Judaism
Canaanite Religion
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Saturday, 25 February 2006
Syncretism Gone Mad!
The paucity of archaeological remains from the Hill Country of Palestine confirm the picture underlying the bible stories—the practices of the small population that lived there were the same as their neighbours. The accessible gods were called Baal, meaning Lord, just as Yehouah is habitually called and actually translated as Lord (Yehouah Elohim, Lord God). The Persians admitted one god only and eventually Yehouah prevailed, but it seems that bodies of people for some time preferred other gods, notably El (Elohim). Each locality also had a deity known by the general name of Baal, whose power was limited to the place in which he was worshipped. Yehouah seems to have have been one of the Canaanite Baals. W David Stacey (Groundwork of Biblical Studies, 1979) writes that the theme throughout the Old Testament is that Yehouah, the God of Israel, implacably opposes Baal, the god of Canaan:
So fierce is the language (see, for example, Dt 7:1-6), that one can only think of the opposition in terms of a holy war. Israel’s mission under Yahweh was to wipe the Canaanites and their religion from the face of the earth.
The Persian settlers in Yehud were Juddin, they had a god acceptable to the Persians, but the Canaanites were depicted in the Jewish scriptures as being worhippers of daeva gods, unnacceptable ones. The Canaanite title for their son of god, Baal, was villified by the “restorers” as the name of all false gods, whatever their real name, Hadad, Eshmun, Dagan, Milcom or whatever, and that is what we find in the bible. In Roman times, there were in Africa and Spain many dedications to the “Genius municipii”. As most of the places where these inscriptions have been found had formerly been settlements of the Phœnicians, the worship of the local Baal of the Phœnicians seems to have continued in the West under the Roman name of “Genius municipii”.
Since the people of the Palestinian hills were Canaanites, as were the Phœnicians further north, some basis for the categorization of the Canaanite gods as daevas, must have arisen. Cyrus took over the Babylonian empire as a whole, and there is no reason that history has revealed for the Canaanites to have been regarded as worshippers of unacceptable gods. The criterion was whether the people resisted the conquest or not. The Babylonians had not resisted, and Cyrus had taken the hand of Marduk in a symbolic acceptance of him as a good god, and of the god’s approval of Cyrus as his chosen ruler of the land. The bible has the same metaphor of approval. The Babylonians worshipped an acceptable god and so did the Jews. Both were Juddin, but the difference is that the Jews were only retrospectively so, having been sent in over a century later by Darius. The natives of Canaan had by then lost their status of Juddin and had been classified as daeva worshippers, and that is how they are depicted in the bible.
What had caused the change? Well, we know that there was an Egyptian revolt in the middle of the fifth century, and the people of the long term Egyptian colony of Palestine most likely supported them against the Persians. Then, only a few decades after the temple state had been set up in Jerusalem, the Phœnician cities rebelled, and they too lost any consideration as Juddin. The only way they could recover it was by adopting the religion of Yehouah, that of the temple state, the people of whom had been appointed a nation of priests. Thus it was that the Jewish scriptures began with the Canaanites depicted as wicked, as daeva worshippers would be, but the priests of Yehud were Juddin, acceptable to the Persians. The local people were only accepted under the terms of the Jews. They wanted to help set up the temple, but were refused because the religion of the colonists, although nominally of a Canaanite god, was a different religion. They had to accept the new religion to become acceptable. To remain worshipping Canaanite Baals was not acceptable.
These Canaanite gods get mentioned often in the Jewish scriptures—the god Baal (89 times), the goddess Asherah (40), the goddess Ashtoreth (10). Yehouah is Himself a Canaanite god (Yaw), and El (Ilu) seems to have been replaced in the Jewish scriptures by his own divine council of gods, because the word which appears most often meaning God (El) is “gods” (Elohim). Athirat (Asherah) is the consort of El, and the “mother of the gods” or “procreatress of the gods”. She is also “Lady Athirat of the sea” and Qadesh, the Holy One.
Claude F A Schaeffer’s work at Ugarit, on the northern coast, revealed a civilization of the thirteenth century BC closely similar to that in Palestine. The Ras Shamra tablets found there describe a complicated Canaanite mythology written in an alphabetic cuneiform that the Phœnicians replaced by an alphabet suitable for writing on parchment rather than clay, inventing the western alphabet.
But the Italian scholar, Mario Liverani, thinks the Ugaritic myths are too early to be directly ancestral to the bible, composed a millennium later. Some believers, and even scholars persist in thinking parts of the bible are as old as the beginning of the first millennium. It is no longer at all likely.
El is such an old god, and one who was a god of so many small states which never united, but which were often under the influence of weightier neighbours, that he can be given the additional title, “the Syncretistic God”. He has the characteristics of so many of his sons (other gods) that he is a genuinely universal god, indeed to such an extent that his name came to mean God. For this reason, El was a god of many titles—“Bull El”, “Creator of creatures”, “Father of the gods”, “Father of men”, “Creator eternal”, “Your patriarch”, “King”, “Father of years”, “El the warrior”.
El, simply means God, and the word for gods which, in the scriptures, appears most often for God is “elohim” which means “gods!” His wife was Asherat Yam, “Our Lady of the Sea”, a mother goddess. The most important sons of El at Ugarit were Baal Haddad, Yaw and Mot, reminiscent of Zeus, Oceanos (or Poseidon, Neptune) and Thanatos (or Hades, Pluto) respectively. Baal means “Lord” and Baalat means “Lady.” In Byblos, Asherat was Baalat, “Our Lady.”
Adon also means “Lord”. The singular form of Adonai is Adoni (“my lord”). It was used by the Phœnicians for the pagan god Tammuz, and is the origin of the Greek name Adonis. Adoni may also be written in the plural form, as is elohim, to show that one God embodied all the gods worshipped concurrently. Milk means “king.”
