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Joshua places Og in the same towns that Ugaritic texts assign to a god of the dead, giving the defeated king's homeland an older religious significance.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
KTU 1.108:3
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
[…] Rapiu, the eternal king, drinks; and drinks [the god] Gathar and Yaqar, the god who dwells in Athtartu, the god who rules in Edrei, who sings and makes music on lyre and pipe, on drum and cymbals, with castanets of ivory, in the good company of Kothar. And Anat the mighty drinks, lady of kingship, lady of dominion, lady of the high heavens, [la]dy of the crown; and Anat flies, soars [in] the high [heav]ens […] […] and El drinks […] […] king […] his god drinks […] […] Rashap […] arrives […] […] for Baal […] Rapiu, the eternal king, comes to you […] […] Rapiu, the eternal king, with strength, [Rapiu], the eternal king, with his might, with [his power], with his rule, with his splendor, for the Rephaim of the earth: your strength, your might, your power,
Joshua 12:4
Hebrew Bible
3 His kingdom included the eastern rift valley from the Sea of Kinnereth to the sea of the rift valley (the Salt Sea), including the route to Beth Jeshimoth and the area southward below the slopes of Pisgah. 4 The territory of King Og of Bashan, one of the few remaining Rephaites, who lived in Ashtaroth and Edrei 5 and ruled over Mount Hermon, Salecah, all Bashan to the border of the Geshurites and Maacathites, and half of Gilead as far as the border of King Sihon of Heshbon. 6 Moses the Lord’s servant and the Israelites defeated them, and Moses the Lord’s servant assigned their land to Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh.
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Notes and References
“... II. Biblical geographical tradition agrees
with the mythological and cultic data of the
Ugaritic texts. According to KTU 1.108:1-3.
the abode of the mlk
11m, the dead and
deified king (DEL OutO LETE 1987:49-53),
and his place of enthronement as rpll was in
cJtrt-lzdry, in amazing correspondence with
the Biblical tradition about the seat of king
Og of Bashan, "one of the survivors of the
Rephaim, who lived in Ashtarot and Edrei"
(Josh 12:4 [NEB». This place Ism is also
treated in KTU 1.100:41; 1.1 07: 17: and RS
86:2'235: 17 as the abode of the god mlk, the
eponym of the
mJkm,
the deified
kings,
synonym of the rpllm. For the 'Canaanites'
of Ugarit, the Bashan region, or a part of it,
clearly represented 'HeU', the celestial and
infernal abode of their deified dead kings,
-Olympus and -Hades at the same time. It
is
possible
that
this
localization
of
the
Canaanite Hell is linked to the ancient tradi-
tion of the place as the ancestral home of
their dynasty, the rpllm. The Biblical text
also recalls that "all Bashan used to be
called the land/earth of the Rephaim" (Deut
3:13 [NEB]), an ambiguous wording that
could equally be translated as "the 'hell' of
the Rephaim". In any case, the link between
Bnshan and the rpllInlRephaim in both tradi-
tions speaks in favour of a very old usc of
the two meanings of this last denomination:
ancient dwellers of Northern Transjordan I
inhabitants of 'Hell'. ...”
* 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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