Mark Gagnon

I see.

So, yeah, the way it's written here, Yahweh was an ancient Semitic deity of weather and war in the southeastern ancient Levant and the nation god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

That's interesting.

Because myself, growing up Catholic, right, I would read the Old Testament, I would read the Tetragrammaton of Yahweh, and you'd be like, all right, this is the God of the Israelites.

And the secular view I understand is that, oh, this is a desert God of war.

And that seems like it is at odds with what the religious belief of who Yahweh is.

And I can see that the framing of this makes it pretty clear.

If you're in a debate with someone about, you know, the nature of Yahweh, someone could pull this up and be like, yeah, this is a...

A deity of war.

This is no different than, you know, Ra or, you know, some type of Norse god or something like that.

Right, right.

Which I can see being at conflict with someone that believes, like, no, this is the one true god.

I see.

Right.

Secular scholars will say that Yahweh was a desert deity, yada, yada.

But amongst Jews and Christians, Yahweh is the God of the ancient Israelites.

I see.

Yes, this makes sense.

This makes sense.

I can see that the subtlety of the way of the framing can really lead people into believing one thing or another.