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In Ugaritic texts (14th–12th c. BCE, from Ras Shamra), the chief god is El, “the father of gods and men,” head of the council of the bene elohim (“sons of El”). El is portrayed as distant, wise, and patriarchal, while his children (like Baal, Yam, Mot) do the active ruling/fighting. This setup is similar to early biblical phrases like bene elohim (“sons of God”) in Genesis 6:2 or Job 1:6, which seem to echo the same divine family structure.
Deuteronomy 32:8–9 (Dead Sea Scrolls / Septuagint) reads:
> “When the Most High (Elyon) gave the nations their inheritance,
he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of El (or sons of God).
For Yahweh’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.”
Here, Elyon (a title for El) assigns nations to the sons of El, and Yahweh is given Israel as his inheritance. This implies Yahweh was one of the divine sons under El/Elyon, not identical with him.
In the earliest Israelite religion (before the Babylonian exile), some inscriptions suggest El and Yahweh were distinct. The Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions (c. 8th c. BCE, Sinai desert) mention “Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah” and “Yahweh of Teman.” Asherah was El’s consort in Canaanite religion. This pairing suggests Yahweh was being slotted into El’s role. Hosea 12:9 and other texts sometimes identify Yahweh as the one “who brought you from Egypt” — a southern warrior deity type (like Edomite/Temanite Yahweh), later merged with El.
Many scholars think Yahweh started as a regional storm/warrior god (possibly from Edom, Seir, or Midian — see Deuteronomy 33:2, “Yahweh came from Sinai, from Seir he shone forth”). Over time, Yahweh was elevated to chief god status and conflated with El, absorbing his titles (like El Elyon, El Shaddai). By the time of the Hebrew Bible’s redaction, Yahweh = El = Elyon = Creator, but older fragments preserve the earlier “Yahweh as son of El” structure.
