El was the most senior God of the Phoenician and Canaanite pantheon, a position that equated him directly with Kronos and Zeus in the form of Zeus Kronios.

THE NAME

Because the Phoenician language was closely related to Akkadian, the word el is descended or convergently developed from the Akkadian word ilu, also meaning "God," which is attested securely from around 2400 BCE. The word coming to mean a specific eponymous deity in a Phoenician context is attested at the site of Ebla only a hundred or so years later, dated securely to the third millennium BCE, so the spread or overlap of this word in the Levant is very ancient.¹ Further, the late Bronze Age sacred corpus from Ugarit around 1400 BCE shows El as the aged creator, "Father of Mankind," chief of the divine council, and the consort of Athirat,² all of which presage his role in the Bible, meaning the characteristics related to the name are established at an early point. Phoenician, Carthaginian and classical witnesses preserve El as a continuing Levantine deity identifiable by name and titles, confirming that biblical language surrounding the primordial God was not an isolated Hebrew invention, nor just a title.

The vowel and consonant of El also hold a secret related to the concept of divine light, which is why it is affixed to many mystical names of Semitic divine entities beyond the paternal God himself,³ including the later Hebrew and Muslim Arabian concepts of angels which represent a corrupted formulation of this entity's powers. The name Michael, for example, is said to be a theophoric name meaning "who is like El?"⁴ The Greek rendering Ἦλος or Ἴλος, which as with many interpretatio graeca terms is not a direct transliteration and is irregular, perhaps even primordial to the Phoenicians with its own ancestral etymology as Philo of Byblos asserted,⁵ relates to the sun and also conveys the concept of divine light.

Linguistically, ʾēl in biblical Hebrew can function both as a generic appellative ("a god") and as part of an older nomenclature reflecting the polytheistic inheritance of the Jewish people, since this dual function is exactly what one could expect in a religious tradition that both inherited and transformed an earlier high-god title; a comparison can be made to the older title of the Aten which related to Re in particular and Akhenaten's monotheistic rebellion against it.⁶ Cambridge produced a recent lexical survey of Jože Krašovec noting that in the Hebrew Bible ʾēl appears predominantly as a generic appellation, but especially in compounds and archaizing material it preserves an older theological weight strongly related to the ancient God himself.⁷ In any case, El is both the name of the chief God and a designation for deity more broadly.

Nowhere is that more clear than in the plural Elohim in the creation account of Genesis, which has long vexed those troubled by the polytheist past of this God.^{8, 9, 10}

In the Luwian interpretation of the Karatepe dedication, El was equated with the ancient Sumerian Ea.¹¹ El was closely identified with Baal Hammon in particular,¹² and both were connected to the Tyrian god named Bayt-il. Baal Hammon's worship seems to have been prominent in Carthage in particular and essentially served as a proxy deity. The name of Carthage's mythological founder, Elissa, may be related to El also.

II. THE MYTHOLOGY OF EL

El appears in the Ugaritic texts dated back to the 1300s BCE and found in Ras Shamra and Ras ibn Hani around 1928, which informed scholars of many conventions of Middle Eastern religion revealingly. In one of them, known as the Baal Cycle,¹³ he acts as the king of the gods and leader of the divine council.

It is said that El lives in a palace near the confluence of the two oceans and rivers, a location he inhabits after a great battle between Ba'al and the sea god Yam. He first sends for the divine craftsman Kothar to build a palace for the deity of the depths. Later, when the gods complain in El's banquet hall that Yam is dishonored, El responds by giving them curdled milk in celebration, proclaiming that Yam's earlier personal name was Yaw; he gives him a new title, and he tells him that if he wants precedence, he would need to unseat Baal from his throne. After that, Yam sends messengers demanding Baal's surrender; the demand is sent specifically to El at his mountain abode at Lel, showing that El's authority is final and absolute.¹⁴

Yam is soundly defeated. When Baal wants a palace of his own, he is therefore the one whose permission is needed, so his fierce warrior sister Anat tries threatening El with earthquakes, which is enough to render him scurrying from the palace, but even that threatening gesture does not work.¹⁴ Athirat, being bribed by jewelry from a scheme of Ba'al, goes to her husband and argues Baal's case more convincingly, and the father of the Gods reluctantly agrees that a house may be built for the ascending thunder deity.

