How YAHWEH Became GOD

How YAHWEH Became GOD

In the annals of religious scholarship, few names shine as brightly as that of Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou. Her work is a testament to the relentless pursuit of knowledge, a journey that has taken her through the corridors of time, unlocking the secrets of the divine. In this extraordinary documentary, How Yahweh Became God, we delve deep into the groundbreaking research and profound insights of Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou. As a scholar, professor, and author, Dr. Stavrakopoulou has dedicated her life to peeling back the layers of history, exposing the transformation of an ancient regional deity into the omnipotent God of monotheism. Her tireless exploration has taken her to archaeological excavations, dusty libraries, and sacred sites, where she has unearthed the relics and revelations that challenge the very foundations of our beliefs.

Through her meticulous scholarship and fearless pursuit of truth, Dr. Stavrakopoulou has illuminated the evolution of Yahweh, providing a profound understanding of the deity’s journey from a tribal God to a cosmic force. But her work isn’t just about the past. It’s a gateway to understanding the intricate tapestry of faith, culture, and human history. As an educator, she has inspired countless minds, nurturing a new generation of critical thinkers who challenge the status quo and seek a deeper understanding of our shared spiritual heritage. Join us on this enlightening journey as we explore the remarkable life and groundbreaking contributions of Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou. Together, we will uncover the mysteries of how Yahweh became God through the lens of a true pioneer in the world of biblical scholarship. Prepare to be inspired and enlightened as we delve into the work of Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou.

Welcome to the channel again, Dr. Stavrakopoulou. It is a pleasure to have you back. Thank you so much for joining me. I was looking at your Wikipedia page, and I genuinely do not know where to begin in presenting your background. You have participated in numerous documentaries and shows, such as The Bible’s Buried Secrets, and you possess an extensive curriculum vitae filled with impressive credentials. If you do not mind, could you tell us what your book is about and perhaps provide some background as we dive in?

Certainly. The book is essentially about the early career of the god who is described and adored in the Bible. It tracks his trajectory from the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age through to the 6th century of the common era. I perform an anatomy of God, arguing that this was a deity understood to have a corporeal, human-shaped, masculine body. I explore the reasons why this deity was gradually disembodied culturally and theologically to become the God we are more familiar with in modern Western cultural constructs. I am a professor of Hebrew Bible and ancient religion at the University of Exeter in the UK. I am an atheist—always have been, always will be. I completed all my degrees at Oxford and finished my post-doctoral work before moving to Exeter.

Your book is absolutely amazing; I must admit, it is my favorite book right now. I have been reading a great deal, and this is, by far, the most compelling. I have structured this episode to respect your time and our respective schedules. I have curated questions derived from your work, and then we can transition to a Q&A session for our audience members who have super chatted. I have reread your book, and during this second pass, I realized I missed so much the first time around. I also want to mention that those watching can support us by joining our Patreon. I will be interviewing John Dominic Crossan in Florida while on vacation—I am working even while away with my family. I am dedicated to this, and as a humanist, I am committed to exploring these topics.

I would like to start with the goddess Inanna. On page 202 of your book, there is a passage I would like to read. In In-nin-sa-gur-ra, Inanna is a deity so powerful that her divinity surpasses even that of the highest gods, An and Enlil, who have willingly ceded their wisdom to her. “In your vast wisdom amongst all the gods, you alone are majestic,” In-nin-sa-gur-ra exclaims. In this poem, Inanna not only governs the forms of wisdom graciously bestowed upon mortals—such as expertise in warfare, ritual, economics, sex, and medicine—but she also curates and controls the divine wisdom underpinning the very foundations of the cosmos. “To destroy, to create, to cut apart, to establish, Inanna, are yours. To turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man, Inanna, are yours. A large and expansive heart, Inanna, are yours.” Almost 2,000 years later, another poet was crediting just one deity with the wisdom to create and destroy, and for him, it was Yahweh. Would you like to comment on this?

