Before the Church · c. 1400 BC
The Baal Cycle
Ilimilku the scribe
What it is
Baal the rider on the clouds defeats Yam the sea and Lotan the twisting serpent, wins a palace with a window in it, and is then swallowed by Mot, death itself — until Anat splits Mot with a blade, winnows him, and Baal returns and the heavens rain oil.
Why it lasted
Found at Ras Shamra in 1929 and immediately decisive. Rider on the clouds, Leviathan the fleeing serpent, the swallowing of death forever — the Bible's most exalted images of God are drawn from this poem's vocabulary, and turned against its god.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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