After building the palace, Baal is confronted by the outraged God of Death, Mot, who threatens to break the heavens into a thousand pieces. When Baal seems to have died at Mot's hands with a fake corpse, El hears the report, comes down from his throne and sits on the ground, mourns, throws dust on his head, puts on sackcloth and shaves his beard, and beats his chest in mourning. After that he asks Athirat who should be appointed in his place and hears her suggestion of Athtar, and allows Athtar to sit on Baal's throne. At the end, after Anat attacks Mot, El has a dream that Baal is alive: he returns from his fake death and fights the God of Death on Mount Zephon; Shapash tells Mot that El is now on Baal's side and will overturn the death god Mot's throne, which ultimately leads the latter to yield and acknowledge Baal Hadad as king.¹⁵ This text is a highly allegorical story of the Magnum Opus.

III. EPITHETS OF EL

El has numerous epithets:

• The Begetter¹⁶
• Father of Years¹⁶
• Father of Mankind¹⁵
• Creator of the Creatures¹⁶
• Kindly God¹⁶
• Creator of Earth¹⁷ — attested on stele¹⁸
• The Bull¹⁵
• The King¹⁶
• The Warrior¹⁹

IV. THE ABSTRACT PRECINCT

One of the biggest problems of constructing the presence of El is that the God has no temples to speak of according to modern archaeological evidence.²⁰ The admonishment of other Gods in the Bible or generic titles like "moloch" to demonize the cults of others may also reflect this fact, as "El" had no priestly adherents to give sacrifice unto, despite the antagonistic relationship of borrowing between the Jewish entity Yahweh and his supposed father. The absence of temples for deities of this type is not particularly unusual for gods in the tradition of Kronos; mainland Greece only had one strongly attested temple to Kronos and Rhea at the Olympeion in Athens.²¹ Whether a corresponding sole site existed evoking the themes of Mount Lel in accordance with the Ugaritic myth, or one existed in Byblos in Hellenistic times, is unknown.

Another possibility is that Baal Hammon or other deities served as a public "face" for El, whose name and attributes are sacred, analogous to the relationship of Zeus Kronios to Kronos. However, the Hebrews appear to have inverted this phenomenon.

V. COSMOGONY

Later classical renditions of creation myths from a main, extended Phoenician narrative involving El are preserved through Philo of Byblos' version of Sanchuniathon's mythology during the Classical era, relayed by the Christian monk Eusebius of Caesarea,⁵ where the later name Elus is directly identified as an alternative name of Kronos. According to Philo, the mythology of Sanchuniathon was compiled from sacred pillars of temples he decoded,⁵ and for Porphyry,²² this was considered the truest history of the time as he also received records from the High Priest of Ieuo (the divine vowels), Hiemobalus. There, Elus is part of a genealogy beginning with Elioun ("Most High") and Beruth who sire Uranus, the personification of the sky, and he ravages Ge, the personification of the earth. Elus is born as a result of this tumult. He becomes king and fathers divine children like Persephone and Athena, then he founds the ancient city of Byblos, his city. Elus gains the divine weapon of a sickle and a spear, and with the assistance of Hermes Trismegistus drives his rampaging father Uranus from the earth. Here, Kronos is portrayed in Saturnian style as rather tyrannical, murdering his son and beheading his daughter. Uranus conspires to make Astarte, Rhea, and Dione kill him, but he takes them as wives after they were sent against him, fathering further divine offspring.

With Astarte, he has seven Titanic children, and with Rhea they conceive another seven, the first of which was divine. He has a further two male twins with the former: Desire and Love. It is said in Peraea that Elus finally fathered a second Kronos, Zeus Belus and Apollo. In his final struggle against his father Uranus, much like in Greco-Roman myth, he castrates him. Later is the relation of Thoth crowning him with an insignia, and the relation of this story is deeply occult and symbolic:

Elus appears on coins from Byblos from the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes as having four spread wings and two folded wings while leaning on a staff as the story contends,²³ and these representations continued to appear on coins until the early Roman Empire. In a more antique sense, El was represented with bull-horn symbolism, much like his divine son, Baal Hadad.²⁴

