desert seemed extravagant and sinful. It was associated with a
licentiousness which Canaanitish religion encouraged rather than
repressed.

The religion was a nature-worship. The supreme deity was addressed as
Baal or "Lord," and was adored in the form of the Sun. And as the Sun
can be baleful as well as beneficent, parching up the soil and blasting
the seed as well as warming it into life, so too Baal was regarded
sometimes as the friend and helper of man, sometimes as a fierce and
vengeful deity who could be appeased only by blood. In times of national
or individual distress his worshippers were called upon to sacrifice to
him their firstborn; nothing less costly could turn away from them the
anger of their god. By the side of Baal was his colourless wife, a mere
reflection of the male divinity, standing in the same state of
dependence towards him as the woman stood to the man. It was only the
unmarried goddess, Ashêrah as she was called by the Canaanites, who had
a personality of her own. And since Ashêrah came in time to be
superseded by Ashtoreth, who was herself of Babylonian origin, it is
probable that the idea of separate individuality connected with Ashêrah.
was due to the influence of Babylonian culture. Ashêrah was the goddess
of fertility, and though the fertility of the earth depends upon the
Sun, it was easy to conceive of it as an independent principle.

The name Baal was merely a title. It was applied to the supreme deity of
each city or tribe, by whatever special name he might otherwise be
known. There were as many Baals or Baalim as there were states or cults.
Wherever a high-place was erected, a Baal was worshipped. His power did
not extend beyond the district in which he was adored and to which he
was territorially attached. The Baal of Lebanon was distinct from the
Baal of Tyre or Sidon, though in every case the general conception that