YHWH, the God of Jesus

So, I was recently informed that the God that Jesus worshiped and YHWH are two different Gods. The person making this claim is aghast at the “barbaric” rituals of the Jews, particularly the feast of the Red Heifer, which is specifically called for in Numbers 19: 1-7. The person who made this astounding claim backed it up with this supporting video by author Paul Wallis.

If you’re not familiar with it, the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle, or Brandolini’s Law, says that, “The amount of energy required to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it.” I’m not sure I want to devote ten times as much effort into refuting Wallis as he did in inventing his fantastic fiction, but I’ll give it a minor shot.

Before I start, this is the sort of nonsense that you end up with when you divorce yourself from the Memory of the Christian Church and assume that anyone armed with a Bible is as qualified as a patristic father to interpret scripture, especially when you disregard the ancient tradition which form the context and frame of reference in which the scripture was written.

Paul Wallis is first and foremost an author, and his primary goal is to sell his books. As a historian and religious scholar, he’s on par with the charlatans Zecharia Sitchin, Immanuel Velikovsky and L. Ron Hubbard. All of these men have invented fantastic theories of ancient history, devoid of common sense, scientific literacy or any tangible evidence. Wallis is no different. He invents a science fiction story that the Early people were influenced by Extraterrestrial visitors who taught them agriculture, and that YHWH was one of these who was an abusive dictator, and that all of scripture is the early peoples trying to tell us about this. Amazing that centuries of scholars never twigged to it. . . .

 Before I go into detail about why Wallis gets it wrong, let’s talk about some of the claims he makes in the video I linked to above, and disassemble some of the ways he cleverly twists scripture to support his fantasy.

First, he says several times that YHWH is never mentioned in the New testament, that "Jesus Never spoke in YHWH's name" and “Jesus never used the name YHWH.” Sorry, Paul, but the New Testament was written in Greek, not Hebrew. So you won’t see the word itself. But this claim is without merit because Jesus specifically refers to HIMSELF with that reference. We first hear the name “YHWH” in Exodus:

 Then Moses said to God, “Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I shall say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ Now they may say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?”

  And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM (Hebrew: YHWH) has sent me to you.’” And God, furthermore, said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and this is My memorial-name to all generations.

-Exodus 3:13-15

Jesus proclaims himself to be this same god in John:

The Jews said to Him, “Now we know that You have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets also; and You say, ‘If anyone keeps My word, he shall never taste of death.’ Surely You are not greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets died too; whom do You make Yourself out to be?” Jesus answered, “If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing; it is My Father who glorifies Me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God’; and you have not come to know Him, but I know Him; and if I say that I do not know Him, I shall be a liar like you, but I do know Him, and keep His word. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” The Jews therefore said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM.” - John 8:52-58

This proclamation shocked the Jews to the point here they were prepared to stone him to death for blasphemy.

Then Wallis tries to suggest that Jesus repudiated and mocked YHWH, starting with a mis-quoted passage from John 8, where Wallis tries to spin Jesus’ words to say that the Pharisees were children of YHWH and that YHWH was an evil being. An objective read of the chapter shows that wasn’t what Jesus was saying at all. He was telling the Pharisees that they’ve forgotten their heritage from Abraham and were serving the devil, thinking and claiming they were serving God/YHWH. The level of misdirection that Wallis uses in his twisting of this passage borders on Satanic.

 Wallis next tries to suggest that his words in Matt 7:9-10 (“What man among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?) are making fun of the way God treated the Israelites in Exodus. He says that the Israelites were thirsty, and YHWH gave them a rock. No, Paul, He told Moses to strike a rock, and then water flowed forth, enough to feed the multitude and their animals. He tries to equate the passage in Numbers 21:4-9 with giving a child a snake instead of a fish. No, God sent the serpents to punish the people for speaking against him. More on this theme later.

Then he makes some strange point using 2 Kings 17, which discusses the behavior of the Israelites that ended in the Babylonian Exile, to suggest that the people of Israel were worshipping other gods from their past. He shows the passage, but it’s nothing like the passage in my New American Standard Bible, which is considered the gold standard for English translations. His is some sort of condensed version and mis-states a number of things, for example his version says they were following the patterns of their ancestors, where the proper translation clearly states they were following the example of the nations that surrounded them. But it suits his narrative to mis-state that as ancestors.