Another God El was compared to was Poseidon in aspect, sustained by bilingual inscriptions from Palmyra during the Hellenistic era.²⁵

VII. EL AND ATHIRAT

Athirat, identified otherwise as Asherah, is from the Baal cycle itself,²⁶ inscriptions,²⁷ retrieved objects,²⁸ and other associated evidence always considered the divine companion of El, the queenly mother of the gods at his side. It was not seen as contradictory for El to have a divine feminine counterpart; rather, this was viewed as perfectly complementary.²⁹

VIII. THE HEBREW CONFLATION

It appears the god named Yahweh began as a core God of the local Phoenician pantheon. It is known that this deity was wedded to Asherah from an early point, and even the Bible alludes to this in several places.³⁰ The secular evidence is strong for this point also, such as Nadav Na'aman's examination³¹ of a pithos dated from 800 BCE that is interpreted categorically as "Yahweh and his Asherah," which is often dismissed as describing a possessed object or place name. Na'aman argues this convention is not supportable given the suffix of the Asherah indicates their association as a union.

A considerable theological problem has always rested upon the fact that only later in the Biblical narrative does the jealousy of this God force Asherah out of the pantheon, and continuing amounts of Israelites fall victim to worshiping the consort of El over and over again, which is sometimes termed as a reversion.³³ Scholars have pinpointed an increasing pattern of Yahweh absorbing titles, attributes, and mythologies of El, alongside Baal and Astarte.

Complicating matters is that the word "el" is a generic word for God in most Semitic languages near the Levant, a concept that also passed into the word 'ilah in Arabic.³⁴ This has been the main vehicle by which the apologists of Judaism and Christianity use atibilibil to spread lies, even though the inheritance with the chief God of the Phoenicians is clearly not coincidental. The polytheistic nature of the Hebrews at least prior to the seventh century is agreed upon by modern scholars:

Theological interpretations of the Torah consider El to be an alternative name for Yahweh, contrasting with the Elohist and Priestly source theories, in which El is regarded as an earlier deity than Yahweh.³⁶ The epithet of El as a name for Yahweh itself is invoked in the Bible not exactly uncommonly. First, the God of Abraham famously identifies itself as El Shaddai to Abram,³⁷ which is continually repeated throughout the Biblical texts as a theonym and came to dominate as a name in Hebrew liturgical texts, displacing Yahweh itself, which had become a forbidden word only allowable to be spoken once per year by the start of the Roman Empire.³⁸ Other than the connection to the Shabbat, it was unknown what this word meant. In the Book of Numbers sections related to Balaam such as 24:4, God sending visions simply identifies himself as "El."³⁹ The Deir Alla inscription, the only known ancient reference to Balaam outside of a Jewish context discovered in 1967, speaks of the shaddayin as a council of Gods led by El himself,⁴⁰ analogous to the heavenly council of Psalm 82:1–8. Along with the plural epithets Elohim (attested as elohin in the Deir Alla text) and Adonai, this has also created a conundrum for monotheists. Philo of Byblos also speaks of the Eloim, companions or descendants in the divine order.⁵

One particularly revealing passage is the story of Melchizedek, the king of Salem and a high priest of Elyon, who confers a blessing from the latter with bread and wine that is accepted by the Hebrews.⁴¹ Melchizedek is later used as a positive example in Hebrew literature.⁴² This title is also used for the deity sending Balaam visions.⁴³ Yahweh is also described as a son of Elyon in the Septuagint rendering of Deuteronomy 32.^{44, 45} This passage of Dividing the Nations assigns Yahweh to Israel, which has caused much confusion over the years about how an indivisible creator God from the Judeo-Christian perspective can be the son of anything.

Outside of this Biblical context, Elyon is also attested as a deity adjacent to El in the Sefire treaty of the 8th century BCE⁴⁶ and the bilingual Karatepe artifact found in Cilicia exalting El as the ultimate creator god.⁴⁷ Kuntillet Ajrud plaster texts in archaic Hebrew from the Sinai also reference El as some kind of intelligible god.⁴⁸ Scholars point out not only the Karatepe inscription, but also a Jerusalem ostracon⁴⁹ with his title "Creator of the Earth" and a later Neo-Punic inscription with an inscription to El from Leptis Magna, associated with Carthage and discussed in French academic literature.⁵⁰

Two other names continually attested and important in Jewish occultism are El Olam and El Kannah, the former meaning the everlasting God, the God of the world, and the latter meaning the Jealous.⁵¹ These titles co-exist with YHVH in Jewish literature in a way that is not seen as contradictory. The occasional cross-identification of the God of the Hebrews with Kronos or Saturn in Antiquity perhaps reflects the relationship of Elus to his son.

