#Canaanite Religion

[i-love-comparative-religion]

I seriously don’t understand why more people aren’t talking more about this. I think it’s interesting!

https://academia.edu/resource/work/122323191

#AddsContext

(Academia.edu = #academic papers)

#CanaaniteReligion, #UgaritReligion, #El, #Yahweh, #polytheism, #monolatry, #monotheism, #HistoryOfReligion

[nerdy-grrl79]

The Ugaritic texts, found in Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra, Syria), date back to the late Bronze Age. They offer insights into the religion of the Canaanites, who lived at the same time as early Israelites. These texts include myths & rituals similar to those in the Bible, mentioning gods like El & Baal Hadad. For instance, Baal's story as a storm god parallels Yahweh in the Psalms, & Baal's battle with the sea god Yam is like Yahweh defeating chaotic waters. These similarities suggest biblical writers were influenced by Canaanite mythology.

[elizabeth-halime]

Asherah/Athirat/Elat = Mother goddess, queen of heaven, goddess of fertility, lady of wisdom, goddess of the seas, the creator of the gods together with the god El, queen of the gods, the one who walks on the sea, patron saint of sailors and fishermen

Athirat is a powerful Goddess, and the other Gods often ask Her to help them, or to try to influence her husband El for their good. As guardian of Wisdom, She is the one who chooses the successor of Aleyin (an aspect of Ba'al as the God of dying vegetation) and, after his death, She instructs Anat in the proper ritual necessary to ensure the fertility of the vines.

Like Ashtart, Athirat is associated with the lion. She is usually shown as a nude Goddess with curly hair covering her breasts with her hands. She is also associated with the snake, and an alternative name for Her is Chawat, which in Hebrew translates as "Hawah", or in English "Eve"; so She may well be the root of the biblical Eve. Like the Carthaginian goddess Tanit, whose name means "Serpent Lady", Athirat was represented as a palm tree or pillar with a snake coiled around her, and the name Athirat derives from a root meaning "straight".

Athirat is associated with the Tree of Life, and a famous ivory box lid of Mycenaean finish found at Ugarit, dated 1300 BC, shows it symbolically representing the Tree. She wears an elaborate skirt and jewelry, and although she is topless, her hair is delicately styled; She is smiling and in her hands holds sheaves of wheat, which she offers to a pair of goats.

[mecthology]

Hadad from Canaanite religion.

The Canaanite religion encompassed the array of ancient Semitic beliefs followed by the Canaanite people in the ancient Levant, spanning from the early Bronze Age to the first centuries CE.

Hadad's representation featured a bearded figure adorned with a bull-horned headdress, wielding a club and a thunderbolt. As the consort of Atargatis and the father of Gibil or Girra, he held sway over land and human fertility. Linked to Zeus in Greek mythology, Jupiter in Roman lore, and Teshub in Hurrian beliefs, Hadad stood as a prominent and influential deity in the ancient Near East.

Follow @mecthology for more mythology and legends.

Pic generated using AI.

Source: Wikipedia and various.

[quotesfrommyreading]

Enoch, an apocryphal text thought to be written sometime between the third century B.C. and the second century A.D., is named for the biblical Noah’s great-grandfather. One reason Langlois didn’t know much about the book was that it didn’t make it into the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament. Another is that the only complete copy to survive from antiquity was written in an ancient Ethiopic language called Ge’ez.

But beginning in the 1950s, more than 100 fragments from 11 different parchment scrolls of the Book of Enoch, written largely in Aramaic, were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. A few fragments were relatively large—15 to 20 lines of text—but most were much smaller, ranging in size from a piece of toast to a postage stamp. Someone had to transcribe, translate and annotate all this “Enochic” material—and Langlois’ teacher volunteered him. That’s how he became one of just two students in Paris learning Ge’ez.

