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I. Name The title ‘Lord of Heavens’, used for the various supreme gods in Syro-Palestine, Anatolia and Mesopotamia during the 2nd millennium bce, later became the name of a specific deity venerated throughout the Semitic world from the 1st millennium bce until the first four centuries of the Christian era. St. Augustin ( Quaest. Hept. VII 16) refers to him as dominus coeli. II. Identity The earliest Phoenician attestation of Baal-Shamem comes from the building-inscription from the 10th century bce of king Yeḥı̄milk in Byblos ( KAI 4). Here Baal-Shamem is named before the ‘Lady o…

I. Name The second element of the name of the deity ʾl qn ʾrṣ can etymologically be connected with the verbal-root qny ‘create, acquire (a property)’, which is used for example, in Ps. 139.13 ( ʾattā qānîtā kilyōtai ‘you created my kidneys’). The interpretation of the god as ‘El-Creator-of-the-Earth’ therefore seems highly justified. Contrast E. Lipiński ( TWAT 7 [1990–1992] 68) who preferred a derivation from qny ‘to keep, to possess’ and translated: ‘El-the-Owner-of the Earth’. The God is mentioned in Gen. 14.19, Gen. 22. II. Identity The name of the deity first occurs ou…

I. Name Mount Hermon is mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Deut. 3.8; Josh. 11.3, Josh. 17). The prominent mountain at the west-end of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon rises to a height of 2.814 m above sea-level. Its modern name is Jebel eš-Šeḫ “Mountain of the Hoar” or Jebel et-talǧ “Mountain of Snow”, both designations pointing to the long-lasting snow-cap on its summit. The etymology of Hermon ( Heb. ḥermōn) is disputed: a) The root ḥrm I Niph. means “to be split”, cf. Ar. ḥarama “perforate”. This may describe the situation of the mountain massif separated fro…

I. Name According to some of our sources Mount Sirion/Siryon is part of the Hermon massif. Deut. 3.9 gives it as the name of the mountain used by the Sidonians, but nevertheless the Amorite designation is Senir. This variant form of the name corresponds to the mountain Saniru being the refuge of Hazaʾel in the inscriptions of Shalmaneser III (E. Michel, WO 1 [1947/1952] 265:6). On the other hand the Hittite designation of the Anti-Lebanon is Šariyana and the same is true for Ug. šryn and Eg. sʒw-r-ı̓-nʒ. According to the Baal-Myth ( KTU 1.4 vi:19, 21) Sirion produced famous cedar-wood. Ezek. …

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. 28.10–19). The god is known from the 7th century bce, mostly in an Aramaic con…

I. Name Lebanon is the name of a mountain range in Syria (Ar. Ǧebel al-Lubnān), which stretches ca. 170 km from the North ( Nahr al-Kabı̄r) to the South ( Nahr al-Qāsimı̄ya), and rises from the Mediterranean Coast reaching a height (at Qenāt al-Saudā) of 3083 m; breaking off to the East it joins the long Biqāʿ-Valley. Opposite, to the East, we find the lower mountains of the Anti-Lebanon. This prominent range is mentioned in cuneiform documents from Old-Babylonian times on, often written Lab-ni-ni (cf. RGTC 5, 175), but also La-ab-a-anki (RIMA 1, A.O.39.1, 84), La-ab-la-na/ni (cf. R…