443
Sippara, had become his wife under Semitic influence,^389 and
from Sippara the conception of a solar goddess passed to the
Semites on the western side of the Euphrates.
The supreme Baalim of the South Arabian inscriptions must
thus have been of Babylonian origin. Name and character alike
were derived from Sumerian Babylonia. And from this the further
inference is obvious: Arabian and West Semitic“Sabaism,”with
its worship of the heavenly bodies, was not indigenous. It must
have been the result of contact with Babylonian civilisation,
a contact which gave Ur and Harran a mixed population, and
caused them to be the seats and centres of the worship of the
moon-god. The primitive Semitic Baal—the“lord”of a specific
plot of earth or tribal territory—became a moon-good or an
evening star, while his wife was embodied in the sun.
This conclusion is confirmed by a study of the religion [483]
of Canaan. Here the place occupied by the moon-god among
Arabians and Hebrews is taken by the sun. The supreme Baal
is the sun-god, and the female Ashtoreth is identified with the
moon. As I endeavoured to show in an earlier lecture, there was
a period in the history of Babylonian religion when here also the
sun-god was supreme. The gods were resolved into solar deities,
or rather were identified with the sun. The solar element in
Merodach threatened to absorb his human kingship; it was only
his likeness to man that saved him from the fate of the Egyptian
gods.
It is just this phase in the history of Babylonian theology that
we find reflected in the theology of Canaan. Baal has passed into
the sun-god, and his characteristics are those of the sun-gods of
Babylonia. The historical monuments have told us how long and
deep was the influence of Babylonia upon the culture of Canaan,
and it was exercised just at the time when the solar faith had
triumphed in the Babylonian plain. It is not without significance
(^389) See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 177, 178.