Dagan was a corn god, not a merman, though possibly represented in that way because he was a type of Ea, a god of fresh water to make the corn grow. Ea was the Babylonian god, earlier known as Enki by the Sumerians, though Ea is itself a Sumerian word written with the glyphs for house (E) and water (A). Ea was the god of water, often depicted with streams of water emanating from his shoulders, and therefore life and growth. He is the lord of the Apsu, the fresh water ocean supporting the ark of the earth. Ea is judged therefore to mean Lord of the world beneath the sky. He is not the god of the sky, that is Anu, nor is he god of the nether world, Aralu. His symbols included a goat and a fish, standing for earth and water, which later combined into a single beast, the zodiacal signs representing the rainy season around the winter solstice, the months being Capricorn, the Water Carrier, and the Fish.
Ea was regarded as the protector and teacher of mankind. He was essentially a god of civilization, and the creator and protecter of man, and of the world in general. The Ea cult at Eridu and that of Marduk are linked by their sanctuaries at Babylon and Eridu having the same name, Esagila, and Marduk being a son of Ea, who abdicated his power in his favour. Hymns to Marduk have curious similarities to those of Ea, attributable to the transfer of the focus of the Ea cult to Marduk.
The Canaanite writer, Sakkun-yathon (Sanchuniathon, Gift of Sakkun), whose works survive only in the use Eusebius makes of the version of them transcribed by Philo of Byblus, makes his El (Graecized to Elus) equivalent to Kronos, the son of Sky and Earth, who are children of Elyon, the Most High. El’s brothers are Bethel (like the Egyptian Ben-Ben stone, a sacred stone) and Dagan, and his sister Ashtart (Ishtar), though he had other brothers and sisters too. El fathers a daughter whom Sakkun-yathon identifes with Persephone (Ishtar again?) a dying goddess, and another identified with Athene, probably the Canaanite goddess Anath.
Baal Haddad (Akkadian, Adad), was often simply called Baal (Lord) perhaps because his name was considered too sacred to utter. He was also a horned god with a thunderbolt called Raman (Rimmon, thunderer), showing he was a meteorological god of the sky causing storms, thunder and lightning and rain, and so was a fertility god, rain being seen as divine semen, fertilising the earth mother. Another name is Aliyan Baal, “the Lord Almighty”, where Aliyan, like El is the same root as the Moslem Allah. Rain brought life, and so Haddad was a saviour, a bringer and saver of life, a fertility god, and god of agriculture. If the rain failed, there was drought, starvation, famine and death. The temple to Baal at Ugarit and the one nearby to Dagan both consisted of an inner sanctum and an outer one opening on to a courtyard with an altar, just like the description of the Jerusalem temple. Anath is the sister and apparently the consort of Baal. The Baal cycle has Baal Haddad living on Mount Zephon (Sapan) near Ugarit, so references to Baal Zephon in old inscriptions and texts, and the Jewish scriptures, mean Haddad.
The Anat and Baal fertility myth was echoed throughout the ancient Near East as Venus and Adonis, Isis and Osiris, Ishtar and Tammuz, and as Astarte and Esmmun at Sidon. The Phœnician goddess was Astarte, the Israelite Ashtoreth, known in Carthage as Tanit, though the appearance of the word might suggest Anat as the source. “Astart” appears often as part of a girl’s name but Tanit never does. Perhaps Astarte and Anat had merged their characteristics. Astarte had acquired the characteristics of a Great Mother, so might well have taken on Anat’s too, and indeed must have in Sidon at least. Tanit was once thought little known in the east, but excavations have shown otherwise. The goddess is often depicted as a triangle or cone shape, and such cones of the third century BC with the triangular image of Tanit, also weights carrying her image, and even Greek styled lamps with it have been found at Beit Jibrin in southern Palestine.
The god of Tyre was “ha Melkart” which simply means “the king of the city”, and he is also given the title Baal so that he is “Baal Melkart”. A large effigy of him was solemnly burned every year. Josephus speaks of a festival at Tyre called the “Awakening of Hercules”. Melkart was the equivalent of Hercules who immolated himself on a funeral pyre, and ascended in a cloud to heaven. From Tyre the Phœnicians, the great colonists and navigators, took Melkart over the seas to their colonies like Carthage, where it is found in Carthaginian names like Hamilcar. Carthage sent special envoys to the celebration in the mother-city every year. As far away on the coast of Spain, at Gades (Cadiz), which the Phœnicians founded, a great effigy of Melkart was fired annually, and the god would rise. Even in Tarsus of Cilicia, where Paul lived, there was a similar annual celebration.
The god of Sidon was Eshmun, identified by the Greeks with Asklepios (Aesculepius), the healing god whose characteristics and titles were many of those Christians later adapted to Christ.
El
El was the first god listed on a tablet at Ebla dated 2300 BC, with the titles the “Ancient of Gods” and the “Father of the Gods”. Gods listed at Ugarit began—Ilab (God the Father), Il, Dagnu (Dagan), and Baal Sapan (Haddad). Ugarit had temples dedicated to Dagan and to Haddad, but, curiously, none dedicated to El. El was thought of as living in a tent on his holy mountain. It suggests he was a sky god, the dome of the heavens being the dome of his tent. It doubtless also suggests his antiquity, because he was a god when a tent was the normal home od transhumant peoples, though tents always were common homes in the ANE. Divine elements of Amorite theophoric names from Zinjirli are Il, Haddad, and Dagan, but Akkadians refer to their god as Amurru or Il Amurru, Amorite El, or the god of the Amorites. Part of the Jewish scriptures (2 Samuel 22:31-48) writes El with a definite article, making him “ha El”, “the God”.
