this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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Genuine question (and I don’t know if you’ve gone down this rabbit hole) but does “el” in the context of Hebrew names refer to the concept of any god generically or was “el” the name of the one monotheistic god (before being combined with the monotheistic god with the other name) and the “els” in the names of the angels meant to be an attachment to the court of the one god in a similar way to “isra-el” being not another god but a kingdom/people bearing the name of the god it served (of course talking about biblical Israel and not the modern state).
The early Abrahamic and general Canaanite religions are super interesting, I absolutely recommend reading on them. Now, considering I'm neither a historian nor a linguistics expert, take anything I say with a grain of salt.
From my understanding and memory on the subject, "El" was used as the noun "god", as the name of the Canaanite chief god, who would later be usurped by YHWH, and as a title of sorts, meant to indicate gods and important people supposedly affiliated with the pantheon chieftain. I believe the latter is related to the older Assyrian culture, it certainly follows the same pattern. The first and second cases weren't widely concurrent, however - there is a clear trace telling us the original pantheon leader lost influence over time before being relegated to "just another god" and finally getting absorbed into the figure of YHWH, a bit like how Odinn slowly faded into the background of Nordic religion as Thor became the figure you'd pray to.
In short: both of your scenarios are right, but at different points in history (except they weren't monotheistic at first).
This is true about El.
I don't remember if YHWH is associated with Assyrian culture though.
But if anyone is interested, I recommend reading Mark S. Smith's The Early History of God. It's very dry and dense, but extremely informative.
I didn't mean to imply a relation between YHWH and Assyria, but rather link the Assyrian culture of appending god names to important figures' names and the Canaanite culture of appending "-el" to indicate allegiance.