Anat

ענת


The Ugaritic love-goddess, she was already the Hittite mother-goddess, daughter of El but also his sister and his wife, a reflection of the sun's marriage to the moon in each of her three phases).

It was in her honour that Yirme-Yahu's (Jeremiah's) priestly birthplace of Anatot was named (Jeremiah 1:1);internal evidence in his book suggests that his father was the High Priest at the shrine, though it is unclear whether it was still a shrine to Anat or had become Yisra-Elised as a shrine of YHVH. Most likely the latter, as evidenced by Yirme-Yahu seemingly expressing regret for it being thus, in chapter 44, verses:17-19, of his book.

Anatot was located in the tribe of Bin-Yamin (Benjamin), and later became known as Beit Anat or Bethany, where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11), and where he was anointed (Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9, Luke 7:36-50) after announcing that the crucifixion would take place two days hence.

Judges 3:31 refers to one Shamgar ben Anat who smote six hundred Pelishtim (Philistines) with an ox-goad. Logic, and the evidence of that one tale, suggests that Shamgar is a variant of Shimshon, the sun-hero, and that the Anat in question is his goddess mother, not his earthly father.

References in Jeremiah (7:18; 44:17, 18, 19, 25) depict her as the Queen of Heaven, which makes her the equivalent of Isis, Astarte, Hera, Ishtar, Yah and other regional variations.

Yoseph's (Joseph's) wife was named Asnat, which may be an Egyptian variation of Anat. A Cyprian inscription (KAI. 42) equates the Greek goddess Athena with Anat, giving her the epithet Nike in Greek, and calling her by the Phoenician epithet "l'uzza chayim", "the strength of life".

The Akkadian god Anu, who was probably female originally, and emerged in the Celtic as a goddess, is also a likely dialect variation of her name; the source is Hittite, and definitely female there, with the Anatolian mountains taking their name from her.

In Canaanite poetry she becomes Astarte. Like most mother-goddesses she is usually described as being a virgin, though in the Ugaritic myths, which are as close as archaeology has yet been able to reach back to the Hittite sources, she is the lover of Ba'al Hadad, the storm god, and depicted as a warrior goddess, in language that is strongly reminiscent of Kali in the Hindu myths that are also sourced in the Anatolian Hittite.

The tale of Anat searching for the ruined body of her son Ba'al, and encountering Mot, who is responsible, bears remarkable similarity to the tale of Eshet (Isis), searching for her brother-son Osher (Osiris), similarly murdered by Set.

Ba'al means "Lord" and is therefore a synonym for "Adonis" and Adonai.

A last observation, which will no doubt upset any Christians reading this: the probability is that the legend of Jesus was in fact a "resurrection" of the old cult of Ba'al, Anat and Adonis, suppressed for centuries when the Hasmoneans ruled in Yehudah (Judea), but sustained underground in places such as Beit Anatot, and able to emerge from the underground when the Temple was destroyed, Jewish hegemony in Yehudah came to an end, and Roman Mithras-worship tolerated the revival of a cult that was immensely similar to its own. We should read "God" in the gospels as Ba'al, the Virgin Mary as Anat, and Jesus as "The Lord Adonis". There are, of course, variations on this, because in Beit Lechem (Bethlehem) and in Yeru-Shalayim (Jerusalem) the cult was the Babylonian version, with Ba'al replaced by El (earlier versions would have had Marduk), Anat by Ishtar (earlier versions would have had Inanna), and Adonis by Tammuz (earlier versions would hve had Utu or Dumuzi), while in the Galilee it was the Samarian version, a complicated mix from the many people who had come to that region, but probably Attis, in his Yisra-Eli variation as Elisha, in the Adonis role.

Copyright © 2019 David Prashker

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