BABEL

(Heb.) A god of the Phoenicians ana Cart hag in i ans, worshipped chiefly at Tyre. The term Baal, common to all the Eastern languages, signifies lord or master; and this circumstance has probably given rise to the various contradictory opinions that prevail respecting this divinity. Servius (m Am. I.), who is followed by Vo ius (Theol. Gent. b. xi. c. 4.), observes that Baal in the Runic language had two significations: the one denoting Saturn, the other equivalent to the Greek Ztvg. Accordingly, if Baal and Ztvs be words of similar import in different languages, we may apply to the former what Varro relates of the latter, that the number of divinities, worshipped under this title amounted to three hundred. This opinion, it would appear, was held also by Milton, With these came they who, from the bordering flood Of old Euphrates, to the brook that parts Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names Of Baalim and Astaroth, . . It is probable that the Baal of the Phoenicians, and the Belus of the Babylonians, whose worship was so a iduously cultivated (Herod, i.), were one and the same divinity. The prjests of Baal amounted to 450; and, among other sacrifices ofiered upon his shrine, the Bible mentions human victims. To the zealous devotion paid by the Eastern nations to this divinity, and the wide circulation of his worship, the adoption of his name in the appellation of distinguished individuals, such as Hannibal, Belshazar, Asdrubal, ., bears ample testimony. (Selden, de Diis Surfs j Shnciford's Connection, b. v.) [s. 126]