Langlois quickly grasped the numerous parallels between Enoch and other books of the New Testament; for instance, Enoch mentions a messiah called the “son of man” who will preside over the Final Judgement. Indeed, some scholars believe Enoch was a major influence on early Christianity, and Langlois had every intention to conduct that type of historical research.

He started by transcribing the text from two small Enoch fragments, but age had made parts of it hard to read; some sections were missing entirely. In the past, scholars had tried to reconstruct missing words and identify where in the larger text these pieces belonged. But after working out his own readings, Langlois noticed the fragments seemed to come from parts of the book that were different from those specified by earlier scholars. He also wondered if their proposed readings could even fit on the fragments they purportedly came from. But how could he tell for sure?

To faithfully reconstruct the text of Enoch, he needed digital images of the scrolls—images that were crisper and more detailed than the printed copies inside the books he was relying on. That was how, in 2004, he found himself traipsing around Paris, searching for a specialized microfiche scanner to upload images to his laptop. Having done that (and lacking cash to buy Photoshop), he downloaded an open-source knockoff.

First, he individually outlined, isolated and reproduced each letter on Fragment 1 and Fragment 2, so he could move them around his screen like alphabet refrigerator magnets, to test different configurations and to create an “alphabet library” for systematic analysis of the script. Next, he began to study the handwriting. Which stroke of a given letter was inscribed first? Did the scribe lift his pen, or did he write multiple parts of a letter in a continuous gesture? Was the stroke thick or thin?

Then Langlois started filling in the blanks. Using the letters he’d collected, he tested the reconstructions proposed by scholars over the preceding decades. Yet large holes remained in the text, or words were too big to fit in the available space. The “text” of the Book of Enoch as it was widely known, in other words, was in many cases mistaken.

Take the story of a group of fallen angels who descend to earth to seduce beautiful women. Using his new technique, Langlois discovered that earlier scholars had gotten the names of some of the angels wrong, and so had not realized the names were derived from Canaanite gods worshipped in the second millennium B.C.—a clear example of the way scriptural authors integrated elements of the cultures that surrounded them into their theologies. “I didn’t consider myself a scholar,” Langlois told me. “I was just a student wondering how we could benefit from these technologies.” Eventually, Langlois wrote a 600-page book that applied his technique to the oldest known scroll of Enoch, making more than 100 “improvements,” as he calls them, to prior readings.

His next book, even more ambitious, detailed his analysis of Dead Sea Scrolls fragments containing snippets of text from the biblical Book of Joshua. From these fragments he concluded that there must be a lost version of Joshua, previously unknown to scholars and extant only in a small number of surviving fragments. Since there are thousands of authentic Dead Sea Scrolls, it appears that much still remains to be learned about the origins of early biblical texts. “Even the void is full of information,” Langlois told me.

  —  How an Unorthodox Scholar Uses Technology to Expose Biblical Forgeries

[dogstardigitalindex]

Title: YHWH had a Wife? Channel: ReligionForBreakfast (Dr. Andrew Henry) Length: 4:54

Explores a temple with evidence for worship of two deities; YHVH and his consort or wife. Inscriptions elsewhere describe YHVH and "his Asherah." Asherah is a Canaanite goddess, consort to Canaanite god El. References to "his Asherah" may be referring to a now-unknown object. Word "Asherah" appears 40 times in Bible and is usually referring to cult object and not a deity. Touches on diversity in ancient Israelite religion.

[elizabeth-halime]

I'm in love with this mythology 🩷

canaanite mythology | goddesses

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 61: Middle Ages and Much Earlier

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct grouping.

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration.

[chamberofthespirit]

Genesis: Let us make man in our image.

First commandment: Have no other gods before me.

Psalms: *talks about Yahweh being in a divine counsel*

Yahweh, El, Baal, Asherah: "Maybe monotheism was the friends we made along the way. Amen."