He follows this by asserting that they were remembering the way Judaism used to be, not what it became after Hezekiah and Josia removed ancient writings that referred to the "Paleo contact." This is pure science fiction, without a shred of supporting evidence. No texts suggest this, which Wallis conveniently writes off that these two kings destroyed all references in an effort to reform Judaism to a YHWH based monotheism.

He then returns to his original claim that YHWH was not the God of Jesus, saying "It took awhile for the idea to bed down that Jesus really rejected and repudiated YHWH and his laws." Yeah, Paul, because it never happened. No Christian with an unbroken line of apostolic succession believes this.

Then he tries to show that Jesus repudiated the Law of YHWH the times he said, "Moses said this, but I say this." Nice try, Paul, but anyone who knows the Gospels knows that Jesus isn't replacing Mosaic teaching with these, He's not teaching something different, He's enhancing them, reinforcing them, showing the spirit of the Law, calling people to do more than the law requires because they understand the spirit of the Law.

Then Wallis overstates the decision of the Council of Jerusalem, and completely misses the implications. He puts words into the mouths of the Apostles and infers intent in the decision making process that suits his conclusions, which have no merit in history or the written record.

He then tries to equate the history of Christianity with regard to wars, enslavement, misogyny, and violence with this link to what he calls "YHWHism".  This completely ignores the fact that these are symptoms of the Christian West after the Great Schism, and a result of the scholasticism and monarchism that's the hallmark of the Roman Catholic Church and its myriad derivative Protestant offshoots.

He belabors the point with comparing the punishment that David received for counting his armies to Jesus offering is the whole cosmic realm, claiming that YHWH is a micromanaging martinet and Jesus wants to give us the universe.  Except Wallis forgets that these two things are deeply connected:  You have to have faith.

Enough of directly refuting Wallis’ nonsense.  I’ll explain why the God of Jesus, YHWH, seems to our modern sensibilities to be so strange.  First of all, you have to take to heart the words of Isaiah:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
and your ways are not My ways.”

“For as heaven is higher than earth,
so My ways are higher than your ways,
and My thoughts than your thoughts. “

             -Isaiah 55: 8-9.

Don’t try to understand why God does things, for you can no more understand it than a two year old can understand why adults do certain things.

To give you an idea of the world outside of ancient Judaism, we can look to the accounts of Herodotus and his story of Astyages and Harpagus.  Harpagus the general disobeyed his king Astyages, who a decade earlier ordered him to execute his own grandson, for whom his palace seers gave evil portent. In retaliation, Astyages acted as if he was relieved that the deed hadn’t been done, and offered to host a banquet of reconciliation.  At that banquet, he fed Harpagus the meat of his own son, whom he had butchered. This is one example of the casual barbarity that was common in the world of Abraham and Moses.  We have to be very careful, because we look at the world through the lens of a Judeo-Christian social ethos that’s so ingrained in us that we actually mistakenly believe it’s human nature. Monogamy, human rights, privacy, the value of human lives, these things are the exception in human history, not the rule, and the only reason we have them is because of the Abrahamic covenant and the Law of Moses.

When YHWH revealed himself to Moses and led the people of Israel out of Egypt, he performed many wondrous miracles, any one of which should have cemented the faith of the Israelites in Him.  But they repeatedly showed themselves to be faithless.  Shortly after leaving Egypt, Moses sent scouts into Canaan.  They all came back and all but Caleb and Joshua were dismayed.  They told Moses the cities were too big, the armies too strong, their soldiers were giants, and that they couldn’t be defeated.  Only Joshua and Caleb reported all these things, but with their faith said that through YHWH they could still take them. Moses chose caution.  YHWH saw they lacked the faith Him he required of His chosen people and condemned them to wander in the desert until everyone who had left Egypt was dead.  The New generation, who had never known Egyptian society or gods, who YHWH had fed with mana and quail all their lives, would take the Promised Land.

YHWH gave Moses the Law.  Very specific, precise instructions in nearly every aspect of life.  The purpose was to foster a new culture among the Israelites.  The penalties were severe, often capital, because the idea was that over the generations the idea of disobeying the law was so horrific that eventually the law would become second nature, that no one would even think of disobeying it, to the point where the Law would be considered human nature.

