Biblical Hebrew Blog by ClassicalHebrew.com

The City of Ugarit was a well-known city and kingdom which flourished during the second millennium BCE, located on the coast of the Mediterranean in today’s northern Syria. The location of the city was unknown until 1928, when a grave discovered by accident in the village of Ras Shamra turned out to be part of the Ugarit necropolis. Extensive excavations of the archaeological site took place from 1929 and revealed a rich material culture which included four libraries. The writings from these libraries are dated to roughly 1400 BCE, and include Ugaritic and other texts, mostly in Ugaritic or Akkadian.

Although Ugaritic is not a Canaanite language, it has close similarities to biblical Hebrew: while slightly varying in consonants and containing virtually no vowels, it is often titled “the closest sister language,” and the script was easily deciphered thanks to these similarities. The mythologies revealed in Ugarit show many similarities to biblical materials: many motifs, titles and characters in biblical literature were identified thanks to Ugaritic material. For instance: 1. the description in 1 Kings 22:19 of “YHWH sitting on his throne, and all the hosts of heaven standing by him to his right and to his left” is similar to Ugaritic descriptions of the chief god El. 2. In Ezekiel 14, Noah, Daniel and Job are mentioned as three righteous gentiles who will be saved thanks to their righteousness. The appearance of Daniel, a Jewish prophet, as part of this list was an exegetical mystery. However, thanks to the Ugaritic story of Aqhat it is now clear that the Bible was not speaking of Daniel, but of Dan’el, a righteous Ugaritic hero. 3. Ba’al, the storm god, is often presented as one who “rides on the clouds” – imagery also used to describe YHWH in Psalm 68:5.

More similarities can be found when examining the Ugaritic literary style: parallelism and the various word-pairs used in parallelism in Ugarit are virtually identical to those found in the Bible. This assists us in learning about the literary practices surrounding ancient Israel. In addition, many expressions found in biblical literature are found in a virtually identical form in Ugaritic literature, thus explaining the choice of imagery and its context and shedding light on the meaning of the biblical text.

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The name Canaanites denotes the inhabitants of the land of Canaan who inhabited the land prior to the Israelite settlement, and remained among the Israelites throughout the First Temple Period. The Bible stresses that the Israelites must stay apart from them, and the Patriarchs set an example for proper behavior by not marrying Canaanite women despite the fact that that would have been the easy and obvious choice. The reason for this segregation is the polytheistic Canaanite culture. Due to the fact that the language and customs of Canaanites and Israelites were very similar, and they lived amongst each other, it was very important to keep the Israelites religiously distinct. It is important to note that the Canaanite Polytheistic culture was wide-spread in the entire region, including the city of Ugarit in Syria. However, despite the biblical command, the Israelites were often influenced by the Canaanites and their pagan ways.

The head of the Canaanite pantheon is the god El, who is the father of the gods and has seventy children, all gods filling the different positions available in polytheistic cultures. El is also considered the creator of the world. Among his children, it is especially important to mention Ba’al, the storm god, Mot, the god of death, and Anat, the goddess of war.

Due to the fact that the land of Canaan is dependant on rain in order to sustain life, Ba’al, the storm god, is especially important, and is often depicted as a warrior, with thunder and lightning as his weapons.

The myths about the gods teach us how the ancient Canaanites explained different natural phenomena. A central myth in Canaanite literature is that of the war between Ba’al and Mot. Mot is not only the god of death but also the one responsible for summer, during which vegetation dries up and dies, while Ba’al, who is responsible for bringing rain, is the god who encourages the growth of vegetation. According do the myth, the cycle of the seasons is a result of a war between Ba’al and Mot. Because they are equal in power, neither can prevail indefinitely. In the myth, Mot succeeds in killing Ba’al – thus bringing about summer. However, Ba’al’s sister and lover, Anat, kills Mot, and brings Ba’al back from the underworld. The war between them is settled by a compromise, giving each the reign over half of the year.

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Legend has it, that when George Smith, a young scholar at the British Museum in 1857, managed to decipher the cuneiform tablet he was working on and realized that he had discovered a Mesopotamian version of the story of the flood described in the book of Genesis, he undressed in euphoria, unable to contain his excitement. The discovery that there is such a parallel story is a landmark in biblical research and in understanding that the Bible did not spring out of nowhere and is innately connected to the cultures surrounding Israel.

Versions of the story of the flood are found in three major Mesopotamian writings: the stories of Zeosudra (Sumerian) and Atrahasis (Acadian), which are fairly similar, and the Epoch of Gilgamesh. In Atrahasis, the gods, weary of all the hard work of building and working the land, decided to create man, in order for him to do their labor. However, although humans did undertake this task, they were extremely loud, and the gods were unable to rest as they had longed. They therefore took various measures in order to destroy human kind, the last of which was to bring a seven day flood upon the Earth. The only person to survive was Atrahasis, who gathered his family into a ship, closed the door behind them, and remained there until the storm abated and the birds he sent out did not return.

In the epoch of Gilgamesh, the hero bearing that name sets out in search of eternal life. At the end of his quest, he meets a couple who achieved immortality, having survived the flood, but could not reproduce. The hero, Utnapishtim, tells a story of the flood similar to that of Atrahasis.

Although there are clear similarities between the biblical story and the Mesopotamian legends, there are also very important differences: in the biblical story, God decides to destroy human kind due to moral reasons – he could not allow the Earth to continue existing in its corrupt and violent state, while the Mesopotamian gods simply wanted to sleep and found destruction to be the fastest and easiest solution, showing no regard for human life; Noah does not achieve immortality, unlike Utnapishtim; Noah does not close the door of the arc himself, therefore leaving out the rest of mankind – God does this (Genesis 7:16), for only He can determine who will survive the flood; in the biblical story, God vows that he will never again destroy human kind, while in the Mesopotamian story, the gods find solutions for the abundance of humans by the creation of various phenomena such as stillborns and barren women.
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