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{"id":861,"date":"2014-08-24T12:35:36","date_gmt":"2014-08-24T16:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/davidmills\/?p=861"},"modified":"2014-08-25T10:48:27","modified_gmt":"2014-08-25T14:48:27","slug":"the-lord-of-the-fly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davidmills\/2014\/08\/the-lord-of-the-fly\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lord of the Fly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In case you were curious, the meaning of Beelzebub<\/a>, from the always interested Philologus writing in\u00a0Forward<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Beelzebub comes, via the Latin Bible, from Hebrew\u00a0ba\u2019al z\u2019vuv,<\/em>\u00a0literally \u201cLord [or Ba\u2019al] of the Fly.\u201d (Most people know this phrase better as \u201cLord of the Flies\u201d from the title of William Golding\u2019s best-selling 1954 novel, but in the Bible,\u00a0z\u2019vuv,<\/em>\u00a0\u201cfly,\u201d is in the singular.) Ba\u2019al was the ancient Canaanite sky god and the senior figure in the Canaanite pantheon, and Ba\u2019al Z\u2019vuv is mentioned in the first chapter of Kings II as the name of a Philistine deity who was worshipped by some Israelites, too. . . .<\/p>\n

Although some scholars have argued that flies were indeed associated with this god, the name\u00a0ba\u2019al z\u2019vuv<\/em>\u00a0is far more likely to be a jeering pun on the Canaanite\u00a0ba\u2019al z\u2019vul,<\/em>\u00a0\u201cLord of the Heavens.\u201d This seems clear from the Greek New Testament, where the name occurs several times as Beelzeboul.<\/p>\n

The article also describes the evolution of his place in the demonic hierarchy and The Testament of Solomon<\/em>, \u201can apocryphal work that, composed in Greek by either Jews or early Christians, purports to be an autobiographical account of King Solomon\u2019s magical dealings with demons.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"