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In Exodus 24, Moses and the elders see God in his throne room, high on a mountain. A similar image is found in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle, where Athtar attempts to ascend Mount Saphon and sit on Baal’s divine throne but fails.
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KTU I.6
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
The Great Lady-who-tramples-Yam replied: Indeed, let us make Athtar the Brilliant king Athtar the Brilliant shall rule! Then Athtar the Brilliant went up into the uttermost parts of Saphon; he sat on the throne of Valiant Baal. But his feet did not reach the footstool; Then Athtar the Brilliant said: I shall not rule in the uttermost parts of Saphon! Athtar the Brilliant came down, he came down from the throne of Valiant Baal, and ruled in the earth
Date: 2300 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Exodus 24:10
Hebrew Bible
9 Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up, 10 and they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet there was something like a pavement made of blue sapphire, clear like the sky itself. 11 But he did not lay a hand on the leaders of the Israelites, so they saw God, and they ate and they drank. 12 The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and remain there, and I will give you the stone tablets with the law and the commandments that I have written, so that you may teach them.”
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The superhuman size is a critical feature of the second divine body, as seen for God in Exodus 24 and 33-34 and the massive throne of Baal in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle (KTU I.6 I 56-65). The superhuman size of Baal is also represented in the so-called Louvre Baal stele, a depiction of the god standing with weapons in either hand, along with a much smaller human figure. The god is depicted more than three times the height of the human figure, which has been interpreted as the king. A temple excavated at Ain Dara in northern Syria likewise exhibits this idea of the supersized deity, with footprints of over three feet (one meter) carved into the temple flooring. With the distance between the supersized footprints being about thirty feet (nine meters), the deity was imagined as being about sixty-five feet (close to twenty meters) tall ..."
Smith, Mark S.
Where the Gods Are: Spatial Dimensions of Anthropomorphism in the Biblical World
(p. 26) Yale University Press, 2016
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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