Ваал

Baal or Baal, Bel, Bel - from Hebrew. means “lord”, “lord”, “strong”. This was the supreme god of the Canaanites, who was also worshiped by the Israelites who betrayed their faith. His name is often found on Phoenician and wedge-shaped inscriptions, also among Greek and Latin authors, who usually call him Βῆλος, Velus, Bel. This name is part of many Phoenician and Carthaginian personal names, such as Annibal (“Baal is mercy”), Asdrubal (“Baal is help”), etc.; Aramaic, like Abdbal (“servant of Baal”); Assyro-Chaldean, like Belshazzar (Bel-sar-usur - “Let Baal protect the king”), and so on. Occasionally it is found even in Hebrew names, such as Baalhanan, Eshbaal, Meribbaal, etc. But it was used not only as a proper name, but also as a common noun to designate a lord, owner, owner of a person or thing, such as the owner or master of a house (Exodus 22:8; Judges 19:22), a field (Job 31:39), an ox (Exodus 21:28; Isa.1:3), owner of wealth (Eccles. 5:12), etc.; then the husband or master of the wife (Ex. 21, etc.). From this we can conclude that the word Baal, when applied to God, was originally only an epithet expressing His supreme dominion and pointing to Him as the Lord of all things; only later did it become a proper name and a special deity, Baal, the ruler par excellence (“Nab-Baal”, with a member). As a result of the abuse that idolaters made of this expression, Holy Scripture, although it constantly calls God Lord, never once applies the name Baal to Him, but instead uses another word - Adon, Adonai, the meaning of which is the same, and uses the word Baal only in application to false gods. The main seat of the cult of V., widespread throughout Western Asia, which penetrated far to the west through the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, was Phenicia, which in turn borrowed it from Babylonia, where V. was known under the name Bela. Due to his Mesopotamian origin, V. everywhere retained the stamp of Sabeanism and, as the “lord” of the gods, corresponded to the main heavenly body - the sun, the source of all life on earth. Some interpreters find confirmation of the solar character of Baal in the very text of Holy Scripture (2 Kings 23:4). Classical writers also identify V. with the sun: “God is called Baal in the Punic language,” says Servius, “and Bel among the Assyrians; he is at the same time Saturn and the Sun” (Commentary on Virgil in Aeneid. I, 729). As the sun god, Baal is the “lord of the heavens,” Baal-Samin, which title he bears in the inscriptions, in the Punic verses of Penulus Plautus - Baal-Samen, in Bl. Augustine - Baal-Samen and Philo Byblos, who directly says: “they consider the sun to be a god who was the sole ruler of Heaven, calling him Beel-Samin.” Hence, in the mythology of the pagan Semites, V. is the personification of the male productive force and acts through his wife Astarte, who represented the passive or receptive force of nature. The religious cult of V., which consisted of wildly unbridled voluptuousness, seeking artificial stimulation, was fully consistent with this idea. In this respect, the cult of V. completely coincided with the cult of Astarte, since serving her was at the same time serving Baal, her fertilizer. Its external symbol was always the phallus, in the form of a column with a truncated top. This is the so-called “gammanimi” are statues or columns of a conical or, rather, pyramidal shape, intended to depict the sun under the guise of a flame. Herodotus (2, 44) says that there were two such columns in the church of Hercules, i.e., Baal, in Tire. One of the most ancient religious inscriptions mentions that one such statue in Palmyra was erected to the sun god. On Roman coins of the imperial era, an image of such a Baal column was preserved. According to the testimony of St. According to the Scriptures, such columns (statues) were made of stone or wood (2 Kings 10:26), or even gold (Hosea 2:8). At the churches of V. lived the so-called kedeshim and kadeshots, holy fornicators and harlots who doomed themselves to serve the church by earning money through fornication. It is clear what a deeply corrupting influence such a cult must have had. The memory of this corruption was immortalized for the consciousness of the Jews in the legend of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, where the cult of V. bore especially bitter fruits. But, despite this instructive story, nor the prohibition to have any communication with the servants of V., nor the menacingly fiery speeches of the prophets who exposed the vileness of the cult of V., he always had an irresistible charm for the Jews, and the entire biblical history, starting from the time of the settlement of the chosen people in Palestine, is a history of passion for this cult. “The children of Israel forsook their Lord and began to serve the Lord, doing evil before the Lord” - this is the many times repeated testimony of biblical historians. Obviously, the sublime cult of Jehovah was too high for the mediocre consciousness of the people, and the sensory-tactile cult of V. attracted him irresistibly. Under King Ahab, thanks to the patronage of his Phoenician wife Jezebel, the cult of V. found almost official recognition in the kingdom of Israel, and at times penetrated into the kingdom of Judah, although there it always met more opposition from kings and prophets. In Phenicia, the main sanctuary of V. was located in Tire. One of the significant features of the cult there were sacred processions, during which the priests - hierodules indulged in frantic dancing, accompanied by inflicting wounds on themselves. From here the cult of V. moved to Carthage, where his name is heard in the names of Hannibal (V.’s mercy), Azdrubal (V.’s help), etc.; Later we find traces of him in Rome, where he found an ardent follower even on the throne, namely in the person of the emperor. Heliogabalus, who, as a priest of the Syro-Canaanite solar god V., danced around the altar built in his honor. Being, in essence, one and the same god, V., under the influence of the polytheistic worldview of the pagans, appeared in different manifestations, which in different places received independent significance. Thus, they received special names according to the place where they were worshiped, like Baal of Lebanon, or according to their attributed properties, like Baal-Berith - “Baal of the covenant”, who protected those who entered into an alliance with him (Judges 8:33; 9:4 and 46), Baal-Zebub (Beelzebub) - “Baal of the flies”, “lord of the flies”, no doubt protecting his worshipers against these insects (see Beelzebub). The names of such places as Baal-Gad, Baal-Gamon, etc. were associated with the local Baals. See op. M. S. Palmova, Idolatry among the ancient Jews (St. Petersburg, 1897), where there is a separate chapter on the cult of Baal (p. 217 et seq.) and where all relevant literature is indicated. The word Baal is said to be part of many biblical and non-biblical proper names of cities, as follows: