Transcript

(16) Who Was Baal? - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMzonzDZ_Uw&t=1109s

Transcript:

Introduction to Theophoric Names

(00:00) Our topic tonight is "Who was Baal?" and so, um, I think this is going to be a really fun one. Let's start off by talking a bit about theophoric names. So, um, you know, a great favorite book of mine anyway is "The Name of the Rose." And they made a really pretty amazing, uh,

(00:25) movie in the '80s that I saw when it, you know, fairly soon after it came out. And here Christian Slater is playing the Christian novice, Adso of Melk, in the movie "The Name of the Rose." Um, the original meaning of the name Christian is "believer in Christ," in the

(00:44) same way that if you're named Christopher, you may not realize it, but that means "Christ-bearer." And so, since Christ—I mean it's a title, but it's more or less used as a name of God in Christianity—these are what is known as theopheric names, or theophoric names, and that means

(01:07) it literally means in Greek, "a name that bears a god." And so, uh, there are plenty of other examples—for example, that are pagan-derived names—that we still use. So Marcus and Martin are both theophoric names that mean something; means related to Mars, somebody who is

(01:29) of Mars, the god of war, the Roman god of war, the planet Mars. Um, and that could mean that the person is warlike, that they're martial. So the Bible has plenty of theophoric names. And so, for example, uh, just a handful of the dozens and dozens that come from the name El,

(01:52) which is the name of a god, but it becomes, uh, a word that means god in a generic sense in, uh, ancient Hebrew and other western Semitic languages. And so we can see the word El at the end of names. And, um, this means it's a theophoric name, but it's also sometimes

(02:15) at the beginning of a name. So for example, Daniel; so that means "El is my judge," or El. Elizabeth: "My El is an oath." Emmanuel: "El is with us." That's one of the Christmas songs. Emmanuel: "God is with us," "God with us." Israel: "struggles with El." Michael: "Who is like El?"

(02:41) Nathaniel: "a gift of El." Samuel: "El heard." So we also have theopheric names for Yahweh, which is the, uh, name of God in the Hebrew Bible. And so, again, there are dozens and dozens of these. I just picked out a couple. [sighs] Hazael: "Yahweh has grasped." Isaiah: "Yahweh is

(03:05) salvation." Jeremiah: "Yahweh will raise." Jonathan: "Yahweh has given." So you can see, like in these—some of these—it's at the end, you know: Isaiah, Yah. So that's Yahweh, uh, and so forth. And sometimes it's at the beginning, like Yehoshua or Yonathan, you know, is where

(03:29) those are. So it's at the beginning. Um, so Yahweh has given. Joseph: "Yahweh shall increase." Matthew is Mattany-Yahu: "gift of God." And Jesus, which is Joshua or Yehoshua: "Yahweh will save." We also, though, in the Bible have plenty of, uh, theophoric names from Baal. And so,

Baal-specific Theophoric Names and Biblical Villains

(03:51) one of these is Ishbaal. Sometimes been changed, and, um, the name has been altered to Ishbosheth, uh, so that they're not using the word Baal, but the original is Baal. Jerubbaal, Jezebel—Jezebel—and, uh, Mephibaal, Mephibaal. So these are, uh, meaning "man of Baal," "Baal contends,"

(04:18) [clears throat] "where is Baal?" and "from the mouth of Baal." And so, although Jezebel is pretty famous as a—a villainess, and it's kind of portrayed as a foreign enemy, a foreign queen who has come and married the king of Israel and is an enemy of Yahweh, uh, and therefore very

(04:39) appropriately has a theophoric name for Baal since she is a devotee—a worshiper of Baal. Um, Ishbaal nevertheless is King Saul's son and successor. Mephibaal is a son of Jonathan, a son of Saul. So, grandson of Saul. Um, David actually also has a son with a Baal, uh,

(05:04) um theophoric name. Jerubale is actually another name for the very heroic judge from the book of Judges, Gideon. Um and so at some point or other they say that essentially they rename or they give it this as an alternate name. Um possibly because again the uh Deuteronomic historians are aware

(05:30) that these Baal names are um contrary to their narrative that they want to be telling because it implies that this hero of Israel is in fact um he or his parents at least were are our worshippers of this great enemy of Yahweh of Baal. So, as a preface for this whole lecture,

Preface on God Names in the Bible

(05:56) just want to point out that the Hebrew Bible includes a whole variety of words that we get translated into English as God or as the Lord. And these include Yahweh, El Shade for God Almighty, sometimes translated, but God, Elon, Lion, God the Most High, Elohim, which is a plural,

(06:18) but is translated as God. So, normally when I'm making doing these lectures, I will quote uh the Bible using the New Revised Standard Version. Uh but and and I almost always get that digitally from biblegateway.com. So, this is my advertisement for them since I use their service for free all the

(06:40) time. Um, but the nice thing about that is that Bible Gateway also has this names of God uh Bible translation and so uh you can go to that and that will actually highlight the underlying uh Hebrew word that is being used for God uh very clearly. So, if you do want to find out

(07:02) what the English is covering up, which is important to this particular lecture, um that's an easy way to get your notes for that. And uh I'm using that translation in some of the quotes here. In some cases, I'm just using the Revised Standard Version, but uh changing where it says the Lord back to

(07:21) the original Yahweh. So, one of the most famous stories, I think, in the Hebrew Bible is Elijah's contests with the prophets of Baal. Um, it's so popular that it's uh has a dozen uh children's stories that I found that illustrate it. So, it's a very memorable story. Uh it's

Elijah's Contest with the Prophets of Baal

(07:48) found in the first book of Kings chapter 18. We read, "So Ahab, who is the king of Israel, sent to the people of Israel and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel. Elijah came near to all the people and said, "How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If

(08:10) Yahweh is God, follow him. But if Baal, then follow him." And the people did not answer him a word. So they didn't want to uh they didn't want to say what which side they're on at this point. It's too dangerous. Then Elijah said to the people, "I even oone

(08:28) am uh left a prophet of Yahweh." But Baal's prophets over there are 450 men. Let two bulls be given to us and let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood and put no fire to it. And then I will prepare the other bull and lay it on

(08:51) wood and put no fire to it. And then you, priest of Baal, call upon the name of your God, and I will call upon the name of Yahweh. And the God who answers by fire, he is God. And the people all answered, "Oh, it's well spoken. Okay. Yeah, I'm up for this. This is going to

(09:11) be a good contest. This is going to prove this whole thing once and for all." So, uh, bulls here are, um, in terms of totem animals, they're sacred to both Baal and also to Yahweh. It's a symbol of both gods, especially Baal. Though the prophets of Baal took the

(09:28) bull that was given him, given them, and they prepared it, and they called upon the name of Baal from morning till noon, saying, "Oh, Baal, answer us." But there was no voice, and no one answered. And they limped around the altar that they had made. And at noon, Elijah mocked them, saying,

(09:48) "Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he's on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened." So, some cruel jibes here. And they cried aloud, and they cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until

(10:06) blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice. No one answered. No one paid attention. Then Elijah said to all the people, "Come near to me." And all the people came near to him. And

(10:26) he repaired the altar of Yahweh that had been thrown down. Elijah took 12 stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob to whom the word of the Lord I'm sorry the word of Yahweh came saying Israel shall be your name and with the stones he built an altar in

(10:45) the name of Yahweh and he made a trench about the altar as great as would contain two seaas about 15 lers of seed and he put the wood in order to cut the bull in pieces and he laid it on the wood. And then he said, "Fill four jars with water and pour it out on the burnt

(11:05) offering and on the wood." So he's just like, he's going to show way more. And this is not just going to start with dry stuff and wait for the fire to happen. He's going to show this is going to be totally soggy wood and and and cut up uh offering cattle here, bull. And then he

(11:23) said, "Do it a second time." And they did it a second time. And he said, "Do it a third time." And they did it a third time. And the water uh ran all around the altar and filled the trench also with water. So, you know, this is a badass prophet. And at the time of the offering of the

(11:42) oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, "Oh Yahweh, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, Yahweh. answer me that this people

(11:57) may know that you Yahweh are God and that you have turned their hearts back. Then the fire of Yahweh fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when the people saw it, they fell on

(12:14) their faces and said, "Yahweh, he is God. Yahweh, he is God." And Elijah said to them, "Size the prophets of Baal. Let not one of them escape." And they seized them. and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon and slaughtered them there. So, and there's the thunderbolt for the I'm

(12:34) sorry, the firebolt uh from heaven in the kids story, although not pictured as the slaughter of all the priests of Baal, [snorts] or at least I didn't find that in any of the kids books. Um Elijah's name, we'll point out here, um is a double theophony. So he has both

(12:51) an L name and a Yahweh name. And so Lya that means my L my God is Yahweh. And so he keeps on this is the part of the whole story. It keeps on saying Yahweh he is God. Yahweh he is God. So that means Yahweh he is L. So, and it's essentially um Elijah's name is almost

(13:13) the slogan here for um Yahwist henotheism, which is to say we are only going to worship one god. There's only our god, our l is going to be Yahweh alone. Okay, so this story is clearly a pmic against Baal. So through a mythic supernatural intervention, Yahweh's

Historical Context of Biblical Authorship and Polytheism

(13:39) power is contrasted with Baal's impotence and this kind of story uh becomes precedent for Christians uh after they're in ascendants. So after Christianity becomes the state religion of the Roman Empire and its successors, Christians in late antiquity in the middle ages would

(13:59) go and topple statues of the old gods and shrines or cut down sacred trees in order to show um the local what are now called pagan peoples, the people who are still revering the old gods, hey if uh if uh Mars or if Dionicus had some kind um actual power. If that was a real god,

(14:22) Dianicius wouldn't let us just uh smash his statue like that. And now we've smashed his statue and we've destroyed the shrine. We've cut down uh you know, Demiter's holy tree, whoever's got a tree, the druid's tree, that must show that your gods aren't real and our gods

(14:40) are the true, our god is the true god. And so this is the same kind of um story although it actually happens in history as opposed to the Elijah uh story from this kind of mythic time period in the Bible. Um what is the story telling us as we look at it though when you're telling

