In later centuries, El and Yahweh became conflated, and El-linked epithets, such as ʾĒl Šadday (אֵל שַׁדַּי), came to be applied to Yahweh alone.[11] Some scholars believe that El and Yahweh were always conflated.[12][13][14] Characteristics of other deities, such as Asherah and Baal, were also selectively "absorbed" in conceptions of Yahweh.[15][16][17]
Other academic terms often used include First Temple period, from the construction of the Temple in 957BCE to its destruction in 586BCE, exilic for the period of the Exile from 586 to 539BCE (identical with Neo-Babylonian above), post-Exilic for later periods and Second Temple period from the reconstruction of the Temple in 515BCE until its destruction in 70CE.
Late Bronze Age origins (1550–1200BCE)
There is almost no agreement on Yahweh's origins.[6] His name is not attested other than among the Israelites, and there is no consensus on its etymology, with ehyeh ašer ehyeh ("I Am that I Am"), the explanation presented in Exodus 3:14,[25] appearing to be a late theological gloss invented at a time when the original meaning had been forgotten,[26] although some scholars dispute this.[27][28] Lewis connects the name to the Amorite element yahwi- (ia-wi), found in personal names in Mari texts,[29] meaning "brings to life/causes to exist" (e.g. yahwi-dagan = "Dagon causes to exist"), commonly denoted as the semantic equivalent of the Akkadianibašši-DN;[30] though Frank Moore Cross emphasized that the Amorite verbal form is of interest only in attempting to reconstruct the verbal root of the name "Yahweh", and that attempts to take yahwi- as a divine epithet should be "vigorously" argued against.[31][32] In addition, J. Philip Hyatt believes it is more likely that yahwi- refers to a god creating and sustaining the life of a newborn child rather than the universe. This conception of God was more popular among ancient Near Easterners but eventually, the Israelites removed the association of yahwi- to any human ancestor and combined it with other elements (e.g. Yahweh ṣəḇāʾōṯ).[33][needs update] Hillel Ben-Sasson states there is insufficient evidence for Amorites using yahwi- for gods, but he argues that it mirrors other theophoric names and that yahwi-, or more accurately yawi, derives from the root hwy in pa'al, which means "he will be".[34]
One scholarly theory is that "Yahweh" originated in a shortened form of ˀel ḏū yahwī ṣabaˀôt, "El who creates the hosts",[35] which Cross considered to be one of the cultic names of El.[36] However, this phrase is nowhere attested either inside or outside the Bible, and the two gods are in any case quite dissimilar, with El being elderly and paternal and lacking Yahweh's association with the storm and battles.[37] Even if the above issues are resolved, Yahweh is generally agreed to have a non-causative etymology because otherwise, YHWH would be translated as YHYH.[12] It also raises the question of why the Israelites would want to shorten the epithet. One possible reason includes the co-existence of religious modernism and conservatism being the norm in all religions.[12]
The oldest plausible occurrence of Yahweh's name is in the Egyptiandemonymtꜣ šꜣsw Yhwꜣ, "YHWA (in) the Land of the Shasu" (Egyptian: 𓇌𓉔𓍯𓄿Yhwꜣ) in an inscription from the time of Amenhotep III (1390–1352 BCE),[38][39] the Shasu being nomads from Midian and Edom in northern Arabia.[40] Although it is still uncertain whether a relationship exists between the toponym yhwꜣ and theonym YHWH,[41] the dominant view is that Yahweh was from the southern region associated with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman.[7] There is considerable although not universal support for this view,[42] but it raises the question of how Yahweh made his way to the north.[43] An answer many scholars consider plausible is the Kenite hypothesis, which holds that traders brought Yahweh to Israel along the caravan routes between Egypt and Canaan.