Bethel (god)
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Bethel, meaning 'House of El' or 'House of God' in Hebrew, Phoenician and Aramaic, was the name of a god or an aspect of a god in some ancient Middle Eastern texts dating to the Assyrian, Achaemenid, and Hellenistic periods.[1][2] The term appears in the Torah and the Christian Bible, but opinions differ as to whether those references are to a god or to a place.
A 1977 book by Javier Teixidor cited some early references that support viewing Bethel as a god of Aramaean or Syrian origin. The author maintains that the origin of the god's cult is unknown, but provides what he believes to be some of the earliest references to the god:[3]
- Theophoric names in the seventh century BC,
- the 677 BC Esarhaddon's Treaty with Ba'al of Tyre, which associates Bethel with what is apparently another god, Anat-Bethel, in a curse upon the Tyrians if they break the treaty: "May Bethel and Anat-Bethel deliver you to a man-eating lion"; and
- an Aramaic tablet from Aleppo dating to 570 BC, which contains three theophoric names of the god Bethel.
Teixodir states that the god Bethel became popular during the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which began in the seventh century BC. He found numerous references to the cult of Bethel in fifth-century Egypt literature, and notes that Bethel is mentioned, but with no details, in the Elephantine papyri and ostraca and the Hermopolis Aramaic papyri. Those papyri also mention gods with names that are variants of Bethel: Eshembethel 'Name of Bethel' and Ḥerembethel 'Sanctuary of Bethel' (cf. Arabic ḥaram 'sanctuary').[3] Tawny Holm also notes that Papyrus Amherst 63 syncretizes Bethel with Yaho.[4]
The ancient Phoenician Sanchuniathon mentions the god Baitylos as a brother of the gods El and Dagon. He later says that the god Sky devised the baitylia, having contrived to put life into stones. There doesn't seem to be any clear relationship between these two terms, however.[5]