Hi all > From: George Athas <[email protected]> > Kristian, I'm not sure your analogy works here. The noun אל is indeed common, > but it often functions as a proper noun. > Certainly that's the case outside the biblical literature. I know that my original question was about the possible differences between the Hebrew usage and the pagan usage. I would also like to know, however, (if this is not too far outside the scope of this group) how certain archaeologists can be that "El" on its own was used as a proper noun/name and not simply as a generic common noun? I framed my original question to address the Hebrew usage only to try and keep on topic for the list. <snip
> From: Yigal Levin <[email protected]> > A similar case is "Baal", which is both a common noun meaning "lord/master" > and a proper name of a deity, known from both > the Bible and a wide range of ANE inscriptions. And here you seem to have a fairly convincing argument that it is very possible that "El" could function as both common and proper name. Is it possible, however, that "Baal" on its own (i.e. not compound names such as Baal-berit etc.) was also used only as a common name and that part of the prophetic dispute was that the baalim could not be considered equal to the (one) "El". Regards Chavoux Luyt _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
