology came up and people were going around the table saying what their sun sign was and they came to this macho guy on the panel who simply insisted, "I am a man." I'm sure he knew what his sign was, he just denied it's existence as he strongly believed it to be anathema to being masculine (not that I agree) and shameful to acknowledge the existence of astrology as pertinent in any sense.
@@awakenedaristocrat In classical and modern Judaism. You never found the term before works like the Kabballah, Mishnah, the Talmud, and Midrash, except an allusion in 2 Maccabees. Otherwise, as a concept, it goes back to early Exodus, so was contemporaneous with Asherah from 1200 to 600 BCE.
It might be the single most academically open period in all of human history, we occupy a Cyber-Alexandria that spans the globe, it's borderline miraculous.
@@theeccentrictripper3863 Unfortunately it seems these scholarly works are a small fraction of the total increase in available information. They constitute an even smaller fraction of the total increase in consumed information. Even smaller still the fraction of information that lands and is internalized. One can go through 12 years of school, then a 4 year degree and a subsequent PhD or professional degree, and never take a course in rhetoric, logic, statistics, or critical appraisal/analysis. In fact, I'd say that outside of the humanities, most people don't take courses like that at all. Even in some of the humanities, it seems the focus is more on indoctrinating the consensus opinion of the field rather than on training thinkers and investigators. I worry this creates an aversion to nonconfirmatory information. This could make it nigh on impossible for quality scholarship like that summarized here could ever reach and affect a broad enough audience to move the needle. But I'm very glad at least a small corner of the internet, like Esoterica, is making the attempt. If nobody were to try, it would never be possible.
I too am massively indebted to this and other similar channels. It indeed is a privileged time to be alive. Sadly the window seems to be closing. Enjoy while we can.
Brother, I swear you're a saint for publicly sharing such critical well founded knowledge in this age of fast spreading misinformation! Bless! Looking forward to the next episode 😊
@@Jackkalpakian iranian? Latin root pax for peace. Idk is there another connotation im just not hip enough to get? I do know bashing babies for revenge is def OT. Maybe this is why there are some who believe jesus was maybe not so much of the OT ways and developed a philosophy to stop the cycle of revenge. I also know that im physically ill by any sort of rhetoric that justifies this but thats just my opinion of course. Its also my opinion that homo sapiens is not the last of the hominid and i hope something evolves that isnt so murderous but only i fear thats only possible if the maniacs dont blow up this beautiful garden planet and leave it a wasteland. My only solace is that even if that happens there are likely other planets that have intelligent life and can also figure out the great mysteries of nature before some stupid maniac blows it all up. Because after all if there is a god who decides about afterlife, why the hell would it let anyone in who has so little regard for the life it and others had? Its most certainly not the god i ever chose to believe in. But like i say. Thats just my opinion. Im ok with my own heresy. Im sad about the likely fate of our world and hope if some of the good things dont survive here maybe they exist or will exist elsewhere. And if all goes well for the eons, it will start all over and not succumb to universal heat death. That one gives me the chills.
Speaking of theological Anarchism!!! Something fascinating that I can't shake is how the Hebrew prophet leading the anarchist revolution against Egypt's puppet-monarchs in Kanangan/Cana'an was called " 'Abdi Ashirta", or Servant of the Goddess in the Amarna Letters. "Kill your kings, join us, and forever live in peace." This was following the mysterious death of the crowned prince of Egypt and the succession of his younger brother (the eventful mono-theism-crazed Akkenaten), but before the Anarchistic period of the Judges (Samuel echoing those values through his advice to not take on a king). On the one hand, I see Deuteronomy being what Judaism has always done: an attempt to salvage the values of our ancient heritage through re-interpretation and re-contextualization. ...and on the other hand, I really want to know who this 'Abdi Ashirta was (the historical Joshua?), where he came from, and what relationship Ashirta had with the spirit of prophesy! (Spirit itself being a female noun.) I'd actually be interested in you doing a deep dive video on the divine feminine in Judaism. Like, was Spirit of God thought of as feminine in Hebrew in more than just the grammatical sense?
Another excellent seminar on Yahweh from Dr. Sledge. I've watched the original several times. This channel got me interested in comparative religion despite being myself agnostic verging on atheist.
I got into comparative religion in 2022! Its an amazing deep dive for any curious mind. The Primordial Cosmic Waters thing, for instance, is very very old. Also often tied up with the Serpent/Dragon like Tiamat, Vrtra, Leviathan, ect. Ive perhaps a panpsychism view currently. Ever learning.
You're not "just some guy", Dr Sledge. Your universal curiosity and knowledge come second only to your intellectual generosity. Thank you for this series and for all the other ones.
This series is one of my favorites on this channel, especially as a non-Abrahamic person curious about ancient polytheism before God flattened it all out. It's so interesting how the Israelite religion was kind of shaped by being on the periphery and morphing in response to other popular gods or forces beyond their control. I would hesitantly say that there are some similarities between the development of Israelite religion and Hinduism over time, except in the latter case, we ultimately didn't develop an absolute monotheism through negation.
With Indian religion it's fascinating as you had Buddhism negating all of existence, but it was corralled and eventually exiled into wider Asia. It's a look at what could have occurred if the might of the Roman state hadn't taken up the monotheistic Yahweh, transmuted into the Trinity, and undermined polytheistic traditions across the West; the possibilities are truly exhilarating in scope.
@@DavidWalls-sr1pg Not really because Brahman describes God in a pantheistic sense. They are one God and every god and all in-between. Different schools of thought have different ideas how that works, but it is not like Yahweh.
@@MrGksarathy god is pantheistic too, if one wants to see him that way. He is god the father, son and holy spirit, but even in Judaism he is a burning bush, a pillar of cloud or fire etc.
As a comfortably apostate former evangelical and a passionately practising metalhead, I can only give you the highest praise possible with these sacred words: That Was Awesome Dude!!!!
Just found your channel yesterday and am already 7 or 8 videos deep. Thanks so much for your work! I would love to see you do a playthrough of Cultist Simulator or Book of Hours to hear your thoughts on their lore. They've got a really great, fleshed out cosmology and I imagine there are a lot of real world influences on their worldbuilding that you could share some insight on. Every time I hear you mention "Mandean" i can't help but think of those games. Thanks again!
Dr. Justin, you may be just "some guy", but you continue to be able to marshal your eloquence in a consistently informative and entertaining manner! Thank you!
I'm a very devout Protestant/Christian, believe iand study the bible etc. and I absolutely love these videos you make on Yahweh. I love to understand the more historical/archeological side of my relegion and try to work the relation between the evidence brought by the religion and the ones outside of the religion. It's challenging sometimes, and there are aspects that are simply a mystery, and that's what I love about it. Feels like I'm trying to put together the lore of a Dark Souls game. One could think this would challenge my faith and make me not believe anymore, but it's kind of the opposite to me.
@@SeanRichards_a I've thought about it before. But I've been in this rabbit hole for some 4 or 5 years now. I can't tell the future of course, but I don't see myself becoming an atheist. I'm overall very secure on my beliefs, and everytime I get into subjects like these, I find my self even more enthusiastic about going deeper both in my faith and studying stuff like in this video. And as Is aid, there absolutely are moments that it challenge's me, and points some possible contradictions, but somehow that makes the process fun and interesting to me.
@@kidren50 very well said. I’m in a similar place. It hasn’t lead me to atheism. I interpret these things as us coming to grasp the infinite as a finite species. That God accepts us calling us Yahweh for us to conceptualize him.
@kidren50 I love this response. I relate completely. Observing others bad marriages only brings more gratitude as the bride of a husband who fills my soul with unshakable security. That kind of faithfulness in marriage isn't natural, it is however supernatural. Blessings from Charleston,SC
Beautifully presented, passionately argued. A chance meeting with the YT algorithm turned into a thing of beauty. Thank you, Dr Sledge. Enjoyment while learning is the only true learning ❤.
Goddamn this was quite the ride! I don't have much to burn but it I appreciated this far too much not to pay at least a fraction of what it's worth to me. For a topic of such profound import it seems to be most profane to even glance at to the average person, and as such much of this scholarship seems to carry Inception levels of esoteric knowledge with it, leaving one of the most important questions, "How Did Yahweh become 'God'" almost entirely shrouded in mystery and purpose-crafted mythology. This topic summons to me what some would see as an equally profane curiosity, and begs the question of what would, or should, logically proceed from widespread knowledge and acceptance of the scholarly take of the evolution of Yahweh monotheism? As you said we more or less got here because of the need to respond to the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian wars and later Exile, so where should knowing all this take us, or rather those who worship Yahweh in his many forms today? Is there some kind of theological obligation to confront this in the same way the Israelites had to wrestle with the Exile? My head is just buzzing with questions and musings and as always I have you to thank Doc, you are a cornerstone for an ever-growing scaffold of knowledge hitherto unencountered or hidden in shadows. Please keep doing what you're doing as long as Nature lets us have you.
