i. ancient near east and hebrew bible/ old testament · i. ancient near east and hebrew bible/old...

B

Baal (Deity)I. Ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible/Old

TestamentII. JudaismIII. IslamIV. LiteratureV. Visual Arts

I. Ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

1. Baal in the Ancient Near East. The Hebrewterm ba�al is a common Semitic noun for “hus-band,” “owner,” or “lord,” but as early as the 3rdmillennium BCE, the term was also employed torefer to a deity in a god-list from Abu Salabikh. Theterm is also attested at Ebla in personal names andtoponyms. Yet, it is difficult at times to ascertainwhich of the possible uses of the term ba�al is inview. Thus, some scholars interpret references to b�lhmn as an epithet for the god El (i.e., “[El,] Lord ofHamon”) while others view b�l hmn as the name ofthe deity in (a construct) relationship with Hamon(i.e., the deity Baal, the patron god of Hamon, thus,“Baal of Hamon”). Furthermore, the frequent oc-currence in the Bible of the plural form, be�alîm, hasled some scholars to view the term as referring toan unspecified local deity or simply generically todeities other than YHWH, thus, “lords.” With thediscovery of the alphabetic cuneiform texts fromUgarit, however, Baal’s major role as a deity in theearly religious traditions of ancient Syria and Ca-naan has been much more firmly established. Thisis evident even if the term is employed as a titlefor a god who went by another name (like Hadad/Haddu) and even if the term was used on other oc-casions to refer to other deities as well. It is clearthat at Ugarit the equation of “Baal” and the godHadad/Haddu (or Adad/Addu) is pervasive, thoughadmittedly this might not be representative of anywider contemporary phenomena.

Through the frequent pairings of Baal and Ha-dad in the Ugaritic texts, Baal was associated withan otherwise well-known Syrian storm god of the2nd millennium BCE, though by the 1st millen-nium BCE, Baal and Hadad appear as two distinctdeities. In the Ugaritic god-lists, numerous Baalsare listed in a series, suggesting that there were sev-eral local cults and manifestations of the deity. Else-where at Ugarit, Baal is described as the son of Eland the son of Dagan. He is portrayed in the mythic

texts as a king enthroned atop Mount Zaphon andis granted a palace upon his triumph in his battleswith the forces of Death (the god Mot) and chaos(cf. the deities Yamm [Sea], Lithan [Leviathan], andTannin). Along these same lines, the iconographyof Ugarit and of the wider Levantine orbit portraysBaal-Haddu/Hadad as a warrior wielding a club ofthunder and/or a spear of lightning (see fig. 6). Inother instances, Baal is depicted as slaying a ser-pent. In the series of texts commonly designatedthe Baal Cycle, the theme of Baal’s kingship is domi-nant. As the victor over the powers of death andchaos, he is the giver of life. It should be pointedout, however, that this theme as depicted in Ugari-tic myth is associated exclusively with the deity’sability to provide rain and ensure agricultural fertil-ity. Nowhere in the myth is this role of Baal explic-itly connected with human fertility, let alone somesupposed power to revive, grant immortality or re-store human life following death, as some scholarshave conjectured (no doubt in some instances underthe influence of later Judeo-Christian notions ofthe afterlife).

To be sure, in 1st-millennium BCE Phoeniciantexts, Baal’s role as king continued to be high-lighted in royal inscriptions that recognize hispower to grant kingship to humans. Yet, again, no-where is any mention made of his granting immor-tality or resurrection to dead humans.

What seems less problematic is the notion thatBaal is portrayed in Ugaritic myth as a god whohimself did indeed die and then rise from the dead.In the Ugaritic texts such as the Baal Cycle, the otherdeities, including El and Anath, mourn his death,and its effects on nature are described at length.Baal then re-appears later in the mythic plot of theBaal Cycle. By any reckoning, one must account forthe reference in the preceding sections of the BaalCycle to deified Death’s summoning of Baal to de-scend to the netherworld, the mourning of hisdeath by El and Anath, and the later description ofEl’s dream in which the renewal of the falling rainsconvince El that Baal is once again alive. Moreover,there are problems with the proposal that Baal sim-ply disappeared rather than died. In other such van-ishing-god traditions, the deity vanishes of his orher own accord as an act of divine anger, and a de-scent to the netherworld as part and parcel of thatdisappearance or vanishing is not mentioned (cf.the Hittite god, Telepinu). Finally, while storm

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gods may not be portrayed as those who typicallydie and rise, it might be the case with the instanceof Baal’s dying and rising in Ugaritic myth that aninnovation had taken place at Ugarit, one perhapsinfluenced by the myth of Dumuzi’s descent inMesopotamian tradition (so Mettinger), but one toolate to make any impact on the Ugaritic ritual texts.