Most revealingly in terms of imagery, coins such as the God of the Winged Wheel drachm from the 4th century, excavated from southern Palestine, show a deity with the name of יהוה which modern scholarship has agreed to depict Yahweh.⁵² The winged solar disc symbolism is generally agreed to have come from Egypt and appears to have a connection with the sacred vowels. Another case of a shield shows Yahweh and Athirat displayed in a vulgar anthropomorphic style with names, showing their status at that time as a divine couple.⁵³

IX. EL IN WIDER GRECO-ROMAN SOURCES

In Greco-Roman magical texts, such as the Magical Papyri from Hellenistic Alexandria, the name Eloai is often invoked side by side with Yahweh and the holy vowels Iao (ΙΑΩ).⁵⁴ Roman authors also conflated the Jewish sabbath with that of Kronos or Saturn, while Diodorus Siculus claims that the Biblical character Moses worshipped the deity called Iao,⁵⁵ probably analogous with the Ieuo of inheritance from the high priest that Porphyry referred to.²² The more widespread identification of the Jewish deity with Dionysus, Bacchus, and Sabazios also related to Kronos in an abstract sense.⁵⁶

X. THE FULL CORRUPTION

Inside ancient Judah, the trajectory was not linear. The major scholarly line associated especially with Frank Moore Cross, Mark S. Smith, and John Day is that Yahweh and El were originally distinct but were identified early in Israelite religion. The synthesis of Smith's work is unequivocal in essence: "The original god of Israel was El," yet by the late monarchic period "no distinct cult is attested for El except in his identity as Yahweh."⁵⁷ El as God had largely disappeared once Yahweh absorbed El's titles and functions. Exodus itself parallels a process in that Exodus 6:2–3 is a key witness to theological memory: the patriarchs knew the deity as El Shaddai, whereas Moses receives the name YHWH.⁵⁸

The syncretization of El and the local Yahweh appears to have become complete by a certain point. From this point onwards, taboos appear to have been leveled against any Hebrew individual worshiping other Gods, and this conflict is underscored deeply in the Bible, with penalties of stoning prescribed for polytheistic worship⁵⁹ and even divination.⁶⁰ At the turn of the fourth century BCE, however, Hebrews in Elephantine still widely worshiped other Gods.⁶¹ In the next centuries, gruesome penalties during Antiquity from the corrupt Yehuboric forces were leveled towards so-called Hellenizing Jews worshiping other entities, as in the Kitos War, where so-called traitors were massacred.⁶²

The angels appear to have become substitutes of God, carrying the light of El in later texts, because there is no evidence whatsoever that angels were regularly given personal names ending in -el in the earlier, pre-exile Hebrew Bible. The explanation that the plural Elohim refers to only "God and his angels" in received Jewish tradition is particularly untenable as a result of this.⁶³ The important shift is late, tied inherently to the context of Second Temple Judaism. The earliest securely attested named Jewish angels with -el endings are Michael and Gabriel in the Book of Daniel, a book whose present form scholars generally date to the 2nd century BCE, during the Antiochene crisis of revolt against the Greek powers. One scholarly summary puts it bluntly: "The Gabriel and Michael accounts in Daniel 8–12 appear to be the earliest…";⁶⁴ Daniel "was composed during the 2nd Century BCE."

The Second Temple period appears to be the period where monotheism became entrenched as a sort of hostility towards the Seleucid Empire and Roman Empire. However, out of confusion or other elements, the names of these angels become more apparent in the Greek Magical Papyri; not only being invoked by the Hellenistic Judaic contingent of Alexandria and often invoked among the Gods of other kingdoms, but also by non-Jews in places. Even at this point, the picture is confused, showing an emerging contingent of fractured allegiances.