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The Ugarit is not the Bible


The Bible is not just a book of truth, it is a book of holy truth. It began by being delivered from God to Moses who put genesis together along with the other 4 books as an eyewitness. When someone says they are a scholar/academic and they monkey around with the Word, adding to it or subtracting from it, we should take this more seriously as violating the command.

There are many so called scholars who are proficient in languages to read ancient stones of other civilizations, but this does not mean they are qualified to teach on the bible, they may not even know or understand the Bible.

In 1929, a French archaeologist named Claude Schaeffer found an ancient palace at Ugarit, known today as Ras Shamra, located on Syria's Mediterranean coast.  Scribes who inscribed on the Ugarit clay tablets appear to have originated the "Ugaritic alphabet" of 30 letters, corresponding to sounds. These were the Languages of Canaan included
both Phoenician and Ugaritic.

Many date it around 1400 BC: All of the tablets found at Ugarit were written in the last period of its life (around 1300- 1200 BCE). Most of the tablets were founds in a library housed in a building  situated between Ugarit's two great temples, one dedicated to Baal and the other to Dagon. Both being false gods of the nation. They had uncovered royal palaces and temples and shrines  and amulets to ward off evil spirits.

Aside from the proto-Canaanite script from which Phoenician is descended, we now know that the Canaanites of about 1400 B. C. also employed Accadian cuneiform, the Ugaritic cuneiform  alphabet, and Egyptian hieroglyphics in order to write (p. 43 FROM THE STONE AGE TO CHRISTIANITY W. F Albright)

The Hittite "hieroglyphs," in which are written hundreds inscriptions from Syria and Asia Minor, apparently all date from between 1,500 and 500 B. C. and mostly from the Iron Age, between 1200 and 700 B. C.

The authors of the Ugarit The Canaanites who wrote the Ugarit were the enemies of God who defiled the land with their immorality. God decided to take it away to give to the Israelites, his people he was forming as
nation under his leadership.
 

The Canaanite gods were a pantheon that was a crude and licentious type of polytheism, the progenitor of the gods, affecting the Canaanite civilization to be extremely decadent. The  Holiness of YHWH, the God of Israel, was in opposition to this thoroughly immoral culture of Canaan.

"The Ras Shamra literature speaks of Canaan as the "land of El," where this deity was absolute in authority over lesser gods. El rapidly declined, however, and was largely supplanted by the worship of Baal, who was equally demoralizing. The Heb. name of God, El, has, of course, no connection with paganism, but is a simple generic term." ( M. F. U. BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. H. Pope, El in the Ugaritic Texts (1955); F. M. Cross, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (1977), 1:242-60.)

William F. Albright points out "There are also numerous points of contact between Canaanite and late Israelite mythology and literature, .. In view of the geographical situation and the close  similarity in language, it is very remarkable that parallels and points of contact remain so few." (p. 179 FROM THE STONE AGE TO CHRISTIANITY) underline mine

As far as outside influences, there are those who claim Israel copied the other nations writings or added to their books hundreds of years later. "the story of Moses must have been too well known in the age of the prophets and too well controlled by written sources accessible to scribes to permit of much unauthorized variation from the standard form." (pp, 191-192 FROM THE STONE AGE TO CHRISTIANITY)

This worship among the Canaanites is frequently referred to in the Scriptures, and the people were warned against adopting its abominations (Lev. 18:21; Deut. 12:31; 1 Kings 11:7; 2 Chron.  28:3; Ezek. 16:20-21; etc.).

The Tablets
"Thousands of clay tablets stored in what seems to be a library between two great Canaanite temples dating from c. fifteenth-fourteenth century B. C. give a full description of the Canaanite  pantheon." (Ungers Bible Dictionary)

It was "deciphered by H. Bauer and E. Dhorme, they have proved to be written in two languages, one a very archaic Canaanite dialect akin to pre-Mosaic Hebrew and the other a Hurrian  dialect (see above). In eleven campaigns from 1929 to 1939 several hundred tablets and fragments in this script have been unearthed; a number of them belong to unusually large tablets
with three or four columns on each side, containing originally several hundred lines. Nearly all the new alphabetic documents, which date mainly from the fifteenth century B. C, are of religious  character and most of them belong to three mythological epics, which treat of the events connected with the death and resurrection of Baal, with the marriage of the demigod Keret, and with another demigod Daniel (Dan'el
)." (p. 12 FROM THE STONE AGE TO CHRISTIANITY )