(14:59) this story? What are the authors actually u giving us as clues as the background of their context? So the story is also telling us that there is a longstanding question about which god should be considered the god of Israel, Yahweh or Baal. I mean Elijah says this

(15:16) is you guys have been of this opinion for a long time. Two opinions and this is getting us nowhere. We've got to decide it out runs for all. Who is the God of Israel? Is it going to be Baal or Yahweh? Also the story is showing us that Baal has royal patronism at least some of the

(15:32) time in um the history of Israel. So the king here a Ahab who is the son of Omry he's great villain of the Bible or he's portrayed as a villain in the biblical account anyway. um he's called together all these prophets. And while there are 450 prophets of Baal, Elijah says he's

(15:52) the only um prophet of Yahweh left, implying that there had been a whole bunch more in the past. And now um because of presumably it has to be royal patronage in order for uh these prophets to be able to be making enough money to have this be their business. Um 450 is a

(16:11) lot. So, Baal has royal pat. The story um admits that there's an open question as to which God should be regarded as the God of Israel, but uh and that Baal is in the sentence, but it also presents the claim uh that Yahweh has priority. So, it says Elijah is the only prophet left and he's

(16:35) just building a brand new altar. It's suggesting that he is repairing an ancient abandoned altar. And so um this is a claim that uh the people of Israel have abandoned worshiping Yahweh in order to start to worshiping Baal. And elsewhere in this story the text um

(16:55) makes a another claim that Ahab's wife uh who is the daughter she's a princess from Siden which is one of the main Phoenician cities. So the Phoenetians are a completely related people to the Israelites and they speak a very similar language and at this point are using uh

(17:16) almost the same alphabet as each other or Abjad the same continental uh writing scheme. Uh and they have um Baal is one of their gods. um uh and essentially the text uh often blames um women as scapegoats uh for uh bringing foreign princesses as bringing um other

(17:40) gods into Israel. And that's certainly an argument that's made here in the text. So in other lectures we have uh pointed out that the biblical edifice as related in the Bible is that at its core prophets and and later the um judges and good kings are attempting to hold on to

(18:04) a monotheism that was supposedly occurring from the beginnings of the foundation of time. So the Adam and the anti-deluvian era of patriarchs, but that the people increasingly are polytheistic and they are therefore turning away from uh God, from Yahweh. And um in fact then it's saying it's

(18:28) suggesting that polytheist rebellions increase over time and then it ultimately has that as the explanation for why uh the northern kingdom why Israel and later the southern kingdom Judah and Jerusalem and the temple of Jerusalem are al ultimately destroyed. Um however the uh that has not proved to be

(18:53) the case and so through centuries of uh study of the biblical text of understanding the history behind the Bible of doing textual criticism literary criticism of the biblical sources uh studying the archaeology and also the surrounding historical record of the peoples outside of the Bible. Um

(19:16) what we actually find out is that throughout the entire period up until the destruction of Israel nearly all of the Israelites were polytheist in the sense that they worship more than one god and that in fact hentheism is an introduction. It's the new thing. First Yahweh comes in as a new god and

(19:37) then the idea of pairing down the pantheon and ultimately um merging everything together so that you worship only one of the gods Yahweh. That's a reform that is associated with uh kings and high priests who are centralizing worship within the kingdom at temples

(20:00) that are patronized by the kings of Israel and Judah. And so despite the um the biblical uh story and origin story of the Israelites as um not being from this land um and that they came from, you know, as slaves from Egypt and andor uh from Abraham as a founder uh out of

(20:27) Mesopotamia, then in fact um the people emerged out of the people largely as their neighbors. And so the Canaanites, the Syrians, the Phoenicians uh are largely all and the Israelites are largely all the same people of which they uh develop their own localized identities which they consider separate

(20:53) from each other. So read literally then the Bible presents a pyramid that is upside down to actual Israelite history. And it's hard for those of us who have uh come to Israelite history uh through the lens of the Bible to see it that way. So we have to adjust our um lenses to understand

(21:13) and get at the the history and then so that we can actually understand the Bible in its context. So this is because the texts um are late and they're written or edited by henotheists and then later uh much later by monotheist reformers who are seeking to portray

(21:34) their own ideas as ancient and the tr and as the truly ancient practices and I'm sorry and that the truly ancient practices of the polytheists are sought to be portrayed as recent innovations and like I say introduced by foreigners especially women. Um, so when I'm saying

(21:52) hentheist here, this is the idea that's an understanding that while there are many gods, we are to worship just the one god. And then later monotheism is saying that there are no other gods. There is only the one god. So archaeology backs up this newer understanding of the history of the

(22:15) Bible. uh and but the this new understanding of the history and the Bible itself contains plenty of footprints of the actual history within its PMIC narratives. So we talked about um the presence right at the beginning of um biblical characters, heroes with um Baal uh theopheric names. And so uh

(22:37) and so same thing here. There are plenty of mentions of Baal in the Hebrew Bible and these come alongside other traces of his worship in Israel and those especially help us reconstruct the development of Yahwism in first temple period Judaism. So this whole time period when Israelite and

(23:00) then later Judahite religion is emerging as distinct from its previously similar or identical Canaanite neighboring practices. So we make the case a lot of times here or make the point that if we're going to understand the historical context of any ancient text, the the real context is not when the

(23:30) characters um are supposedly living and when they are set. So if you are writing if you're an ancient writer and you're writing about something 200 years in your past, you may want to write about that all you want, but you are going to introduce amazing number of anacronisms. You're

(23:47) going to write about things and how things are in your own time period uh because history hasn't been invented yet and you aren't able to you aren't aware of all of the of the things that have changed. And so you're going to write about um the past as if it was exactly

(24:02) like things are now because you are not aware of those things. You might have a couple echoes of memory that you're going to include, but you're really giving context for the history of the author, not for the characters, which the authors don't know much about. And

(24:17) so when we're looking at things like the book of Kings here, these are parts of what scholars call the Deuteronomistic histories which were likely first composed in the kingdom of Judah after the fall of Israel to the Assyrians and frankly probably as close to the end of that

(24:39) time period as possible, shortly before the fall of Judah to the Babylonians. Okay, that's the earliest they probably could be composed. There are plenty of scholars who want to argue that for them at least to be edited together, anything like their present format that happens

(24:56) in the exile or after the return from the exile. The earliest possible is really at the end of the kingdom of Judah. These texts were all later edited after Jerusalem's fall by the exiles and also maybe by the scribes who returned with Ezra. So in any event, the version

(25:13) that we have now um may include things that the exiles and the people who are returning find the most important to have kept in. So just by way of that [clears throat] context, so that time period, we're really so focused on Judah when Judah is um uh in its flowering when those biblical

(25:39) texts are being written. This is actually at kind of the height and then the later decline of the Assyrian Empire. So this is after the northern kingdom Israel had been incorporated into Assyria in 721 B.CE E and the leaders and nobles and uh u anyway upper classes of that kingdom had all been

(26:03) taken off to Assyria as the so-called lost 10 tribes where they as assimilated and became regular Mesopotamians up there. And so you can kind of see anyway that this is all within the taking place within the shadow of this um kind of first really vast Middle Eastern empire.

(26:27) And so although the maps tend to emphasize the independence of the kingdom of Judah um from the destruction of Israel by Assyria, Judah became effectively a client kingdom of Assyria. There were time periods when Judah was um actually at war with the Assyrians and was

(26:48) asserting a kind of independence but generally speaking they were under siege when that was happening. uh when that wasn't happening, they were within the Assyrian economic sphere which actually caused lots and lots of prosperity. And so Judah prospered [clears throat] in

(27:02) the 7th century B.C.E. and Jerusalem which during the uh time period when the kingdom of Israel was around. Uh it was a pretty small little hilltown of no significance. It now finally develops as an urban center as its you know quasi independent. its autonomous Davidic kings uh especially

(27:22) welcome exiles from the destroyed northern kingdom uh and create this court that is able to produce um a bunch of literature that includes the origins of the Bible. So although it's written in a time when Judah is important, the story of Elijah that I read at the

(27:45) beginning here is set at a time when Jerusalem was still a hilltown and Judah was a minor neighbor of Israel, maybe just a a tributary of Israel. [clears throat] Excuse me. So to connect with their Davidic patrons, the kings of Jerusalem, the authors who included priests and

(28:11) other exiles from the north who brought with them uh northern traditions and including uh the northern tradition of Yaoism. um they're the ones that created the myth of the United Kingdom of Israel. The myth that um that in fact Jerusalem had been the center of a grand

(28:33) unit United Kingdom is Israel before the northern kingdom broke away uh from Judah. So this idea of the kingdom under David and Solomon which is really important biblically but does not seem to have existed um historically because uh it doesn't backed up in the

(28:51) archaeology. So, we'll look at this just by way of a general context so that we can see kind of this timeline for Israel, Judah, and the Bible creation as we're going here from 1,200 BC BCE till we get to 400. And there's this whole big range of um composition

(29:12) for the Hebrew Bible. The beginning of that is this period that we've talked about as as so important of the Bronze Age collapse when the Hittite Empire falls. Uh this is the time period for the Trojan War. The Masonans, the Manowans uh collapse, the Philistines as the sea peoples

(29:34) invade the Egyptians and later are settled in Canaan in Felistia in what gives its name becomes Palestine. Um like I say, there's a general collapse we have in the biblical um idea in this kind of dark age um set in that kind of shadowed time is this idea of Saul and David and Solomon,

(30:00) a united monarchy uh literarily at least. Then what really happens is a strong state emerges in the north under king Omry the father of Ahab that king in the story uh with Elijah and the priests of Baal that's when Elijah is active but that is not when the Elijah

(30:22) story is written the Elijah story is written uh at the earliest down we have here down here when Jeremiah is active two centuries later uh between these periods of time. We're writing DTR1 and DTR2. Those are potentially writing time periods possibly for when the book of