[yumemiyas-wips]

According to my scant, second hand knowledge of the Jewish religion (idek the proper name, don't @ me), Catholicism, and Christianity, back when Jews were nomads, way before they settled down in one place, their god Yahweh was, in two words, a vicious dickhead of a storm god, and only after they settled down in Canaan did they try to calm him down by doing the theological equivalent of murdering the real wise and kind skydaddy god, El, blessed be his name, and then have Yahweh wear his flayed skin like some sort of grotesque mask and eat the rest, and that frankly goes pretty hard. Anyways I'm SOOO co-opting that into my writing, imagine worshipping the god that killed the supreme skydaddy and ate his corpse to gain his might. That's baller.

Edit: After further study, I have concluded that Yahweh was once an aspect of Qos, a mountain, weather and war god of the Edomite people. The ancient Israelites of Canaan then did a systematic eradication of every other god in the greater Canaan religion, including such gods as El and Asherah, Yam and Lotan, Arsu and Azizos, Aglibol, Malakbel, Yahribol, Bel, and Ba'al Hadad. In their shame after the crushing of the ancient Jewish kingdom under Babylon, the Jews, jealous in the banning of sacrifices to Yahweh, later wrote into their own Bible the banning of sacrifices to all gods. But Yahweh took sacrifices, and Yahweh took sacrifices in human infants, for Yahweh was a fellow Canaanite god just like the rest of them.

Edit 2: THIS POST IS ABOUT THE PRE-JUDAISM YAHWIST CULT OF THE ANCIENT CITY STATE OF ISRAEL AND HOW IT BECAME THE MODERN CULTS. Having to add this because some fucking [REDACTED] in the comments think that literal historical facts (with added hyperbole) is antisemitic somehow. They know who they are.

[bi-numi-aliyani]

Two myths from ancient Ugarit: Anat Binds the Dragon and Ashtart the Huntress

An early eighth century BCE stamp seal discovered at Tel Hazor depicting a hero-deity slaying a seven-headed serpent. [Source: Uehlinger, Christoph. “Mastering the Seven-Headed Serpent: A Stamp Seal from Hazor Provides a Missing Link Between Cuneiform and Biblical Mythology.” Near Eastern Archaeology 87, no. 1 (March 1, 2024): 14–19. https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-258353.]

Hey folks, these are my versions of some fragmentary myths from the ancient Ugaritic corpus. A lot of what I used to fill in the blanks is based on other Ugaritic literature and I'm sure those with a lot more experience than me reading them will notice them pretty quickly.

The first text, KTU 1.83, has been subject to quite some discussion among scholars in the past. I present it here to feature 𒀭Maiden Anat's slaying of the monstrous serpent Lotan (cf. Biblical “Leviathan”) and 𒀭Yam's other cohorts as She recalls in Tablet 3 of Ba'al. I primarily used the "provisional" translation of this text provided in Religious Texts From Ugarit (2nd edition, 2002, pp. 368–69) by Nathaniel Wyatt with credit as well to Wayne T. Pitard's edition titled “The Binding of Yamm” (J. Near East. Stud. 57(4):261–80, Oct. 1998) and Simon B. Parker's translation as “The Binding of a Monster” in Ugaritic Narrative Poetry (1997, pp. 192–93).

Next is KTU 1.92, somewhat more coherently narrating a hunt of 𒀭Lady Ashtart and 𒀭Lord Ba'al's passion for Her. My interpretation of this text has some more draw from general Semitic mythology and symbolism. Wyatt (pp. 370–74) is again my main source with further reference to Baruch Margalit's interpretation of the obverse text (Part I) as “A [sic] Ugaritic Theophagy” (Aula Orientalis 7:67–80, 1989).

