Ugarit und die Bibel.

• Author: Pope, Marvin H.

This study is intended for serious students of the Bible as well as for specialists in Ugaritology, and there is much here for both. The book begins with a brief sketch of the discovery (1928) and ongoing excavations of the metropolitan and cosmopolitan Bronze Age port city of Ugarit and one of its suburbs on the coast of North Syria. A couple of pages are devoted to the history of the city and about eight pages to the various archives of texts recovered. Then attention turns to the bearing of these texts on the Old Testament.

The core of the book treats the literature of Ugarit and Canaan, writing systems, misunderstood and mistranslated words in the Bible that have been elucidated by Ugaritic; poetry and parallelism; the problem of tricola; the Psalms; Ugaritic and biblical gods, from Canaanite polytheism to Yahwistic monotheism; the Assembly of Gods at Ugarit and in the Bible; Gods, Goddesses, and Demons; El as Creator of the World and Father of Humanity; Bal as storm and rain god; Bal's foes, Sea and Death; the great goddesses Anat and Athirat, Astarte; YW = YHWH?; deified ancestors; other gods, messengers, demons; the hero Danel; Leviathan; Adonis; the cult at Ugarit and in the Bible; Enthronement of Bal and Yahwe from the temporal to the eternal Kingdom of Yahwe; mourning rites in Canaan and Israel; from the Scapegoat (Lev 16) to Paul's words, "women should be quiet in church"; sacrifice in Ugarit and Israel; alcohol and sex in Ugarit and the Bible; the kid in its mother's milk; the dead and the ancestor cult, from ancestor worship to honor of parents; necromancy and the Marzih celebration; inquiry and control of the future, omenology; the art of incantation and medicine; from extispicy to the Law of Moses; the inquiry of the future through liver-inspection in Ugarit and pre-Exilic Israel; astronomy and astrology; medicine; nature and world; the origin of the world; El-Yahwe, Creator of the World?; Bal as creator-god beside or after El?; the palace of the victor on the holy mountain; dew and rain; law, commerce, and seafaring; contracts, administration, justice, symbols of justice; commerce and seafaring; history and politics in the frame of old oriental royal ideology; Ugaritic texts and history of the patriarchs; from the Habiru in Ugarit to the Hebrews in the Bible; the Reed Sea and the Song of Miriam; royal duties in Ugarit, Canaan, and Israel; kingship in Ugarit; art in Canaan and Israel; was there a statue of Yahwe?; the...