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70-574: El means " God " in the Ugaritic and the Canaanite languages . The literal meaning of Shaddai, however, is the subject of debate. Some scholars have argued that it came from Akkadian shadû ("mountain") or from the Hebrew verb shaddad שדד meaning "Destroyer". Shaddai may have also come from shad שד meaning mammary; shaddai is a typical Biblical Hebrew word (שדי). The plural ( Shaddayim -- שדיים)

140-702: A pluralis excellentiae like other titles for the Hebrew deity, Elohim ("gods") and Adonai "my lords". The possessive quality of the termination had lost its sense and become the lexical form of both Shaddai and Adonai, similar to how the connotation of the French word Monsieur changed from "my lord" to being an honorific title. There are a couple of verses in the Bible where there seems to be word play with "Shadday" and this root meaning to destroy (the day of YHWH will come as destruction from Shadday, כשד משדי יבוא , Isaiah 13 :6 and Joel 1:15), but Knauf maintains that this

210-412: A "rabbinic view understanding the name meaning 'who suffices' (Se + day) is clearly fanciful and has no support." The name "Shaddai" often appears on the devices such as amulets or dedicatory plaques. More importantly, however, it is associated with the traditional Jewish customs which could be understood as apotropaic : male circumcision , mezuzah , and tefillin . The connections of the first one with

280-403: A "treaty partner" in covenants, where the clan is seen as the "kin" of the deity. Eventually, El's cult became central to the ethnogenesis of Iron Age Israelites but so far, scholars are unable to determine how much of the population were El worshippers. It is more likely that different locales held different views of El. The Egyptian god Ptah is given the title ḏū gitti 'Lord of Gath ' in

350-652: A dagesh). The noun containing the dagesh is the Hebrew word dai meaning "enough, sufficient, sufficiency". This is the same word used in the Passover Haggadah , Dayeinu, which means "It would have been enough for us." The song Dayeinu celebrates the various miracles God performed while liberating the Israelites from Egyptian servitude. The Talmud explains it this way, but says that "Shaddai" stands for "Mi she'Amar Dai L'olamo" (Hebrew: מי שאמר די לעולמו ‎) – "He who said 'Enough' to His world." When he

420-701: A huge area from southern Syria to Yemen. In 1937, Fred V. Winnett divided those known at the time into five rough categories A, B, C, D, E. In 1951, some 9,000 more inscriptions were recorded in south-west Saudi Arabia which have been given the name Southern Thamudic. Thamudic A is now known as Taymanitic . Thamudic E is now known as Hismaic . Southern Thamudic is also known as Thamudic F. The Thamudic B inscriptions are concentrated in Northwest Arabia, but can be occasionally found in Syria, Egypt, and Yemen. The Thamudic C inscriptions are concentrated in

490-625: A large temple dedicated to Dagon and another to Hadad, there was no temple dedicated to El. El had a variety of epithets and forms. He is repeatedly referred to as ṯr il ("Bull El" or "the bull god") and 'il milk ("El the King"). He is bny bnwt ("Creator of creatures"), ' abū banī 'ili ("father of the gods"), and ab adm ("father of man"). The appellations of "eternal", "creator" and "eternal" or "ancient creator" are "characteristic designations of 'El in Canaanite myths and liturgies". He

560-510: A nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins." According to Exodus 6:2–3 Shaddai was the name by which God was known to Abraham , Isaac , and Jacob . In the vision of Balaam recorded in the Book of Numbers 24:4 and 16, the vision comes from Shaddai, who is also referred to as El ("God") and Elyon ("Most High"). In the fragmentary inscriptions at Deir Alla , shaddayin appear ( Hebrew : שדין ;

630-543: A parasitic h, and ʾl may be an abbreviated form of ʾlh . In Ugaritic the plural form meaning "gods" is ʾilhm , equivalent to Hebrew ʾ lōhîm "powers". In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for "god" by biblical commentators. However, according to the documentary hypothesis , at least four different authors – the Jahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteronomist (D), and Priestly (P) sources – were responsible for editing stories from

700-480: A period when Yahweh held a place in theology comparable to that of Hadad at Ugarit; or as late henotheistic /monotheistic applications to Yahweh of deeds more commonly attributed to Hadad; or simply as examples of eclectic application of the same motifs and imagery to various different gods. Similarly, it is argued inconclusively whether Ēl Shaddāi, Ēl 'Ôlām, Ēl 'Elyôn, and so forth, were originally understood as separate divinities. Albrecht Alt presented his theories on

770-419: A polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. These sources were joined together at various points in time by a series of editors or "redactors". Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis. The stem ʾl is found prominently in the earliest strata of east Semitic, northwest Semitic, and south Semitic groups. Personal names including

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840-580: A prism from Tel Lachish which has on its opposite face the name of Amenhotep II ( c.  1435  – c.  1420 BCE). The title ḏū gitti is also found in Serābitṭ text 353. Frank Moore Cross (1973, p. 19) points out that Ptah is often called the Lord (or one) of eternity and thinks it may be this identification of El with Ptah that lead to the epithet ' olam 'eternal' being applied to El so early and so consistently. Yet another connection

910-532: A role as father of the gods, of creation, or both. However, because the word el sometimes refers to a god other than the great god El, it is frequently ambiguous as to whether El followed by another name means the great god El with a particular epithet applied or refers to another god entirely. For example, in the Ugaritic texts , ʾil mlk is understood to mean "El the King" but ʾil hd as "the god Hadad ". The Semitic root ʾlh ( Arabic ʾilāh , Aramaic ʾAlāh , ʾElāh , Hebrew ʾelōah ) may be ʾl with

980-462: A variety of hypotheses have been put forward. According to Ernst Knauf, "El Shaddai" means "God of the Wilderness" and originally would not have had a doubled "d". He argues that it is a loanword from Israelian Hebrew , where the word had a "sh" sound, into Judean Hebrew and hence, Biblical Hebrew , where it would have been śaday with the sound śin . In this theory, the word is related to

1050-595: Is ḥātikuka ("your patriarch"). El is the grey-bearded ancient one, full of wisdom, malku ("King"), ab šnm ("Father of years"), ' El gibbōr ("El the warrior"). He is also called lṭpn ʾil d pʾid ("the Gracious One, the Benevolent God") and lṭpn wqdš ("the Gracious and Holy One"). "El" (Father of Heaven / Saturn) and his major son: "Hadad" (Father of Earth / Jupiter), are symbolized both by

1120-510: Is Yahweh who is prophesied to one day battle Leviathan the serpent, and slay the dragon in the sea in Isaiah 27:1 . The slaying of the serpent in myth is a deed attributed to both Ba'al Hadad and ' Anat in the Ugaritic texts, but not to El. But some scholars argue that "El Shadday" reflects a conception of El as a storm god. Such mythological motifs are variously seen as late survivals from

1190-527: Is a Northwest Semitic word meaning 'god' or ' deity ', or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. A rarer form, ' ila , represents the predicate form in the Old Akkadian and Amorite languages. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil- . Specific deities known as ' El , ' Al or ' Il include the supreme god of

1260-598: Is a generic word for god that could be used for any god, including Hadad , Moloch , or Yahweh . In the Tanakh , ' lōhîm is the normal word for a god or the great God (or gods, given that the 'im' suffix makes a word plural in Hebrew). But the form ' El also appears, mostly in poetic passages and in the patriarchal narratives attributed to the Priestly source of the documentary hypothesis . It occurs 217 times in

1330-545: Is attested to in approximately 1350 BCE in one of the Amarna Letters EA333, found in Tell-el-Hesi from the ruler of Lachish to 'The Great One' A Phoenician inscribed amulet of the seventh century BCE from Arslan Tash may refer to El. The text was translated by Rosenthal (1969, p. 658) as follows: An eternal bond has been established for us. Ashshur has established (it) for us, and all

1400-587: Is called ' il brt and ' il dn , which Cross (p. 39) takes as 'El of the covenant' and 'El the judge' respectively. For the Canaanites and the ancient Levantine region as a whole, ʼĒl or ʼIl was the supreme god, the father of mankind and all creatures. He also fathered many gods, most importantly Baal , Yam , and Mot , each sharing similar attributes to the Greco-Roman gods: Zeus , Poseidon , and Hades respectively. As recorded on

