Volcanoes of Turkey (18 volcanoes) Volcanoes of Turkey – information / VolcanoDiscovery

Acigöl-Nevsehir | Akyarlar | Ararat | Erciyes Mountain | Girekol | Göllü Mountain | Hasan Dagi| Karaca Mountain | Montenegro | Karapinar | Kars | Kenger | Koruhüyüğü | Kula| NemrutMountain | Sandal | Suphan Mountain | Tendürek Mountain

Did a Volcano Inspire the bible god?

Exodus 3:12 And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.” Exodus 13:21 By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light so that they could travel by day or night. Exodus 15:7 In the greatness of your majesty you threw down those who opposed you. You unleashed your burning anger; it consumed them like stubble. Exodus 19:18 Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the LORD descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently.

Exodus 24:17 To the Israelites the glory of the LORD looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain.

Exodus: 32:14 And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.

Exodus 40:38 So the cloud of the LORD was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the Israelites during all their travels.

Leviticus 9:24 Fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the fat portions on the altar. And when all the people saw it, they shouted for joy and fell facedown.

Leviticus 10:2 So fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD.

Leviticus 10:6 Then Moses said to Aaron and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, “Do not let your hair become unkempt and do not tear your clothes, or you will die and the LORD will be angry with the whole community. But your relatives, all the Israelites, may mourn for those the LORD has destroyed by fire.

Numbers 11:1 Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the LORD, and when he heard them his anger was aroused. Then fire from the LORD burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.

Numbers 11:3 So that place was called Taberah, because fire from the LORD had burned among them.

Numbers 14:14 And they will tell the inhabitants of this land about it. They have already heard that you, LORD, are with these people and that you, LORD, have been seen face to face, that your cloud stays over them, and that you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

Numbers 16:35 And fire came out from the LORD and consumed the 250 men who were offering the incense.

Numbers 26:10 The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them along with Korah, whose followers died when the fire devoured the 250 men. And they served as a warning sign.

Deuteronomy 1:33 who went ahead of you on your journey, in fire by night and in a cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and to show you the way you should go.

Deuteronomy 4:11 You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while it blazed with fire to the very heavens, with black clouds and deep darkness.

Deuteronomy 4:12 Then the LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice.

Deuteronomy 4:15 You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully.

Deuteronomy 4:24 For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

Deuteronomy 4:33 Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived?

Deuteronomy 4:36 From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire.

Deuteronomy 5:4 The LORD spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain.

Deuteronomy 5:5 At that time I stood between the LORD and you to declare to you the word of the LORD, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain.

Deuteronomy 5:22 These are the commandments the LORD proclaimed in a loud voice to your whole assembly there on the mountain from out of the fire, the cloud and the deep darkness; and he added nothing more. Then he wrote them on two stone tablets and gave them to me.

Deuteronomy 5:23 When you heard the voice out of the darkness, while the mountain was ablaze with fire, all the leaders of your tribes and your elders came to me.

Deuteronomy 5:24 And you said, “The LORD our God has shown us his glory and his majesty, and we have heard his voice from the fire. Today we have seen that a person can live even if God speaks with them.

Deuteronomy 5:25 But now, why should we die? This great fire will consume us, and we will die if we hear the voice of the LORD our God any longer.

Deuteronomy 5:26 For what mortal has ever heard the voice of the living God speaking out of fire, as we have, and survived?

Deuteronomy 9:3 But be assured today that the LORD your God is the one who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them; he will subdue them before you. And you will drive them out and annihilate them quickly, as the LORD has promised you.

Deuteronomy 9:10 The LORD gave me two stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God. On them were all the commandments the LORD proclaimed to you on the mountain out of the fire, on the day of the assembly.

Deuteronomy 9:15 So I turned and went down from the mountain while it was ablaze with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands.

Deuteronomy 10:4 The LORD wrote on these tablets what he had written before, the Ten Commandments he had proclaimed to you on the mountain, out of the fire, on the day of the assembly. And the LORD gave them to me.

Deuteronomy 18:16 For this is what you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the LORD our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.”

Deuteronomy 33:2 He said: “The LORD came from Sinai and dawned over them from Seir; he shone forth from Mount Paran. He came with myriads of holy ones from the south, from his mountain slopes.

2 Samuel 22:9 Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it.

Golan Heights dormant volcano 

“Avital Volcanic Park is located on the site of a dormant volcano that last exploded between 100,000 to 700,000 years ago.

The explosion that rocked the site at the time is what formed the black basaltic rocks that now exist on the Golan Heights.” – Read the full story ›

Mount Bental, Golan Heights, Israel

“Mount Bental is part of a chain of volcanoes spanning along the eastern edge of Israel’s Golan Heights, you can witness spectacular views of the Hula Valley, Mount Hermon and the Golan. Its last eruption is said to have occurred more than 50,000 years ago.” Mount Bental, Golan Heights, Israel

“So myths about volcano gods had to come from somewhere than Israel. As rge DNA of Some Jews traces 4,000 years ago from the Lake Van Region, the largest lake in Turkey, lies in the far east of that country in the provinces of Van and Bitlis, Eastern Anatolia. It receives water from numerous small streams that descend from the surrounding mountains. Lake Van is one of the world’s largest endorheic lakes (having no outlet) – a volcanic eruption blocked the original outlet from the basin in ancient times. A test drilling in the lake detected evidence of 15 volcanic eruptions in the past 20,000 years. The lake was the center of the Armenian kingdom of Araratfrom about 3,000 years ago, afterwards of the Satrapy of Armina, Kingdom of Greater Armenia, and the Armenian Kingdom of Vaspurakan. Along with Lake Sevan in today’s Armeniaand Lake Urmia in today’s Iran, Van was one of the three great lakes of the Armenian Kingdom, referred to as the seas of Armenia ” – Lake Van – Wikipedia

Ararat volcano?

The 5165-m-high, double-peaked stratovolcano Mount Ararat, also known as Agri Dagi, is Turkey’s highest, largest volume, and easternmost volcano. Background:

Glacier-clad Ararat, along with its twin volcano, 3925-m-high Kucuk Ararat (or Lesser Ararat), covers an area of 1000 sq km at the eastern end of a SSW-ESE line of volcanoes extending from Nemrut Dagi. Construction of the Greater and Lesser Ararat volcanoes was followed by a period of extensive flank eruptions, many erupted along N-S-trending fissures. The initial stage of flank eruptions produced a cluster of cinder cones and dacitic-rhyolitic lava domes surrounding Greater Ararat and a series of pyroclastic cones and domes on the western flank of Lesser Ararat. Late-stage activity formed large pyroclastic cones lower on the flanks of the two volcanoes. Ararat appears to have been active during the 3rd millennium BC; pyroclastic-flow deposits overlie early Bronze Age artifacts and human remains.” Ararat

“Despite the scholarly consensus that the “mountains of Ararat” of the Book of Genesis do not refer specifically to Mt. Ararat, it has been widely accepted in Christianity as the resting place of Noah’s Ark. It is the principal national symbol of Armenia and has been considered a sacred mountain by Armenians. It is featured prominently in Armenian literature and art and is an icon for Armenian irredentism. Mount Ararat forms a near-quadripoint between Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Iran. Ararat (sometimes Ararad) is the Greek version of the Hebrew spelling of the name Urartu, a kingdom that existed in the Armenian plateau in the 9th–6th centuries BC. German orientalist and Bible critic Wilhelm Gesenius speculated that the word “Ararat” came from the Sanskrit word Arjanwartah, meaning “holy ground. Mount Ararat consists of two distinct volcanic cones, Greater Ararat and Lesser Ararat (Little Ararat). The western volcanic cone, Greater Ararat, is a steep-sided volcanic cone that is larger and higher than the eastern volcanic cone. The chronology of Holocene volcanic activity associated with Mount Ararat is documented by either archaeological excavations, oral history, historical records, or a combination of these data, which provide evidence that volcanic eruptions of Mount Ararat occurred in 2500–2400 BC, 550 BC, possibly in 1450 AD and 1783 AD, and definitely in 1840 AD. Archaeological evidence demonstrates that explosive eruptions and pyroclastic flows from the northwest flank of Mount Ararat destroyed and buried at least one Kura–Araxes culturesettlement and caused numerous fatalities in 2500–2400 BC. Oral histories indicated that a significant eruption of uncertain magnitude occurred in 550 BC.”  Mount Ararat – Wikipedia

Mt. Ararat 

“A mountainous plateau in western Asia from which flow in different directions the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Aras and the Choruk rivers. Its general elevation is 6,000 feet above the sea. Lake Van, which like the Dead Sea has no outlet, is nearly in its center. The Babylonian name was Urartu, the consonants being the same in both words. In 2 Kings 19:37 and Isaiah 37:38 the word is translated in the King James Version Armenia, which correctly represents the region designated. It was to Armenia that the sons of Sennacherib fled. In Jeremiah 51:27 Ararat is associated with Minni and Ashkenaz, which according to the Assyrian monuments lay just to the east of Armenia. In Genesis 8:4 the ark is said to have rested “upon the mountains of Ararat,” i.e. in the mountainous region of Armenia, the plural showing that the mountain peak known as Ararat was not referred to. This peak is of volcanic origin and lies outside the general region, rising from the lowlands of the Araxes (Aras) River to a height of 17,000 feet, supported by another peak seven miles distant, 13,000 feet high. It is only in comparatively modern times that the present name has been given to it. The Armenians still call it Massis, but believe, however, that Noah was buried at Nachitchevan near its base.” Bible Map: Ararat 

“The original name of the kingdom occupying Armenia was Bianias, which Ptolemy transliterated Byana. Later the “B” was modified into “V” and we have the modern Van, the present capital of the province. The “mountains of Ararat” on which the ark rested were probably those of the Kurdish range which separates Armenia from Mesopotamia and Kurdistan. In the Babylonian account the place is called “the mountain of Nizir” which is east of Assyria. Likewise Berosus locates the place “in the mountain of the Kordyaeans” or Kurds (Ant., I, iii, 6), while the Syriac version has Hardu in Gen. 8:4 instead of Ararat. The Kurds still regard Jebel Judi, a mountain on the boundary between Armenia and Kurdistan, as the place where the ark rested.” Bible Map: Ararat 

