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Baal
In Biblical Canaan "on the hillsides are grown vines and lives, which, with natural pine and cedar forests in the Lebanon and Amanus, were the main products of the land. Moreover, soil which is eroded builds up fertile pockets of earth and even considerable plains. Such cultivable land was regarded as 'Baal's land', that is to say, land where cultivation depends on the activity of the god manifest in the autumn and winter rains. These rains are heralded by thunder, and 'the lord' (Baal) was known to the Canaanites by his proper name Hadad, 'the Thunderer', or Rimmon, which means the same. The term 'Baal-land' as distinct from irrigated land has survived down to the present day in Muslim law when making tax assessment for poor relief."
- John Gray, Near Eastern Mythology
"Baal, one of the sons of El [the chief god of the Canaanites], was the executive god of the pantheon, the god of thunder and winter storms, the dynamic warrior god who champions the divine order against the menacing forces of chaos. He is also identified with vegetation and the seasonal fertility cycle. There is little evidence in the Ras Shamra texts of the sexual license, the sympathetic magic aspects of the cult to secure the productivity of Nature, that the Bible writers found so abhorrent. On the contrary there is ample evidence that some of the aspects of Yahweh reflected aspects of Baal as the Divine King, in the destruction of the sea-serpent Leviathan and the concept of everlasting kingly dominion; even some of the liturgical language is strikingly similar, like the wording of Psalm 68: 'To him that rideth upon the heavens of heavens, 'his strength in the clouds', and so on.
"Baal is sometimes called the 'son of Dagon'. Dagon was also a god of vegetation, specifically corn, which is what his name means....As the summer drew to an end and the rains were due, the peasants would suffer a crisis of anxiety - would the rains come? By calling upon Baal, the rain god, and encouraging his intervention by rituals of imitative magic involving sexual union, their tensions were released and purged."
- Magnus Magnusson, BC - The Archaeology of the Bible Lands
"The goddess peculiarly associated with Baal is Anat, like Ishtar a goddess of love and war. She complements Baal, abetting him in his conflict and vindicating him when he succumbs, possibly reflecting the role of women at the critical seasons of transition in popular religion or when the order of the gods is temporarily in eclipse. Related to such phases is certainly the weeping of the women in Jerusalem for Tammuz (Ezekiel 8:14) and possibly the annual lamentation of the maidens of Israel, which may be only secondarily related to the mourning for Jephthah's daughter (Judges 11-39-40)."
"The actual death of Baal and his descent to the underworld are not described, but they may well be visualized as occurring at the coming of the sirocco in early summer, when the annual vegetation wilts and the long summer drought sets in."
- John Gray, Near Eastern Mythology
"Verily Baal has fallen to the earth,
Dead is Baal the Might!
Perished is the Prince, lord of the earth!
Then the Kindly One, El the Merciful
Comes down from his throne, he sits on the footstool,
And (coming) off the footstool, he sits on the ground
He sprinkles dirt signifying grief on his head,
On his pate the dust in which he wallows;
For clothing he covers himself with a loincloth;
He scrapes his skin with a stone,
With a chipped flint as a razor
He cuts off side-whiskers and beard;
He rends his shoulder (with his finger-nails);
He scores his chest as a garden plot,
Even as a valley-bottom his trunk he lacerates.
He raises his voice and cries:
Baal is dead! What will become of the people?
The Son of Dagan (is dead)! What of the multitudes (of men)?
After Baal I shall go down to the underworld!"
- Ras Shamra texts
"Here we have the mourning rites, familiar among the ancient Semites and in Israel. generally at death, which is a crisis in society when the community is especially open to the influences of the supernatural, normal activities were suspended to thwart those forces. Thus the normal resorts were avoided, one forsook one's usual seat to sit on the ground, like Job on the village midden (Job 2:8), or begrimed the personal or the clothes with dust and scored the face or the body. that last practice was specifically banned in Israel (Deuteronomy 14:1) in protest against what was seen as a barbarous Canaanite rite."
- John Gray, Near Eastern Mythology
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