1470-511: Is re-etymologization. It has been speculated that the tell in Syria called Tell eth-Thadeyn ("tell of the three breasts") was called Shaddai in the Amorite language . There was a Bronze-Age city in the region called Tuttul , which means "three breasts" in the Sumerian language . The Hebrew noun shad ( שד ) means "breast". Biblical scholar David Biale notes that of the six times that

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1540-732: Is seen as inhabiting a holy mountain, a concept not unknown in ancient West Asian religion, and also evident in the Syriac Christianity writings of Ephrem the Syrian , who places the Garden of Eden on an inaccessible mountaintop. The term "El Shaddai" may mean "god of the mountains", referring to the Mesopotamian divine mountain. This could also refer to the Israelite camp's stay at biblical Mount Sinai where God gave Moses

1610-634: Is seen with the Mandaean angel Ptahil , whose name combines both the terms Ptah and Il. Wyatt, however, notes that in Ugaritic texts, Ptah is seemingly identified with the craftsman god Kothar-wa-Khasis, not El. In an inscription in the Proto-Sinaitic script , William F. Albright transcribed the phrase ʾL Ḏ ʿLM , which he translated as the appellation "El, (god) of eternity". The name Raphael or Rapha-El, meaning 'God has healed' in Ugarit,

1680-598: Is that Shaddai is a derivation of a Semitic root that appears in the Akkadian language shadû ("mountain") and shaddāʾû or shaddûʾa "mountain-dweller", one of the names of Amurru . This theory was popularized by W. F. Albright , but was somewhat weakened when it was noticed that the doubling of the medial d  is first documented only in the Neo-Assyrian Empire . However, the doubling in Hebrew might possibly be secondary. According to this theory, God

1750-576: Is that in much of the Hebrew Bible the name El is an alternative name for Yahweh, but in the Elohist and Priestly traditions it is considered an earlier name than Yahweh. Mark Smith has argued that Yahweh and El were originally separate, but were considered synonymous from very early on. The name Yahweh is used in Genesis 2:4 , while Genesis 4:26 says that at that time, people began to "call upon

1820-432: Is the case with names like ʾĒl ʿOlām , ʾĒl ʿElyon and ʾĒl Bēṯ-ʾĒl . As such, El Shaddai can convey several different semantic relations between the two words, among them: the deity of a place called Shaddai , a deity possessing the quality of shaddai and a deity who is also known by the name Shaddai . Other deities are attested in various cultures. One is Ammonite Šd- Yrḥ . Third in frequency among divine names,

1890-487: Is the name and the seal that He had put on them? It is "Shaddai". [The letter] shin He put in the nose, dalet – on the hand, whereas yod on the {circumcised} [membrum]. Accordingly, {when} He goes to {His eternal home} (Ecclesiastes 12:5), there is an angel {appointed} in the garden of Eden who picks up every son of which is circumcised and brings him {there}. And those who are not circumcised? Although there are two letters of

1960-469: Is the typical Modern Hebrew word for human breasts in dual grammatical number . The Deir Alla Inscription contains shaddayin as well as elohin rather than elohim . Scholars translate this as "shadday-gods," taken to mean unspecified fertility, mountain or wilderness gods. The form of the phrase "El Shaddai" fits the pattern of the divine names in the Ancient Near East , exactly as

2030-654: Is translated as "the God of heaven". "Almighty" is the translation of "Shaddai" followed by most modern English translations of the Hebrew scriptures, including the popular New International Version and Good News Bible . The translation team behind the New Jerusalem Bible (N.J.B.) however, maintains that the meaning is uncertain, and that translating "El Shaddai" as "Almighty God" is inaccurate. The N.J.B. leaves it untranslated as "Shaddai", and makes footnote suggestions that it should perhaps be understood as "God of

2100-724: Is unquestioned, but sometimes exacted through threat or roundly mocked. He is "both comical and pathetic" in a "role of impotence." But this is arguably a misinterpretation since El had complementary relationships with other deities. Any "differences" they had pertained to function. For example, El and Baal were divine kings but El was the executive whilst Baal was the sustainer of the cosmos. The Hebrew form ( אל ) appears in Latin letters in Standard Hebrew transcription as El and in Tiberian Hebrew transcription as ʾĒl. ʼel