“This elevated plateau of Armenia has still many attractions, and is eminently suited to have been the center from which the human race spread in all directions. Notwithstanding its high elevation the region is fertile, furnishing abundant pasture, and producing good crops of wheat and barley, while the vine is indigenous. Moreover there are unmistakable indications that in early historic times there was a much more abundant rainfall in all that region than there is now, so that the climate was then better adapted to the wants of primitive man. This is shown by the elevated beaches surrounding lakes Van, Urumiah, and, indeed, all the lakes of central Asia. Great quantities of mammoth bones have been found in these bordering lacustrine deposits corresponding to those found in the glacial and postglacial deposits of Europe and America. It should, also, be remembered that the drying up of the waters of the flood is represented to have been very gradual-it being 170 days from the time the waters began to subside before Noah could disembark. It may have been many centuries before the present conditions were established, the climate, meanwhile, being modified to a corresponding degree by the proximity of vast surrounding bodies of water.” Bible Map: Ararat 

“Armenia abounds in inscriptions carved on the rocks, altar stones and columns, but they have been only imperfectly translated. The script is cuneiform and each letter has only a single phonetic character attached to it. But there are introduced a good many borrowed ideographs which have assisted in the decipherment. According to Sayce this cuneiform syllabary was introduced from Assyria after the conquest of Shalmaneser II in the 9th century B.C. AR’ARAT, the Scriptures no where speak of a Mt. Ararat, but of the mountains of Ararat. The name Ararat is found in the English bible only in Gen. 8:4, Jer. 51:27, but in the Hebrew it occurs in Isaiah 37:38 although translated Armenia and so also in 2 Kings 19:37. In the latter passage the event described took place in Armenia as we know from other history. Ararat is only another name for Armenia which was one of three ancient associated kingdoms as Jer. 51:27 shows. No particular mountain was specified in Scripture, and that mountain now pointed out in Armenia, 500 ms. n. of Babylon, and called Mt. Massis by the Armenians, and Mt. Ararat by travelers, seems first to have been announced as the mount Ararat by one Rubruquis, a traveler, in about Asher Dan 1250, as Bochart says. This opinion seems to have been derived from St. Jerome. But more ancient writers, as Berosus and the Chaldee paraphrast Jonathan with other historians and early commentators, think that the high range, 50 ms. n. of Nineveh, is the true resting place of the Ark, in Armenia. Mt. Massis is 17,750 ft. above the sea and rises from a plain at the e. end of a range of many miles in length. The older claimant, of which we have just spoken, is called Mt. Kudur, the meaning of this word being “the great ship.“ Bible Map: Ararat

“ARME’NIA, see Ararat. Anciently it was associated with Ararat; the Assyrian monuments show that the country into which the sons of Sennacherib escaped, see 2 Kings 19:37, was Armenia, but called Ararat in the Hebrew. It is a high mountainous land beginning 50 ms. n. of Nineveh with several high mountain ranges, w. of the Caspian. In very ancient times, Jer. 51:27, there were three kingdoms and the entire district was, probably, called Togarmah. It was, as a whole, bounded w. by the upper Euphrates; e. by the lower part of the Caspian; s. by lat. 36 50′ and n. by lat. 41 40’.” Bible Map: Ararat

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First infertility diagnosis made 4,000 years ago discovered in cuneiform tablet in Turkey. 

First infertility diagnosis made 4,000 years ago

This reminds me of the Abraham story Genesis 12: 1 The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
 land I will show you. 2 “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.“4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran.

4,091/2091 BC God Sends Abram to Egypt Genesis 12

2090 BC The Famine in Canaan Genesis 12:10

2085 BC Abram and Lot Part Ways Genesis 13

2085 BC Abram Promised Many Descendants Genesis 13:14

2084 BC Abram Rescues Lot Genesis 14

2081 BC God’s Covenant with Abram Genesis 15

2081 BC Sarai and Hagar Genesis 16

2080 BC Ishmael Born Genesis 16:15

2067 BC The Covenant of Circumcision Genesis 17

2067 BC God Promises the Birth of Isaac Genesis 18

2067 BC The Destruction of Sodom Genesis 19

2067 BC Abraham, Sarah and Abimelech Genesis 20

2066 BC Isaac Born Genesis 21

2064 BC Hagar and Ishmael Sent Away Genesis 21:8

2057 BC The Treaty at Beersheba Genesis 21:22

2054 BC The Offering of Isaac Genesis 22

2030 BC Death and Burial of Sarah Genesis 23

2026 BC Isaac Marries Rebekah Genesis 24

2006 BC Birth of Jacob and Esau Genesis 25

1991 BC Death of Abraham Genesis 25:5 ref

“Harran was a major ancient city in Upper Mesopotamia whose site is near the modern village of Altınbaşak, Turkey, 28 miles southeast of Şanlıurfa. The location is in a district of ŞanlıurfaProvince that is also named “Harran”. A few kilometers from the village of Altınbaşak are the archaeological remains of ancient Harran, a major commercial, cultural, and religious center first inhabited in the Early Bronze Age III (3rd millennium BCE) period. The earliest records of Harran come from Ebla tablets (late 3rd millennium BCE). In its prime Harran was a major Assyrian city which controlled the point where the road from Damascus joins the highway between Ninevehand Carchemish. This location gave Harran strategic value from an early date. Because Harran had an abundance of goods that passed through its region, it became a target for raids. In the 18th century, Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad I (1813–1781 BCE) launched an expedition to secure the Harranian trade route.” https://lnkd.in/eUiyFUf

“The Abraham story cannot be definitively related to any specific time, and it is widely agreed that the patriarchal age, along with the exodus and the period of the judges, is a late literary construct that does not relate to any period in actual history.”

“Abraham, originally Abram, is the common patriarch of the three Abrahamic religions. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the Covenant, the special relationship between the Jewish people and God; in Christianity, he is the prototype of all believers, Jewish or Gentile; and in Islam he is seen as a link in the chain of prophets that begins with Adam and culminates in Muhammad.[2]

The narrative in Genesis revolves around the themes of posterity and land. Abraham is called by God to leave the house of his father Terah and settle in the land originally given to Canaan but which God now promises to Abraham and his progeny. Various candidates are put forward who might inherit the land after Abraham; and, while promises are made to Ishmael about founding a great nation, Isaac, Abraham’s son by his half-sister Sarah, inherits God’s promises to Abraham. Abraham purchases a tomb (the Cave of the Patriarchs) at Hebron to be Sarah’s grave, thus establishing his right to the land; and, in the second generation, his heir Isaac is married to a woman from his own kin, thus ruling the Canaanites out of any inheritance. Abraham later marries Keturah and has six more sons; but, on his death, when he is buried beside Sarah, it is Isaac who receives “all Abraham’s goods”, while the other sons receive only “gifts” (Genesis 25:5–8).” https://lnkd.in/enKmTMX

Abram married Sarah (Sarai), who was barren. Terah, with Abram, Sarai, and Lot, then departed for Canaan, but settled in Haran/Harran

“Haran is a place mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. almost universally identified with Harran, a city whose ruins lie within present-day Turkey. Haran first appears in the Book of Genesis as the home of Terah and his descendants, and as Abraham‘s temporary home. Later biblical passages list Haran among some cities and lands subjugated by Assyrian rulers and among Tyre‘s trading partners. 

where Terah died at the age of 205.[Genesis 11:27–32] God had told Abram to leave his country and kindred and go to a land that he would show him, and promised to make of him a great nation, bless him, make his name great, bless them that bless him, and curse them who may curse him.[Genesis 12:1–3] Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran with his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and the substance and souls that they had acquired, and traveled to Shechem in Canaan.[Genesis 12:4–6] https://lnkd.in/ev2dzwR)

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Around 7,200 years ago spread both European-related dogs into the levant (Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey) and Iranian-related dogs across the Near East. ref

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“Map of Semitic languages and statistically inferred dispersals, Beginning origin about ca. 4500-3500 BCE or around 6,500 to 5,600 years ago. One hypothesized location of the divergence of ancestral Semitic from Afroasiatic between the African coast of the Red Sea and the Near East is also indicated. Since all modern Semitic languages can be traced back to a common ancestor, Semiticists have placed importance on locating the Urheimat of the Proto-Semitic language. Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical reconstructed proto-language ancestral to the Semitic languages.” ref

“Semitic languages occur in written form from a very early historical date in West Asia, with East Semitic Akkadian and Eblaite texts (written in a script adapted from Sumerian cuneiform) appearing from the 30th century BCE and the 25th century BCE in Mesopotamia and the north eastern Levant respectively. Semitic languages include the UgariticPhoenicianAramaicHebrewSyriacArabic, and ancient South Arabian alphabets.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.

  • By day the “Bible God” was in a cloud pillar.
  • By night the “Bible God” was in a fire pillar.

Volcano deity?

“A volcano deity is a deification of a volcano, including:

Nature deity

“In nature worship, a nature deity is a deity in charge of forces of nature, such as a water deityvegetation deitysky deitysolar deityfire deity, or any other naturally occurring phenomena such as mountains, trees, or volcanoes. Accepted in panentheismpantheismdeismpolytheismanimismtotemismshamanism, and paganism, the deity embodies natural forces and can have various characteristics, such as that of a mother goddess, “Mother Nature“, or lord of the animals.” ref

Volcano Gods?

VOLCANO GODS……and their commonalities…..

BROUGHT PEOPLE OUT OF BONDAGE?

