The BAAL BOOK
A Biography of the Devil
V. Rev. Dr. Stephen De Young
ancient faith publishing
CHESTERTON, INDIANA
The Baal Book: A Biography of the Devil
Copyright © 2025 Stephen De Young
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by: Ancient Faith Publishing A Division of Ancient Faith Ministries 1050 Broadway, Suite 6 Chesterton, IN 46304
Cover art and design: Amber Schley Iragui
ISBN: 978-1-955890-82-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025940360
Printed in the United States of America
Out on Baal
What Should We Make of an Ancient Canaanite God?
This book is a biography of the Devil. In twentiethcentury scholarship, the common view of the origin of the figure of the Devil or Satan is that it emerged in the Persian period. Following Judah’s exile in Babylon, an alliance of Persians and Medes conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire, producing the first Persian Empire. Cyrus the Great then allowed the exiles of Judah to return and created the province of Judea. Since much of the Old Testament was either composed or reached its current, edited form in Hebrew or Aramaic during this period, scholars concluded that any changes in Second Temple Judaism leading into the emergence of Christianity were, in whole or in part, the result of Persian influence. Western scholars, vaguely understanding Zoroastrianism as a form of dualism, then argued that the idea of a figure opposed to Yahweh the God of Israel must be an evolution or adaptation of Persian belief in a second, evil god. However, this is not the reality of Zoroastrian self-understanding, which holds that Ahura Mazda has a complicated relationship with an entity described as his shadow.
More importantly, there is simply no evidence, Jewish or Christian, in which the Devil is seen as being equally powerful or eternal along with God. Rather, the Devil—or Satan—is always depicted in Scripture and in Second Temple Jewish and Christian traditions as a rebellious vassal of the true God.
The figure of Baal is consistently portrayed as just such a rebellious servant; he is described by his own worshipers in terms very similar to those used to describe the Devil in Jewish and Christian tradition. He is prominent throughout the Hebrew Scriptures as an adversary of God for the worship of His people. In ancient Near Eastern pagan circles, this rebellion was a revolution with Baal as its hero; it was the first in a long string of victories for which he was worshiped and glorified. But the Hebrew Scriptures consciously recast this story, turning it on its head. Baal is depicted as a failed rebel, defeated and condemned, who nonetheless continues to attempt to steal glory that rightly belongs to the Almighty God. From the Scriptures’ retelling of the Baal myth, the figure of the Devil emerges from the earliest chapters of Genesis to the New Testament’s descriptions of the Evil One.
Modern Archaeology and the Scriptures
The contributions of modern archaeology to the understanding of the Old Testament are a mixed bag in that it’s difficult to see some research as a legitimate contribution. Biblical archaeology in its earliest phase divided into “modernist” and “fundamentalist” factions, more recently described commonly as “liberal” and “conservative,” respectively. In truth, both these factions proceed on modernist presuppositions and principles. This is not the place to enter into a discussion of whether archaeology properly constitutes a science or ought to be conducted by scientific means. But, when approached as a science, both groups have set out to use those
means either to prove or disprove a very literal interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The Limitations of “Real”
Literal itself is a slippery term. In archaeology, it refers to the idea that what is “real” is that which can be demonstrated to be true through the application of scientific methods to evidence. This means that anything proposed about the past must obey the then-current understanding of the laws of natural science and also correspond to a kind of material reality that could be filmed or photographed. Thus the wisdom and spiritual insights of ancient people regarding the greater meaning of events, their feelings and impressions of them, and the importance of them in the life of nations or people groups are not “real” in this sense. For the liberal scholar, insofar as these larger considerations form the biblical narrative, Scripture is not true, or at least not historical. For the conservative scholar, to imply that these larger considerations of meaning shape the biblical narrative outs someone as a liberal and means that they do not believe that the narrative is true, or at least historical.
The world is not so artificial, so material, or so clockwork as these views require. Someone either loves another person, or they do not. There is no way to test for love. It does not leave, in most cases, conclusive archaeological evidence. Yet it is no less real. A narrative reflecting the author’s subjective views of goodness, beauty, and ethical norms does not render it ahistorical. When an ancient author sees spirits at work in events on earth, this does not mean that the events didn’t happen. Nor is the author’s understanding a claim that these spirits would have been seen with the bodily senses at the time the events occurred. Everyone understands this in day-to-day communications and in reading written records.