2170-579: The Masoretic Text : seventy-three times in the Psalms and fifty-five times in the Book of Job , and otherwise mostly in poetic passages or passages written in elevated prose. It occasionally appears with the definite article as hā'Ēl 'the god' (for example in 2 Samuel 22:31,33–48 ). The theological position of the Tanakh is that the names ʼĒl and ' Ĕlōhîm , when used in the singular to mean

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2240-532: The Semitic languages . They include Ugaritic ʾilu , pl. ʾlm ; Phoenician ʾl pl. ʾlm ; Hebrew ʾēl , pl. ʾēlîm ; Aramaic ʾl ; Akkadian ilu , pl. ilānu . In northwest Semitic use, ʼel was a generic word for any god as well as the special name or title of a particular god who was distinguished from other gods as being "the god". El is listed at the head of many pantheons. In some Canaanite and Ugaritic sources, El played

2310-427: The clay tablets of Ugarit , El is the husband of the goddess Asherah . Three pantheon lists found at Ugarit (modern Ras Shamrā — Arabic : رأس شمرا , Syria ) begin with the four gods ' il-'ib (which according to Cross; is the name of a generic kind of deity, perhaps the divine ancestor of the people), El, Dagnu (that is Dagon ), and Ba'l Ṣapān (that is the god Haddu or Hadad ). Though Ugarit had

2380-461: The Bible, though now more commonly dated to a later period. The Septuagint often translates Shaddai or El Shaddai just as "God" or "my God", and in at least one passage (Ezekiel 10:5) it is transliterated (" θεὸς σαδδαΐ "). In other places (such as Job 5:17) it appears as "Almighty" (" παντοκράτωρ "), and this word features in other translations as well, such as the 1611 King James Version . The origin and meaning of "Shaddai" are obscure, and

2450-500: The English expression [by] God awful ). It is possible also that the expression ' ēlîm in both places descends from an archaic stock phrase in which ' lm was a singular form with the m -enclitic and therefore to be translated as 'sons of El'. The m -enclitic appears elsewhere in the Tanakh and in other Semitic languages. Its meaning is unknown, possibly simply emphasis. It appears in similar contexts in Ugaritic texts where

2520-465: The God of Gods ( ' El 'Elîm ) he will speak outrageous things, and will prosper until the indignation is accomplished: for that which is decided will be done. There are a few cases in the Tanakh where some think ' El is not equated with Yahweh. One example is found in Ezekiel 28:2 , in the taunt against a man who claims to be divine, in this instance, the leader of Tyre : Son of man, say to

2590-592: The God of the Jews evolved gradually from the Canaanite El, who was in all likelihood the "God of Abraham" ... If El was the high God of Abraham—Elohim, the prototype of Yahveh—Asherah was his wife, and there are archaeological indications that she was perceived as such before she was in effect "divorced" in the context of emerging Judaism of the 7th century BCE. (See 2 Kings 23:15 .) The apparent plural form ' Ēlîm or ' Ēlim "gods" occurs only four times in

2660-984: The Mountain" from the Akkadian "shadu", or "God of the open wastes" from the Hebrew "sadeh" and the secondary meaning of the Akkadian word. The translation in the Concordant Old Testament is 'El Who-Suffices' (Genesis 17:1). In Book 5, Chapter 2 of the Right Ginza , part of Mandaean holy scripture of the Ginza Rabba , El Shaddai is mentioned as ʿIl-Šidai . El (deity) (Ugarit religions) El ( / ɛ l / EL ; also ' Il , Ugaritic : 𐎛𐎍 ʾīlu ; Phoenician : 𐤀𐤋 ʾīl ; Hebrew : אֵל ʾēl ; Syriac : ܐܺܝܠ ʾīyl ; Arabic : إل ʾil or إله ʾilāh ; cognate to Akkadian : 𒀭 , romanized:  ilu )

2730-640: The Najd, but can be found elsewhere across western Arabia as well. Thamudic D inscriptions are concentrated in northwest Arabia, and one occurs alongside a Nabataean tomb inscription in Hegra (Mada'in Salih) dated to the year 267 CE. Thamudic F texts come from the southwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula and seem to contain only names , although some of these names contain mimation and one example of

