The ancient Israelite knew two Yahwehs—one invisible, a spirit, the other visible, often in human form. The two Yahwehs at times appear together in the text, at times being distinguished, at other times not.
doesn’t the two yhwh theory seem to contradict the following verses in the bible?
1 Kings 8:27
“But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!
“But will God really dwell on earth with humans? The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!
And lest you lift up your eyes to heaven, and see the sun, and the moon, and the stars, all the HOST of heaven, which the Lord your God assigned to all peoples under the entire heaven, and be drawn away to prostrate yourselves before them and worship them.
Joshua 5:14
captain of the Lord’s HOST
I just posted this over at the other thread but I’ll repeat it here. It’s not as simple as two Yahwehs.
On the question of who Yahweh was you may wish to supplement your reading with Hebrew scholar James L Kugel’s book ** you do not have permission to see this link ** , especially the first third of the book which focuses on the image of the “Angel of the Lord” in the Hebrew Bible. Kugel believes the image of the Angel of the Lord allowed later editors and redactors of the texts who were uncomfortable with the older views of an anthropomorphic deity to place a necessary distance between themselves and a deity who had been exalted in later traditions. Of course the redacting was not seamless and we can detect interesting survivals in the texts of the old views. A great book.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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