I cannot say thank you enough for this lecture. As someone who grew up reading the Old Testament and studying Jewish culture and witnessed it being incorporated into Christianity, i am thrilled to have a more detailed and demistifying explination of the foundational shifts and mutations of this religon. It has made it so much easier to remove myself from a deeply harmful and sadistic belief structure, and helped me to root myself in a more "consciousness" based practice. (Believing that everyone's consciousness is cut from the same cloth and that we're all God incarcerated experiencing itself. Thus we are all connected in circle of life that never ends. )
Indeed. We are the Universe made conscious of itself. Not parts of it like the Vedas would have us believe, but the whole thing. Each of us is the Universe. I've recently come back to Christ though. I don't believe He was a historical person, but a revealed one.
The details i learn from this channel! This is my favorite thing to put on in the background while cooking. I feel like im getting a free university lecture!!! Many thanks dr sledge
10:35 December 2024. As a POP ( poor old pensioner ) I really appreciate your lively, dry humour and your intelligent expositions of 'old world' theologies. May you and your family be safe and prosperous and have a very happy New Year! 🩵😀🇦🇺 Thank you Dr Justin. Your work is loved by many ...
This is all too fascinating for words! I love learning about the roots of institutions and belief structures that I was raised to view as rootless, primordial, and eternal. Hearing the possible origins of the monotheistic Yahwist cult really humanizes what to me has always seemed like a real, but inexplicable, boogeyman stalking and menacing the world I've grown up in. Despite growing up in a very conservative Christian family, and learning to read from Bible stories, I've never been able to shake the suspicion that if a creator there be, then obviously we are ALL his/her/their children... right? Yet many would, and do, disagree with that sentiment. I've always wondered how such a militant and narrow view of the divine could have taken root at all, let alone become so damned popular. Thanks to your wonderful scholarship, and your willingness to share your insights, I feel more sympathy now for the people who must have viewed monotheism as a necessary means of retaining cultural identity and solidarity. It doesn't seem as crazy as I once believed it to be, though I can't help wishing that it had mellowed out into something a little more universalist in the years to follow. Ah, well, there's still time to give the whole "universal brother-and-sister-hood of humanity" concept another good, college try, I suppose. It's always a blessing to hear your point of view on a subject, Dr. Sledge, and I can't thank you enough! Many thanks. --N
It is because he is our father, and as the first father he is the one who started the "this house is not a democracy" tradition, expect his house is the whole world.
You take a complex and contested ancient process and lay it out is clearly as possible - without pretending its the one reading or can be known with any real certainly. Fantastic work. The previous one was good too.
The sequel to the episode that got me fascinated into studying the "esoteric" side of my Christian faith, including the early stages of its formation in gnosticism I had no idea actually had so much influence in the beginning periods like the Patristic Period. Thank you for these well researched and and humorous episodes on all of this typically hard to approach and hard to grasp information. I come from a Methodist background so reason and discernment is important to me so getting to learn about this ancient history that organically shaped and formed the traditions that eventually caused the explosion of what is "God" for all of the Abrahamic religions is a reall fascinating study. I appreciate your candor, yet willingness to take healthy jabs and pokes at everyone, you make it fun and approachable like everyone is along for the ride.
You have no idea how thankful I am of every second you spent into reading a book, article, watching conferences, attending conferences, hours of research to make this video happen. I am an atheist but I thank god for your work, it's helped me rationalized parts of my life that religion left in shambles, and give a sense of redeeming my days of religious fanatism. Thanks Justin!
Excellent as always! As I said about your last video on Yahweh: I wish this had been available six years ago, when a real jerk (a fundamentalist Christian minister) tried to get me fired over suggesting--contrary to what our World Civilizations textbook said--that monotheism was not the norm amongst the early Judeans/Israelites. But, that's a story in itself (sadly!).
@@f34rbeast32 It's a long story...but, in an online World Civilizations class, because I suggested the textbook wasn't actually teaching history at that point but instead was distorting it to fit theological ideologies, the minister (who was the parent of a student in the class...but she was an adult, living away from home, and married!) sent a letter to me; our department chair at the time refused to acknowledge it, so I was left to deal with it. Our vice president required me to respond, and the minister kept moving the goal posts, and wanted to meet with me, but I refused because he wouldn't be changing his mind, and I wouldn't alter my tactic of teaching actual history rather than his preferred theological version of it. He continued to write harassing e-mails to me until I stopped responding. He then accused me of discriminating against Jews, Muslims, and Christians and tried to get me fired (when, in fact, his daughter sent me one e-mail, it wasn't about this nor anything related to it, and got an A in the class...so, where's the evidence of discrimination there?). The college took his complaint, even though he had no standing to make it (and narrowly avoided a defamation suit by me!), didn't allow me to be at the meeting where this was discussed with the minister, nor did they acknowledge that they were violating my academic freedom as well as the fact that my "version" was actually history as acknowledged by actual experts nowadays and therefore not in any way in error, and then at the end of the meeting, were told by the minister that they all needed to "remember who the majority is in this country" when dealing with situations like this. Supposedly, no note of this went into my record in HR; however, the dean and vice president that were at the meeting were both instrumental in denying me promotion over the next few years, and in my eventual situation of being permanently laid off. In any case, that was the situation, in brief. While Dr. Sledge's videos would have helped (or, at least one hopes they would have!), this guy was probably never going to change his mind or actually be educated on this matter (nor would it have helped in showing the college admins that they were making serious mistakes in how they dealt with this entire situation...which might even have been more than mistakes and were outright illegal), because if Yahweh wasn't always and forever the one and only God, then his entire theology would break down...and we can't have that, now, can we?
considering that one of the Old Testament’s biggest themes was the fact that the Israelites worshipped idols nearly the entire time… finding out that they were polytheistic in the 21st century is *not really a surprise*. In fact, finding this out through archaeological means and not simply through the words in the Bible… PROVE IT!
@@davidm5415 To anyone who is reasonable, educated, intellectual, certainly...but, there are some people that aren't, and never will be because they refuse to be. This minister was in that category, which is truly sad...and he decided to make my life hell for it, and almost got me (and another faculty member) fired for it because we dared to question his "faith" with our history and facts. (And we didn't actually seek to undermine his faith, and said nothing about it...but he felt offended and attacked by presenting the facts, and...well, you read the rest of the story.)
A tour de force presentation that is highly detailed, nuanced, persuasive and passionately argued. Whereever our beliefs intersect with the material here, we are educated and provided a historical framework. Thank you again, Dr. Sledge.
Describing how monotheistic Yahweh theology came about sort of 'unwillingly' in the mode of dialectical negation & ending with 'this has somehow become a Yahweistic series, not planned' is the cherry on the cake. The power of the becoming of the God is such that not only it forced itself into "early" theology, it also forced itself into the best RUclips series, too! Gotta give kudos to YHWH. (but mostly to you, of course! amazing video as always)
I rather like the idea that Hezekiah's reforms were inspired by an alliance with the Aaronid priests of Jerusalem to cope with the influx of northern Levites, given that Hezekiah destroyed Moses's staff. This was argued by Friedman in his book, Who Wrote the Bible? in a section arguing for a dating of the P source to Hezekiah's day.
Alot of JWs and exJWs are watching this and it's enlightening af, sad that most will turn a blind eye at the truth of biblical analytical study in favour of being lead to the slaughter by a bunch of manipulative greedy few intent on making money off their ignorance, while promising them everlasting life on a paradise earth. Dgmw, I believe in God and universal creator, but if biblical doctrine is to be taken into account, it doesn't matter how you acknowledge God personally, or what it's name is, just remember that God exists and cares about it's creation on a deeper level we could ever imagine. Peace be with you friends ✌🏽🥰
12:30 "Yahweh would rise to the top of the pantheon, but not without a fight." - I love this line because it gives me huge Shin Megami Tensei vibes. 35:44 "Along with there being chaos monsters inhabiting primordial, uncreated waters." - This fascinates me. The idea of there being horrific monsters that existed before the universe was created is so cool. It would make such a chilling story. I wish there was more detail on what sort of nightmare beasts existed before creation.
Hey Justin i really appreciate your effort in putting out weekly content that must be grueling turn-around time for such consistency and it makes my friday. I fell asleeo to a kot of your videos on paternity leave. Do you have any more William Blake in the oven? You implied you were working on more at the end of your Blake video and I'm fascinated by his mythopoeia, plus I feel like his particular brand of anarchism is some sort of starting point for spiritual reconstruction. As a rec, you should check out the band La Armada. They're a dominican punk band now living in chicago, but their sound leans more toward metal I think you'd appreciate. Thank you for always putting these up for free, helps me keep my academic aspirations alive despite the evidence for the fact that I'll never finish my degree lol
You can continue, take tiny steps. No need to fumble, and even if you do! Just get back on your feet, it hurts to slip and fall, but it didn’t kill you. Time to manage what you can!
As much as you may find this series challenging, Dr. Sledge, we are glad for your efforts. Myself included. Growing up Christian and coming from an anti-denominational family, it always amazed me that the broader Christian religion held this narrative of ancient Isrealites as monotheistic. The books of the prophets literally call out the entire nation on their syncretism constantly, and the court prophets in the employ of the Isrealite kings for being polytheistic. Regardless of modern faith or personal views, and even setting aside the archaeology of the last century, the text of the Hebrew Bible paints a clear picture of a developing religion in constant jeopardy over centuries. It's amazing that it survived at all.
