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> El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into one as the people groups unified. Well, only one of those is the name of a god. El is just the ord

> El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into one as the people groups unified. Well, only one of those is the name of a god. El is just the ordinary word "god". Ba'al is the ordinary word "lord". Unlike El, this could theoretically double as the name of a god in a couple of ways. In the typical case it didn't, and gods addressed as Ba'al had names beyond the title. Compare "Ba'al Hadad", where the god's name is "Hadad". (But in the general case, Freyja is just the ordinary word "lady" and has no other name that survives to us, and Adonis is the ordinary word "lord". Adonis is a special case in that his name is not the word "lord" in Greek; he is a borrowing of the Semitic deity Tammuz, and the Greeks copied his title, "lord", rather than his name.)

cogman10 1y ago
El was the great God and Father of all gods, YHWH was his son [1]. The meaning of the word "El" changed over time and by the time most of the Bible was written it did simply mean God. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_%28deity%29?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_%28deity%29?wprov=sfla1
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > The meaning of the word "El" changed over time and by the time most of the Bible was written it did simply mean God. That is not correct; the word simply meant "god" long, long before there is any attestation of a god that might use it as a name. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ilum#Akkadian https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ilum#Akkadian