El lives on Mount Lel (perhaps, “night”, cf Lilith, the Jewish night hag) at the fountains of the two rivers at the spring of the two deeps. This is a Semitic parallel, not four sources of water, but one, perhaps two. From the Babylonian, one most likely refers to the deep sources of fresh water supporting and watering the earth, two, perhaps the salt or bitter water too, though the Canaanites might have identified them with the Great Sea (the Mediterranean) to their west, and the great River (the Euphrates) to their east. An ancient inscription at Karatepe identifies El with the Babylonian God Ea, through his Luwian equivalent. Ea is the god of life giving fresh waters. Another inscription from Palmyra identifies El with the Greek god Poseidon, whose image was impressed on the coins of Beirut, suggesting he was revered there. All suggest that El was a god of waters, albeit both sweet, fresh water and bitter, salt water.
His title “Father of the Gods” might not have meant that he sired them all, but that he was the ancestor of them all, as the Creator, though, in fact, El was not so much a creator as a procreator! That is the point. His title of “Creator of Created Things” is better “Begetter of All that is Begat”. El sired Dawn and Dusk, the two markers of the passage of the day. El was seen by the ancient Greeks as Kronos, whom they also called Chronos—if this was a mistake, as many experts maintain, it was one that the Greeks had made themselves! Fragments of Pherecydes of Syros (sixth century BC) relate a myth in which Chronos (Time) existed at first, though apparently accompanied by two other primeval gods Zas (Sky, Zeus) and Chthonie (Earth), and created the world. Ophion and Ophioneus also appear. Eusebius quotes Philo of Byblos that these gods are Phœnician. In Ugaritic myth, soon after the beginning of time, El came to the sea shore, and saw two women in the sea. He killed with his staff and roasted a bird, then invited the women to join him in a feast. The women were to shout him when the bird was cooked, addressing him as husband or father, and whichever they chose, he promised to treat them appropriately. When the bird was ready, they called to their husband, and so El slept with them. Each produced a child, Shachar, Dawn, and Shalim, Dusk. Thus the Dawn and the Dusk, two sons of God, are half brothers. Shalim is the same word as Solomon, Salem and shalom, the dusk identified with peace and death.
In the creation myth given by Sakkun-yathon, Sky and Earth fell out and separated from each another, but Sky continued to force himself on Earth while destroying the children of earth, until El, son of Sky and Earth, instigated by Thoth and El’s daughter Athene, attacked his father Sky with a sickle and spear of iron and castrated him, intiating the custom of circumcision to acknowledge the favour he had done the world. El and his fellow gods, the Eloim, took Sky’s kingdom. The author identifies El as the Greek god, Kronos, adding that he was deified as the star Saturn, the Greek god Kronos being seen by the Romans as Saturn. In Greek mythology, Kronos was indeed youngest son of Sky (Uranus) and Earth (Ge, Gaia), and was the leader of the race of Titans who preceded the Olympian gods. Gaia made a flint sickle and invited Kronos and his brothers to kill Uranus. Having deposed Uranus, Kronos ruled in a mythic Golden Age, but supposedly became like his father and was deposed in turn by his son, Zeus, and imprisoned in Tartarus, though in a more benign version of the myth, he went to live in the Isles of the Blessed in the west, the place of souls, identified with the setting sun and Saturn.
In the Ugaritic texts, Baal Haddad is a son of Dagan, and the Akkadian god, Adad, is a son of Sky, Anu (Uranus). In Sakkun-yathon, one of Sky’s concubines was given to El’s brother Dagan, but she was already pregnant by Sky. The son born of this union was mainly called by Sakkun-yathon Demarus (Zeus), but was called Adodus at the end. He is obviously Haddad, the Baal of the Ugaritic texts, where he allies with his grandfather Sky and challenges El. It looks like an exercise in syncretism, a way of combining two legends or even two gods. Yet he is often called a son of El—possibly son meaning here a descendent, and all the gods would have been sons of El, if he was the All Father. Sky fights Sea (Pontus), then allies himself with Haddad who takes on the enemy but loses. Muth, the Ugaritic Mot (Death), is another son of El identified by Sakkun-yathon.
Sakkun-yathon then explains the custom, in times of crisis for the nation or city, of sacrificing with mystic rites “the most beloved of their children” as a ransom to the avenging daimons. Though this practice is alluded to in the Jewish scriptures in the incident of Abraham being told to substitute a ram for Isaac, it was long remembered, if not practiced. The Golden legend of S George and the dragon is from Phœnicia (Berytus, Beirut), and in it the king had to sacrifice his daughter to the dragon that was threatening the city. Moreover, Christians do not seem to notice that their own religion is based on the self same custom, outlawed in the Jewish scriptures, but revived by Yehouah for His own son, and for the same reason, as a ransom to a demon, Satan. El, who was personified in the myth as a king, “when very great dangers from war had beset the country, he arrayed his only begotten son in royal apparel, and prepared an altar, and sacrificed him”.
Even more interestingly, the son El sacrificed in Sakkun-yathon’s account is called Yedud, “Beloved of Yehouah”, but translated by the author as “the only begotten” with an affirmation that was still the meaning at the time of writing. Yet elsewhere the slain son is Sadidus. Plainly Yedud is Sadid and both are Haddad, the sound of the aspirate or soft gutteral “h” being an “s” or an “i” to the Greek ear of whoever really wrote all this, and Sadid pronounced Shadid reminds us, to digress, of Shaddai.
The name “Shaddai” is a name of God chiefly in Job. Exodus 6:2-3 says it is how God was known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In the Septuagint and other early translation “El Shaddai” was translated as “God Almighty”:
May God Almighty [El Shaddai] bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers.Genesis 28:3
I am God Almighty [El Shaddai]. Be fruitful and increase in number.Genesis 35:11
By the Almighty [El Shaddai] who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts [shadayim] and of the womb.Genesis 49:25
It all implies El Shaddai was a god of fertility and fruitfulness. Haddad?
