"Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God" by Robert D. Miller II - A Review
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Note: This was originally a Twitter thread, which you can find here.
First, thanks to @doofgeek4011 for posting a link to a pdf of the book. It's been on my list to read but probably never would have gotten around to it, but hey, since it was free, I had to ;)
It's a dry read but interesting nonetheless. If you want to save yourself time, just read the last two chapters which have the most value imo. There are no slam dunks about the origin of Yahweh but the evidence is exhaustive and Miller makes a good case for a Midianite-Kenite origin. However, I think he takes the Bible too much at face value.
For example, he talks about smiths being known as healers in the ancient world and therefore, that's why Sisera went to Jael's tent, the wife of a Kenite (smith). But, as I point out in my series on the Northern Book of Judges, "entering Jael's tent" was a sexual euphemism along with "tent peg", "between her feet" and others. So making Jael the wife of a Kenite, who were at least semi-nomadic, the Biblical author moves the tent euphemism away from sexual connotations and towards a literal interpretation. Furthermore, it was unusual for a Kenite to be that far north, and the Biblical author has to point out that Jael's husband broke away from the Kenites to justify the northern location.
I also question whether we should connect the Kenites to the Midianites. Almost all instances of Kenites in the Bible seem to be trying to convince the reader that they were part of the Midianites, which is a typical tell of Biblical propaganda. So who were the Kenites then? If I had to guess, I'd say they are linked to the Amalekites since the Biblical author has to explain how it was they came out from them in 1 Sam 15.
However, I might replace one nomadic tribe(Kenites) with another (Levites). The Levites had no inheritance of the land, were not counted in the census and fought against the rest of the Israelites. This could all be explained if they were originally a nomadic tribe that was later assimilated into the family of Jacob.
Speaking of which: I've been rethinking the Elohist as an oral tradition that was manipulated by the Yahwist, instead of a stand alone source. This is primarily because I see the propaganda of the Yahwist too intertwined with the Elohist. One example is that the Jacob and Esau narrative seems to be wholly an injection by the Yahwist imo. This perspective could have an impact on the origins of Yahweh if Moses is also an injection by the Yahwist. In my Elohist series, I proposed that, in the original narrative, Moses was a Midianite and he did not lead the Israelites out of Egypt. If that's true, then we could have a direct connection of Yahweh from Midian to Israel via the Yahwist.