Chapter 28. Out of Canaan: El, Baal, Asherah and the Emergence of Yahweh

Part 4 turns from Iran to the small highland people whose god became the God of three world religions. The scholarly literature in the library agrees on one starting point. Israelite religion did not arrive from outside Canaan as a finished monotheism. It grew up inside a West Semitic religious world, and that world became directly readable only when the archives of Ugarit were recovered. On that view the biblical “Yahweh alone” is the end of a long process of merging, borrowing and exclusion. This chapter sets out the comparative evidence, then the main scholarly reconstructions (John Day, Mark S. Smith and the Dictionary of Deities and Demons), and finally the non-mainstream readings the library also holds, each given as its author presents it.

The Ugaritic Window

Excavations at Ras Shamra on the Syrian coast began in 1928. They produced about 1,500 texts and fragments written in the 13th and 12th centuries BCE in Ugaritic, a previously unknown Northwest Semitic language. The best known are the Baal Cycle, the Legend of Keret and the Aqhat epic [Wikipedia: Ugaritic texts]. The pantheon in these texts is headed by El, the aged, wise and benevolent “father of years”. His consort Asherah is “mother of the gods”, and the gods as a body are “the sons of El”. Below El stand the active deities: Baal (Hadad), the storm and fertility god; Yam (Sea/River); Mot (Death); Anat; and Astarte [Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, #86469, ch.1].

Karen Armstrong gives a narrative summary of the central myth. Baal and Yam both lived with El, and “at the Council of El, Yam demands that Baal be delivered up to him. With two magic weapons, Baal defeats Yam and is about to kill him when Asherah (El’s wife and mother of the gods) pleads that it is dishonourable to slay a prisoner.” In another version, she notes, “Baal slays the seven-headed dragon Lotan, who is called Leviathan in Hebrew” [Armstrong, A History of God, #68999, ch.1]. Armstrong also observes that in the patriarchal stories “El gives them friendly advice, like any sheikh or chieftain,” and is sometimes seen in human form. That idea, she says, later became anathema to Israel [Armstrong, #68999, ch.1].

Day sets out how the Ugaritic Baal Cycle is built. It has three parts: Baal’s conflict with Yam and his exaltation as king; the building of Baal’s palace-temple on Mt Zaphon; and his struggle with Mot [Day, #86469, ch.4 “Yahweh’s Appropriation of Baal Imagery”]. Each part, Day argues, reappears in transformed form in the Hebrew Bible.

Yahweh and El: One God or Two?

Day opens his study with the question directly: “In the Old Testament Yahweh is frequently called El. The question is raised whether Yahweh was a form of the god El from the beginning or whether they were separate deities who only became equated later.” The Bible itself, he notes, records both continuity and a break. The E and P sources say the patriarchs did not know the name Yahweh, which was first revealed to Moses (Exod 3:13-15; 6:2-3). P says they knew God as El-Shaddai. The J source, by contrast, has the name known from primaeval times (Gen 4:26) [Day, #86469, ch.1 “Yahweh and El”].

Wellhausen, F.M. Cross and J.C. de Moor identified Yahweh with El. Day rejects this on three grounds. First, the Ugaritic El is wholly benevolent, whereas Yahweh “has a fierce as well as a kind side”. Second, the earliest texts (Judg 5:4-5) associate Yahweh with the storm, “which was not something with which El was connected at all. Rather, this is reminiscent of Baal.” Third, Cross’s derivation of the name Yahweh from a cultic title of El is “pure speculation”. Day concludes: “El and Yahweh were originally distinct deities that became amalgamated,” the view of Movers, Eissfeldt and Mettinger [Day, #86469, ch.1]. On origins, Day reports that most recent scholars place Yahweh “outside the land of Israel to the south, in the area of Midian” (Judg 5:4-5; Deut 33:2; Hab 3:3, 7). The evidence he cites includes the epithet “Yahweh of Teman” at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud and Egyptian references to “Shasu Yahweh”. Yahweh “does not appear in the Ugaritic pantheon lists”. The equation with El was acceptable because El was supreme, a creator and wise, whereas Baal was subordinate and “dead in the underworld for half the year” [Day, #86469, ch.1].