Whether or not Baal’s dying and rising (as op-posed to the mythic texts) was celebrated in a sea-sonal ritual festival at Ugarit is also problematic,but many opine that there remains some associa-tion between Baal’s death and rejuvenation and theseasonal cycle in early Syrian tradition. In this view,the seasonal attachments of the Baal myth are givenexpression in the portion of the Baal Cycle whereinthe goddess Anath annihilates Mot, deified Death,after which Baal returns to life. For those interpret-ers so inclined, the death of Baal here occurs at thebeginning of the summer and is followed by hisreturn in the fall.

There remains the related question: If Baal wereunderstood as a dying and rising god, what impactor relationship might this tradition have as regardsthe death and revivification of humans in the ritualcult? One proposal is that Baal served as the patrongod of the royal ancestor cult at Ugarit and, by im-plication, continued in such a role well into the 1stmillennium BCE. Accordingly, such a cult is pre-served in a ritual text from Ugarit KTU 1.161,where in this view, Baal is portrayed as descendingto the netherworld following his invocation in thetemple cult, only to bring up from the world belowthe ghosts of the deceased kings who were genea-logically related to the living king, so that they maydine in splendor with the king and his courtiersand offer their blessings on the king, thereby reaf-firming his right to the throne.

The problems with this interpretation are nu-merous. Conventional literary and phraseologicalparallels found in mythic texts say nothing aboutthe ritual realities that one should derive from suchlanguage, since it is often the case that languagelike this is stereotypical. The presumed connectionbetween a particular mythic theme and a histori-cally-observed ritual must be demonstrated on in-dependent and compelling grounds (such as the di-rect appeal to the myth or the deity mentionedtherein which, in the case at hand, is entirely lack-ing). In fact, Baal is nowhere attested in the ritualcontained in KTU 1.161, notwithstanding thehighly questionable proposal that he is a partici-pant who is identified by the epithet, title, or divinename Rp�u. It is Shamash, the solar deity, who playsthe main role in this ritual as transporter of thedead from earth above to netherworld below, butnot vice versa. The ubiquitous theme of kingship isby itself inadequate to make a direct or derivativeconnection between the two, and it assumes arather antiquated view that there is some necessary

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connection between a myth and a ritual. In sum,the biblical writers’ polemic against Baal had to dowith the role of Baal and YHWH as the deities re-sponsible for sustaining life on earth, which for theancient Canaanites and Israelites did not includethe revivification or restoration back to life of thehuman dead.

2. Baal in the Bible. A comparison of the religiouspractices and beliefs associated with Baal as pre-served in the Bible with those reflective of Canaan-ite practice and belief attested at Ugarit and at otherLevantine sites illustrates both the distinctive as-pects as well as the several similarities shared by theprior, broader Canaanite storm-god traditions andthose in the Israelite religious traditions thatemerged from those Canaanite traditions. In fact,there is growing recognition that Israel’s earliest re-ligious and cultural traditions possess extensive Ca-naanite origins, as is indicated by recent archaeo-logical and anthropological research that situatesIsrael’s Late Bronze age emergence primarily, if notexclusively, within a Canaanite cultural milieu.This has in turn impacted how scholars view theportrayal of Canaanite religion depicted in the Bibleand its close historical relationship with early Isra-elite religion, despite the biblical polemics. The lit-erary depiction of disjunction was in fact an histori-cal conjunction.

The deities Baal and YHWH, two of the majorgods in Canaanite and Israelite religions, are por-trayed in their respective literary traditions asstorm and fertility gods (Job 38, Ps 29) and as war-rior gods who can “ride the clouds” (Ps 18 : 10 =2 Sam 22 : 11; Ps 68 : 5). Both face as their arch-nem-eses the cosmic chaotic forces personified in the fig-ures of Yamm, or Sea (Ps 89 : 9), and his mythicmonsters, Lithan in Ugaritic and Leviathan in He-brew (Ps 74 : 14, Job 3 : 8, 41 : 1) and Tannin (Ps74 : 13, Job 7 : 12). Moreover, both deities appar-ently possessed as their consort or wife the goddessAsherah (cf. e.g., Judg 3 : 7 and Kuntillet Ajrud in-scriptions that mention YHWH and Asherah as adivine couple). It should be noted that Baal is alsoassociated with Ashtarte (Astarte) in other biblicaltraditions (Judg 2 : 13). In 1 Kgs 18, the contest be-tween the prophets of the YHWH cult and those ofthe Baal cult introduced by Jezebel of the Phoeni-cian city of Tyre is focused on which deity possessedthe power to provide rain to fertilize the earth. Thedivine “fire” mentioned in the story undoubtedlyrefers to the lightning and thunder, both character-istic qualities that accompany descriptions of thewest Semitic storm god.