[44] This ties together various points of data, such as the absence of Yahweh from Canaan, his links with Edom and Midian in the biblical stories, and the Kenite or Midianite ties of Moses,[43] but its major weaknesses are that the majority of Israelites were firmly rooted in Palestine, while the historical role of Moses is problematic.[45] It follows that if the Kenite hypothesis is to be maintained, then it must be assumed that the Israelites encountered Yahweh (and the Midianites/Kenites) inside Israel and through their association with the earliest political leaders of Israel.[46] Christian Frevel argues that inscriptions allegedly suggesting Yahweh's southern origins (e.g. "YHWH of Teman") may simply denote his presence there at later times, and that Teman can refer to any southern territory, including Judah.[47]
Alternatively, some scholars argue that YHWH worship was rooted in the indigenous culture of the Kingdom of Israel and was promoted in the Kingdom of Judah by the Omrides.[47][48] Frevel suggests that Hazael's conquests in the Kingdom of Israel forced the two kingdoms to cooperate, which spread YHWH worship among Judean commoners. Previously, YHWH was viewed as the patron god of the Judean state.[47]
Early Iron Age (1200–1000BCE)
Early Iron Age bull figurine from Bull Site at Dhahrat et-Tawileh (modern West Bank, ancient Ephraim), representing El, Baal or Yahweh
In the Early Iron Age, the modern consensus is that there was no distinction in language or material culture between Canaanites and Israelites. Scholars accordingly define Israelite culture as a subset of Canaanite culture.[51] In this view, the Israelite religion consisted of Canaanite gods such as El, the ruler of the pantheon,[52]Asherah, his consort, and Baal.[53] However, Israel Knohl argues that there is no evidence of any anthropomorphic figurines or cultic statues in Israel during this period, suggesting monotheistic practice.[54]
In the earliest Biblical literature, Yahweh has characteristics of a storm god typical of ancient Near Eastern myths, marching out from Edom or the Sinai desert with the heavenly host of stars and planets that make up his army to do battle with the enemies of his people Israel:[55]
Yahweh, when you went out of Seir, when you marched out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, the sky also dropped. Yes, the clouds dropped water. The mountains quaked at Yahweh's presence, even Sinai at the presence of Yahweh, the God of Israel. ... From the sky the stars fought. From their courses, they fought against Sisera.
Alternatively, parts of the storm god imagery could derive from Baal.[16][48]:78
From the perspective of the Kenite hypothesis, it has also been suggested that the Edomite deity Qōs might have been one and the same as Yahweh, rather than a separate deity, with its name a title of the latter.[56] Aside from their common territorial origins, various common characteristics between the Yahwist cult and the Edomite cult of Qōs hint at a shared connection.[57]Doeg the Edomite, for example, is depicted as having no problem in worshiping Yahweh and is shown to be at home in Jewish sanctuaries.[57]
Unlike the chief god of the Ammonites (Milcom) and the Moabites (Chemosh), the Tanakh refrains from explicitly naming the Edomite Qōs.[58][59] Some scholars have explained this notable omission by assuming that the level of similarity between Yahweh and Qōs would have made rejection of the latter difficult.[60] Other scholars hold that Yahweh and Qōs were different deities from their origins, and suggest that the tensions between Judeans and Edomites during the Second Temple period may lie behind the omission of Qōs in the Bible.[61]
Painting on a jar found at Kuntillet Ajrud, under the inscription "Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah" (c.800BCE)
It has been argued that Yahweh was originally described as one of the sons of El in Deuteronomy 32:8–9,[63] and that this was removed by a later emendation to the text:[64]
When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided up humankind, he set the boundaries of the peoples, according to the number of the heavenly assembly. For the Lord's allotment is his people, Jacob is his special possession.
