The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

by Michael S. Heiser

Scholars have learned a lot from this library, about both Ugarit and the content of the Old Testament. The chief deity of Ugarit was El—one of the names that appear in the Old Testament for the God of Israel. El had a divine council whose members were “the sons of El,” and he had a coruler, Baal. Since El’s and Baal’s duties sometimes appeared to overlap, and since Ugarit was so geographically close to Israel, it was small wonder that Baal worship was such a problem in Israel. The discoveries at Ugarit put all of that Old Testament history in context. El and Baal were, to say the least, markedly different in behavior from Yahweh of Israel. But the literature of Ugarit proved very illuminating in other respects, especially as to where El, Baal, and the Ugaritic divine council lived and held court. At Ugarit the divine council had three levels: the highest authority (El, who did most of his ruling through a coruling vizier, Baal), the “sons of El,” and messenger gods (mal’akim).

I have stumbled across this in my apologetic studies