2800-505: The Tanakh. Psalm 29 , understood as an enthronement psalm, begins: A Psalm of David. Ascribe to Yahweh, sons of Gods ( b nê 'Ēlîm ), Ascribe to Yahweh, glory and strength Psalm 89 :6 (verse 7 in Hebrew) has: For who in the skies compares to Yahweh, who can be likened to Yahweh among the sons of Gods ( b nê 'Ēlîm ). Traditionally b nê 'ēlîm has been interpreted as 'sons of the mighty', 'mighty ones', for ' El can mean 'mighty', though such use may be metaphorical (compare

2870-598: The Ten Commandments. According to Stephen L. Harris , the term was "one of the patriarchal names for the Mesopotamian tribal god". In Exodus 6:3, El Shaddai is identified explicitly with the God of Abraham and with Yahweh . The term "El Shaddai" appears chiefly in Genesis , only with a fertility association. The root word " shadad " ( שדד ) means to plunder, overpower, or make desolate. This would give Shaddai

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2940-621: The ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Early Dynastic Period of Mesopotamia . Among the Hittites , El was known as Elkunirsa ( Hittite : 𒂖𒆪𒉌𒅕𒊭 Elkunīrša ). Although El gained different appearances and meanings in different languages over time, it continues to exist as -il or -el in compound proper noun phrases such as Ishmael, Israel, Samuel, Daniel, Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel. Cognate forms of El are found throughout

3010-472: The beginning of the account mention the goddess Athirat , who is otherwise El's chief wife and the goddess Raḥmayyu ("the one of the womb"). In the Ugaritic Ba'al cycle , El is introduced having an assembly of gods on Mount Lel (Lel possibly meaning "Night"), and dwelling on (or in) the fountains of the two rivers at the spring of the two deeps. He dwells in a tent according to some interpretations of

3080-401: The bull, and both wear bull horns on their headdresses. The mysterious Ugaritic text Shachar and Shalim tells how (perhaps near the beginning of all things) El came to shores of the sea and saw two women who bobbed up and down. El was sexually aroused and took the two with him, killed a bird by throwing a staff at it, and roasted it over a fire. He asked the women to tell him when the bird

3150-490: The divine beings and the majority of the group of all the holy ones, through the bond of heaven and earth for ever , ... However, Cross (1973, p. 17) translated the text as follows: The Eternal One ('Olam) has made a covenant oath with us, Asherah has made (a pact) with us. And all the sons of El, And the great council of all the Holy Ones. With oaths of Heaven and Ancient Earth. In some inscriptions,

3220-491: The eventual Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Hebrew words meaning "breast", means "to extend" (lengthwise) in proto-Afrasian and into "pre-proto-Semitic" while šdh means a plain in Canaanite but a mountain in Sumerian. A popular interpretation of the name Shaddai is that it is composed of the Hebrew relative particle she- (Shin plus vowel segol followed by dagesh ), or, as in this case, as sha- (Shin plus vowel patach followed by

3290-684: The expression bn 'il alternates with bn 'ilm , but both must mean 'sons of El'. That phrase with m -enclitic also appears in Phoenician inscriptions as late as the fifth century BCE. One of the other two occurrences in the Tanakh is in the " Song of Moses ", Exodus 15:11a : Who is like you among the Gods ( ' ēlim ), Yahweh? The final occurrence is in Daniel 11:36 : And the king will do according to his pleasure; and he will exalt himself and magnify himself over every god ( ' ēl ), and against

3360-401: The gods ( ' ilm ) in general or at least a large portion of them. The only sons of El named individually in the Ugaritic texts are Yamm ("Sea"), Mot ("Death"), and Ashtar , who may be the chief and leader of most of the sons of El. Ba'al Hadad is a few times called El's son rather than the son of Dagan as he is normally called, possibly because El is in the position of a clan-father to all

3430-406: The gods. The fragmentary text R.S. 24.258 describes a Marzēaḥ banquet to which El invites the other gods and then disgraces himself by becoming outrageously drunk and passing out after confronting an otherwise unknown Hubbay, "he with the horns and tail". The text ends with an incantation for the cure for a hangover . El's characterization in Ugarit texts is not always favorable. His authority

