Tag: Baal
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God’s Life Story (ii)
A previous post noted that the first Israelites were Canaanites, and so their chief god was called El or Elohim (as in the name Isra-el). How many other gods and goddesses did they follow? The answer is, lots! Unsurprisingly, the Hebrew Bible doesn’t go into details, but frequently denounces Israelites who followed the weather/fertility god…
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The Bible and Canaanite Myth
Previous posts have explored the use made by the writers/editors of the Hebrew Bible of the Babylonian myth of Marduk and Tiamat, goddess of the salt waters. A different version of this story is found in the mythology of Israel’s fellow Canaanites, and appears in tablets (see above) discovered at ancient Ugarit on the Mediterranean…
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Genesis and Ugarit
From 1939 onwards, the excavation of a mound on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria, (called Ras Shamra), uncovered the ancient Canaanite city of Ugarit. Included in the finds were tablets containing texts recording the religious beliefs of its people, which show that Ugarit and Israel shared a common linguistic and literary heritage, and provide…
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‘Once Upon a Time’ (iv) El and Baal
As I noted in my 1st post on this theme, the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament contains many echoes of far older, interesting and amusing creation myths, flood stories and epic poems which, because used to train scribes, were widely spread in location and time across the ancient near east. The Hebrew writers/editors used a number of…
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