Introductory Essay 3

The Good, The Bad and The Ba’al

As far as “evil”, the case of the connection to Ba’al is much easier to explain and prove then the case for Ba’al as the good, and it helps to prove the premise that cultures “morph.” For as we will see, the religions of Abraham see the world through the Bible, and in the Bible we see that Ba’al was the chief rival of God.

• In my presentation, we see that this has not changed, since our current view of the chief rival of God, the Devil, is actually still Ba’al. To be more precise, the Christian depiction the Devil is actually a manifestation of Ba’al.

There is historical support for this connection between Ba’al and the Devil, and, although this is a key to understanding the development of the Christian religion, it will not be the major focus of this work. We will need to explore this connection in some detail, however.

• Early demonologists ranked (Ba’al) as the first and principal king in Hell, ruling over the East. According to some authors Baal is a duke, with 66 legions of demons under his command.
• During the English Puritan period, Baal was either compared to Satan or considered his main lieutenant.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal

The case for showing the connection between Ba’al and the mostly Christian view of salvation and “good” is a bit more difficult and will be the major exploration of these works.

Some of the key points that I will try to show include;

• The issue of human sacrifice, so long ineffectively fought against by the “Jewish” prophets and “reformers” is eventually relatively “addressed” through a new “morphing” process, involved in the “Christ Story”

While there has been a great deal recently written showing how the Christ Story follows the hallmarks of many other “savior” and “death and rising gods.” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-death-rebirth_deity ) I think that the Christian story adds something more than these common factors of superficial similarities.

I believe that the critical differences between Christianity and the “death and rising gods” are written in a number of sources as: the “understanding” of the death of Jesus, his crucifixion, his “sacrifice” as completing the process of the “near sacrifice of Isaac”, or the completion of the “needed” death of “the first born” to meet the needs of the true God, denied to God, by the Hebrews, by the non-sacrifice of Isaac..

The other “mystery cults” of these “death and rising gods” seem mostly to focus on the issues of the need to bring about the new “spring” the coming of rain and the growth of the new crops. In short, they’re about food, not eternal salvation. The death and rising gods are also not seen as “human sacrifices” but as tragic events that are rectified through the resurrection of the god.

• The word Ba’al is also translated as the word, “Lord.” The connection of the Christ story to this need to appease the Lord (or Ba’al) for a sacrifice denied (to make up for the original sin?) to Ba’al, (not as the Devil, but as the “true God”) is mostly unseen in the other death and rising gods story lines: they talk of restoring the Earth with the restoring of the god.

This is the basis of Christianity: that through the death of Jesus (God sacrificing his only begotten son) the needs of the “true God” are met and a new contract between man and God is developed. Furthermore, a new prospect of salvation is delivered by the human sacrifice of Jesus, the first born son, and as the eventual surrogate for Isaac the original contract with God and Abraham is completed and the original sin of Adam and Eve erased. These components are not fully found in the other death and rising stories. However, they are found within the rituals of the Phoenicians, and their religious belief system collectively referred to as “Ba’alism.”

• As we will see, according to the Christians, the religion of Ba’al requires human sacrifice for solidification of a “contract” or “covenant” with God. The difference is that with the Christians, this requirement is completed with the death of Jesus and this death eliminates the need for any other sacrifice of its kind.

We also now know that the basic Christ story, with all its main elements has been around from some 6,000 years prior to Christ (or the time attributed to be the time of Christ). As we will see this concept of God having a son, and in time of crisis declaring him king, and then sacrificing him, is connected to the very foundation of the Western Sky Gods of the Greeks, but has its origins in Phoenicia:

• So Cronus, whom the Phoenicians call Israel, being king of the land and having an only-begotten son called Jeoud (for in the Phoenician tongue Jeoud signifies Ôonly begotten’), dressed him in royal robes and sacrificed him upon an altar in a time of war, when the country was in great danger from the enemy.” Frazer’s Golden Bough , Chapter 26 http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/frazer/gb02600.htm

Also, other religions and customs are associated with Cronus (besides being the father of Zeus),

• Cronus, visiting the Ôinhabitable world’, bequeathed Attica to his own daughter Athena, and Egypt to Thoth the son of Misor and inventor of writing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronus
• To El/Cronus is attributed the practice of circumcision. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanchuniathon

What I will attempt to present in this arena, this “final human sacrifice” is far more complex than the issues of understanding Ba’al as the “Devil.” While much is written on how and why the death of Christ was not a human sacrifice, I will present the premise, that in part,

• At the time and place Christianity began, believers in the power of the practices of Ba’al were apparently quite numerous. The Christ story is told in a fashion that creates a means to present to this population the idea that the need for sacrifice was ended and that with the death of Christ, God wanted no more human sacrificing, but Christ was that human sacrifice needed to appease EI, God or Ba’al.