When Moses died, Joshua was to lead the invasion of Canaan, with the instruction to slaughter all of the Canaanites, even their livestock, and leave nothing. Harsh, but with a reason.  YHWH knew that to foster the culture he was trying to instill there could be no contamination with pagan outside influences.  The Israelites were to be completely insular, geographically, spiritually and culturally.

Joshua and the Israelites disobeyed.  Canaanites were spared, their livestock and temples weren’t razed to the ground.  Canaanite culture remained.  And the rest of the Old Testament is a repeating story of how that caused problems for the Israelites.  The culture of the strange religions and practices were like siren songs, leading the Israelites away from YHWH.  When they stayed faithful to YHWH’s law, they prospered.  When they strayed, they suffered. YHWH sent prophets to call them back to him, to warn them of the consequences of straying.  Stray they did, and suffer mightily they would.  Then they would repent and return to YHWH and prosper. It oscillated back and forth, to greater extremes each time, until the Scythians carried off ten of the tribes, followed by the Babylonians carrying off the remaining two tribes and destroying the Temple.

Fifty years as slaves in Babylon was a time of repentance and introspection.  Scribes and historians compiled the books of Chronicles and Kings.  Prophets instructed the people on what to do when they regained their freedom.  Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonians and restored the Jews to their land, even offering to help rebuild the Temple.

The Jews never embraced foreign gods or cultures again.  They fought a partisan war against the armies of Alexander when the Greek armies occupied Israel. And at last the culture of morality that God tried to instill was a reality. The Israelites developed a reputation of being stiff necked people who would never bow to or accept the gods of their occupiers, whether they be Greek, Persian, Egyptian or Roman.  The harsh Mosaic Law had done its job.

But there was a problem.  The Law became second nature, but the Levite enforcers of the Law became abusive autocrats in their own right.  The Law was enforced to the letter, without regard to the sprit of the Law.  Meanwhile the philosophical culture of the Greeks infused Israeli society.  They never accepted Greek gods, but they learned of Greek science, mathematics, and philosophy.  Remember, the Greek Philosopher Plato had written a work named the Timaeus, which started with logical definitions of the physical, observable world, and then through a process of logical deduction arrived at a conclusion of a monotheistic God. The Greeks had a philosophy of logical conclusion that drove their ethos.  The Jews had a rigid Law that drove theirs.  The combination of the two mingled for three hundred years, making a fertile social bed for the catalyst that would merge the two:  Jesus Christ.

Christ – YHWH incarnate – came with the Mosaic Law in one hand and Greek philosophy in the other. Take note of His teachings:  He rarely if ever issued edicts or rules.  He would teach as a Socratic, offering scenarios that forced his disciples to think about the Law and how to apply it.  Sometimes they missed His point, and he would give them another perspective or insight and ask the question in a different way until they got it. These lessons, the successes and the failures are recorded in the Gospels. The need for the rigid Mosaic law was no more: the people’s ethos was so ingrained that it was their nature, thought to be inborn.  They needed now to learn how to think about the law.

But Jesus came for the Jews. He even overtly referred to gentiles as dogs (Matt15:26). The faith shown by the gentiles, though, was even greater than that of Israel, and he embraced it.  The Jewish powerful disavowed him, He was a threat to their position, causing him to declare that the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone (Mark 12:10). 

YHWH made a covenant with Abraham, that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars and the nations of the Earth will be blessed by them (Gen 26:4).  YHWH keeps his covenant, even though the children of Israel acted like the harlot, consorting with strange cultures and idols, YHWH never broke his promise. All of the nations and cultures of the Old Testament are gone, but Israel remains. Today look at the Nobel prizes, and the many scientific achievements and innovations coming from Israel.  Without Jewish scientists, we never would have unlocked the power of the atom. It’s no wonder that Satan sows discord among the nations about Israel, and has sought to exterminate them repeatedly.  Read the prophecies of Isaiah, Ezekial and Jeremiah. If you’re not on the side of Israel, you’re on the losing side, because YHWH, the god of Abraham, Moses and Jesus, will not break His word.

If you can understand how the arborist prunes the vie to get the greatest yield, you can start to see why YHWH seemed so bloodthirsty in a very bloodthirsty age. The vine never likes to be pruned, it hurts.  That’s a lesson for society and for our personal lives.