It's easier when the translations deliberately smooth out the text of the Old Testament (so you have a harder time seeing stylistic changes and insertions) and wrongly translate some stuff (the divine assembly, etc.).
Again, absolutely mesmerizing and interesting topic. Thank you very much. I must confess, your "programs" became a staple of my weekly rutine, which makes them ever so much importnat. Looking forward to the next episode on YHVH, Will dive into Smith's material, as I am not sure about "unavoidabliity" of monotheistic conclusion. Maybe I even report back...
I grew up a fundie Christian, and only when digging deep in my beliefs to become a preacher did this fact change, and for better or worse (that’s a joke), I was honest with myself. Let me tell you ESOTERICA is a fantastic recontextualization of some of the beliefs I grew up with. Not sure I’d be open to it if it weren’t for that change. I probably wouldn’t know how to handle the data or care. Now I don’t have a huge point to make with this, aside from adding engagement and expressing my appreciation. Keep killing it, Dr. Sledge, your stuff’s… pretty metal sometimes
I really love listening to your scholarly reporting. You absolutely provide valuable insight. Im thankful for your channel and thankful for your desire to share your passion.
Thunder god prolly won out because as someone here in comments quoted Dr Sledge saying: "it was a protection racket", *and* thunder was most powerful force known. Maybe Ouranos (Uranus) beats Jupiter/Zeus if they knew about, and could imagine him wielding asteroids. (But then, asteroids are also like nukes, when sometimes you just need to zap one person.)
@@HoopsKevinski. I'd say that a very important thing is that asteroids weren't actually historically recurrent disasters, while giantic storms are. I'd also say that another thing is that storms are not wholly dependent on lightning; on the contraty, lightning causes tremendous yet highly personal damage with the incredibly powerful winds and especially floods being the ones to destroy all the buildings. Even in modern-day mexico, I can say as someone from guadalajra it is not uncommon for the streets to get flooded during the rainy reason. And yet, a lack of rain or rain which is in some way intoxicated like acid rain is just as bad if not worse than the tremendous floods and storms due to to the terrible famine that comes with it, that slow and dreadful death. Without the seasonal rainy season, millions would die all through mexico and a national crisis would happen, a path that the unpredictable weather that global warming seems to be bringing closer to reality in many regions. A sky god was and is of vast importance, in my opinion at least, due to the close relationship betweeen rain and crop production, with thunder and lighting being particular due to showcasing not a widespread distaster but a particular, personal, damage.
My take away from this is that politics deeply influence theology, and far more than i ever imagined. It's projecting into the heavens our own reality.
I'm glad to have a good distillation of Smith's work. It's really good, but it's also really dense and difficult for most people to easily read. Also, thanks for your hard work, Dr. Sledge. That was great.
Oh yeah Doc, after rewatching this video a few times to make sure I got your point you made me realize something: One of the reasons why Abrahamic religions really took off is down to the fact that Abrahamic religions trace their ancestry to the fragmented, oppressed, and disenfranchised people of the ancient Israelite polity. Their religion and its history with Imperialism and colonialism echoed in the imperialism and colonialism in the centuries to come. I mean it's not the only reason why Abrahamic religions are now so widespread, but my intuition is telling me it's not pure coincidence.
Also: What kind of god is a better fit for an expansive, conquest-centered ideology than a warrior storm-god. It seems that the idea of Jahwe being kind never became dominant - it's still the warrior ideology that prevails in these religions.
@@johannageisel5390 kind of a back and forth huh? On the one hand El's Mercy appeals to the oppressed peoples of the world, while Storm Yahweh brings the suffering.
Thank you for this episode... I have been looking for someone to do a deep analysis on this subject. My favorite channel find so far in years. Keep up the good work, A fellow Historian, -TJQ
Um, this could actually be my favorite video of all time. And I'm a RUclips junkie. I don't want to know how many thousands of videos I've seen. Look, Dr. Sledge, it ain't JUST your fantastic delivery making this my perhaps-favorite. You're working with some damn good ingredients here. The narrative is fascinating and unpredictable; on a human-interest level, there's so much to wonder about and learn from how this all went down. The consequences of Yahweh's development, needless to say, have been world-defining. The scholarship has surely been appallingly meticulous. And the capstone on all of this was a presentation that was compelling, thorough-yet-concise, and downright relatable. That one's all you, Dr Sledge.
I applied your alchemy teaching to an eastern medicine recipe and healed myself. As above so below regarding ingredients, sulfur, Aspen bark oil, gathered from chest deep snow on the grand mesa in Colorado from 4 Aspen trees, cooked for 7 hour 3 different ways, sodium carbonate without the hydrogen molecule etc... I gather ingredients myself, cook from scratch, your baptism video was helpful! I use my forces, book of morals and dogma. 3 forces I use in cooking or healing myself, thought, will and prayer. Was a deck boss in bering sea for 12 years before becoming a chef, just am better at jobs then most ppl. Wish I had smart ppl like you in my everyday life! I am humble and try not to want. Don't eat sugar cain, deep fried etc... only cook for myself. Last time I went out to eat was 2 years ago, I live in town, America. So you know why. Am 42. You look close to my age. I rant so I won't text anymore. I will continue to listen to your teaching and thank you again!
I’ve battled with the north/south kingdom conflict for some time and tried to understand the separation. Then the yhwh /el split hit me and made so much sense
Hezekiah's reforms were so unpopular, that it took a rival --Israelite-- priesthood of Shiloh at ngAnathoth to re-introduce i.e.u.e. -exclusive worship under Josiah. Note Jeremiah's opinion of the Priestly (Aaronid-Judahite) Torah: "A worthless scroll cheapened by the lying pen of dishonest scribes!" ...Jeremiah was a priest of ngAnathoth.
Watching this and the previous video Yahweh reminds me of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series in which the gods of Discworld need believers in order to exist and do reinvent themselves in order to continue to retain believers.
Fantastic video as always Dr. Sledge. Thank you for releasing so much good content, it has been a huge influence on my ideas and perspective lately, and helped me think about my own religious tradition and skepticism in radical, different ways. Looking forward to the next episodes!
I’ve been looking for scholarship of this quality for a long time and am so pleased to have stumbled across your channel. I have books but sometimes you want to listen to a good lecture, and I’ve enjoyed Christine Hayes’ Yale course most often. Thank you for the in-depth lecture and accompanying graphics. I hadn’t known about the cuneiform inscriptions from the Babylonian Jewish communities-such a treat to see them. Will be donating and following. Thanks again.
What is the story of Exodus and the plagues if not "my God can totally beat up your god"? Yahweh beats up Pharoah (the Egyptian demigod) 10 times, so badly that we still brag about it every spring.
Dr. Sledge, you are so much more than just "a guy!" Your insight, your knack of seeing the big picture, your clarity of expression- these are gifts you possess in abundance! Prester Bob
Am a chef, everything is a recipe to me, don't believe in oil based medicine everything is ingredients to me! I love your teaching! Used to run 10 miles a day for 10 years, Sundays off in Oregon. So insightful and wish I had your talent with languages. You make me want to learn, thank you!
I’m getting into Greek stuff. It’s so awesome so peer into the minds of the creators of our religions and see through their bs. I find it useful to skim through the bs and appreciate the lessons and history. Thank you Sir. ❤
@@HvV_FilmRoom they took the divine spirit out of everything else and concentrated in one being. So called polytheistic and animistic systems saw the divine spirit in everything, all animals, all plants, all lakes and mountains and so on. Elevating one entity as the only real divine being, and in particular a being strictly connected with humans, began the process of human exceptionalism. Now we are not a spirit surrounded by infinite other spirits forming a giant organism together, nay now we are in a world that is external and hostile, a world to be dominated and exploited and it doesn t matter what we do to it, because we are the only special being here with a big daddy in the sky on our side (when is not pissed). Monotheism took away from the world most of its divinity to put it in the hands of an inscrutable entity above the world. You wouldn t burn a forest down so easily or poison a river, if you thought that it was as alive as you and way more ancient.
Dr Sledge - "The Israelites were polytheists!"
The Prophets - "We know 😞"
The prophets were also probably a type of polytheists as well
What was Benjamin calling?
The Deuteronomists stamped out a lot. I'd recommend "In the Language of Adam" for more
Good one!
@@TheEsotericaChannel I'm sure they'd say the same about Catholics if we had fragmented ruins of their saints and handful of texts reciting their prayers.
Babe wake up new Esoterica on YHWH dropped
😂Arise! Arise!
I wanted to comment that exact same thing😭
😂😂❤
Dude fr, this topic never gets old for me
Stoneworks? I sure hope it does!!
Jokes aside, cool seeing you here
The deities of Ancient Canaan being local to their shrines is so interesting to me because that's just how it is here in Japan, where the kami is basically only present in the shrines dedicated to them. There is something nice and cozy about it honestly, like every once in a while I'll just take a different side street than usual while strolling in the city and come across a shrine I've never been to before, and I get to learn about what kami resides at that shrine and see what kind of prayers people do there, and of course make an offering of my own and do a prayer as well. Like the other day I just randomly found a shrine dedicated to a kami of love, where most of the wooden plaques of wishes people had left there were about relationships and marriages. This kind of spiritual landscape is quite nice honestly. I imagine that in Ancient Canaan, this was likely how it was like too.
