Ugarit texts

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AspieAtheistAlly
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08 Dec 2008, 12:18 am

Have any christians here ever heard of the Ugarit texts??

How does that effect your faith??

Magnus
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08 Dec 2008, 4:13 pm

I'm not familiar with it so I looked it up on Wikipedia.

Quote:

Ugaritic religion centered on the chief god, Ilu or El, the "father of mankind", "the creator of the creation". The Court of El or Ilu was referred to as the 'lhm or Elohim. The most important of the great gods was Hadad, the king of Heaven, Athirat or Asherah , Yam (Sea, the god of the primordial chaos, tempests, and mass-destruction) and Mot (Death). Other gods worshipped at Ugarit were Dagon (Grain), Tirosh, Horon, Resheph (Healing), the craftsman Kothar-and-Khasis (Skilled and Clever), Shahar (Dawn), and Shalim (Dusk). Ugaritic texts have provided scholars with a wealth of material on the religion of the Canaanites and its connections with that of the Israelites.

The religion of Ugarit and the religion of ancient Israel were not the same, but there were some striking overlaps. For example, the name of the ultimate divine authority at Ugarit was El, one of the names of the God of Israel (e.g., Gen 33:20). El was described as an aged god with white hair, seated on a throne. However, at Ugarit, El was sovereign, but another god ran things on earth for El as his vizier. That god’s name was Baal. At Ugarit Baal was known by several titles: “king of the gods,” “the Most High,” “Prince Baal” (baal zbl), and “the Rider on the Clouds.”

Baal’s position as “king of the gods” in Ugarit, Israel’s northern neighbor, helps explain the “Baal problem” in the Old Testament. Jeroboam’s religion in the northern kingdom borrowed from Baal worship, and it soon began to look like there was no difference, or if there was a difference, they were so close that worshipping one or the other was just theological hair-splitting.

Some of the original documents are at the Claremont School of Theology which is just a few blocks away. I'm interested in learning more.

I thought Baal was a demon god.

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ThatRedHairedGrrl
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09 Dec 2008, 2:47 pm

Magnus wrote:

I thought Baal was a demon god.

There wasn't a single god called Baal. The word means 'Lord'. It was used as a title for tons of gods in that general area, often followed by some descriptive epithet or by a place-name - Baal-peor, Baal-hammon and so forth. Also in human names, especially those of kings - Belshazzar, f'rinstance. And you could also have a goddess called Baalat, or Lady, of a particular place.

Baal or Bael got made a 'demon' in some medieval magic books, but then the magicians (most of whom considered themselves good Christians) would do that with any old weird name they could find in ancient mythology, including some of the Hebrew names of God.

Calling the gods of other religions 'demons' tells you nothing about them and everything about the monotheistic religion doing the name-calling. Still happens today, as well.

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Magnus
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09 Dec 2008, 3:04 pm

The word Baal means god. Christianity sees the worship of any gods or goddesses as idol worship. That is probably why the word got demonized.
I'm sorry for appearing ignorant and I didn't mean to offend ThatRedHairedGrrl.

On a side note, I'm curious about the word Baal or Bael. I never gave it much thought until this thread. Hasidism was started by
Baal Shem Tov. He was an amazing man. Apparently Baal means master too. He must have know some mystical secrets from the gods.

http://www.dlshq.org/saints/baalshemtov.htm

z0rp
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09 Dec 2008, 4:28 pm

Yes, all mythological gods, lords, deities, etc. that predate The Old Testament were products of Satan produced early on, to test your faith of course. Am I right?

Magnus
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09 Dec 2008, 6:05 pm

They weren't invented to test our faith. Jesus didn't proclaim to have Faith in the bible. He actually criticized much of the Old Testament.
Faith is an inner knowing of God, the Infinite within us. He didn't say angels and demons didn't exist. He just said we shouldn't put them before the God within us. In the Nag Hamadi it states that humans are above the gods because we are both mortal and immortal while gods are only immortal.
The gods can also be referred to as angels and demons. Some are higher than others. They represent virtues and vices.

z0rp
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09 Dec 2008, 6:18 pm

Hey, this is the s**t your apologists came up with, considering Jesus couldn't come up with a better explanation for these things it seems.

