ABSTRACT
At the beginning of his study on the book of Hosea, G. Östborn remarked that the relation between Yahweh and Baal is ‘the main problem of the history of the Old Testament religion’.1 This is true in so far as scholars attempt to trace the links between the Canaanite religious tradition and the forms of religion occurring in Israel and Judah. It may appear that a solution to this problem has now been found, since recent studies have argued forcefully for the derivation of Yahweh’s conflict with the sea from the Ugaritic myth of Baal’s combat with Yam. While in terms of a literary debt there is a strong case for this, the corollary that seems to be drawn, that Yahweh is a form of Baal,2 is perhaps more questionable. How are we then to account for the apparently persistent rivalry between the two deities envisaged for example in Deuteronomistic thought? What are we to make of the fact that on the Ugaritic evidence Baal is a dying and rising god, whatever that means, while there is no such attribution given to Yahweh? And above all, what of the Old Testament’s own evidence to the effect that Yahweh has a close relation with El? Clearly these and other questions remain to be answered. It is difficult to know where to start an enquiry into these matters. To the obvious retort that we should start at the beginning, one can only reply that it is difficult to know just where the beginning is, since traditions purporting to deal with the remote past often turn out on further enquiry to be dealing with a later period. I shall begin with what appears to be a historical episode, which has its antecedents, to be sure, and indeed appears at first glance to repeat an earlier event. The episode is Jeroboam’s reform, and the narrative of this in 1 Kings 12.26-33 has literary links with the story of the golden calf in Exodus 32.3 Which of the two is the older? Did an event take place before the Israelites settled in Palestine, which then provided the narrator’s model for a lampoon on whatever Jeroboam was attempting to achieve? Or has an account of his activities formed the basis of a midrash set in the wilderness period?