I hope you enjoy these take on ancient stories of the Goddesses and Gods of Canaan 💛

Anat Binds the Dragon

When Lotan, the Twisting Serpent with one lip to Heaven and one lip to Earth,

was unleashed by 𒀭Desire, Beloved of 𒀭El, the 𒀭Rogue, the Bullock of 𒀭El,

by 𒀭Fire, the Bitch of 𒀭El, 𒀭Flame, Daughter of 𒀭El,

they came out from the Arsa;

with its fangs it thrashed the Sea to foam,

with its forked tongue it kissed the Heavens,

with its forked tail it thrashed the Sea to foam.

𒀭Anat snared the Dragon on high,

She bound it in the heights of Lebanon.

Towards the desert shall You be scattered, O 𒀭Yam!

To the multitudes shall You be crushed, O 𒀭Nahar!

You shall not see: You shall foam up!

𒀭Anat will destroy You, O 𒀭Yam, Beloved of 𒀭El,

slay You, O 𒀭Nahar, the Great God.

She snared the Dragon and vanquished it,

destroyed the Writhing Serpent, the Tyrant of Seven Heads;

She destroys 𒀭Desire, Beloved of 𒀭El,

annihilates the 𒀭Rogue, the Bullock of 𒀭El;

She destroys 𒀭Fire, the Bitch of 𒀭El,

slays 𒀭Flame, Daughter of 𒀭El;

𒀭Batulatu-Anat battles for the Silver,

She takes possession of the Gold.

Ashtart the Huntress

Scribal note: Of Thabil

Part I. “The Hunt of Ashtart”

 𒀭Ashtart went out on a hunt,

 She went out into the wild grazeland.

 She polished the tip of Her Spear,

 the Stars and the Crescent of the Moon favored Her bounty.

 And behold! The hills began to shake,

 the abysmal waters boiled up,

 as a herd of antelope dashed off to the Marsh,

 the swamp where buffalo graze.

 She unsheathed Her Spear.

 𒀭Ashtart sat and hid in the Marsh,

 at Her right She placed Her Dog Crusher,

 at Her left Boomer.

 She lifted up Her Eyes and looked:

 a drowsing Hind She espied,

 a Bull eating in the pond She saw!

 Her Spear She grasped in Her Hand,

 Her Lance in Her Right Hand.

 She hurled the Spear at the Bull;

 She felled 𒀭Ba'al, Servant of 𒀭El.

 As She went home She thought:

 She would feed Him to 𒀭El the Bull, Her Father,

 She would feed Him to the Sons of 𒀭Athirat for dinner.

 She would feed Him to 𒀭Yarikh's indomitable gullet,

 She would serve the dinner to 𒀭Kothar-wa-Khasis, 𒀭Heyan the Skillful Craftsman.

 Thereafter, when 𒀭Ashtart arrived at Her House,

 She set away Her Implements of the Hunt.

Part II. “Ba'al and Ashtart”

 𒀭Ashtart asked after the Guardian of the Vineyard

 for She sought 𒀭El the Bull, Her Father, Master of the Vineyard.

 Clad in a Veil of Linen,

 donning an Aegis of Cypress, Lady 𒀭Ashtart,

 the Kilt She wore catching the Splendor of the Male Stars,

 Her Sash the Magnificence of the Female Stars.

 Once the Maiden had changed,

 𒀭Ba'al longed after Her;

 the Valiant One wondered of Her Beauty!

 𒀭Aliyan-Ba'al desired to know Her by heart.

 He was glad to see Lady 𒀭Ashtart, but She was frightened by the Son of 𒀭Dagan.

 He heard Her cry peal across the Valley and the Coast,

 past the Two Surs, beyond Sidon and Gebal,

 echoing off Caphtor and Keilah,

 Sapon and Nanaya brought low, Lalu and Inbubu brought high,

 She lifted up Her Voice to the Guardian of the Vineyard,

𒀭Ba'al-Hadad called out:

 “Seventy-seven times You have caught My Eye,

 “eighty-eight pierced My Heart!”

But the Guardian answered Him:

 “The City is guarded against Your Flesh.

 “Do not return to the Court of the Sons of 𒀭El!”

