The title ʿElyōn is a common topic of scholarly debate, sometimes interpreted as equal to the Abrahamic God, and otherwise theorized as a reference to a separate deity of its own kind, potentially above that of Yahweh.
Outside of biblical context, the term also has mundane uses, such as "upper" (where the ending in both roots is a locative, not superlative or comparative), "top", or "uppermost", referring simply to the position of objects (e.g. applied to a basket in Genesis 40:17 or to a chamber in Ezekiel 42:5).
The compound name ʼĒl ʻElyōn 'God Most High' occurs in Genesis 14:18–20 as the God whose priest was Melchizedek, king of Salem.
In this verse the name of God also occurs in apposition to ʼĒl ʻElyōn in the Masoretic Text but is absent in the Samaritan version, in the Septuagint translation, and in Symmachus.
[2] The phrasing in Genesis resembles a retelling of Canaanite religious traditions in Philo of Byblos's account of Phoenician history, in which ʻElyōn was the progenitor of Ouranos ("Sky") and Gaia ("Earth").
According to Heiser, it also raises the question on why the Deuteronomists would be so careless to introduce this error, especially a few verses later, and why they didn't quickly remove them as 'intolerant monotheists'.
[7] The most controversial of these uses outside the Bible is in the earliest of three Aramaic treaty inscriptions found at al-Safirah 16 miles (26 km) southeast of Aleppo.
Sanchuniathon tells only: In their time is born a certain Elioun called "the Most High," and a female named Beruth, and these dwelt in the neighbourhood of Byblos.