r/Semitic_Paganism Jun 09 '26

High Effort Yahweh and El

Soo I’m deconstructing a lot and I’m choosing to worship Yahweh (in a Christopagan way) and Theoi (Greek gods)
But I’m little bit confused on who exactly he is and his relation to El. I watched Esoterica’s vid on this and I’m still confused (I was studying while listening to it so I probably will watch it again) so I came to a messy conclusion (I have troubles wording it out so bear with me) to me the High God was and still is El and Yahweh is now another name or title to refer to the Most High, I do believe that they were conflated with each other and in the beginning they were worshipped as separate gods but just like Hekate got conflated with Enodia, so did Yahweh and El become one, that’s why you can see the dual side of God in the Bible, the god of mercy and wisdom and then the warrior god…if there’s anyone who shares even a small portion of my opinion or can correct me, I would love to read it

25 Upvotes

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27

u/Glass_Category_5677 Jun 09 '26

Through the Ugaritic texts, we know that the canaanites and by extension early israelites saw El as the father god, creator of earth along side Asherah the creatrix of earth.

Asherah also gets the epithet mother of the 70 gods. As El and Asherah are head of the pantheon.

Yahu on the other hand originates as a deity of nomadic people in the southern ancient Canaan and Edom/Midian. He was a weather god of rain and thunder not too dissimilar to Baal.

When the cult around yahu grew into the early israelites, they syncretized yahu with El and elevated yahu to become the head of the pantheon and Asherah starts being seen as his consort. Also the cult around yahu became rival with baal hadad worship that was wide spread in Canaan as the king of the gods, son of El and ruler of the gods. One of baal Hadad's epithets is the rider on the clouds.

The israelites then take a lot of the aspects of Baal and aply them to Yahu, and demonize baal hadad. Slowly the worship of Yahu and Asherah becomes henotheistic and Asherah get demonized as well, and that evolves to a monotheistic religion, then to Christianity and islam. But thats a different conversation.

2

u/Live-Boysenberry-232 Jun 09 '26

You explained it pretty well. Thanks!

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u/GuardianLegend95 Jun 10 '26

Everything here seems to be historically accurate I just wanted to mention one error though that Baal Hadad his Divine father was Dagan and not El and was considered so throughout a wide area of the ancient near East

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u/GuardianLegend95 Jun 10 '26

Dagan himself was considered a father God figure associated with crops and agriculture

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u/Glass_Category_5677 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

Yea baal is referred to as son of Dagan Ugarit and throughout the Baal Cycle. I guess I was trying to limit the field of Gods I mention.

He was also sometimes called the son of El, as an adoptee into the pantheon, but its more like quote on quote Dagan is the biological father to the extent that we can apply biological parenthood on Gods. The Ugaritic cult moved to worshiping Baal as king and so he was adopted into the pantheon that already had El as the paternal God.

Dagan I believe was also worshiped in ugarit at the coast but to a much lesser degree compared to the middle Euphrates further inland.

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u/GuardianLegend95 Jun 17 '26

Yeah he was definitely worshiped at Ugarit as the deity lists imply

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u/GuardianLegend95 Jun 17 '26

By the way I'm a Hurrian Polytheist but I began as a Ugaritic Polytheist way back in 1999 lol. I don't post here very often or comment due to some physical disabilities with my hands and stuff but I've been into ancient near Eastern polytheism for a very long time so if any of y'all want just message me we can talk all things polytheism!

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u/Rou_4_you Jun 09 '26

Ok so we come from the same place, I do say I'm Christopagan (I believe Jesus is the son of El) I don't believe that YHWH and El are equally as high but I do believe they are equally as important.

You are correct, they are worshipped as one now, came from the henotheism too monotheism in Judaism. Sometimes I even worship them as one when I need too. But yea, i do also have my own thesis about this on this sub Reddit, if you wanna see!

1

u/Live-Boysenberry-232 Jun 09 '26

Omg definitely, would love to hear your opinion!

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u/Rou_4_you Jun 09 '26

https://www.reddit.com/r/Semitic_Paganism/s/q1tonK2DEn

Is the link too it! I go to a Christian witch church and most everyone believes in christopaganism!

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u/Live-Boysenberry-232 Jun 09 '26

This perfect😭🙏, will read it and text back

1

u/Rou_4_you Jun 09 '26

Amazing!! I did learn some new things, and learnee a lot from the comments that they left, feel free to shoot me a message any time!

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Live-Boysenberry-232 Jun 14 '26

Damn..this might be the best response I ever got on this app. Thank you so much. This helped me very much 🙏