Ancient Israel and the Origins of Judaism

Ancient Israelite religion emerged from the broader religious world of the Canaanite-speaking peoples of the Levant during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. Excavated inscriptions, such as those from Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai (ninth-eighth century BCE) and Khirbet el-Qom, which refer to "YHWH and his Asherah," indicate that early worship of the god YHWH coexisted for a time with broader Canaanite religious practices, including reverence for deities such as El and Baal and, in some contexts, a divine consort. Over several centuries, a process generally described as convergent or emergent monotheism took hold, in which YHWH was increasingly understood not merely as the chief god of Israel among many but as the sole legitimate deity. The biblical narrative itself frames this development as a recurring struggle between exclusive loyalty to YHWH and the pull of surrounding polytheistic practices, reflected in accounts such as the confrontation between the prophet Elijah and the priests of Baal. The Babylonian exile of the sixth century BCE, discussed further below, is widely regarded by scholars as the period in which explicit, doctrinal monotheism, the conviction that other gods do not exist at all rather than simply should not be worshiped, became firmly established.