Commenting on the biblical authors' appropriation of Canaanite concepts, Raphael Patai wrote:
Another debt Judaism owes the Canaanites is connected with Biblical poetry, in particular, with its theocentric imagery. Even Jews who have totally abandoned all religious observance know, if they are educated at all, that the Bible is one of the greatest masterpieces of world literature Among both Jewish and Christian students, “The Bible as Literature” is one of the more popular courses in many universities and colleges. What escapes many is the extent to which Biblical poetry reflects its Canaanite and Phoenician background. Many phrases, expressions, poetic forms, and above all ideas which contribute to the greatness of Biblical poetry have their origin in Canaanite and Phoenician antecedents. Much has been written on this subject, particularly since the 1920s of the rich fifteenth- to fourteenth- century B.C.E literature at Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra, near the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean), which is recorded in a language that closely resembles Biblical Hebrew but antedating by one or two centuries even the earliest written formulations of any part of the Bible. The most important Ugaritic texts are mythological, and they document very fully the Canaanite fertility cult which so influenced the Israelites, and against which the Hebrew prophets inveighed. These texts prove that the Hebrews were indeed well acquainted with the mythology of Canaan and used it in their literary works; or at least, to put it as cautiously as possible, that much of the imagery of Hebrew prophecy and poetry on the one hand and of Canaanite mythological literature on the other, goes back to a common, very ancient tradition. The Biblical prophets and poets used epithets, phrases, and even descriptions which occur in Ugaritic poetry in connection with the gods of Canaan and applied them with little or no change to Yahweh, thereby making them part of the religious thought and vocabulary of Judaism and Christianity to this very day. Just one or two examples will suffice to illustrate the point.
The Song of Moses, dating from the thirteenth century B.C.E., contains this praise of God:
Who is like unto Thee among the gods, O Yahweh?
Who is like unto Thee, feared in holiness?
Compare this with the following Ugaritic distich from the fifteenth century B.C.E.:
Who is like unto thee, O Baal?
Who is like unto thee among the gods?
Again, in one of the Psalms we read:
Behold, Thine enemies, O Yahweh
Behold, Thine enemies shall perish
All the works of iniquity shall be scattered.
which is an almost literal reproduction of the Ugaritic:
Behold, thine enemies, O Baal,
Behold, thine enemies shalt thou crush,
Behold, thou shalt crush thy foes!
In these two examples both the formal and the ideational similarities are striking. No less remarkable is the recurrence of a divine epithet in Ugaritic myth and in the Psalms. In Ugaritic, Baal is termed “Rider of Clouds,” and the same term (translated “Rider of the Skies”) appears as an epithet of Yahweh in the Psalms. The ancient Canaanite myth about the god who kills the dragon also figures in the Bible. In the Psalms we read: “Thou didst crush the heads of Leviathan . . . “ and in Isaiah: “In that day Yahweh with His sore and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the winding serpent and Leviathan the crooked serpent, and He will slay the dragon [tannin] that is in the sea.” The same myth is referred to in the Ugaritic texts:
When thou dost smite Lotan the primordial serpent
When thou dost destroy the winding serpent
Shalyat of the seven heads . . .
And again:
Have I not muzzled the dragon,
Nor crushed the crooked serpent
Mighty monster o the seven heads?
The great seven-headed dragon reappears in Revelation, the only apocalypse in the New Testament, composed in the late first century C.E. by a Jew who was well versed in the Scriptures. (Raphael Patai, The Jewish Mind [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977], 51-53)
Further Reading
“Chapter 4: Yahweh's Appropriation of Baal Imagery” in John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (London: T&T Clark, 2000)
