Bobzammel

Aren't there references to other Caanaanite Gods? For instance "Day Star"(Lucifer) was apparentally a form of Caanaite God, used in code to attack the King Of Babylon.

Anti-Creedance Front

Gods and goddesses are crowded into the Bible like businessmen in an office elevator. Most of the "demons" were actually foreign gods that the Christians (or the Jews) looked down upon. In the Christians' case, some were the gods of Canaan, such as Baal-Peor, who was mutated into Belphegor, or the lord of all demons himself, Satan, otherwise known as Beelzebub, which was mutated from the god Baal-Zeboul. I think the Bible is just a pagan story changed to "fit" monotheism.

Even though a Christian will tell you Satan has many guises, and was there throughout the Bible, it says nowhere that any of those "evil beings" had a connection. There was no mention of the snake being affiliated with Satan, or any other "incarnations" or "names" of Satan. So they basically squashed all those pagan entities down into one being. Jesus has about just as many names in the NT. And he shares one in common with Satan. Daystar. Hmm. Fishy. YHVH also has many names throughout the Bible.

vtran31

(hence IsraEL = land of EL)

bunk. israel is 03478 Yisra'el {yis-raw-ale'}
and means, unless the OT is wrong, he who wrestled, or struggled, with God

Marduk

ACF asked, “How much do you study up on this stuff?”

Not so much anymore, I do like to read the stories. Some good books:
Noah Kramer’s “History Begins at Sumer” and “The Myths of Sumer”
And Stephany Dalley’s book of translated Sumerian Lore “The Myths of Mesopotamia”
The Chaldean Genesis by Smith

“Genesis 1 removes the creation from the realm of the sacred and moves it into the profane. It also places humans distinctly over animals in the order of things. “

Marduk creates the Earth by cutting it from the belly of Tiamat but says nothing about creating animals, which is weird since Genesis does. The Enuma Elish seems to imply that animals were here already, but then Pagans had the view that God created the Universe then created ‘the Gods’ who did the rest of the work. The Pagan creator God does not seem to micro-manage the Earth. That’s what ‘the gods’ are for.

vtran31

I particularly like the story in the Atrahasis about how the lesser gods go on strike because their work is ‘too much’. To placate the rabble-rousers the higher gods create humans to do the grunt work.

thats a hoot. want funny, look up some greek myths sometime. not Roman, they godilized them too much. hmm, wrong word since they called em gods already. how about honorized?

Nectaris

I would like to thank everyone for their replies and information and would like to apologize for my absence. I actually had read the responses and wanted to look up some stuff before replying.

Marduck, thank you for the link, I have read the Enuma Elish and realize the mistake in my original statement. There are some similarities, but there are many differences. Do you know of a source that has the entire Ugaritic creation myth, if they did indeed have one? I have done some searches but have only found bits and pieces.

Vtran31 thanks for the correction on the meaning of Israel and it actually makes sense, if you interpret Genesis 32:24-30 as Jacob as wrestling with El. I was always wondering how people got the interpretation about Jacob wrestling and beating God, now I know.

I would also like to apologize for misrepresenting Tim Callahan’s book. Re-reading the pertinent parts, I had found that I had read in some of what I wanted to be there (although he does do a comparison of the Marduch creation myth and the Genesis stories). All misstatements were my own and not his. . .

BTW, I have often wondered about the absence of the a combat myth from the Genesis creation account, so I’m working on a write-up right now to support the idea that a creation myth was later edited out of Genesis, which I was going to include as part of this post, but it’s developing into being quite a long beast on its own, so I’ll post that as a separate post as soon as I’m finished with it.

Dave

Marduk

"Do you know of a source that has the entire Ugaritic creation myth, if they did indeed have one"

I don't believe there is just one, Enuma Elish, Atrahasis, The Eridu Genesis, are similar but have there differences. Also there are several versions of each, The books I mentioned by Dalley & Kramer contain a few, that might help.

One of the major differences between Pagan and Hebrew myth is that The Hebrews cannonized their text, sticking with the same single version over a long period of time, while the Pagan stories often changed for various social or political reasons. The Egyptians were especially vulnerable to this with an endless variety of myths and stories about the same 'events'.

Another good book "Cannanite Myth and Hebrew Epic" by Frank Cross