Eshmun

They gave these annual awakening festivals that always involved fire [laughs] through death and rebirth.

Uh, Sidon had, uh, Astarte and the healer god Eshmun.

I can't get through this without mentioning ties to certain pop culture things.

Yeah, absolutely.

And through her desire to see her wee girl set free, she comes and she falls at the feet of Jesus.

I wonder, why do we not find her within the temple of one of her Canaanite gods, such as Eshmun, the Canaanite god of healing? Well, perhaps, probably even, she had already tried those little gods of her own culture and background, but found them to be impotent.

Whether she had or not, though, we encounter her here, not heading for a temple, but heading for a house.

A house where Jesus happens to be because word has got out to that effect.

Marduk, the champion deity, ultimately subdues chaos by killing Tiamat and casting her body out of the god's presence, with half forming the earth's seas and the other half the sky.

People worshipped an important Phoenician deity named Eshmun of Sidon on the Mediterranean coastal plain of northern Syria-Palestine to the west of Mesopotamia.

Eshmun was the god of medicine, just like the Greek deity Asclepius, whose symbol was a serpent.

And again, like the Greek Asclepius, Eshmun of Sidon apparently oversaw the growth and use of medicinal herbs, poison cures, and potent charms.

Since devotees knew about antidotes for poisons and medicinal herbs from the ground, it seems only natural that they represented both Eshmun and Asclepius as serpents.

Phoenician inscriptions refer to Eshmun as Adonai, my lord, parallel to the Hebrew Adonai, a reference to Jehovah.

Over a long period and a wide geographical region, Eshmun has exerted its influence.

Scholars believe that coins from the Roman period depicting the figure of a youthful god standing between two serpents reflect the cult of the god Eshmun, the healer.