In Canaanite (or West Semitic) mythology, El was an influential high-god of time, water, life and creation. He was known by titles such as El the King, El the Compassionate, El the Kind, and could also be referred to as the Kind and Holy One, the Creator of Creatures and the Father of Time. Befitting his patriarch titles, El fathered a majority of the Canaanite gods and goddesses, excluding some fellow primordial entities and certain deities that joined the pantheon later. Additionally, many of the deities that El did not directly sire or create were portrayed as the high-god’s adopted children. As for El’s direct descendants, the god had multiple ways to bring them into existence. For one, he was a sexual being and could father children in the usual biological way. El’s primary consort was the goddess, Asherah, but similarly to the Greek god, Zeus, El was known to have had many affairs on the side and seemingly practiced polygamy or concubinage. Additionally, mythological stories such as those unearthed in the ruins of the Kingdom of Ugarit (which fell around 1200 BCE) ascribed to El the power to create gods and goddesses through a combination of ritual and divine power. On this ability, the Ugaritic tablets stated:
“Then El the Kind, the Compassionate, replied:
‘My sons, sit down upon your thrones,
upon your princely seats.
I will fashion and establish;
I will establish one to expel the sickness,
to drive out the disease.’
He filled his palms with dirt,
his fingers with the best dirt.
He pinched off some clay.
…
A cup he takes in his hand,
a goblet in his right:
‘You are the Expeller…’”
(Kirta, Tablet 3, column 5, approximately lines 24-41).
In the passage above, El hand-crafted a powerful healer-goddess known as Shataqat (the Expeller). El’s ability to divinely manufacture deities added complications to his family life. For instance, what was the relationship of the goddess, Shataqat, to her creator, El? She was born from divine power instead of flesh, but, in a way, she was still El’s offspring. Was she a direct daughter of El, or an adopted daughter of El, or simply a new goddess without any familial connection? According to the Ugaritic tablets, El may have solved this odd conundrum by letting gods and goddesses born from his divine energy decide for themselves how they wished to identify. This practice of El letting deities choose for themselves whether or not he was their father occurred in an Ugaritic tale called The Lovely Gods. In it, El pondered whether to take certain goddesses as his wives, but he decided to wait to hear how they addressed him before he made his decision. The tablet stated:
“El enticed the two women.
Now if the two women declare:
‘O man, man,
…
then the two women will be wives of El,
wives of El, his forever.
But if the two women declare:
‘O father, father,
then the two women will be daughters of El,
daughters of El, his forever.”
(The Lovely Gods, back of the tablet, approximately between lines 39-50).
If The Lovely Gods story from the Ugaritic archive faithfully represented how the gods might have interacted, then it may be that El let miraculously conceived goddesses decide for themselves whether they saw El as a “father” or a “man.” Similarly, one might suppose El also let male gods born from his divine power decide whether or not they wanted to accept the high-god as their father. El would have been more than willing to accept these divinely crafted entities into his family. According to his portrayal in Ugaritic mythology, El was fairly unconditional and universal with his love—he cherished both his biological and adopted children, be they good and beautiful, or evil and monstrous.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Impression from an Old Syrian Cylinder Seal, dated 1820–1730 BCE, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the MET).
Sources:
- Stories from Ancient Canaan (Second Edition), translated and edited by Michael D. Coogan and Mark S. Smith. Published by Westminster John Knox Press in 1978 (second edition in 2012).
- The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan. Oxford University Press, 1993.
- The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version With The Apocrypha (Fifth Edition, Fully Revised), edited by Michael D. Coogan and associates. Oxford University Press, 2018.
