Place · Land of Israel / Judea
Moab
A kingdom east of the Dead Sea, known from the Mesha Stele and the cult of Chemosh. It has no point because it represents a territory.
No verified coordinates
Statements linked to this place
Each block is a sourced statement. Click the number to see the cited page.
YHWH's earliest extrabiblical attestation appears on the ninth-century BCE Moabite Mesha Stele, where the context links him with Israel. Whether his history is older remains unknown, so scholars seek clues to his origins within biblical texts. This led to the theory that early Israelite religion was not very different from earlier Canaanite religion: Yahweh would be another name for El, with a consort Asherah, or a variant of Baal, defeating Baal's enemies and taking up residence on a sacred mountain; lesser deities would exist, overshadowed by Yahweh's superior power. A similar process occurred among neighbors in the first millennium: Ugarit acknowledged more than 200 gods in the second millennium, but Canaanite states of the first have ten or fewer; Moab coalesced around Chemosh, Edom around Qaws and Ammon around Milkom.