3500-491: The meaning of "destroyer", representing one of the aspects of God, and in this context it is essentially an epithet . The meaning may go back to an original sense which was "to be strong" as in the Arabic " shadid " ( شديد ) "strong", although normally the Arabic letter pronounced "sh" corresponds to the Hebrew letter sin , not to shin . The termination " ai ", typically signifying the first person possessive plural, functions as

3570-405: The meaning of the word Shaddai and connects it to mezuzah. The name "Shadday" can also be found on tefillin – a set of two black leather boxes strapped to head and arm during the prayers. The binding of particular knots of tefillin is supposed to resemble the shape of the letters: the leather strap of the tefillah shel rosh is knotted at the back of the head thus forming the letter dalet whereas

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3640-564: The name ' Ēl qōne 'arṣ ( Punic : 𐤀𐤋 𐤒𐤍 𐤀𐤓𐤑 ʾl qn ʾrṣ ) meaning "El creator of Earth" appears, even including a late inscription at Leptis Magna in Tripolitania dating to the second century. In Hittite texts, the expression becomes the single name Ilkunirsa , this Ilkunirsa appearing as the husband of Asherdu ( Asherah ) and father of 77 or 88 sons. In a Hurrian hymn to El (published in Ugaritica V , text RS 24.278), he

3710-542: The name Shaddai appears 48 times in the Bible , seven times as "El Shaddai" (five times in Genesis , once in Exodus , and once in Ezekiel ). The first occurrence of the name comes in Genesis 17:1 , "When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, 'I am El Shaddai; walk before me, and be blameless,' Similarly, in Genesis 35:11 God says to Jacob , "I am El Shaddai: be fruitful and multiply;

3780-485: The name "Shaddai" is often written on the back of the parchment containing the shema‘ and sometimes also on the casing itself. The name is traditionally interpreted as being an acronym of shomer daltot Yisrael ("the guardian of the doors of Israel") or shomer dirot Yisrael ("the guardian of the dwellings of Israel"). However, this notarikon itself has its source most probably in Zohar Va’ethanan where it explains

3850-505: The name "Shaddai" present on them, {namely} shin from the nose and dalet from the hand, the yod (...) is {missing}. Therefore it hints at a demon (Heb. shed ), which brings him down to Gehenna. Analogous is the case with mezuzah – a piece of parchment with two passages from the Book of Deuteronomy, curled up in a small encasement and affixed to a doorframe. At least since the Geonic times,

3920-488: The name El Shaddai appears in the Book of Genesis , five are in connection with fertility blessings for the Patriarchs . He argues that this original understanding of Shaddai as related to fertility was forgotten by the later authors of Isaiah, Joel, and Job, who understood it as related to root words for power or destruction (thus explaining their later translation as "all-powerful" or "almighty"). Šad, which sounds like

3990-531: The name Shaddai are twofold: According to the biblical chronology it is El Shaddai who ordains the custom of circumcision in Genesis 17:1 and, as is apparent in midrash Tanhuma Tzav 14 (cf. a parallel passages in Tazri‘a 5 and Shemini 5) the brit milah itself is the inscription of the part of the name on the body: The Holy One, blessed be He, has put His name on them so they would enter the garden of Eden. And what

4060-523: The name of the LORD". El's title of " El Shadday ", which envisions him as the "god of the steppe", may also derive from the cultural beliefs of Upper Mesopotamian (i.e. Amurru ) immigrants, who were ancestors of the Israelites. In some places, especially in Psalm 29 , Yahweh is clearly envisioned as a storm god , something not true of El so far as scholars know (although true of his son, Ba'al Haddad). It

4130-520: The one that is passed through the tefillah shel yad forms a yod -shaped knot. In addition to this, the box itself is inscribed with the letter shin on two of its sides. The Septuagint (and other early translations) sometimes translate "Shaddai" as "(the) Almighty". It is often translated as "God", "my God", or "Lord". However, in the Greek of the Septuagint translation of Psalm 91:1, "Shaddai"

4200-561: The original differences of such gods in Der Gott der Väter in 1929. But others have argued that from patriarchal times, these different names were generally understood to refer to the same single great god, El. This is the position of Frank Moore Cross (1973). What is certain is that the form 'El does appear in Israelite names from every period including the name Yiśrā'ēl ("Israel"), meaning "El strives". According to The Oxford Companion to World Mythology , It seems almost certain that