Mark S. Smith reaches a similar result by a different route. He states plainly: “The original god of Israel was El.” His evidence is that the name Israel “is not a Yahwistic name with the divine element of Yahweh, but an El name” [Smith, The Early History of God, #67245, ch.1 §2 “Yahweh and El”]. He develops the same point in The Origins of Biblical Monotheism. There, drawing on B.A. Levine’s work on El traditions in Iron Age Transjordan, he explores “who was the original chief god of Israel?” [Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism, #64008, ch.7 “El, Yahweh, and the Original God of Israel and the Exodus”].

The key text for both scholars is Deuteronomy 32:8-9, which Smith translates from the older textual witnesses:

“When the Most High (‘elyôn) gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated humanity, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of divine beings. For Yahweh’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.” [Smith, #67245, ch.1]

Smith reads this as presenting “an order in which each deity received its own nation”. Here Yahweh is “one of the sons of El”, a “literary vestige of the initial assimilation of Yahweh, the southern warrior-god, into the larger highland pantheism, headed by El” [Smith, #67245, ch.1]. He reports that the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls readings preserve this sense, and that E. Tov labels the Masoretic text’s reading (“sons of Israel”) an “anti-polytheistic alteration” [Smith, #64008, Part III]. Day links the same verse to “the seventy sons of El” at Ugarit, the seventy nations of Genesis 10, and the seventy guardian angels of later Jewish tradition [Day, #86469, ch.1 “The Sons of El (God)”]. Smith adds that there are “no biblical polemics against El”. The identification was early and peaceful, while Yahweh and Baal “co-existed and later competed as warrior-gods” [Smith, #67245, ch.1].

Asherah: From El’s Consort to “Yahweh and his Asherah”

At Ugarit Asherah is El’s wife. Day’s argument follows from this: once Yahweh had absorbed El, the goddess was available as Yahweh’s consort. The finds that revived the debate, he writes, are “inscriptions from both Kuntillet ‘Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom referring to ‘Yahweh and his Asherah'”. Debate has centred on “whether Asherah in these texts refers to the goddess or her wooden cult symbol” [Day, #86469, ch.2 “Yahweh and Asherah”]. Day translates the Khirbet el-Qom tomb text: “Uriah the rich wrote it. Blessed be Uriah by Yahweh, yea from his enemies by his Asherah he has saved him…” [Day, #86469, ch.2]. Kuntillet ‘Ajrud in north Sinai was occupied c. 801-770 BCE by carbon-14 dating. On its pithos A, drawings of a cow and calf and a seated musician sit beside the phrase “Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah” [Wikipedia: Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions].

Day’s conclusion is that the texts refer to the cult object. Even so, they “imply a close relationship (doubtless that of god and consort) between Yahweh and the goddess Asherah, since the cult object symbolized the goddess”. The “vast numbers of pillar figurines of the goddess Asherah”, especially from eighth- and seventh-century Judah, “clearly imply the popularity of her cult” [Day, #86469, ch.8]. Smith is more cautious. On his reading the Hebrew ‘šrth in these inscriptions “refers to the symbol originally named after the goddess, although during the eighth century it may not have symbolized the goddess” [Smith, #67245, ch.1]. The Dictionary of Deities and Demons points out that 24 of the 40 biblical references to the asherah come from the Deuteronomistic History. One of that work’s “chief concerns is cultic purity, a strictly monolatrous Yahwism, and it therefore regards the presence of the asherah as evidence of apostasy” [van der Toorn et al., Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, #66939, “Asherah”].

Baal, the Goddesses, the Astral and the Underworld Gods

Day’s central chapters follow the other deities one by one. Yahweh was set against Baal, yet he also took over Baal’s imagery. Day traces the “rider of the clouds” language, the defeat of the sea and its dragon (Leviathan, Rahab, Tannin), and the holy mountain Zaphon. A paganised version of Psalm 20 in Papyrus Amherst 63 even replaces Zion with Zaphon [Day, #86469, chs 3-4]. On Daniel 7 he finds the clearest survival of all. The “Ancient of Days” with hair “like pure wool” reflects El, and the “one like a son of man” coming with the clouds “derives ultimately from Baal, ‘the rider of the clouds'” [Day, #86469, ch.1]. He also derives the New Testament Beelzebul from the Ugaritic title zbl b’l, “Prince Baal” [Day, #86469, ch.3].

