by Brian Godawa
Joshua suddenly got serious. “This people are not able to serve Yahweh. He is a holy and jealous god. Even after all the deliverance he has brought, after the Red Sea, the water from the rock, and Jericho, and every other miracle, they will still worship foreign gods and will not put away the idols of the land. They will fail to drive out the Canaanites.”
“Is this a prophecy?” said Caleb.
“No,” replied Joshua. “It is merely my knowledge of their nature—of the nature in all of us. We need a king who can bring final triumph. Until then, the Seed of Eve will never find rest.”
Caleb said, “When he comes, he will be like you. Only perfect.”
They both chuckled at it.
“Indeed,” said Joshua. “Something I could never be.”
“Yahweh saves,” said Caleb. It was the meaning of Joshua’s name.
EPilogue
The four archangels arrived at the camp of Joshua outside of the newly named Hebron. Othniel was consulting Joshua and Caleb for his plan of attack on Kiriath-sepher.
When the angels entered, the generals saw a grim look on their faces.
Caleb said, “You are late as usual, archangels. But do not worry, we do not need you for our next campaign. Feel free to take a vacation, get some rest.”
“For your information, jester,” said Uriel. “We were binding Ba’al the Most High and demolishing his high place in the northern regions of Mount Sapan.”
Gabriel jumped in, now defending Uriel with unusual favor, “No rest for the righteous. And you are welcome.”
Caleb drew down. He knew that if Ba’al would have been fighting against them, they might have doubled their losses and maybe not have won at all.
Joshua could see the solemn look on Mikael and Raphael’s faces.
“What news do you bring?”
Mikael said, “On our way back we discovered that the nations of the north country have formed a massive coalition of armies from north, east, and west, led by King Jabin of Hazor. The Amorites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and even the Hivvites from under Mount Hermon. They are assembling their armies at the waters of Merom to launch a joint attack on you.”
Gabriel said, “You have not faced this many before.”
Joshua said, “How many?”
Mikael said, “Forty thousand.”
That was six times the number of Israel’s army. That was like the sand on the seashore to them. But Joshua had learned to have faith in such situations since Yahweh had promised them ultimate victory.
But that victory was given a stab to the kidney when Mikael added, “But they also have something you have never faced before.”
Uriel threw in, “You might want to ask us to delay our vacation.”
“What is that?” said Joshua. “What do they have?”
“Iron chariots. A multitude of them.” …
It is here that the Chronicle is broken off and lost to history. One may read more about the incident from the Book of the Wars of Yahweh. If new archaeological discoveries bring to light this small missing segment of manuscript, we will publish it as a novella available for devoted readers of Chronicles of the Nephilim.
Otherwise, the Chronicles continue with the next book, David Ascendant.
Appendix
Canaanite Ba’al and Old Testament
Storytelling Polemics
For many Christians, the word apologetics conjures a picture of defending the faith with philosophical arguments, archeological evidence, historical inquiry, and other rational and empirical forms of discourse. Apologetics also involves polemics, which are aggressive arguments against the opposition. Sometimes a good offense is the best defense. But what is often missed in some apologetic strategies is the Biblical use of imagination. This is illustrative of a distinct imbalance when one considers that the Bible is only about one-third propositional truth and about two-thirds imagination: image, metaphor, poetry, and story.[3]
With the discovery in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of pagan religious texts from ancient Near Eastern (ANE) cultures such as Babylon, Assyria, and Ugarit, Biblical scholarship has discovered many literary parallels between Scripture and the literature of ancient Israel’s enemies. The Hebrews shared many words, images, concepts, metaphors, and narrative genres in common with their neighbors. And those Hebrew authors of Scripture sometimes incorporated similar literary imagination into their text.
With regard to these Biblical and ancient Near Eastern literary parallels, liberal scholarship tends to stress the similarities, downplay the differences, and construct a theory of the evolution of Israel’s religion from polytheism to monotheism.[4] In other words, liberal scholarship is anthropocentric, or human-centered.
Conservative scholarship tends to stress the differences, downplay the similarities, and interpret the evidence as indicative of the radical otherness of Israelite religion.[5] In other words, conservative scholarship is theocentric, or God-centered. Both liberal and conservative hermeneutics err on opposite extremes.
The orthodox doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture states that it is composed of “God-breathed” human-written words (2Tim. 3:16). Men wrote from God, moved by the Holy Spirit (2Pet. 1:20-21). This is a “both/and” reality of humanly and heavenly authorship. While I affirm the heavenly side of God’s Word, in this essay I will illustrate how the authors of the Old Testament used the imagination of their enemies as a polemic against those enemies’ religion and deities. In my book, Word Pictures: Knowing God through Story and Imagination, I describe the nature of this subversive storytelling as the act of entering the opposition’s cultural narrative, retelling it through their own paradigm, or worldview, and thereby capturing the cultural narrative. God used literary subversion in the Bible as a means of arguing against the false gods and idols of that time.
