THE CANAANITE BACKGROUND OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE VIRGIN MARY E. CB. MacLaurin Many scholars have examined the close resemblances between the thought and cultus of Ugarit and that of the OT. I would especially men- tion J.H. Patton: Canaanite Parallels in the Book of Psalms (John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1944), Loren Fisher (ed.): Ras Shamra Parallels, 2 vols., P.I.B., Roma, 1975, Rene Dussaud: Les origines cananeeans du sacrifice israelite, Paris, 1921, and my own The Origins of the Hebrew Sacrificial System, Sydney, 1947. It seems that Hebrew religion should perhaps be regarded as Canaanite religion reformed through the influence of the revelation given at Sinai; however, the monotheistic reformers were unable to eliminate completely the non- Yahwistic elements in the religion of the Canaanites who still formed the bulk of the population of the land. Consequently it is not surprising to find Canaanite culture, especially thought-forms, widely distributed throughout the OT. The NT has not yet been subjected to this type of study but it is reasonable to expect that some strands of the ancient folk-religion which were not incorporated into Judaism should have survived in popular religion, especially in such areas as Galilee, and to have come to the sur- face again in Christianity. In the following remarks the abbreviations RSP will denote Fisher: Ras Shamra Parallels, and CML will denote G.R. Driver: Canaanite Myths and Legends (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1956) whose translations I quote, with certain alterations where I think they can be improved. The Virgin Birth of Jesus The best discussion of the Virgin Birth is still, in my opinion, that of J. Gresham Machen: The Virgin Birth of Christ, Clark, London, reprinted 1958, but as the last edition of this book was brought out in 1932 it con- tains no references to Ugaritic myth. It is necessary to realize that the gospel story records the surge into historicity of a hope expressed in the form of myth for at least a millenium and a half, so we are not unreasonable in seeking its original relevance in more ancient material. The Ugaritic epics contain a very large number of references to the btlt Anat. Btlt is the Ugaritic equivalent of BH btlh virgin, usually (but not always, of Joel 1:8 where it is applied to a young widow) in the sense of virgo intacta, the plural abstract form btlm meaning tokens of virgini- ty as in Deut. 22:15,17 etc. 1 However, btlh does not appear to be the Hebrew word in the background of the evangelists' thinking, for the key 2 Religious Traditions NT text, Mtt. 1:23, quotes Is. 7:14 where btlh is not used. The Isaianic word is glmh, which means a young nubile woman who is not necessari- ly virgo intacta. A passage in the epic Nikkal and the Kathirat (Driver, op.cit., p.l24-5, which RSP I p.46, no. 36 refers to as Ti:7) should be read in parallel with Is. 7:14: NK 1:7 hi glmt tid b(n lmt) behold a lass shall bear a son to a man Is. 7:14 hnh hglmh hrh · wyldh bn behold the lass shall conceive and bear a son. Cyrus Herzl Gordon, quoted by RSP, claims that the 'glmt is called a btlt in line 5, but line 5 is so defective that one cannot read it with any con- fidence. The definitive edition (Andre Herdner: Corpus des Tablettes en cuneiformes alphabetiques, Libraire Paul Geuthner, Paris, 1963) reads bt. (--) which Driver restores as bn 1(n)h, so I cannot accept Gordon's suggestion as quoted by RSP "the glmt of 1. 7 is called btlt in 1. 5 so the LXX and NT interpretation of Is. 7: 14 has even pre-Mosaic antecedents". The NK text appears to describe the marriage of the Moon Prince Yarikh to Nikkai-Eb daughter of King Summer. There is perhaps some sort of literary and mythological connection between the Canaanite and Hebrew uses of the line quoted; it probably represents adoption by Isaiah of some traditional prayer or hymn used at a mar- riage ceremony, glmt bearing its usual meaning young nubile woman. The LXX translators were responsible for Christian difficulties in this matter, for Matthew relied upon their translation of glmh by parthenos. Parthenos itself does not always mean virgo intacta in ordinary use, but takes that meaning when used as a divine epithet in Greek religion. Thus the goddess Athena at Athens was so described, and the designation was applied to the Vestal Virgins. 