Question: Your post "Old Man Winter" where you told the story of Stribog got me thinking - another reason why not having family trees for some of your Anne-created Pantheons on the site is an inconvenience is they don't come with a few myths and legends. Could you perhaps share a myth of the Elohim? Baal and Moloch appear as false Gods and nemeses to the Hebrew God in The Bible, but what about through the eyes of their own people?
I love storytime, so yes!
Unfortunately, Moloch doesn't have much going on; he's one of those gods with a ridiculously strong cult presence but very few myths of his actual exploits, similar to other strong-cult gods like Cernunnos. He was especially popular in the areas in close proximity to the Hebrews, which is why he turns up so often and with such censure in the Bible, and that probably contributed to the lack of remaining written record of him, as the Israelites were hardly about to preserve his filthy, filthy behavior for future generations.
Baal, on the other hand, has super fun tales, usually having to do with him electrocuting people he's related to. The most famous sets up the delicious continuing rivalry between him and his brothers, Yam and Mot, which scholars are often impressed by because they really want to relate the Baal-Mot-Yam triad to the Zeus-Hades-Poseidon one but then they realize that there is nowhere near this level of animosity among the gods of Olympus.
El led the Elohim, his innumerable children, for many millennia, but his son Baal was ambitious and chafed against his rule, wanting to seize power for himself. Worried that he might rise up against him and angry that anyone would dare defy him, El turned to one of his other sons, the sea-god Yam, and crowned him king of the Elohim, informing him that if he wanted to rule securely he would have to kill Baal, who was plotting treachery. Yam and Baal waged a massive battle that destroyed large parts of the local countryside, and Baal was beginning to lose badly when Kothar, the smith-god and an ally of Baal's, saw what was happening, crafted two incredibly powerful clubs, and ran into battle to help him. He passed the clubs on to Baal, and Baal was then able to finish the fight, defeating Yam (and, though his excitable sister Astarte called on him to kill him, he left him alive because he was pretty sure his mother would kick his ass if he didn't).
El, having been watching all this go down, immediately claimed that he had always liked Baal best and crowned him king of the Elohim; at the urging of his wife Asherah and Baal's sister/wife Anat, he allowed that Baal should build a new palace for himself and invite all the Elohim to a celebratory feast. Baal called on Kothar to build his palace, but insisted that it have no windows (the myth does not discuss why, but it was a common belief in Canaanite myth that death always enters via a window, and additionally it's implied that without windows Baal won't be able to let out the rain the world needs to survive); Kother in turn insisted that it had to have windows, and eventually Baal gave in rather than have Kothar not finish the project. The palace was excellent, the feast was splendid, and he invited everyone over.
Unfortunately, Baal does not know how to not be an insulting dick to people, so his invitation to his oldest brother Mot, the god of death, offended him by not providing appropriate food and drink. Mot sent a messenger back, refusing to attend and taunting Baal that even though he had defeated Yam, Mot would eventually defeat him as death defeats all living things. Baal, having a storm-god temper, immediately abandoned his feast and marched into the Underworld to fight his brother, where he was summarily murdered because it is a bad idea to fight death gods on their own turf (see also: Ishtar, Ereshkigal).
His wives, Astarte and Anat, mourned him, but Anat is an angry war goddess and swore vengeance, and in turn marched into Mot's realm while he was still weak from battle, killed him, and cut his body into little pieces in retaliation before going home. Mot did not remain permanently dead (it's his underworld, after all), but it took him seven years to recover, and due to his weakened power Baal was able to return to the gods, where he was hailed and beloved by everyone. Furious at this further insult and interference in the realm of death, Mot challenged Baal to fight, and the two were so evenly matched that their battle shook the world and they fought until they both collapsed. At that point, Shapshu, the sun-goddess and messenger of El, arrived and informed Mot that El was officially going to back Baal now, so fighting him would be fruitless. Mot conceded that Baal would be king with extraordinarily bad grace and went home.
The entire story is extremely fascinating from an interpretive point of view, because there's so much going on in it; there's the idea of Death as the final conqueror, Baal as a death/rebirth deity like Tammuz or Persephone (the seven-year time period is about the usual length of time between droughts in the area; lacking as much of a fixed seasonal change, the Canaanites needed their rebirth god to show up when they were having droughts, rather than every winter), the father-god playing his sons off each other, Sky, Water and Death as the preeminent triad of powers, a female war-goddess being the final conqueror rather than the male sky-god, possibly suggesting the female's ability to give birth to new life, the shenanigans with the window and Baal's reluctance to invite danger to himself so that he could nurture the world, the suggestion that Baal's death is a symbolic requirement because of his destruction of the natural order in harming/killing Yam, and so on and so forth.
