בית-אל
A Kena'ani (Canaanite) shrine long before the age of the patriarchs, it was situated on a mountain (1 Samuel 13:2 and Joshua 16:1), which in Kena'an generally means a tall hill, one mile east of Luz, in the tribal territory of Ephrayim - today's Beitin.
Av-Ram sacrificed there on his way to Mitsrayim (Genesis 12:8)and again on his return (Genesis 13:3).
Judges 20:18 and 26, and 21:2, have the Ark of the
Covenant kept there in the Tent of Assembly, and "all Yisra-El went up to her in judgement". The god was obviously El, and the priestess appears to have been Rivkah's (Rebecca's) "nurse", the bee-goddess Devorah.
One of the principal shrines until Sha'ul's time (1 Samuel 10:3), it declined after Shelomoh (Solomon) built the Temple, but revived after Rechav-Am (Rehoboam) and Yerav-Am (Jeroboam) divided the kingdom. Beit-El then became the central shrine of the northern kingdom of Yisra-El (1 Kings 12:29); Rechav-Am set up his Golden Calf there (see also Jeremiah 48:13), and revived the ancient tradition of sacrificing young calves on the altar. This fact allows us to discount the theory of some scholars that Beit-El may have been the site of the non-sacrifice of Yitschak, where it was a ram and not a heifer that was killed.
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| The Standing Stones of Stenness, Orkney Islands |
As noted above, Genesis 12:8 states that this is where Av-Ram built an altar on his arrival in Kena'an. Given that he came from the moon-shrine of Charan, which was the home of his "nephew" Betu-El, there is much that can be deduced from his making this his first stop. We can presume that the altar - probably a dolmen-altar like the one in the illustration- was already there, but that he used it for sacrifice. Being a moon-priest, and Beit-El being a place for the worship of calves, we can deduce that what he sacrificed was a heifer, and that what he worshiped was a golden calf - a supposition confirmed in 1 Kings 12:28. Given that the place was originally named Luz, which in Yehudit means "an almond tree", we can also reckon that these events may have taken place within a sacred grove of almond trees (see below). These are precisely the elements which the Rabbinic editors sought to expurgate in their pretense that YHVH was already worshipped in those ancient times.
Genesis 13:2 ff states that Av-Ram also came here on his return from Mitsrayim, and that it was here that he parted with Lot. The role of Lot in the Aramaic journey south is worth exploring, Lot having probably been al-Lat originally, an Arabian deity who appears to have disappeared for many centuries, but who is remembered in the Qur'an as one of the trinity of goddesses (al-Uzza and Manat are the other two) who were the original pantheon at Mecca before Muhammad claimed it for al-Lah alone; they are, in fact, al-Lah's daughters (many Qur'anic references; see for example Surah 53:19 ff; the link given here contains a very interesting debate about their status in Islam).
Genesis 28:10 ff tells the extraordinary tale of Ya'akov's ladder, for which see the textual commentary.
Genesis 31:13 makes a seemingly tautological reference to Ha-El Beit-El, the god of Beit-El.
Genesis 35:11 ff (also 35:7 and 15) states that it was originally known as Luz. There is much dispute within the Genesis stories as to when it changed its name from Beit-El to Luz, or even if it did, rather than their being two adjacent places. Joshua 18:13, which describes the two as the same place, makes it seem to have been in the period of the Judges; but Joshua 16:2 differentiates Luz and Beit-El as separate sites, while Judges 1:26 has another town - significantly in Hittite territory - also called Luz: probably the town also known as Luweiziyeh, four miles north-west of Banyas (Caesarea Philippi). It may well be that the almond grove of Luz was in fact an entirely separate place from the dolmen and cromlech of Beit-El - indeed, there were probably many such almond-groves dotted about the land.
Genesis 35:8 identifies Beit-El with Rivkah's (Rebecca's) "nurse", the bee-goddess Devorah - who died and was buried there, under an oak tree which gave the shrine yet another name: Alon Bachot, the weeping oak, or "the oak of the weeping goddess"; a name that links back again to Charan and Betu-El, whose brother Yidlaph (probably an amalgamation of the Aramaean moon-goddess Yah with the Babylonian sun-god Dalphon; he reappears in the Esther story as one of the sons of Chaman) also means "weeping".
However Judges 4:5 makes clear that the Prophetess Devorah "dwelt under the palm-tree of Devorah between Ramah and Beit-El in Mount Ephrayim, and the Beney Yisra-El came up to her for judgement". This may well simply mean that Devorah had more than one sacred grove in the region, which is highly likely as she was essentially the goddess of all megalithic burial-grounds. The date-palm links her to Tamar. Devorah as Rivkah's "nurse" probably means that it was through the already-accepted worship of the bee-goddess that worship of the cow-goddess was able to be brought into Kena'an.
Luz, as noted, means "an almond-tree" and is always sacred. See, for example, Genesis 30:37, where Ya'akov uses it, along with hazel and chestnut, to make the magic wand with which he will transform Lavan's white sheep to speckled. But there is also the word SHAK'ED (שָׁקֵד), likewise meaning "an almond", and the sacredness of the tree and its nut can most easily be understood in this second term. Genesis 43:11 has Ya'akov instructing his sons to take some with them as a present for Yoseph. Jeremiah 1:11 uses it as a metaphor for the speedy fulfillment of the divine covenant. More significantly, Aharon's rod - his caduceus pole or divining instrument, the symbol of his shamanistic powers - was cut from an almond tree (Numbers 17:8, Hebrews 9:4 ). The candlestick for the Ark was designed to look like almond buds" (Exodus 25:33/34 ). It is probable that Luz denotes the wild almond, while Shak'ed denotes the cultivated variety.
One last observation on this subject: like many "pagan" practices officially outlawed by Judaism, worship of the almond continues to this day, in a form that has been modified to make it "acceptable". So the festival of Tu B'Shvat, originally the rites of the moon-goddess Yah when she became full on the 15th of the month of Shvat, focuses on her chief symbol, the almond - as evidenced, for one of a possible thousand examples that you can surf for yourself, by clicking to this ultra-orthodox page.
In Greek a "baetylos" is a cone-shaped pillar (a "pillow of stones" in the figurative language of Genesis 28:10-19), periodically anointed with oil, wine or blood, in which a god dwelt. It was often said to have fallen from the heavens (cf the Thunderstone to Terminus at Rome, the Palladium of Troy, the Ka'aba at Mecca). In all likelihood the Greek word, like most Greek words and all their alphabet, was derived from the same Phoenician that sourced Yehudit, or even from an earlier Hittite word, which fed all three languages.
Baetylus was a son of the sky-god Ouranus and the earth-mother Gaia, as was El. The Greeks probably took their version of this from the Phoenician as well.
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