| always trying to get up an interruption. Did ever any man believe in horsemanship, and not in horses? or in flute-playing, and not in flute-players? No, my friend; I will answer to you and to the court, as you refuse to answer for yourself. There is no man who ever did. But now please to answer the next question: Can a man believe in spiritual and divine agencies, and not in spirits and demigods? Meletus: He cannot. Socrates: How lucky I am to have extracted that answer, by the assistance of the court! But then you swear in the indictment that I teach and believe in divine or spiritual agencies (new or old, no matter for that); at any rate, I believe in spiritual agencies - so you say and swear in the affidavit; and yet if I believe in divine beings, how can I help believing in spirits and demigods; - must I not? To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent. Now what are spirits or demigods? are they not either gods or sons of gods? Meletus: Certainly they are." From the above we can see quite a few things about Socrates. First, he was as well educated and read as his contemporaries. He had an above average ability in debate. He was not afraid to speak his mind in public. His mind didn't cloud under pressure. He was not an atheist, but instead was a polytheist. At one point in the dialogue, it appeared that Socrates was close to making a monotheist statement, but it turned into a polytheist statement. So if Socrates believed in more than one god, which ones did he believe in? I'm not sure we were ever told which specific ones. Were the Greek gods different from the gods of the Caananites, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, or the Babylonians? Baal in the Hebrew dictionary means "lord". We can gain some insight here from Judges 2:10-13: "And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim: 95 ______________________________________________________________________________ And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the Lord to anger. And they forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtaroth.". Since Baal appears to be generic in form we need to look at some of the other names associated with the gods. They were the son of Dagon and the son of El to the Caananites and Phoenicians, and Hadad in Babylonia. In Aram the gods were Hadad, Mot, Anath, and Rimmon. Chemosh was the chief deity of Moab. Molech was worshiped, by the Ammonites, at times by offering human sacrifice. Milcom was another name for Molech, and they are both forms of a Semitic word for king. The Phoenicians also worshiped Baal-Zebul, which was deliberately changed by followers of the Lord to Baal-Zebub meaning "lord of the flies". Dagon is the same as the Hebrew word for grain, which suggests that he was a deity of vegetation. In Ur and Harran the moon-god Nanna or Sin, was worshiped, and Terah's family would have been exposed to that worship. Another form of Baal was the god of the Egyptians who was Apis, their chief deity, and was represented by the golden calves. They believed that Baal gave fertility to the womb and life through rain to the soil. The pictures of him told this story through his standing on a bull, or golden calf, a popular symbol of strength and fertility; his chariot was a storm cloud, his voice the thunder, while his spears and arrows were the lightning. Baal worship involved child sacrifice and sacred prostitution. Baal's consort was Ashtoreth, while El's consort was Asherah. El was chief god of the Caananite pantheon. Ashtoreth was associated with the evening star. She was the beautiful goddess of war and fertility. She was Ishtar in Babylonia, Athart in Aram, Astarte or Aphrodite to the Greeks, and Venus to the Romans. The evening star by the way is named Venus. I won't make other cross connections though they can be made for each of the later gods. Each god appeared to serve a narrow function of rule over specific areas of the worshiper's life. None of them were recognized as all powerful over all segments of a person's 96 ______________________________________________________________________________ |
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