DevilInPgh
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11 Dec 2008, 2:19 am

Magnus wrote:

That's because you're wrong. Ba'al actually means "master". Thus, Ba'al Shem Tov (BeSH"T) is translated to English as "master of the good name." Additionally, the word "ba'al" is used in the grace after meals (Birkat haMazon) in the phrase "HaRachaman hu y'varech et avi mori ba'al habayit hazeh" - May the Merciful One bless my father and teacher, the master of this house.

Similarly, this is how the phrase "Lord of the Flies" (ba'al zevuv (or, more commonly seen, Beelzebub), an obvious corruption of ba'al zebul in order to be insulting to the idol) came into being (and hence how Ba'al became seen as a demon).

Magnus
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11 Dec 2008, 12:37 pm

Reread my post more carefully. Don't be so hostile. I'm just trying to learn more about the Ugarit texts. The origin of words often is different from their current meanings. You have to admit that anyone familiar with the bible has seen the word Baal to represent idol worship.

Kilroy
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11 Dec 2008, 12:41 pm

z0rp wrote:

Yes, all mythological gods, lords, deities, etc. that predate The Old Testament were products of Satan produced early on, to test your faith of course. Am I right?

um no
that is the biggest pile of pig s**t I have ever seen
if your joking sorry-there is a lot of uber christian wacko's here

Vigilans
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11 Dec 2008, 3:32 pm

AspieAtheistAlly wrote:

Have any christians here ever heard of the Ugarit texts??

How does that effect your faith??

Not a Christian myself, and I can't see how these texts of the Phoenician religion would affect Christian faith. The Phoenicians were a Semitic people based in Lebanon, at this period called the Levant, and their land was Phoenicia, based out of a handful of maritime city states including Ugarit, Tyre and Sidon. Their religion is grossly misunderstood due to their rivals, the Greeks, putting a lot of negative stigma on them. The Phoenicians also invented the first non-pictogram alphabet which the Greek and Latin alphabets were based upon. Much of the reason for this misunderstanding of the Phoenician religion dates back to the Punic Wars of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. These wars took place between the Roman Republic and Carthage, a Phoenician colony in Tunisia, which after hundreds of years had become a great power in it's own right. The Romans claimed that the Carthaginians practices child sacrifice to their principle deities, these being Baal and Milqart. There is some evidence to support these beliefs as there are regions of Carthage known as 'tophets' which contain thousands of children to adolescent bones. Some believe these were sickly children 'cast off', while others believe the sacrifice was a way to limit the amount of heirs among rich Carthaginian families, which were numerous due to the city's position as a trading power. I'm fairly certain these controversies also put stigma on the religion of Baal.

Magnus
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11 Dec 2008, 8:42 pm

I also don't see how this would affect the Christian faith other than it demonstrates that the Jews were Pagans before becoming monotheistic.
This is no secret though. Even after Moses delivered the message that there is one God above all the lesser deities, many still practiced ritual sacrifice because they enjoyed the material blessings from the gods.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Baal

z0rp
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12 Dec 2008, 4:49 pm

Kilroy wrote:

z0rp wrote:

Yes, all mythological gods, lords, deities, etc. that predate The Old Testament were products of Satan produced early on, to test your faith of course. Am I right?

um no
that is the biggest pile of pig sh** I have ever seen
if your joking sorry-there is a lot of uber christian wacko's here

I was being sarcastic, because there really are many people like that out there, many of which would actually agree with that statement I stated above.

pakled
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15 Dec 2008, 12:51 am

I have an Ugarit font...but that's as close as I got...

Actually, I've heard that Beezlebub (or however it's spelled) is a sort of a joke by Hebrews to the phonetic similarity of the two. Which makes sense, unless you're a crowd of schoolboys stuck on a desert island...

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