 Thereafter, 𒀭Ba'al went up to Sapon, His Holy Stronghold,

 crushed the Heart of 𒀭Ba'al-Zebul for want of the comfort of the living.

 But lo! His Eyes lit up, He beheld His Lady with vessels of wine,

 𒀭Ashtart the Heifer made feast with the Rider on the Clouds,

 a supper of honeycomb and wine and all kinds of fish;

 She opened the City Gates for 𒀭Aliyan-Ba'al,

 Standard raised in triumph for the Rider on the Clouds.

[i-love-comparative-religion]

[nogetron]

El, the original Semitic creator god. An omnipotent creator, all things emerged from his hands. With Reality bending around his fingers, El is the highest authority across the pantheon, Even greater than the king of the gods Baal. The specifics on how El created the universe is still a mystery, but it is believed that he created the cosmos from the nothingness around him. After creation, El investigated the seas of Chaos that flowed from him, among the waves bobbed the heads of two women, that of Asherah and Raḥmayyu. Curious, El took them home and began cooking a bird, he asked them that once the bird was done if they could call to him as either father or husband, whichever one they picked he would behave as such, once the bird was done they called to him as husband. The following intimate night resulted in the birth of Shachar and Shalim, the gods of Dusk and Dawn. From his coupling with his two wives the pantheon of Canaan was born. Baal, Mot, Yam, Astarte, Anat, all of them came from the light of El. El oversaw and organized the race for the throne of the king of the gods, a competition in which his children could campaign to be bestowed the throne by El. During the race, the sea god Yam gained much influence, with him having the favor of El’s wife Asherah. However, during a gathering of the pantheon, Yam insults the entire pantheon including his own father El. But following a duel with Baal, Yam is defeated and forced to pull out of the race, leaving Baal to be crowned the king of the gods. With the help of Asherah, Baal is able to convince El to authorize the construction of a palace. However during a feast ushered by the newly appointed Baal, the death god Mot consumes him. El joins the universe in grieving the loss of his son. Despite being in the throes of grief, El dreams that Baal is still alive. Elated, El sends the sun goddess Shapsh to rescue his son. After his return Baal once again begins combat with Mot, that is until El steps in, threatening Mot that if he continues he’d annihilate him, causing Mot to back down. In a separate myth, during a feast of the gods, El gets outrageously drunk, but is ultimately healed.

El was an incredibly important deity, it cannot be understated just how important he was. His worship evolved and transmitted into many different gods, the Syrian Dagan, the Mesopotamian Anu Enlil and Marduk, the Hurrian Kumarbi, and his Hittite form Elkunirsa. El also corresponds to the Chinese Shangdi, the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda, and the Slavic Rod and Svarog, with some of these gods possibly developing out of El. The Egyptian Ptah also has traces of El within his worship, as both share the epithet of “Eternal”, however among the Egyptians Kothar-wa-khasis was supposed to be cognate with Ptah. The most important theological relation El holds is his connection to the modern Abrahamic God, as El is the direct originator of the Deity. Originally Known as Yhwh, this deity originated as the Israeli form of El, similar to how Dagan was the Syrian form of the god. Yhwh was a divine warrior god married to Asherah, with their children being the other Canaan gods like Baal and Astarte, all these deities held divine messengers known as Malak. Yhwh was the foremost worshipped deity in ancient Israel, with the vast majority of prayer being offered to them. However during the subjugation of Israel under Babylon, the monotheistic Yhwh emerged as a form of resistance against their Babylonian rulers. The deities of Canaan were demonized and absorbed into Yhwh and his Malak, who became the angels of Abrahamic faith. The naming scheme of angels keeps their relation with El, as seen in Raphael the oldest name among the angels. The modern God shares many of their other titles with El, including El Shaddai, Elohim (the term referring to the Canaanite pantheon meaning “the children of El), and El Elyon. Phoenicia also held Canaan’s gods and myths, including El. However due to being conquered by the Greeks, Phoenicia was forced to Hellenize their culture, with it essentially becoming Greek mythology with a Canaanite coat of paint. This is seen most prominently in their recorded creation myth, in which El wasn’t the creator or original god, but rather the son of the sky and earth who in turn were created by El Elyon, which was originally a name for El himself. El is later deposed by Baal, obviously this myth is heavily based on the greek theogony, with El taking the place of Chronus and Baal with Zeus. My personal theory on the origin of El is that he may have developed from the African creator gods, like Ra, Nyame, Amma, and even possibly Zanahary. El held many titles, such as “the bull god”, “Creator of creatures”, “the gracious one”, “father of the gods” and “father of man”. In many god lists from ancient Canaan, El is preceded by Ilib, a character not mentioned in any other texts. Ilib’s placement has led to the idea that it was possibly a forerunner deity to El, however no other texts support this, and the belief that El was the original deity contradicts this. Ilib is used as a term to refer to dead ancestors in Canaan, so most likely the Ilib in the god lists refers to the familial dead ancestors. The word El is used as a term to denote a deity in Canaanite language, evolving from Il, in texts however El himself is distinguished from this word by using ha El meaning “the great El”.