The mythological poems of Ugarit many see as part to Old Canaanite prototypes  of the Early Bronze age. "The mythological texts and rituals from Ugarit, the myths recorded by Philo Byblius on the authority of a Phoenician named Sanchuniathon (who seems to have flourished about the seventh century B. C), and the scattered evidence from other sources agree so completely in all main aspects that there can no longer be any doubt that the Canaanites  possessed just as sharply defined a religious and mythological system as did the Egyptians and the Sumero-Accadians, though it was much cruder as well as more debased"( p. 175 FROM THE STONE AGE TO CHRISTIANITY)

Their language

EDWARD D. ANDREWS BS in Religion, MA in Biblical Studies, and MDiv in Theology is CEO and President of Christian Publishing House points out " the Pentateuch (first five books by  Moses) was written between 1510 and 1470 B. C. E., a full 200-300 years before the Ugaritic texts. This means that Moses could not have leaned on Ugaritic mythology."

https://christianpublishinghouse.co/2019/11/04/ottc-deuteronomy-328-was-it-the-sons-of-israel-or-the-sons-of-god-or-the-angels-of-god/

Some claim Hebrew is a possible derivative of a parallel language of Ugarit, and find the similarity of the word 'el' being used. This does not mean that Israel who spoke a similar language transferred the belief of the pagan's god[s] into their religion, that the Hebrews synthesized the pagans el to be of their God from among the many gods of the Canaanites.

The God El in the Ugarit

El was styled "father of years" (abu shanima), "the father of man" (abu adami, "father bull"), i. e., the progenitor of the gods. Baal, the widely revered Canaanite deity, was the son of El  who dominated the Canaanite pantheon (other gods). He was the god of thunder, whose voice reverberated through the heavens in the storm. He is pictured on a Ras Shamra stela brandishing a mace in his right hand and holding in his left hand a stylized thunderbolt.

BAAL-HADDAD (Canaanite) called "The Mighty," "He who mounts the clouds." The executive of the divine assembly. Baal was the son of El, and the reigning king of the gods , dominating  the Canaanite pantheon. As El's successor he was enthroned on a lofty mountain in the far northern heavens. Often he was considered to be "the Lord of Heaven" (Baal-  shamem).Considering that titles were used of the counterfeit pagan god we must understand this from the Biblical view of the Hebrews throughout history, which Paul encapsulates in Rom  1:18-26 "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man--and birds and four-footed animals  and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen."

the Ugarit's gods

The Ugaritic texts from Ras Shamra supply more than five hundred references to the god El. In about half of the occurrences, El denotes a distinct deity who, residing on the sacred mountain,  occupies within the myths the position of master of the Ugaritic pantheon.  "El, a heartless, unbridled tyrant, had three wives or consorts who were patrons of sex and war. Baal was the great NW Semitic god of the storm. At Tyre, Melcarth was honored. Koshar was  the Vulcan of the Canaanite; Hauron, the shepherd god. Mot was the god of death. The Ras Shamra texts speak of a sun goddess, Shapash. In the worship of these various deities
prostitution was glorified
."  (Ungers Bible Dictionary)

Philo says, "Despite these enormities, El was styled "father of years" (abu shanima), "the father of man" (abu adami, "father bull"), i. e., the progenitor of the gods. Baal, the widely revered Canaanite deity, was the son of El and dominated the Canaanite pantheon. He was the god of thunder, whose voice reverberated through the heavens in the storm. He is pictured on a Ras
Shamra stelabrandishing a mace in his right hand and holding in his left hand a stylized thunderbolt
." (Unger's Bible Dictionary)

Asherah, the consort of the chief Canaanite deity E. was spelled Athirat(u) (spelled ?? rt). This name in other Semitic dialects is ?s? rth (often with added "h" - and note that t? (th) in Ugaritic is  dialectically equivalent to s? (sh). The result is Asheratah. It is the convention of the Hebrew Bible to spell this name as Asherah (spelled ?s? rh).

