Skip to content
Curated playlist

Deities in the Hebrew Bible

  • SatanIn the Hebrew Bible, Satan began as a heavenly prosecutor working for God. He later became the Western symbol of evil.
  • InannaInanna was a goddess of war and love, but not of marriage. Scholars still debate how she gained such mixed powers.
  • LuciferLucifer begins with a line of poetry. In a modern translation of the Book of Isaiah, it reads: "How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth." Centuries of readers heard in those…
  • YahwehYahweh may first appear in writing on an Egyptian inscription at Soleb, dating from the time of Amenhotep III, who ruled from 1390 to 1352 BCE. The inscription names a place as 'YHWA in the Land of the Shasu.' The Shasu were nomads from…
  • BaalBaal is the most common Modern Hebrew word for a husband, and it is also the name of a god whom biblical prophets denounced as false. That double life is the puzzle at the heart of this documentary. The word began as an everyday title in…
  • BeelzebubBa'al Zabub, Ba'al Zvuv, Beelzebul, Belzebuth. Beelzebub has been spelled in many ways, and one nickname has outlasted every spelling: the Lord of the Flies. The name began as the title of a god worshipped by the Philistines. Later, some…
  • Yam (god)Yam, the Ugaritic sea god, ranks only thirtieth in his city's list of gods. Yet El favored him for king.
  • Names of God in JudaismThe names of God in Judaism begin with four Hebrew letters, יהוה. That name appears 6,828 times in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia edition of the Masoretic Text. Yet most Jews today never say it aloud. Judaism recognizes a short list of…
  • AmunAmun's name meant "the hidden one," yet his temples became Egypt's largest.
  • AnatEl, head of the gods at Ugarit, told the goddess Anat she was a "manly sort."

Queue