That's beautiful. My son has been obsessed with Japanese culture for most of his life. He's just turned 18 and is heading there on holiday soon. I'll be sure to let him know to keep an eye out for such shrines.❤️
Thank you for sharing this.
Project Moon/Occultisim Pipeline runs deep.
@@lambdadelta3119 Yeah, that IS in fact how I got into the Kabbalah and started reading the Zohar.
@@Binarokaro As a PM fan, nice!
"I bet my sky dad can beat up ur sea monster dad!"
"Nuh uh!"
*several centuries later*
"Your MOM's an emanation!"
"Well, at least she's not an ARCHON like your MOM!"
@@TheEsotericaChannel 🤣😂 touche!
It's 1-1, last time I checked. It's been eons since their last bout.
- Percy Jackson and Thalia Grace circa 2008
Who's side are you on here? The peoples front of judea or the judean peoples front?
As a biologist, I find this concept of 'divine ecology' and the mutation and evolution of pantheons is fascinating. Really interesting analysis.
It really is surprising how seemingly all things that reproduce are subject to evolution by selection. We have a tendency to imagine that the creatures and ideas we have today survived because they were the strongest, when really what endures are the organisms that were adaptable enough to survive when things got bad. Monotheism wasn’t some inevitability, it was the desperate survival strategy of a religion that was in danger of becoming extinct. Just like how human sapience wasn’t the inevitable triumph of evolution, but rather a last-resort adaptation that let our ancestors to survive as arboreal apes who were forced to eke out a living on the open savanna.
@Uhshawdude You can't know this for sure. It's a statement of faith like any other. I will agree with you that special pleading Monotheism or human intelligence is on dodgy epistemological ground, but so too are your "just" statements.
@@alaricgoldkuhl155 “Statement of faith” lol no, its a hypothesis. An explanation for a set of observations. All Im really doing is applying the Copernican Principle to religion. The difference between that and faith is that if I find contradictory evidence, I will change my hypothesis, rather than stubbornly clinging to faulty ways of thinking.
@@UhshawdudeYou seem to be ascribing conscious intent to evolution, when it is a random thing. Things don’t choose to develop new traits, it just happens by mutation.
@@NoobslayarI’m actually saying the opposite. People tend to think of humans as the endpoint of evolution, that we are “more evolved” because we are more intelligent than most other animals. Their justification for this is pointing to how successful humans are, and how we’ve dominated the planet.
But evolution cannot plan ahead, nor act intentionally as you said. The reason other animals haven’t achieved sapience/ human level intelligence is because it simply wouldn’t be useful to them. Our huge, calorically expensive brains would actually make the vast majority of creatures less fit for their environments. Ive seen convincing arguments that human levels of intelligence, rather than being the pinnacle of evolution, is so uncommon because it’s actually a rather janky strategy, which was only selected for in our ancestors because they lacked any physical adaptations for life in the Sahara as rainforests disappeared millions of years ago. They had a unique mix of ancestral traits (hands, flexible shoulders, sociality, tool use, lack of claws/fangs, slow ground movement) adaptions (bipedalism, loss of fur, smaller jaws), and environmental pressures to encourage the development of advanced tool use and language, which eventually gave us culture. That ended up allowing us to conquer the world, but in its beginning it was just the only thing our ancestors could evolve in a short enough timescale to allow them to survive the transition. Intelligence only looks like the peak of evolution with the benefit of hindsight.
Im arguing that the same can be said for monotheism. From our point in history, the rise and dominance of monotheistic Abrahamic religions seems like a natural progression. Religion goes from animism-> polytheism -> monotheism in a nice line of progress. But that’s teleological thinking, and reality is a lot more complicated. As the video shows, Jews didn’t become monotheistic because monotheism is the most advanced and strongest form of religion, they did so because it was the only way to survive as the fringe religion of an small, persecuted minority. The religion evolved much like a species does, individual sects had variability between them, and the ones that made it to the present day were the ones that were most effective at reproducing into the next generation and avoiding extinction. Jewish monotheism just barely avoided extinction, and now its descendants are the largest religions in the world. Meanwhile the religions of the countless powerful empires that dominated and persecuted the Jews are all shadows of their former selves, if not outright extinct.
Dr.Sledge your commitment to researching theology in an interesting and accurate manner is appreciated
“Yahweh is pretty metal from time to time” has me rolling 😂
Love this channel.
I am so confused, if it's clear to him that Judaism was once a religion that believe in more than one god, then became monotheistic why is he Jewish? How can anyone believe a religion knowing it went from polytheism to mono?
@@bunjijumper5345I guess Judaism can be a cultural ethnicity thing. Or maybe he believes in those deities also.
I'm Christian, but I take Jesus as not the same character as yahweh, since he presented a negative view on what yahweh did. Saying that a father would act differently in the same situations.
@bunjijumper5345 a good question but once you understand Yahweh was a certain tribes god and they themselves spread monotheism it makes more sense. He is absolutely right though and I love his content. His religion doesn't concern me as long as he spreads truth. I'd be curious to see if he is a Zionist or not as that's a modern movement within Judaism. Knowing what he does I'd wager he is more orthodox in that view.
@@codyrockarano5220 I just am trying to understand the logic. I am glad you understood I didnt mean any offense.
I mean if a religion claims there is only one God, it seems wild that at one time they believed there were many Gods.
The idea of a certain tribes God, as you say in a certain place reminds me of Hinduism because it is also specific to a place.
His religion doesnt bother me either, it just seems hard to comprehend that people can literally believe in a faith, and admit that it once was polytheistic. And then still practice that same faith.
Certainly the 10 commandments are good rules to live by.
It's just perplexing to my brain that he wears the kippa, etc and does other things that are based on something that he basically admits is not true.
Thanks for your response.
@@bunjijumper5345 Technically speaking, any "monotheistic" religion that also believes in demons and angels of some kind would just be the same kind of polytheistic as Hinduism is, the only difference with Hinduism is that worshipping the lower transcendent beings is encouraged, while in Judaism, it's a sin to worship transcendent beings other than the one most supreme, both religions acknowledge the existence of multiple "gods," but one religion makes it clear that only one God ought to be worshipped, while the other gods ought to be cleansed and simply called "demons." We have stories about specific demons and angels with names, just like Hinduism and Hellenism has about different gods, and all of these lesser beings originate from some supreme creator too, Hellenists have Gaia, Hindus have either Vishnu or Brahma, depending on who you ask, Ancient China had Shangdi, and Abrahamic religions have Yahweh, Elohim, Shaddai, and many other names. Demons are thought to have divine intelligence and supernatural powers, so if a demon were to reveal itself to a human, the only thing the human would know is that it's of supernatural origin, and would either assume it's a demon or assume it's a god, either way it's still just an assumption, and we can't really use our sense of fear to tell whether it's a demon or an angel since biblically, both demons and angels can strike fear into the hearts of men. I, as a Christian, believe that some gods of other religions could be real, but that either A. They unknowingly worship the same God as me, we just call Him different names and have different stories about Him, or B. They worship a demon.
"It's like the Cryps and the Bloods, only Yahweh and B'aal." Jeez you make me laugh!
Hell yeah like naruto and goku vs vegeta n sasuke ητ´ρ
Lol 💯
Jeez is short for Jebez. Are you sure it want to use that name in vain?
@@windigo77 in vain? he would 100% approve
You see gid tripping is ego tripping ❤❤❤❤
This is a solid and concise summary of the origins of biblical monotheism. As someone who’s read and studied both of Mark Smiths books on the subject as well as John Day’s, Frank Moore Cross’s and the Ugaritic mythologies I can say Dr Sledge is truly painting as clear and objective of a picture as I’ve seen of such an amazingly complex and fascinating subject that I have been obsessed with for years
Thank you kindly sir
Huge wealth of knowledge shared in a simple way. Indeed. I love this channel.
@@DavidWalls-sr1pg It sounds a bit like you’re referring to the something similar to the Midianite-Kenite hypothesis maybe? I have read theories that try to place Yahweh’s origins in the ancient volcanic regions of the levant. I’ve also read Nissim Amzalags Yahweh and the origins of ancient Israel which essentially suggests that Yahweh was originally a cult god of the miners and smelters. It could be argued that there is some volcanic language used to describe the theophany of Yahweh in scripture but I would say it’s far less convincing than the scholarly consensus that it’s mostly storm language used…There is certainly a fraternal relationship between ancient Israel, Edom, Moab, and Ammon in the bible and extra biblical sources as well as a potential for Amorite influence on the region we sometimes refer to as Canaan. Just curious, what are your sources to say outright that Yahweh is a Moabite god and a volcanic one at that? I’ve always known Chemosh to be the chief god of Moab and I’m not aware of any reliable information that Yahweh was a minor deity in Moab let alone a volcano god. Thanks for your response
@@PESSIMYST1C ignoring the volcanic imagery, one can't ignore the tabernacle. Archeological evidence shows us that it is most likely an arabic syle tent temple. Also the ark of the covenant was an Egyptian bark. I feel these must be explained and never are. As far as imagery goes: in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth. To a contemporary audience this would have obviously been about two well known gods and a young upstart named yahweh. "The earth was without form and void" is fighting words. They just said the sacred goddess was baren. "God moved upon the face of the waters and said let their be light." The primordial waters too were powerless and uncreative. This is a direct attack on the sumerian religion and all mesoptamian religions that it cane from. Reading it with sumerian and Egyptian imagery in mind one can clearly see the influence, but it was argumentative and mocking. Yahweh rides the clouds can be seen as plagiarism to academics, but to believers living at the time it would have been highly offensive.
