No, Yahweh was not originally an Omride deity

Strawmanning, in this piece claiming that Yahweh was originally the family/tribal god of the Omride dynasty of Israel and moved southward to Judah from there.

And, stupidity in commenting, especially by the OP, from the r/academicbiblical post where I saw it .

The start of the strawmanning? How many critical scholars think Yahweh “was already the national deity in the tenth century”? I don’t. Since the name of “Abijah,” if properly translaterated into English, is “Abijam,” or אבים in Hebrew, and son Asa is אסא In Hebrew, the kingdom of Judah has no Yahweh-theophoric kings in the 10th century. 

That said, depending on how carefully one parses, Ahaz, Manessah and Amon also are not. Makes one wonder how Hezekiah got there, and, given the later corruption of the Judahite line that means Josiah likely isn’t Josiah, either, that perhaps Hezekiah isn’t Hezekiah.  It is not until Josiah that we get an uninterrupted set of Yahweh-theophoric kings.

Tis true that the last two Omride kings, brothers Ahaziah and Athaliah, are Y-theophoric, as is sister Athaliah. But? Jehoshaphat in the south preceded not only them but their father Ahab.

That said, all of this, plus the fact that Ahaziah of Judah’s reign dating, like Hezekiah’s and others, are “unstable” is an additional issue.

From there on, setting aside for now the issue of ruling names, Frevel lists seven “pillars” of reconstruction of Israelite / Judahite religion. And, really? Have half of these been held by most critical scholars in the past 30 years?

I outrightly reject 3. I’ve not heard 4 listed as a major tenet of Yahwism before. I definitely reject 5, and also see 4. I reject 6 and because of that, I reject 7. I know I am nowhere near alone, either. Frevel comes off as pushing at an open door while carrying a big mug of smug. Unfortunately, other than point 1, that Yahweh was not indigenous to Canaan, which I totally support, Frevel bases the rest of his argument on the open door of points 5-7.

Next, in talking about Yahweh coming from the south, he mentions Judges 5:4-5 and other passages, but ignores Judges 1. (That said, in English alone, Judges 1 shows how muddied the Former Prophets are. If Jerusalem was captured (then?) put to fire and sword, as in Judges 1:8, why wasn’t it held? Or, if it weren’t because tribal nomads like Mongols and Turkmen didn’t want to live in that city, why was it allowed to refortify itself so much?

Then, re Numbers 10 and Jethro? Why WOULDN’T the author, or editor, of the P passage make Jethro a Yahwist only via Moses? Next, the one paragraph, or less than that, of rejecting the Arab-Midiante etymology is bad enough without giving credence of any sort to the actual biblical proposal. Frankly, that’s a big fail right there. If you’re going to buy the biblical form of the etymology, you lost me, especially knowing that the Yawhist is a producer of epically mangled puns.

The biggest fail would be that there’s no explanation of why Ahab gave his children Y-theophoric names. In his first mention of Ahab, he says this:

All of them bear theophoric Yahwistic names for the first time in the history of Israel: Ahaziah, Joram, Athaliah. This corroborates that YHWH was the patron God of the Omrides. This is not only a new phenomenon in the biblical reflection of the Northern dynasty (Sanders 2015, 79). The father of Baasha, Ahijah (1 Kgs 15:27), and Abijah, the son of Jeroboam (1 Kgs 14:1), are special cases which cannot be discussed in this paper. In Judah Jehoshaphat is the first king to carry a Yahwistic name.

While ignoring that Jehoshaphat ruled first. It also ignores that Jehoram of Judah was likely older than Ahaziah of Israel. Of course, that sets aside the issue of either corruption of or distortion of king lists and that we should perhaps speak of only one Ahaziah and one Jehoram, but that’s a different matter entirely. After all, 2 Kings runs two different narratives about Jehoram of Israel, almost as diverse as 1 Samuel running two different narratives about whether or not Yahweh supported or opposed kingship for Israel.

Finally? As my grokking patience has worn out. Tracing the Samaritans back to this time might be a mug’s game. I think there’s nothing even semi-firm pre-Persian Empire.