Lecture: "From YhwꜢ Of The People To The People Of Yahweh - The Contribution of Soleb to Ancient History and Religion"
Guest Lecturer: Prof. Daniel E. Fleming, Skirball Professor of Bible and Ancient Near East, New York University, USA
HOW DID THE NAME OF A PEOPLE BECOME THE NAME OF A GOD?
The Institute of Advanced Studies is honored to welcome Prof. Daniel E. Fleming as an IAS Distinguished Scholar. Professor Fleming will deliver his lecture, "From YHWꜢ of the People to the People of Yahweh: The Contribution of Soleb to Ancient History and Religion", within the framework of the From Yahwism to Monotheism Department of Biblical Studies Research Seminar, led by Prof. Guy Darshan.
In this lecture, Professor Fleming revisits the early history of the name Yahweh in light of Egyptian evidence from 14th-century Soleb. Focusing on the Egyptian reference to YHWꜢ as a named Shasu population, he explores how the name of an inland people may have come to be identified with a god, and considers its possible connection with the biblical expression “the People of Yahweh” in the Song of Deborah (Judges 5).
View the full invitation here
COURSE DETAILS
When: Wednesday, 11 November 2026, 12:00
Where: Room 208, Rosenberg Building
Light refreshments will be served before the lecture.
The lecture will be conducted in English.
MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Professor Daniel E. Fleming is Skirball Professor of Bible and Ancient Near East and Professor with Chair in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. He is also affiliated with NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. His research focuses on the Hebrew Bible, ancient Near Eastern history and culture, and the societies of ancient Syria. His work brings together biblical studies, Assyriology, cuneiform research, and historical investigation, with particular attention to second-millennium BCE Syria, including the ancient centers of Mari and Emar. His research interests also include ancient religion and the ways in which ancient Near Eastern societies interacted and developed.
Prof. Fleming is the author of numerous books and scholarly articles, including "Democracy’s Ancient Ancestors: Mari and Early Collective Governance" (Cambridge University Press, 2004), "Time at Emar: The Cultic Calendar and the Rituals from the Diviner’s Archive" (Eisenbrauns, 2000), and "Yahweh before Israel: Glimpses of a Biblical Deity’s Early History" (Cambridge University Press, 2021). His work has made significant contributions to the study of the ancient Near East and to historical approaches to the Hebrew Bible.
FULL ABSTRACT
FROM YHWꜢ OF THE PEOPLE TO THE PEOPLE OF YAHWEH
THE CONTRIBUTION OF SOLEB TO ANCIENT HISTORY AND RELIGION
Whatever the precise history of reverence for The God “El” and for female deities in ancient Israel and early related populations, one crucial figure bore the name YHWH, perhaps to vocalize as Yahweh. Because this name was not common to the ancient Levant, the early associations and character of the god have long offered a tantalizing pursuit. For generations, one prominent explanation has been the “Midianite Hypothesis,” proposed in 1872 by Cornelis Tiele based on biblical reference to Moses in Exodus, then adapted to Albright’s identification of early poetry in Exodus 15, Judges 5, and the like, and finally to evidence discovered in Soleb and ‘Amara West in 1947.
In all probability, the oldest reference to the divine name, before its appearance in the Mesha Inscription (ca. 840), is in the Song of Deborah, especially as the umbrella for the gathered allies, as “the People of Yahweh” (‘am Yahweh), in Judges 5:13. The geography of both the Song and Mesha is more northern, and I began with doubt about a purely southern origin for the deity. Review of the Egyptian evidence from 14th-century Soleb, in Sudan, convinced me that we have missed the obvious implications of this much earlier use of the name, which I understand to be the same. In a list of major divisions among the Shasu, an Egyptian name for inland peoples dependent in part on long-distance pastoralism, Yhwȝ is a “people” in the sense of a named population and a political entity recognized by Egypt.
In Fleming, Yahweh before Israel (Cambridge 2021), I have recast the problem of Yahweh’s early character in light of what I consider to be the ground-shifting Egyptian evidence. The question becomes: How did the name for an inland Shasu people come to be identified with a god? The answer might somehow be traced through the old biblical appearance of “the People of Yahweh” in the Song of Deborah.
