William Durand-Poor

Now, in that detonator sentence that you gave us 10 minutes ago, which we're unpicking the resonance of now, there was another little reference to the fact that Yahweh has a wife, a sharer.

And weirdly, this is the least contentious thing you said.

This seems to be completely established in the early days, something that no monotheist wants to hear.

But it's there, you'd say, pretty firmly in the archaeology and the inscriptional evidence.

Exactly.

They were very green.

Again, this is something that blew my mind when I read your book.

You should all know that God is not initially Yahweh.

And the Israelites' first God is El.

And just very briefly, to go into these other deities, there is an entire council.

Like Mount Olympus, there's a whole world of gods.

And this is, again, uncontroversial to academics.

This is something that most serious theologians studying this period will accept, that there is a

whole world of many, many gods that the early Israelites and their neighbors are sharing.

One thing, is there a phonetic link between El and Allah?

Is that the same sort of Semitic root?

So Allah, El, Israel all have etymological links to each other.

And that is enough to detonate other minds on its own even before we go any further with God's wife and the rest of it.

And again, this is another crucial point that in terms of academics is not...

controversial that this early Israelite world of deities, which El and Yahweh are part, is not exclusive to the Israelites.