Baal

Baal, also rendered Baʿal (Biblical Hebrew בַּעַל), is a North-West Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various deities who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu. A Baalist or Baalite means a worshiper of Baal.
"Baal" may refer to any deity and even to human officials. In some texts it is used for Hadad, a deity of the rain, thunder, fertility and agriculture, and the lord of Heaven. Since only priests were allowed to utter his divine name, Hadad, Ba‛al was commonly used. Nevertheless, few if any biblical uses of "Baal" refer to Hadad, the lord over the assembly of deities on the holy mount of Heaven; most refer to a variety of local spirit-deities worshipped as cult images, each called baal and regarded in the Hebrew Bible in that context as a "false deity".
== Baal-deities ==
Semitic Baal's
* Hadad
* Berith
* Melqart
* Baal Hammon
Deities compared to Baal
* Enlil
* Marduk
* Jupiter
* Malakbel
Category:Deities
Category:Sky and weather deities
Category:West Semitic deities
Category:Rain deities