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| Background | |||||
| Ba'al (pronounced: [ba'al]; Arabic,بعل; Hebrew: בעל) (ordinarily spelled Baal in English) is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant, cognate to Assyrian Bēlu. A Baalist means a worshipper of Baal. | |||||
| Ba'al" can refer to any god and even to human officials; in some texts it is used as a substitute for Hadad, a god of the rain, thunder, fertility and agriculture, and the lord of Heaven. | |||||
| Since only priests were allowed to utter his divine name Hadad, Ba'al was used commonly. | |||||
| The Ugaritic texts (mainly preserved in the Ba'al cycle) place the dwelling of Baal on Mount Saphon, so references to Baal Zephon in the Tanach and in inscriptions and tablets referring to the Baal of Mount Saphon may indicate the storm-god Hadad. Though the god Hadad (or Adad) was especially likely to be called Ba'al, Hadad was far from the only god to have that title. | |||||
| In the Canaanite pantheon, Hadad was the son of El, who had once been the primary god of the Canaanite pantheon, and whose name was also used interchangeably with that of the Hebrew God, Yahweh. | |||||
| Baalbek | |||||
| The most sacred and ancient of locations for Baal in Northern Lebanon is Baalbek. | |||||
| Baal of Tyre | |||||
| Melqart (Molock) is the son of El in the Phoenician triad of worship, He was the god of Tyre and was often called the Ba'al of Tyre. 1 Kings 16:31 relates that Ahab, king of Israel, married Jezebel, daughter of Ethba’al, king of the Sidonians, and then served habba’al ('the Ba'al'.) The cult of this god was prominent in Israel until the seige of until the reign of the Assyrians in the 8th C BCE. | |||||
| Baal of Hanan (Hammon) | |||||
| At Hammon (Hanan), (now called Umm al Awamid) between Tyre and Acre, Ba'al was worshipped as Ba'al Hammon (Ba'al Hanan). Since El was normally identified with Kronus and Ba'al Hammon was identified with Cronus, the deities are one and the same. | |||||
| It appears this site grew rapidly in importance upon the temporary exile of the priest families at Baalbek. | |||||
| The site appears to have still been flourishing until the 2nd Century BCE by evidence of the ruins. The western temple (56 m x 60m ) was dedicated by this time to the god Milkashtart (Molech). | |||||
| Inside a sacred enclosure is an open courtyard in the center of which stands a cella. The temple was built on a podium and the cella was surrounded by a portico and rooms. the eastern temple is very similar to the western one (60m x 35m) in its overall plan: it was also built on a podium and it has a cella erected in the middle of an open courtyard and surrounded by a portico and rooms. | |||||
| Hammon is the Ugaritic and Akkadian name for Mount Amanus, the great mountain separating Syria from Cilicia based on the occurrence of an Ugaritic description of El as the one of the Mountain Haman. | |||||
| Ba'al Hammon was also worshipped by the Phoenician descendents at Carthage with the sacrificing of children to him in the incarnation of Molech. The Carthaginians also practised sacred prostitution in honor of this god. | |||||
In Carthage and North Africa Ba'al Hammon was especially associated with the ram and was worshiped also as Ba'al Qarnaim ("Lord of Two Horns") in an open-air sanctuary at Jebel Bu Kornein ("the two-horned hill") across the bay from Carthage. |
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| Ba'al Hammon's female cult partner was Tanit. Ba'alat Gebal ("Lady of Byblos") appears to have been generally identified. | |||||
| Ba'al of Shechem | |||||
| The ancient Sumerian city of Shechem (modern Tell Ba(a)latah 2km east of present-day Nablus) as a significant centre for a period of the worship of Ba'al. The city was destroyed and rebuilt up to 22 times before its final demise around 200 CE. | |||||
| In the Armana letters of Akhenaten it is mentioned as the city held by Labayu of the Habiru. The city became the dominant location for the Priest line of Menasheh. | |||||
| Priests of Ba'al | |||||
| The Priests of Ba'al are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible numerous times, including a famous confrontation with Elijah. | |||||
| There appeares a long standing power struggle between the priestly families of Ba'al with the House of Hamon (Hanan) of Priests against the House of Menasheh (Priests) which in turn became the battle between Sadducee dynasties. | |||||
| From 30 BCE to 60 CE, the former Ba'al High priests dominated Jerusalem as the High Priests of Israel. | |||||
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