Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

BAALBEK

A town situated near the source of the Orontes River, on the eastern edge of the fertile Beqaʿa Valley. Baalbek was named Heliopolis by the Greeks after the classical sun-deity, who was identified with Baal during the Hellenistic period. The Semitic name indicates an earlier occupation or shrine, but no evidence for pre-Hellenistic occupation has been found.

The city was the cultic center of the so-called Heliopolitan triad: Jupiter (Zeus) Heliopolitanus, Mercury (Hermes), and Venus (Aphrodite). Their syncretic Semitic counterparts were Baal with Jupiter and Atargatis with Venus; the local equivalent of Mercury remains problematic. One of the city’s temples is depicted on late 2nd/early 3rd-century a.d. coins.

The visible architectural remains date to the Roman period and include a major temple complex with a large staircase and ceremonial gateway leading through a hexagonal court into a vast courtyard. Pools of water flanked a central altar. West of the courtyard was the Jupiter temple, placed on a rectangular platform that raised it above the surrounding buildings. South of the Jupiter temple is the so-called temple of Bacchus, although it may have been dedicated to Venus. Late in the 4th century a Christian basilica replaced the central altar, and a mosque was placed west of the temple of Bacchus after the Arab conquest. Not far from the acropolis is a quarry where stone for the temples was prepared.

Thomas W. Davis

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

BAALBEK

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)