Q&A: Literary Similarities Between the Baal and Anat Cycle and Biblical Narratives
Literary Similarities Between the Baal and Anat Cycle and Biblical Narratives
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I came across an entry on the Baal and Anat Cycle, and I saw several things there that are reminiscent of stories in the Hebrew Bible:
- The terrifying sea monsters: the great dragon, Leviathan the fleeing serpent, and Leviathan the twisting serpent — Isaiah 27:1: “On that day the Lord will punish, with His hard and great and mighty sword, Leviathan the fleeing serpent, and Leviathan the twisting serpent; and He will slay the dragon that is in the sea.” Also: “And God created the great sea monsters, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, according to their kinds.”
- Anat hastens to fly to the summit of Zaphon and tells Baal that his request has been granted, and that he may begin preparations to build himself a house — a house of cedars and bricks, overlaid with gold, silver, and precious stones.
- Kothar-wa-Hasis takes the finest cedars of Lebanon and kindles a fire for six days in order to melt the silver and gold and turn them into bricks and ingots. On the seventh day, the palace made of cedar, silver, and gold is miraculously ready.
- After the construction is completed, Baal holds a magnificent feast of meats and wines, to which the gods are invited, including the seventy sons of Asherah. (Compare the seventy descendants of Jacob, the seventy elders.)
- Anat slaughters groups of seventy different animals: bulls, sheep, rams, ibexes, and fallow deer. (Parallel to the seventy bulls of Sukkot.)
- Anat meets Mot, seizes him, splits him with a sword, winnows him with a sieve, burns him in fire, grinds him in a mill, and scatters his fragments in the field, while the birds eat what remains. (Compare: “And he took the calf that they had made and burned it in fire, and ground it until it was fine, and scattered it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink it.”)
- The goddess Anat bathes in the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth. In Isaac’s blessing to Jacob, he blesses him with: “May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth, and abundance of grain and wine.”
The time of composition of these tales apparently predates the giving of the Torah (though not the stories of the patriarchs). In your opinion, is there any significance to this similarity? Or is it perhaps just coincidental?
Answer
This has come up here more than once. In my opinion it doesn’t have much significance. It’s possible that they took from us, or that both they and we took from an earlier source. Some of these similarities are themselves fairly dubious. For example, to my mind 7 is not a similarity.
Discussion on Answer
That is certainly possible, and it’s also possible that this was simply a common type of punishment, etc. But why is that important?
I think that if these things did not happen historically, then there is room to reflect on the author’s intention in choosing this literary structure.
For example, regarding the verse in Genesis, it seems that the writer was trying to polemicize against the Ugaritic creation story and wanted to reject the notion that the great sea monster is a creature with the powers of a god, and instead lower it to the level of the rest of the animals. Otherwise, it seems puzzling that the verse would mention the particular before the general (the great sea monsters are a particular case within sea creatures).
With God’s help, Wednesday, for the weekly Torah portion “and he shall burn the cow before his eyes,” 5782
To Oren — greetings,
The mythological stories about idols beating and smashing one another are reminiscent of the deed of Abram the Hebrew, who broke the idols in his father’s shop, saying that there had been a quarrel among them and they struck and shattered one another. Perhaps Abram wrote satires (as part of his 400 books against idolatry mentioned by Maimonides) that mocked the idols by describing their petty quarrels. It is possible that what he wrote as “mockery of idolatry” was taken seriously by some of his readers.
Best regards, Dr. Kailas Odelson, University of Asgard
Even in our own generation, idolatrous influences on the world of Judaism are well known. For example, on this very site there is an editor called “Oren,” inspired by the idol worshippers of whom it is said: “He plants an oren tree, and the rain makes it grow.” Likewise there is the writer Yehonatan Geffen [like the name of Baal’s messenger] who wrote a book: “Things Anat Especially Loves.” I even heard of a woman who used to wake her husband by calling: “Answer us, O Baal, answer us, O Baal!” 🙂
And regarding what you wrote, that “the great sea monsters” were brought down from their “greatness” as God’s fixed enemies to the level of creatures that the Creator plays with — “Leviathan, whom You formed to sport with” — and instead of a world of מלחמה, the God of Israel created a harmonious and pastoral world, which was spoiled only by man’s sin.
The sun and moon suffered a steep demotion as well. They serve gloriously as chief idols in every self-respecting pantheon, whereas the creation story lowers them to the level of “lamps,” whose place is somewhere between plant life and animal life (since the sun serves as the mediator between them in the process of “photosynthesis,” as described by the magicians of our own day).
Best regards, Shamshum-Okhin the Helvingardian
Let’s take section 6 for example. The question is whether Moses actually carried out acts of burning, grinding, scattering, and making them drink in a real historical sense, or whether this verse uses a literary structure taken from an earlier source, as you said, in which case there is no necessity, historically speaking, that these actions really happened as described in the verse.