No 10

(Ras Shamra Texts)

The ancient city of Ugarit, now known as Ras Shamra, Lebanon was a great religious and commercial center which lay on the coast forty miles southwest of Antioch, opposite the island of Cyprus. One of the most important discoveries of the 20^th century was the recovery of hundreds of clay tablets which had been housed in a library between two temples – one dedicated to Baal and the other to Dagon.

These tablets turned out to be written in a literary style very similar to Hebrew. Here is a text in this language that resembles a passage in the Psalms: “Behold thy enemies, O Baal; Behold thine enemies shalt thou crush; Behold thou shalt smite thy foes”. In Psalm 92:9 we read, “For, behold thine enemies O Lord; For behold thy enemies will perish; All who do iniquity will perish.”

By far the most important contribution of these religious texts from Ras Shamra (Ugarit) is in giving the background material for the study of the Old Testament. The texts speak of the Canaanite deity and how they were degenerate. In Genesis 15:16, when the Lord declared to Abraham “…for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full”, He was speaking about this degenerate Canaanite deity. When Joshua and his army entered the Promised Land 400 years later, this iniquity had reached its height and had to be eradicated. Exterminating the Canaanites was not a question of destroying innocent people. Archaeology helps us to see this in an entirely different light and that God’s destruction of this irreligious people was warranted.