@@PESSIMYST1C my first reply disappeared. Mostly I am curious why it's never acknowledged that the tabernacle was an Arabian style tent temple.
@@DavidWalls-sr1pg hmm…maybe take a few minutes and research how similar the description of the tabernacle is to the war tents of the ancient Egyptians in the battle of Qedesh against the Hittites…and how the holy of holes would have occupied the same space as where the pharaoh would have resided…Then look into how the Ugaritic high god El also dwelt in a tent…then simply research how much older the Egyptian civilization is compared to Moab and how much older still the Ugaritic civilization was…
Thanks!
Massive fan Dr. Sledge.
You bring a strict scholarly perspective to subjects that rarely receive it.
Can't get enough of your videos!!
As someone who was raised as a Fundie Christian, I can't say how much I appreciate your videos! I'm very excited for a YHWH series, your videos have helped me deconstruct so much while also embracing my love and appreciation for mysticism, history, theology and the occult. It's been very freeing learning everything from the point of view of mysticism and how that's historically shaped society as we know it today (for better or for worse), versus how I was raised to believe in everything being the Absolute Truth. Very much looking forward to future videos 😄
SAME. As a deconstructing exvangelical for the last 15 years or so, Dr.Sledge's educational videos have filled in many gaps and answered so many of the questions I've had that helped me get out of christianism. I hope that all who seek truth find Dr.Sledge's channel.
I’m the odd man out in my Fundie family, but it’s fun to throw out little tidbits now and then like “Yahweh was a minor storm god until he got a promotion for political reasons.” They just love it. Thanks Dr. Sledge.
...how did you come to be Liberated from FundieXtianity..?
Those capitalized A and T are so on point 😊
Should check out the lord of spirits podcast sometime. Fascinating breakdowns of pagan and 2nd temple Jewish, as well as early Christian theology. Definitely blows my mind several times an episode.
Yo it's the sequel to the episode that got me into Esoterica! I have to watch it now.
Same here.
Same here as well.
I just watched the first one like last week so I’m lucky here lol
Same! Really grateful he decided to tell us more! :3
Me too!!
LOVE this series on Yahweh. I cannot wait for you to cover Ashera. I have always thought that the Holy Spirit somehow evolved from her. I feel like it was originally a female or female coded. Idk.
I can't wait to find out!
Thank you SO MUCH for all your hard work and putting hard scholarship into language I can understand as a non scholar.
All I could think of during the segment on demythologizing the creation story was "in the beginning God created the black and white cookie"
And it was good.
@@TheEsotericaChannel another image from later in the episode: "Forget it, Jake. It's Yehudu."
If you demythologize you miss the point. "In the beginning god created the heavens and the earth." How many gods are mentioned?
@@TheEsotericaChannel wasn’t Yahweh originally a place name?
@@DavidWalls-sr1pg you are using a trandltion made with the purpose of fitting into monotheism why do you think that's productive. In orginal translstion, elohim did the action. Elohim translates to council of el.
1)I can see a kind of "they are dead to me" defiance towards foreign gods, much like a parent might say about children they are ashamed of, would lead to a tradition of no gods but the one worthy of respect (Yahwey).
2) Interesting coincidence that after the more-or-less banishment of Asherah from Judaism, Proverbs 1-9 (4th century BCE) and Sirach 24 and 51 (185 BCE), begin praise of Lady Wisdom who is called the Tree of Life. She is later identified with the Spirit of God in the Book of Wisdom/Wisdom of Solomon (c. 1 CE).
I've got an Asherah episode up my sleeve and I'll be discussing this sleight of hand with her and the Lady of Wisdom.
Would love to hear your take on Margareth Barker's work on that topic.
@@Reso-pn7kr It's like I watched a podcast where there were a bunch of people sitting around a table and the subject of astrology came up and people were going around the table saying what their sun sign was and they came to this macho guy on the panel who simply insisted, "I am a man." I'm sure he knew what his sign was, he just denied it's existence as he strongly believed it to be anathema to being masculine (not that I agree) and shameful to acknowledge the existence of astrology as pertinent in any sense.
@@Reso-pn7kr Not really what I was getting at, but whatever.
@@awakenedaristocrat In classical and modern Judaism. You never found the term before works like the Kabballah, Mishnah, the Talmud, and Midrash, except an allusion in 2 Maccabees. Otherwise, as a concept, it goes back to early Exodus, so was contemporaneous with Asherah from 1200 to 600 BCE.
binge watching your channel I can’t believe I live in a time where I can access academia of this level for free. #feelingblessed
I will be buying merch off how much I love your content. Thank you professor S
It might be the single most academically open period in all of human history, we occupy a Cyber-Alexandria that spans the globe, it's borderline miraculous.
@@theeccentrictripper3863 Unfortunately it seems these scholarly works are a small fraction of the total increase in available information. They constitute an even smaller fraction of the total increase in consumed information. Even smaller still the fraction of information that lands and is internalized.
One can go through 12 years of school, then a 4 year degree and a subsequent PhD or professional degree, and never take a course in rhetoric, logic, statistics, or critical appraisal/analysis. In fact, I'd say that outside of the humanities, most people don't take courses like that at all. Even in some of the humanities, it seems the focus is more on indoctrinating the consensus opinion of the field rather than on training thinkers and investigators.
I worry this creates an aversion to nonconfirmatory information. This could make it nigh on impossible for quality scholarship like that summarized here could ever reach and affect a broad enough audience to move the needle. But I'm very glad at least a small corner of the internet, like Esoterica, is making the attempt. If nobody were to try, it would never be possible.
Blessed indeed. Doc's metal references give me life lol. ESOTERICA RULES :)
I too am massively indebted to this and other similar channels. It indeed is a privileged time to be alive. Sadly the window seems to be closing. Enjoy while we can.
Brother, I swear you're a saint for publicly sharing such critical well founded knowledge in this age of fast spreading misinformation! Bless!
Looking forward to the next episode 😊
The local divine family of Canaan + the imperialism of Assyria + the cosmology of Zoroastrianism + Greek philosophy= 1 fresh baked monotheism
Don't forget the seasonings from the medieval and early modern periods
Técnicamente hoy el cristianismo católico parce más un henoteismo o monolatria con todos sus santos, ángeles y demonios
Great stuff. Always excited to see your videos pop up.
I really appreciate how easy you made it to digest all this really good information. Thanks so much
As a Catholic I love learning about the roots of my faith. Thanks!
@@sleeperino3054 faith means no proof or evidence
@ whatever makes you feel better, bud 🤙
🤣@@sleeperino3054
As someone who briefly researched the Canaanite Pantheon and is interested in the Kabbalah, this is a great analysis.
"By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, there we were when we remembered Zion" ... put in context, wonderful.
the great Frank Farian knew something
Psalm 137. Read the last lines and see how you feel about that one again.
@@fishcult60608 What makes you think I did not? Checked out my last name?
@@Jackkalpakian iranian? Latin root pax for peace. Idk is there another connotation im just not hip enough to get? I do know bashing babies for revenge is def OT. Maybe this is why there are some who believe jesus was maybe not so much of the OT ways and developed a philosophy to stop the cycle of revenge. I also know that im physically ill by any sort of rhetoric that justifies this but thats just my opinion of course. Its also my opinion that homo sapiens is not the last of the hominid and i hope something evolves that isnt so murderous but only i fear thats only possible if the maniacs dont blow up this beautiful garden planet and leave it a wasteland. My only solace is that even if that happens there are likely other planets that have intelligent life and can also figure out the great mysteries of nature before some stupid maniac blows it all up. Because after all if there is a god who decides about afterlife, why the hell would it let anyone in who has so little regard for the life it and others had? Its most certainly not the god i ever chose to believe in. But like i say. Thats just my opinion. Im ok with my own heresy. Im sad about the likely fate of our world and hope if some of the good things dont survive here maybe they exist or will exist elsewhere. And if all goes well for the eons, it will start all over and not succumb to universal heat death. That one gives me the chills.
@@fishcult60608 Armenian ... been "at the rivers of Babylon" since 1915
“it’s always a protection racket, this yahweh stuff,” dr. SLEDGE 💀
Italy, birthplace of popes...
...and mafia
He "gets it": people have used religion to make money, legally or illegally, going back to the beginning of religion.
Speaking of theological Anarchism!!! Something fascinating that I can't shake is how the Hebrew prophet leading the anarchist revolution against Egypt's puppet-monarchs in Kanangan/Cana'an was called " 'Abdi Ashirta", or Servant of the Goddess in the Amarna Letters.
"Kill your kings, join us,
and forever live in peace."