On the goddesses, Day weighs Ishtar, Asherah and Astarte as the “Queen of Heaven” to whom Judean women baked cakes (Jer 7; 44). He concludes that “the best case can be made for the Queen of Heaven being Astarte”, given “the deep-seated, folk nature of the cult depicted in Jeremiah 44” [Day, #86469, ch.5]. He notes the worship of Anat-Yahu and Anat-Bethel beside Yahu at Elephantine, “most naturally understood as a continuation of the worship of Anat in pre-exilic Israel” [Day, #86469, ch.8]. Chapter 6 treats sun, moon and “Lucifer”. Day observes that most solar allusions date from the seventh and sixth centuries (Deut 4:19; 17:3; 2 Kgs 23:5, 11), and that the Elyon language of Isaiah 14:13-14, with its “mount of assembly”, is “El-like” [Day, #86469, chs 1, 6].

J. Glen Taylor’s monograph argues for a Yahwistic solar cult in Jerusalem itself. It centres on 2 Kings 23:11, where Josiah “removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun”. Taylor rejects M. Cogan’s view that “the horses and chariots of the sun in the Jerusalem temple” arose under Assyrian influence, and he surveys horse figurines with discs and the winged sun-disk iconography, together with the problems of dating them [Taylor, Yahweh and the Sun, #66074, ch.2]. Day’s chapter 7 adds the underworld deities. Mot, whose insatiable throat swallows the dead, survives as the personified Sheol of Isaiah 5:14 and Habakkuk 2:5. Isaiah 25:8 ironically has God “swallow up death for ever”. Resheph, Molech (whom Day elsewhere treats as “a god of human sacrifice”) and the Rephaim, cognate with the Ugaritic rp’um (divinised dead), complete the picture [Day, #86469, ch.7].

How Monotheism Arose: The Scholarly Positions

Day concludes that “Yahweh was very much the chief god in ancient Israel, and the other gods and goddesses would have been worshipped as part of his pantheon”. He rejects J.H. Tigay’s theophoric-name argument (Yahwistic names sixteen times more common than pagan ones, a ratio Graham Davies puts nearer ten to one). He also rejects A.P. Hayman’s opposite claim that absolute monotheism arrived only in the Middle Ages. Day’s own position is that monotheism “was first given explicit expression by the prophet Deutero-Isaiah in the exile”. Elijah, the classical prophets, the Deuteronomic movement and Josiah’s reform were stages on the way, and the “Yahweh alone movement” (B. Lang, after Morton Smith) is part of the story [Day, #86469, ch.8]. Smith stresses method. Biblical historiography, especially Deuteronomy 32 (“there was no foreign god with him”), “omits any reflection of the fact that Israel’s cultural heritage was largely Canaanite; indeed, it implicitly denies this idea”. Scholars who call early Israel “syncretistic” have, he argues, taken over the Bible’s own view and treated it as historical reality [Smith, #67245, ch.1 §1]. The Dictionary of Deities and Demons, in its entry “Angel of Yahweh”, notes that “in many early narratives Yahweh himself appears to humans (just like other ancient Near Eastern deities), in later texts there is a marked” shift towards mediating figures. That shift is part of the same move away from a more plural divine world [van der Toorn et al., #66939, “Angel of Yahweh”].

Non-Mainstream Readings

Several authors in the library read the same material in radically different ways. Mauro Biglino proposes a literal reading of the Hebrew. On his account the Elohim are “flesh-and-blood” individuals “not concerned with theology”, and the malakhim (angels) were likewise “individuals of blood and flesh” [Biglino, Gods of the Bible, #69369, ch.11 “The Messengers of God”]. He uses the same Deuteronomy 32 tradition to argue that “the ‘God’ of Israel was only one of several Elohim who shared control over the territories of the Middle East, namely, Yahweh of Teman (Lord of the south, of Sinai) and Baal Zaphòn (Lord of the north, of Lebanon)”. He asks how Moses could warn against “other Elohim among the Elohim” if Elohim meant a single God, and he cites Freud on “the similarities between the worship of the Egyptian sun god Aten and Mosaic monotheism” [Biglino, #69369].