(30:42) Deuteronomy its first draft or the Deuteronomic history, its first draft and a second later updated draft is written. Uh not book of Deuteronomy, the Deuteronomic History. Um and so you can see then the uh kingdom of Judah existing on after um Israel is uh destroyed and that's where

(31:03) its flowering occurs under Hezekiah, Manasseh, Josiah and then the destruction of Judah, the Babylonian captivity, the end then of the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, the Persians sending the exiles back and then under Ezra uh we have the reading ing of the Torah, maybe in its

(31:25) present edition for the very first time, the five books of Moses. So that's possibly when everything was finally all put together there at the end 400s. And so you can see um why are the Saul, David, and Solomon period is so far removed, so many centuries removed from

(31:44) when anybody was writing anything down. Um this is why it is lacking in a in a lot of historicity. So David um is known as the name of the uh the house that rules the king the royal family that rules in Jerusalem and so it's assumed that he was a person and so stories

(32:05) about him are written. Solomon might have been a name associated with the temple and so that's maybe stories are written about him about that. Um but these are composed um very much later. So, while scholars agree there was likely a historic Elijah that is active

(32:25) in the 9th century B.C.E. Israel, the stories, like I say, are composed two centuries later. And so, they're generally mythic and um this is why they are literary and they're able to contain so many wonderful supernatural interventions. Um, by contrast, when we get to two

(32:42) centuries later to Jeremiah, he's actually active when Jerusalem falls to the Babylonians. And so, he's a historic figure whose writings survive um within a nucleus of the book bearing his name. So, we have a book of Jeremiah. It's been expanded. It's not what he himself wrote every part of

(33:04) that, but he's a historic person and we probably have some of his writings within that. and his um writings align very much with the Deuteronomist the Deuteronomist Deuteronomistic histories and so it's thought because of the themes are so similar that he is part of

(33:21) a school that is responsible for those for bringing together at least the the things that become the books of Joshua judges Samuel Samuel kings kings so and say all of that so that we can think of the context right so the context really is Jeremiah's day as opposed to um uh as opposed to Elijah's

(33:43) day. And so um let's look at what Jeremiah has to say about Baal worship in his day. So according to Jeremiah, Baal worship remains completely widespread in Judah in his own time period. That is to say, long after the fall of Israel, um Yahweh spoke his word

Jeremiah's Context and Baal Worship in his Time

(34:03) to Jeremiah. Jeremiah says Yahweh said, "Stand at the gate of Yahweh's house, the temple, and announce there this message. Listen to the word of Yahweh, all you people of Judah who go through these gates to worship Yahweh." This is what Yahweh saba oath which is to say

(34:24) the Lord of hosts the Elohim the God of Israel says change the way you live and act and I will let you live in this place do not uh trust the words of the saying this is Yahweh's temple Yahweh's temple Yahweh's temple it's a lie suppose you really change the way you

(34:48) live and act and you treat each other fairly suppose you do not oppress foreigners and orphans and widows or kill anyone in this place. And suppose you do not follow other gods that lead you to your destruction. So keep the commandments, but especially here, don't

(35:03) worship other gods. Then I will let you live in this place in the land that I gave permanently to your ancestors long ago. You are trusting in the words of a saying. It's a lie that cannot help you. So um Yahweh here through Jeremiah is saying this is a uh this is not an

(35:21) unconditional covenant that you guys have made. You have to obey these commandments otherwise otherwise you know the covenant that you get to stay here is not going to um be kept. You steal, murder, commit adultery, lie when you take oaths, burn incense as an offering to Baal, and run after other

(35:39) gods that you do not know. Then you stand in my presence in the house that is called by my name. You think that you're safe to do all these disgusting things. The house that is called by my name has become a gathering place for thieves. I have seen what you were doing,

(35:59) declares Yahweh. So the Judites are worshiping Baal just as the Israelites in Samaria had done. And Yahweh warns Jeremiah that Judah will be destroyed the same way Israel was if Baal worship does not cease. So he says, "I will force you out of my sight as I forced out all of your

(36:20) relatives, all of Ephraim's descendants." So Ephraim here is the leading tribe of the northern kingdom, the leading tribe of Israel. And so that's a is more or less saying, "I destroyed Israel because of this. I'm going to destroy Judah as well." So, henist henotheist uh reformers

(36:39) including the deuteronomists. So, the people who are writing kings and also Jeremiah here who has the same themes as the deuteronomists, they see Yahwehonly worship as a covenant and a covenant that is in fact um uh not unconditional. It's a very conditional covenant. So

(36:59) when Judah is breaking it by continuing to be polytheist, uh Jeremiah explains, Yahweh said to me, "Conspiracy exists among the people of Judah and among those who live in Jerusalem. They've gone back to the evil ways of their ancestors and refuse to obey my words.

(37:17) They are following other gods and worshiping them. The nation of Israel and Judah have rejected the promise I made to their ancestors." So there's a result that's going to happen with this. So as with Elijah's mythic contest, Jeremiah predicts that Baal will not rescue Judah from the Babylonians. This

(37:39) is what Yahweh says. Jeremiah says, "I'm going to bring a disaster on them that they can't escape. Although they will cry out to me, I won't listen to them." Then the cities of Judah and all those who live in Jerusalem will cry to the gods to whom they've been sacrificing.

(37:56) But these gods will never rescue them when they're in trouble. Judah, you have set up many go as many gods as you have cities. You have set up many altars in Jerusalem to sacrifice to Baal. You have as many altars there as there are streets in Jerusalem. So So you've been praying to all those

(38:17) guys. So pray to them for help just like the priests of Baal did when they wanted their altar to be licked with the fire. Um but here's the difference between uh what the present day uh Jeremiah that is seeing and the story that the Deuteronomists are writing about. In

(38:34) this case, Yahweh also isn't going to save the people from the Babylonians. So he says, Jeremiah, don't pray for these people. Don't cry or pray for them. I won't listen when they call to me for help in times of trouble. What right do these people I love have to be in my

(38:48) house when they do so many devious things? Yahweh says but Seboth has pronounced disaster on you. This is because of evil things that Israel and Judah have done. They have made him furious by burning incense as an offering to Baal. So um so the context really is this Baal

(39:13) worship is still um um very central to Judah. This is as it had been in Israel. Um because again this is Jeremiah complaining about it in his present day and again the story of Elijah is being written contemporaneously to Jeremiah. So this is a problem that they're seeing

(39:34) as a contemporary issue. So a couple generations before Jeremiah, there was a king Hezekiah of Judah. And he's really the guy who brought about kind of the early Yahwist reforms in Judah. So Hezekiah is a king who successfully resisted the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC. and he's

Hezekiah's Religious Reforms

(39:54) an early patron of Yahweh's reforms and has the goal of centralizing worship by destroying what's called the high places all around his kingdom. And so previously in all the past um the Levites, the priestly class in Judah had had uh local shrines up in the hilltops

(40:15) where they would offer sacrifices to Yahweh but also to the other gods in the Israelite uh pantheon. And uh and now Hezekiah is uh going around and smashing all of those. No longer are anybody allowed to sacrifice anywhere else. We're now only going to offer sacrifices at the central temple

(40:39) that is directly controlled by the king and his uh high priest partner. So among things that he destroyed, Hezekiah went so far as to uh destroy the neushan. And so this is a bronze serpent which had become kind of a um pagan cult statue thing. It's a rival

(41:00) cult object, but this object was believed by the people at the time. Hezekiah in killing in destroying it believed that Moses had actually created it. And so this is an actual relic of Moses. Uh and it does take there's a story about it in the um Torah in the

(41:19) Pentatuk that may or not may not have existed yet, but anyway is that is still remembered from this time. Uh and yet he's so um concerned about centralizing reforms and eliminating worship of other gods that um an important uh religious item mosaic religious item like this is

(41:43) also kept caught up in the smashing. Um it's also because they are trying to create a religion that is um u iconoclastic. It doesn't have pictures, you know, so God isn't to be pictured anymore. So having these uh these symbols and animal symbols like this like a snake um are also something

(42:03) that they're probably trying to get rid of. Um this uh neushan is a symbol of a snake wrapped around a pole. And so this is um a symbol of healing and it's used in a healing story and it is similar to the staff of Eskeipius in Greek mythology. Um it is not the same as the

(42:26) kaducius which is two snakes with wings. Um the two snakes with wings is actually the um kaducius is actually a thing that Mercury runs around with and it's about commerce but because it looks similar and it's looks a little cooler because it's got two snakes and wings. Um that

(42:46) became uh adopted um it that became adopted by medical stuff. So you'll see like a lot of that used as a medical symbol even though really they should be using this one not the kaducius which is a symbol of commerce. This is a mistake that people made. So Manasseh uh who is

Manasseh's Reign and Religious Reversal

(43:07) uh Hezekiah's son. So Hezekiah's reforms were reversed when his son came into power. So Manasseh restored the the previous Israelite pantheon back to the temple. So, King Manasseh rebuilt all of those illegal places of worship, the high places that his father Hezekiah had

(43:29) destroyed. He set up altars dedicated to Baal. And he made a pole dedicated to the goddess Asher as King Ahab of Israel had done. Manasseh like Ahab worshiped and uh the entire sorry and served the entire army of heaven. So, the whole pantheon. He built altars in Yahweh's temple where

(43:53) Yahweh had said, "I will put my name in Jerusalem." In the two courtyards of Yahweh's temple, he built altars for the entire army of heaven. So now all the gods of the pantheon are now um being worshiped in the temple in Jerusalem. He burned his son as a sacrifice.