Sakkun-yathon’s account goes on to say Thoth devised for Kronos as insignia of royalty four eyes in front and behind, two of them quietly closed, and upon his shoulders four wings, two as spread for flying, and two as folded. With these attributes, El (Kronos) could see when asleep, and sleep while awake, and could fly while at rest, and rest while flying. Time flies! Other gods Thoth gave two wings upon the shoulders, so that they could fly with El. El also had two wings on his head, one being the all-ruling mind, and the other sensation. Coins of Byblos from the time of Antiochus IV (175-164 BC) show El with four spread wings and two folded wings, leaning on a staff, a device used on coins until after the time of Augustus.
The Golden Age in the myth of Kronos was a time when laws were not needed, the moderns say because everyone was so moral, but perhaps the Golden Age is simply when everyone did as they wished—there are no laws! It corresponds with the Good Creation in Zoroastrian religion, and the Garden of Eden Paradise of the Jews. In fact, the Golden Age happens every year, in summer at harvest time, so Kronos is an agricultural and harvest god. For that reason he is shown carrying a sickle ready to reap the crops, but which he also used to castrate his father, Uranus, rendering him impotent. Kronos is curiously similar to Chronus in spelling, and Chronus is the god of time—Old Father Time, who is also depicted with a sickle to reap, not grain, but lives!
We noted that despite the continuous chorus that these gods should not be confused, the confusion began in prehistory. The reason is that Cronos is a sun god, the god of the summer or the harvest season, counted by the place of the sun in the sky in its celestial circuit. The sun was the god of time because the motion of the sun measured time throughout the year. The fact that Kronos was identified with Saturn is not surprising either, for that happened in Babylonia. A reason for it might be that the king was the regent on earth of the sun god, from early times, and the king was also represented in horology by Saturn. As on earth, so in heaven, the gods too had to have a king subject to the high god, El, and he was the king of the season, Yam, Baal Hada, and Mot.
The Greeks might have had Kronos from the Canaanites (Phœnicians) by seeing him as Baal Hamman, who was the Molech of the bible, the god to whom the Canaanites sacrificed their first born children. The children were thrown into a burning brazier held by a statue of the god, and their ashes carefully removed and put into terracotta pots in a garden of remembrance called a tophet.
The people of Judah have done evil in my eyes, declares the Lord. They have set up their horrors in the house that bears my Name and have defiled it. They have built the high places of topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn theirs sons and daughters in the fire: something I never commanded, nor did it even enter my mind.Jeremiah 7:30-31
The Baal Cycle of Myths
The Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls, but not the Jewish Masoretic version, agree on this passage in Deuteronomy:
When the Most High (Elyon) allotted peoples for inheritance, When He divided up the sons of man, He fixed the boundaries for peoples, According to the number of the sons of El But Yehouah’s portion is his people, Jacob His own inheritance.Deuteronomy 32:8-9
A Masoretic editor had noticed the incongruity of the Jewish Creator, Yehouah, being merely a son of El and altered the text to “sons of Israel”. The Septuagint and the Scrolls date to about 200 BC, suggesting that even so late the Jews still accepted polytheism because all nations had their own god, and Yehouah was theirs. The same sense appears in Psalms 82 when the situation was in transition, the passage urging God, as He stood among His peers, to be the God of all nations:
God (Elohim) stands in the assembly of El. He judges in the midst of the gods (Elohim).Psalms 82:1
Originally a Semitic parallel, it was interpreted to mean Yehouah usurping El. The assembly of El is a motif which appears often in Ugaritic myth. Much of the myth on the tablets is missing or undecipherable, but there is enough of it to suggest it is a typical cyclic solar myth. In these the sun is the supreme god of the whole year, but he has sons representing the seasons, mainly rainy and parched, but there is also a short windy season too, when the gales blow off the sea. El favours one, and it is wild and windy, another and it is rainy, then the third, and it is parched. Occasions for seasonal feasts are plainly signalled in the myth. It is a calendar, serving as an explanation of the seasons, seasonal festivals, rituals and sacrifices, and the alternate growth and blight of vegetation. El is the solar god of the year, and therefore of time, the sun in its course round the heavens. His sons vie to be his heavenly regent, and he successively favours one and then another.
El’s former favourite, Baal, seems to have fallen out with him, and he now favours Yaw (Yahu, Yahouah), formerly overawed by the popularity of Baal. In the assembly of gods, El renames Yaw as “Prince Yam and Judge Nahar”, meaning the Sea Prince and the River Judge. The sea and river are the west and the east respectively, being the Mediterranean sea and the Orantes (perhaps, Euphrates) river, which bound Phœnicia to west and east, respectively. “Springs of the sea” appears at Ugarit as “In the midst of the springs of the Two Oceans, the Double Deeps”, as it does in Job 38:16. Sea has mainly negative connotations in Semitic culture, as the abode of chaos. It manifests as a short but wild season of gales and storms.
El also gives Yaw the title “the Beloved”, showing he is the new favourite, but Haddad means the same! Sakkun-yathon implies it means “only begotten”, which would amount to the same thing, since a father would love an only begotten son, but it also implies another son has been rejected. He is the one popular with the people, and the one who retains the title as a name. “Beloved” at root is the meaning of the name, David (dwd). To be the “beloved” or “only begotten” of god is a kingship formula. In the supposed history called the Jewish scriptures, Saul is rejected by Yehouah in favour of David. The kingship formula applies on earth too. The beloved of god is the king, god’s regent on earth.
The beloved in heaven is the same. El is not the executive god. That is the king of the gods, El’s only begotten or beloved one. The question is who is now Haddad and who is Yaw? Is Haddad the new name of the god previously called Yaw, then Yam and Nahar? Anyway, the implication is that the season has moved on from the windy period to the rainy one, and Yaw is now the favourite, and is the rain god, Haddad. Yam slaughters a lot of oxen, sheep and kids as a sacrifice, the occasion of a feast. El summons Kothar wa Khasis and sends messengers to Anat.