Differences between YHWH and Baal are like-wise evident. Among others, one in particularstands out, namely, the Israelite demythologizationof the heavenly realm. In Genesis, YHWH only sep-arates the sea from dry land and, if there are anyreminiscences of the mythic cosmic battle between



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the gods Baal and Yamm in Canaanite mythology,they are at best faint and vague. Likewise, althoughBaal’s chthonic aspect, if that is an accurate descrip-tor of his role vis-à-vis the netherworld, might beevident in YHWH’s ability to exercise his power inthe realm of the dead (Amos 9 : 2; Hos 13 : 14; Isa7 : 11), YHWH is never depicted as descending tothe netherworld for an extended period of time. Inany case, this trope raises yet again the rather con-tentious point regarding Baal’s categorization as a“dying and rising” god and the related suggestionthat Baal played a crucial role in the revivificationof the human dead in Canaanite religious tradition.

The apparent competition between YHWH andBaal for the hearts and minds of the Israelites isexplored in several narratives, including those ofthe incident at Baal-Peor (Num 25), the murder ofGideon at the hands of Baal worshippers (Judg 6),the story about Elijah’s challenge to the 400 pro-phets of Baal and the 450 prophets of Asherah atMount Carmel (1 Kgs 18), and especially in thesponsorship of Baal worship by a number of kingswho ruled over Israel and Judah, north and south.For example, Ahab of Israel built a temple for Baalin Samaria and worshipped him there (1 Kgs16 : 31–33; 22 : 53), and Manasseh, king of Judah,supported Baal worship in the south (2 Kgs 21 : 3),while his successor and son, Josiah, attempted anextensive purging of all Baal religion (2 Kgs 23 : 4–5). Yet, despite the reference to Jehu’s having“wiped out Baal from Israel” during one of the cen-turies before the exile (2 Kgs 10 : 28), Baal worshipapparently continued well into the exile (Zeph 1 : 4;Jer 2 : 8; 9 : 13). In addition, several personal andproper names from the region contain a theophoricBa�al element, suggesting that many citizens camefrom Israelite and Judahite families who wor-shipped Baal (e.g., Jerubaal).

Further evidence for the persistence and perva-siveness of Baal religion besides the mention of histemple (cf. also 2 Kgs 23 : 24–25) include the men-tion of his altar (2 Kgs 21 : 3), his sacred pillar (2 Kgs10 : 27), his prophets (2 Kgs 10 : 19), and his priests(2 Kgs 11 : 18). In fact, some biblical writers portrayBaal prophets as ecstatics who challenge Elijah in1 Kgs 18, and who lacerate themselves in a ritualact. Also deserving of mention is the view that ref-erences to the god Hadad in the 2nd-millenniumBCE texts from Ugarit likewise refer to this sameWest-Semitic storm god, while in the 1st millen-nium BCE these two deities, Hadad and Baal, cometo represent two distinct storm gods, Hadad of theArameans and Baal of the coastal Canaanites orPhoenicians. Finally, the negative evidence alongthese lines includes the repeated attempts at thesuppression of Baal worship (1 Sam 7 : 4 and 2 Chr23 : 17; 34 : 4), and the mention of a faithful minor-ity that had not succumbed to Baal worship (1 Kgs19 : 18).

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Bibliography: ■ Cornelius, I., The Iconography of the CanaaniteGods Reshef and Ba�al (OBO 140; Fribourg 1994). ■ Met-tinger, T. N. D., The Riddle of Resurrection (Coniectanea Bib-lica: Old Testamant Series 50; Stockholm 2001).■ Schmidt, B. B., Israel’s Beneficent Dead (FAT 11; Tübingen1994). ■ Smith, M. S., The Origins of Biblical Monotheism (Ox-ford 2001).

