Thursday, April 02, 2020

Self-sufficient

YHWH is the only sufficient deity. Affirming YHWH’s sufficiency is one way to summarize a broad pattern in the OT: advocacy of monolatry. Israel should have no other ʾelōhîm beside YHWH (Exod 20:3; Deut 5:7), which covers anything from benign neglect of YHWH to hostile rejection. Such a profile differentiates the OT from much of the ANE tradition, with its various permutations of polytheism.— J. Andrew Dearman in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, p. 81

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