THE COSMOGONY As This Chapter Is the First in Which Fragments Of

CHAPTER SIX

THE COSMOGONY

As this chapter is the first in which fragments of Philo's supposed translation of Sanchuniathon will be discussed, a few general remarks seem appropriate at the outset. In the extant fragments Philo does not date Sanchuniathon directly. Philo's date for Sanchuniathon can, however, be inferred from 813: 4-22: Sanchuniathon's work was deformed by misinterpretation and eventually reached Greece to become the basis of Hesiod's Theogony. Sanchuniathon, according to Philo, must therefore have lived before Hesiod-long enough prior to Hesiod for the intervening process of misinterpretation and trans­ mission to be completed. A date late in the second millennium B.c. or early in the first millennium would therefore seem proper. 1 Por­ phyry, on the other hand, dates Sanchuniathon directly-at the time of the Trojan War. Eusebius (following Porphyry, and perhaps Philo's allusions) calls Sanchuniathon a most ancient man, who lived before the Trojan War. Sanchuniathon's writings, therefore, allegedly date from the late second millennium B.C. Nevertheless, as was concluded at the end of the previous chapter, the data in Porphyry and Philo's descriptions of Sanchuniathon are derived from a Hellenistic milieu. This must arouse suspicion concerning the texts which Philo presents as his translation of Sanchuniathon. Do the fragments reflect ancient Phoenician beliefs, as Philo claims, or do they reflect the beliefs of Hellenized Phoenicians? Testing the antiquity of beliefs or doctrines is complicated by the fact that some elements may be old, others new. Thus names of gods or festivals may survive long after the notion of the god or practices in the

I It is impossible to be more precise. Two crucial questions are unanswerable: (I) when Philo dated Hesiod (for the problem in general see West, Theogony, p. 40); and (2) how much time to allow for the process of transmission. THE COSMOGONY 95 festival have changed completely. This may have occurred in Phoenician religion. Another, closely related, source of difficulty is the fact that some elements, like names, are handed down from one text to another, relatively unchanged,2 so their occurrence at a late date is no proof that they were directly derived from an ancient text. Several deities mentioned by Philo may have been otherwise virtually unknown or totally incomprehensible before the discovery of the Ugaritic epics,3 yet this does not prove that Philo's immediate sources were as ancient as the Ugaritic literature. Such examples (and even the agreement of the larger structure of a relatively recent text with the structure of an older text) prove no more than that the older text may have been ultimately, a source of the more recent work. Only if the congruences between the texts include essential and characteristic elements ought we conclude that the more ancient text was an immediate source of the

2 Consider the history of the deities EI, Baalshamem, Anat, Reshef and Baalat Gebal. EI, an important figure in the Ugaritic epics, is named in the Azitawada inscription (KAI 26 A III, 18). Philo describes EI as having six wings (812: 2Iff), a description confirmed by numerous Byblian coins. See below Chapter Nine, pp. 225-226. EI also appears in KAI 129 of the second century. Baalshamem is mentioned in KAI 4,3 from Byblos of the tenth century, as well as in the Azitawada inscription (KAI 26 A III, 18). He is also found in a Carthaginian inscription (KAI 78,2). Anat is one of the principal figures of the Ugaritic epics. The bilingual inscription to her, CIS I, 95 in which she is identified with Athena, is well known. The god Reshef is found compounded in several names known from Ugarit, such as bn rsp (Gordon, UT, 64: 12). He was very popular on Cyprus and many Cypriot names are compounded with his, such as l'n!llll' of CIS I, 10, 4. On Reshef see also Teixidor "BES 1969," #86 and "BES 1970," #68 & 69. Baalat Gebal, is often mentioned in the Amarna letters (See Mercer EA Tablets, Vol. 2, p. 901 for a list of passages). She is also mentioned in KAI 5,2 from Byblos and dated to ca. 925 B.c., and in CIS 1,2 of the fourth or fifth century B.C. Dahood, "ASD," pp. 69-71 misinterprets this continuity as the "stability" of the Canaanite religion from the Late Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period. Cf. Teixidor, The Pagan God, pp. 5-6. 3 Deities in this category are Mot and Chousor. Philo mentions a Mouth, the god of death, in 812: 9-11. This is of course the Ugaritic Mot. Philo also mentions a certain Chousor who invented iron and its use (808: 21fT.). Although Chousor may be intended in several Punic and Neo-Punic names (e.g. 'lII::l'J17 and In''lIIJ, on which see Teixidor, "BES 1970," #69, and Benz, Personal Names, p. 336), his functions were not under­ stood until we learned of the Ugaritic artisan god klr wbss. For an example of the earlier lack of comprehension see Meyer GdA, Vol. II,2, p. 180, n. 5. Cf. Eissfeldt, RS, pp. 28-29.