International Encyclopedia
Copyright 1969
Baal- ancient Canaanite title
for a male deity, meaning simply “lord”.
By about 1500B.C., however: the
people along the eastern Mediterranean coastlands used Baal as the chief name of
the storm-god Hadad. As the
personified storm, Baal was the power of nature, considered the king of gods,
“the Exalted One, Lord of the Earth.” The
head of the Canaanite pantheon was El, but Baal was the executive force in the
divine government. In northern
Syria his consort was the fertility-goddess anath; in the southern Syria it was
Astarte; in Palestine during the time of the Hebrew kings it was the
mother-goddess Asherah. As “Lord
Storm,” people heard his voice in the thunder; saw his arrow in the Lightning,
and through the rain. Considered him the giver of fertility.
The chief myths about him and his cult centered in the annual cycle of
nature. The spring burst of life
was the result of the marriage of Baal and the fertility-goddess; the drought
resulted when the forces of Mot (death) killed Baal; the rains returned when he
was brought back to life.
As a title, ball was also used
of the God of Israel, after the Israelites entered Palestine; but because of the
great danger in confusing him with the Canaanite Baal there was in Israel a
great struggle against the use of the term after the 10th century B.C.
G. Earnest Wright, Harvard
Divinity School
Yahweh or Jahveh {ya’we}, the most common name for God
in the Hebrew Bible. It appears
6,823 times. It is the proper name
for the God of Israel, in contrast to the more general name for the Deity,
“Elohim.” From the earliest times in the synagogue the name was not
pronounced, the word “Adonoi” being used instead.
Since the word was pointed with the vowels of its substitute Adonoi when
the vowel points were finally put into the Hebrew text, “YHWH” was
mistakenly read as “Jehovah.” The
now more common pronunciation Yahweh is based on inconclusive evidence from
ancient sources.
The meaning of “Yahweh is also
not certain. The most convincing
scholarly opinion is that it is derived from a Hebrew root meaning to be, and
thus “Yahweh” would mean
either “He Who Always Is” or
“He Who Brings Everything into Being.”
In rabbinical literature “Yahweh” is interpreted as referring to
God’s attribute of Mercy. Because
the name of Yahweh has four letters in Hebrew it is frequently referred to as
the Tetragrammaton (Gr. “four
lettered”).
Consult Moore, G.F., Judaism,
Vol. I (1950); Albright, W.F., From the Stone Age to Christianity 92d ed.,
1957).
Seymour Siegel,
Jewish Theological Seminary of
America
See also Adonoi or Adonai;
Elohim.
Cain {kan}, eldest son of Adam
and Eve, and brother of Abel, whom he murdered. For this Cain was cursed by God to live a nomadic existence
(Gen. 4). He was regarded as the
ancestor of the Kenite tribe, who, like Israel, worshiped Yahweh, but whose
nomadic life Israel disliked.
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