This was following the mysterious death of the crowned prince of Egypt and the succession of his younger brother (the eventful mono-theism-crazed Akkenaten), but before the Anarchistic period of the Judges (Samuel echoing those values through his advice to not take on a king).
On the one hand, I see Deuteronomy being what Judaism has always done: an attempt to salvage the values of our ancient heritage through re-interpretation and re-contextualization.
...and on the other hand, I really want to know who this 'Abdi Ashirta was (the historical Joshua?), where he came from, and what relationship Ashirta had with the spirit of prophesy! (Spirit itself being a female noun.)
I'd actually be interested in you doing a deep dive video on the divine feminine in Judaism. Like, was Spirit of God thought of as feminine in Hebrew in more than just the grammatical sense?
Your work --and this episode in particular --is so very good. Thanks!
Another excellent seminar on Yahweh from Dr. Sledge. I've watched the original several times. This channel got me interested in comparative religion despite being myself agnostic verging on atheist.
I got into comparative religion in 2022! Its an amazing deep dive for any curious mind. The Primordial Cosmic Waters thing, for instance, is very very old. Also often tied up with the Serpent/Dragon like Tiamat, Vrtra, Leviathan, ect. Ive perhaps a panpsychism view currently. Ever learning.
You're not "just some guy", Dr Sledge. Your universal curiosity and knowledge come second only to your intellectual generosity. Thank you for this series and for all the other ones.
This series is one of my favorites on this channel, especially as a non-Abrahamic person curious about ancient polytheism before God flattened it all out. It's so interesting how the Israelite religion was kind of shaped by being on the periphery and morphing in response to other popular gods or forces beyond their control.
I would hesitantly say that there are some similarities between the development of Israelite religion and Hinduism over time, except in the latter case, we ultimately didn't develop an absolute monotheism through negation.
Great insight!
With Indian religion it's fascinating as you had Buddhism negating all of existence, but it was corralled and eventually exiled into wider Asia. It's a look at what could have occurred if the might of the Roman state hadn't taken up the monotheistic Yahweh, transmuted into the Trinity, and undermined polytheistic traditions across the West; the possibilities are truly exhilarating in scope.
Isn't Brahman God? The one that wants no other gods before him?
@@DavidWalls-sr1pg Not really because Brahman describes God in a pantheistic sense. They are one God and every god and all in-between. Different schools of thought have different ideas how that works, but it is not like Yahweh.
@@MrGksarathy god is pantheistic too, if one wants to see him that way. He is god the father, son and holy spirit, but even in Judaism he is a burning bush, a pillar of cloud or fire etc.
As a comfortably apostate former evangelical and a passionately practising metalhead, I can only give you the highest praise possible with these sacred words: That Was Awesome Dude!!!!
I was too until relatively recently and think it's a good move. Fatted calf is yummy.🤣
Can we marry? 😂
Just found your channel yesterday and am already 7 or 8 videos deep. Thanks so much for your work!
I would love to see you do a playthrough of Cultist Simulator or Book of Hours to hear your thoughts on their lore. They've got a really great, fleshed out cosmology and I imagine there are a lot of real world influences on their worldbuilding that you could share some insight on. Every time I hear you mention "Mandean" i can't help but think of those games.
Thanks again!
Dr. Justin, you may be just "some guy", but you continue to be able to marshal your eloquence in a consistently informative and entertaining manner! Thank you!
@@artkoenig9434 He is not just some guy, he literally has a PhD in his field.
I'm a very devout Protestant/Christian, believe iand study the bible etc. and I absolutely love these videos you make on Yahweh. I love to understand the more historical/archeological side of my relegion and try to work the relation between the evidence brought by the religion and the ones outside of the religion. It's challenging sometimes, and there are aspects that are simply a mystery, and that's what I love about it. Feels like I'm trying to put together the lore of a Dark Souls game. One could think this would challenge my faith and make me not believe anymore, but it's kind of the opposite to me.
I remember that phase! I was in college. Its the one right before atheism. Safe Journey
@@SeanRichards_a I've thought about it before. But I've been in this rabbit hole for some 4 or 5 years now. I can't tell the future of course, but I don't see myself becoming an atheist. I'm overall very secure on my beliefs, and everytime I get into subjects like these, I find my self even more enthusiastic about going deeper both in my faith and studying stuff like in this video. And as Is aid, there absolutely are moments that it challenge's me, and points some possible contradictions, but somehow that makes the process fun and interesting to me.
@@kidren50 very well said. I’m in a similar place. It hasn’t lead me to atheism. I interpret these things as us coming to grasp the infinite as a finite species. That God accepts us calling us Yahweh for us to conceptualize him.
@@SeanRichards_a lol
@kidren50 I love this response. I relate completely.
Observing others bad marriages only brings more gratitude as the bride of a husband who fills my soul with unshakable security. That kind of faithfulness in marriage isn't natural, it is however supernatural.
Blessings from Charleston,SC
Thank you for the amazing insights. My favorite video yet!
Beautifully presented, passionately argued. A chance meeting with the YT algorithm turned into a thing of beauty. Thank you, Dr Sledge. Enjoyment while learning is the only true learning ❤.
Goddamn this was quite the ride! I don't have much to burn but it I appreciated this far too much not to pay at least a fraction of what it's worth to me. For a topic of such profound import it seems to be most profane to even glance at to the average person, and as such much of this scholarship seems to carry Inception levels of esoteric knowledge with it, leaving one of the most important questions, "How Did Yahweh become 'God'" almost entirely shrouded in mystery and purpose-crafted mythology. This topic summons to me what some would see as an equally profane curiosity, and begs the question of what would, or should, logically proceed from widespread knowledge and acceptance of the scholarly take of the evolution of Yahweh monotheism? As you said we more or less got here because of the need to respond to the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian wars and later Exile, so where should knowing all this take us, or rather those who worship Yahweh in his many forms today? Is there some kind of theological obligation to confront this in the same way the Israelites had to wrestle with the Exile? My head is just buzzing with questions and musings and as always I have you to thank Doc, you are a cornerstone for an ever-growing scaffold of knowledge hitherto unencountered or hidden in shadows. Please keep doing what you're doing as long as Nature lets us have you.
Religious scholarship vs theology has become fascination of mine. Thank you for your work!
Thanks for your time and knowledge.
I cannot say thank you enough for this lecture. As someone who grew up reading the Old Testament and studying Jewish culture and witnessed it being incorporated into Christianity, i am thrilled to have a more detailed and demistifying explination of the foundational shifts and mutations of this religon. It has made it so much easier to remove myself from a deeply harmful and sadistic belief structure, and helped me to root myself in a more "consciousness" based practice. (Believing that everyone's consciousness is cut from the same cloth and that we're all God incarcerated experiencing itself. Thus we are all connected in circle of life that never ends. )
Indeed. We are the Universe made conscious of itself. Not parts of it like the Vedas would have us believe, but the whole thing. Each of us is the Universe.
I've recently come back to Christ though. I don't believe He was a historical person, but a revealed one.
Your made up belief is not better than Christianity. At least Christianity has real history and logic
@@alaricgoldkuhl155 could you give some further details on your Christ position?
"deeply harmful and sadistic" is such a ridiculous stance. You must not know what pain really is.
Thank you for your great videos!
The details i learn from this channel! This is my favorite thing to put on in the background while cooking. I feel like im getting a free university lecture!!! Many thanks dr sledge
10:35 December 2024. As a POP ( poor old pensioner ) I really appreciate your lively, dry humour and your intelligent expositions of 'old world' theologies. May you and your family be safe and prosperous and have a very happy New Year! 🩵😀🇦🇺 Thank you Dr Justin. Your work is loved by many ...
Thank you Dr. Sledge. This channel is a treasure trove.
This is all too fascinating for words! I love learning about the roots of institutions and belief structures that I was raised to view as rootless, primordial, and eternal. Hearing the possible origins of the monotheistic Yahwist cult really humanizes what to me has always seemed like a real, but inexplicable, boogeyman stalking and menacing the world I've grown up in.
Despite growing up in a very conservative Christian family, and learning to read from Bible stories, I've never been able to shake the suspicion that if a creator there be, then obviously we are ALL his/her/their children... right? Yet many would, and do, disagree with that sentiment.
I've always wondered how such a militant and narrow view of the divine could have taken root at all, let alone become so damned popular. Thanks to your wonderful scholarship, and your willingness to share your insights, I feel more sympathy now for the people who must have viewed monotheism as a necessary means of retaining cultural identity and solidarity. It doesn't seem as crazy as I once believed it to be, though I can't help wishing that it had mellowed out into something a little more universalist in the years to follow. Ah, well, there's still time to give the whole "universal brother-and-sister-hood of humanity" concept another good, college try, I suppose.
It's always a blessing to hear your point of view on a subject, Dr. Sledge, and I can't thank you enough! Many thanks. --N
This is so deep. I had to pause 30 minutes in to catch my breath. Haha. Great lecture, Justin.
Well I didn't vote for him.
It is because he is our father, and as the first father he is the one who started the "this house is not a democracy" tradition, expect his house is the whole world.
Great comment lmao
Come and see the violence inherent in the system
Help Im being repressed!!!!