Brian B. Schmidt

II. JudaismIn classical rabbinic literature Baal is rarely men-tioned. In the many rabbinic texts that detail thelaws of idolatry the sages never discuss the worshipof Baal. This is perhaps not surprising, since by thattime Baal worship no longer existed. The smallnumber of rabbinic texts that do mention Baal re-flect the sages’ exegesis or their didactic goals andare not based on firsthand knowledge of Baal wor-ship.

In fact, the sages were so far removed from Baalworship that they apparently did not notice thattheir own term for a field that receives sufficientrainfall (bet ha-ba�al) is apparently a vestige of an-cient idolatry. The term presumably originates withBaal worshipers who felt that if Baal took care of afield, no human efforts would have to be expendedon irrigation (see Ben-Yehuda: 1: 575, n. 1; the termis still used in modern Hebrew.) The sages them-selves offered a very different midrashic etymologyfor this surprising turn of phrase (bMQ 2a), sayingthat it connotes peace of mind or tranquility, anemotion that can result from sexual activity (basedon one meaning of the Hebrew verb b-�-l). In theMiddle Ages, at least one rabbi, David Qimh� i, sawthe word Baal in the Bible as a general referenceto all forms of idolatry, explaining that these idolsbecame “the owners” of their worshipers (based onanother meaning of the Hebrew noun ba�al,“owner”; see Celniker: 17 [commentary on Judg2 : 11]).

One text in the Jerusalem Talmud (appearingtwice, with small variations) connects the worshipof Baal to sexuality. According to yShab 9 : 1 (folio11d), a statue of Baal had the shape of the head ofa penis, and (according to the standard printed text)“it was [a] na�afon.” Rabbi David Frankel (Germany,18th cent.) writes in the standard rabbinic commen-tary on the Palestinian Talmud that na�afon means“a dildo” (presumably connecting the noun to theroot n-�-p, to commit adultery). It is more likely,though, that the reading na�afon is a scribal errorand that the proper reading is found in the parallelpassage in the Jerusalem Talmud, yAZ 3 : 6 (folio43a), which records that a Baal statue had the shapeof “the head of a penis and it was Ka-�afon (or ka-�afun),” meaning that it was the size of a pea or abean. Again there is no reason to believe that thesages are reflecting knowledge of Baal worship inthis text. More likely, they are just mocking idola-try, as they often do. If the sages’ reference to Baal



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with a tiny phallus is referring to some historicalreality, it might be mocking Roman statuary fromtheir own period, when the genitals of the godswere often portrayed as being oversized.

In modern Israel, Hosea’s anti-Baal polemic(2 : 16–17: “On that day, says the LORD, you willcall me, ‘My husband’ [ishi; lit. ‘my man’], and nolonger will you call me, ‘My Baal’ [ba�lî; lit. ‘my hus-band’]. For I will remove the names of the Baalsfrom her mouth”) has taken on a new meaning.Hosea was so concerned to fight against Baal wor-ship that he was even willing to propose a changein the Hebrew language. Similarly, in 1953 DavidBen Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, wrote aletter to his minister of finance suggesting a correc-tion to the language of a proposed law where a hus-band was referred to as “ba�al.” Ben Gurion thoughtit more appropriate in modern times that a hus-band be referred to as an �ish, to avoid the possiblesuggestion that a husband owns his wife, and hecited the anti-Baal verse in Hosea to buttress hisargument (Rozental). Many progressive Israelis fol-low this suggestion today and eschew the use of theHebrew word ba�al for husband.

Bibliography: ■ Ben-Yehuda, E., Thesaurus totius Hebraitatiset veteris et recentioris, 16 vols. (Jerusalem et al. 1908–59).■ Celniker, M. (ed.), The Commentary of Rabbi David Kimhø i onthe Book of Judges (Toronto, Ont. 1983). ■ Rozental, R.,“Language is Precise about Profanities,” Ma�ariv (November20, 2008; www.nrg.co.il; accessed October 26, 2010).[Heb.]

Martin Lockshin

III. IslamIn a characteristically brief and allusive passage, theQur�an refers to the prophet Ilyas (S 37 : 123; inv. 130 the form Ilyasın occurs) appealing to his peo-ple to abandon their worship of Baal. But only someheed him, and the rest will be called to face whatawaits them (S 37 : 123–30). Although no contextualdetails are given, the commentators accept this as areference to Elijah and his battle against the paganworship that flourished under Ahab and Ahaziah,as recounted in 1 Kgs 17–19 and 2 Kgs 1. In theQur�an, as in the HB/OT, people are diverted fromthe true God by the worship of Baal, though Baal’sinferiority is economically underlined here whenGod’s power is recalled in the title “the best of Crea-tors” (v. 125).