Baal in Canaan
In 1929, an archeological excavation at a mound in northern Syria called Ras Shamra unearthed the remains of a significant port city called Ugarit, whose developed culture reaches back as far as 3000 BC.[6] Among the important finds were literary tablets that opened the door to a deeper understanding of ancient Near Eastern culture and the Bible. Those tablets included Syro-Canaanite religious texts of pagan deities mentioned in the Old Testament. One of those deities was Baal (alternate spelling of Ba’al).
Though the Semitic noun baal means “lord” or “master,” it was also used as the proper name of the Canaanite storm god.[7] In the Baal narrative cycle from Ugarit, El was the supreme “father of the gods,” who lived on a cosmic mountain. A divine council of gods called “Sons of El” surrounded him, vying for position and power. When Sea is coronated by El and given a palace, Baal rises up and kills Sea, taking Sea’s place as “Most High” over the other gods (excepting El). A temple is built and a feast celebrated. Death then insults Baal, who goes down to the underworld, only to be defeated by Death. But Anat, Baal’s violent sister, seeks Death and cuts him up into pieces and brings Baal’s body back up to earth where he is brought back to life, only to fight Death to a stalemate.[8]
The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible explains of Baal: “His elevated position shows itself in his power over clouds, storm and lightning, and manifests itself in his thundering voice. As the god of wind and weather Baal dispenses dew, rain, and snow and the attendant fertility of the soil. Baal’s rule guarantees the annual return of the vegetation; as the god disappears in the underworld and returns in the autumn, so the vegetation dies and resuscitates with him.”[9]
Baal in the Bible
In the Bible, Baal is used both as the name of a specific deity[10] and as a generic term for multiple idols worshipped by apostate Israel.[11] It was also used in conjunction with city names and locations, such as Baal-Hermon and Baal-Zaphon, indicating manifestations of the one deity worshipped in a variety of different Canaanite situations.[12] Simply speaking, in Canaan, Baal was all over the place. He was the chief god of the land.
On entering Canaan, Ya
hweh gave specific instructions to the Israelites to destroy all of the places where the Canaanites worshipped, along with their altars and images (Deut. 12:1-7). They were to “destroy the names” of the foreign idols and replace them with Yahweh’s name and habitation (vv. 3-4). God warned them, “Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them” (Deut. 11:16).
Yet, turning to other gods in worship is exactly what the Israelites did—over and over again. No sooner had the people settled in Canaan than they began to adopt Baal worship into their culture. The book of Judges describes this cycle of idolatry under successive leaders.[13] In the ninth century BC, Elijah fought against rampant Baal worship throughout Israel (1 Kings 18). In the eighth century, Hosea decried the adulterous intimacy that both Judah and Israel had with Baal (Hos. 2:13, 16-17), and in the seventh century, Jeremiah battled with an infestation of it in Judah (Jer. 2:23; 32:35).
Baal worship was so cancerous throughout Israel’s history that Yahweh would have to intervene periodically with dramatic displays of authority in order to stem the infection that polluted the congregation of the Lord. Gideon’s miraculous deliverances from the Baal-loving Midianites (Judges 6-8) and Elijah’s encounter with the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18) are just a couple examples of Yahweh’s real-world polemic against Baal. But physical battles and miraculous signs and wonders are not the only way God waged war against Baal in ancient Canaan. He also used story, image, and metaphor. He used literary imagination.
Yahweh Vs. Baal
Literary subversion was common in the ancient world to affect the overthrow or overshadowing of one deity and worldview with another. For example, the high goddess Inanna, considered Queen of Heaven in ancient Sumeria, was replaced by her Babylonian counterpart, Ishtar. An important Sumerian text, The Descent of Inanna into the Underworld, was rewritten by the Babylonians as the Descent of Ishtar into the Underworld to accommodate their goddess Ishtar.[14] The Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish tells the story of the Babylonian deity Marduk and his ascendancy to power in the Mesopotamian pantheon.[15] And then when King Sennacherib of Assyria conquered Babylon around 689 BC, Assyrian scribes rewrote the Enuma Elish and replaced the name of Marduk with Assur, their chief god.[16]
Picture this scenario: The Israelites have left Egypt where Yahweh literally mocked and defeated the gods of Egypt through the ten plagues (Exod. 12:12; Num. 33:4). Pharaoh claimed to be a god, who according to Egyptian texts, was the “possessor of a strong arm” and a “strong hand.”[17] So when Yahweh repeatedly hammers home the message that Israel will be delivered by Yahweh’s “strong arm” and “strong hand,” the polemical irony is not hard to spot. Yahweh used subversive literary imagery, which in effect said, “Pharaoh is not God, I am God.” Nothing like an arm wrestling match to show who is stronger.
But now, God is leading Israel into the Promised Land, which is very different from where they came, with very different gods. “For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven” (Deut. 11:10-11). And the god of rain from heaven in this new land was believed to be the storm god, Baal.[18]
Now the Biblical text begins to reflect that storm god language in its reference to Israel’s god, Yahweh. Let’s take a look at some Ugaritic texts will give us a literary description of the Baal that Israel faced in Canaan. A side-by-side sampling of those Ugaritic texts with Scripture illustrates a strong reflection of Canaanite echoes in the Biblical storytelling.
UGARITIC TEXTS[19]
Baal sits…
in the midst of his divine mountain, Saphon,
in the midst of the mountain of victory.
