Oulomos

Oulomos is a Phoenician god whose name corresponds to the Hebrew word olam, meaning eternity. The figure appears in a creation story attributed to a Phoenician writer named Mochos of Sidon and preserved by the later Greek author Damascius. In this account, Oulomos is born from the elements of air and sky and gives rise to further divine beings and the ordered world. Inscriptions from the eastern Mediterranean show that a god of eternity was worshiped in the region as early as the 14th century BCE. Oulomos stands behind the biblical name El-olam, found in Genesis 21:33, which combines the word for god, El, with olam to form a title meaning God of eternity. The Israelite tradition appears to have absorbed this older regional deity and reshaped the name into a reverential title for the one God of Israel.