Introduction

A number of colleagues have reacted adversely to my characterization in recent studies on the Ugaritic texts of the deity El as androgynous. It was in response to this criticism that I wrote the first draft of the present paper for a Festschrift in honour of Yitzhak Avishur in the summer of 2002. The present version has broadened it a little, and alluded to, but not merely repeated, other elements that I have already published, as well as adding new material, in order to address more directly than in the first draft some of the biblical passages which I shall maintain have a connection with the theme. This in turn will provide at least circumstantial evidence in support of my interpretation of the Ugaritic matieral.

By ‘androgyny’ in the ensuing discussion I mean not merely ‘bisexuality’ (as with an aphid or other invertebrate life-forms) or ‘hermaphroditism’, as having both male and female genitalia, and therefore a monster both in reality and in symbolism (as representing chaos), but rather a widespread metaphor, which has its origin in ancient conceptions of sexuality, concerning primordial deities and primordial men, who contain within themselves an archetype, later to be reified in the separated genders.