Pagan Volcano Gods

Anganju‘s significance in Cuba in the past is most probably due in part to the fact that he was said to have delivered people out of bondage and helped one to carry the heaviest of burdens.” ref

Abrahamic Volcano God ‘Yahweh’

Exodus 20:2 am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” ref

OFFERINGS / SACRIFICES / APPEASEMENT

Pagan Volcano Gods

“When the gods seem restless, believers make offerings of vegetables, money, chickens, and even goats to appease them as well as to bring prosperity. Oldoinyo Lengai is also a holy mountain for the Maasai people, just like Namibia’s Ovahimba people believe in their holy fire. He said the Maasai people use the mountain as a site to conduct rituals such as sacrifices and prayers.” ref

“The (Inca) children were sacrificed as part of a religious ritual, known as capacocha. They walked hundreds of miles to and from ceremonies in Cuzco and were then taken to the summit of Llullaillaco (yoo-yeye-YAH-co), given chicha (maize beer), and, once they were asleep, placed in underground niches, where they froze to death. Only beautiful, healthy, physically perfect children were sacrificed, and it was an honor to be chosen. According to Inca beliefs, the children did not die, but joined their ancestors and watched over their villages from the mountaintops like angels.” ref

“The name “Fuji” most likely derives from an Ainu word meaning “fire” or “deity of fire”. The Japanese believed that the god was very powerful, so it needed to be placated. A shrine was built at the foot of the volcano in AD 806 in order to keep the mountain from erupting. Masaya (Mayan volcano god). The Chorotega people used to sacrifice virgins by throwing them into the volcano, hoping that the Goddess would provide divine oracles in return for the sacrifice.” ref

Abrahamic Volcano God ‘Yahweh’

If the offering to the LORD is a burnt offering of birds, he is to offer a dove or a young pigeon. Leviticus 1:14″ ref

BATTLE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL/

Monadalkni flew into a rage and called down the Curse of Fire. The top of Moy-Yaina exploded. Five great bursts sent ash, boulders, and fire high into the sky. A devastating flood of flame and hot stones swept across the forests. Gmok’am’c, the Good Chief who made his dwelling on Mt. Shasta, heard their prayers and was moved by their sacrifice. He came down to battle the Chief of the World Below. The battle was terrible. The two mountains threw fire and rocks at each other. At last, the Good Chief thrust Monadalkni under Moy-Yaina, jamming debris down the entrance to the underworld to seal it.” ref

Christians of Europe saw Hekla as a doorway to the underworld and as one of two known entrances to Hell or Purgatory. When people would see lava bombs and other projectiles fly from the volcanoes crater, they believed the fragments were actually spirits. These bombs often hissed as they flew (due to the cooler temperature of the air) and these noises were interpreted as the souls screaming out in pain. Because Hekla was associated with the underworld, people abroad also thought that it was a meeting place for witches and magicians, and patrons of dark magic. Still, others saw Iceland’s jagged lava flows and rugged mountains as an ancient battlefield. It was on this battlefield where immortal gods had once waged war against one another. As they fought, they had shaped the land with blows of fists and swords. Nearly every myth and legend about the volcano is in some way connected to evil and the demonic.” ref

The Klamath Indians of the Pacific Northwest tell a legend about a fight between two chiefs. Llao was the chief of the Below World and was at Mount Mazama in Oregon. Skell was the chief of the Above World and stood at the summit of Mount Shasta in northern California. The two mountains are only a hundred miles apart. As darkness covered the land the two chiefs threw rocks and flames at each other. Llao, injured, fell back inside of Mount Mazama and was never seen again.” ref

CHARIOTS / CARRIAGES

Pagan Volcano Gods

“They believe that when it expels hot lava, Merapi is really sending golden carriages to the South Sea, the kingdom of Nyai Ratu Kidul (Queen of the South Sea), for the feast. However, he (Agni) is feared by nature. When he gets angry he can burn trees with his fire and burns the grass with his chariot’s wheels while raging thru the forest.” ref

Pele is a skilled rider of the holua, a wooden sled that slides down steep stone ramps. Papalauahi and other chiefs challenged Pele to see who was the best holua rider. Papalauahi proved by far to be the most skilled. Pele lost her temper. She produced a great flood of lava which overran many of the other chiefs and onlookers.” ref

“MOUNT Cameroon, also called Mount Fako, also called Buea Mountain but most fondly called “The chariot of the gods” is the only mountain in Cameroon which has also been recorded as a volcanic mountain, with a horrifying eruption record Cameroonians have been trying to erase from memory for over 10 years. Mount Fako is believed to be guarded against erupting again by a man-eater god named Epasa Moto. Efasa-Moto is the folkloric god of the Fako Mountain.” ref

Abrahamic Volcano God ‘Yahweh’

Isaiah 66:15 See, the LORD is coming with fire, and his chariots are like a whirlwind; he will bring down his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.

Psalm 104:3 and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. 

Jeremiah 4:13 Look! He advances like the clouds, his chariots come like a whirlwind, his horses are swifter than eagles. Woe to us! We are ruined!” ref

GOD THE ALMIGHTY

Pagan Volcano Gods

“According to Javanese culture expert Suryanto Sastroatmodjo, in Javanese culture, a volcano occupies an important position. It is also referred to as the Sang Hyang Dahana Giri, a representation of the possessor of the universe, God the Almighty.” ref

CHIMNEY / FURNACE

Pagan Volcano Gods

“Centuries ago, the people living in this area believed that Vulcano was the chimney of the forge of Vulcan – the blacksmith of the Roman gods. When Hephaestus got angry he would heat up his furnace until the volcanoes would erupt.  When he works, sparks and flames fly out of the volcanoes that he works in.” ref

Abrahamic Volcano God ‘Yahweh’

Matthew 13:42 And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

1 Kings 8:51 For they be thy people, and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest forth out of Egypt, from the midst of the furnace of iron.

Deut. 4.11, 12 and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.” ref

ANGER/REVENGE

Pagan Volcano Gods

“Goddess Pele was and still is famous for the different forms she can be and for the fiery rage she would go into when her temper got high. Some Hawaiians believe that Pele can cause earthquakes by stamping her feet and volcanic eruptions by striking the ground with a stick. The chain of volcanoes in Hawaii were formed when Pele and her older sister Namakaokahai had a fight.” ref

Mt. Fuji is the source of many myths, underscoring its importance in Japanese society; it has been the home of multiple deities, including the goddess Sengen, also known as the Goddess of Fuji, whose temple was once said to reside on the summit of the mountain (1). In the days of religious pilgrimages to Mt. Fuji, it is said that Sengen would throw from the mountain any pilgrims that were impure of heart (1).” ref

“Many interpret an eruption on Merapi as a sign that the volcano deity has been disrespected by improper behavior or thought. He said when the mountain (Oldoinyo Lengai) erupts the Maasai people believe that their God is angry and they have to go to the mountain to placate him with prayers. The Klamath stories say that quarrels began, and war broke out between Llao and Skell. of Mount Mazama.” ref

There are two myths involving the recent eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886. One of these legends blames the eruption on the people of Te Ariki village for eating forbidden honey. Those in the village that ate the honey were killed, while people in nearby villages who did not eat it were allowed to live.” ref

Abrahamic Volcano God ‘Yahweh’

Lamentations 4:11 The LORD has given full vent to his wrath; he has poured out his fierce anger. He kindled a fire in Zion that consumed her foundations.

Numbers 16:35 And there came out a fire from the LORD, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense.

Hebrews 12:29 for our “God is a consuming fire.”

Exodus 15:7 In the greatness of your majesty you threw down those who opposed you. You unleashed your burning anger; it consumed them like stubble.

Psalm 97:3 Fire goes before him and consumes his foes on every side.

Hebrews 10:27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.

Numbers 11:1 Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the LORD, and when he heard them his anger was aroused. Then fire from the LORD burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.

Psalm 78:49 He unleashed against them his hot anger, his wrath, indignation, and hostility–a band of destroying angels.” ref

MIRACULOUS PREGNANCY AND BIRTH OF A SON

Konohana Sakuya Hime, Goddess of Mt. Fuji …There special ceremonies celebrate her miraculous pregnancy and the birth of her son in the midst of a fire.” ref

SERPENTS / RIVERS OF FIRE

Pagan Volcano Gods

Pompeii – Casa de Centenario

“At the center of each patio, families built small shrines consisting of mountains modeled from clay, stone, and potsherds crowned with crudely carved heads humans, or serpents. Some are clearly effigies of Popocatépetl. Beneath each carved stone head is a chimney that leads to a charcoal-filled chamber dug in the patio floor. Smoke would have puffed out from under each head in imitation of the ash and vapor plumes expelled from the crater during volcanic activity.  The most fascinating part of Sahagún’s account is that the mountain models are given human faces. In fact, the Spanish text indicates that each mountain was given two faces, one human and one serpent.” ref

“Behaviors attributed to Wy’east include hurtling of hot rocks from gaping holes, sending forth streams of liquid fire, loss of formerly high summits, and choking of valleys with rocks. (Aztecs) In fact, the Spanish text indicates that each mountain was given two faces, one human and one serpent. The dual nature of the mountains described in the Florentine Codex recalls the human and serpent images that crown the volcano effigies of the village shrines and suggests a conceptual continuity that spans some 1,500 years.” ref

“Because Erciyes was always snow-covered, the Hittites (second millennium to 1200 BCE) called it “Harkasos” or “White Mountain.” The Hittite pantheon included a number of mountain gods, including Erciyes. From the region of Imamkulu in Cappadocia, a 1300 BCE Hittite rock carving depicting a storm god above three mountain gods, furnishes proof of the Hittite veneration of Cappadocian volcanoes. A Hittite bas-relief from Malatya dating from 1000 BCE portrays the weather god (prototype of Zeus) slaying a coiled serpent. Flames and volcanic bombs issue from the serpent’s body, which might symbolize volcanoes.” ref

Abrahamic Volcano God ‘Yahweh’

Daniel 7:10 A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before him. Thousands upon thousands attended him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The court was seated, and the books were opened.” ref

ANTHROPOMORPHISM

Pagan Volcano Gods

“The most fascinating part of Sahagún’s account (on Popocatepetl) is that the mountain models are given human faces. In fact, the Spanish text indicates that each mountain was given two faces, one human and one serpent. The Gikuyu people believe their god, Ngai or Mwene Nvaga, lived on the top of Mount Kenya when he came down from the sky. They believed the mountain is the earthly throne of their god. The father of the tribe, Gikuyu, was said to meet with god on the top of the mountain. Source.” ref

The farmers who live on the flanks of Popocatépetl today see the volcano in human terms.

