“I’ve no idea why this is so important to you. I’ve only heard that the Greek Apollo is associated with the Semitic Baal.”
I understand you’ve heard it. But what is the evidence for that claim? Is there any? Any at all?
I can’t say that there was no late conflation of the two gods and their symbols in the Near East. Creuzer claimed that in his famous (and seriously flawed book) Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der Griechen, but that book was (as I said) seriously flawed and now almost 200 years obsolete in information. And what Creuzer claimed only touched on late developments (if even true) in the Near East and not the origins of the cult of the god Apollo in Greece.
The only other source I can find that would make the same claim you made is a Swedenborgian one - and that’s enough to make me EXTREMELY hesitant to assume it is correct: http://www.swedenborgstudy.com/books/C.Th.Odhner_Mythology-Greeks-Romans/26.html on Swedenborg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Swedenborg
“The two being so important to their respective cultures, its seems like a logical connection.”
So hot dogs must actually be associated with eating real dogs because the two things are so important to the respective cultures of the U.S. and South Korea, right? And not only that but both names contain the word “dogs” so they must be not only related but one must be derived from the other. Before you complain please realize that what I just wrote here is very similar to what you’ve been saying about Apollo.
Facts are important. Truth is important. They should be important to you too.
I’m just saying. . .
I take it you’re a bit more into mythology than I am, then. Understandable. The only “facts” about it that matter to me is that all pagan mythologies are dubious if not outright Satanic in origin, even the ones that seem enlightened on the surface. They all lead back inevitably to the snake in Genesis.