Literary similarities between the plots of Baal and Anat and the biblical stories
Hello Rabbi,
I came across an article about the stories of Baal and Anat and saw a number of things there that are reminiscent of the biblical stories:
- The Terrible Sea Monsters: The Great Crocodile, the Flying Whale, and the Crooked Whale – Book of Isaiah, Chapter 27, Verse 1: “In that day the Lord will command with His hard and great and strong sword, against Leviathan, the flying whale, and against Leviathan, the crooked whale; And he killed the great sea monster that was in the sea.” And God created the great sea monster, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, according to their kinds.
- Anat hurries to fly to the northern peak and announces to her husband that his wish has been granted, and he can begin preparations to build himself a house – a house of cedar and brick, covered with gold, silver, and precious stones.
- Qusham-Vahashis takes the finest Lebanese caskets and lights a fire for six days to melt the silver and gold into bricks and ingots. On the seventh day , the palace made of caskets, silver, and gold is miraculously ready.
- After the construction is completed, the owner holds a magnificent feast of meat and wine to which the gods are invited, including the seventy sons of Asherah (seventy sons of Jacob, seventy elders).
- Anat sacrifices a series of seventy different animals: bulls, sheep, deer, goats, and donkeys. (Compared to the seventy bulls of Sukkot)
- Anat meets Death, seizes him, splits him with a sword, throws him in a pit, burns him in fire, grinds him in mills, and scatters his crumbs in the field, and the birds eat his remains. (And he took the calf that they had made, and burned it in the fire, and ground it until it was fine, and scattered it upon the water, and gave it to the children of Israel to drink.)
- The goddess Anat bathes in the dew of heaven and the fat of the earth. In Isaac’s blessing to Jacob, he blesses him with “And God give thee of the dew of heaven, and of the fat of the earth, and plenty of grain, and an inheritance:”
The time of writing the plots probably predates the giving of the Torah (but not the stories of the patriarchs). Do you think there is any significance to this similarity? Or is it perhaps a coincidental similarity?
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