I. Name

The name of this deity must be explained in accordance with Heb. bēt-ʾēl, i.e. ‘house/temple of god/El’ (God, El), cf. also the name of the town Bethel in central Palestine (former Lûz, see Judg. 1.23). The name Bethel is a shortened version of the designation ‘(El of the) House of El’, a kind of tautology or hypostasis not unfamiliar in Semitic god-names. This name originally did not point to the town of Bethel, but may have referred to open cult-places, as the aetiology of Bethel in the OT suggests (Gen. 28…