Today, in a symbolic act, Iranians set fire to the flags of Israel and the United States, as well as an obelisk and a statue of Baal—which they described as a symbol of Satan—in various cities across Iran in response to the release of the Epstein documents.

  • protist@mander.xyzEnglish
    115·
    7 days ago

    Isn’t there evidence that the Canaanite gods El and Ba’al were merged into Yahweh, who remains to this day the Christian god and the Islamic Allah? These people are burning their own god

    Edit: My Lemmy client is messing up and won’t let me respond to comments. Just wanted to add that yeah, the Muslim Allah is the same Abrahamic God that Christians and Jews worship. In fact, the name “Allah” is directly derived from the god “El”:

    The majority of scholars consider[Allah] to be derived from a contraction of the Arabic definite article al- and ilāh “deity, god” to al-lāh meaning “the deity, the God.” Originally, ʾilāh was used as an epithet for the West Semitic creator god ʾIlu (the Ugaritic version of El), before being adopted as the proper name itself for this god

    El, Ba’al, Yahweh, God, and Allah are all wrapped up in each other

    • railcar@midwest.socialEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      It’s likely better to think of baal and yahweh as effectively the same deity for rival regional clans. Many psalms etc in the Bible are directly plagiarized from baal.

    • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
      2·
      6 days ago

      Saying that polytheism and monotheism are actually the same thing and therefore they’re burning their own god is quite a large stretch.

      • protist@mander.xyzEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        I didn’t say that. Yahweh used to be a part of a polytheistic religion and over time became the only god. That doesn’t make polytheism and monotheism the same thing, but it does make Allah and God the same god as the Yahweh from the original polytheistic religion.

        • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
          1·
          5 days ago

          Linguistically they seem to use a word for “God” but that is about where the similarities seem to end. A quick search shows your theory being a prominent Quota answer which usually isn’t a great indicator of truthfulness, but also it claims Baal and Yahweh being two entirely different polytheistic gods and then Yahweh winning out over time (at least according to some rando on Quota). So even following that line they aren’t the same and Iran isn’t “burning their own God.”