In the Bible, the prophet/warrior Gideon is the father of 70 sons, all of whom are killed by one of the brothers. King Ahab is the father of seventy sons, all of whom are killed by his conquerors. In ancient Canaanite myth, the god El, taking the form of a bull, “knew” the goddess Asherah (in the form of a cow) and fathers seventy sons/bull calves. In Greek myth, Heracles impregnates the seventy daughters of Thespius in one night (in some accounts it’s only fifty, just as his adversary Priam had fifty sons, but the number of Heracles’ total children is given as seventy).
Question: does anybody know if there was a particular mysticism associated with the number 70? The “70 sons” motif occurs far too often to be coincidental.
Correction: I can’t find any number other than “fifty” for the daughters of Thespius, but for the others the seventy stands, implying that this must be a semitic mysticism.
Of probable significance: Jezebel, wife of Ahab, was a worshipper of Baal and Ishtar/Ashtoreth, so the 70 sons deaths could have been symbolic as the fall of the gods with her. I’m not familiar with a link between Gideon and El, though.
Well, I’m not a numerology expert, and I have no clue how they come up with these things, but Googling “biblical numerology” brings up, as well as tons of psychic hotline websites :rolleyes: , this…