It is widely recognized that the name of the Old Testament Hebrew God, YHWH, was not derived from the Hebrew language, although the word seems to share the common Afroasiatic etymological roots of the Hebrew words “hay” (“living being”) and “hawwah” (derived from the Hebrew root of the verb “to be”).

The common Afroasiatic root of the Hebrew word “hay” is ubiquitous in the Sub-Saharan Niger-Congo group of African languages. In the West African Yoruba language, for example, the root appears in words meaning “life,” “mother,” and earth. Similarly, the Afroasiatic root, “hwh”, from the Hebrew word “hawwah” (Eve) is found in words meaning “life”, “being”, and woman in the Yoruba language.

The divine name, YHWH, could have been derived in a way that combined the common Afroasiatic roots of the Hebrew words “hay” and “hawwah”; a form commonly found in the Niger-Congo languages ​​of Africa as a generic term for divine spirits. Thus, in the Fon language of the vodu (voodoo) culture of Dahomey, West Africa, “Yehweh” is synonymous with vodu and means “divine spirit.” In the Ewe language of southern Togo, also West African, “Yehweh” means “spirit.”

Among the Yoruba of West Africa, Yewa is the chthonic goddess of death and the underworld. She is the Virgin Mary of the Yoruba pantheon in a heterosexual relationship with the sky god Sango in the circumstances of her spiritual death and resurrection. The name YHWH could therefore be of Hamitic derivation, and could have reached the languages ​​of the Africans on the Guinea coast, whose languages ​​belong to a different class, by cultural diffusion through centuries of close contact with the ancients. Hamitic languages ​​of East Africa (the family of languages ​​classified as “Hamites” are a subgroup of the “Afroasiatic” language family).

The Genesis account of the “generations” of the “male heavens” and “female earth” has strong Hamitic conceptual overtones that Moses (the ancient Egyptian name “Masi” is in widespread use as a personal name among African peoples) might have acquainted. while growing up in the Upper Egyptian-dominated culture of the New Kingdom, which had intimate cultural and historical ties to the African Kingdom of Kush to the south. We are told, in the Old Testament scriptures, for example, that Moses had a Kushite wife of whom Mariam and Aaron (Moses’ brothers) disapproved.

The Genesis act of unifying the gods in the singular personage YHWH reflects a millennial practice of Ancient Egyptian theologians. Ancient Egypt had a myriad of constantly fragmenting synthetic gods derived from the unification of a plurality of divinities: Amun-Re, Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, Hamarkis-Kheper-Re-Amun. Thus, in the act of unifying the myriad gods in YHWH, we see the imprint of Ancient Egyptian enculturation in Moses. Moses, however, achieved a grand unification of the Godhead rather than the partial unifications to which Ancient Egyptian theology was limited.

The book of Genesis identifies the name YHWH with the ancient Kushite civilization. We read the following words in the Book of Genesis: “And Kush was the father of Nimrod, who became the first great conqueror in history. He (Nimrod) was a mighty wandering conqueror before YHWH; hence the saying goes: Like Nimrod a mighty wandering conqueror (gibbor sayid) before YHVH.”

The significance of the association of the name YHWH with the legendary hero of an ancient Kushite civilization is generally overlooked in the context of the anti-Hamitism of ancient Semitic culture, even as the significance of the identification of the Hamite-Jebusite king Melchizedek with the Hebrew. “Most High God” (the elyon) is generally ignored. And just as the Reformations signaled the coming of age of Germanic civilization, so too the rise of Semitic culture witnessed a revolution involving an assertion of Semitic identity through the rise of anti-Hamite sentiments (thus, the genocidal policy of the Hebrews in Canaan would be explained as divinely approved).

The popular interpretation of the statement, “Nimrod was a mighty hunter before YHWH,” forces a negative connotation in a neutral text. The saying: “Like Nimrod, vigorous hunter before YHWH”, can be interpreted as a compliment. Similarly, the saying can be interpreted to imply a relationship of devotion to God between YHWH and Nimrod (one might say, in this sense, that just as Nebuchadnezzar was a mighty hunter before his god Marduk, so Nimrod was a mighty hunter before ( their god ) YHVH).

