6. The Mythology of Death and the God of Israel

This discussion of Baal holds considerable import for understanding biblical evidence about death and the underworld. The argument that the mythological presentation of Baal and the god of Death in the Baal Cycle is largely a literary one deriving some of its imagery from royal mortuary ritual should be consistent with biblical presentations of the chief deity of Israel and Death personified. Let me spell out this working hypothesis. Iron Age Israel shows clear evidence of the storm-battle imagery of Baal’s mythology. Indeed, biblical tradition shows a reliance on the particulars of Baal’s mythology. In this category may be placed biblical references to the cosmic enemies such as Leviathan, Sea, and Tannin (discussed in chapter 1). Moreover, Psalm 48:3 identifies Mount Sapan, Baal’s home in the Ugaritic texts, with Zion. Scholars generally accept the view that these details point to the continuity and modification of older traditions about Baal. In view of such shared specifics, one may ask why the Bible lacks a comparable mythology of the chief-god with respect to the underworld and the god of Death. Like the Baal Cycle, the Bible is replete with speculations about the nature of the underworld and the god of Death; perhaps the best-known biblical texts are Isaiah 28:15, 18; Jeremiah 9:20; Habakkuk 2:5; and Psalm 49. Unlike the Baal Cycle, the Bible contains few references to, much less any substantial mythology about, the conflict between the chief deity of Israel and the god of Death. Although the Bible does mention a divine victory over Death—though barely (Isaiah 25:8; cf. Revelation 21:4)—there is no mythological presentation of this conflict. The absence of this conflict is all the more striking because of the Bible’s massive complex of storm-battle imagery shared with the Ugaritic texts. The disparity might be attributed to the idea that the god of Israel has nothing to do with the realm of Death. Yet this is only partially correct. Certainly Yahweh is said to defeat death (Isaiah 25:8). There may be a deeper cause, one that involves the nature of this mythology as well as its social context in Ugarit and Israel. In the West Semitic world, the mythology of death may not have involved the chief deity in a conflict. However, in the Baal Cycle the presentation of Baal and Mot may have been a literary production that modified an older mythology lacking such conflict. Indeed, the many structural similarities and verbal resonances between the Baal-Mot and Baal-Mot sections of the cycle (1.1–1.2 and 1.4 VIII–1.6, respectively) lend themselves to a theory that the latter section, using the traditional mythology of the underworld and the god of Death, was modeled on the former one under the further influence of a royal mortuary cult. If the theory is correct, the Ugaritic monarchy influenced the development of this particular form of the mythology of death at Ugarit. As far as the record presently indicates, Late Bronze Age West Semitic did not generally develop this sort of mythology except at Ugarit.

Accordingly, the chief god’s conflict with Death may be absent in ancient Israel because West Semitic tradition perhaps did not generally contain and therefore transmit a broad mythology of death into the Iron Age. In other words, the dynasties of Israel and Judah may never have developed a mythology of Death as the Ugaritic monarchy did. The dominant priestly and deuteronomic theologies in the Iron II period in Judah may have inherited some dissociation between Israel’s chief deity and the realm of death. Perhaps then death and the underworld in the Bible, insofar as they appear in Israelite material without a mythology of conflict, offer limited corroboration for the argument that the Ugaritic presentation of Baal’s death and re-appearance in the cosmos was fundamentally a literary production. In any case, the evidence does not support a ritual approach to the complex of material grouped under the category of “dying and rising gods,” at least for Ugarit and Israel. An attempt to resuscitate Frazer’s category must drastically modify its basic criteria, perhaps so much so that Frazer would barely recognize it.