Salvete
This is part 2 of the text that can be found on this site:
http://www.theology.edu/canaan.htm
The Canaanite Pantheon
As the myths of ancient Ugarit indicate, the religion of the
Canaanite peoples was a crude and debased form of ritual polytheism.
It was associated with sensuous fertility-cult worship of a
particularly lewd and orgiastic kind, which proved to be more
influential than any other nature religion in the ANE.
Canaanite deities, on the one hand, present remarkable fluidity of
personality and function, so that it is often extremely difficult to
fix the particular domain of different gods or to define their
kinship to one another. Physical relationship, and even sex, change
with disconcerting ease. This is one of the grossly irrational
aspects of Canaanite religion, indicative of its corrupt nature. On
the other hand, Canaanite deities have for the most part
etymologically transparent names, a fact which seems to point to the
Canaanite pantheon as representing a cruder and more primitive type
of polytheism.
Miscellaneous epigraphic and literary sources reveal the names of the
chief gods and goddesses of numerous Canaanite citaies in various
periods. The Ugaritic deities are now best known because of the
hundreds of religious texts dating from the fifteenth and early
fourteenth century BC which were found in a library housed in a
building situated between Ugarit's two great temples, one dedicated
to Baal and the other to Dagon. The divinities which figure in the
mythological texts from Ugarit were evidently not peculiar to the
city, but were current among all Canaanites, since they brear only a
vague relationship to the most popular deities worshipped in the city
itself.
El
El is the name by which the supreme Canaanite deity is known. This is
also a name by which God is called in the Old Testament -- El, the
God (Elohim) of Israel (el elohe yisrael: Gen. 33:20). In most prose
it occures more often with an adjunct: El Elyon (the most high God,
Gen. 14:18), El Shaddai (traditionally, God Almighty, Gen. 17:1), El
Hai (The living God, Josh. 3:10), and very commonly in the plural of
majesty, Elohim. In Hebrew poetry El is much more frequent, where it
stands quite often without any adjunct (Ps. 18:31, 33, 48; 68:21; Job
8:3).
The word El is a generic name for "god" in Northwest Semitic (Hebrew
and Ugaritic) and as such it is also used in the Old Testament for
heathen deities or idols (Ex. 34:14; Ps. 81:10; Is. 44:10). The
original generic term was 'ilum; dropping the mimation and the
nominative case ending (u) becomes 'el in Hebrew. It was almost
certainly an adjectival formation (intransitive participle) from the
root "to be strong, powerful" ('wl), meaning "The Strong (or
Powerful) One."
In Canaanite paganism the el, par excelence, was the head of the
panthon. As the god, El was, in accordance with the general
irrationality and moral grossness of Canaanite religion, a dim and
shadowy figure, who, Philo says, had three wives, who were also his
sisters, and who could readily step down from his eminence and become
the hero of sordid escapades and crimes. Philo portrays El as a
bloody tyrant, whose acts terrified all the other gods, and who
dethroned his own father, murdered his favorite son, and decapitated
his own daughter. The Ugaritic poems add the crime of uncontrolled
lust to his morbid character and the description of his seduction of
two unnamed women is the most sensuous in ANE literature (much of
Ugaritic literature is R rated at best).
Despite all this, El was considered the exalted "father of years"
(abu shanima), the "father of man" (abu adami), and "father bull",
that is, the progenitor of the gods, tacitly likened to a bull in the
midst of a herd of cows. Like Homer's Zeus, he was "the father of men
and gods."
Baal
Baal was the son of El, and the reigning king of the gods, dominating
the Canaanite pantheon. As El's successor he was enthroned on a lofty
mountain the the far northern heavens. Often he was considered to
be "the Lord of Heaven" (Baal-shamem); but sometimes distinguished
from the latter, as in Philo, Baal was the god of the rain and storm,
whose voice could be heard reverberating through the heavens in the
thunder. He is pictured on a Ras Shamra stela brandishing a mace in
his right hand and holding in his left hand a stylized thunderbolt
ending in a spear head.