A male being with long wavy hair, (Popocatepetl) thought by some to represent the smoke tendrils that unfurl from the crater.

In 1993, the carbonatite has extruded forming the white top of Oldoinyo Lengai and this white peak in the heart of the Maasailand is thought to represent the beard of the Maasai God, which is why the Maasai people call it the Mountain of God (Oldoinyo Lengai is the world’s only active volcano).

THE OUREA were the Protogenoi (primeval gods) or rustic Daimones (spirits) of the mountains. Each and every Mountain was said to have its own ancient bearded god. Mountains were occasionally depicted in classical art as bearded old men rising up from between their craggy peaks.

Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes and fire. Pele had long thin strands of hair – which are supposed to represent the very runny lava produced by the volcano Kilauea, where she lives.

They made the images of each one of them in human form, from the dough which is called tzoalli, and they laid offerings before these images in veneration of these same mountains.” The most fascinating part of Sahagún’s account is that the mountain models are given human faces. (Aztec Popocatépetl). The farmers who live on the flanks of Popocatépetl today see the volcano in human terms. To them he is Gregorio. Since the eruption, the name Don Gregorio and the nickname Don Goyo have come into general usage. A male being with long wavy hair, thought by some to represent the smoke tendrils that unfurl from the crater.

Masaya (Mayan volcano god) is depicted as an old crone with black skin, drooping breasts, and white wispy hair, similar to the gases that rise from the volcano in Nicaragua that is named for her.

Abrahamic Volcano God ‘Yahweh’

Isaiah 30:27 See, the Name of the LORD comes from afar, with burning anger and dense clouds of smoke; his lips are full of wrath, and his tongue is a consuming fire.

Isaiag 30:30 And the LORD shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall show the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and tempest, and hailstones.

PSA 18:8 There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it.

Daniel 7:9 “As I looked, “thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze.

Revelation 1:14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; :15 And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.” ref

OFFERINGS OR BURIALS IN CAVES

Pagan Volcano Gods

“Tradition requires that he (Popocatepetl) be venerated with offerings placed in sacred caves high on the slopes of the mountain. The poet Virgil claimed that Mount Etna, in Sicily, is the place where the gods buried the giant Enceladus. (Aztec Popocatépetl). Tradition requires that he be venerated with offerings placed in sacred caves high on the slopes of the mountain, an example of the general Mesoamerican metaphor of caves on mountains and temples on pyramids.” ref

LOVERS / SISTERS / WIVES

Pagan Volcano Gods

Popocatapetl was a warrior who fell in love with Iztaccihuatl (they were two adjacent volcanoes). Iztaccihuatl’s father, however, did not favor the match and sent Popocatapetl to war, promising Iztaccihuatl as his bride when he returned. Iztaccihuatl’s father lied to her and told her that Popocatapetl was dead, and she died from grief. When Popocatapetl returned to find his love dead, he carried her up to the top of a mountain and climbed to the top of an adjacent mountain, carrying a torch to keep watch over her. As time passed, snow-covered the lovers and formed the two mountains Iztaccihuatl (which resembles a woman lying on her side) and Popocatapetl. Popocatepetl’s torch smokes to this day. Another tale tells the story of a quarrel between Pele and her older sister Namakaokahai, which led to the creation of the volcanic Hawaiian islands.” ref

“Filipino legend has it that the moon god, Apung Mallari, angered the sun god, Apung Suku. Apung Suku flung boulders at Apung Mallari’s home, Mt Pinatubo. Apung Mallari’s daughter tried to stop her uncle from destroying her home, but was struck down by a boulder. In grief and despair, Apung Mallari hid himself deep inside Mt Pinatubo, never to be heard from again until the day of June 15, 1991, when Mt Pinatubo erupted catastrophically.” ref

Legend has it that the great Tengger Crater was dug out with just half a coconut shell by an ogre smitten with love for a princess. When the king saw that the ogre might fulfill the task he had set, which was to be completed in a single night, he ordered his servants to pound rice. This caused the cocks to start crowing, thinking the dawn had broken. The coconut that the ogre flung away became Gunung Batok, and the trench became the Sand Sea – and the ogre died of exhaustion.” ref

In another myth, the volcanoes Tongariro, Taranaki, and Ruapehu were all giants. Taranaki and Ruapehu fell in love with Tongariro and proceeded to fight for her. Taranaki threw himself at Ruapehu, but Ruapehu sprayed scalding water from his lake one Taranaki. In retaliation, Taranaki threw stones at Ruapehu destroying his once beautiful summit. Ruapehu was able to swallow the fragments of his cone, melt them, and spit them back at Taranaki. Taranaki retreated up the coast to where he lives now, plotting his revenge (Vitaliano, 1973). The Maoris also have a legend involving two extinct volcanic cones made of basalt named Kakepuku and Kawa. Kakepuku loved Kawa but had to fight several opponents in order to win her over.” ref

Abrahamic Volcano Gods ‘Yahweh’

“According to a British theologian, who says the Almighty, also known as ‘Yahweh’, had a wife – a goddess named ‘Asherah’. J. Edward Wright, president of The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies and The Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, supported Stavrakopoulou’s findings, saying several Hebrew inscriptions mention Yahweh and his Asherah.” ref

CREATION STORY

Pagan Volcano Gods

The Koryak believe that creation began when the great raven swooped over the sea and dropped a feather, thus creating Kamchatka. Once he established land he created men to inhabit his creation. After some time Kutkh created a woman and placed her within the land for the men to continue creation. She was very beautiful and all of the men fell in love with her, desiring her affection deeply. As the men died they became mountains, turning the originally flat land into mountains. The mountains turned to volcanoes as the hearts of the men with in each mountain still burnt with fiery love for the woman. It is the hearts of these original men that created the mountains, which shaped the peninsula into what it is today.” ref

The creation of Mt. Fuji is itself a matter of legend in Japan – the tale goes that the mountain was born in a single day. The Modoc Indians of northern California have lived in the area a long time and have seen the volcano erupt. Their oral tradition explains how the volcano formed. The Chief of the Sky Spirits was cold in the Above World. One day he used a rotating stone to drill a hole in the sky. Once the hole was finished he pushed in snow and ice. The snow and ice piled up and almost reached the sky. Then, the Chief of the Sky Spirits stepped down to the Earth. He created the trees, rivers, animals, fish, and birds.” ref

BURIAL POSITIONS

Pagan Volcano Gods

“The Balinese sleep with their heads toward nearby volcanoes. And when the residents of Flores, the Nage, die they’re usually buried with their feet pointing in the direction of the ocean and their head toward Mount Ebulobo.” ref

Abrahamic Volcano God ‘Yahweh’

The deceased is laid in the grave (without a coffin if permitted by local law) on his or her right side, facing Mecca.  SourceThe traditional Christian method of positioning the coffin or shroud-covered body in the grave was to have the body with the head to the west, feet to the east. The body was placed face up. When it was not practical to use the west-east position for the grave, a north-south positioning was the next best option. There the body would then be laid on its side, head to the north and facing eastSourceJews are buried facing – that is, with toes facing – Jerusalem’s Temple MountSource.” ref

BURIAL PLACE

The Ancient Egyptians buried their dead in tombs in the hills.” ref

BANNING OF NAME

Pagan Volcano Gods

“A number of taboos also surround Merapi. One includes a prohibition on mentioning the volcano by name. Locals believe that to do so could bring them bad luck. When referring to Mt. Merapi they, therefore, prefer to use the words “”Si Mbah“” instead. Si Mbah means “”elderly person”” or “”respected figure””, used for the volcano as an expression of respect.
For a long time, they kept Giiwaas — their name for Crater Lake — a secret, fearing and revering it, visiting it only for spirit quests.” ref

Volcanoes of Saudi Arabia (10 volcanoes)

Al Harrah| Harrat ‘Uwayrid| Harrat al Birk| Harrat ar Rahah| Harrat Ithnayn| Harrat Khaybar| Harrat Kishb| Harrat Lunayyir| Harrat Rahat| Jabal Yar 

Harrat ar Rahah volcano has been thought before to relate to the bible as well?

The age of the last eruptions is unknown, but probably less than 10,000 years. Neumann  van Padang (1963) in the Catalog of Active Volcanoes of the World speculated that the Israelite account in Exodus 19:16-18 might refer to an eruption from Harrat ar Rahah.” ref 

Exodus 19:16-18: 

16 On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. 17 Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain.18 Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently.