[elizabeth-halime]

Baal/Bael/Ba'al = It is a title meaning "lord" or "master", There were many local Baals. The greatest, known as the “Great Baal”, is Son of the Father of the Gods, El, and Brother of the God of the seas and rivers, Yam-Nahar. Baal, known as “Knight of the Clouds”, is a God of fertility who represents the beneficial aspects of water such as rain. His lightning and thunder represent his Power, and the fertile land his beneficence.

[baalsblade]

So who is Baal?

Baal or Baʻal, was a title and honorific meaning 'owner', 'lord' in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity.

Baal is a God of fertility, weather, rain, wind, lightning, seasons, war, sailors and so on.

Baal worship is also called Baalism.

Solid cast bronze of a votive figurine representing the god Baal discovered at Tel Megiddo, dating to the mid-2nd millennium BC.

His holy symbols are bull, ram and thunderbolt.

Baal was worshipped in ancient Syria, especially Halab, near, around and at Ugarit, Canaan, North Africa and Middle Kingdom of Egypt.

Baʿal is well-attested in surviving inscriptions and was popular in theophoric names throughout the Levant but he is usually mentioned along with other gods, "his own field of action being seldom defined". Nonetheless, Ugaritic records show him as a weather god, with particular power over lightning, wind, rain, and fertility. The dry summers of the area were explained as Baʿal's time in the underworld and his return in autumn was said to cause the storms which revived the land. Thus, the worship of Baʿal in Canaan—where he eventually supplanted El as the leader of the gods and patron of kingship—was connected to the regions' dependence on rainfall for its agriculture, unlike Egypt and Mesopotamia, which focused on irrigation from their major rivers. Anxiety about the availability of water for crops and trees increased the importance of his cult, which focused attention on his role as a rain god. He was also called upon during battle, showing that he was thought to intervene actively in the world of man, unlike the more aloof El. The Lebanese city of Baalbeck was named after Baal.

The Baʿal of Ugarit was the epithet of Hadad but as the time passed, the epithet became the god's name while Hadad became the epithet. Baʿal was usually said to be the son of Dagan, but appears as one of the sons of El in Ugaritic sources. Both Baʿal and El were associated with the bull in Ugaritic texts, as it symbolized both strength and fertility. He held special enmity against snakes, both on their own and as representatives of Yammu (lit. "Sea"), the Canaanite sea god and river god. He fought the Tannin (Tunnanu), the "Twisted Serpent" (Bṭn ʿqltn), "Lotan the Fugitive Serpent" (Ltn Bṭn Brḥ, the biblical Leviathan), and the "Mighty One with Seven Heads" (Šlyṭ D.šbʿt Rašm). Baʿal's conflict with Yammu is now generally regarded as the prototype of the vision recorded in the 7th chapter of the biblicalBook of Daniel. As vanquisher of the sea, Baʿal was regarded by the Canaanites and Phoenicians as the patron of sailors and sea-going merchants. As vanquisher of Mot, the Canaanite death god, he was known as Baʿal Rāpiʾuma (Bʿl Rpu) and regarded as the leader of the Rephaim (Rpum), the ancestral spirits, particularly those of ruling dynasties.

