s indicated in
Chapter III of Biblelore, temple prostitution had its basis in the
Canaanite worship of Baal, god of fertility. Sexual union was made a
ritual in imitation of the gods to ensure continued fertility of the
human race. The cult of Baal was widespread among the tribes throughout
the eastern Mediterranean, and so was well-known by the Israelites. But
Baal's influence on Israelites was not welcomed by priests devoted to
Yahweh. In the 9th century B.C. priests resented the introduction of
Baal into Israel by Jezebel, Phoenician wife of King Ahab, and Ahab's
acceptance of Baal and Asherah, which as an Israelite king, set a bad
example for his subjects. 1 Kings 16: 31-33 reads:
"And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk
in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel
the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal,
and worshipped him. And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of
Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a grove; and Ahab did
more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of
Israel that were before him."
Indeed, Israelite priests despised the cult of Baal as opposing their
cult of Yahweh, as seen in the use of the term "dog" in Deut. 23:18.
Other evidence of their contempt for Baal is the mockery made of the
name Beelzebul which translates "lord of the house (or dwelling)."
Israelite priests changed the name to Beelzebub meaning "lord of the
devils," as evidenced in Matthew 12:24 concerning Jesus' healing of a
blind and dumb man possessed with the devil: "But when the Pharisees
heard it, they said: This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by
Beelzebub the prince of devils." (Matt. 12:24.) Again, Beelzebul is
described in Mark 3:22 as Beelzebub, prince of the devils. Also, in Luke
11:15 he is referred to as "Beelzebub, the chief of the devils."
BAAL/ BAALZEBUL/BAALZEBUB/BEELZEBUB
Actually
the misnomer Beelzebub is derived from "Baal," and "zebub" which
translates "fly," i.e. insect. Zebul translates "house, dwelling or
residence." So the mockery of the name Beelzebul extended from the time
of the writing of 2 Kings 1 (where the name was still spelled Baalzebub
[2 Kings 1: 2, 6, 16] ) to the time of Jesus. The correct name for "lord
of the house" was derided by Jews as "lord of the flies," and by
extension, because flies carry disease, "prince of the devils."
Priests prevailed upon the kings of Judah and Israel to carry their
opposition to Baal into action by driving out all forms of worship of
Baal, as well as Asherah, goddess of fertility. The attempts of several
Israelite kings to purge the land of the cult worship of Baal and
Asherah, including ritual or sacred prostitution, are described in 1
Kings and 2 Kings. Ritual worship took place apparently in places called
groves. (One is reminded of the Druids in the forests of ancient Gaul.)
Grove, i.e.a small wood or group of trees, is "asherah" in Hebrew.
Asherah was also the proper name of the mother goddess, for whom
Canaanite women wove "hangings" which may have been a kind of robe or
drape for the goddess and hung on idols of the goddess. (For Israelites,
hangings were curtains woven for the tabernacle where the ark of the
testimony was placed. See Ex. 26.)
Reference to cult worship is made in 1 Kings 14:23 where worshipers
had built "high places," "images" and "groves" on every high hill and
under every green tree. Asa, Solomon's great-grand-son, chastised
Maachah, his mother, the queen-mother, for having made an idol, probably
an image of Asherah, in a grove. 1 Kings 15: 11-14 reads:
"And Asa did that which
was right in the eyes of the Lord, as did David his father. And he took
away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his
fathers had made. And also Maachah his mother, even her he removed from
being queen, because she had made an idol in a grove; and Asa destroyed
her idol, and burnt it by the brook Kidron. But the high places were not
removed:nevertheless Asa's heart was perfect with the Lord all his
days."
Grove here was no doubt a wooded sanctuary dedicated to the worship
of Asherah. But grove may also have meant an "idol" of Asherah, in
contrast to Baal, for verse 4 of 2 Kings 23 speaks of vessels made "for
Baal, and for the grove, and for all the host of heaven."
"
And the king commanded
Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the
keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the Lord all
the vessels that were for Baal, and for the grove, and for all the host
of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem, in the fields of Kidron,
and carried the ashes of them to Bethel."
And verse 6 next states:
"And he brought out the
grove from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, unto the brook of
Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to
powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of
the people." ( 2 Kings 23:6.)
So here grove could only be an idol, which was anathema to the
Israelite priests whose god Yahweh had forbidden any graven images.
The effort to purge the land of cult worship of Baal and Asherah, as
described in Deut. 12:3, invites conjecture:
"And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and
burn their groves with fire, and ye shall hew down the graven images of
their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place
."
To be destroyed, pillars had to be broken; groves were burned.
Groves, then, had to be of wood, whereas pillars, to be broken, must
have been of stone (or molten, cf. 2 Chron. 34:4). No mention is made of
images of Baal. Could it be that the pillars were dedicated to Baal and
therefore were phallic in form, much like the phalluses found today in a
Japanese fertility shrine?
The groves, then, served as places of worship to the goddess of
fertility Asherah with hangings woven by women. These groves, with their
images and pillars were regarded by the scribe who wrote Deut. 12:3 as
expressions of idolatry, which were anathema to the Israelite god
Yahweh, and so were labeled as abominations.
So what can we learn from the conflict between the cults of Baal and
Yahweh?. Worshipers of Baal and Asherah were much like worshipers of
other pagan deity of neighboring tribes. Ritual sex was intended to
imitate their lover gods Baal and Anat who, they believed, ensured
fertility, rebirth and reproduction in the natural world, much like the
cyclical renewal of nature's seasons. (Asherah too was a goddess of
fertility imported by Phoenician queen Jezebel.)
Enter a Semitic band of refugees from Egypt as invaders of the land
of Canaan who imagined they had a covenant from their god Yahweh to
force themselves upon , and wrest the land from, the inhabitants,
claiming the land for themselves. Then they fought to subjugate the
various neighboring tribes for their own purposes.
