ABSTRACT
This chapter broadly introduces the challenges and past attempts to articulate YHWHism. It identifies a specific gap, which is that many studies tend to focus on single time periods to understand YHWH but rarely ask why those changes to YHWHism occurred in particular contexts. First, the chapter briefly introduces readers to the 19th-century context and the early discoveries of Egyptian and Mesopotamian material that led to the basic questions that remain today: How much did the biblical writers know about their ancient world and, given the multiple correspondences between biblical YHWHism and surrounding deities of the ancient world, what if anything is original in the Bible? This simple question continues to manifest itself in different forms through all the discussions and proposed methodologies to examine the Israelite deity. Second, this chapter examines the various approaches to comparative studies between the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East. To trace the changes and contextual developments to YHWH through the Hebrew Bible, this chapter suggests two comparative strategies of “cultural translation” and “subversive reception”; at times Israelite scribes translated ideas from other cultures to their own (cultural translation), but in that translation and, thus, reception, at times they attempt to subvert surrounding cultures in order to make unique claims about YHWH (called subversive reception). These are suggested lenses through which to view selected texts of YHWH across various time periods and then ask why YHWHism changed and examine the contexts that led to such change.