2 Their purity and chastity was held to be beyond reproach so parthenos, whilst used by the LXX to translate glmh, really has the nuances of meaning usually associated with btlh. 3 The orthodox Christian position seems, then, to have arisen from the cultic meaning of parthenos, which it perpetuated in the Creeds, but this argument does not imply that this tradition is to be rejected. The gospel- writers, like many rabbis, associated the statements of Is. 7:14 with those of Is. 9:6ff, and made the fulfillment of the OT texts, as they understood them, as part of the evidences of their Christology. Turning back to the Ugaritic texts, we find that the title btlt is used exclusively (of R.E. Whitaker: A Concordance of the Ugaritic Literature, Harvard Univ. Press, 1972) of the goddess Anat in much the way that Christians speak of the Virgin Mary.4 The term, with its im- plications of perpetual virginity, occurs also in Aramaic titles; in Arabic Religious Traditions 3 it is an honorific title applied to the mother of Hasan and Hussein within Islam. 5 We shall now consider certain Ugaritic passages and those OT and NT passages which are to some extent reminiscent of them. Ba'al VI ii tells of mlkm angels, messengers sent by E1 to Anat: "at the feet of Anat they bowed and spoke, they prostrated themselves, and they lifted up their voices and cried". A message of Tr thy father, a word of Lutpan (Hidden·ofFace?) who begot thee. "War on earth is opposition to me. Pour into the dust mandrakes, Pour slmm (peace·offerings) to honour the earth, Multiply love to honour the fields. Restrain your club and your sling. Unto me on your feet you shall hurry." There are no OT passages showing similar concepts, but the NT offers Mtt. I :20·23; Lk. 1:26-38, where an angel from El/YHWH proclaims the coming birth of the Son of God from the Theotokos, the Virgin Mary. The differences between these interviews are important - the messengers of EI do homage to Anat, who is generally aggressive as befits a goddess of sexual love and war, but when the angel salutes Mary she is shy, reserved and obedient (Lk. 1:29-30, 38). El summons Anat to lay aside the insigna of her office and run to him whereas the NT angel, having delivered his message to Mary departs. There is however, a possi- ble parallel in thought between the Ugaritic passage which proclaims El's opposition to war and his instructions for averting it and the angel's announcement in Mtt. 1:21 "thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins"; Lk. 1:31-3 "and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end". Both of these NT texts have the establishment of God's peace as the background of their thinking, and to this extent Is. 9:6 is relevant "the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called 'The Prince of Peace'". It is probably not presuming too much to trace, through all these literatures, a belief that El/YHWH's basic plan is peace, under the government of God's appointee. The next passages to be considered are Ba'al IV ii 13ff; iii 1ff. In Ba'al IV ii 13ff. Ba'al greets his sister-wife, the btlt Anat, who is about to bear him a son - himself reborn - with the following manner: "And the Victorious Ba'al lifted up his eyes, He lifted up his eyes and looked And he gazed upon the btlt Anat, 4 Religious Traditions The most beautiful among the sisters of Ba'al. At her presence he fell-in-love and rose up, At her feet he bowed and did obedience (cf Jud. 5:27) And he lifted up his voice and cried "Thou dost live, 0 sister, and 'arm (/shall exalt - see below) The horn of thy serenity, 0 Virgin Anat The horn of thy serenity ( cf Exod. 29: 12) shall ba'al msh (anoint)" Ba'al describes Anat in this passage as "the most gracious of the sisters of Ba'al", with which should be compared Lk. 1:28 "Hail, thou that art kecharitomene, the Lord is with thee". The Greek kecharit6mene means full of grace, but translators often render it highly exalted, a translation possibly influenced by the name Mary, derived from the Hebrew root rwm raise up, exalt, the root also used in the Ba'al text to describe Anat as exalted. So the English version preserves faithfully a tradition of association between full of grace and highly exalted which apparently existed in Ugaritic over a millenium before. The OT tradition contain no comparable laudatory passages referring to the child's mother, except that implied in Is. 7: 14. The reverence paid to A nat by Ba'al is logical when considered in the light of this tribute of respect, it will be shown later that there is an echo of this in the OT, but in the NT the greeting of the angel implies the same degree of reverence from a super-natural visi- tant.