Baal Worship
From Canaan, worship of Baʿal spread to Egypt by the Middle Kingdom and throughout the Mediterranean following the waves of Phoenician colonization in the early 1st millennium BCE. Baʿal Hammon was worshipped in the Tyrian colony of Carthage as their supreme god. He has been variously identified as a moon god and as Dagan, the grain god. Rather than the bull, Baʿal Hammon was associated with the ram and depicted with his horns. The archaeological record seems to bear out accusations in Roman sources that the Carthaginians burned their children as human sacrifices to Baal and Moloch. He was worshipped as Baʿal Karnaim ("Lord of the Two Horns"), particularly at an open-air sanctuary at Jebel Bu Kornein ("Two-Horn Hill") across the bay from Carthage. His consort was the goddess Tanit. Baʿal Hammon is identified with the Greek Cronos and the Roman Saturn as the Zabul Saturn. See Saturn Blood Worship.
Baal was a title and honorific meaning "owner", "lord" in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied to gods. The Hebrew Bible includes use of the term in reference to various Levantine deities, often with application towards Hadad, who was decried as a false god. That use was taken over into Christianity and Islam, sometimes under the form Beelzebub in demonology.
Baʿal is well-attested in surviving inscriptions and was popular in ancient Canaan. The worship of Baʿal eventually supplanted El as the leader of the gods and patron of kingship—was connected to the regions' dependence on rainfall for its agriculture, unlike Egypt and Mesopotamia, which focused on irrigation from their major rivers. The Lebanese city of Baalbeck was named after Baal.
Christianity refers to Baal, Beelzebub or Beelzebul as Satan, prince of the demons. The Quran mentions that Prophet Elias (Elijah) warned his people against Baʿal worship. [1]