Amorites

“The Amorites were an ancient Northwest Semitic-speaking people from the Levant who also occupied large parts of southern Mesopotamia from the 21st century BCE to the end of the 17th century BCE, where they established several prominent city-states in existing locations, such as Isin, Larsa and later notably Babylon, which was raised from a small town to an independent state and a major city. The term Amurru in Akkadian and Sumerian texts refers to the Amorites, their principal deity, and an Amorite kingdom. The Amorites are also mentioned in the Bible as inhabitants of Canaan both before and after the conquest of the land under Joshua. In the earliest Sumerian sources concerning the Amorites, beginning about 2400 BCE, the land of the Amorites (“the Mar.tu land”) is associated not with Mesopotamia but with the lands to the west of the Euphrates, including Canaan and what was to become Syria by the 3rd century BC, then known as The land of the Amurru, and later as Aram and Eber-Nari.” ref

“They appear as an uncivilized and nomadic people in early Mesopotamian writings from Sumer, Akkad, and Assyria, to the west of the Euphrates. The ethnic terms Mar.tu (“Westerners”), Amurru (suggested in 2007 to be derived from aburru, “pasture”) and Amor were used for them in Sumerian, Akkadian, and Ancient Egyptian respectively. From the 21st century BCE, possibly triggered by a long major drought starting about 2200 BCE, a large-scale migration of Amorite tribes infiltrated southern Mesopotamia. They were one of the instruments of the downfall of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and Amorite dynasties not only usurped the long-extant native city-states such as Isin, Larsa, Eshnunna, and Kish, but also established new ones, the most famous of which was to become Babylon, although it was initially a minor insignificant state.” ref

“Known Amorites wrote in a dialect of Akkadian found on tablets at Mari dating from 1800–1750 BCE. Since the language shows northwest Semitic forms, words, and constructions, the Amorite language is a Northwest Semitic language, and possibly one of the Canaanite languages. The main sources for the extremely limited extant knowledge of the Amorite language are the proper names, not Akkadian in style, that are preserved in such texts. The Akkadian language of the native Semitic states, cities, and polities of Mesopotamia (Akkad, Assyria, Babylonia, Isin, Kish, Larsa, Ur, Nippur, Uruk, Eridu, Adab, Akshak, Eshnunna, Nuzi, Ekallatum, etc.), was from the east Semitic, as was the Eblaite of the northern Levant.” ref 

“There is a wide range of views regarding the Amorite homeland. One extreme is the view that kur mar.tu/māt amurrim covered the whole area between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean Sea, the Arabian Peninsula included. The most common view is that the “homeland” of the Amorites was a limited area in central Syria identified with the mountainous region of Jebel Bishri. Since the Amorite language is closely related to the better-studied Canaanite languages, both being branches of the Northwestern Semitic languages, as opposed to the South Semitic languages found in the Arabian Peninsula, they are usually considered native to the region around Syria and Transjordan.” ref

As the centralized structure of the Third Dynasty slowly collapsed, the component regions, such as Assyria in the north and the city-states of the south such as Isin, Larsa, and Eshnunna, began to reassert their former independence, and the areas in southern Mesopotamia with Amorites were no exception. Elsewhere, the armies of Elam, in southern Iran, were attacking and weakening the empire, making it vulnerable. Many Amorite chieftains in southern Mesopotamia aggressively took advantage of the failing empire to seize power for themselves. There was not an Amorite invasion of southern Mesopotamia as such, but Amorites ascended to power in many locations, especially during the reign of the last king of the Neo-Sumerian Empire, Ibbi-Sin. Leaders with Amorite names assumed power in various places, usurping native Akkadian rulers, including in Isin, Eshnunna, and Larsa. The small town of Babylon, unimportant both politically and militarily, was raised to the status of a minor independent city-state, under Sumu-abum in 1894 BCE.” ref

“The Elamites finally sacked Ur in c. 2004 BCE. Some time later, the Old Assyrian Empire (c. 2050 – 1750 BCE) became the most powerful entity in Mesopotamia immediately preceding the rise of the Amorite king Hammurabi of Babylon. The new Assyrian monarchic line was founded by c. 2050 BCE; their kings repelled attempted Amorite incursions, and may have countered their influence in the south as well under Erishum I, Ilu-shuma ,and Sargon I. However, even Assyria eventually found its throne usurped by an Amorite in 1809 BCE: the last two rulers of the Old Assyrian Empire period, Shamshi-Adad I and Ishme-Dagan, were Amorites who originated in Terqa (now in northeastern Syria).

“Amorite presence in Egypt was inevitable since at least the First Intermediate Period. The Levantine-blooded Fourteenth Dynasty of Egypt, centered in the Nile Delta, had rulers bearing Amorite names, such as Yakbmu. Furthermore, increasing evidence suggests that the succeeding Hyksos of Egypt were an amalgam of Asiatic peoples from Syria, of which the Amorites were also part of. Based on temple architecture, Manfred Bietak argues for strong parallels between the religious practices of the Hyksos at Avaris with those of the area around Byblos, Ugarit, Alalakh, and Tell Brak, defining the “spiritual home” of the Hyksos as “in northernmost Syria and northern Mesopotamia”, areas typically associated with Amorites at the time. In 1650 BCE, the Hyksos went on to establish the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt and rule most of Lower and Middle Egypt contemporaneously with the Sixteenth and Seventeenth dynasties of Thebes.” ref

“The era ended in northern Mesopotamia, with the defeat and expulsion of the Amorites and Amorite-dominated Babylonians from Assyria by Puzur-Sin and king Adasi between 1740 and 1735 BCE, and in the far south, by the rise of the native Sealand Dynasty c. 1730 BCE. The Amorites clung on in a once-more small and weak Babylon until the Hittites‘ sack of Babylon (c. 1595 BCE), which ended the Amorite presence, and brought new ethnic groups, particularly the Kassites, to the forefront in southern Mesopotamia. From the 15th century BCE onward, the term Amurru is usually applied to the region extending north of Canaan as far as Kadesh on the Orontes River in northern Syria.” ref

“Amorite presence in Egypt was supplanted by Ahmose I, the founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, when he kicked out the wider group of Asiatic Hyksos back into the Levant in 1550 BCE, putting an end to Levantine political influence in Egypt. After their expulsion from Mesopotamia, the Amorites of Syria came under the domination of first the Hittites and, from the 14th century BCE, the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1050 BCE). They appear to have been displaced or absorbed by a new wave of semi-nomadic West Semitic-speaking peoples, known collectively as the Ahlamu during the Late Bronze Age collapse. The Arameans rose to be the prominent group amongst the Ahlamu, and from c. 1200 BCE on, the Amorites disappeared from the pages of history. From then on, the region that they had inhabited became known as Aram (“Aramea”) and Eber-Nari.” ref

Skourtanioti et al. (2020) conducted ancient DNA analysis on 28 human remains dating to the Middle and Late Bronze age from Tell Atchana, ancient Alalakh, a city which was founded by Amorites and contained a Hurrian minority later on, which the authors called an Amorite cultural assemblage. The analysis found that the inhabitants of Alalakh were a mixture of Copper age Levantines and Mesopotamians, and were genetically similar to contemporary Levantines from Syria (Ebla) and Lebanon (Sidon).” ref

Amurru (god)

“Amurru and Martu are names given in Akkadian and Sumerian texts to the god of the Amorite/Amurru people, often forming part of personal names. He is sometimes called Ilu Amurru (DMAR.TU). He was the patron god of the Mesopotamian city of Ninab, whose exact location is unknown. He was occasionally called “lord of the steppe” or “lord of the mountain.” ref

“Amurru/Martu was probably a western Semitic god originally. He is sometimes described as a ‘shepherd’ or as a storm god, and as a son of the sky-god Anu. He is sometimes called bêlu šadī or bêl šadê, ‘lord of the mountain’; dúr-hur-sag-gá sikil-a-ke, ‘He who dwells on the pure mountain’; and kur-za-gan ti-[la], ‘who inhabits the shining mountain’. In Cappadocian Zinčirli inscriptions he is called ì-li a-bi-a, ‘the god of my father‘.” ref

“Bêl Šadê could also have become the fertility-god ‘Ba’al‘, possibly adopted by the Canaanites, a rival and enemy of the Hebrew God YHWH, and famously combatted by the Hebrew prophet Elijah.” ref

“Amurru also has storm-god features. Like Adad, Amurru bears the epithet ramān ‘thunderer’, and he is even called bāriqu ‘hurler of the thunderbolt’ and Adad ša a-bu-be ‘Adad of the deluge’. Yet his iconography is distinct from that of Adad, and he sometimes appears alongside Adad with a baton of power or throwstick, while Adad bears a conventional thunderbolt.” ref

“Amurru’s wife is usually the goddess Ašratum (see Asherah) who in northwest Semitic tradition and Hittite tradition appears as wife of the god El which suggests that Amurru may indeed have been a variation of that god. If Amurru was identical with Ēl, it would explain why so few Amorite names are compounded with the name Amurru, but so many are compounded with Il; that is, with El.” ref

“Another tradition about Amurru’s wife (or one of Amurru’s wives) gives her name as Belit-Sheri, ‘Lady of the Desert’. A third tradition appears in a Sumerian poem in pastoral style, which relates how the god Martu came to marry Adg̃ar-kidug the daughter of the god Numushda of the city of Inab. It contains a speech expressing urbanite Sumerian disgust at uncivilized, nomadic Amurru life which Adg̃ar-kidug ignores, responding only: “I will marry Martu!.” ref

“Amorite (Sumerian ???????? MAR.TU, Akkadian Tidnum or Amurrūm, Egyptian Amar, Hebrew ’emōrî אמורי) refers to a Semitic people who occupied large parts of Mesopotamia from at least the second half of the third millennium BCE. The term Amurru refers to them, as well as to their principal deity.” ref

“In the earliest Sumerian sources, beginning about 2400 BCE, the land of the Amorites (“the Mar.tu land”) is associated with the West, including Syria and Canaan. They appear as nomadic people in the Mesopotamian sources, and they are especially connected with the mountainous region of Jebel Bishri in Syria called as the “mountain of the Amorites”. The ethnic terms Amurru and Amar were used for them in Assyria and Egypt respectively.” ref

“From the 21st century BCE and likely triggered by the 22nd century BCE drought, a large-scale migration of Amorite tribes infiltrated Mesopotamia, precipitating the downfall of the Neo-Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur, and acquiring a series of powerful kingdoms, culminating in the triumph under Hammurabi of one of them, that of Babylon.” ref

“Known Amorites (mostly those of Mari) wrote in a dialect of Akkadian found on tablets dating from 1800–1750 BCE showing many northwest Semitic forms and constructions. The Amorite language was presumably a northwest Semitic dialect. The main sources for our extremely limited knowledge about the language are proper names, not Akkadian in style, that are preserved in such texts.” ref