The culture of Israel had been exposed to a strong Hamitic influence in the four and a half centuries of their stay in Egypt (the Hebrew scriptures classify the ancient Egyptians among the “sons of Ham”). The significance of the fact that Moses had a Kushite wife becomes apparent when we realize that the Jews acquired the tradition of circumcision from the Hamitic cultures that had practiced circumcision since prehistoric times. The African scholar Modupe Oduyoye has shown in his work, Afroasiatic interpretation of Genesisa strong undercurrent of thought lies in the confused ideas expressed by the Hebrew writers in the Genesis account of creation.

This article explores the tenuous associations of the Hebrew god YHWH with the West African Yoruba goddess Yewa (West African Yoruba insist their ancestors had been immigrants from the Nile region via the Lake Chad region). That YHWH might originally have been a Kushite androgynous cosmic deity can be explored in the peculiar transgender character of the transvestite West African god of thunder, lightning, and atmospheric disturbances, the fearsome Sango (Candomblé). : Xango), Oba Koso (King of Kush). The Yoruba goddess Yewa (“Our Lady”, “Our Mother”) is the female earth deity (“IYAWO”) associated in Yoruba mythology with Sango, king of Kush, upon his death. Sango, according to the Candomblé system, triumphs over death by seducing Yewa (YHWH), the virgin goddess of the underworld, and with this feat recovers his life. The goddess Yewa (YHWH) thus becomes a model of the spirit possession medium in the spirit possession cult of Sango. Sango’s spirit, in turn, becomes the mythical seed of the heavens fallen on earth: the bini ha loyim (sons of God) than observing the beauty of the daughters of men (binot ha-adam) thing wives from among themselves and produced as sons, the ha-gibbor-iym (men of fame, heroes of old).

While the masculine element in Sango’s character is strongly emphasized, the feminine element (Yewa) of the two-faced deity’s personality was preserved, not only in the female-dominated priesthood of the god in pre-colonial Oyo, but also in the association of the gods edun macaw (double/twin/celtic thunder stones) with earth. The Alaafin (King) of Oyo, a direct descendant of Sango, was held in legal custody by a group of titled ladies who, as a group, represented the highest concentration of power and authority in the entire Kingdom. This cabal exclusively presided over the mysteries of the cult of Sango associated with the throne of Oyo. Tea Iya Fashion it was Sango’s primary medium. She was the living oracle of Sango’s spirit, and although she was a woman, she was universally referred to as “Father”. The King of Oyo humbled himself before no mortal other than the Iya Fashion and the mediums under her care, for when a medium is possessed by the spirit of Sango, she is considered the “selem” incarnation of the god himself. Tea iya kere he was the single most powerful individual in the entire palace and in the kingdom of Oyo. Nothing happens in the palace without his consent. He could delay affairs of state by holding the royal insignia and other paraphernalia symbolic of state office. She was the boss of the The river (the King’s bodyguards), and even the King’s “Chief of Staff”, the man osi’wefa he was subservient to her.

The double-headed axe of the thunder god, in the Yoruba tradition, is a symbol of the essentially androgynous two-faced (Sango-Yewa) nature of the cosmic deity in his synthetic heaven-earth identity (which explains why Sango is the boss). twin deity in the Yoruba pantheon of gods). In Yoruba tradition, Sango’s double ax head is usually mounted on a female figure: a representation of Sango’s female alter ego or doppelganger, i.e., the chthonic goddess Yewa, in her model role as a means of spiritual possession in the deification of Sango in the afterlife. (Sango, like Jesus, is supposed to have died by hanging.) The Yoruba believe, as do the Christians, that the god Sango continued to live in the heavenly realms, after he apparently died at the stake, watching over humanity and punishing the wicked with lightning bolts from heaven.