In Ugaritic literature Baal is given the epithet Aliyan, "the one who
prevails". As the giver of rain and all fertility, he figures
prominently in Canaanite mythology in his struggle with Mot (Death),
the god of drought and adversity. In his grapple with Mot, he is
slain. As a consequence, a seven year cycle of scarcity ensues.
Thereupon the goddess Anath, the sister and lover of Baal Aliyan,
goes in search of him, recovers his body and slays his enemy, Mot.
Baal is then brought back to life and placed on Mot's throne so that
he ma insure the revival of vegetation for seven years. This is the
central theme of the great Baal Epic of Ugarit.
Besides the king of the gods and the storm god, Baal was the god of
justice, the terror of evildoers. He was also called "the son of
Dagon", the grain god, who was athe cheif deity of Ashdod (1 Sam. 5:1-
7) and who had temples at Ugarit and Gaza (Judges 16:23).
At Ugarit Baal's consort was his sister Anath, but at Samaria in the
ninth century BC Ashera appears in that role (1 Kings 18:19).
Different places at different periods arranged the pantheon somewhat
differently, but the picture by and large was fairly stable. The name
ba'al itself in Northwest Semitic (Hebrew, Phoenician and Ugaritic)
is the common noun for "master" or "lord" and accordingly,
like 'el, "strong one", could be applied to various gods. Actually,
however, from an early period (by at least the 15th century BC) the
ancient Semitic storm-god Hadad (Akkadian Adad) became "the lord" par
excellence.
Anath
A combination of the sister and spouse of Baal, was one of a galaxy
of three Canaanite goddesses whose character gives a hint of the
depths of the moral depravity to which the Canaanite cults sank. The
other two are Astarte and Asherah. All three were patronesses of sex
and war -- sex mainly in its sensuous aspect as lust, and war in its
aspects of violence and murder. The depraved character of Canaanite
religion is indicated by the character of Anath. An Egyptian text of
the New Kingdom period described Anath and Astarte as "the great
goddesses who conceive but do not bear."
Another equally viscious characteristic of Anath worship was the
fiendish savagery of the composite goddess. A fragment of the Baal
Epic (II.7ff) shows her indulging in a massacre of old and young
alike:
She smites the people of the seashore
Destroys mankind of the sunrise....
She piles up heads on her back
She ties up hands in her bundle....
Anath gluts her liver with laughter
Her heart is filled with joy.
Egyptian texts represented Astarte and Anath as goddesses of violence
and war, showing them naked astride a galloping horse, waving weapons
of battle.
Interestingly enough, Anath was given the epithet of "virgin"
and "the Holy One" (qudshu) in her invariable role of a sacred
prostitute. This term qudshu, "the Holy One" is related to the
biblical term translated "holy". It is important to recognize that
among Semitic poeples the idea of "holiness" was applied to anything
that had been dedicated to the service of a deity. The moral
connotation of the term is a later, derived, concept. Even in the OT,
its usage is often just in the sense of "separated" to God.
Anath is represented often as a naked woman bestride a lion with a
lilly in one hand and a serpant in the other. The lilly represented
sex appeal and the serpant represented fertility.
The male prositutes consecrated to her honor were called qadesh
(Deut. 23:18, 1 Kings 14:24, 15:12, 22:46). The feminine qedesha is
also found (Deut. 23:18, Hosea 4:14)
Astarte
The goddess of the evening star, was like Anath and Ashera concerned
with sex and war and was not always clearly distinguished from them.
In Egypt Anath and Astarte were even fused into one deity called
Antart, while in later Syria their cult was displaced by that of a
composite deity: Anat-Ashtart (Atargatis). Like Anath, Astarte was
both a mother goddess and a divine courtesan, and she shares all the
latter's moral turpitude. (She was also known as Ishtar in Persia,
and the name Esther is a form of this word. Additionally, the English
word "star" comes from this name).