From Canaan, worship of Baʿal spread to Egypt by the Middle Kingdom and throughout the Mediterranean following the waves of Phoenician colonization in the early 1st millennium BCE. He was described with diverse epithets and, before Ugarit was rediscovered, it was supposed that these referred to distinct local gods. However, as explained by Day, the texts at Ugarit revealed that they were considered "local manifestations of this particular deity, analogous to the local manifestations of the Virgin Mary in the Roman Catholic Church". In those inscriptions, he is frequently described as "Victorious Baʿal" (Aliyn or ẢlỈyn Baʿal), "Mightiest one" (Aliy or ʿAly) or "Mightiest of the Heroes" (Aliy Qrdm), "The Powerful One" (Dmrn), and in his role as patron of the city "Baʿal of Ugarit" (Baʿal Ugarit). As Baʿal Zaphon (Baʿal Ṣapunu), he was particularly associated with his palace atop Jebel Aqra (the ancient Mount Ṣapānu and classical Mons Casius). He is also mentioned as "Winged Baʿal" (Bʿl Knp) and "Baʿal of the Arrows" (Bʿl Ḥẓ). Phoenician and Aramaic inscriptions describe "Baʿal of the Mace" (Bʿl Krntryš), "Baʿal of the Lebanon" (Bʿl Lbnn), "Baʿal of Sidon" (Bʿl Ṣdn), Bʿl Ṣmd, "Baʿal of the Heavens" (Baʿal Shamem or Shamayin), Baʿal ʾAddir (Bʿl ʾdr), Baʿal Hammon (Baʿal Ḥamon), Bʿl Mgnm.

The epithet Hammon is obscure. Most often, it is connected with the NW Semitic ḥammān ("brazier") and associated with a role as a sun god. Renan and Gibson linked it to Hammon (modern Umm el-‘Amed between Tyre in Lebanon and Acre in Israel) and Cross and Lipiński to Haman or Khamōn, the classical Mount Amanus and modern Nur Mountains, which separate northern Syria from southeastern Cilicia.

The major source of our direct knowledge of this Canaanite deity comes from the Ras Shamra tablets, discovered in northern Syria in 1958, which record fragments of a mythological story known to scholars as the Baal Cycle. Here, he earns his position as the champion and ruler of the gods. The fragmentary text seems to indicate a feud between him and his father El as background. El chooses the fearsome sea god Yam to reign as king of the gods. Yam rules harshly, and the other deities cry out to Ashera, called Lady of the Sea, to aid. Ashera offers herself as a sacrifice if Yam will ease his grip on her children. He agrees, but Baal opposes such a scheme and boldly declares he will defeat Yam even though El declares that he must subject himself to Yam.

With the aid of magical weapons given to him by the divine craftsman Kothar-wa-Khasis, Baal defeats Yam and is declared victorious. He then builds a house on Mount Saphon, today known as Jebel al-Aqra. (This mountain, 1780 meters high, stands only 15 km north of the site of Ugarit, clearly visible from the city itself.)

Lo, also it is the time of His rain. Baal sets the season, And gives forth His voice from the clouds. He flashes lightning to the earth. As a house of cedars let Him complete it, Or a house of bricks let Him erect it! Let it be told to Aliyan Baal: 'The mountains will bring Thee much silver. The hills, the choicest of gold; The mines will bring Thee precious stones, And build a house of silver and gold. A house of lapis gems!'