Discoveries of Ancient Texts
Despite its limitations in methodology, archaeology has made incontrovertible contributions in the discovery of ancient texts. In the ancient Near East, texts were routinely written in a shared cuneiform script on clay tablets. A reed was used to make wedge-shaped impressions on wet, hand-sized lumps of clay. These small tablets then were fired in a kiln to preserve them, and the writing they contained, for posterity. Due to their durability, a huge volume of these tablets has been preserved to the present day. Most of those uncovered in the modern period have not yet been translated, and those that have are, as one might suspect, records of a very mundane nature. Just as today, receipts, bills of lading, various contracts, and agreements make up the majority of ancient writings.
Archaeologists have also recovered significant troves of texts— usually royal libraries of the kings of ancient empires or city-states. Within these libraries are texts of far greater significance. Many of the most familiar ancient Near Eastern stories, like the Epic of Gilgamesh and ancient accounts of the creation of the world and the Flood, parallel to those in Genesis, were found in such troves. Those texts, from Assyrian and Babylonian libraries, are primarily written in Akkadian, a Semitic language that serves as the root of most other Semitic languages, in the way that Sanskrit stands behind IndoEuropean languages or Latin stands behind the Romance languages. They provide valuable information about the beliefs and practices of the nations surrounding ancient Israel and Judah, as well as information concerning the history of the world in which the Old Testament Scriptures are set.
Ugarit
For the subject matter of this book, the most important textual find came from the discovery, beginning in 1928, of the ancient city of Ugarit. Ugarit began as a Neolithic settlement on the Mediterranean coast. It grew into a prominent city-state, serving as a port and lying along trade routes in Syria leading to Europe, the Levant, and Egypt. Through the Bronze Age, Ugarit was related in various ways to the Hittites, the Syrians, and the Egyptians in terms of trade and power relationships. During the Bronze Age collapse, circa 1185 bc, Ugarit itself fell, likely due to the Sea Peoples’ migration or invasion. Unlike the Phoenicians or Egyptians, who managed to reemerge as civilizations after the collapse, or other city-states that were later rebuilt, Ugarit remained desolate in the region of Ra’s Shamra until its twentieth-century rediscovery.
A Window into Canaanite Language and Liturgical Life
Ugarit’s ruins and her library of texts give us a snapshot of Levantine and Canaanite culture in the twelfth century bc. The texts found there predate most, if not all, of the texts that make up the Hebrew Scriptures.1 They reflect the cultural identity of the Canaanites of the latter part of the Torah, the Book of Joshua, and the earliest parts of Israelite history. Various aspects of this picture are relevant to the historian, the political scientist, and the material archaeologist. For the biblical scholar, the two main important elements of these
1 If one accepts the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch and the early date of the Exodus, then the Torah, or significant elements of it, would predate the finds at Ugarit. For a late dating of the Exodus, the Ugarit texts would be older than even the Torah.
texts are Ugarit’s language and the picture we have received of her religious and liturgical life.
Ugaritic, as the particular language of the city of Ugarit has been dubbed, is a dialect of Old Canaanite, as is Hebrew. But unlike Hebrew, Ugaritic was written in the older, cuneiform script, while the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet is derived from the Phoenician alphabet, a later development. Nonetheless, the two languages are closely related. In written form, ancient Semitic languages, from Akkadian to Ugaritic to Hebrew to Aramaic to Syriac to even later Arabic, record consonantal sounds but not vowels and have vocabularies based on very similar sets of consonants. The vocalization—the vowels that are utilized to pronounce the words aloud—differs and separates these languages and dialects.
The discovery of Ugaritic, therefore, has been a great help in interpreting very early and obscure parts of the Hebrew Scriptures. Roughly four hundred Old Testament words occur only once, and their meaning is obscure. In the past, translators have guessed at their meaning based on context clues and words in other, sometimes much later, Semitic languages that seem similar. A great number of these are word roots found in various Ugaritic texts, giving us a much better idea of the original meanings of the words in their biblical context, although scholars argue over individual cases.
The texts found written in this language include a wide variety of religious and liturgical matter that give us a firsthand witness to the worship life of the city of Ugarit and of Canaanite cities more broadly. Chief among these texts is the Baal Cycle, an epic regarding Baal, son of El, and his various exploits and victories. Many of the ritual and liturgical texts reflect these epic stories and the way in which these stories and Baal himself, along with other gods over whom Baal presided, were worshiped. In many cases, worship in these stories involved various kinds of ritual participation.
Understanding the Old Testament
Treatment of Baal Worship
These texts tell us a great deal more than we knew previously about the Baal worshipers and prophets of Baal who appear in the Scriptures. The opposition to these figures in the Old Testament is more understandable when we know the specific beliefs and practices that are being denounced. Now that we are aware of the Baal Cycle and similar texts, we see that passages in the Hebrew Bible take scenes from the Baal Cycle and other similar stories and reshape or comment on them directly. In many cases, this new knowledge serves to validate long-held traditional interpretations of biblical texts that were previously thought to be allegorical.