(44:12) So he also restored it says here in the Bible Manasseh restored the uh ancient uh practice westsmitic uh pagan uh religious practice of child sacrifice which is something um that continued in certain circumstances uh in the um the Romans we're talking no you know used as

(44:39) a plumbing against the Carthaginians the Carthaginians who were also um uh Phoenicians or Punic colonists. So from the same uh Canaanite Punic Westsmitic culture um that they would sacrifice their children uh and that was you know firstborn and that was a um you know the

(44:59) Romans considered that to be very uh barbaric practice and the Romans had their own barbaric practices but this was the one that they uh singled out as being uh that their enemies were uh were doing. And we also know that for example this great leader of um of Carthage

(45:14) Hannibal you can just see right there the the apheric name right so Hannah Baal right so that's and so that's where um that continues Baal worship so he burned his son as a sacrifice um you know we've talked about before how actually um the Isaac story the Abraham

(45:37) Isaac myth is a a substitution story where they're saying yes, in the past we have sacrificed the firstborn of every womb. But now we don't need to do that. Stop everybody. The religious reform here is stop doing that. We can instead have a a substitute. We can use a a

(45:56) young ram to do that. And indeed the the Passover story itself is also uh referencing this. So the firstborn is being killed by the destroying angel. Everybody who hasn't sacrificed their firstborn. But if you take ram's blood and you put it over your door, that

(46:13) shows that you've done a substitute. And so then your firstborn is not going to be uh killed by Baal or Yahweh or the destroying angel by Mott or whoever is whoever the sacrifice is being to. So he's restored that though Manasseh, he consulted fortune tellers. He cast evil

(46:31) spells. He appointed royal mediums and psychics. He did many things that made Yahweh furious. Manasseh had an idol of Asher made. Then he set it up in his temple where Yahweh had said to David and his son Solomon, I have chosen this temple and Jerusalem from all the tribes

(46:48) of Israel. So Manasseh overturns his father's reforms. He restores the traditional pantheon to the temple and the various polytheist pra polytheistic practices which the reformers saw as abrogating the covenant with Yahweh. The Deuteronomists believed that Yahweh would punish Judah for reverting to

(47:13) polytheism. And thus, if they were correct, if that was a true thesis or um theodysy, then we King Manasseh really ought to have been chasened somehow by God or frankly even killed by foreign enemies. That's certainly what always happens in the literary component of the

(47:33) Deuteronomistic history. So, uh, Israel forgets God and they start worshiping, uh, some other god and then God brings the Moabites in and the Moabites conquer them for a while or the Philistines come in and conquer them. Um, there's a big empire right here, Assyria, that could

(47:49) easily conquer Manasseh to prove to remind everybody that actually you should go back to worshiping Yahweh. That does not happen though. In fact, instead because of the general context of Israel, I'm sorry, of Assyria's decline. So, one of the things that happens is um

(48:06) Canaan, Syria, Palestine, this area um because it is wedged between two larger powers. It's when those powers are in decline that it can see its flowering. And so um this is a time period when really Judah is able to start flourishing affording Manasseh a really

(48:26) long relatively peaceful and incredibly prosperous reign. So he reigns 55 years according to the Bible um completely doing what should not have happened according to the Deuteronomistic um theology. So Manassa's son and successor, King Ammon, is assassinated very early in his

Josiah's Reign and Reforms

(48:47) reign, and that presented an opportunity for another reversal of policy when Ammon's son, Josiah, assumed the throne as a minor, according to the Bible, an 8-year-old. Uh, and during his reign, during Josiah's reign, uh, we'll see Hezekiah's reforms are reinstated and

(49:05) redoubled. And it is this time, Josiah's reign, that's when the prophet Jeremiah began to be active. And so he continues on after Josiah. And he actually continues to be an active prophet after the destruction of Jerusalem. But this is Jeremiah's immediate context. So this is

(49:23) why we come back to um Josiah so often. And indeed, the Deuteronomistic history praises Josiah above all other kings. And it's a good reason for that is maybe because the very first draft of this thing is written during his reign. So according to 2 Kings 22 in the 18th

(49:44) year of Josiah's reign, in other words, after he has achieved his majority, the chief priest of the temple, Hilkaya, sent him news. And so we read there the chief priest Hokkaya told the scribe chef uh chefam fam it's hard to say that sha fam fam I have found uh the book of

(50:04) Moses teachings in Yahweh's temple. So this previously lost we'll say in quotes book here is then read to the king which causes him to have an immediate shift in policy. So when the king heard what the book of teachings has said he tore his clothes in distress. [snorts]

(50:22) So uh many scholars have proposed that the book that Hilkaya found here uh is Deuteronomy and Deuteronomy may have been composed in its earliest form around this time. It probably does not predate this at all. And so um probably here the idea is that it Hokkaya and his school are composing um

(50:48) this book uh regardless of when it arose the book hadn't been read before or seen before u by the kings and it is used to justify Josiah's Yahwist reforms. So in 2 Kings chapter 23 we read, "Then the king ordered the chief priest Hilkaya, the priest who served under Hilkaya and

(51:11) the doorkeepers to take out of Yahweh's temple all of the utensils that had been made for Baal, Asher, and the entire army of heaven." So now we're getting out rid of the pantheon again. Josiah burned the utensils outside Jerusalem in an open field near the Kiddran brook.

(51:27) Then he carried their ashes to Bethl. Josiah got rid of the pagan priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to sacrifice at the illegal places of worship in the cities of Judah and all around Jerusalem. They had been sacrificing to Baal, to the sun god, to

(51:45) the moon god, to the zodiac, and the entire army of heaven. He took the pole dedicated to the goddess Asher from the temple to the kiddron valley outside Jerusalem. He burned it in the kiddron valley, ground it to dust, and he threw its ashes on the tombs of the common

(52:02) people. He tore down the houses of the male temple prostitutes who were in Yahweh's temple where the women did weaving for Asher. So there is a lot of um that's a lot of paganism going on in the temple precinct precinct all the way up until um Josiah. And as we can kind of see in the

(52:26) biblical period, Josiah is very close to the end of the first temple period. And we are still, you know, in the middle of, you know, pretty unreformed um uh Israelite Canaanite religion that is taking place at the very heart in the temple itself. Um, so then one of the ironies of the

(52:45) Deuteronomistic history that has so far looked forward to Josiah and has always promised again that if you obey the Lord and stop worshiping other gods, you're going to prosper. And if you forget and if you forget the Lord and you start worshiping other gods, uh, you will be

(53:04) uh, chastised. um you know Manasseh had that great long reign despite uh doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Whereas Josiah um just completely unexpectedly uh when a resurgent Egypt starts to come out and the Pharaoh brings an army to uh Megiddo, Josiah goes to see him maybe to

(53:30) be offer himself as a uh client king. Uh and very unexpectedly in 609 the pharaoh Neco II just kills Josiah. uh and that um is later interpreted as a battle uh which later becomes the the precursor to the idea of a battle there Armageddon. Uh but it's probably nothing any so

(53:55) grand but it is a very um unexpected for the present- day reformers who really believed that believed their theology that if you were to just not be polytheists if we're going to just be hentheist like Josiah was being he should be being prospered. he's the lord should be backing him and

(54:13) that's not what happens in actual history. Okay. So from this really partial survey we can see that baal worship was very widespread in Israel and Judah often enjoying royal patronage really up until the end of the first temple period of Judaism. And we've also caught glimpses

(54:33) of a broader pantheon of gods. So the entire army of heaven as it's being referred to here and that included gods with names like Asher, the goddess Asher, uh the sun, the moon and so forth. So that kind of brings us to the topic we've been dancing around a little bit

Baal as a Title and the Ugaritic Texts

(54:56) and we wanted to do a more deep dive into who was this great rival of Yahweh, who is Baal who um uh Jeremiah and the Deuteronomists are are complaining um many people think should be the God of Israel. So first off there is more than one Baal. So in ancient northwest Semitic

(55:19) languages. So all of these Syria um Syri Palestine Canaan Israel area here Phoenicia area uh Baal is a title that means lord means owner. So it's like the later ancient Semitic word adon which also means lord and that word is pluralized as adoni my lord. um my lords that uh word is used also as an

(55:50) honorific for a number of gods and in some cases it becomes the theonym or the name of a god in particular. So for example Adonis. So the Greek god Adonis who the Greeks really did understand um had come from um this Canaan area from Syria. Uh this name itself um is a lone word from this

(56:16) word adon which means uh uh lord adoni. So um we'll bring it we get to find out more about bael because we have um come upon another source of a lot of literature from western smitic uh the western smitic region. So, Yugurit was a wealthy northwest Semitic kingdom with

(56:45) close ties to the Hittite Empire before this Bronze Age collapse that we talk about all the time. So, it was destroyed in 1185 most likely as part, you know, during the general Bronze Age collapse. Um, very likely uh collapsing when the sea peoples overran it and other places. So

(57:07) on this little map here of the Levant and Egypt, the um the little places that have castle symbols, those are the cities like Ty and Tannis and Haron um those don't fall. Whereas cities like Ashcolan and Cadesh and Urit those Tarsus those all are conquered and those

(57:30) are destroyed during the collapse and the Hittite state collapses. Although the Egyptians are weakened, they they survive. Um so it's a fortuitous collapse not for the people of Ugarit at the time but for history because um all of their texts which were written on clay tablets, some

(57:52) 1500 texts uh survive and because um nobody ever rebuilt Yugarit after it was destroyed. it just stayed there buried and uh it was only in 1928 and when it was dug up that all of these uh texts these tablets clay tablets were um discovered and that gives us a very rare glimpse into uh

(58:16) ancient northwest Semitic religion as important as you know the phoenetians are with the um very early alphabet we just don't have like a cache of you know all of the writings from Tyer or something like that so that we can know all of Phoenician mythology the way that we

(58:35) know uh Greek and Roman mythology and so how getting these survival texts in uh Ugaritic is really really crucial. So what do we learn from the Ugaritic texts? So Baal is among their chief gods that are worshiped there. We also have figurines and um relief sculptures and

(58:54) so forth of Baal from Ugarit. Um the texts make it clear that Bale that the that the bale I said there's other ones more than one possible Baal because it means Lord. The Baal that's venerated in Yugur is Hadad. So Hadad is a storm god whose name likely means roar or rumble

(59:16) effectively is evoking thunder. So this god originates in the Levant. So in this area and so Bale Hadad, the Lord Hadad was introduced uh into eastern uh Semitic areas, Mesopotamia by the Amorites, the kind of Bedawin attacking people who uh barbarians who overran uh at different times uh the

