The Desert's Role in the Formation of Early Israel and the Origin of Yhwh

The Desert's Role in the Formation of Early Israel and the Origin of Yhwh DOI: 10.46586/er.12.2021.8889 Entangled Religions 12.2 (2021) License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 er.ceres.rub.de The Desert’s Role in the Formation of Early Israel and the Origin of Yhwh ‘UZI AVNER The Dead Sea and Arava Science Center, Israel ABSTRACT The origin of ancient Israel has been questioned and intensively d. [...] The Desert’s Role in the Formation of Early Israel If the view of early Israel as a “mixed multitude” is accepted, the interest of this article, as [6] stated above, is in the desert component of the conglomerate. [...] The importance of the tent is demonstrated in the highly detailed description of the Tabernacle’s construction (12 chapters; Exodus 25-31, 35-40), com- pared to the short descriptions of construction of the Temple in Jerusalem—one chapter in 1Kings (No. [...] The ‘hatred’ of maṣṣebot by Yhwh can be understood as a later development, exilic or post-exilic, reflecting the ideology of the Deuteronomistic editor.36 The brief review of the above nine points shows that the desert was indeed profoundly [19] imbedded in the culture, reality, and spirituality of ancient Israel (see de Miroschedji 1933).37 The Origin of Yhwh In the land of Israel, Yhwh shared ch. [...] The technology of mining and smelting, as well as the organization of the work, were all in the hands of the desert people (Avner 2014).