History of the Ancient Near East · Part 19 · Kingdoms of the Iron Age · B2–C1
The Gods of Israel and Their Neighbours
Part 19 of History of the Ancient Near East: in the hills of Canaan, every people had its gods: El the father, Asherah the mother, Baal the storm, Chemosh of Moab, Milkom of Ammon, and Yahweh of Israel. Clay tablets, blessings scratched on jars and thousands of little figurines show that the worship of one God alone grew slowly, and against much resistance. The language of comparison, must / might / can’t be, and so-called, referred to as, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight, the most delicate subject of all: the gods. Philo, I will be careful, and I will be honest. Stop me if I am unfair.
I believe that there is one God, and that He has no wife and no rivals. And I know that our prophets complain, on almost every page, that our people did not always agree with me. Say what the evidence says, Sophia.
And if the evidence is on the side of the people who disagreed?
Then the prophets were telling the truth about them, at least.
The clay tablets of Ugarit, a Canaanite city destroyed around 1185 BCE, describe the gods of Canaan: El, the old, wise father of the gods; Asherah, his wife, mother of the gods; Baal, the young storm god who “rides on the clouds” and fights the Sea and Death; and his fierce sister Anat. Hebrew poetry uses many of the same images: Yahweh “rides on the clouds” and defeats the sea monster Leviathan, whom the Ugaritic poems call Lotan.
In the Iron Age, each people of the region had a national god: Chemosh in Moab, Milkom in Ammon, Qos in Edom, and Yahweh in Israel and Judah. But national gods were not the only gods. Inscriptions, the remains of shrines, and thousands of small clay figurines of a woman, found in Judean homes of the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, show that many Israelites and Judeans also worshipped other gods, especially the goddess Asherah.
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