That poem from Mesopotamia was written by what we understand to be the world’s first named author, a woman named Enheduanna. She was the daughter of a king and a priestess. Whether she actually wrote this poem is debated by scholars—it may have been a poem to which her name was ascribed—but it reflects a profound praise for the goddess Inanna, who is also known as Ishtar. Inanna is her Sumerian name, while Ishtar is her Akkadian name; these are two different languages used throughout the ancient Near East. In the poem, she is praising Inanna as the most supreme deity imaginable. By claiming that even the high god An—the god of heaven—has given his daughter these gifts, she highlights the fluidity of divine functions in a complex polytheistic system. One could single out a particular deity to incorporate all divine qualities. Inanna was incredibly important, probably the most significant deity across ancient Southwest Asia, particularly in Mesopotamia, over many millennia. The poem shows this elevated, sophisticated role of divine functions for a goddess, and we find Yahweh being described in similar ways thousands of years later in the Hebrew Bible.

Would you be willing to say that Yahweh is a “Johnny-come-lately”? It is difficult because a major theological premise of biblical theology is the idea that Yahweh was somehow extraordinary and that ancient Israelite religion was wholly unlike the religions of surrounding peoples. Yahweh himself claims this in the Bible, such as in Isaiah chapters 40 to 55, where he asserts, “I am God; there is no other.” Historically, however, we know this is not the case. While you certainly get innovative shifts in religious imagination, there is nothing particularly unusual or extraordinary about Yahweh. He functions within a broader cultural landscape as a local iteration of what successful, frontline deities were supposed to be doing.

I would like to jump to something interesting regarding Inanna or Ishtar. Dr. Richard Carrier wrote an article about “dying and rising gods.” I created a documentary video about this, discussing how Inanna, despite her power, was defamed, stripped naked, made into a corpse, hung on a hook for three days and three nights, and then brought back to life—a motif we see with Jesus, Jonah, and other mythologies. Is that true?

The myth about Ishtar/Inanna is one I discuss in the book. It is the goddess’s decision to enter the underworld; she is an ambitious, kick-ass goddess. The act of being stripped of her divine accessories—which were more than decorative, as they served to make the divine body complete—is a deliberate self-diminishment required to enter the underworld. Some view this as an example of a “dying and rising god,” though it is essentially about her debasement into a corpse—a “hunk of meat,” so to speak. The “dying and rising god” debate is complicated. The main pre-Christian ancient Southwest Asian myth that clearly reflects this is the myth of Baal from Ugarit in the late Bronze Age. Baal is defeated by Mot, the god of death, who swallows him. Death is a “swallower,” which explains the imagery in the Bible where the ground opens up to swallow idolatrous priests, or Jonah being swallowed by the fish. In the Baal myth, his sister Anat and the sun goddess Shapash find his corpse in a tomb, and about three days later, he is restored. As I have said, there is very little in the Bible that is completely original.

Before we move on to the food aspect, I want to discuss Ezekiel and Genesis. I always read the Bible as a Christian believing it was written in chronological order. You mentioned that in Ezekiel, there is a king who says in his heart—which in the ancient world was considered the seat of thought, not the brain—that he will rise above the throne of God. Specifically, he wants to go up the holy mountain and sit on the throne of El. You mentioned this was written before the account in Genesis. Could you elaborate?

It is complicated. Genesis 2 and 3, the story of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden—which is an expulsion, not a fall—shares motifs with material in Ezekiel. The Ezekiel material is likely older, dating to the 6th century but drawing on even older motifs, while the Genesis story is likely from the 5th century. Both share a mythic schema where the first human is a paradigm of the king. The king, in these high-status royal texts, is the man made and appointed to perform tasks for the deity. The Ezekiel myth refers to an anonymous ruler, likely a foreign king harassing Israel—perhaps Assyrian or Babylonian—who claims he will ascend the holy mountain and sit on the throne of the divine council. The deity, referred to as both El and Yahweh, rejects this, telling him he will die like a mortal. A quality of divine nature is perpetual immortality; even if a god like Baal dies, he does not stay dead. This king is expelled from the holy mountain, called Eden in Ezekiel, and cast into the underworld. In the ancient world, you exist only as long as you are remembered. If your tomb is desecrated or your remains destroyed, your postmortem existence is eradicated. Both Genesis and Ezekiel reflect an earlier mythic trope about a semi-divine figure trying to usurp a senior deity.