Nonetheless, some scholars argue that El Elyon ("the Most High") and Yahweh are theonyms for the same deity in the text, based on contextual analysis.[65][66]
The late Iron Age saw the emergence of nation states associated with specific national gods:[67]Chemosh was the god of the Moabites, Milcom the god of the Ammonites, Qōs the god of the Edomites, and Yahweh the god of the Israelites.[68][69] In each kingdom the king was also the head of the national religion and thus the viceroy on Earth of the national god.[70] Yahweh filled the role of national god in the kingdom of Israel (Samaria), which emerged in the 10th century BCE; and also in Judah, which may have emerged a century later[71] (no "God of Judah" is mentioned anywhere in the Bible).[68][69]
During the reign of Ahab, and particularly following his marriage to Jezebel, Baal may have briefly replaced Yahweh as the national god of Israel (but not Judah).[72][73]
In the 9th century BCE, there are indications of rejection of Baal worship associated with the prophets Elijah and Elisha. The Yahweh-religion thus began to separate itself from its Canaanite heritage; this process continued over the period from 800 to 500BCE with legal and prophetic condemnations of the asherim, sun worship and worship on the high places, along with practices pertaining to the dead and other aspects of the old religion.[74] Features of Baal, El, and Asherah were absorbed into Yahweh, and epithets such as El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone.[75]
In this atmosphere a struggle emerged between those who believed that Yahweh alone should be worshipped, and those who worshipped him within a larger group of gods;[76] the Yahweh-alone party, the party of the prophets and Deuteronomists, ultimately triumphed, and their victory lies behind the biblical narrative of an Israel vacillating between periods of "following other gods" and periods of fidelity to Yahweh.[76]
Some scholars date the start of widespread monotheism to the 8th century BCE, and view it as a response to Neo-Assyrian aggression.[77][78] In an inscription discovered in Ein Gedi and dated around 700 BCE, Yahweh appears described as the lord of "the nations", while in other contemporary texts discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei (near Lachish) he is mentioned as the ruler of Jerusalem and probably also of Judah.[79]
In 587/6BCE Jerusalem fell to the Neo-Babylonians, Solomon's Temple was destroyed, and the leadership of the community were deported.[80] The next 50 years, the Babylonian exile, were of pivotal importance to the history of Israelite religion. As the traditional sacrifices to Yahweh (see below) could not be performed outside Israel, other practices including sabbath observance and circumcision gained new significance.[81] In the writing of second Isaiah, Yahweh was no longer seen as exclusive to Israel, but as extending his promise to all who would keep the sabbath and observe his covenant.[82] In 539BCE Babylon in turn fell to the Persian conqueror Cyrus the Great, the exiles were given permission to return (although only a minority did so), and by about 500BCE the Second Temple was built.[83]
Towards the end of the Second Temple period, speaking the name of Yahweh in public became regarded as taboo.[18] When reading from the scriptures, Jews began to substitute the divine name with the word adonai (אֲדֹנָי), meaning "my Lord".[19] The High Priest of Israel was permitted to speak the name once in the Temple during the Day of Atonement, but at no other time and in no other place.[19] During the Hellenistic period, the scriptures were translated into Greek by the Jews of the Egyptian diaspora.[84] Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures render both the tetragrammaton and adonai as kyrios (κύριος), meaning "Lord".[19]
The period of Persian rule saw the development of expectation in a future human king who would rule purified Israel as Yahweh's representative at the end of time—a messiah. The first to mention this were Haggai and Zechariah, both prophets of the early Persian period. They saw the messiah in Zerubbabel, a descendant of the House of David who seemed, briefly, to be about to re-establish the ancient royal line, or in Zerubbabel and the first High Priest, Joshua (Zechariah writes of two messiahs, one royal and the other priestly). These early hopes were dashed (Zerubabbel disappeared from the historical record, although the High Priests continued to be descended from Joshua), and thereafter there are merely general references to a Messiah of David (i.e. a descendant).[85][86] From these ideas, Second Temple Judaism would later emerge, whence Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism, and Islam.
Yahweh and the rise of monotheism
Although the specific process by which the Israelites adopted monotheism is unknown, the transition was a gradual one and was not totally accomplished during the First Temple period.[87][pageneeded]
It is unclear when the worship of Yahweh alone began. The earliest known portrayals of Yahweh as the principal deity to whom "one owed the powers of blessing the land" appear in the teachings of the prophet Elijah in the 9th century BCE. This form of worship was likely well established by the time of the prophet Hosea in the 8th century BCE, in reference to disputes between Yahweh and Baal.[78] The early supporters of this faction are widely regarded as being monolatrists rather than true monotheists;[88][needs update] they did not believe Yahweh was the only god in existence, but instead believed that he was the only god which the people of Israel should worship.[89]
Finally, in the national crisis of the Babylonian exile, the followers of Yahweh went a step further and outright denied that the other deities aside from Yahweh even existed, thus marking the transition from monolatrism to true monotheism.[90] The notion that Yahweh is to be worshipped as the creator-god of all the earth is first elaborated by the Second Isaiah, a 6th-century BCE exilic work whose case for the theological doctrine rests on Yahweh's power over other gods,[91][needs update] and his incomparability and singleness relative to the gods of the Babylonian religion.[92][improper synthesis?]
