"During the first millennium BC, the Babylonians worshipped a deity under the title "Bel", meaning "lord", who was a syncretization of Marduk, Enlil, and the dying god Dumuzid. Bel held all the cultic titles of Enlil and his status in the Babylonian religion was largely the same. Eventually, Bel came to be seen as the god of order and destiny. The cult of Bel is a major component of the Jewish story of "Bel and the Dragon" from the apocryphal additions to Daniel. In the account, the Babylonians offer "twelve bushels of fine flour, twenty sheep, and fifty gallons of wine" every day to an idol of Bel and the food miraculously disappears overnight. The Persian king Cyrus the Great tells the Jewish wise man Daniel that the idol is clearly alive, because it eats the food that is offered to it, but Daniel objects that it "is only clay on the inside, and bronze on the outside, and has never tasted a thing." Daniel proves this by secretly covering the floor of the temple with ash. Daniel and Cyrus leave the temple and, when they return, Daniel shows the king the human footprints that have been left on the floor, proving that the food is really being eaten by the seventy priests of Bel. Bel is also mentioned in the writings of several Greek historians."
"Bel signifying "lord" or "master", is a title rather than a genuine name, applied to various gods in the Mesopotamian religion of Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia. The feminine form is Belit 'Lady, Mistress'. Linguistically Bel is an East Semitic form cognate with Northwest Semitic Baal with the same meaning"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Semitic_religion#Babylonia_and_AssyriaWhen the five planets were identified, they were associated with the sun and moon and connected with the chief gods of the Babylonian pantheon.
A bilingual list in the British Museum arranges the sevenfold planetary group in the following order:
Sin (the Moon)
Shamash (the Sun)
Marduk (Jupiter)
Ishtar (Venus)
Ninurta (Saturn)
Nabu (Mercury)
Nergal (Mars)
Rather than "sons of Israel", the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, suggests the "angelōn theou," or "angels of God", and a few versions even have huiōn theou (sons of God)."
Message too long. Click here to view full text.