Let us discuss the gods and food. They were consistently concerned with eating. Did the demise of the temples change the understanding of God eating in Jewish thought?

In the ancient world, sacrifice was not just about giving something up; it was a way of sharing a meal with the deity. You would sacrifice animals, wine, oil, honey, and bread. Burning some of it on the altar provided food for the deity, who was described as being attracted to the “sweet aroma.” This called the deity into a social relationship around the altar. The deity would eat part of the sacrifice, and the priests and worshippers would eat the rest. This forged and maintained a social relationship with the gods, similar to how we use communal feasts today to strengthen social bonds. When the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed, first in the 6th century BCE and again in 70 CE, the loss of this sacrificial center necessitated a theological shift in how these offerings functioned for the deity.

Speaking of food, you mentioned how God flooded all of humanity—a genocide—and yet, after Noah offers a sacrifice upon exiting the ark, God smells it and seems to change his mind about destroying humanity again. Was this God being appeased by the barbecue?

Within the narrative of Genesis 6–9, which draws on various traditions, God regrets making humankind because of their corruption, often linked to sexual relations with divine beings. When he smells the aroma of Noah’s sacrifice, he establishes a covenant—not just with humans, but with all living creatures—never to flood the earth again. This is a crucial theological point, especially given modern concerns about climate change and the exploitation of the Earth. It is the first bonding moment with this “new” humanity. Sitting around a table or altar for a meal is essential for forging social relationships. The sacrifice is a focal point for this agreement.

You mentioned that “idols” is a derogatory term for other gods. Could you explain what a god actually is and the language surrounding this?

We get the word “idol” from the Greek Bible, the ancient translation of the Hebrew scriptures. It often translates the Hebrew word Gilulim, which is a plural term best translated as “gods.” It derives from a word meaning dung—specifically, balls of dung. It is used in the book of Ezekiel and other priestly literature as a deliberate, derogatory way to demean the cult statues of other deities. Cult statues were not merely symbols; they were understood to be the deity—to manifest the deity. By calling them Gilulim, the biblical writers were trying to talk down or “smear” those deities. Even in the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, the taunts—asking if their god is on a journey or defecating—show that scatology played a role in the theology of the period.

Lastly, I want to ask about the seventh-day Sabbath. Some claim that because we are on a seven-day cycle, we are under the jurisdiction of the God of the Bible. You mentioned a Sumerian lament where Inanna sings to Enlil to wake him up. Could you expand on the significance of the seventh day?

Seven is a highly significant number in many ancient Southwest Asian cultures, likely because seven planets were visible to the naked eye at the time. The division of time into seven-day periods was not unique to Yahweh-worshipping cultures. Regarding the passage you read, it describes the notion that for many worshippers, divine neglect or inaction could be interpreted as a god who was sleeping. The idea of singing petitions to “rouse” a deity, whether it was Inanna singing to Enlil or the petitioners in the 6th century BCE crying out to Yahweh to wake up after the Babylonian attack, shows a shared cultural understanding of divine behavior. The seven-day cycle was a way of marking time that existed long before its specific application in the Hebrew Bible. It is a testament to how human constructs and observations of the cosmos were integrated into the religious life of the ancient world.

The study of these origins is endlessly fascinating because it strips away the veneer of “uniqueness” that many religious traditions claim. By placing Yahweh within the context of his peers—the gods of Mesopotamia, Canaan, and beyond—we see that he was not an isolated phenomenon. He was part of an ancient dialogue about the nature of power, the necessity of sustenance, and the human desire to connect with the divine. Whether it is the corporeal nature of the gods, the importance of the temple meal, or the significance of cosmic cycles, the history of religion is a history of human storytelling and the projection of our own societal needs onto the screen of the heavens. Dr. Stavrakopoulou’s work is vital because it reminds us that to understand the Bible, we must understand the world that produced it—a world where gods were as real, as hungry, and as complex as the people who worshipped them.