The term ba�al and its plural bu�ula also occur inthe Qur�an with the meaning “husband,” “hus-bands” (S 4 : 128, S 11 : 72, S 2 : 228, S 24 : 31), and inthis sense, together with the feminine form ba�ala(“wife”), it is used in general speech.

David Thomas

IV. LiteratureBaal enjoys a long literary history that echoes hisbiblical role as false god. John Lydgate (1370?–1451?) includes “fals prophetis langyng to Baal” in

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a long list of typological references in “A Defenseof Holy Church.” Jean Racine’s Athalie (1691) is atragedy featuring the downfall of a Baal-worship-ping queen of Judah.

Baal unsurprisingly comes to the aid of anti-Catholic polemics in English poetry, as in MartinF. Tupper’s “Our Church’s Enemies” (1874): “Theyworship bread and wine, and so to Baal bow theknee,/ And make thy better children, Church ofEngland, fear for thee.” The example of BertoltBrecht’s Baal illustrates many of the ways in whichliterature made use of the false god.

In 1918 at 20 years of age, four years after hehad finished writing Die Bibel, Brecht wrote anotherplay with a title almost as biblical: Baal. This workgoes beyond the horizon of moral protest againstwar found in Die Bibel and takes on the existentialworld of human sex, cruelty, indifference, vulgar-ity, and humor as the hero, Baal, attempts to livewhile being aware that he, along with everyoneelse, is just a Leichnam auf Urlaub, a “corpse on vaca-tion.”

The problem of human self-righteousness andits absolutism no longer concerns him. Instead, hehas found a new and more horrible absolute thanthat of the grandfather in Die Bibel: death. Baal isthus not a plea from World War I for an end to theuseless killing of wartime; rather, it is the shock ofthe medical student and military orderly who hasdiscovered the overall weakness of the human or-ganism, the frailty of human life, and the tenacitywith which the dying hold on to it. He discoveredthe transitory nature of human existence even with-out war, and it is this death-and-body-centered con-cept of humanity that the student Brecht uses torefute the non-scientific, romantically-biblical glo-rification of the human as poet, presumptiouslycalled der Gesalbte, “the Anointed One,” as found inHanns Johst’s Der Einsame.

Brecht’s conversion of the protagonist poetfrom “the anointed” to Baal is described through-out the play in terms of the Baal myth with whichhe seems to have been familiar. At this time he keptin his room both a human skull and a picture ofthe Syrian god Baal over his bed – a sign of hisappreciation of the insatiable appetite for life andthe inevitable fate of the living. Worship of Baal isconstantly condemned by the HB/OT prophets be-cause of its idolatry, its connection to sex and ani-mals as the god’s way of maintaining life, and itsdeep association with the spring rain and storm wa-ter. The famous depiction of the god on the RasShamra stele in the Louvre shows him striding for-ward in the style of an Egyptian god, a shaft oflightning in one hand, an upraised thunder club inthe other. Beneath him is a stylized representationof the mountaintops over which he strides and onwhich he is worshiped, and on his head is a crowncomposed of the two horns of the bull (both bull



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and calf are the symbols of fertility connected withhis cult), topped by a large phallus. The two longcurling locks of hair may represent the clouds ofthe storm as well as the testes. The enemy of Baalis the god Mot or Mat, death and sterility, to whomhe yields completely when the time comes.

Brecht uses all the elements of the myth is hisplay. The plot is very loose and bohemian but isheld together by the symbols of the myth, the pass-ing of the seasons, and the image of the tree. Sex iseverywhere, and there are even calves and bullswith their farmers coming to a swindle arranged byBaal. However, plot has only one real antagonistthat is the necessary partner of life: death. Even thetree, symbol of life, can fall on a lumberjack andreverse their roles. Throughout the play the seasonsmove on, the months beginning at the start of theplay with April rain and ending in November justafter All Souls’ Day.