Benjamin D. Sommer argues that the distinction between polytheism and monotheism has been greatly exaggerated.[93]
The centre of Yahweh's worship lay in three great annual festivals coinciding with major events in rural life: Passover with the birthing of lambs, Shavuot with the cerealharvest, and Sukkot with the fruit harvest.[94] These probably pre-dated the arrival of the Yahweh religion,[94] but they became linked to events in the national mythos of Israel: Passover with the exodus from Egypt, Shavuot with the law-giving at Mount Sinai, and Sukkot with the wilderness wanderings.[69] The festivals thus celebrated Yahweh's salvation of Israel and Israel's status as his holy people, although the earlier agricultural meaning was not entirely lost.[95] His worship presumably involved sacrifice, but many scholars have concluded that the rituals detailed in Leviticus 1–16, with their stress on purity and atonement, were introduced only after the Babylonian exile, and that in reality any head of a family was able to offer sacrifice as occasion demanded.[96] A number of scholars have also drawn the conclusion that infant sacrifice, whether to the underworld deity Molech or to Yahweh himself, was a part of Israelite/Judahite religion until the reforms of King Josiah in the late 7th century BCE.[97] Sacrifice was presumably complemented by the singing or recital of psalms, but again the details are scant.[98]Prayer played little role in official worship.[99]
The Hebrew Bible gives the impression that the Jerusalem temple was always meant to be the central or even sole temple of Yahweh, but this was not the case.[69] The earliest known Israelite place of worship is a 12th-century BCE open-air altar in the hills of Samaria featuring a bronze bull reminiscent of Canaanite Bull-El (El in the form of a bull) and the archaeological remains of further temples have been found at Dan on Israel's northern border, at Arad in the Negev and Beersheba, both in the territory of Judah.[100]Shiloh, Bethel, Gilgal, Mizpah, Ramah and Dan were also major sites for festivals, sacrifices, the making of vows, private rituals, and the adjudication of legal disputes.[101]
Yahweh-worship was thought to be aniconic, meaning that the god was not depicted by a statue or other image. This is not to say that he was not represented in some symbolic form, and early Israelite worship probably focused on standing stones, but according to the Biblical texts the temple in Jerusalem featured Yahweh's throne in the form of two cherubim, their inner wings forming the seat and a box (the Ark of the Covenant) as a footstool, while the throne itself was empty.[102]
There is no universally accepted explanation for such aniconism, and a number of scholars have argued that Yahweh was in fact represented prior to the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah late in the monarchic period: to quote one study, "[a]n early aniconism, de facto or otherwise, is purely a projection of the post-exilic imagination".[103] Other scholars argue that there is no certain evidence of any anthropomorphic representation of Yahweh during the pre-exilic period.[104]
A coin issued by Pompey to celebrate his successful conquest of Judaea showed a kneeling, bearded figure grasping a branch (a common Roman symbol of submission) subtitled BACCHIVS IVDAEVS, which may be translated as either "The Jewish Bacchus" or "Bacchus the Judaean". The figure has been interpreted as depicting Yahweh as a local variety of Bacchus, that is, Dionysus.[107] However, as coins minted with such iconography ordinarily depicted subjected persons, and not the gods of a subjected people, some have assumed the coin simply depicts the surrender of a Judean who was called "Bacchius", sometimes identified as the Hasmonean king Aristobulus II, who was overthrown by Pompey's campaign.[108][109][110][111]
The history of ancient Israel and Judah spans from the early appearance of the Israelites in Canaan's hill country during the late second millennium BCE, to the establishment and subsequent downfall of the two Israelite kingdoms in the mid-first millennium BCE. This history unfolds within the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. The earliest documented mention of "Israel" as a people appears on the Merneptah Stele, an ancient Egyptian inscription dating back to around 1208 BCE. Archaeological evidence suggests that ancient Israelite culture evolved from the pre-existing Canaanite civilization. During the Iron Age II period, two Israelite kingdoms emerged, covering much of Canaan: the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.
Henotheism is the worship of a single, supreme god that does not deny the existence or possible existence of other deities that may be worshipped. Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854) coined the word, and Friedrich Welcker (1784–1868) used it to depict primitive monotheism among ancient Greeks.
Monotheism is the belief that one god is the only, or at least the dominant deity. A distinction may be made between exclusive monotheism, in which the one God is a singular existence, and both inclusive and pluriform monotheism, in which multiple gods or godly forms are recognized, but each are postulated as extensions of the same God.
