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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
The aim of this paper is to outline the thinking of the Canaanite peoples on the subject of death and to compare it with their near neighbour Israel's in the Old Testament. My chief source for the former is the mythological tablets from Ras Shamra (anciently Ugarit), the quoted extracts being taken from the translation in the second edition (for which I was responsible) of Sir Godfrey Driver's Canaanite Myths and Legends. For the Old Testament side of the equation I have mainly followed the survey in the opening chapters of Professor Martin-Achard's book From Death to Life, though I do not necessarily agree with all his interpretations. I have also profited, particularly in my concluding remarks, from rereading after a gap of many years Gustaf Aulén's well-known work of historical theology Christus Victor. Other studies which I found helpful are listed in the select bibliography at the end of the paper.
page 151 note 1 First given in a spoken version at a meeting of the Glasgow University Oriental Society in September 1977.
page 151 note 2 Interested readers are referred to this edition for the Ugaritic text and a treatment of the philological problems. In the extracts given here I do not mark restorations which are certain, due to the existence of parallel passages or the use of stereotyped language, bracketing only those which are conjectural; square brackets [ ] indicate a lacuna in the text and pointed brackets 〈 〉 an omission by the scribe.
page 151 note 3 Fuller bibliography on the theology of death in the Old Testament may be found in Brueggemann's article, and on the Ras Shamra tablets (including relations with the Bible) in my edition pp. xiii–xx.
page 156 note 1 It is possible that the equation of the Psalmist's enemies with lions or wild beasts goes back to a similar personification of death; e.g. Ps. 7.3 (Engl. 2), 17.2; cp. 1 Peter 5.8 (of the Devil).
page 160 note 1 The relevant passage (5 v 1–25) speaks of the mating of Baal with a heifer near the entrance to the underworld and of the immediate birth of a boy. It is illpreserved and De Moor's interpretation which I chiefly follow is by no means certain; other commentators think that Baal is merely concerned to ensure a successor in case he should fail to return to earth.
page 161 note 1 Similarly Baal in the Ras Shamra texts is not a ‘fertility’ god in the same sense as the Mesopotamian Dumuzi or Tammuz who was intimately linked with the growing vegetation, but a weather-god responsible for thunder, wind and rain; his other name Hadad in fact means ‘thunderer’. Baal and Mot are connected with agricultural fertility only in the sense that they supply the conditions under which it is furthered or disrupted. Loose usages of the word ‘fertility’ which fail to make this distinction have in my opinion led to much misrepresentation of Canaanite religion in the writings of Old Testament scholars.
page 163 note 1 It is going much too far to speak of it being enacted in a cultic drama (so e.g. Gaster in his influential book). Only partisans of the theory that myth has its origin in ritual would look for such evidence in an epic text which like Homer or the Norse sagas has all the marks of being composed for oral recitation. Though it is still popular in Semitic and biblical circles, this theory is, if my reading in the subject is any guide, now rather discredited in other disciplines; see further my article on myth, legend, and folklore in the Keret and Aqhat texts. In the same way, if there did exist an Israelite counterpart of the Canaanite New Year festival, as hints in certain Psalms can be taken to suggest, it would seem to me wiser to conclude that these Psalms were simply sung at it than on their basis to attempt (like, for instance, Johnson) to reconstruct a complicated series of cultic performances. I particularly mention Johnson's reconstruction because he has not only the chaos waters but a kind of demythologized ‘Death’ figuring in it. His chief supportive passages are Ps. 68.21 (Engl. 20), surely a straightforward statement about escaping death, and Ps. 48.14, which he renders ‘(God) is our leader against death’ when the parallelism obviously demands ‘will guide us till death (comes)’.
page 164 note 1 Not a few scholars (e.g. Kapelrud, Cross) have detected in the Ras Shamra texts evidence of a conflict between El and Baal or of a replacement of the former by the latter as head of the gods, and have used this evidence to fix and illumine successive stages of Canaanite influence on Israelite religion. My own reading of the tablets leads me to reject this theory strongly. El is pictured as old and often disinterested but he is not senile; his ultimate authority is never challenged and his permission or assent has to be sought by all the gods, Baal included, whenever they propose any important course of action. Particularly noteworthy are the passages (3 E 43ff and parallels) where Baal requests El to let him build a palace and expressly acknowledges that El has ‘created’ or ‘installed’ him as king.
page 165 note 1 It is rather disappointing in view of Jer. 9.20 (Engl. 21) that the allusion here is not to Mot. Is the prophet transferring to ‘death’ an image that had originally to do with the chaos waters?
page 166 note 1 See e.g. Hanson, index under ‘dualism’ and Cross, pp. 343ff. Hanson's investigation of surviving Canaanite imagery in Zech. 9 (pp. 292ff) is the kind of detailed preliminary study that is badly needed in this area; see also Emerton's earlier investigation of Dan. 7.13–14. Valuable additional material for such enquiries may be found in the legends and folklore of the Talmud; see Jacob's study.
page 167 note 1 In such a discussion imagery derived from the yearly ‘death’ and ‘resurrection’ of Baal, a matter only lightly touched upon in this paper, would certainly have a part to play; one wonders, for instance, whether there is any distant connexion between the cheating of Mot by Baal (see above p. 160) and Christ's deception of the Devil (or sometimes death), an idea picturesquely and on occasion grotesquely developed by some of the early Church Fathers.