(59:44) Mesopotamia. And so there in Mesopotamia, Hadad became known as Adad for the Acadians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, etc. So among the most famous myths require recovered from Yugarit, those 1500 texts is called the Bale cycle of stories. So in the pantheon while L is their

The Baal Cycle Myths

(1:00:09) supreme god who's essentially representing kind of the heavens um the uh he is sort of like the if we if you think of if you're more familiar with uh Greek and Roman mythology um you know this there's a succession of sky gods where the sky gods begin uh with

(1:00:30) Orinos and then Kronos and then Zeus and each one you know Orinos is just the uh heavens alone and Kronos is more uh each one is like more present among people until you get to finally you get to Zeus, a young active um uh storm god who is much more active in people's lives

(1:00:53) than just the distant heavens. And so in that same way, L is is more distant and removed and Baal is going to be a much closer at hand storm god. So it's sort of a um equivalence there between uh when Baal is overthrowing L, it's sort of like Zeus overthrowing Cron Kronos if

(1:01:12) you know those stories. So then at the beginning of this Baal cycle um the god Yam seeks to gain dominion and effectively be he's going to be the one that is going to be the new leader of the gods since L is sort of removed in his lofty heavens. So Yam is the god of the sea and his

(1:01:32) claim for dominion is initially it has the support of L. So L likes Yam uh and Yam is beloved of L and he summons uh the divine craftsman figure in the story who's called Kather Wakasus which is skilled and wise is what his name means. So it's the wise kind of craftsman of

(1:01:54) the gods, the architect of the gods to build a grand palace for Yam. But when he goes and talks to Yam, Koser Wakasus tells him that Yam has really risen presumptuously, that he's he's not glorious enough to um take over as the king of the gods. And you know, Baal is

(1:02:14) going to resist him, he predicts. And indeed, that's what happens. And so Baal has a big long fight against Yam. And Yam again is the sea and he has sea creatures uh there and who are initially very scary and are fighting Baal a lot but ultimately Baal wins and slays Yam. And

(1:02:34) so we have a missing part of the the tablets. So we don't have all the tablets. Um because this fight of Baal against um Yam this kind of uh primordial sea chaos kind of thing um that's very similar to other Middle Eastern other Semitic mythic stories like for example Marduk um who slays

(1:03:00) Tiiamat the Babylonian personification of the sea as part of the Babylonian creation story. And so a lot of scholars speculate here that what we would have here now is Baal having a creation story for this earth out of u kind of the carcass of of Yam out of the chaotic the

(1:03:23) waters of chaos. Um so uh now that uh Baal has uh defeated the person who was the god who was going to take dominion uh Anat his very close ally maybe his sister the exact relationship isn't clear Anat the goddess of hunting uh and Atherat as it's called in the Ugaritic but is also

(1:03:53) in other um Westsmitic uh iterations is Asher who we've already heard of. So Asher, who is the wife of L. They together persuade L to allow the divine craftsman to build a palace for Baal, which he does, and he uses the aid of fire, kind of like Prometheus. Uh this is a important uh power in

(1:04:18) civilization. And it takes a a seven-day kind of cosmic period to build this palace for Baal. Bale then has the divine architect Kther Wacasus install a window in his palace's roof. And that window allows him to open and close the heavens, giving Baal control over the rain and thus fertility

(1:04:41) of the land. You might remember we just talked about the um uh the biblical um background cosmology of the world is that the uh world is flat that is um resting upon cosmic waters and there is a kind of a hemispheric like firmament that is the sky that is over top of the

(1:05:05) earth and that there is a a window in the heavens that God that Yahweh can open up and he does open up when to cause the flood. And this is a window that Baal has made in his own palace that gives him control over fertility. And it's very important in this arid land obviously to be able

(1:05:22) to uh bring rain. So in the next cycle because Baal has um struck the seventh uh the seven-headed serpent monster Lotan. Um, in other words, he's express it and he's also done things to express um his dominion over everything including death. Uh, Mott death, the god of death is very

(1:05:45) offended. So, Mott um, you know, threatens to lock Bale in the underworld and says, "All the gods will know you're dead." uh when that happens and after some fighting proceeds to kill Baal. A L and Anat then have a big long uh mourning of Baal's death. Uh L and Asher decide well Baal's gone

(1:06:11) now. Who can be now who should have dominion? Um it was going to be you know the god of the sea and then it was the god of the storm god. Who is going to be? So they decide they're going to replace him with Aar which is the morning star, Venus the lightbringer.

(1:06:26) Um but Aftar proves unsuitable. He's not able to be a strong enough uh god to be ruling uh you know ruling as king of the gods. Um the story continues. We saw that Anat um the hunt goddess of hunting is either Ball's sister or some other close relative of Bale. He she goes and

(1:06:49) kills Mott. Um L then has a dream that Baal is still alive. Anat goes in to seek him. Um Baal is still alive because rain is still coming and and then they're able to find him. Anat restores him to his palace. Mott, even though you know I guess he's god of death, you don't can't kill him

(1:07:13) forever. He returns too. Um uh he fights he you know doesn't like that Bale is back in charge. He fights Bale. They fight on and on and on to a standstill but ultimately Mott has to concede. The fact that Al has um Bale's back and is bestowing his favor that means he's

(1:07:31) going to Baal has to be considered the king of the gods. And so this very quick simplification of the the Baal cycle here. So um so what can we say then about this Baal? So Baal Hadad the main is also likely to be the main biblical Baal. So although Baal Lord began as an

(1:07:51) epithet for hadad, the word also then evolved into the god's name and then had became the epithet. So most scholars agree that the Baal here in the Ugaritic Baal cycle is essentially the same as the primary god named Baal in the Hebrew Bible. Although there are other gods in

(1:08:11) the text, there's so many mentions of Baal in the Old Testament that sometimes it simply is the the word Lord is meant. And so one of the examples of that is when we have things like um uh Ishbel, you know, the the son of of of Saul, that uh theonymic uh theophoric

(1:08:31) name. So it's saying that he is a man of Baal. But what's not clear there is is Saul's son here a worshshiper of Baal, the rival of Yahweh, or is he representing um a different a different Yahwist understanding where they were trying to say Yahweh is Baal. So So

(1:08:57) there there might have been there there were a couple different paths that could have been taken. one is to to insist that Baal simply is Yahweh in the same way that they have later, as we'll see, insist that L simply is Yahweh. And so the Bales in those names could mean

(1:09:16) Lord, but also be referring to Yahweh um as opposed to a distinct a God who is Baal who is distinct from Yahweh. So we'll see how that goes. So essentially um as we kind of have looked at all of those we have just an abbreviated from the story I just summarized westsmitic

(1:09:35) pantheon. So we had L who is the supreme heavenly deity. L has a wife Asher the mother goddess. Uh at different times L then was favoring Yam who was the god of the sea. And then later um when Yam and Baal were dead, he wanted to have maybe Aftar, the god of the morning star,

(1:09:59) Venus to be the um uh the chief of the gods. We had Baal and Anat um Bale had and Anat who were related. Maybe they are the children of Deeon, the god of crops. It's not entirely clear from the text. Uh they Baal in turn fights Yam and Lotan the monster of chaos and also

(1:10:24) Mott the god of death. Um so those are just some of the gods in the pantheon and there are more because we've already talked about how um even in the Bible as are saying there were uh uh shrines or or altars to also the sun god, the moon god and and the whole zodiac.

(1:10:43) So, so one of the things that happens Oh, did I miss one? I missed one slide there. Okay. So, one of the things that happens is we abbreviate this um uh I'm missing one slide. So, I'll explain what happens. So, where does y where does Yahweh come from? So, um this is

The Progression of Yahwism

(1:11:02) kind of an important slide that I skipped. [laughter] So in the charts, so essentially as we have an abbreviated um more abbreviated pantheon, what we're going to continue to have it be important here especially is L and Asher. And then we're going to have that

(1:11:18) include L and Asher have sons of L. Among whom one of the sons of L is Yahweh and then there are other unnamed in the Bible other sons of L. Then we also continue to have um Baal and Baal continues to have for example his um the things that he's doing as a rival to

(1:11:40) Yahweh and it's understood in the biblical text. Okay, that's like phase one. Then phase two is Yahweh absorbs L. So, um, Asher, who had been El's consort, now becomes, uh, and maybe Yahweh's mother, now becomes Yahweh's consort. And so, there's a bunch of phrases in the Bible where it talks

(1:12:06) about Yahweh and his Asher. Um, and then there are sons of L that are still remembered here and mentioned here. And so Yahweh who is now L is the leader of a heavenly court lesser gods who are the sons of L. And now in this stage um uh Baal is largely seen as a rival. So it shouldn't

(1:12:32) be the god of Israel for at least the Yahwist as far as the Yowis are concerned. the people who are baists would maybe are saying no, we can have both side by side or maybe you know Baal should be the God of Israel. Um and so Yahwists anyway paint Baal as a rival to

(1:12:49) Yahweh's dominion. And so then uh in the next phase then Yahweh also uh um absorbs Asher as Yahweh becomes now the more removed cosmic god uh in whose image uh whose divine image both male and female are created. Um Yahweh at this time also takes on all of Baal's roles. So even though Baal is

(1:13:16) not uh Yahweh and indeed bales are not gods at all in this final um understanding of the Yahwehist they're just merely idols. Now everything that Baal did like fight the Leviathan that's something that Yahweh did. And meanwhile the sons of Al which had been gods they're no longer gods. Now

(1:13:38) they are understood to be angels of Yahweh. And so that's sort of the stage of um the progression of Yaoism uh from kind of polytheism, hentheism and ultimately monotheism in the first temple period. All right. And so that is um my overall uh you know glimpse on who was Baal um

(1:14:03) the whole development of Yahweh and who was Yahweh where Yahweh come from that's a future lecture you know that's a really also complicated thing and we'll talk about that but I thought we'd start with this but give you a window into that sequel at the end. Okay, let me get a glass of water while

Q&A Session

(1:14:22) Landra is giving me the questions. Um, boy, I want to thank uh everybody for their donations. Puglies uh writes, "Waking up Wednesday morning and seeing the new stream going is the highlight of my whole week." Well, thank you so much, Booley, for your support and uh your donation. Thanks also to

(1:14:52) Dave Anderson, to Michael Rogers. Oh, thanks Philip Dento for a couple donations. Lots of donations. I appreciate that. Uh and Jared um says, "I should have dressed up as Bale for the lecture. It is Halloween. Happy Halloween. I I didn't have a Bale costume, so I I should have." You're

(1:15:11) right. I apologize for not doing that. Lander, let's advance the getting there. Sorry. Very active chat. It's a very active chat. Okay. Ron Wagner uh comments are in question. Uh one of the commandments says something like, "I am God. Thou shalt not have any other gods before me."

