Ba'l
Definition
Ba'l — Baal — was the prominent deity of the ancient Levantine and Canaanite religious systems, worshipped as a lord of storm, rain, and fertility, and associated with temples that included practices deeply incompatible with the monotheism the prophets were sent to restore. Ilyas confronted the people's attachment to Baal with a directness that echoes Ibrahim's confrontation of his father's idols: 'Do you call upon Baal?' The absurdity of preferring a fabricated deity — unable to speak, to hear, to act — over the Creator of the universe is the same absurdity that every prophet in the Qisas has confronted in different forms. Ibn Kathir uses Ba'l to illustrate the persistent human susceptibility to worshipping the created rather than the Creator.
As understood in the classical tradition of Ibn Kathir and the scholars of his school.
Appears in
1 book in the library
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