page_title: Baal
section_title: Judaism
hierarchical_section_title: Baal / Judaism
caption_attribution_description: English: Woodcut for "Die Bibel in Bildern", 1860. Elijah kills the Ba'al priests. Deutsch: Holzschnitt aus "Die Bibel in Bildern", 1860. Elias tödtet die Baals-Priester. Français&#160;: Gravure en bois pour «Die Bibel in Bildern», 1860.
context_page_description: Baal, properly Baʽal, was a title and honorific meaning "owner", "lord" in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied to gods. Scholars previously associated the theonym with solar cults and with a variety of unrelated patron deities, but inscriptions have shown that the name Baʿal was particularly associated with the storm and fertility god Hadad and his local manifestations.
  The Hebrew Bible includes use of the term in reference to various Levantine deities, often with application towards Hadad, who was decried as a false god. That use was taken over into Christianity and Islam, sometimes under the form Beelzebub in demonology.
context_section_description: Baʿal (בַּעַל) appears about 90 times in the Hebrew Bible in reference to various gods. The priests of the Canaanite Baʿal are mentioned numerous times, most prominently in the First Book of Kings. Many scholars believe that this describes Jezebel's attempt to introduce the worship of the Baʿal of Tyre, Melqart, to the Israelite capital Samaria in the 9th century BCE. Against this, Day argues that Jezebel's Baʿal was more probably Baʿal Shamem, the Lord of the Heavens, a title most often applied to Hadad, who is also often titled just Ba‘al.
  1 Kings 18 records an account of a contest between the prophet Elijah and Jezebel's priests. Both sides offered a sacrifice to their respective gods: Ba'al failed to light his followers' sacrifice while Yahweh's heavenly fire burnt Elijah's altar to ashes, even after it had been soaked with water. The observers then followed Elijah's instructions to slay the priests of Baʿal, after which it began to rain, showing Yahweh's mastery over the weather.
  Other references to the priests of Baʿal describe their burning of incense in prayer and their offering of sacrifice while adorned in special vestments.
caption: Slaughter of the Prophets of Baal, 1860 woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld
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