The Israelites were a Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group consisting of tribes that inhabited much of Canaan during the Iron Age.
Baal, or Baʻal, was a title and honorific meaning 'owner' or 'lord' in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied to gods. Scholars previously associated the theonym with solar cults and with a variety of unrelated patron deities, but inscriptions have shown that the name Ba'al was particularly associated with the storm and fertility god Hadad and his local manifestations.
Monolatry is the belief in the existence of many gods, but with the consistent worship of only one deity. The term monolatry was perhaps first used by Julius Wellhausen.
Elohim, the plural of אֱלוֹהַּ, is a Hebrew word meaning "gods" or "godhood". Although the word is grammatically plural, in the Hebrew Bible it most often takes singular verbal or pronominal agreement and refers to a single deity, particularly the God of Israel. In other verses it refers to the singular gods of other nations or to deities in the plural.
Idolatry in Judaism is prohibited. Judaism holds that idolatry is not limited to the worship of an idol itself, but also worship involving any artistic representations of God. The prohibition is epitomized by the first two "words" of the decalogue: I am the Lord thy God, Thou shalt have no other gods before me, and Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any image in the sky, on earth or in the sea. These prohibitions are re-emphasized repeatedly by the later prophets, suggesting the ongoing appeal of Canaanite religion and syncretic assimilation to the ancient Israelites.
High places are simple hilltop installations with instruments of religion: platforms, altars, standing stones, and cairns are common. Along with open courtyard shrines and sacred trees or groves, they were some of the most often-seen public places of piety in the ancient Near East. They appear in the early Bronze Age at the latest.
An Asherah pole is a sacred tree or pole that stood near Canaanite religious locations to honor the goddess Asherah. The relation of the literary references to an asherah and archaeological finds of Judaean pillar-figurines has engendered a literature of debate.
Qos also Qaus, or Koze was the national god of the Edomites. He was the Idumean structural parallel to Yahweh. The name occurs only twice in the Old Testament in the Book of Ezra and Nehemiah as an element in a personal name, Barqos, referring to the 'father' of a family or clan of perhaps Edomite/Idumaean nəṯīnīm or temple helpers returning from the Babylonian exile. Outside the Bible, Qos is frequently invoked in names found on documents recovered from excavations in Elephantine, where a mixed population of Arabs, Jews and Idumeans lived under the protection of a Persian-Mesopotamian garrison.
Monotheism—the belief that there is only one deity—is the focus of the Abrahamic religions, which like-mindedly conceive God as the all-powerful and all-knowing deity from whom Abraham received a divine revelation, according to their respective narratives. The most prominent Abrahamic religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They, alongside Samaritanism, Druzism, the Baháʼí Faith, and Rastafari, all share a common core foundation in the form of worshipping Abraham's God, who is identified as Yahweh in Hebrew and called Allah in Arabic. Likewise, the Abrahamic religions share similar features distinguishing them from other categories of religions:
The Omride dynasty, Omrides or House of Omri were the ruling dynasty of the Kingdom of Samaria founded by King Omri. The dynasty's rule ended with the murder of Zechariah of Israel by Shallum in 752 BCE, who was then killed by Menahem in the next month.
In Judaism, God has been conceived in a variety of ways. Traditionally, Judaism holds that Yahweh—that is, the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the national god of the Israelites—delivered them from slavery in Egypt, and gave them the Law of Moses at Mount Sinai as described in the Torah. Jews traditionally believe in a monotheistic conception of God, characterized by both transcendence and immanence.
Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel is a book by Syro-Palestinian archaeologist William G. Dever, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Did God Have a Wife? was intended as a popular work making available to the general public the evidence long known to Biblical archaeologists regarding ancient Israelite religion: namely that the Israelite God of antiquity, Yahweh, had a consort, that her name was Asherah, and that she was part of the Canaanite pantheon.
The most widespread belief among archeological and historical scholars is that the origins of Judaism lie in Bronze Age polytheistic Canaanite religion. Judaism also syncretized elements of other Semitic religions such as Babylonian religion, which is reflected in the early prophetic books of the Tanakh.