(1:15:33) Doesn't that imply that the Israelites worship multiple gods at the same time? So, so they're not supposed to because it says, "I am God and you're not have any other gods before me." What it's saying is that they believe in multiple gods. And so this is not a um you know

(1:15:49) this is from the ten commandments from Deuteronomy. I am the Lord thy God that shall not have any of the gods before me. [clears throat] That means um that we're not to um we're not to a monotheist understanding of God yet. So when that is written um by the deuteronomist

(1:16:08) uh or whatever that could even be an older formulation when that commandment exists um um it's representing a henotheist. In other words, there are multiple gods but we're supposed to worship one of them. And so like you say that's an example of um the reality that

(1:16:22) we really have kind of demonstrated that the Bible demonstrates a lot. Um, Forever Seeking Wisdom says, "How does the Baal cycle compare to Jesus as dying and rising gods? Does it fit any mythological themes?" So, so the dying and rising god theme is like this very

(1:16:44) popular thing from the 19th century that um that 19th century scholars have kind of um kind of imposed on stuff. And so and so mostly this dying and rising god um framework has been largely abandoned. Um what is the in the Bale cycle um it isn't entirely clear what Bal's dying

(1:17:07) and rising which he does do here what this in in in fact represents. So sometimes for example when in the Greek mythology when Pphanie is taken by you know the daughter of uh of series of deer uh who is the this fertility god that is creating all of this when uh creating the the

(1:17:35) flourishing of the earth um when her daughter is taken to the underworld by Hades by um Zeus's brother and brought into the the world of death Then um Demiter in her grief causes all the plants to die and then that's why um plants uh die in winter. This is an

(1:17:54) ideological myth to explain that. And then because of a deal that Hades made with with Zeus and Demiter uh when the spring comes Pphanie gets to come back with her mother. It makes her mother happy and so the plants all come again. So for the Bale cycle, um some scholars

(1:18:09) have suggested that the Baal going into the underworld with Mott and then getting his sister bringing him back um uh in the form of a rain that maybe that would be a seasonal like that. Others have said that no, maybe um in this case it's um because it's from this more aid area

(1:18:30) as opposed to a um as opposed to a seasonal annual thing, an annual cycle like we experience uh where we are that it's talking about catastrophic droughts. And so, um, Baal is in the underworld during a time of catastrophic droughts and then L sees him come again

(1:18:50) and because the rains have come again um that that maybe is a not an annual um seasonal explanation of an ideological myth. But it uh is that it is not entirely clear because we don't have you we have so little unfortunately in all of these uh westsmitic um mythology in contrast to what we have

(1:19:12) for the Greeks. Um Donnie Lee Gringo writing from Brazil says uh what connections if any are there between Eden snake and the mosaic snake on a pole? Well, it doesn't there's not any uh direct there's not any direct links in the text. So, they don't suggest that there

(1:19:37) is or that and there and and specifically the the mosaic snake on a pole that existed an actual historical artifact at the time of um of Hezekiah. That's a artifact of a snake on a pole that was attributed to Moses who was not a historical figure. So Moses so so it

(1:19:57) is something that they understood one of their ancestral heroes Moses would have had as his own thing and so it's seen as an artifact of that. Um but it's more likely you know but it is simply an ancient um religious cult item that Hezekiah destroyed. So later when they

(1:20:15) have the uh when people wrote down stories about what their understanding of of where of Moses and where Moses would have made it, it's it's in it's in relationship to healing. And so it has no relationship with the the Eden snake uh that I know of. So he has the Egypn

(1:20:34) snake has nothing to do with um uh with healing. And so it's more related to this idea um even to of the Eskeipius's uh you know the staff of Aaron and the staff of u uh Eskeipius as opposed to the Eden the snake from Eden. Um you know the the idea of snakes is

(1:20:56) that they um you know in terms of healing. So they shed their skins and then they that's as and it looked like a way to heal to people. I mean, it's how they grow. They can't they can't grow uh the way we grow skin. So, the way the the scales work is they shed their skin

(1:21:13) and then they seem like they've healed. And so, there was an idea that uh snakes had the ability of healing. And so, that's why um that's why it's associated with that. It's not why it's associated necessarily with Eden. Uh Sandra Burn asks, "I'm assuming that

(1:21:29) uh the sacrifice of children is historically accurate. Uh why was it done to keep control or to hurt? Um I would say it's done because uh yeah it's it is it is historically accurate. Yes, there isn't done um it's not like I don't think that we have the example

(1:21:49) that it was it's insanely widespread but it was certainly done especially among the elite. Um it is not done uh well I mean it was done because uh I would say ancient religion is especially superstitious and so um there is your world is fairly chaotic. The gods are uh

(1:22:10) fairly chaotic. You do not know what will offend them. And there is there was an idea that emerged here in um we call um Syrio Canaanite religion that um sort of a dedicatory offering had to be made. So the first born of every womb is mine sayaeth the Lord. Uh and so that is

(1:22:38) that's actually made its way into the Bible even that that statement. Um and so there was an understanding if you didn't do that you would be um punished. So, so paganism, you know, polytheism is largely about uh all kinds of ritual things that you have to do to make sure

(1:22:57) that you can not be um uh not have gods be angry with you and curse you and do horrible things to you or if they have been doing horrible things, uh that you can propitiate them and get them to stop or at least um you know, make make some kind of amends to make sure that would

(1:23:14) be and so it's just an understanding of ancient religion. And so one of the this is one of the things that um you know people uh often think just think that religion is always bad. Actually the the um the Israelite religion that is having a reform that is saying no you don't have to kill

(1:23:37) children anymore. Now we can substitute do a sacrifice of a ram or something like that an animal sacrifice. Okay that's you may not want to do animal sacrifices. You think that you today you might think that's a terrible thing. it was a big improvement you know and then

(1:23:49) later um eliminating animal sacrifices which is another religious reform that comes later is also uh a big improvement and the and uh so reform continuously happens um and some some modern reforms uh reformers would like to say well let's just get rid of um religion and many

(1:24:08) people have but the problem with that is is that they are only really getting rid of organized religion people immediately uh are just as religious as before in the sense of the things that they believe and when they don't have a forum for exploring it then they they fall

(1:24:27) into all kinds of other things like um they read books about manifesting or and they start to believe in manifesting or they you know they you know there's all kinds of different things that uh you know you go to different gurus for and you believe your energy is blocked and

(1:24:42) all this kind of thing and so religion doesn't Um just because you uh get rid of organized religion that doesn't get rid of religion. Um and instead actually what I think we need or this is my personal belief is that we need um uh rational organized religions so that we

(1:24:59) can help people as a or we can as a people um try to understand things that are are healthy and that make sense and that are and that are workable and that and that are true as opposed to um things that aren't. And so when we have traditions that are horrific like this,

(1:25:18) those should be uh abolished like they did in this uh historic time period um uh and indeed that's certainly part of what the Yahwist reform was about getting rid of. So um Jason Cuculo, oh thank you so much for your support. Um so he asks you also ask was Baal a man a

(1:25:41) king later uh deified. So that is also some things that happen. So a lot of times um there there are examples where there might have been a historical person who was a hero who is eventually revered as a god or their their name in a you know kind of an ancestor worship eventually

(1:26:05) um they have a shrine. Uh it becomes mythicized over time. And so when it's a name like so Baal, which just means Lord, um anybody who was an earthly person who was a lord who used the title Baal, um you know, yes, in theory sometimes, um as they're remembered or

(1:26:25) as their remains or their shrine or their statue gets remembered, it could be also be understood as a as a god, one of the many uh manifestations of Baal or a different Bale. Okay, so Landra says there's several examples in the tablets of that. Um, uh, Ry the King 2 asks, "Is there any

(1:26:53) evidence of a hentheism towards Baal in any of the northern Levant?" So, so I don't know that that is happening. So there is hentheism outside of Israel. There's evidence for that. For example, in Moab, which is just a neighbor of uh of Judah. And the Moabites seem to be

(1:27:18) having, you know, hentheism towards a national god for them, Kosh. Um I don't I'm not aware of a Bale hentheism uh elsewhere in the northern Levant, but it might be a thing that is happening among Israel's nearer neighbors anyway. And it's certainly true that let's say

(1:27:40) if you have a citystate um a city state like Ty could maybe have a I'm not just saying that out of hand, any one of them might have a very particular patron that they get really focused on. um that wouldn't necessarily be henotheism, but it might be kind of

(1:27:57) moving towards that. But I'm not I don't aware of any of the examples of that. Bale in the northern Levant, as far as I know, continues to be worshiped as part of a regular large pantheon where he gets equated um uh syncretically with with Zeus when during the Henistic

(1:28:14) period. Um, Hector Herrera says, "Can you talk about how Elohim, technically the plural of L yet is used as a singular in uh post first temple Judaism?" So, so yeah, the um the name that we see almost all the time that gets translated as God in the Bible is technically, you know, would be

(1:28:40) pronounced God's. And there is also a plural. And so there's another bunch of different ways that this can can be described. So uh it can be described essentially as how God as God is getting more cosmic um is effectively having a divine we. You know, like we talk about the royal

(1:29:05) we, you know, that is our pleasure that you uh come to us and so forth that this is that God as God is absorbing these lesser gods like Yahweh into being one the one God um that maybe um the whole council of the gods is is being kind of referred to even though it's now

(1:29:25) understood as one. And so I guess I would say it is a sign of uh it's a tradition that develops. It's potentially like a a sign of respect and reverence. Uh it isn't u it isn't a sign that um that the Israelites are believing uh the second temple Jews are believing that a

(1:29:46) whole bunch of gods plural. They're using it to mean one God even though the word um is plural. Rain Weber says uh when in Genesis God kicked out Adam and Adam and Eve, he put a cherubim to guard um to guard the guard unless they eat also of the tree of life and become like us.

