Note 687 — Chapter IX · PROPHETISM AND THE JAHVEH-RELIGION.

With respect to the originality and the specifically Hebrew character of the notion of Jahveh, I consider the most correct assertion yet made to be what Ewald declared in reference to the alleged Phenician Divine name Jah; for when we examine the passages and the data on which Movers’ and Bunsen’s opposite view is based, their apocryphal nature strikes us at the first glance. This is especially true (to mention one case only) of the passage of Lydus, De mens. IV. 38. 14: Οἱ Χαλδαῖοι τὸν θεὸν ΙΑΩ λέγουσιν ... τῇ Φοινίκων γλώσσῃ καὶ ΣΑΒΑΩΘ δὲ πολλαχοῦ λέγεται κτλ (See Bunsen, Egypt’s Place in Universal History, vol. IV. p. 193). As to the occurrence of the name Jahveh in the Assyrian theology there is not yet sufficient certainty. Eberhard Schrader, who refers to it, imagines the name to be borrowed from the Hebrew (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, p. 4).