The phrase false god is a derogatory term used in Abrahamic religions to indicate cult images or deities of non-Abrahamic Pagan religions, as well as other competing entities or objects to which particular importance is attributed. Conversely, followers of animistic and polytheistic religions may regard the gods of various monotheistic religions as "false gods", because they do not believe that any real deity possesses the properties ascribed by monotheists to their sole deity. Atheists, who do not believe in any deities, do not usually use the term false god even though that would encompass all deities from the atheist viewpoint. Usage of this term is generally limited to theists, who choose to worship some deity or deities, but not others.
Second Temple Judaism is the Jewish religion as it developed during the Second Temple period, which began with the construction of the Second Temple around 516 BCE and ended with the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70CE.
The Kenite, or Midianite–Kenite hypothesis, is a hypothesis about the origins of the cult of Yahweh. As a form of Biblical source criticism, it posits that Yahweh was originally a Midianite god whose cult made its way northward to the proto-Israelites.
Yahwism is the name given by modern scholars to the religion of ancient Israel and Judah. An ancient Semitic religion of the Iron Age, Yahwism was essentially polytheistic and had a pantheon, with various gods and goddesses being worshipped by the Israelites. At the head of this pantheon was Yahweh, held in an especially high regard as the two Israelite kingdoms' national god. Some scholars hold that the goddess Asherah was worshipped as Yahweh's consort, though other scholars disagree. Following this duo were second-tier gods and goddesses, such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, each of whom had their own priests and prophets and numbered royalty among their devotees.
↑ Elior 2006, p.779: "...the pronunciation of the Ineffable Name was one of the climaxes of the Sacred Service: it was entrusted exclusively to the High Priest once a year on the Day of Atonement in the Holy of Holies."
↑ Fleming 2020, p.176: "There has been one key objection, by Michael Streck, who reevaluated Amorite personal names as a whole in 2000 and as part of this work published the separate conclusion (1999) that all the Ya-wi- and Ya-aḫ-wi- elements in these names must be understood to reflect the same root ḥwy, "to live"....If Streck is correct that these are all forms of the verb "to live", then the Amorite personal names must be set aside as useful to any interpretation of the name [Yahweh]." But see Fleming 2020b, p.425: "While the identification of the verbal root in the Amorite names with and without the -ḫ- remains impossible to prove with certainty, the parallels with contemporary Old Babylonian Ibašši-DN and the later second-millennium parallels from the verb kwn show the viability of a West Semitic root hwy, "to be, be evident", for at least some portion of these Amorite names."
↑ Shalomi Hen 2021: "Unfortunately, albeit the interesting analogies, the learned discussions, and the broad perspective, the evidence is too scanty to allow any conclusions concerning the exact meaning of the term YHWA/YHA/YH as it appears in Ancient Egyptian records."
↑ E. A. Knauf. (1999). Qos [in] Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter Willem van der Horst [eds.], Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, pp. 674–677. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing: "This clan or family must have been of Edomite or Idumaean origin." (p. 677).
↑ Elie Assis, Identity in Conflict: The Struggle between Esau and Jacob, Edom and Israel, Penn State Press, 2016 ISBN978-1-575-06418-5 p.10: At 1 Kgs 1–8 there is exceptionally no mention of any Edomite gods:'King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of the Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women. ... For Solomon followed Astarte the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom the aboimination of the Ammonites. ... Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who offered incense and sacrificed to their gods.'
↑ Levine, Lee I. (1998). Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence?. University of Washington Press. pp.38–60. ISBN978-0-295-97682-2. JSTORj.ctvcwnpvs.
↑ Juvenal, Satires 14.97; Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World (Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 41, 79–80.
↑ Petronius, frg. 37.2; Schäfer, Judeophobia, pp. 77–78.
↑ Florus, Epitome 1.40 (3.5.30): "The Jews tried to defend Jerusalem; but he [Pompeius Magnus] entered this city also and saw that grand Holy of Holies of an impious people exposed, Caelum under a golden vine" (Hierosolymam defendere temptavere Iudaei; verum haec quoque et intravit et vidit illud grande inpiae gentis arcanum patens, sub aurea vite Caelum). Finbarr Barry Flood, The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies on the Makings of an Umayyad Visual Culture (Brill, 2001), pp. 81 and 83 (note 118). The Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982, 1985 reprinting), p. 252, entry on caelum, cites Juvenal, Petronius, and Florus as examples of Caelus or Caelum "with reference to Jehovah; also, to some symbolization of Jehovah."
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