(1:30:08) Would Baal have been considered one of us at that time? So he um uh Yahweh here uh in that story which is uh from the from the Yahwist source of the book of Genesis when Yahweh is talking about that the other gods are these sons other sons of L that are part of the court who are

(1:30:32) going unnamed and so he's talking to the other gods that are getting reduced ultimately going to get to reduce to angels Um, and so, so Baal could have been, but it but probably isn't anymore. It's could have been one of the sons of God, one of the sons of L, uh, like Yahweh. But, um, so it's

(1:30:54) hard to decide because there's, I think, a couple different roads that could have been taken. So, one road is that Baal is collapsing into Yahweh. And so um you know and Yahweh is saying he'll become like they'll become like us um Yahweh is Baal and so Baal wouldn't be one of the

(1:31:16) other people or if um if Baal is a rival then um then maybe he's not being referred to as that but he's a different god. So I guess I wouldn't necessarily it's hard to say since it's it's a we're more or less speculating because it's not it's not mentioned in the text

(1:31:33) directly what is meant there. But I would say the sons of L are meant there, the heavenly host. Um, Eric Taylor says, "Was worshiping Baal sort of like praying to St. Peter for modern Christians?" No. Um, it's not because Baal is a god and you could have been your, you know,

(1:31:53) he's vying in the Baal cycle to be the supreme god. So, Baal, like praying to Baal is like praying to Yahweh or it's like praying to uh to Zeus. Praying to St. Peter is like um praying to uh any one of the uh the you know what the sons of L essentially it's like praying to an

(1:32:14) angel. So if you you can pray to um Michael who is not a uh human. Michael is an angel uh and so is a different creation. We're going to have a whole lecture on what angels are. And so you can pray to to Michael and that's fairly similar to praying to St. Peter. You're essentially

(1:32:35) asking somebody that's up there in the heavenly court to put in a good word for you with God. Uh Michelangelo says, "Why is Michael phrased as a question? Oh, is it meant as an attack to non-believers or doubt? Since Michael is an uh archangel, why isn't the name sort of equivalent as

(1:32:57) nobody is like L? Um so so I was just repeating like this out of an etmological dictionary. And so it may be these are every time I've seen these um these etmological meanings for these names, they are a reconstruction. And so the scholar is making an argument of of

(1:33:18) of what it's posing. So usually um often they will look at the biblical etmology that's sometimes given in the Bible. So a lot of times uh when the name is mentioned uh the person will say something that's kind of like a pun to explain the etmology of the name. And so

(1:33:36) a lot of times people give preference to that but I don't think I don't actually think that that's necessarily a great practice. it it makes it at least that what that is is understands what the uh the compiler of the text how they understand the name at the time it's

(1:33:53) written and so maybe that's where that is coming from in that form but it may well mean something like you're saying is it does it mean nobody is like L I think that um it could it could mean that and so you could probably um look up the etmology for Michael and I think

(1:34:07) it'll probably be uh phrased another multiple different ways as scholars kind reconstruct what it's supposed to mean. Uh, Andre Andre B says, "Can John make a connection between ancient and modern paganism/supstition? Uh, why does that confusion of stories and explanations work even to this day?

(1:34:32) Um, so so modern paganism is a is a a revival. It's a new um a new religion that was kind of born out of postprotestants who are upset with um usually I think it came from is uh people who are upset with directions that uh especially 19th and 20th century Christianity took uh post Victorian era

(1:35:01) as Christianity conf got really confused and with uh uh trying to police social norms and uh being very anti-ex and having a bunch of sex negative attitudes, stuff that is just um should all be jettisoned from Christianity, but was seemed was made to be pretty central

(1:35:22) to it. And so, um, I think people saw, um, believed that ancient paganism was free of a lot of that because, um, you know, some of the early expressions of ancient paganism is much more body focused and bodily and and, um, and has a lot of nudity in the pictures and and

(1:35:44) sex. And so I think that that was a a way to legitimize a a liberation from some of this uh Christian puritanism and prudism of modern Christianity. Um and so it's a it's a a reasonable reaction to that. Um, but you know, it isn't it isn't particularly um I don't think it's

(1:36:08) particularly borne out in what ancient paganism was like, which is extremely um uh ritualistic. It is kind of like this fear-based worldview. It is. Yeah, there's um not as you know, they may not have been as upset about nudity and sex and different variants of it, but they're upset about

(1:36:32) lots of other things that uh that if you were to revive it really uh you would we would be appalled by. And um and and it's you don't even have to get to the the child sacrifice that we saw saw here listed um and that the Carthaginian pagans were still doing um to even get

(1:36:51) there. It's all kinds of stuff that the that the Romans were even doing. If we read about we've done lectures on on how paganism is actually lived. Um in terms of superstition, superstition is been uh with us the entire time. So um so animists, pagans, uh Christians and Jews

(1:37:09) and Muslims uh uh and post um Christian uh agnostics and atheists can all be superstition. So superstitious is something that exists inside and outside of of all of the religions. And so I define um superstition as uh effectively like u things like believing that

(1:37:32) different kinds of ritual magic or or magic is going physical magic is going to happen in the world. So um you know believing that you can do Jedi mind tricks with the force and that kind of a thing. Um there are uh believing in in luck uh believing crossing your fingers believing in in uh

(1:37:55) sympathetic magic all those kind of things are I would lump into superstition and and unfortunately that it exists uh inside Christianity a lot in the present day lots of superstitious Christians there's lots of superstitious post-religious people uh in the modern world so um you ask why does that

(1:38:15) confusion of stories and explanations work even to this day. I'm not so I'm not sure entirely what you mean. So I would just say that the reason why we have um a bunch of supernatural um stuff happening in ancient literary stories like when Elijah calls down the

(1:38:36) the fire of God. Um it's because again those are literary creations written after the fact. The people in ancient in in the ancient world didn't have a um a a understanding of the difference of causation and they they didn't um didn't really have any difference between

(1:38:56) natural causes and and things that are that we would define as as supernatural because causation wasn't understood largely by them. Um let's see. I really don't know. uh uh give um thank you for your donation and also you ask um can you suggest any books, videos, lectures, etc. that go into

(1:39:20) historical detail of the other gods mentioned in the Bible? Um so actually Landra, we had a big bibliography for this. Can you give me can you look up some of those so that we can just put them into the links because I I I had a I got a stack of books for this and I don't remember what

(1:39:39) they're all called. They've got long titles. Um, so there are a bunch of books. I don't have uh I don't have other videos and lectures, but I but we definitely have a stack of books. The lecture lecture before God was God. Yeah, we have another lecture before God

(1:39:56) was God in our own queue. Polytheism in the Bible. And we have a lecture called polytheism in the Bible. And we're going to come back to this topic in the new year and get some updated lectures on it. Uh, Leon asks, "Is there a lexogical collection connection between the L name

(1:40:14) in the Bible and the Baal name? Maybe that it's BL." And no, I think that that's not the case. So, um, so it's a different it's a different um source. Uh, Mealangelo says, "Did any biblical prophet make a correct real prediction, not a retroactive prediction like

(1:40:41) Daniel's statue, or did all predictions fail like Josiah's reign?" So, so the real prophecy is actually not about um making true predictions. So, I'm I'm going to tell you they they literally they want to have that be the case, you know. So when when people are

(1:41:01) writing um about literary prophets who make pred you know who lived 200 years ago who make correct predictions of your time and they do it correct because you know what happened in your own past um they are they are making a kind of prophet prophecy that is um that is

(1:41:17) assuring you of our place in the world in this day but obviously that is not a prediction of the future. So a real contemporary prophet who is speaking to his own time period or her own time period they really shouldn't be saying you know um I know for a fact that this

(1:41:36) will happen in the future uh because the future is not written. So the the correct thing that I think prophets should be doing and and good prophets are doing is saying if we for example don't um if we don't address uh all of the issues that are causing the

(1:41:54) humanmade climate crisis um if we do not get carbon emissions under control if we do not deal with uh you know the population crisis all those kind of things that the degradation of um of of agricultural lands, the extinction of species, the world is going to be

(1:42:14) significantly um worse in future generations than it is right now. And there's a lot of suffering right now. And so that would be a um you know, a conditional um a conditional prophecy. And so I think that some of them, you know, there are some conditional prophecies that end

(1:42:34) up being correct. So I think that some of Jeremiah's um conditional prophecies that he was making there about uh you know or some of the other prophets that they're saying you know Jerusalem also is going to be destroyed if uh you know if we don't change our ways and and one of his

(1:42:51) things is monotheism but actually if you if you remember that quote that I read he's also talking about um we have to be more ethical. We have to be uh better to widows and orphans and and refugees um this kind of a thing. So he's you have to stop lying and and and spreading

(1:43:06) false uh o O's and things like that. We have to you know be interested in truth and reality. Um so he so he's making those kind of predictions and in that case um you know Jerusalem was destroyed after that and and the reason why he might have you know that might have not

(1:43:27) been a totally um you know crazy call to make is that obviously the northern kingdom had been destroyed. um the kingdoms were pretty precarious at that point and so making the prediction that it's going to get destroyed is something that um you know you can make different political prog

(1:43:47) prognostications that this is if we go on this path this kind of thing is going to happen. Uh and so I think that that some of those are going to happen. Um most of the so most of the the really problematic uh predictions are are when we get to apocalyptic

(1:44:07) um and apocalypticists like the author of Daniel that you're mentioning they really even though even though people misinterpret them so people um very wrongly read the book of revelation and thinks that uh that the book of revelation is referring to the 21st century. The book of revelation is

(1:44:24) referring to the first century when it was written. that guy is writing to those guys and those things didn't happen in the sense of a literal end of the world. Um so that's a failed prophecy. It is not a prophecy where he's writing about now. So now we have

(1:44:36) to interpret it um uh spiritually and not as if it's going to happen in history for it to have meaning. Um Kevin five Kevin the fifth uh says since the Israel region was an Egyptian asset in the Bronze Age would their ba be different from the u ugaritic one

(1:44:57) which was under Hittite control. Um it could be so Baal actually um so it was the same god but he would have developed different uh different stories and attributes. Um, Baal actually spreads at that time to Egypt. So, it is one of the gods that's known. Um, it's not one of

(1:45:18) it's obviously not a um uh one of the main Egyptian gods who are their native gods. But so, so there is a you know um cultural exchange that's happening as also we were mentioning that Hadad is also taken to um Mesopotamia where he becomes Adad. So, so um these ideas are kind of spread as

(1:45:40) they spread they change in all the different areas and that is based on like you say the fact that they're having different cultural um uh interchanges and they're exposed to slightly different ideas and customs and so it'll be a little different how it's understood in those areas.