The end of the Baal myth and the end of theplay have a telling similarity. In the Baal myth, thegod surrenders abjectly to Mot’s rapacious jaws. Be-fore descending into the realm of death, Baal copu-lates with a heifer and begets a male offspring.Baal’s sister/consort Anath dismembers Mot andscatters the pieces (melting snow?) on the land-scape. In time, though, the news of Baal’s resurrec-tion is transmitted to the Creator God by a visionas he sees the skies opening up with rain and thewadis once more flowing with honey.

When Brecht’s bohemian Baal is in the woodswith the lumberjacks, he seems to be associatingwith the forces of Mot. In a touching final moment,Brecht has Baal drag himself to the door. No morecommonplace symbol could be more effective: thedying Baal looks out the open door, perhaps hopingfor a sight of the stars and an unambiguous Chris-tian vision of transcendence, but he utters only,“hmmm …” Later, another woodcutter reports thathe was with Baal at his moment of death and askedfor his last thoughts. Baal answered, “I am listeningfor the rain …”

Perhaps the key to Baal’s biblical “theology” liesin this striving for the door. Even trapped in death,Baal is looking for life, starlight, the possible wayout: the door. He has pleaded for companionship,sex, and music. He has called out to his mother, tonumbers, and to himself (originally to God). Invivid poetry Brecht has dismissed poetry as an ulti-mate concern and reasserted the value of life itselfby pointing in biblical terms to its sovereign enemy:the wind. In language both scientific and anti-sci-entific, poetic and anti-poetic, religious and anti-religious, the play avers that we are au fond whatthe ancients and their myths said we were: mor-tals – adding in the Christian-pagan language ofBaal: but it may rain again in the Spring.

Baal and the biblical prophet who challengedhim would continue to address a variety of modern

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historical concerns. Martin Buber’s play Elijah(1956) recasts the biblical conflict in terms of themodern search for moral integrity. Spanish mod-ernist Fernando Arrabal’s Baal Babylone (1959) de-picts a childhood living in revolutionary and fas-cist Spain.

Bibliography: ■ Grimm, R., Bertolt Brecht: Die Struktur seinesWerkes (Nürnberg 1961). ■ Ley, R., “Brecht’s Science andCosmic Futility,” The Germanic Review 40 (1965) 205–24.■ Murphy, G. R., “Brecht’s Pocket Bible,” The German Quar-terly 50 (1977) 474–84. ■ Murphy, G. R., Brecht and the Bible(Chapel Hill, N.C. 1980). ■ Pabst, H., Brecht und die Religion(Graz 1977). ■ Sehm, G. G., “Moses, Christus und PaulAckermann: Brecht’s ‘Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Maha-gonny’,” Brecht-Jahrbuch (1976) 83–100.

G. Ronald Murphy

V. Visual Arts“Baal” appears most significantly (first in the pluraland then in the singular) in Judg 2 : 10–15, again inJer 11 : 13, and most famously in 1 Kgs 18 : 16–39,referring to the primary Canaanite/Sidonian god(s)to which the people Israel is drawn.

Baal is most frequently portrayed in the north-west Near East – today’s coastal Syria, Lebanon andnorthern Israel – in antiquity. Several stone reliefsfrom perhaps 1900–1750 BCE Ugarit/Ras Shamradepict the “Baal of Lightning” in a style reminis-cent of Egypt: the torso is shown frontally, but thelower parts of the body, most obviously the legs,are shown in profile, as is the head, albeit with thevisible eye also shown frontally. Several thick, styl-ized locks of curled hair emerge from his conicalhelmet over his shoulders, and counter-balancingthem, curved horn-like protrusions emerge fromhis forehead. His left arm is extended slightlydownward and holds a lightning-bolt “tree,” as hisright arm is raised, clutching a club-like weapon.This is the “Baal of Lightning” who, as a storm god,fertilizes the fields and make things grow. Simi-larly, a small bronze figurine from 14th- to 12th-century BCE Ugarit presents the god with enor-mous eyes – a virtually universal ancient Near East-ern attribute of gods and those in close contact withthem – a towering conical helmet with bulbous topand his right arm upraised, as if in the act of throw-ing a thunderbolt (cf. fig. 6). This is a variation onBaal Hadad as a storm and fertility god.

Somewhat more staid representations of thegod in his capacity as Hadad are also found, suchas a Hittite image in which the god is enveloped ina body-long garment and thus depicted as a simplecylinder from which his arms protrude at a hori-zontal angle – as if to receive offerings – and witha rounded cap and detailed curly beard.