Asherah
She was the wife of El in Ugaritic mythology, and is the goddess who
is also called Athirau-Yammi: "She Who Walks on (or in) the Sea". She
was the cheif goddess of Tyre in the 15th century BC, and bore the
appellation qudshu, "holiness." In the OT Asherah appears as a
goddess by the side of Baal, whose consort she evidently became, at
least among the Canaanites of the south. However, most biblical
references to the name point obviously to some cult object of wood,
which might be cut down and burned, possibly the goddesses' image (1
Kings 15:13, 2 King 21:7). Her prophets are mentioned (1 Kings
18:19), and the vessels used in her service referred to (2 Kings
23:4). The existence of numerous symbols, in each of which the
goddess was believed to be immanent, led to the creation of numerous
forms of her person, which were described as Asherim. The cult object
itself, whatever it was, was utterly detestible to faithful
worshippers of Yahweh (1 Kings 15:13), and was set up on the high
places beside the "alters of incense" (hammanim) and the "stone
pillars" (masseboth). The translation of asherah by "grove" in some
translations follows a singular tradition preserved in the LXX and
the Vulgate which apparently connects the goddess' image with the
usual place of its adoration.
Mot
Mot means "death", and he was Baal's enemy. He is the god of the dead
and all the powers that opposed life and fertility. He was the
favorite son of El, and the most prominent enemy of the god Baal. Mot
was the god of sterility and the master of all barren places.
Traditionally Mot and Baal were perpetually engaged in a seasonal
struggle in which Baal, like many similar harvest deities, was
annually vanquished and slain. Mot, however, was annually vanquished
and killed by Baal's sister and lover Anath, who thus aided Baal's
resurrection.
Reshep
Or Resheph (from Hebrew reshef, "the burner", or "the ravager"), an
ancient West Semitic god of the plague and of the underworld, the
companion of Anath, and the equivalent of the Bablylonian god Nergal.
He was also a war god and was thus represented as a bearded man,
brandishing an ax, holding a shield, and waring a tall, pointed
headdress with a goat's or gazelle's head on his forehead. Resheph
was worshipped especially at Ras Shamra (Ugarit), Byblos, and Arsuf
(later Apollonia, near Yafo); under the title Mikal (or Mekal) he was
also worshipped at Beth-shean in eastern Palestine and at Ialium in
Cyprus. Resheph was usually believed to be related to Mot, the god of
sterility and death, but he also seems to have been a god of well-
being, plenty, and fertility, and in that respect he may have been a
form of the god Baal.
Shulman (or Shalim)
The god of health. The name is related to the Hebrew word shalom,
which means "peace" or "prosperity".
Koshar (Hothar)
The god of arts and crafts. He seems to be related to the Hebrew
kosher, which means "fit" or "proper".
The General Character of Canaanite Cults
The Ugaritic literature has helped reveal the depth of depravity
which characterized Canaanite religion. Being a polytheism of an
extremely debased type, Canaanite cultic practice was barbarous and
thoroughly licentious. It inevitably had a most serious retarding and
debilitating effect on every phase of Canaanite cultural and
community life. It was inescapable that people should gravitate to
the moral level of the sordid gods they worshipped, or rather that
the gods were a reflection of their society. "Like gods, like priest;
like prist, like people" expresses a law that operates unfailingly.
Canaanite Cults Utterly Immoral
The brutality, lust and abandon of Canaanite mythology is far worse
than elsewhere in the ANE at this time. And the astounding
characteristic of Canaanite deities, that the had no moral character
whatsoever, must have brought out the worst traits in their devotees
and entailed many of the most demoralizing practices of the time,
such as sacred prostitution, child sacrifice and snake worship.