(1:45:56) Um so Pugley says is there any relation to Carthage's uh Bale Hammon other than the linguistic lord title that uh John mentioned earlier? That's true. So the so we don't know in um Carthage's case. So Bale again is a um is a sky god there uh and is an important sky god. But instead of for

(1:46:24) example uh Hamon which is who's which is ed etmologically we don't know exactly where that comes from. There's a bunch of different theories of where Hamon is coming from as opposed to hadad which is like rumbling. Um and also uh Carthage's Bale has as his sacred animal the ram as

(1:46:40) opposed to a um as opposed to a bull. And so it's could be a totally different uh lord like you're saying it's say so so when I'm mentioning this the custom being the same um the the child sacrifice thing the the the sacrifice of the firstborn is a general um westsmitic

(1:47:01) you know Canaanite Phoenician thing um that is not necessarily bale Hadad's thing it's actually even um in the Bible it's attributed to a different god. It's I think it's to to Molech anyway. So it's like the is it or Milcom or something like that. It's to a

(1:47:23) different god. And so so it's not necessarily um I don't want to blame Baal for that. Uh it is simply part of the um uh that that pagan religion. And so in this case like you're suggesting actually because there's a lot of differences between you know Bal Haman

(1:47:41) and Bale Hadad uh even including the you know the the sacred animal it may be a totally different god. Uh Daryl Scott thank you for your uh support and he asks uh did worship of Baal or any other members of his pantheon survive anywhere? So yes, um uh so the

(1:48:00) Israelites by the second temple period successfully, you know, wipe out all of the other people in the Israelite pantheon. And so it becomes true monotheism, but all of their neighbors now then are very separated from um from them religiously. So um the people in

(1:48:20) Damascus, their their kingdom Aram, you know, becomes um kind of a cultural Aramaic. the Aramaic language becomes, you know, widespread even the and alphabet too which even it gets adopted by the Israelites as a spoken language. And so they uh continue to have uh

(1:48:41) temples to Baal. There's temples to Baal across Syria and Palmyra and everything like that. Um he continues to be um as the uh uh as the area is conquered by the Greeks and becomes parts of hellistic kingdoms um Greek Greek uh synretatism kicks in and so um people in

(1:49:03) those areas continue to worship Baal but they associate him with Zeus and so now he's Zeus and Jupiter and Baal but he continues to be known as Baal in the uh in the cities of the east and so that continues on until um uh until the Romans uh become converted to

(1:49:24) Christianity. It becomes a state religion and the um monks in the Eastern Roman Empire at a certain point start knocking over all the shrines like I was saying they do like that Elijah battle u and they say well and why isn't Baal uh stopping us from kicking over the

(1:49:41) statue? I guess he's not God. I guess God, the God of of the Christians, the God of the Byzant the East Roman Empire here, the Roman Empire is uh is God Christ. And so that's when when it finally goes extinct uh under the Christians. Pugley says, "Oh, no. Pugl's already

(1:49:58) talked." Uh you have to uh what was the next one? No, I just finished Daryl Scott. Daryl. Okay. Sorry. Oh, there's a lot of questions. Okay. Uh Jonathan McFarland, thank you for your support. Um, you ask, "Are there any Bible passages that may originate from smitic gods

(1:50:18) other than Yahweh?" Um, like where where you're saying, "Thus saith the Lord, and they speak." Um, think of that. So, there are, you know, like in a first person. I think that's an interesting question. I would have to look up any case where that might be. I feel like um

(1:50:41) there's might be some cases where like El Shade is speaking directly to one of the patriarchs um and so the idea then is that might be you know the actual god L before he's absorbed into Yahweh uh or they're absorbed together. So something like that might be the case. Um,

(1:51:01) there are definitely things where Yahweh is doing stuff that other Seemetic gods actually did. So, like we had in the in the creation story that exists in the Psalms where um uh where Yahweh uh you know destroys Leviathan uh and in order to begin creation. That's something that

(1:51:25) um Baal actually did. Um but yeah, that's an interesting question. and it's something I would have to look up to see if I can find examples of that. Uh Jason Culo, thank you for your support. Um asks a bunch of questions here. Let me look at look go through

(1:51:43) these a little bit. Um in this chat, uh I noticed that Bale looks like a sea people attacker, a pelicit invader that became a lord in uh in Canaan possibly. No. Um, no. Baal is there before the sea peoples. So, u Bale is definitely present in Ugarit before the sea peoples

(1:52:05) get there. So, all of those things in the Baal cycle, those are all present um in texts that have been around in Ugarit and then the sea people's come and destroy Ugarit. They don't make all the texts after they get destroyed. So, he's definitely there first. And it's not um

(1:52:20) uh the the Peliset invader. um those guys probably brought their own gods but um ultimately they uh become you know the Philistines and they lose their language and they really start adopting the customs of the locals. So even though they're a warrior cast, what

(1:52:41) probably happened is when they conquer the plane um the region between, you know, uh between the Judah highlands and the and the sea there, Felistia, when they conquer that and and gives it its name, um there's probably a lot of people that are still there, which is

(1:52:59) why they adopt the local language and customs and probably al mostly their religion as well. Um, you also ask why was Cyrus conquest of Babylon prophesied? Um, I think that there is prophecies that the Babylonians are also going to fall. I'd have to look at that. I I haven't

(1:53:20) looked that up. That that's a good place to look for a prophecy that maybe uh succeeded. Um, you said, "Is Mosaic uh code plagiarized from Hittite law codes?" Um, so definitely there's a bunch of studies of where the what parallels with Hittites. There's definitely parallels from from

(1:53:41) the Mesopotamian law codes. Um so Hittite law codes I haven't looked at parallels for that. It's an interesting place to look for other parallels. There are I would say the problem for um you know direct influence from the Hittites is that they have a completely different

(1:53:58) kind of language and it's harder to get at. uh whereas um the Mesopotamians and their law codes, they're speaking the same language and there's some really direct u u spreading of ideas between the two, but it would be an interesting place to look for parallels. Uh Fabiano

(1:54:14) Gritty says, "No, just supported." So, thank you gave thank you for your support, Fab Fabiano. Um, Joseph Kenya um asks, "Was there ever a Jewish backlash against the worship of angels? I think that once the gods were transformed into angels, some people would have realized that angel

(1:54:37) worship is polytheistic." So, so yeah, this is a um I think this is a very legitimate complaint that um for example, uh the world religion of Hinduism can have with uh Muslims and Christians and Jews. In other words, that Muslims and Christians and Jews have made this big

(1:54:58) big um uh case. We're monotheists. We believe in only one God and things like that. But then there's all these other levels of of angels and demons and jin and and you know dead people that are with God and and so forth. And so there are are all of these divine beings

(1:55:15) especially angels which are not even related to um mortal beings but are divine creations. Um, and so like you say, any any existence of any of those ideals is a dimminuation of monotheism technically. Um, I think or a kind of monotheism. And so um, and so the argument that that there's any big

(1:55:40) deal about the difference between monotheism and polytheism, I I think it's a an Abrahamic palemic that doesn't really have a lot of a lot of meaning and you as you kind of point out. Um but I don't know that um I don't know how much um Jewish backlash against it there is because the text the

(1:56:00) transformation of the sons of God into angels is at the first layer of uh Jewish holy text. So at Torah level, right? And so um and so even the more conservative uh the most conservative sect of the second temple period, the Sadducees um took the Torah as scripture. and the Torah talks about,

(1:56:21) you know, angels. And so I don't think that they were opposed to angels. Um, so ton of YouTube asks, "Is the battle between Baal and Mott just another example of the fight between good and evil?" Well, you know, it it can be, but I don't think so. I think that the um so I

(1:56:42) think that these earlier ones are is less representing the fight between good and evil and it is more between order and chaos. Um and that's the same kind of thing that's happening in the um you know in the Greek myths, right? So there's the the Olympians fight against

(1:56:58) the titans that are essentially monstrous that are representing chaos. And so um and so I think that that's the precursor be between uh the more ethical thing that occurs later in the um in the axial age when we start to get the world religions when people are worried about

(1:57:16) um more worried about good and evil uh as opposed to the polytheist concerns about order and chaos. Um so I just want to remind everybody uh we have our upcoming lecture is actually happening on Sunday. So this Sunday as opposed to Tuesday, this is a special lecture and I hope you'll um you'll

(1:57:35) listen to it. It's a um it's called the past, present, and future of the prophetic monarchy in the Latterday Saint tradition. And so it is me as a historian talking about present day in um my own immediate context and also me as a historian actually making predictions, but also uh being an

(1:57:56) activist historian trying to change history. And so we'll we'll see. It should be uh interesting. And then we'll continue with our regular Tuesday lectures, not next week, but the next on November 14th with the problem of universals. Thanks so much.