4270-759: The prince of Tyre: "Thus says the Lord Yahweh: 'Because your heart is proud and you have said: "I am ' ēl (god), in the seat of ' lōhîm ( gods ), I am enthroned in the middle of the seas." Yet you are man and not ' El even though you have made your heart like the heart of ' lōhîm ('gods'). ' " Thamudic Thamudic , named for the Thamud tribe, is a group of epigraphic scripts known from large numbers of inscriptions in Ancient North Arabian (ANA) alphabets, which have not yet been properly studied. These texts are found over

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4340-534: The same as the manbaa al-nahrayn ("Source of the Two Rivers"), the abode of El in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle discovered in the 1920s and a separate serpent incantation. In the episode of the "Palace of Ba'al", the god Ba'al Hadad invites the "seventy sons of Athirat" to a feast in his new palace. Presumably these sons have been fathered on Athirat by El; in following passages they seem to be

4410-482: The stem ʾl are found with similar patterns in both the Amorite and Sabaic languages. There is evidence that the Canaanite/Phoenician and Aramaic conception of El is essentially the same as the Amorite conception of El, which was popularized in the 18th century BCE but has origins in the Pre- Sargonic period . Any "changes" in El's status can be explained by the randomness of available data. Tribal organizations in West Semitic culture also influenced El's portrayal as

4480-458: The supreme god, refer to Yahweh, beside whom other gods are supposed to be either nonexistent or insignificant. Whether this was a long-standing belief or a relatively new one has long been the subject of inconclusive scholarly debate about the prehistory of the sources of the Tanakh and about the prehistory of Israelite religion. In the P strand, Exodus 6:3 may be translated: I revealed myself to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai , but

4550-444: The text which may explain why he had no temple in Ugarit. As to the rivers and the spring of the two deeps, these might refer to real streams, or to the mythological sources of the salt water ocean and the fresh water sources under the earth, or to the waters above the heavens and the waters beneath the earth. A few miles from the swamp from which the Litani (the classical Leontes) and the Asi (the upper Orontes ) flow, Baalbek may be

4620-410: The vowels are uncertain, as is the gemination of the "d"), perhaps lesser figurations of Shaddai. These have been tentatively identified with the šēdim "demons" ( Hebrew : שדים ) of Deuteronomy 32:17 ( parashah Haazinu ) and Psalm 106 : 37–38, who are Canaanite deities. The name "Shaddai" is often used in parallel to "El" later in the Book of Job , once thought to be one of the oldest books of

4690-422: The word śadé "the (uncultivated) field", the area of hunting (as in the distinction between beasts of the field, חיות השדה , and cattle, בהמות ). He points out that the name is found in Thamudic inscriptions (as ʾlšdy ), in a personal name Śaday ʾammī used in Egypt from the Late Bronze Age until Achaemenid times , and even in the Punic language name ʿbdšd "Servant of Shadé or Shada". Another theory

4760-438: Was forming the earth, he stopped the process at a certain point, withholding creation from reaching its full completion, and thus the name embodies God's power to stop creation. The passage appears in the tractate Hagigah 12a. There is early support for this interpretation, in that the Septuagint translates "Shadday" in several places as ὁ ἱκανός , the "Sufficient One" (for example, Ruth 1:20, 21). However, Day's overview says

4830-459: Was fully cooked, and to then address him either as husband or as father, for he would thenceforward behave to them as they called him. They saluted him as husband. He then lay with them, and they gave birth to Shachar ("Dawn") and Shalim ("Dusk"). Again El lay with his wives and the wives gave birth to "the gracious gods", "cleavers of the sea", "children of the sea". The names of these wives are not explicitly provided, but some confusing rubrics at

4900-405: Was not known to them by my name, YHWH . However, it is said in Genesis 14:18–20 that Abraham accepted the blessing of El, when Melchizedek , the king of Salem and high priest of its deity El Elyon blessed him. One scholarly position is that the identification of Yahweh with El is late, that Yahweh was earlier thought of as only one of many gods, and not normally identified with El. Another

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