Canaanite Cults Effete and Corrupt
Such an effete and corrupt religion could have no other than a
devitalizing effect on the population. So vile had the practices of
the Canaanites become that the land was said to "vomit out its
inhabitants" (Lev. 18:25) and the Israelites were warned by Yahweh to
keep all his statutes and ordinances "that the land," into which he
was about to bring them, would not "vomit" them out (Lev. 20:22). The
character of the Canaanite religion as portrayed I the Ugaritic
literature furnishes ample background to illustrate the accuracy of
these biblical statements in their characterization of the utter
moral and religious degeneracy of the inhabitants of Canaan, wo were
accordingly to be decimated and dispossessed.
The Character of the Canaanite Cults Justifies the Command to Destroy
Them
It is without sound theological basis to question God's justice in
ordering the extermination of such a depraved people or to deny
Israel's integrity as God's people in carrying out the divine order.
Nor is there anything in this episode or the devotion of Jericho to
destruction that involves conflict with the New Testament revelation
of God in Jesus Christ.
God's infinite holiness is just as much outraged by sin in the NT as
it was in the OT, and the divine wrath is not less in the NT against
those who refuse the forgiveness provided by Christ. Consider what
Jesus said to and about the scribes and Pharisees who opposed him,
the fate of Annanias and Sephira, or the rather apocalyptic judgments
describe in Revelation.
The principle of divine forbearance, however, operates in every era
of God's dealings with people. God awaits till the measure of
iniquity is full, whether in the case of the Amorite (Gen. 15:16) or
the antediluvians consumed by the Deluge (Gen. 6) or the inhabitants
of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19). But God always gives a way to repent
and avoid the judgment (consider God's words in Ezekiel 33, as an
example -- "God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but
rather, that the wicked turn from his evil ways.")
In the case of the Canaanites, instead of using the forces of nature
to effect his punitive endes, he employs the Israelites to be his
ministers of justice. The Israelites were apprized of the truth that
theywere the instruments of the divine judgement (Joshua 5:13-14). In
the light of the total picture the extermination of the canaaites by
the Israelites was just and employment of the Israelites for the
purpose was right. It was, frankly, a question of destroying or being
destroyed, of keeping separated or of being contaminated and
consumed.
Canaanite Cults Dangeroulsy Contaminating
Implicit in the righteous judgment was the divine intention to
protect and benefit the world. When Joshua and the Israelites entered
Palestine in the 14th century (or 13th), Canaanite civilization was
so decadent that it was small loss to the world that in parts of
Palestine it was virtually exterminated. The failure of the
Israelites to execute God's command fully was one of the great
blunders which theycommitted, as well as a sin, and it resulted in
lasting injury to the nation (Judges 1:28, 2:1-3).
In the ensuing judgment the infinite holiness of Yahweh, the God of
Israel, was to be vindicated saliently against the dark background of
a thoroughly immoral and degraded paganism. The completely
uncompromising attitude commanded by yahweh and followed by the
leaders of Israel must be seen in its true light. Compromise between
Israel's God and the degraded deities of Canaanite religion was
unthinkable. Yahweh and Baal were poles apart. There could be no
compromise without catastrophe.
W.F. Albright wrote:
It was fortunate for the future of monotheism that the Israelites of
the conquest were a wild folk, endowed with primitive energy and
ruthless will to exist, since the resulting decimation of the
Canaanites prevented the complete fusion of the two kindred folk
which would almost inevitably have depressed Yahwistic standards to a
point where recovery was impossible. Thus the Canaanites, with their
orgiastic nature-worship, their cult of fertility in the form of
serpent symbols and sensuous nudity, and their gross mythology, were
replaced by Israel, with its nomadic simplicity and purity of life,
its lofty monotheism, and its severe code of ethics. In a not
altogether dissimilar way, a millennium later, the African
Canaaanites, as they still called themselves, or the Carthaginians,
as we call them, with the gross Phoenician mythology which we know
from Ugarit and Philo Byblius, with human sacrifices and the cult of
sex, were crushed by the immensely superior Romans, whose stern code
of morals and singularly elevated paganism remind us in many ways of
early Israel. (Note: the Romans were apparently descended from
Japheth, so their destruction of Carthage was a fulfillment of Gen.
9:27).
valete
Quintus