The animosity between Yam and Baal is the struggle of the chaotic destruction of winter with its gales, rain, hail and wind driven tides. The new favourite of El would bring the chaos of winter to the land unless Baal asserts his benign rule. Yam sends messengers, called “clouds”, to Baal who is feasting, telling him to yield, but Baal is not persuaded, chastizing the gods for cowardice. The old and new favourites face up to each other, but Baal Haddad has two irresistible secret weapons from the God’s wise artificer, Kothar wa Khasis. Baal is victorious and would have killed Yam had it not been for appeals for his mercy, so he sends him to the sea to live for another year, while Baal rules on earth.
Baal serves a celebratory feast on Mount Zephon, the “Heights of the North”. Curiously Baal, supposedly a title becomes a name, “Prince Baal”, and he is also called “Rider of the Clouds”, a description of Yehouah in Psalms 68:4. The capture of Yam and his confinement to the his palace in the sea, which seems to be implied, allows some quality, the translators seem to think is “heat”, to return. Doubtless the chaotic windy season seems particularly cold in the Levant. But as Haddad is a fertility god, heat might be metaphorical, like describing an animal to be on heat, in which case “fertility” might be meant, or perhaps even “love”!
Anat has destroyed all Baal’s enemies from the Western Shores to the Eastern Sunrise. Aliyan (Almighty or Great) Baal now wants a palace of his own. El consents. A palace is built of silver and gold for Baal Haddad, with cedars from Mount Lebanon and Sirion. The palace is, of course, the god’s temple. It suggests that the temple was renewed and rededicated annually before the rains came, justifying an old practice. With a new temple in place, the texts suggest the rains will come on schedule. Baal, urged by the wise architect, Kothar wa Khasis (Sakkun-yathon’s Thoth?), Baal opened a window in his palace and fired off thunder and lightning, the occasion for a feast. The tale suggests that Baal defeats Yam’s wild, windy, chaotic storms with his weapons of thunder and lightning, heralding the rain.
Baal, the beloved god of the people, had retained the kingship of the gods, though El did not seem to favour him still, but instead settled on another son, Mot, as his favourite. Mot was a death god representing the heat of the summer. Baal refused to acknowledge him, sending his messengers “Vinyard” and “Field”. Mot was insulted. The eater of human flesh was not satisfied with bread and wine. He threatened to break Baal into bite sized pieces and eat him. Even Baal as beloved, and therefore king of the gods, cannot stand against Death each year and has to join him in Hades. Here lacunae break the story, then Baal had intercourse with a heifer and dressed the resultant calf in his own clothes as a gift to Mot, and prepared to descend into the earth to the abode of the dead. News of Baal’s death led El and Anat to mourn, signalling an occasion for wailing, and a funeral feast, but perhaps confirming that Haddad had been favoured again. But, the earth would remain parched until Baal Haddad returned. The death of Baal is the start of the dry season.
Anat, Baal’s sister-wife, was distraught at his disappearance and, lovelorn, she sought him everywhere. She retrieved his body (the calf?), and took it to the heights of Zephon where she buried him with proper ritual, signifying the ritual of a calf sacrifice which allows Anat to kills Mot and free Baal, an occasion for another feast. Then full of fury Anat sought out Mot, split him in two with a sickle, burnt him, winnowed the pieces and sowed them into the fields, or to be eaten by the birds. With Mot dead, Baal returns to life and sits on Mot’s throne, life ascendant over death for a season, allowing vegetation to grow again. The reunited lovers celebrate their joy with an ecstatic marriage. It seems that seven years later Mot returned and attacked Baal in a battle which ceased only when Mot realised El now supported Baal, surely a justification of the sabbath year, every seven years when the fields had to be left fallow. Thereupon Mot at once surrenders to Baal Haddad and recognizes him as king, so they have a feast.
The cycle involves the defeat of the sea, the potential wild chaos of the unpredictable winter winds and rains, the entry of Baal into his palace (temple), the bringing of the benign rains to fertilize the earth, the submission of Baal to Mot, the parching summer sun, his death and the withering of the vegetation, the sacrifice of a calf to remind the gods, Anat’s reception of the sacrifice and her consequent destruction of Mot and release of Baal, and the beginning again of the cycle. Mot and Yam are protected from ultimate destruction as sons of El, and so is Baal. The winter gales are the chaos that fringes the civilized world and always threatens, becoming the monster Lotan or Leviathan. The victory of Baal over Yam is the Creation myth, in the sense that the defeat of wintry chaos begins the New Year, and it is marked by the New Year festival, held near the autumnal equinox, the days in the modern Jewish calendar marked by Rosh ha Shanah and Succoth when the rains began.
The agricultural calendar had three seasons, planting, grain harvest and vine harvest. In the heat of summer, the siroco blew from the east, a hot enervating wind, then the wind changed to the west and blew off the sea bringing the cold and the rain. Planting began in October or November. Planting could not be done until the first rains, but the rains had not to be too heavy or the winds too fierce or the seed grain would blow or wash away. The coming of the rains was therefore potentially disastrous, and the first hope was that they would be contained. So, Baal’s first task was to contain Yam, the Sea! The rains then would be just heavy enough for the growth of the crops of flax, barley and wheat. The flax harvest began in March, just as the last spring rains fell gently. Barley followed in April and wheat in June, just as the summer sun began to beat down. This was when the women in the Jerusalem temple was wailed for Tammuz, according to Ezekiel. The grain harvest was an occasion for a big harvest celebration, called Shavuot (about June) by the Jews. Baal died as the last grain was gathered in, and the sun scorched on through July and August.