The Purpose of This Book
The purpose of this book is to make this knowledge about Baal accessible to everyday Bible readers. Obviously, most Christians lack the time and interest to study Ugaritic or even to try to track down and understand Ugaritic texts in translation. Nevertheless, the insights and scriptural interpretation derived from this knowledge is not too difficult or strange for the average person to grasp if it isn’t kept locked away in academic materials. The figure of Baal looms large in the Old and even the New Testaments of Scripture, and an understanding of Baal enriches one’s understanding of the Bible.
In this book, we will survey what we know about Baal in the stories and beliefs of the nations surrounding ancient Israel and Judah. We will describe what we know about the religious practices and liturgical life of the ancient Near Eastern pagans who followed Baal. We will also work through the texts in the Old and New Testaments that make reference to, or directly oppose, various Baal traditions. Through all of this, we will see that the figure of Baal—experienced
by his followers as the king of the gods—and the Devil—the prince of demons—are one and the same.
Translations and Psalm Numbering
Regarding Scripture references from the Psalms: When the Hebrew tradition (used in most English Bibles) and the Greek tradition (on which the Orthodox Study Bible and certain other translations are based) differ from one another, the numbering from the Hebrew tradition precedes the Greek, and a slash (/) separates them.
All the translations in this book, biblical or otherwise, are my own. Part of the aim in this effort is to reveal the connections between ancient texts that interact with one another by translating them in a way that is consistent. However, this translation method and the parallels drawn between these materials do not imply equality between them. Where the Scriptures speak to a topic or figure from preexisting texts or in cultures outside of Israel, the Scriptures correct and explain these texts. To put a finer point on it, again and again, the Hebrew Scriptures take the very texts that Baal’s worshipers use to claim that he is glorious and worthy of worship and invert them to show that Baal is neither. Baal and his followers may present him as a rival of Yahweh the God of Israel, but the True God, the Creator of all things, is without rival or peer.
Make Baal
Who Was Baal to His Worshipers?
Throughout the period of history described within the New Testament, the most prominent pagan deity among Israel and Judah’s geopolitical neighbors was Baal. From the archaeological finds at Ugarit, we know that Baal worship was already well established among Canaanites, Syrians, and Phoenicians by the middle part of the second millennium bc. This is roughly the time of the earliest suggested dating of the Exodus from Egypt. Even when later powers arose in the Near East, such as Assyria and the NeoBabylonian Empire, they assimilated not only Baal himself into their council of gods but elements of his worship and festal celebrations. The Greeks and Romans sought to assimilate him into the figures of Zeus and Jupiter, respectively.
As reflected in the pages of the Old Testament, the cult of Baal was the primary threat to the exclusive worship of Yahweh. Despite Yahweh’s commands to the Israelite people, Baal worship entered Israel and Judah, most often syncretistically. Rather than worshiping Baal instead of Yahweh, the Israelites most commonly fell into worshiping Baal alongside Yahweh or worshiping Yahweh in ways that tried
to assimilate Him with Baal. Baal worship was deeply integrated into Canaanite and Syrian cultures. Baal worship’s intrusions into Israel, therefore, tended to wax and wane with the cultural and political influence of those neighboring cultures.
Who Is Baal?
The Aramaic word Baal is commonly pronounced in English transliteration as “bale.” Its original pronunciation was two syllables, Ba’al (Bah-all). Baal is an Aramaic word that means “lord” or “master.” It can also be used to mean “husband,” giving a window into ancient Near Eastern family structures. The fact that Baal is a commonly used title in other contexts does not mean that it doesn’t also function as a proper name, both in the Hebrew Bible and in extrabiblical texts written by his followers. Baal’s father, as we will see, is named El, which is simply the word for “god.”
Nonetheless, there are places in the Scriptures and in other texts where the word is used as a title or to mean “husband,” and does not imply the proper name of a deity. Examples of its use to refer to a human husband include Genesis 20:3 and Exodus 21:3, 22. In many texts from Israel’s neighbors, it is used as a general title, appended to the name of a deity, not necessarily implying that Baal and that other deity are the same god. In these cases, it simply means “lord so-and-so.” The Old Testament reflects this usage when it refers to pagan gods generally as “the baals.” In some Semitic-speaking circles, it came to be used as an honorific title before the name of respected human teachers, as in the case of the founding figure of Jewish Hassidism, the Baal Shem Tov.
Very clearly in the Hebrew Bible, Baal is often used as the proper name of a particular Canaanite and Phoenician deity. The textual finds in the city of Ugarit have further confirmed that Baal was used as a proper name by his worshipers in those regions. There is also a
