Ancient Israel's religion was not monotheistic at first, many scholars argue
The name Israel honours not Yahweh but El, chief god of the Canaanite pantheon. Archaeology and close reading of the Bible suggest early Israelites worshipped a family of gods, perhaps including a goddess consort for Yahweh. Strict belief in one god emerged gradually, sharpening during the Babylonian exile.
Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, was closely related to Canaanite belief. None of the Hebrew patriarchs, tribes, judges or early kings bears a name built on Yahweh, and while Israel appears in records in the 13th century BCE on Egypt's Merneptah Stele, the name Yahweh itself is not attested in the Levant until the Mesha Stele of the 9th century BCE. Over time El and Yahweh were merged into one deity, a fusion visible in Exodus 6.
Scholars reconstruct a layered divine world. According to Mark S. Smith, El, then Yahweh, stood at the top, with Asherah as consort, and biblical passages suggest statues of the goddess stood in Yahweh's temples. Baal, Astarte, Shamash and others had their own priests. Below came specialist gods, such as one for snakebite cures known only by a pun, Nehushtan, and at the bottom messenger beings, the mal'ak, later the angels of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Evidence suggests Baal and Yahweh were worshipped side by side, especially in the north, until 722 BCE.
Jerusalem's temple was not originally unique. The earliest known Israelite shrine is a 12th-century BCE hilltop altar in Samaria with a bronze bull recalling El, and remains of temples have been found at Dan, Arad, Beersheba and Motza. Worship centred on three farm festivals: Passover with lambing, Shavuot with the grain harvest and Sukkot with the fruit harvest, later tied to the exodus, Sinai and the wilderness years. Any head of a family could offer sacrifice.
The first clearly monotheistic statements date from the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, and Deuteronomy's insistence on worshipping Yahweh alone may mark the start of monolatry. After Persia took Babylon in 539 BCE, returning exiles brought a reshaped faith centred on written law, priesthood and purity, which grew into Second Temple Judaism and, separately, Samaritanism. Yonatan Adler argues Judaism as a distinct religion emerged only in the Hasmonean era, in the 2nd to 1st centuries BCE.
Source: Yahwism