Things were not all bad, though. There were the vine, olive, date and fig harvests yet to come (called “vintage”) successively in July and August. Vines were planted on the slopes and so caught more wind and were higher up and cooler. Farming families moved into shelters—translated as “tabernacles” in the Jewish scriptures on the slopes—to tend the vines and escape the summer heat. Then the grapes were trodden, and the liquor fermented and allowed to settle for a couple of months. It was ready by September, just as the first rains were expected. The vine harvest marked the end of the year and the start of the new one with a great festival (Jewish Succoth) held at this time, with plenty of merriment from the wine.
The seasonal schema suggests what is missing in the Canaanite myths, found so far, is that Yaw is the god of the vine, and the vine god gives way to Yam (El renames Yaw as Yam). What is missing is how Yaw defied Mot to bring in the fruit harvests when Mot was apparently king of the gods. Presumably, some missing tablet explains it. Ancient writers believed the Jews worshipped Dionysus, the Greek god of the vine, thus identifying Jehouah with Dionysus. Alternative names for Dionysus are Bacchus and Iacchus (Jacob?), and since the “ch” sound is variably pronounced as a gutteral or as an aspirate, Iacchus can be Yehu.
In another story in the Ugaritic poem, the god Haddad defeats Lotan, the many headed sea serpent who is Leviathan in the Jewish scriptures. Both Lotan and Yam seem the equivalent of Babylonian Tiamat. They are ferocious dragons or serpents of the sea, but standing for chaos. The base of the Menorah, the seven branched candlestick from the Jewish temple can be seen carved on the Arch of Titus in Rome. It has six panels, one of two winged cherubim facing each other over the cover of the covenant, and others a sea-dragon, sea-horses or fish. Lotan seems to be another name for Yam but it is not certain, and the biblical Yehouah fights Leviathan himself. Yehouah conquers Leviathan in Isaiah 27:1; Psalms 74:14; Job 3:8; 40:25, just as Baal, not El, did in the Ugaritic myths.
Leviathan means “not a gift” meaning something “not wanted”. It is chaos in all its ramifications—unpleasant things not wanted in life, like the parching heat of summer, the heat and emptiness of the desert, and the wildness and unpredictablilty of the sea, illness, drought, famine, death, and so on. In short the opposite characteristics of Haddad. Haddad is the good sun of the productive winter season when it rains, while Leviathan is the wicked sun that burns up the crops and makes life hazardous and miserable in the heat of the summer. Leviathan fights annually with the rain god for the earth!
Haddad as a Sun God
In the nineteenth century there was a fashion to class all major gods as sun gods or former sun gods, but in 1899, W Robertson Smith and George F Moore pooh-poohed the whole idea, saying it was an abandoned theory. In one respect, they were right, and that is that worshipping the sun is not the first thing that enters the consciousness of primitive people. Sun worship is far from the beginning of religion, as many nineteenth century scholars seem to think, but it is plain enough that most societies came to the stage of worshipping the sun. When they did, it was because they had developed so far that they had realized that the sun was linked with fertility, through the variation of the seasons, and so was responsible for life. It was at this stage that important gods all accumulated some solar aspects.
The point is that the rainy season came at a particular time of the year, so was linked with the progression of the sun from its southernmost point to its northernmost one. The fertile season was winter, after the autumn storms brought by Baal Haddad. So, the god of the autumnal storms was also a sun god, the god of the autumn sun, and the autumn sun was obviously stormy. Robertson and Moore also try to make out that there was not just one Baal, and of course they were right. Each sanctuary had its own Baal, but each of these Baals was not a different god. Each sanctuary had its own idiosyncratic ways of honouring the god, no doubt, but he was the fertilising god, and not any god.
To say that Baal was not the same as Shamash, the sun god of the Canaanites, is absurd. Shamash was the god of the summer sun, the god of justice whose rays exposed all injustice, and burned up the wicked. Shamash was the law giver from this association, but both were sun gods, or gods with solar aspects. In India, twelve solar gods were associated with the twelve constellations, and several others too were sun gods besides. The whole phenomenon is multiplied by the mixing of traditions when one people conquer another, or even simply mix by migration or trade. So, it was Robertson and Moore who were being dogmatic.
In the Canaanite cycle of Baal myths, Haddad was the son of El and had been his beloved one and the popular god of the Canaanites. Yet he seems to fall out of favour, and Yehouah, is chosen as El’s new favorite and is called “the Beloved of El”, which means Haddad. That is why Baal Haddad and Yehouah often seem to be the same. 1 Chronicles 12:5 gives us the name Bealiah meaning “Baal is Yehouah”.
El and Baal were used interchangeably meaning the Creator of the world, and whose face in the heavens is the sun. The sun is aroused in the east, and seeks out the earth which he penetrates at dusk. The redness of the rising sun and the sun entering the womb of the earth was seen as paralleling the appearance of the aroused phallus. God was potent at dawn in the east and at dusk in the west. El is considered to derive from ’ayil meaning strength, but also means “ram”. A ram is strong but his particular strength is his tupping ability. El means masculine sexual vigour!
Sakkun-yathon mainly calls Haddad Demarus (possibly from Haddad Raman), but once uses Adodos. His work is likely to be a pseudepigraph of Philo of Byblus (second century AD) who claimed to have translated his mythological writings from the Phœnician originals. Supposely Sakkun-yathon lived before the Trojan war, indeed, as a contemporary of the mythical Assyrian Queen, Semiramis, and read his history in the Phœnician temples where it was inscribed on the sun pillars (Ammouneis, chammim, phallic images devoted to the sun god Baal Hamman) associated with sacred poles (asherim, female sexual symbols, possibly treetrunks with a bored hole in them) in Isaiah 27:9. Baal-peor was the “Lord of the Opening”—of the hole—the woman’s vagina, plainly relating to human fertility. Israelites were not to serve Baal Peor (Numbers 25:3,5), who was Haddad. Philo wrote a history of the Jews as Sakkun-yathon, according to Porphyry, supposedly based on information from a priest of Yehouah called Hierombalos (possibly a Jerubaal). He dedicated it to Abibalus, king of the Roman city of Berytus (Beirut). Interestingly, the king of Beirut mentioned in the Amarna letters is Ammunira, showing that Hamman, (Ammon) had been revered there for a very long time.
