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El, Baal and the Cycle from Ugarit

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El, Baal and the Cycle from Ugarit

Almost everything known about Canaanite religion from the inside comes from one place. The tablets found at Ras Shamra, ancient Ugarit, from 1929 onward gave the tradition its own literature for the first time, and Simon Parker's edition presents the principal narrative poems: the Baal Cycle, the tale of Aqhat and the tale of Kirta.

The pantheon those texts show is headed by El, an aged creator who presides over the divine assembly, with his consort Athirat, the Asherah of the Hebrew Bible. The active figure is Baal, the storm god, whose cycle turns on his acquisition of a palace, his combat with Yamm the sea, and his descent into the power of Mot, death, from which his sister Anat retrieves him. The pattern of a storm god defeating the sea and then being swallowed by death has obvious agricultural sense, though scholars differ on how directly the texts should be read as seasonal ritual.

Mark Smith's work on early Israelite religion argues that Israel emerged from within this world rather than against it, and that Yahweh acquired El's titles and imagery before the two were understood as one. The Hebrew Bible's polemic against Baal and Asherah is therefore evidence of proximity as much as of difference, and it is the polemic of an insider quarrel rather than a report on foreigners.

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