Images of Baal as a distinctly biblical figure areless frequent than those of various Israelite heroesin the act of destroying the “Baalim” – idols, statuesof false Canaanite gods for which that term is usedgenerically. Thus, Johann Christoph Weigel pub-



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Fig. 6 Figurine of the storm god Baal (Ugarit/Syria,ca. 1300 BCE)

lished a woodcut (1695) depicting the reforming Ju-dean king Josiah (2 Kgs 23 : 4–7) presiding over thedestruction of the Baalim. Similarly, Bernard Picartand A. Van Buizen published an engraving (1728)in which, as the priests of Baal are being destroyedin the foreground, the idols themselves are beinghammered to dust in the background. Differently,the contemporary artist Duncan Long illustrates theplaint in Jer 11 : 10–13 that the Israelites have bro-ken the covenant and built altars to Baal with a dra-matic image of a figure kneeling at sunrise amidstthree large Anubis-like monoliths.

Confusion between the ancient God Baal/Hadadand centuries of Christian associations between“Baal” and various demons – most emphatically“Beelzebub” – has left a legacy of images, such asthat in C. de Plancy’s 1818 Dictionnaire infernal, inwhich this “King of Demons” possesses a crownedhuman head, a frog’s head and a cat’s headmounted atop eight hairy spider legs. So, too, theidea of Baal has been appropriated in contemporaryvisual culture to the “Diablo” series within theMario DS game, as the “Lord of Destruction and oneof the Prime Evils who rule over hell.” The render-ings of him are varied, from a horned and bony de-monic anthropomorph to one with multiple hairy

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legs that appears inspired by de Plancy’s 1818 im-age.

Bibliography: ■ Gray, J., The Canaanites (Westport, Conn.1964). [Esp. 120–22] ■ Plancy, C. de, Dictionnaire Infernal(Paris 1818). ■ Poswick, R.-F./G. Rainotte (eds.), Diction-naire de la Bible (Brepols 1985). [Esp. plate 3] ■ Pritchard,J. B. (ed.), The Ancient Near East, vol. 1 (Princeton, N.J. 1958).[Esp. plates 135–36]

Ori Z. Soltes

Baal (Person)The name Baal (MT Ba�al; LXX Βααλ; Ugar. B�l;Akk. Bel) is a common theophoric element in West-Semitic names. Most “Baal” names are compoundsentence names, whether in the HB (e.g., Baal-tamar, Baal-hanan) or extra-biblical inscriptions(e.g., Ba�lu Mehir [“Baal is a warrior”] in the Amarnatexts). Occasionally, however, the name Baal ap-pears as a hypocoristicon, that is, an abbreviatedform of a longer name. There are only two biblicalexamples of this, both in Chronicles. Two Tyriankings are also known by the name Baal (bel “Lord”in Phoenician), which may be an abbreviation of afull name which includes the name of the Canaanitedeity Baal as a theophoric element.

1. The ReubeniteThis Baal is listed as a descendant of Reuben in1 Chr 5 : 5. Interestingly, he is not listed as de-scended from one of the four sons of Reuben, butrather from a certain Joel, whose relationship tothose sons is unclear. Baal is the son of a Reaiahand father of a Beerah, who was said to be takeninto exile by Tiglath-Pil(n)eser. The few generationslisted from Reuben to Beerah is evidence of the ex-tremely partial nature of this genealogy, perhapsonly selecting certain individuals or a family-line ofinterest to the Chronicler’s postexilic community.

The Reubenite genealogy in chapter five is intwo parts, the first mainly listing certain descend-ants of Joel down to the Assyrian exile (5 : 4–6) andthe second listing the kinsmen of Beerah, severalof whom may be in the previous genealogy, withvariations in spelling: a Joel is mentioned in both5 : 4 and 5 : 8, but also Jeiel in 5 : 7 (very similar or-thographically to Joel), Shema in 5 : 8, similar toShemaiah and Shimei in 5 : 4, and Bela in 5 : 8, per-haps the same as Baal in 5 : 5, which the Peshittarenders as Bela.

Bela is a possible emendation for Baal here, notonly based upon the Syriac evidence, but the factthat personal names containing the element Baalappear to be most common in the 10th century andearlier (i.e., Jerubbaal, Gideon), especially with ref-erence to the family of Saul (Meribaal, Ishbaal),though names with the Baal element are attested inthe Samaria Ostraca. Knoppers, however, suggeststhat the Bela of the Peshitta has suffered metathesisand that Baal is original.



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