. 1887); R. Falckenberg, _History of Philosophy_, pp.
472-475 (trans. A. C. Armstrong, New York, 1893); Reichel, _Die
Sozietaetsphilosophie Franz v. Baaders_ (Tuebingen, 1901); Kuno Fischer,
_Zur hundertjaehrigen Geburtstagfeier Baaders_ (Erlangen, 1865).

BAAL, a Semitic word, which primarily signifies lord, owner or
inhabitant,[9] and then, in accordance with the Semitic way of looking at
family and religious relations, is specially appropriated to express the
relation of a husband to his wife and of the deity to his worshipper. In
the latter usage it indicated not that the god was the lord of the
worshipper, but rather the possessor of, or ruler in, some place or
district. In the Old Testament it is regularly written with the article,
_i.e._ "_the_ Baal"; and the baals of different tribes or sanctuaries were
not necessarily conceived as identical, so that we find frequent mention of
Baalim, or rather "_the_ Baalim" in the plural. That the Israelites even
applied the title of Baal to Yahweh himself is proved by the occurrence of
such names as Jerubbaal (Gideon), Eshbaal (one of Saul's sons) and Beeliada
(a son of David, 1 Chron. xiv. 7). The last name appears in 2 Sam. v. 16 as
Eliada, showing that El (God) was regarded as equivalent to Baal; cf. also
the name Be'aliah, "Yahweh is _baal_ or lord," which survives in 1 Chron.
xii. 5. However, when the name Baal was exclusively appropriated to
idolatrous worship (cf. Hos. ii. 16 seq.), abhorrence for the unholy word
was marked by writing _b[=o]sheth_ (shameful thing) for _baal_ in compound
proper names, and thus we get the usual forms Ishbosheth, Mephibosheth.

The great difficulty which has been felt by investigators in determining
the character and attributes of the god Baal mainly arises from the
original appellative sense of the word, and many obscure points become
clear if we remember that when a title becomes a proper name it may be
appropriated by different peoples to quite distinct deities. Baal being
originally a title, and not a proper name, the innumerable baals could be
distinguished by the addition of the name of a place or of some special
attribute.[10] Accordingly, the baals are not to be regarded necessarily as
local variations of one and the same god, like the many Virgins or Madonnas
of Catholic lands, but as distinct _numina_. Each community could speak of
its own baal, although a collection of allied communities might share the
same cult, and naturally