God's Real Name Isn't in Your Bible

Abraham prayed to El Shaddai. Moses encountered a burning bush revealing the personal name YHWH. Solomon built a temple for a national God who allegedly lived in a cloud of thick darkness. If you line up every description of God in the early books of the Hebrew Bible, you don't get a single, consistent character. The God of the patriarchs looks and acts like a local Canaanite mountain deity, while the God of the Exodus is a fiery desert warrior who leads armies into battle. Today, we're tracking the dramatic evolution of Israel's God from a localized tribal storm deity sharing a crowded pantheon into the universal, singular creator of the universe.