Seven lightning-flashes,
eight bundles of thunder,
a tree-of-lightning in his right hand.
His head is magnificent,
His brow is dew-drenched.
his feet are eloquent in wrath.
(KTU 1.101:1-6)[20]
The season of his rains may Baal indeed appoint, the season of his storm-chariot.
And the sound of his voice from the clouds, his hurling to the earth of lightning-flashes (KTU 1.4:5.5-9)
At his holy voice the earth quaked;
at the issue of his lips the mountains were afraid…
the hills of the earth tottered.
(KTU 1.4:7.30-35)
now your foe, Baal,
now your foe the Sea you must smite;
now you must destroy your adversary!
Take your everlasting kingdom,
your eternal dominion!
(KTU 1.2:4.9-10)
OLD TESTAMENT
Yahweh came from Sinai…
At His right hand there was flashing lightning…
There is none like the God of Jeshurun,
Who rides the heavens to your help,
And through the clouds in His majesty…
And He drove out the enemy from before you,
And said, ‘Destroy!’…
In a land of grain and new wine;
His heavens also drop down dew.
(Deut. 33:2, 26-28)
The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders,
the Lord, over many waters…
The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon…
The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire [lightning].
The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness…
And in His temple everything says, “Glory!”
Yahweh sits enthroned over the flood;
Yahweh is enthroned as King forever.
(Ps. 29:3-11)
Like the usage of Yahweh’s “strong arm” to poetically argue against the so-called “strong arm” of Pharaoh, Yahweh inspires His authors to use water and storm language to reflect God’s polemic against the so-called storm god, Baal.
Comparing the texts yields identical words, memes, and metaphors that suggest God is engaging in polemics against Baal through scriptural imagery and storytelling. It is not Baal who rides his cloud chariot from his divine mountain Saphon (Sapan), it is Yahweh who rides the clouds as a chariot from mount Sinai. It is not Baal who hurls lightning flashes in wrath; it is Yahweh whose lightning flashes destroy His enemies. It is not Baal whose dew-drenched brow waters the land of Canaan; it is Yahweh who drops dew from heaven to Canaan. It is not Baal’s voice that thunders and conquers the waters resulting in his everlasting temple enthronement; it is Yahweh whose voice thunders and conquers the waters resulting in His everlasting temple enthronement.
Psalm 29 (quoted in part above) is so replete with poetry in common with Canaanite poetry that many ANE scholars have concluded it is a Canaanite hymn to Baal that has been rewritten with the name Baal replaced by the name Yahweh.[21] God was not only physically dispossessing Canaan of its inhabitants; He was literarily dispossessing the Canaanite gods as well. Old Testament appropriation of Canaanite culture is a case of subversion, not syncretism—overthrowing cultural narratives as opposed to blending with them.
A closer look at comparing just two elements of the Baal cycle with Yahweh’s story will yield a clearer picture of the literary subversion of the Canaanite narrative that God and the human authors were employing. Those two elements are the epithet of “cloud-rider” and God’s conflict with the dragon and the sea.
Cloud-Rider
In the Ugaritic text cited above, we are introduced to Baal as one who rides the heavens in his cloud-chariot dispensing judgment from the heights. “Charioteer (or ‘Rider’) of the Clouds” was a common epithet ascribed to Baal throughout the Ugaritic texts. Here is another side-by-side comparison of Ugaritic and Biblical texts that illustrate that common motif.
UGARITIC TEXTS
‘Dry him up. O Valiant Baal!
/>
Dry him up, O Charioteer [Rider] of the Clouds!
For our captive is Prince Yam [Sea],
for our captive is Ruler Nahar [River]!’
(KTU 1.2:4.8-9)
What manner of enemy has arisen against Baal, of foe against the Charioteer of the Clouds? [then, he judges other deities]
Surely I smote…Yam [Sea]?
Surely I exterminated Nahar [River], the mighty god?
Surely I lifted up the dragon,
I overpowered him?
I smote the writhing serpent,
Encircler-with-seven-heads!
(KTU 1.3:3.38-41)
OLD TESTAMENT
“[Yahweh] bowed the heavens also, and came down
With thick darkness under His feet.
And He rode on a cherub and flew;
And He appeared on the wings of the wind.
He made darkness canopies around Him,
A mass of waters, thick clouds of the sky.
(2 Sam. 22:7-12)
[Yahweh] makes the clouds His chariot;
He walks upon the wings of the wind;
(Ps. 104:3-4)
Behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud and is about to come to Egypt; The idols of Egypt will tremble at His presence,
(Isa. 19:1)
Yahweh is described here with the same exact moniker as Baal, in the same exact context as Baal—revealed in the storm and riding a cloud in judgment on other deities. Baal is subverted by Yahweh.
This correlation of deity with cloud judgment sheds light on the vision of Daniel’s Son of Man that Christians understand as a reference to Jesus Christ.[22] The everlasting dominion received by the divine Baal riding the clouds before the throne of the High God El is apologetically ascribed to the divine Son of Man (Jesus Christ) riding the clouds to the throne of “Elyon,” the Ancient of Days.[23]
