December 2022

The ancient Canaanite settlement known as Ugarit was a city destroyed around 1,200 BC and rediscovered in 1928, thanks to a Syrian plowman who accidentally opened a tomb. Ugarit is located on the north Syrian coast of the Mediterranean and was one of the major Canaanite city-states during the second millennium BC. During the excavations conducted at and near Ugarit since 1929, thousands of texts have been found. Most are tablets of baked clay and include diplomatic correspondence, legal records, and a long list of gods and sacrificial offerings. Most of the tablets are about the size of a large modern book, and many of these tablets tell stories. The gods and goddesses of Ugarit are major characters in these stories, and they are the focus of many other texts, especially ritual ones.

The head of the Ugaritic pantheon of gods was El, as his epithets “the King” and “the Father of Gods” indicate. El’s name is a common noun meaning “god.” Its precise etymology is uncertain: two major theories derive it from roots meaning “strong” or “first.” Compare, for example, the Arabic word “Allah,” which literally means “God” along with the epithets “ the Merciful” and “the Beneficent” used to describe Allah are strikingly close to the Ugaritic designations of El as “the Kind, the Compassionate.” And while El was the head of the pantheon, Baal was also a dominant Canaanite deity. There seems to be a sort of co-regency between El as the executive power and Baal as the military power in the cosmos. In addition to male deities, three goddesses appear regularly in religious texts. They are known as Astarte, Asherah, and Anat. Asherah is El’s consort and the mother of the gods. Anat is Baal’s sister and is closely identified with as a successful opponent of Sea, Death, and other destructive powers. Her fierce temper is directed against gods and mortals alike. With her thirst for violence and her macabre trappings – a necklace of human heads, a belt of human hands – Anat resembles the Hindu goddess Kali.

Until the discovery of Ugarit, the sources for the study of the religion of ancient Canaan were both sketchy and late. There were also dedicatory and funerary inscriptions of the Phoenicians and of their Punic cousins in western North Africa. But even when this literary evidence was synthesized with archaeological remains – the figurines and statues, the temples and shrines – it was impossible to reconstruct a coherent account of what the Canaanites believed. The Bible contains many direct references to Canaanite religious beliefs and practices. Now, with the discovery of Ugarit and its thousands of texts, we have an extensive and primary source for the study of Canaanite religion.

Returning to Ugaritic deities, we find trances of Anat, Asherah, and Astarte in the Bible. Anat is the least well attested, occurring only in the place names Beth-anath and Anathoth and in the personal name Shamgar Ben-Anath. In the Bible, most scholars detect the goddess Asherah in 2 Kings 21:7 and 23:4,6-7. In Biblical Hebrew the word asherah is also a common noun, meaning a sacred tree or pole used in the goddess’s wordhip; it was probably a fertility symbol. In this capacity, the asherah, arguably the symbol of the goddess by the same name, is implicitly associated with Yahweh, as the fertility god par excellence. The Bible prohibits this form of worship of Yahweh, for it is written: “You shall not set up an asherah of any wood next to the altar of Yahweh your God” (Deut. 16:21). Because of its disapproval of asherah, the Bible sometimes associates her name with the god considered to be the divine epitome of idolatry, Baal himself (1 Kgs. 18:19). Astate occures in extant Ugaritic sources, but little light is shed on her personality. She is called “the goddess” or “the abominations of the Sidonians” (1 Kgs 11:5).

As this brief overview has shown, Canaanite motifs permeate the Bible. Most significant is the fusion of Baal language and El language in the descriptions of Yahweh and His activity. For the more we learn of the cultural context in which the Israelites lived, the more the prophetic remark rings true: “…thus saith the Lord GOD unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan…” (Ezekiel 16:3).

References:

Coogan, M. & Smith, M. Stories from Ancient Canaan. (Louisville, KY: Westminister John Knox Press, 2012).