 "The goddess Ashirat, the Asherah of the Bible, often called " Ashirat of the Sea," meaning originally perhaps " She who Treads the Sea." This goddess was also worshipped by South  Arabians and Amorites; a votive inscription in Sumerian which was erected to her by an Amorite of the 18th century B. C. calls her "the bride of heaven." (p. 175 From the Stone Age to  Christianity)

Asherah was only one manifestation of a chief goddess of western Asia, regarded now as the wife, then as the sister, of the principal Canaanite god El. Other names of this deity were  Ashtoreth (Astarte) and Anath. Frequently represented as a nude woman bestride a lion, with a lily in one hand and a serpent in the other, and called Qudshu "the Holiness," that is, "the Holy  One" in a perverted moral sense, she was a divine courtesan.

The three goddesses that were sacred courtesans were Anath, Astarte, and Ashera, who were all three patronesses of sex and war. "the gross Phoenician mythology which we know from  Ugarit and Philo Byblius, with human sacrifices and the cult of sex."(ibid. p. 214)

Other Canaanite deities were Mot (death); Reshep, the god of pestilence; Shulman, the god of health; Koshar, the god of arts and crafts. These Canaanite religious cults were utterly immoral, decadent, and corrupt, dangerously contaminating and thoroughly justifying the divine command to destroy their devotees (Deut. 20:17).

The similarities of the age

"That there are striking parallels between the Bible and Ugarit is beyond question, but that many of the proposed parallels have real existence only in the heads of their inventors is also  evident. Yet how does one distinguish between the real and the illusory? Only by the use of as controlled a method of comparison as possible, and in the last resort, this paper is dedicated to contributing something to the issue of control in comparative studies" (THE TYNDALE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY LECTURE, 1982 UGARIT, CANAAN, AND ISRAEL By Peter c. Craigie Conjecture vs substance nature) Underline mine

Some say their gods and Israel's were the same, because they were spoken of as el with other similar pronunciations. If that were true they would get along, they would have taught the same things if Israel God was the same el. What certain scholars believe because of some similar generic language used to identify God as 'el' they are the same. If so Israel's God were the same he would not have them opposing these nations. Again similarities of titles, or words do not mean the same for the teachings or meanings.

For example: if a Muslim speaks of God and a Jew speaks of God does this mean it is the same God? When one uses the general word God today does it mean the same for all who use the  same word? Of course not. And neither did it then.

The Halley's Bible Dictionary actually says: "These Babylonian and Assyrian Creation stories are all grossly polytheistic." But with so many points of similarity to the Genesis account, it  would seem that they must have had a common origin. Are not these corrupted traditions a testimony to the fact of a divine original." [emphasis mine]

And that is what was delivered in the Bible contrary to the all the worlds stories on the flood.
"It has often been maintained in the past thirty years that Yahu is more original than Yahweh, but all the epigraphic and linguistic facts are utterly opposed to this paradoxical view. It has also been insisted that this or that earlier non-Israelite divine name or element in a personal name shows the existence of the prototype of the Tetragrammaton before Moses. In itself this is not impossible, but every single suggestion has been effectively disproved, including the  latest from Ugarit, where Virolleaud suggests that a word yiv is identical with Yahweh. Unfortunately, the context does not lend itself in the least to such an interpretation, and the supposed yw should probably be read yr, <c offspring," which suits the context well, so far as it is preserved. 88 It is well known today that the most plausible of the older suggestions, Accadian  yaum in the name Yaum-ilu, means simply " Mine (is the god)/' Many different meanings have been attributed to Yahweh by scholars who recognized its relative antiquity, but only one yields any suitable sense: "He causes to be." The other suggestions, "He blows, He fells, He loves, He is kindly," etc., are totally without parallel in ancient Near-Eastern
onomastics."
(pp. 198 -199 FROM THE STONE AGE TO CHRISTIANITY)

Apparently there are scholars who are willing to make connections that are not there to prove unwarranted theories. This has nothing to do with what was delivered to Moses by divine  revelation.

This next quote from the Ugarit should my point.

"the original text that tells the tale of how the god El holds a big feast at which he becomes drunk. The story is appended with medical instructions at the end, which Pardee interprets as a hangover cure." (University of Chicago Chronicle Feb. 6, 2003, Vol. 22 No. 9 "Pardee's careful scrutiny of ancient texts reveals colorful world of Ugaritians" By Seth Sanders)

Canaanite bn il are deities in general. the Ugaritic Texts has the god El marry the daughters of men by whom he had two sons, Shcht and Shim, who both became gods.

A god who is married, who has other children, offspring, gods in a pantheon, who gets drunk who promotes unholy immoral teachings is not the God of the Bible. This convergence of religions promoted by liberal scholars should be rejected and refuted.