However, the very act of the death of Christ seems to have been presented as the “ultimate” human sacrifice to those who were still believers in the ritual. At the time of Jesus (given he existed at all), in the place he lived, and among the people he lived with, there is strong evidence (at least from what little we have left) to show that many people still believed in this practice, and in the ancient ways of Ba’al.

As stated before, it will be hard for me to show this connection, and it involves a great deal of understanding of world history that most readers will not have. It also requires readers not to be so tied into their own religious beliefs that exploration of options to interpretation is, well not an option. I too had to put away my initial views and understandings. I hope all readers will do so. This is the purpose of study, to challenge your views based on new facts and others understanding of these facts.

With an open mind we can look at history, or at least the stories that pass as history, differently. We can see that in re-reading depictions of Abraham and Isaac, the death of King David’s first son with Bathsheba, or the reason’s for God’s damnation of both Israel and Judah, the religion of Ba’al seems to be central to the issues of each of these stories. Then, we can also understand that despite the defeats of Ba’alists by Persians, Greeks, Romans, and once in power, the Maccabee Jews, the religion of Ba’al did not, as we have presented in standard history, die or fade away, but continued to be a dominant player in the world of the time. We need to appreciate the fact that it was a major rival to the new religion of Christianity.

We do have documented proof that some three hundred and fifty years after the destruction of Carthage, and some one hundred and seventy-five years after the accepted date for the crucifixion of Christ, the Roman emperors were looking for a new religious model for the empire. In these efforts to formulate a “universal” religion, the emperors’ first choice for a new paradigm was in fact Ba’alism, not Christianity, which, as it turns out, was the fourth option. Some 125 years before Constantine accepted Christianity (and the extent of his conversion is open to debate), other emperors offered to Rome as the new universal salvation god, Ba’al, and openly required the ritual of human sacrifice to Ba’al, daily offering up children of the Senatorial class. http://www.roman-empire.net/decline/elagabalus.html

• As Christianity developed, Ba’alism was not a dead issue connected only to stories of the Old Testament. It was an active and strong rival (the chief rival of God again) for the hearts and minds of the Romans. The core ritual, the offering of human sacrifice, needed to be addressed by the Christians of the time, as they struggled to survive in an increasingly hostile Roman world.

The viewing of Christ as “the last human sacrifice needed” was part of the “morphing” offered by the early Christians to explain why the rituals of sacrifice could and should change. But, this rivalry between Ba’alism and early Christianity clearly shows a strong link between the Church and its developing views and Ba’alism.

Documented history shows that human sacrifice was not a long ago forgotten ritual as the Church was developed; human sacrifice in Rome was being practiced by the Emperor and was a major element to one of the first major rivals of the new religion. The ritual needed to be addressed in a politically acceptable means by the newly rising Christian church.

I have thought and read about this Ba’alist influence on Christianity’s point of view for years. Such books as “The Religion of the Occident” and the “The Closing of the Western Mind” helped me with a new understanding of history of Christianity, and religions in general. However, both books seem to miss the Ba’al importance. Hyam Maccoby’s, The Sacred Executioner is a book that greatly influences this work. However, Maccoby, while seeing the Jesus sacrifice as part of a ritual of human sacrifice, fails to make the major connection between the “sacrifice of Jesus”, and Ba’alism, directly. In the classic concerning religious development and human sacrifice, “The Golden Bough” there is a great deal of insight on the process and ritual of sacrifice, but not the connections I am suggesting. Also, most of the new books that question the existence of Jesus added to this new world view. However, they seem to miss the apparent connection between the ancient rival of God, Ba’al and the new Christian views. So, I prepare to present what I see.

Not only do I now see that the adversary of the God of the Old Testament, is still the chief adversary of God today, only under a different name and mythology, I also think that it might be closer to the truth to say that we live under a Ba’alic/Christian tradition in the Western world as opposed to Judaic/Christian one. The main rituals and world views of modern day Christians are more closely related to those of Ba’al than those of Judaism, with the key major issue being the view of human sacrifice, and its role in religion.

Please note that the term Ba’al can be used as

• A particular god (the storm god of the Canaanites)
• A title for any god or ruler or noble (the way Lord is used in English)
• Or a reference to the collective religion of the Canaanites — such as Hindu is used to refer to the pantheon of India

I will use the term Ba’al or Ba’alism mostly in third manner except where specifically pointed out as reference to the storm god.