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This paper is about the development of ancient Israel’s religion. This will show how the Israelite religion has changed from polytheism to monolatrism to monotheism. This paper will be broken up into five parts. First, I will discuss the nature of my sources. Then I will cover the worship of El, Yahweh, Baal, and Asherah. Next, I will talk about how the kings were seen as god’s agents and how god guided them. Afterward, I will cover the role of prophets in Israel. Lastly, I will discuss the monotheism in second Isaiah. For my information, I will be using several books from the bible. These include the book of genesis, first Samuel, second Isaiah, and Kings 1 and 2.
I
The sources I am using are all stories from the bible written by multiple authors. Since multiple authors wrote the bible, there are stories included that contradict each other and two different stories for the same event. This is attributed to the fact that Israel was split into two different groups, the north or Israel and the south or Judah. As a result of the split customs arose that differed such as the names of their chief god. The north referred to the god as Elohim and the south referred to the god as Yahweh. With the two different groups came two different types of editors. Modern scholars call the stories from the northern editors as the E source; they call the stories from the southern editors the J source. The other editors were the priests who are responsible for genealogies, and the editors of Deuteronomy. They refer to them as the P source and the D source.
In first Samuel, there are two different types of stories. There are the anti-king and pro-king. The anti-king writers portrayed the king as against what the god wanted. However, the pro-king writers showed the kings in the god’s favor. Stories about the kings often contradicted themselves because of this. In second Isaiah when they return from exile, there is belief in only one god. That is because the...