On the Assumption of a Purely Naturalistic Origin of YHWH and Israelite Religion in Scholarship since the 19th-century

  

Going back to the 19th century, scholars observed that if Israel had an origin, its God must as well. In particular, the divine name peculiar to Israel, written with the consonants Yhwh, must have come from outside this people, and the only question was where. (Daniel E. Fleming, Yahweh Before Israel: Glimpses of History in a Divine Name [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021], 1, emphasis added)