BAAL, ba-al, a primitive title of divinities which is found among all branches of the Semitic race, originally. signifying or In its primary sense the husband was the gnat) of the wife, the aproprietor,D the of his field. As a title of divinity its application is entirely secondary, the ThaalP in this sense having the same meaning as the other, and probably the possessor also of some attribute. Baals were as numerous as the ob jects or places or cities which they inhabited. There were baals of springs, trees, animals, mountains, stones and sanctuaries, as well as celestial baals, baals of the sky, of one or other of the heavenly bodies, or of some atmospheric phenomenon. The belief was strong among all Semitic races, as among all primitive and ancient peoples, that every natural object that could do something, or was supposed to be able to do something, should be reverenced as divine. In Canaan and Phoenicia, in Syria and south Arabia, in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and also among the Greeks and Romans baal cults sprang up. Mythologists and students of comparative religions were for long inclined to the -view that gBaal)) is identical with the sun god — the Bel or Belas of the Babylonians and Assyrians. According to Hastings' 'Dictionary of Religion and while it is admitted that the sun was worshipped as a baal, identi fication of baal as the sun-god without scientific foundation)) ('Except in late theo logical abstraction, there is no such thing as a god Baal)) After the Israelites had been brought out of Egypt, and had conquered Canaan, the rural districts were chiefly occupied by the invaders, and the cities remained in the hands of the original inhabitants. In process of time race assimilation began, and with it the taking over ,of the local, baals or gods. The domestication of baal-worship among the inhabitants is at tested by the frequency with which the word baal appears as a component part of the names of towns and cities, as Baalath, Baal-meon, Baol-peor and Baal-tamar. Concurrently with
Jahweh, the national god, the local baals were worshipped; indeed Jahweh appears to have been worshipped as a baal. The national unity was thus endangered, the people splitting up into small communities and worshipping the local deities. The rapid development of the Philistine power awakened consciousness of this peril; the absorption of baal-worshiP in that of Jahweh began. When King Ahab established the worship of his wife's deity, Melkart, the baal of Tyre, Elijah took issue, thundered his denunciations of the worship of Jahweh and Melkart as mutually exclusive, and sought to free the former of its foreign ele ments and accretions. The Old Testament re cords the history of the chosen people as a series of backslidings to the local baals of the land, alternating with penitences and return to the worship of Jahweh. The prophets of the 8th and 7th centuries continued Elijah's work of purging, Jerusalem became the recognized sole sanctuary for the worship of Jahweh, and during the Persian period baal worship dis appeared.
Mythologists who regarded Baal as synony mous with the sun-god, associated his worship as having prevailed through ancient Scandi navia, and it is supposed to have been general in the British Isles. In Ireland and in some parts of Scotland Beltain (1 May O. S.) was one of the festival days. In the former country fires were made early on the tops of the hills, and all cattle were made to pass through them. This fumigation was supposed to guard them against disease for that year. In Sir John Sinclair's Account of Scotland) he describes the ceremonies observed in that country.