• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2078 0

death and, on the positive side, of bringing fertility to the land. He too was a bull when he took on his father’s role as inseminator of the herd. The major epic of Ba’al from Ugarit involves Ba’al in a huge conflict with Yam (the sea), from a city by the seaside. Besides referring to the weather, and winter storms, the critical conflict with the sea perhaps also reflects similar interest in seafaring that we associate with the Phoenicians and Greeks. The Phoenicians and their colony of Carthage in North Africa were transplanted Canaanites.

Besides defeating Yam, Ba’al had to also defeat Mot (Death), who was the god of the underworld. Only after doing this could he claim the throne from his father ’El.53 Ba’al’s association with the Hebrew God was also clear. His epithets are: “Ba’al the Mighty” and “He Who Mounts The Clouds,” the epithet that YHWH of the Hebrew Bible received (e.g. Ps 68:4; Heb). And, indeed, Ba’al was awarded the guidance of the vegetation, like Tammuz or Dummuzi. In this capacity he was known as “son of Dagan.”54 His dress was military and so reminds us of several depictions of YHWH as Lord of Hosts, though he was most often depicted with bull’s horns, since he had himself taken on the power of the bull. In other words, the Hebrew God could alternatively pick up the epithets of Ba’al or ’El.

The consort of El was normally Asherah; but as the “Queen Mother” she too was deeply involved in the cult of her son Ba’al. She interceded with ’El to sanction a temple for Ba’al in token of his victory over Mot and Yam (literally “death” and “sea,” cognates with the Hebrew mawet55 and yam) and their allies Lothan (literally, the “writhing” animal, cognate with the Hebrew Leviathan). The first, Mot, was the god of death, chaos, and sterility, to whom Ba’al succumbed every seven years, causing famine. In Canaanite mythology, the building of a temple was divinely sanctioned and was the result of Ba’al’s victory over all the forces of nature, succeeding to the throne of his father.

The story of Solomon’s temple building, in turn, shares several themes and conventions with the Canaanite myth of the building of Ba’al’s house. For instance, both were finished and dedicated at the beginning of the rainy season. In Isaiah 27 and Job 26:13, we hear of the LORD’S famous conquest of the Leviathan, the Hebrew equivalent for Lothan. This ambivalence shows the great identity crisis of Israelite religion. Prophetically opposed to Canaanite religion, it nevertheless was suffused with Canaanite cultural forms and motifs and could hardly avoid them.

Asherah was a kind of “mother nature,” often depicted as a tree of life. Her sacred tree was itself called an Asherah and symbolized her creative power. Thus, her role was suggestive both of the role Eve took in the Hebrew creation story and the Biblical tree of life. The Asherah was a potent symbol in Israelite agricultural life, as the Bible’s opposition shows so powerfully: “You shall not plant any tree as a sacred pole (Asherah) beside the altar that you make for the LORD your God” (Deut 16:21).56

The consort of Ba’al was ’Anat, who was very much of a piece with the unforgettable Ishtar and Inanna in Mesopotamia. She was the goddess of love but also the gory goddess who went to battle, entertained, seduced, and slaughtered young men.57 Along with Inanna and Ishtar, ’Anat should be thought of as the goddess testosterone, fostering sex and warfare. Like Ishtar’s and Inanna’s, ’Anat’s cult animal was the lion. But she helped save Ba’al when he was weak and dying, until he was “resurrected.”

Ishtar herself underwent a sex-change of sorts in migrating to Canaan, where she was transformed into her linguistic cognate, the god Athtar. Athtar was a god whose power was originally manifested in the planet Venus, bright star of dawn and dusk, worshiped by the ancestral Syrian tribesmen. Or she could keep her original gender in the person of the goddess Ashtoret or Athtoret. Ishtar and Inanna were identified as the planet Venus in Mesopotamia. The goddess Ashtoret, nemesis of the Hebrews