The Aramean king defeated by David is Haddadezer (Haddad saves), and later kings of Damascus called themselves Ben Haddad (Aramaean, Bar Haddad, son of Haddad), just as a whole series of Egyptians called themselves Rameses (son of Ra). A stele of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser I calls Adad the “god of Aleppo”, there being a temple of Haddad at Kilasou. An Aramaean king, Bar Haddad, in the eighth century BC dedicated a stele, found near Aleppo, to Melqart, the god of Tyre, also called Baal. Josephus (Antiquities 8:13:1) says Jezebel “built a temple to the god of the Tyrians, which they call Belus”, which must mean Melqart, confirming he was a Baal, and doubtless to Tyrians he was “the Baal”.
Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, who married Ahab, king of Israel (1 Kings 16:31) and continued to serve Habbaal, “the Baal”, “The Lord”. The god of the Sidonians was Eshmun (usually identified with Asklepios), and he, if the Jewish scriptures are to be believed here, is “the Baal”. Eshmun looks like a shortened form of Esh-Hamman, “Hamman Saves”. Hamman and Haddad seem to have been the same Baal. The Jewish scriptures have Saul’s son called Ishbosheth (Shameful Man), acknowledged as a deliberate alteration of the original, Ishbaal (The Lord Saves).
Baal Hamman
Baal Hamman was the supreme god of the Phœnician colony of Carthage. The meaning of Hamman (or Haman, Hammon) is unclear. Baal Hamman’s female cult partner was Tanit. When Ernest Renan excavated the ruins of Hamman, between Tyre and Acre, he found two Phœnician inscriptions dedicated to El Hamman. Since El was normally identified with Kronos and Baal Hamman was also identified with Kronos, it seemed possible they could be equated. Classical sources relate how the Carthaginians burned their children as offerings to Baal Hamman (Molech). Such a devouring of children fits well with the Greek traditions of Kronos. Moreover, in the context of the aforementioned dispute about Kronos and Chronus, what better description is there of a god of time than one that eats his own offspring. In time everyone is born and dies. The god of time giveth and the god of time taketh away.
In Carthage and North Africa, Baal Hamman was especially associated with the ram and was worshipped also as Baal Qarnaim “Lord of Two Horns”. It makes it difficult not to equate Baal Hamman with the Egyptian god Ammon (Amun). The Phœnicians were always deeply influenced by Egypt. Amun was a god of Egypt from early times but became the “King of Gods” at Karnak in the time of Senwosret I (1971-1926 BC). A millennium and a half later, under the Ptolemies, he was still considered the Egyptian Zeus. Indeed, Alexander claimed to be his son, and since he was worshipped as a ram, images of Alexander often show him with rams’ horns among his curls.
Amun is always said to mean “The Hidden One”, but the Libyan word for water was “aman”, and this might have been the original meaning. That would associate him with the Canaanite rain god. Or possibly, the Canaanites originally came from Africa and he always was a Canaanite god. He had curious titles like “Mysterious of Form”, which describes the formlessness of water, but later it attained a mystical or magical significance. Moreover, Amun Kematef was a god of resurrection represented as a snake, because it sloughs off its skin. And he was an ithyphallic god. As the double god, Amun Ra, Amun had a great influence on the Egyptian colonies of the Levant, including Phœenicia where, Ammunira was the king of Beirut, and a loyal subject of the Pharaoh at the time of Akhenaten.
A sixth century adornment from Carthage showed the throne of Baal Hammon resting on a boat, much like that of Osiris, having a solar disc to the left. It relates to the sun setting, crossing the kingdom of the dead by boat, and reappearing at dawn diametrically across the sky. In short, it depicts a god who is universal—lord of the sky, the earth, and the underworld. The impression of the seated God is rather like that of Serapis. He is clad in long robes, on a high backed chair, with a beard and a hat, looking serious. He usually has a hand held up in blessing and carries a staff or pine cone, or bunch of grain in his other hand.
The menorah, the seven branched candlestick, often considered an exclusively Jewish symbol, has been found in a distinctive style at Carthage. Seven lamps, containers or candlesticks are arranged along a branch about a foot long. To the front is a head rather like the goddess Hathor and, in front of that, the head of a long horned bull.
At the beginning of the fourth century, the urns in the tophets of Carthage and Hadrumetum still contained bones of child sacrifices. Soon the human children were replaced by small animals. Hadrumetum was a seaport, and so its patron god was Neptune, doubtless the equivalent of the Ugaritic Yam. Few representations of their main god, Baal Hammon, whose name appears so often in inscriptions are found. Carthaginian Canaanites showed their gods symbolically. Inscriptions were usually aniconic glyphs. Anthropomorphic images of Baal Hammon were discouraged, if not forbidden.
After the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, urban survivors mostly accepted Roman hegemony and many went to Rome to settle as tradesmen, but the religious beliefs of the Phœnicians working the country estates remained unchanged. Baal Hammon, the great sun god who governed the sky, promoted fertility and productiveness of fields and flocks still maintained his importance. He retained the devotion of the African Canaanites, who brought their offerings to the tophet, even under the Romans, for another two or three hundred years, although, he was assimilated first to Saturn, then under the influence of Roman colonists, later to Apollo.
