Yahweh’s Desert Origins - The BAS Library

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Before Yahweh became the God of ancient Israel, archaeological evidence indicates that he was likely worshiped by desert peoples to the south. Coupled with the biblical text, this suggests a southern origin for Yahweh. Learn how desert ritual practices may have influenced Israelite worship and religion.

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Footnotes

1. Lawrence E. Stager, “The Song of Deborah—Why Some Tribes Answered the Call and Others Did Not,” BAR, January/February 1989.

2. Uzi Avner, “Sacred Stones in the Desert,” BAR, May/June 2001.

Endnotes

1.
Theodore J. Lewis, The Origin and Character of God: Ancient Israelite Religion Through the Lens of Divinity (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2020), pp. 271–282. For a recent volume with different approaches to the Midianite Hypothesis, see Juan M. Tebes and Christian Frevel, eds., The Desert Origins of God: Yahweh’s Emergence and Early History in the Southern Levant and Northern Arabia, Entangled Religions 12.2 (Bochum: Ruhr–Universität Bochum, 2021).

2.
See Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).