“In early inscriptions, all western lands, including Syria and Canaan, were known as “the land of the Amorites”. “The MAR.TU land” appears in the earliest Sumerian texts, such as Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, as well as early tablets from Ebla; and for the Akkadian kings Mar.tu was one of the “Four Quarters” surrounding Akkad, along with Subartu, Sumer, and Elam. The Akkadian king Naram-Sin records campaigns against them in northern Syria ca. 2240 BCE, and his successor Shar-Kali-Sharri followed suit.” ref

“By the time of the Neo-Sumerian Ur-III empire, immigrating Amorites had become such a force that kings such as Shu-Sin were obliged to construct a 170-mile wall from the Tigris to the Euphrates to hold them off. These Amorites appear as nomadic clans ruled by fierce tribal chiefs, who forced themselves into lands they needed to graze their herds. Some of the Akkadian literature of this era speaks disparagingly of the Amorites, and implies that the neo-Sumerians viewed their nomadic way of life with disgust and contempt, for example:

“The MAR.TU who know no grain…. The MAR.TU who know no house nor town, the boors of the mountains…. The MAR.TU who digs up truffles… who does not bend his knees (to cultivate the land), who eats raw meat, who has no house during his lifetime, who is not buried after death…They have prepared wheat and gú-nunuz (grain) as a confection, but an Amorite will eat it without even recognizing what it contains! ref

“As the centralized structure of the neo-Sumerian empire of Ur slowly collapsed, the component regions began to reassert their former independence, and places, where Amorites resided, were no exception. Elsewhere, armies of Elam were attacking and weakening the empire, making it vulnerable. Some Amorites aggressively took advantage of the failing empire to seize power for themselves. There was not an Amorite invasion as such, but Amorites did ascend to power in many locations, especially during the reign of the last king of the Ur-III Dynasty, Ibbi-Sin. Leaders with Amorite names assumed power in various places, including Isin, Larsa, and Babylon. The Elamites finally sacked Ur in ca. 2004 BC. Sometime later, the most powerful ruler in Mesopotamia (immediately preceding the rise of Hammurabi of Babylon) was Shamshi-Adad I, another Amorite.” ref

Effects on Mesopotamia

“The rise of the Amorite kingdoms in Mesopotamia brought about deep and lasting repercussions in its political, social, and economic structure. The division into kingdoms replaced the Sumerian city-state. Men, land, and cattle ceased to belong physically to the gods or to the temples and the king. The new monarchs gave, or let out for an indefinite period, numerous parcels of royal or sacerdotal land, freed the inhabitants of several cities from taxes and forced labor, and seem to have encouraged a new society to emerge, a society of big farmers, free citizens, and enterprising merchants which was to last throughout the ages. The priest assumed the service of the gods, and cared for the welfare of his subjects, but the economic life of the country was no longer exclusively (or almost exclusively) in their hands.” ref

“In general terms, Mesopotamian civilization survived the arrival of Amorites, as it had survived the Akkadian domination and the restless period that had preceded the rise of the Third Dynasty of Ur. The religious, ethical, and artistic directions in which Mesopotamia had been developing since earliest times, were not greatly impacted by the Amorites’ hegemony. They continued to worship the Sumerian gods, and the older Sumerian myths and epic tales were piously copied, translated, or adapted, generally with only minor alterations. As for the scarce artistic production of the period, there is little to distinguish it from the preceding Ur-III era.” ref

“The era of the Amorite kingdoms, ca. 2000–1600 BCE, is sometimes known as the “Amorite period” in Mesopotamian history. The principal Amorite dynasties arose in Mari, Yamkhad, Qatna, Assur (under Shamshi-Adad I), Isin, Larsa, and Babylon. This era ended with the Hittite sack of Babylon (c. 1595 BCE) which brought new ethnic groups—particularly Kassites and Hurrians—to the forefront in Mesopotamia. From the 15th century BC onward, the term Amurru is usually applied to the region extending north of Canaan as far as Kadesh on the Orontes.” ref

Biblical Amorites

“The term Amorites is used in the Bible to refer to certain highland mountaineers who inhabited the land of Canaan, described in Gen. 10:16 as descendants of Canaan, son of Ham. They are described as a powerful people of great stature “like the height of the cedars,” who had occupied the land east and west of the Jordan; their king, Og, being described as the last “of the remnant of the giants” (Deut. 3:11). The terms Amorite and Canaanite seem to be used more or less interchangeably, Canaan being more general, and Amorite a specific component among the Canaanites who inhabited the land.” ref

“The Biblical Amorites seem to have originally occupied the region stretching from the heights west of the Dead Sea (Gen. 14:7) to Hebron (13:8; Deut. 3:8; 4:46-48), embracing “all Gilead and all Bashan” (Deut. 3:10), with the Jordan valley on the east of the river (4:49), the land of the “two kings of the Amorites,” Sihon and Og (Deut. 31:4; Josh. 2:10; 9:10). Both Sihon and Og were independent kings.” ref

“These Amorites seem to have been linked to the Jerusalem region, and the Jebusites may have been a subgroup of them. The southern slopes of the mountains of Judea are called the “mount of the Amorites” (Deut. 1:7, 19, 20). Five kings of the Amorites were first defeated with great slaughter by Joshua (10:10). They were said to have been utterly destroyed at the waters of Merom by Joshua (Josh. 11:8).” ref

“It is mentioned that in the days of Samuel, there was peace between them and the Israelites (1 Sam. 7:14). The Gibeonites were said to be their descendants, being an offshoot of the Amorites that made a covenant with the Hebrews; when Saul would break that vow and kill some of the Gibeonites, God sent a famine to Israel.” ref

Indo-European Amorites

“The view that Amorites were fierce tall nomads led to an idiosyncratic theory among some writers in the 19th Century that they were a tribe of “Germanic” warriors who at one point dominated the Israelites. This was because the evidence fitted then-current models of Indo-European migrations. This theory originated with Felix von Luschan, who later abandoned it.” ref

Amorite Jesus and David

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, claimed that King David and Jesus were both Aryans of Amorite extraction. This argument was repeated by the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg.” ref

God Amurru’s father sky God Anu

Anu, Anum, or Ilu (Akkadian: ???????? DAN), also called An (Sumerian: ???? AN, from ???? an “Sky”, “Heaven”), is the divine personification of the sky, supreme god, and ancestor of all the deities in ancient Mesopotamian religion. Anu was believed to be the supreme source of all authority, for the other gods and for all mortal rulers, and he is described in one text as the one “who contains the entire universe”. He is identified with the part of the sky located between +17° and -17° declination which contains 23 constellations. Along with his sons Enlil and Enki, Anu constitutes the highest divine triad personifying the three bands of constellations of the vault of the sky. By the time of the earliest written records, Anu was rarely worshipped, and veneration was instead devoted to his son Enlil. But, throughout Mesopotamian history, the highest deity in the pantheon was always said to possess the anûtu, meaning “Heavenly power”. Anu’s primary role in myths is as the ancestor of the Anunnaki, the major deities of Sumerian religion. His primary cult center was the Eanna temple in the city of Uruk, but, by the Akkadian Period (c. 2334–2154 BCE), his authority in Uruk had largely been ceded to the goddess Inanna, the Queen of Heaven.” ref

“Anu’s consort in the earliest Sumerian texts is the goddess Uraš, but she is later the goddess Ki and, in Akkadian texts, the goddess Antu, whose name is a feminine form of Anu. Anu briefly appears in the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, in which his daughter Ishtar (the East Semitic equivalent to Inanna) persuades him to give her the Bull of Heaven so that she may send it to attack Gilgamesh. The incident results in the death of Enkidu. In another legend, Anu summons the mortal hero Adapa before him for breaking the wing of the south wind. Anu orders for Adapa to be given the food and water of immortality, which Adapa refuses, having been warned beforehand by Enki that Anu will offer him the food and water of death. In ancient Hittite religion, Anu is a former ruler of the gods, who was overthrown by his son Kumarbi, who bit off his father’s genitals and gave birth to the storm god Teshub. Teshub overthrew Kumarbi, avenged Anu’s mutilation, and became the new king of the gods. This story was the later basis for the castration of Ouranos in Hesiod‘s Theogony.” ref

“In Mesopotamian religion, Anu was the personification of the sky, the utmost power, the supreme god, the one “who contains the entire universe”. He was identified with the north ecliptic pole centered in Draco. His name meant the “One on High”, and together with his sons Enlil and Enki (Ellil and Ea in Akkadian), he formed a triune conception of the divine, in which Anu represented a “transcendental” obscurity, Enlil the “transcendent” and Enki the “immanent” aspect of the divine. The three great gods and the three divisions of the heavens were Anu (the ancient god of the heavens), Enlil (son of Anu, god of the air and the forces of nature, and lord of the gods), and Ea (the beneficent god of earth and life, who dwelt in the abyssal waters). The Babylonians divided the sky into three parts named after them: The equator and most of the zodiac occupied the Way of Anu, the northern sky was the Way of Enlil, and the southern sky was the Way of Ea. The boundaries of each Way were at 17°N and 17°S.” ref

“Though Anu was the supreme god, he was rarely worshipped, and, by the time that written records began, the most important cult was devoted to his son Enlil. Anu’s primary role in the Sumerian pantheon was as an ancestor figure; the most powerful and important deities in the Sumerian pantheon were believed to be the offspring of Anu and his consort Ki. These deities were known as the Anunnaki, which means “offspring of Anu”. Although it is sometimes unclear which deities were considered members of the Anunnaki, the group probably included the “seven gods who decree”: Anu, Enlil, Enki, Ninhursag, Nanna, Utu, and Inanna.” ref

“Anu’s main cult center was the Eanna temple, whose name means “House of Heaven” (Sumerian: e2-anna; Cuneiform: ???????? E2.AN), in Uruk. Although the temple was originally dedicated to Anu, it was later transformed into the primary cult center of Inanna. After its dedication to Inanna, the temple seems to have housed priestesses of the goddess.” ref