Seriously, these guys are batshit insane, but they are one of my favorite pantheons ever. We've only had the one Scion of Baal show up in-game, as an NPC, but even that was enough to completely foxtrot what the PCs were trying to do thanks to unscheduled flame/lightning battles.
The Baal Cycle was found on tablets unearthed in the ruins of Ugarit in modern-day Syria, and there are a lot of good translations and annotated interpretations floating around out there. For a really simple and fun to read one, I'd recommend Michael Coogan's Stories from Ancient Canaan (which also includes the tale of Anat murdering some poor Scion over a relic, Asherah ruining some poor king because he failed to honor her properly, and other tales of godly misconduct).
It does not help the elohims reputation that molochs sacred valley became synonymous with hell. How did that happen anyway?
ReplyDeleteThe valley was originally called Ge Hinnom, which was corrupted in Hebrew to Gehenna. Basically, the Jewish people knew that Moloch's sacrifices took place there and began referring to it as a horrible place full of death and evil; because of its association with fire and burning, they started referring to it as a place their enemies should go and be destroyed as a result of their worship of pagan gods, and eventually began viewing it as the "bad" afterlife (as opposed to Sheol, the not-great-but-you're-dead-what-can-you-do afterlife of the Old Testament) where evildoers would go after death. With the advent of Christianity, this was naturally syncretized into the idea of Hell, and entered popular culture under those terms.
DeleteThe Elohim in general get most of their reputation problems from the Hebrews, who hated them possibly the most of any of the other pantheons in the area because they were sharing space near them and their religions did not get along at all. Canaanite gods seem to have gotten along fine with Egyptian, Arab and Mesopotamian tribes they encountered, though of course it depends on specifics.
Thanks. And is it just me or does Sheol, the not good but not bad misty dreary dark place where the common dead go to rest pretty much mirror Irkallu? I'm guessing that when the semetic peoples were part of the Sumerian peoples (I think they were the same people or at least were so close culturally that it didn't matter)They kept many beliefs When they broke away. There is evidence that the Jews were pretty pagan for a while before they started worshpping one god. What I want to know is did there one god come from some Sumerian diety they took with them or did the turn El (as wierd as that sounds) into their god. There are theories for both versions.
ReplyDeleteYahweh is initially neither Sumerian nor Canaanite; he's the totem god of their particular tribe, which wasn't uncommon in the area, where lots of different tribes would choose a particular god who was their special protector. After moving into Canaanite territory, the Hebrews were exposed to Canaanite religion and incorporated some of their worship into their own (not particularly weird, as it's likely that they were henotheists at the time, not true monotheists). Yahweh was syncretized with both El, as the preeminent father-god (and even borrowed his name eventually, still visible in the Bible's epithets for him El-Shaddai or El-Elyon), and Baal, as the protective storm-god and king (there's a particular psalm, though which one is escaping me at the moment, that's almost a dead ringer for a hymn to Baal, and some scholars believe the vague references to Yahweh battling a dragon in the Old Testament are references to Baal's battle against Yam). In addition, at least in some outlying areas, there's some evidence that Asherah may have been considered Yahweh's consort - again, probably because of Yahweh being syncretized with El.
DeleteAt some point, however, the culture decided that they wanted to consolidate their religious identity and reject Canaanite polytheism, which resulted in the slow move away from henotheism (in which Yahweh is a "jealous" god who doesn't want you to worship other gods, but who doesn't say that other gods don't exist) to the final monotheistic form Judaism is in today. Yahweh is by that point a very different figure, though the influence of El and Baal is still visible for those looking for that kind of thing.
There is of course influence from the Mesopotamian religion in the area (in particular, the Bible gets pretty snippy about worship of Tammuz), but to say that they're the same people as the Hebrews is pretty culturally inaccurate. Many of the peoples of the middle east descended from the Sumerian, Assyrian and Hittite empires, but that doesn't make them the same people at all. Definitely by the rise of Yahweh they weren't particularly close, and cultures influencing one another doesn't mean they can necessarily be treated as the same or lumped together categorically.
Of course, there are scholars who disagree with all this - in particular, I believe there's a pretty vast body of Jewish scholarship on the subject of how they are totally not influenced by the Canaanites at all, and a lot of modern monotheists have various religious reasons that they don't care for these kinds of interpretations.
again thank you. and as to the others scholars you mentioned, they are a bit heavily invested in the doctrins of there own faith, so I tend to agree with the more unbiased factual version you have given than the one given by those who seek to promote there own faith more than look for facts. You guys are pretty much religious scholars yourselves the way you manage to find the most accurate versions of every pantheon you take on.
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