However, the god of the underworld, Mot, soon lures Baal to his death, spelling ruin for the land. His sister Anat retrieves his body and begs Mot to revive him. When her pleas are rebuffed, Anat assaults Mot, ripping him to pieces and scattering his remains like fertilizer over the fields.

El, in the meantime, has had a dream in which fertility returned to the land, suggesting that Baal was not indeed dead. Eventually he is restored. However, Mot too has revived and mounts a new attack against him.

They shake each other like Gemar-beasts, Mavet [Mot] is strong, Baal is strong. They gore each other like buffaloes, Mavet is strong, Baal is strong. They bite like serpents, Mavet is strong, Baal is strong. They kick like racing beasts, Mavet is down. Baal is down.

After this titanic battle, neither side has completely prevailed. Knowing that the other gods now support Baal and fearing El's wrath, Mot finally bows before him, leaving him in possession of the land and the undisputed regent of the gods.

Baal is thus the archetypal fertility deity. His death signals drought and his resurrection, and brings both rain and new life. He is also the vanquisher of death. His role as a maker of rain would be particularly important in the relatively arid area of Palestine, where no mighty river such as the Euphrates or the Nile existed.

[alpaca-clouds]

Mythologic Geekery: Ba'al

Given that I now have the theory that he might play into Nocturne - and the fact I wanted to speak about Abrahamitic and Semitic mythology this and next week either way... LET ME TALK BA'AL!

So, first things first: Ba'al originally was a title within several of the semitic languages, being best translated with "Lord". So several male gods used the honorific over the time. But within both Babylon and also the Canaanite culture the name became mostly associated with the god Hadad. (While the Phoenicians associated the name with El(ohim) - but I am gonna talk about Elohim next week and he is a bit different, because he never became a demon.)

Hadad was a good mainly of weather (especially storms) and of fertility, being associated with the harvest and agriculture in general. Statues of Hadad were also used in fertility rituals.

From Ba'al Hadad came Ba'al as a god on his own. And while he was usually not the head god of a pantheon, he very much fulfilled the same role as Zeus in the pantheon. Being association with weather and these things. Interesting enough he had also a reverse version of the same kinda myth like Persephone associated with him: According to this myth the hot and dry summer months were the time of the year he was forced to live in the underworld.

What happened, though, with the Hebrew culture was that YHW subsumed the same role within the pantheon that Ba'al originally fulfilled. So he basically took that role and on the longterm subplanted Ba'al. And when the Abrahamitic culture turned towards Monotheism around YHW, Ba'al first became one of the false idols. Those idols that the folks prayed to in the desert while Moses was on the mountain. (Also Ba'al was among the idols people in Mekka prayed too that Mohammed then worked against.)

So, when Judaism took of they used Ba'al to build out their demonology. Now, again, Ba'al is technically a title, but a lot of people do agree that the fact that the demon got called Ba'al Zebub (Lord of Flies) was for the reason that Ba'al was the god they were trying to subplant.

Now technically Ba'al Zebub also references another god (Ekron). Now, the role of Ba'al Zebub (or how you might more easily recognize the name: Beelzebub). Within early Judaist sources Ba'al Zebub is mostly associated with death and sickness. Hence also the name: Lord of Flies.

As mythology shifts over time, by the time of the Testament of Solomon Ba'al Zebub was called "the Prince of Demons", who also was said to once have been an angel who rebelled against God for which he was cast into hell. And yes, if you think about Luzifer here: This was probably the source for that. I will talk more about Luzifer next week.

And then came Christianity. While within the gospels Ba'al Zebub was still in the same role of "prince of demon", later Christian theology started to decide that he and Satan were the same character. Something that happened around the same time that Satan became seen as more and more "evil" (something he is not within the original Hebrew mythology). And the Christian theology turned Ba'al Zebub into Beelzebub, as which we still have him around to this day.