Yahweh
Yahweh was an ancient Levantine deity who was venerated in Israel and Judah. Though no consensus exists regarding his origins, scholars generally contend that he is associated with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman, and later with Canaan. His worship reaches back to at least the Early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age, if not somewhat earlier.
In the oldest examples of biblical literature, Yahweh possesses attributes that were typically ascribed to deities of weather and war, fructifying the Land of Israel and leading a heavenly army against the nation's enemies. The early Israelites may have leaned towards polytheistic practices that were otherwise common across ancient Semitic religion, as their worship apparently included a variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses, such as El, Asherah, and Baal.
In later centuries, El and Yahweh became conflated, and El-linked epithets, such as ʾĒl Šadday (אֵל שַׁדַּי), came to be applied to Yahweh alone. Some scholars believe that El and Yahweh were always conflated. Characteristics of other deities, such as Asherah and Baal, were also selectively "absorbed" in conceptions of Yahweh.
Over time, the existence of other deities was denied outright, and Yahweh was proclaimed the creator deity and the sole divinity to be worthy of worship. During the Second Temple period, openly speaking the name of Yahweh in public became regarded as a religious taboo, and Jews instead began to substitute other Hebrew words, primarily ăḏōnāy (אֲדֹנָי, lit. 'My Lords'). By the time of the Jewish–Roman wars—namely following the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the concomitant destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE—the original pronunciation of Yahweh's name was forgotten entirely.
Additionally, Yahweh is invoked in the Aramaic-language Papyrus Amherst 63 from ancient Egypt, and also in Jewish or Jewish-influenced Greco-Egyptian magical texts from the 1st to 5th centuries CE.
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