Yehouah
The bible admits that Yehouah is not the original name of God:
And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as El Shaddai, and by My name Yehouah I have not been known to them.Exodus 6:3
Yehouah used to be called El Shaddai but changed his name to Yehouah. The qualifying adjective here is not clear in meaning. Biblicists say it means “almighty” because it has the connotation of irresistible, but the sense of it is again sexual rather than neutral. El Shaddai is the “Irresistible God”, or the “Ravishing God”.
In the Ugaritic texts, Yam is a sea god whose consort was also Asherat. El renames Yehouah as Yam, for no clear reason, except that the myths are cyclical, the cycle being the cycle of the agricultural years. Baal and Yam are in conflict and, in the beginning of the cycle, El urges Yam to drive Baal out. It seems the antagonism between Baal and Yehouah was an ancient feature of Canaanite religion, because, at one time, they alternated in El’s favour.
Richard J Clifford in The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and the Old Testament has pointed out a multitude of biblical parallels between the mountains where Canaanite gods lived, and allusions to the sacred mountains of Yehouah in the Jewish scriptures:
Great is Yehouah, and exceedingly to be praised in the city of our God, His holy mountain. Beautiful on high, the joy of all the earth, is Mount Zion, in the slopes of the north, the city of the great King.Psalms 48:1-2
Yehouah’s sanctuary is on a mountain, Mount Zion. “North” is “Zephon” in Hebrew, the name of Baal’s holy mountain near Ugarit. Zion is where Yehouah sets up His kings:
Yea, I have set My king on My holy mount on Zion.Psalms 2:6
Baal Hadad is the beloved of El, meaning He is El’s choice of the king of the gods and he is set up on Zephon. So mutatis mutandis, the verse could have been said by El. A stele from Byblos is dedicated to Yahawmilk. It shows a cloaked and bearded man making an offering to a goddess who looked like Hathor, the Egyptian goddess (Asherat?). Yahawmilk means “Yehouah is king.” The mountain of Yehouah is also called the “mount of assembly”, though the main reason why people “assembled” in Canaan and in Yehud was for festivals and annual celebrations:
For you have said In your heart, I will go up to the heavens, I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit in the mount of assembly, in the slopes of the north.Isaiah 14:13
Yehouah issues His edicts from His alternative holy mount at Sinai. When, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel feasted with God on the holy mountain Sinai in Exodus 24, the scene is just those of the feasts in on the holy mountains of the Canaanite myths, in which El has seventy sons in his assembly. Indeed, the author of Exodus mentions a paved construction of “sapphire stone” (lapis lazuli?), “like the heavens for clearness” under God’s feet, and the Ugaritic myths describe a brick pavement making Baal’s temple in Zephon “a house of the clearness of lapis lazuli”.
At Ugarit, the gods and “the circle of El” (the Council of El) lived in tents and tabernacles. El issued his decrees from his “domed tent” in the Ugaritic myths, just as the tabernacle set up by Moses Exodus 33:7-11) was where Yehouah issued His pronouncments. The divine tabernacle in Exodus was visited by a supernatural cloud. By coincidence, the myths at Ugarit speak of a messenger to the divine council being called “Cloud” (“anan”). Jerusalem is an eternal tent on Mount Zion in Isaiah 33:20-22, and it is also a supernatural source of water inaccessible to ships, sounding like the parallel founts of Ugaritic myth. On Zion, Yehouah carries out four roles:
For Yehouah is our judge, Yehouah is our lawgiver, Yehouah is our king, He will save us.Isaiah 33:22
The “height of Zion” appears in Jeremiah 31:12, as a place of joy for all the good things like grain, wine, oil and livestock, suggesting the harvest festival that heralded the New Year.
Satan
Satan is derived from the Persian evil spirit, Ahriman. Ahriman tried everything he could do to oppose Ahuramazda’s Good Creation, He made a Wicked Creation in parallel, and set about hindering and obstructing whatever Ahuramazda had made good in his original one. The meaning of Satan in Semitic languages is “the Opposer”! With the fall of Persia, and eventually the rise of the Jewish state under the Hasmoneans, Satan was watered down from his original role of being almost the equal of Ahuramazda. The Jewish god had to be almighty, so no equal could be tolerated, and Satan was demoted into being simply an angel, appointed by God to test people. His duty became tempting people. So we read in the New Testament:
Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.1 Peter 5:8
Satan has his greatest role in the Jewish scriptures in Job, where he is sent by God to torment the pious Job. He stands before God in His council in heaven and explains whence he had come:
From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.
Jewish tradition has a closer match with the original than the scriptures. When the shofar is blown on New Year’s Day (Rosh ha Shanah), Satan is confused, and ten days later on the Day of Atonement the shofar annuls his power. In between are the days of penitence. The reason for it all is that the ten day festival celebrates the beginning, existence in time, and end of the world—the world from the creation to the Judgement Day. At the Creation God made the world perfect before Satan spoilt it. This spoiling no longer is recorded in the Jewish religion, but it corresponds with the Persian one. The ten days actually stand for the whole of creation, and the Day of Atonement is the Judgement when Satan is destroyed and the world begins again in a state of perfection. The Perfection of Creation is restored.
The festival actually extended into twelve days, the first day being the last day of Elul and the first of Tishri, counting as one day, and the Day of Atonement extending into the next day by one hour. Nowadays it is solemn, but once it was not. Originally it began celebrating the creation and ending with Judgement. The first week was the creation, each day being a day of creation in Genesis, and the seventh was for resting. All of this was joyful. Only the run up to Judgement on the remaining days was penitential. Now, the Mishnah declares 1 Tishri as the Judgement Day, so the whole period is pentitential.
In the Slavonic Book of Enoch, Satan with other wicked angels was expelled from heaven. His name was accordingly altered from Satanel to Satan, the reference to God (El) being dropped. This was the belief of the Cathars and Bogomils of the middle ages. John Milton was influenced by this legend, or by the heretics, in writing Paradise Lost, for Satan is shown rebelling against God before Adam.