“Anu was believed to be a source of all legitimate power; he was the one who bestowed the right to rule upon gods and kings alike. According to scholar Stephen Bertman, Anu “… was the supreme source of authority among the gods, and among men, upon whom he conferred kingship. As heaven’s grand patriarch, he dispensed justice and controlled the laws known as the meh that governed the universe.” In inscriptions commemorating his conquest of Sumer, Sargon of Akkad, the founder of the Akkadian Empire, proclaims Anu and Inanna as the sources of his authority. A hymn from the early second millennium BCE professes that “his utterance ruleth over the obedient company of the gods.” ref

“Anu’s original name in Sumerian is An, of which Anu is a Semiticized form. Anu was also identified with the Semitic god Ilu or El from early on. The functions of Anu and Enlil frequently overlapped, especially during later periods as the cult of Anu continued to wane and the cult of Enlil rose to greater prominence. In later times, Anu was fully superseded by Enlil. Eventually, Enlil was, in turn, superseded by Marduk, the national god of ancient Babylon. Nonetheless, references to Anu’s power were preserved through archaic phrases used in reference to the ruler of the gods. The highest god in the pantheon was always said to possess the anûtu, which literally means “Heavenly power”. In the Babylonian Enûma Eliš, the gods praise Marduk, shouting “Your word is Anu!” ref

“Although Anu was a very important deity, his nature was often ambiguous and ill-defined; he almost never appears in Mesopotamian artwork and has no known anthropomorphic iconography. During the Kassite Period (c. 1600—1155 BCE) and Neo-Assyrian Period (911—609 BCE), Anu was represented by a horned cap. The Amorite god Amurru was sometimes equated with Anu. Later, during the Seleucid Empire (213—63 BCE), Anu was identified with Enmešara and Dumuzid.” ref

Family

“The earliest Sumerian texts make no mention of where Anu came from or how he came to be the ruler of the gods; instead, his preeminence is simply assumed. In early Sumerian texts from the third millennium BC, Anu’s consort is the goddess Uraš; the Sumerians later attributed this role to Ki, the personification of the earth. The Sumerians believed that rain was Anu’s seed and that, when it fell, it impregnated Ki, causing her to give birth to all the vegetation of the land. During the Akkadian Period, Ki was supplanted by Antu, a goddess whose name is probably a feminine form of Anu. The Akkadians believed that rain was milk from the clouds, which they believed were Antu’s breasts.” ref

“Anu is commonly described as the “father of the gods”, and a vast array of deities were thought to have been his offspring over the course of Mesopotamian history. Inscriptions from Lagash dated to the late third millennium BC identify Anu as the father of Gatumdug, Baba, and Ninurta. Later literary texts proclaim Adad, Enki, Enlil, Girra, Nanna-Suen, Nergal, and Šara as his sons and Inanna-Ishtar, Nanaya, Nidaba, Ninisinna, Ninkarrak, Ninmug, Ninnibru, Ninsumun, Nungal, and Nusku as his daughters. The demons Lamaštu, Asag, and the Sebettu were thought to have been Anu’s creations.” ref

Sumerian

Sumerian creation myth

Main article: Sumerian creation myth

“The main source of information about the Sumerian creation myth is the prologue to the epic poem Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld, which briefly describes the process of creation: at first, there is only Nammu, the primeval sea. Then, Nammu gives birth to An (the Sumerian name for Anu), the sky, and Ki, the earth. An and Ki mate with each other, causing Ki to give birth to Enlil, the god of the wind. Enlil separates An from Ki and carries off the earth as his domain, while An carries off the sky.” ref

“In Sumerian, the designation “An” was used interchangeably with “the heavens” so that in some cases it is doubtful whether, under the term, the god An or the heavens is being denoted. In Sumerian cosmogony, heaven was envisioned as a series of three domes covering the flat earth; Each of these domes of heaven was believed to be made of a different precious stone. An was believed to be the highest and outermost of these domes, which was thought to be made of reddish stone. Outside of this dome was the primordial body of water known as Nammu. An’s sukkal, or attendant, was the god Ilabrat.” ref

Inanna myths

“Inanna and Ebih, otherwise known as Goddess of the Fearsome Divine Powers, is a 184-line poem written in Sumerian by the Akkadian poetess Enheduanna. It describes An’s granddaughter Inanna’s confrontation with Mount Ebih, a mountain in the Zagros mountain range. An briefly appears in a scene from the poem in which Inanna petitions him to allow her to destroy Mount Ebih. An warns Inanna not to attack the mountain, but she ignores his warning and proceeds to attack and destroy Mount Ebih regardless.” ref

“The poem Inanna Takes Command of Heaven is an extremely fragmentary, but important, account of Inanna’s conquest of the Eanna temple in Uruk. It begins with a conversation between Inanna and her brother Utu in which Inanna laments that the Eanna temple is not within their domain and resolves to claim it as her own. The text becomes increasingly fragmentary at this point in the narrative, but appears to describe her difficult passage through a marshland to reach the temple, while a fisherman instructs her on which route is best to take. Ultimately, Inanna reaches An, who is shocked by her arrogance, but nevertheless concedes that she has succeeded and that the temple is now her domain. The text ends with a hymn expounding Inanna’s greatness. This myth may represent an eclipse in the authority of the priests of An in Uruk and a transfer of power to the priests of Inanna.” ref

Akkadian

Epic of Gilgamesh

“In a scene from the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, written in the late second millennium BC, Anu’s daughter Ishtar, the East Semitic equivalent to Inanna, attempts to seduce the hero Gilgamesh. When Gilgamesh spurns her advances, Ishtar angrily goes to heaven and tells Anu that Gilgamesh has insulted her. Anu asks her why she is complaining to him instead of confronting Gilgamesh herself. Ishtar demands that Anu give her the Bull of Heaven and swears that if he does not give it to her, she will break down the gates of the Underworld and raise the dead to eat the living. Anu gives Ishtar the Bull of Heaven, and Ishtar sends it to attack Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu.” ref

Adapa myth

“In the myth of Adapa, which is first attested during the Kassite Period, Anu notices that the south wind does not blow towards the land for seven days. He asks his sukkal Ilabrat the reason. Ilabrat replies that is because Adapa, the priest of Ea (the East Semitic equivalent of Enki) in Eridu, has broken the south wind’s wing. Anu demands that Adapa be summoned before him, but, before Adapa sets out, Ea warns him not to eat any of the food or drink any of the water the gods offer him, because the food and water are poisoned. Adapa arrives before Anu and tells him that the reason he broke the south wind’s wing was because he had been fishing for Ea and the south wind had caused a storm, which had sunk his boat. Anu’s doorkeepers Dumuzid and Ningishzida speak out in favor of Adapa. This placates Anu’s fury and he orders that, instead of the food and water of death, Adapa should be given the food and water of immortality as a reward.” ref 

“Adapa, however, follows Ea’s advice and refuses the meal. The story of Adapa was beloved by scribes, who saw him as the founder of their trade and a vast plethora of copies and variations of the myth have been found across Mesopotamia, spanning the entire course of Mesopotamian history. The story of Adapa’s appearance before Anu has been compared to the later Jewish story of Adam and Eve, recorded in the Book of Genesis. In the same way that Anu forces Adapa to return to earth after he refuses to eat the food of immortality, Yahweh in the biblical story drives Adam out of the Garden of Eden to prevent him from eating the fruit from the tree of life. Similarly, Adapa was seen as the prototype for all priests; whereas Adam in the Book of Genesis is presented as the prototype of all mankind.” ref

Erra and Išum

“In the epic poem Erra and Išum, which was written in Akkadian in the eighth century BC, Anu gives Erra, the god of destruction, the Sebettu, which are described as personified weapons. Anu instructs Erra to use them to massacre humans when they become overpopulated and start making too much noise (Tablet I, 38ff).” ref

Hittite (indo-europian)

“In Hittite mythology, Anu overthrows his father Alalu and proclaims himself ruler of the universe. He himself is later overthrown by his own son Kumarbi; Anu attempts to flee, but Kumarbi bites off Anu’s genitals and swallows them. Kumarbi then banishes Anu to the underworld, along with his allies, the old gods, whom the Hittites syncretized with the Anunnaki. As a consequence of swallowing Anu’s genitals, Kumarbi becomes impregnated with Anu’s son Teshub and four other offspring. After he grows to maturity, Teshub overthrows his father Kumarbi, thus avenging his other father Anu’s overthrow and mutilation.” ref

Later influence

“The series of divine coups described in the Hittite creation myth later became the basis for the Greek creation story described in the long poem Theogony, written by the Boeotian poet Hesiod in the seventh century BCE. In Hesiod’s poem, the primeval sky-god Ouranos is overthrown and castrated by his son Kronos in much the same manner that Anu is overthrown and castrated by Kumarbi in the Hittite story. Kronos is then, in turn, overthrown by his own son Zeus. In one Orphic myth, Kronos bites off Ouranos’s genitals in exactly the same manner that Kumarbi does to Anu in the Hittite myth. Nonetheless, Robert Mondi notes that Ouranos never held mythological significance to the Greeks comparable with Anu’s significance to the Mesopotamians. Instead, Mondi calls Ouranos “a pale reflection of Anu”, noting that “apart from the castration myth, he has very little significance as a cosmic personality at all and is not associated with kingship in any systematic way.” ref

“According to Walter Burkert, an expert on ancient Greek religion, direct parallels also exist between Anu and the Greek god Zeus. In particular, the scene from Tablet VI of the Epic of Gilgamesh in which Ishtar comes before Anu after being rejected by Gilgamesh and complains to her mother Antu, but is mildly rebuked by Anu, is directly paralleled by a scene from Book V of the Iliad. In this scene, Aphrodite, the later Greek development of Ishtar, is wounded by the Greek hero Diomedes while trying to save her son Aeneas. She flees to Mount Olympus, where she cries to her mother Dione, is mocked by her sister Athena, and is mildly rebuked by her father Zeus. Not only is the narrative parallel significant, but so is the fact that Dione’s name is a feminization of Zeus’s own, just as Antu is a feminine form of Anu. Dione does not appear throughout the rest of the Iliad, in which Zeus’s consort is instead the goddess Hera. Burkert therefore concludes that Dione is clearly a calque of Antu.” ref

