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380 Ba'al- Worship

Baal-Hanan

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

divine agency, and as each of them had its own divinity or demon as the "owner" of the soil, such a being was called its "Ba'al." The Stages in usage, having thus begun in agriculBa'altiiral settlements, was naturally transWorship, ferred to the sites of cities, all of which were in any case founded under religious auspices. Hence the multiplicity of Ba'als; and hence the proper names of places which have " Baal" as the first element, such as Baai.-hazor,

Baal-hermon, Baal-.meon, Baal-perazim, Baalshalisha, Baal-tamak, and Baal zephon. A second stage of development was reached when to the Ba'al of a place was assigned a more abstract character as a divinity of wider functions as Baalberith, Baalzebub. A further step was taken when the name was used absolutely of a god Ba'al without qualifications, used, for example, in antiYhwh and as the second element in names of persons, in such forms as Ish-baal ("Man of Ba'al ") or Hannibal (" Favor of Ba'al "). It is not correct, therefore, to speak of Ba'al as being a universal Semitic deity, nor even as being the thesis to

object of a common Canaanitish worship. On the other hand, it can not be said that there was no god Ba'al, as a distinct divinity among inland or maritime Canaanites, for later usage points clearly to the use of the word as a proper name without any definition whatever. It would appear that the Hebrews first learned Ba'al- 'Worship from the agricultural Canaanites. Their life before the conquest of Canaan, whether lived in or outside of Palestine, was nomadic, and therefore kept them beyond the circle of religious associations promoted by the cultivation of the soil. After their settlement the Israelites the began to live as did the people of Hebrews the land, and with the new mode of Adopted industrial and domestic life came the the Cult, example and the incitement of the religious use and wont that were inseparable from the soil. The stated festivals, in which the Ba'als of the land had drawn to themselves all the enthusiasm and devotion of an intensely religious people, were a part of the fixed order of things in Palestine, and were necessarily appropriated by the religion of Yhwh. With them came the danger of mixing the rites of the false gods and the true God; and, as a matter of fact, the syncretism did take place and contributed more than anything else to the religious and moral decline of

How

Israel.

The noxious elements in such Ba'al- Worship were not simply the degradation of Yhwh and the enthronement in his place of a baseless superstition. The

from the fact that the Ba'als were more than mere religious fanDangers tasies. They were made the symbols and Evils of the reproductive powers of nature, of the and thus their worship ministered to Worship, sexual indulgences, which it at the same time legalized and encouraged. Further, there was placed side by side with the Ba'al chief evil arose

a corresponding female symbol, the Ashtoreth (Babyl. " Ashtar ") and the relation between the two deities was set forth as the example and the motive

380 The

of unbridled sensuality.

evil

became

all

the

worse when in the popular view Yhwh himself was regarded as one of the Ba'als and the chief of then) (Hosea ii. 16). It was in northern Israel, where agriculture was more followed than in the southern kingdom, that Ba'al- Worship was most insidious and virulent. The Book of Hosea speaks Popular eloquently and pathetically of the and Official moral and religious ruin which it Forms of wrought in the days just before the fall the Cult, of the monarchy. It was to the Ba'als that the popular worship of the high

was paid

places



or,

Himself with Baalish

more frequently, to Yhwh In the kingdom of Judah

rites.

the inveterate evil was abated, if not at once quelled, by the concentration of all religious acts in Jerusalem and its Temple. More pernicious while it lasted than this popular inland Canaanitic cult was the elaborate official Ba'al- Worship of Ahab and Jezebel, above alluded to, which was finally rooted out by revolution and proscription (II Kings ix., x.). It had prophets by the hundred, as well as priests, and had the effect of virtually though not avowedly putting the religion of Yhwh under the ban. It was introduced into Judah by Athaliah, daughter of Jezebel and its suppression there was also accompanied by a civil outbreak (II Kings xi. Aetsecj.). Ba'al-Worship did not play so great a part in the later

rjf Judah as did the adoration of the heavenly and related usages borrowed from Assyria and Babylonia. Yet the customs native to the soil lingered on till they were obliterated by the Exile. Apart from the offerings of fruits from the earth and the firstlings of cattle, much is not known with

religion bodies!

regard to the

popular Ba'aland mutilation Accom- characteristic of the Phenician t} pe paniments. (I Kings xviii.28) were probably absent from the simpler and freer usages of

Rites and

Worship.

rites of the

Self-torture

r

the primitive local observances. It is also doubtful whether tjie sacrifice of children, proper to the service of Molech, was ever a feature of inland Canaanitic Ba'al-Worship (Jer. xix. 5 is to be corrected by the LXX.). The shrines were little more than altars with the symbol of the Ashtoreth planted beside it the sacred tree-stem or pole named from an old Canaanite goddess, Ashera, with whom Ashtoreth was identified. Near by sacred pillars were also often reared. It has been already indicated that the Ba'al plays curious a great r61e in Canaanitic proper names. phase in the history of the cult in Israel Baal in is shown in the substitution by later Personal editors of (ntJO), " boshet, " " the shameNames, ful thing," for Ba'al in such names as

A

comIshbosheth and Mephibosheth pare " Eshbaal, " I Ohron. viii. 33, and " Meribbaal, " I Chron. ix. 40 (viii. 34). A name which could not be thus treated was " Bealiah " (I Chron. xii. 6 [A. V.

5]),

which means "Jehovah

Bibliography et sea.



is

Selden, De Din Syris

Ba'al."

Movers, PhOnlzier, i. 169 Munter, Religion der Karthager Gesenius, The:





saurus, s.v.; Comrn. ad Jes. ii. 335 et sea.; Oort, Worship of Baalim, in Israel (transl. by Colenso, 1885); Batbgen, BeitrOue zur Semit. Religionsgesehichte; Baudissin, art. Baal in Herzog's Beal-Encycl. 3d ed.; Nowack, Hebr. Archttologie, ii. 301 et sec/.; Benzinger, Hebr. Arch. pp. 371 et seq.;

Smend, Alttest. Reliffionsgesehichte, pp. 51

et

seij..