Baal

The term “Ba’al” or just Baal, before it was eventually built up to be a name for the Judeo-Christian demon Bael, was an honorific title meaning master,  or lord that originated mainly in the Northwest Semitic region. The title refers to gods or patron deities of the cities located in the Levant, or the Assyrian equivalent of Belu. A “Baalist” is the term for a worshipper of Baal. Some texts used the term Baal in reference to Hadad, the Semitic god of wind, storms, fertility, agriculture, and also known as the ruler of Heaven. Baal has also been used in reference to human individuals. Ba’al was most commonly used as the spoken term for Hadad in the Semitic region because priests were the only individuals allowed to say the name of Hadad aloud. However, very few references made in the Bible refer to Hadad; instead, the term ba’al in the Bible is used to reference any of the other gods or idols worshipped by the locals of the different cities in that region.

In that context, the worship of Ba’al, or a “cult image”, was the worship of a false god, hence the following evolution of that idea to maintain that Baalists, or Baal worship was the worship of demons, or at least the unholy worship of false gods. What led to this also, was that many token or patron deities of the cities in that region had titles that began with Ba’al; as previously stated, it was merely meant as a prefix to a name, meaning lord or master. Actually, to further prove how innocuous the term was, it’s present day equivalent is Sir, or Mr. The feminine equivalent to Ba’al was Ba’alath or Ba’alat which meant, Lady. This caused confusion among the historians, because naturally, rather than learn the language and ask or inquire of the natives to the area, most took the term Ba’al to only mean Hadad, and gradually it evolved into a general term, and further ignorance resulted in the invention of Bael, the Christian-Jewish demon, known as a Duke of Hell, or possibly as Satan himself.