Marilyn Hopkins and Tim Wallace-Murphy write in their “Rex Deus” framework: “In the era covered by Judges and Kings, it is obvious that the ancient Israelites were not monotheistic as we now understand the term. Yahweh, the God of Akenhaten/Moses, was described as their one true God,” while many continued to worship other deities “as their Egyptian ancestors had done” [Hopkins & Wallace-Murphy, Custodians of Truth, #70623, “The Era of the Judges”]. They follow Ahmed Osman’s identification of Moses with Akhenaten, which they call “plausible though it may be, … still a matter of considerable debate” [#70623, ch.2] (see chapter 29).

Mehran Tavakoli Keshe’s reading in Knowledge Seekers Workshop 520 (11 January 2024) comes from a different direction again. He states that the tribe, having “lived a harsh life, didn’t have anything, so they chose the god of ancient time, who was a god of murder, torture, god of pain”. In his words, “the Hebrew name of the god they chose at that time, is the god of fighting and torture and deceive” [Keshe, KSW 520, #378232, (1:26)]. He also claims that “if you look at in the Jewish principles and works, there is a lot of hints of Mitra, which they ignore. Because it’s written by the Persians”, and that “the principle of the Judaism, it’s the principle of the Mithraism” [Keshe, KSW 520, #378232, (2:14-2:16)]. Set beside the scholars, the claims compare as follows. Day and Smith also find a warrior deity at the origin of Yahweh (“the southern warrior-god”), but they derive his features from the Midianite south and from Baal’s storm imagery, not from a choice of character. The Persian and Mithraic link that Keshe asserts is not discussed in the critical works cited here. Its Persian-period dimension returns in chapter 31.

Key points

• The Ugaritic texts (13th-12th c. BCE) show the pantheon behind much biblical language: El and his council of “sons”, his consort Asherah, Baal the storm-god who defeats Yam and Lotan/Leviathan, and Mot [Day, #86469; Armstrong, #68999].
• Day holds that Yahweh and El were originally distinct and later merged. Smith holds that El was Israel’s original god (the name Isra-el), with Yahweh a southern warrior-god absorbed into El’s pantheon, as Deuteronomy 32:8-9 preserves [Day, #86469; Smith, #67245, #64008].
• The Kuntillet ‘Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom inscriptions (“Yahweh … and his Asherah”, c. 800 BCE) and the Judean pillar figurines are the main evidence for Asherah as Yahweh’s consort in popular religion. Scholars dispute whether the inscriptions mean the goddess or her cult symbol [Day, #86469, ch.2; Smith, #67245].
• Yahweh took over Baal’s imagery (cloud-rider, sea-dragon fight, Zaphon) while the biblical writers condemned Baal. Day traces Daniel 7’s Ancient of Days to El and its “son of man” to Baal [Day, #86469, chs 1, 4].
• Astarte (the probable Queen of Heaven), Anat, solar cult objects (2 Kgs 23:11) and underworld figures (Mot, Resheph, Molech, Rephaim) all left traces in the text [Day, #86469, chs 5-7; Taylor, #66074].
• Day places explicit monotheism with Deutero-Isaiah in the exile, after a long “Yahweh alone” struggle. Smith and the Dictionary of Deities and Demons warn that the Deuteronomistic ideology of “strictly monolatrous Yahwism” shapes the biblical picture [Day, #86469, ch.8; Smith, #67245; #66939].
• Alternative readings: Biglino treats the Elohim as flesh-and-blood rulers; Hopkins and Wallace-Murphy treat Yahweh as “the God of Akhenaten/Moses”; Keshe claims the Hebrews chose a god of war and deception and that the Torah carries hidden Mithraic content [#69369; #70623; #378232].