You don't vote for god
You take a complex and contested ancient process and lay it out is clearly as possible - without pretending its the one reading or can be known with any real certainly. Fantastic work. The previous one was good too.
The sequel to the episode that got me fascinated into studying the "esoteric" side of my Christian faith, including the early stages of its formation in gnosticism I had no idea actually had so much influence in the beginning periods like the Patristic Period. Thank you for these well researched and and humorous episodes on all of this typically hard to approach and hard to grasp information.
I come from a Methodist background so reason and discernment is important to me so getting to learn about this ancient history that organically shaped and formed the traditions that eventually caused the explosion of what is "God" for all of the Abrahamic religions is a reall fascinating study. I appreciate your candor, yet willingness to take healthy jabs and pokes at everyone, you make it fun and approachable like everyone is along for the ride.
You have no idea how thankful I am of every second you spent into reading a book, article, watching conferences, attending conferences, hours of research to make this video happen. I am an atheist but I thank god for your work, it's helped me rationalized parts of my life that religion left in shambles, and give a sense of redeeming my days of religious fanatism. Thanks Justin!
WOW… what an astonishing amount of research it took to make this happen! Kudos!
Excellent as always!
As I said about your last video on Yahweh: I wish this had been available six years ago, when a real jerk (a fundamentalist Christian minister) tried to get me fired over suggesting--contrary to what our World Civilizations textbook said--that monotheism was not the norm amongst the early Judeans/Israelites. But, that's a story in itself (sadly!).
Ministers straight up lie to their congregation and they're encouraged to do so because they learn this stuff at seminary school.
If you don’t mind me asking, what happened and the outcome?
@@f34rbeast32 It's a long story...but, in an online World Civilizations class, because I suggested the textbook wasn't actually teaching history at that point but instead was distorting it to fit theological ideologies, the minister (who was the parent of a student in the class...but she was an adult, living away from home, and married!) sent a letter to me; our department chair at the time refused to acknowledge it, so I was left to deal with it. Our vice president required me to respond, and the minister kept moving the goal posts, and wanted to meet with me, but I refused because he wouldn't be changing his mind, and I wouldn't alter my tactic of teaching actual history rather than his preferred theological version of it. He continued to write harassing e-mails to me until I stopped responding. He then accused me of discriminating against Jews, Muslims, and Christians and tried to get me fired (when, in fact, his daughter sent me one e-mail, it wasn't about this nor anything related to it, and got an A in the class...so, where's the evidence of discrimination there?). The college took his complaint, even though he had no standing to make it (and narrowly avoided a defamation suit by me!), didn't allow me to be at the meeting where this was discussed with the minister, nor did they acknowledge that they were violating my academic freedom as well as the fact that my "version" was actually history as acknowledged by actual experts nowadays and therefore not in any way in error, and then at the end of the meeting, were told by the minister that they all needed to "remember who the majority is in this country" when dealing with situations like this. Supposedly, no note of this went into my record in HR; however, the dean and vice president that were at the meeting were both instrumental in denying me promotion over the next few years, and in my eventual situation of being permanently laid off.
In any case, that was the situation, in brief. While Dr. Sledge's videos would have helped (or, at least one hopes they would have!), this guy was probably never going to change his mind or actually be educated on this matter (nor would it have helped in showing the college admins that they were making serious mistakes in how they dealt with this entire situation...which might even have been more than mistakes and were outright illegal), because if Yahweh wasn't always and forever the one and only God, then his entire theology would break down...and we can't have that, now, can we?
considering that one of the Old Testament’s biggest themes was the fact that the Israelites worshipped idols nearly the entire time… finding out that they were polytheistic in the 21st century is *not really a surprise*. In fact, finding this out through archaeological means and not simply through the words in the Bible… PROVE IT!
@@davidm5415 To anyone who is reasonable, educated, intellectual, certainly...but, there are some people that aren't, and never will be because they refuse to be. This minister was in that category, which is truly sad...and he decided to make my life hell for it, and almost got me (and another faculty member) fired for it because we dared to question his "faith" with our history and facts. (And we didn't actually seek to undermine his faith, and said nothing about it...but he felt offended and attacked by presenting the facts, and...well, you read the rest of the story.)
A tour de force presentation that is highly detailed, nuanced, persuasive and passionately argued. Whereever our beliefs intersect with the material here, we are educated and provided a historical framework. Thank you again, Dr. Sledge.
Describing how monotheistic Yahweh theology came about sort of 'unwillingly' in the mode of dialectical negation & ending with 'this has somehow become a Yahweistic series, not planned' is the cherry on the cake. The power of the becoming of the God is such that not only it forced itself into "early" theology, it also forced itself into the best RUclips series, too! Gotta give kudos to YHWH. (but mostly to you, of course! amazing video as always)
I rather like the idea that Hezekiah's reforms were inspired by an alliance with the Aaronid priests of Jerusalem to cope with the influx of northern Levites, given that Hezekiah destroyed Moses's staff. This was argued by Friedman in his book, Who Wrote the Bible? in a section arguing for a dating of the P source to Hezekiah's day.
"Mortal Kombat, but for the gods."
I present to you: Immortal Kombat
Ex JW here and this is very enlightening
Same! ^-^
JW is a sect, a heresy at best.
The parallels with what JWs called the covenant, God's chosen people, and other concepts with concepts mentioned in this video is deeply fascinating
same here very interesting we been bamboozled by imaginary gods😂🤣
Alot of JWs and exJWs are watching this and it's enlightening af, sad that most will turn a blind eye at the truth of biblical analytical study in favour of being lead to the slaughter by a bunch of manipulative greedy few intent on making money off their ignorance, while promising them everlasting life on a paradise earth. Dgmw, I believe in God and universal creator, but if biblical doctrine is to be taken into account, it doesn't matter how you acknowledge God personally, or what it's name is, just remember that God exists and cares about it's creation on a deeper level we could ever imagine. Peace be with you friends ✌🏽🥰
love me some esoterica yahweh content
As an East Asian who had no background in those kinds of history, I really appreciate your video has widened my perspective!
12:30 "Yahweh would rise to the top of the pantheon, but not without a fight." - I love this line because it gives me huge Shin Megami Tensei vibes.
35:44 "Along with there being chaos monsters inhabiting primordial, uncreated waters." - This fascinates me. The idea of there being horrific monsters that existed before the universe was created is so cool. It would make such a chilling story. I wish there was more detail on what sort of nightmare beasts existed before creation.
Finding out that there are a lot of SMT fans in this comment section is very unsurprising.
SMT fans rise up!
Honestly, it makes sense that people who are into SMT would also be interested in mythology
The Venn diagram of fans of this channel and those who would appreciate SMT is almost two circles stacked on top of each other.
I guess Lovecraft would appeal to you.
Hey Justin i really appreciate your effort in putting out weekly content that must be grueling turn-around time for such consistency and it makes my friday. I fell asleeo to a kot of your videos on paternity leave. Do you have any more William Blake in the oven? You implied you were working on more at the end of your Blake video and I'm fascinated by his mythopoeia, plus I feel like his particular brand of anarchism is some sort of starting point for spiritual reconstruction. As a rec, you should check out the band La Armada. They're a dominican punk band now living in chicago, but their sound leans more toward metal I think you'd appreciate. Thank you for always putting these up for free, helps me keep my academic aspirations alive despite the evidence for the fact that I'll never finish my degree lol
Yep, more Blake eventually!
You can continue, take tiny steps. No need to fumble, and even if you do! Just get back on your feet, it hurts to slip and fall, but it didn’t kill you. Time to manage what you can!
As much as you may find this series challenging, Dr. Sledge, we are glad for your efforts. Myself included.
Growing up Christian and coming from an anti-denominational family, it always amazed me that the broader Christian religion held this narrative of ancient Isrealites as monotheistic. The books of the prophets literally call out the entire nation on their syncretism constantly, and the court prophets in the employ of the Isrealite kings for being polytheistic. Regardless of modern faith or personal views, and even setting aside the archaeology of the last century, the text of the Hebrew Bible paints a clear picture of a developing religion in constant jeopardy over centuries. It's amazing that it survived at all.
It's easier when the translations deliberately smooth out the text of the Old Testament (so you have a harder time seeing stylistic changes and insertions) and wrongly translate some stuff (the divine assembly, etc.).
Again, absolutely mesmerizing and interesting topic. Thank you very much. I must confess, your "programs" became a staple of my weekly rutine, which makes them ever so much importnat. Looking forward to the next episode on YHVH, Will dive into Smith's material, as I am not sure about "unavoidabliity" of monotheistic conclusion. Maybe I even report back...
Òw
New Esoterica video means an excellent excuse for a coffee break. Thank you for the astounding quality of your content.
Yeah I made coffee too 😆
Yahweh being understood primarily as a storm God, same as Baal, really brings a lot of context to Christ calming the storms
I grew up a fundie Christian, and only when digging deep in my beliefs to become a preacher did this fact change, and for better or worse (that’s a joke), I was honest with myself.
Let me tell you ESOTERICA is a fantastic recontextualization of some of the beliefs I grew up with. Not sure I’d be open to it if it weren’t for that change. I probably wouldn’t know how to handle the data or care.
Now I don’t have a huge point to make with this, aside from adding engagement and expressing my appreciation. Keep killing it, Dr. Sledge, your stuff’s… pretty metal sometimes
I really love listening to your scholarly reporting. You absolutely provide valuable insight. Im thankful for your channel and thankful for your desire to share your passion.
Started as a thunder god...
like Jupiter/Zeus and Thor?
And funny, we *STILL* say "let God strike me with ⚡"!!
Thunder god prolly won out because as someone here in comments quoted Dr Sledge saying: "it was a protection racket", *and* thunder was most powerful force known. Maybe Ouranos (Uranus) beats Jupiter/Zeus if they knew about, and could imagine him wielding asteroids. (But then, asteroids are also like nukes, when sometimes you just need to zap one person.)
@@HoopsKevinski. I'd say that a very important thing is that asteroids weren't actually historically recurrent disasters, while giantic storms are. I'd also say that another thing is that storms are not wholly dependent on lightning; on the contraty, lightning causes tremendous yet highly personal damage with the incredibly powerful winds and especially floods being the ones to destroy all the buildings. Even in modern-day mexico, I can say as someone from guadalajra it is not uncommon for the streets to get flooded during the rainy reason. And yet, a lack of rain or rain which is in some way intoxicated like acid rain is just as bad if not worse than the tremendous floods and storms due to to the terrible famine that comes with it, that slow and dreadful death. Without the seasonal rainy season, millions would die all through mexico and a national crisis would happen, a path that the unpredictable weather that global warming seems to be bringing closer to reality in many regions. A sky god was and is of vast importance, in my opinion at least, due to the close relationship betweeen rain and crop production, with thunder and lighting being particular due to showcasing not a widespread distaster but a particular, personal, damage.
My take away from this is that politics deeply influence theology, and far more than i ever imagined. It's projecting into the heavens our own reality.
I'm glad to have a good distillation of Smith's work. It's really good, but it's also really dense and difficult for most people to easily read.
Also, thanks for your hard work, Dr. Sledge. That was great.
Oh yeah Doc, after rewatching this video a few times to make sure I got your point you made me realize something: One of the reasons why Abrahamic religions really took off is down to the fact that Abrahamic religions trace their ancestry to the fragmented, oppressed, and disenfranchised people of the ancient Israelite polity. Their religion and its history with Imperialism and colonialism echoed in the imperialism and colonialism in the centuries to come. I mean it's not the only reason why Abrahamic religions are now so widespread, but my intuition is telling me it's not pure coincidence.
Also: What kind of god is a better fit for an expansive, conquest-centered ideology than a warrior storm-god. It seems that the idea of Jahwe being kind never became dominant - it's still the warrior ideology that prevails in these religions.
@@johannageisel5390 kind of a back and forth huh? On the one hand El's Mercy appeals to the oppressed peoples of the world, while Storm Yahweh brings the suffering.
@@roys.1889 Yes. Storm Yahwe appeals to the ones who want to take other people's land and force their religion upon them.
@@roys.1889 The old one/two.
Thank you for this episode... I have been looking for someone to do a deep analysis on this subject. My favorite channel find so far in years. Keep up the good work,
A fellow Historian,
-TJQ
Um, this could actually be my favorite video of all time. And I'm a RUclips junkie. I don't want to know how many thousands of videos I've seen.
Look, Dr. Sledge, it ain't JUST your fantastic delivery making this my perhaps-favorite. You're working with some damn good ingredients here. The narrative is fascinating and unpredictable; on a human-interest level, there's so much to wonder about and learn from how this all went down. The consequences of Yahweh's development, needless to say, have been world-defining. The scholarship has surely been appallingly meticulous. And the capstone on all of this was a presentation that was compelling, thorough-yet-concise, and downright relatable. That one's all you, Dr Sledge.
Lemme just spin this thing up from the beginning again
I applied your alchemy teaching to an eastern medicine recipe and healed myself. As above so below regarding ingredients, sulfur, Aspen bark oil, gathered from chest deep snow on the grand mesa in Colorado from 4 Aspen trees, cooked for 7 hour 3 different ways, sodium carbonate without the hydrogen molecule etc... I gather ingredients myself, cook from scratch, your baptism video was helpful! I use my forces, book of morals and dogma. 3 forces I use in cooking or healing myself, thought, will and prayer. Was a deck boss in bering sea for 12 years before becoming a chef, just am better at jobs then most ppl. Wish I had smart ppl like you in my everyday life! I am humble and try not to want. Don't eat sugar cain, deep fried etc... only cook for myself. Last time I went out to eat was 2 years ago, I live in town, America. So you know why. Am 42. You look close to my age. I rant so I won't text anymore. I will continue to listen to your teaching and thank you again!
I’ve battled with the north/south kingdom conflict for some time and tried to understand the separation. Then the yhwh /el split hit me and made so much sense
Hezekiah's reforms were so unpopular, that it took a rival --Israelite-- priesthood of Shiloh at ngAnathoth to re-introduce i.e.u.e. -exclusive worship under Josiah.
Note Jeremiah's opinion of the Priestly (Aaronid-Judahite) Torah:
"A worthless scroll
cheapened by the lying pen
of dishonest scribes!"
...Jeremiah was a priest of ngAnathoth.
Giving me chills around the 53 minute mark. This is the content I'm here for.
Watching this and the previous video Yahweh reminds me of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series in which the gods of Discworld need believers in order to exist and do reinvent themselves in order to continue to retain believers.
The Golden Calf is another god that's "pretty metal"...
Lol. ^ ^
I see what you did there!
It's metal as fuck
I doubt it ever was a god.
It was probably a lowly servant of Yahweh like the cherubim in Solomon's Temple.
You don't know how "that happened", a series on Yahweh, brother! It NEEDED to happen. This is so well done and informative. Mazel tov!
Fantastic video as always Dr. Sledge. Thank you for releasing so much good content, it has been a huge influence on my ideas and perspective lately, and helped me think about my own religious tradition and skepticism in radical, different ways. Looking forward to the next episodes!
“Just how did Yahweh become “God?”
…well sir, he had excellent PR 😂 looking forward to the episode 🥰
I don't think babylonian exile was a popular PR move, but oh boy, didn't It Just work?
@@kingeternal_ap 😂
@@kingeternal_ap All part of the plan.😆
I’ve been looking for scholarship of this quality for a long time and am so pleased to have stumbled across your channel. I have books but sometimes you want to listen to a good lecture, and I’ve enjoyed Christine Hayes’ Yale course most often. Thank you for the in-depth lecture and accompanying graphics. I hadn’t known about the cuneiform inscriptions from the Babylonian Jewish communities-such a treat to see them. Will be donating and following. Thanks again.
All your videos are so well researched and interesting, and the origins of Yahweh are my favourite so far. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
Very clear and unbiased. Thank You
What is the story of Exodus and the plagues if not "my God can totally beat up your god"? Yahweh beats up Pharoah (the Egyptian demigod) 10 times, so badly that we still brag about it every spring.
Well done. Great summary of the materials (some of which I've skimmed). That hour went by quicker than I'd expected from the topic.
Dr. Sledge back with another excellent video!
I can't get enough of your channel. Thank you for putting all this great stuff up!
¡Gracias!
These videos are fascinating! I love learning about the history of Yahweh and monotheism. Thank you so much for making these!
Dr. Sledge, you are so much more than just "a guy!" Your insight, your knack of seeing the big picture, your clarity of expression- these are gifts you possess in abundance! Prester Bob
Seeing Justin is doing another episode on Yahweh; "Oh boy, oh BOY, OH BOY! Ladies and gentlemen, here we go!"
Am a chef, everything is a recipe to me, don't believe in oil based medicine everything is ingredients to me! I love your teaching! Used to run 10 miles a day for 10 years, Sundays off in Oregon. So insightful and wish I had your talent with languages. You make me want to learn, thank you!
I’m getting into Greek stuff. It’s so awesome so peer into the minds of the creators of our religions and see through their bs. I find it useful to skim through the bs and appreciate the lessons and history. Thank you Sir. ❤
Thank you so much for these videos and the work you put into them! Really appreciate you sharing your knowledge.
"my dad can beat your dad" is such a good way of describing religious conflicts😭
Casually drops an Omar reference while talking about Yahweh. I love it.
Thanks!
Monotheism is only one god away from atheism. I m defo gonna use this one, thanks brother 😂
And atheism is only one God away from monotheism. How is this insightful?
@@HvV_FilmRoom they took the divine spirit out of everything else and concentrated in one being. So called polytheistic and animistic systems saw the divine spirit in everything, all animals, all plants, all lakes and mountains and so on.
Elevating one entity as the only real divine being, and in particular a being strictly connected with humans, began the process of human exceptionalism. Now we are not a spirit surrounded by infinite other spirits forming a giant organism together, nay now we are in a world that is external and hostile, a world to be dominated and exploited and it doesn t matter what we do to it, because we are the only special being here with a big daddy in the sky on our side (when is not pissed).
Monotheism took away from the world most of its divinity to put it in the hands of an inscrutable entity above the world.
You wouldn t burn a forest down so easily or poison a river, if you thought that it was as alive as you and way more ancient.