“The most direct equivalent to Anu in the Canaanite pantheon is Shamem, the personification of the sky, but Shamem almost never appears in myths and it is unclear whether the Canaanites ever regarded him as a previous ruler of the gods at all. Instead, the Canaanites seem to have ascribed Anu’s attributes to El, the current ruler of the gods. In later times, the Canaanites equated El with Kronos rather than with Ouranos, and El’s son Baal with Zeus. A narrative from Canaanite mythology describes the warrior-goddess Anat coming before El after being insulted, in a way that directly parallels Ishtar coming before Anu in the Epic of Gilgamesh.” ref

“El is characterized as the malk olam (“the eternal king”) and, like Anu, he is “consistently depicted as old, just, compassionate, and patriarchal”. In the same way that Anu was thought to wield the Tablet of Destinies, Canaanite texts mentions decrees issued by El that he alone may alter. In late antiquity, writers such as Philo of Byblos attempted to impose the dynastic succession framework of the Hittite and Hesiodic stories onto Canaanite mythology, but these efforts are forced and contradict what most Canaanites seem to have actually believed.” ref

Most Canaanites seem to have regarded El and Baal as ruling concurrently:

“El is king, Baal becomes king. Both are kings over other gods, but El’s kingship is timeless and unchanging. Baal must acquire his kingship, affirm it through the building of his temple, and defend it against adversaries; even so he loses it, and must be enthroned anew. El’s kingship is static, Baal’s is dynamic.” ref 

El (deity)?

“Ēl (also ʼIl, Ugaritic: ????????; Phoenician: ????????; Hebrew: אֵל‎; Syriac: ܐܠ‎; Arabic: إيل‎ or إله‎; cognate to Akkadian: ????, romanized: ilu) is a Northwest Semitic word meaning “god” or “deity“, or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. A rarer form, ʼila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil-, meaning “god”. Specific deities known as ʼEl or ʼIl include the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period.” ref 

Linguistic forms and meanings

Cognate forms are found throughout the Semitic languages. They include Ugaritic ʾilu, pl. ʾlm; Phoenician ʾl pl. ʾlm; Hebrew ʾēl, pl. ʾēlîm; Aramaic ʾl; Akkadian ilu, pl. ilānu. In northwest Semitic use, Ēl was both a generic word for any god and the special name or title of a particular god who was distinguished from other gods as being “the god”. Ēl is listed at the head of many pantheons. In some Canaanite and Ugaritic sources, Ēl played a role as father of the gods or of creation.” ref

“However, because the word sometimes refers to a god other than the great god Ēl, it is frequently ambiguous as to whether Ēl followed by another name means the great god Ēl with a particular epithet applied or refers to another god entirely. For example, in the Ugaritic texts, ʾil mlk is understood to mean “Ēl the King” but ʾil hd as “the god Hadad“.” ref

“The Semitic root ʾlh (Arabic ʾilāh, Aramaic ʾAlāh, ʾElāh, Hebrew ʾelōah) may be ʾl with a parasitic h, and ʾl may be an abbreviated form of ʾlh. In Ugaritic the plural form meaning “gods” is ʾilhm, equivalent to Hebrew ʾelōhîm “powers”. In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for “god” by biblical commentators. However the documentary hypothesis developed originally in the 1870s, identifies these that different authors – the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source – were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis.” ref

“The stem ʾl is found prominently in the earliest strata of east Semitic, northwest Semitic, and south Semitic groups. Personal names including the stem ʾl are found with similar patterns in both Amorite and Sabaic – which indicates that probably already in Proto-Semitic ʾl was both a generic term for “god” and the common name or title of a single particular god.” ref

Proto-Sinaitic, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Hittite texts

“The Egyptian god Ptah is given the title ḏū gitti ‘Lord of Gath‘ in a prism from Tel Lachish which has on its opposite face the name of Amenhotep II (c. 1435–1420 BCE). The title ḏū gitti is also found in Serābitṭ text 353. Cross (1973, p. 19) points out that Ptah is often called the Lord (or one) of eternity and thinks it may be this identification of ʼĒl with Ptah that lead to the epithet ’olam ‘eternal’ being applied to ʼĒl so early and so consistently. (However, in the Ugaritic texts, Ptah is seemingly identified rather with the craftsman god Kothar-wa-Khasis.) Yet another connection is seen with the Mandaean angel Ptahil, whose name combines both the terms Ptah and Il.” ref

“In an inscription in the Proto-Sinaitic script, William F. Albright transcribed the phrase ʾL Ḏ ʿLM, which he translated as the appellation “El, (god) of eternity”.The name Raphael or Rapha-El, meaning ‘God has healed’ in Ugarit, is attested to in approximately 1350 BCE in one of the Amarna Letters EA333, found in Tell-el-Hesi from the ruler of Lachish to ‘The Great One’ ” ref

“A Phoenician inscribed amulet of the seventh century BCE from Arslan Tash may refer to ʼĒl. The text was translated by Rosenthal (1969, p. 658) as follows:

An eternal bond has been established for us.
Ashshur has established (it) for us,
and all the divine beings
and the majority of the group of all the holy ones,
through the bond of heaven and earth for ever, …” ref

“However, Cross (1973, p. 17) translated the text as follows:

The Eternal One (‘Olam) has made a covenant oath with us,
Asherah has made (a pact) with us.
And all the sons of El,
And the great council of all the Holy Ones.
With oaths of Heaven and Ancient Earth.” ref

“In some inscriptions, the name ’Ēl qōne ’arṣ (Punic: ???????? ???????? ???????????? ʾl qn ʾrṣ) meaning “ʼĒl creator of Earth” appears, even including a late inscription at Leptis Magna in Tripolitania dating to the second century. In Hittite texts, the expression becomes the single name Ilkunirsa, this Ilkunirsa appearing as the husband of Asherdu (Asherah) and father of 77 or 88 sons. In a Hurrian hymn to ʼĒl (published in Ugaritica V, text RS 24.278), he is called ’il brt and ’il dn, which Cross (p. 39) takes as ‘ʼĒl of the covenant’ and ‘ʼĒl the judge’ respectively.” ref

Amorite inscriptions from Sam’al refer to numerous gods, sometimes by name, sometimes by title, especially by such titles as Ilabrat ‘God of the people'(?), ʾil abīka “God of your father”, ʾil abīni “God of our father” and so forth. Various family gods are recorded, divine names listed as belonging to a particular family or clan, sometimes by title and sometimes by name, including the name ʾil “God”. In Amorite personal names, the most common divine elements are ʾil “God”, Hadad/Adad, and Dagan. It is likely that ʾil is also very often the god called in Akkadian texts Amurru or ʾil ʾamurru.” ref

Ugarit and the Levant

“For the Canaanites and the ancient Levantine region as a whole, Ēl or Il was the supreme god, the father of mankind and all creatures. He also fathered many gods, most importantly Hadad, Yam, and Mot, each sharing similar attributes to the Greco-Roman gods: Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades respectively. As recorded on the clay tablets of Ugarit, El is the husband of the goddess Asherah.” ref

“Three pantheon lists found at Ugarit (modern Ras ShamrāArabic: رأس شمرا‎, Syria) begin with the four gods ’il-’ib (which according to Cross; is the name of a generic kind of deity, perhaps the divine ancestor of the people), Ēl, Dagnu (that is Dagon), and Ba’l Ṣapān (that is the god Haddu or Hadad). Though Ugarit had a large temple dedicated to Dagon and another to Hadad, there was no temple dedicated to Ēl.” ref

“Ēl is called again and again Tôru ‘Ēl (“Bull Ēl” or “the bull god”). He is bātnyu binwāti (“Creator of creatures”), ’abū banī ’ili (“father of the gods”), and ‘abū ‘adami (“father of man”). He is qāniyunu ‘ôlam (“creator eternal”), the epithet ‘ôlam appearing in Hebrew form in the Hebrew name of God ’ēl ‘ôlam “God Eternal” in Genesis 21.33. He is ḥātikuka (“your patriarch”). Ēl is the grey-bearded ancient one, full of wisdom, malku (“King”), ’abū šamīma (“Father of years”), ’El gibbōr (“Ēl the warrior”). He is also named lṭpn of unknown meaning, variously rendered as Latpan, Latipan, or Lutpani (“shroud-face” by Strong’s Hebrew Concordance).” ref

“El” (Father of Heaven / Saturn) and his major son: “Hadad” (Father of Earth / Jupiter), are symbolized both by the bull, and both wear bull horns on their headdresses. In Canaanite mythology, El builds a desert sanctuary with his children and his two wives, leading to speculation that at one point El was a desert god. The mysterious Ugaritic text Shachar and Shalim tells how (perhaps near the beginning of all things) Ēl came to shores of the sea and saw two women who bobbed up and down.” ref 

“Ēl was sexually aroused and took the two with him, killed a bird by throwing a staff at it, and roasted it over a fire. He asked the women to tell him when the bird was fully cooked, and to then address him either as husband or as father, for he would thenceforward behave to them as they called him. They saluted him as husband. He then lay with them, and they gave birth to Shachar (“Dawn”) and Shalim (“Dusk”). Again Ēl lay with his wives and the wives gave birth to “the gracious gods”, “cleavers of the sea”, “children of the sea”. The names of these wives are not explicitly provided, but some confusing rubrics at the beginning of the account mention the goddess Athirat, who is otherwise Ēl’s chief wife, and the goddess Raḥmayyu (“the one of the womb”), otherwise unknown.” ref

“In the Ugaritic Ba‘al cycle, Ēl is introduced dwelling on (or in) Mount Lel (Lel possibly meaning “Night”) at the fountains of the two rivers at the spring of the two deeps. He dwells in a tent according to some interpretations of the text which may explain why he had no temple in Ugarit. As to the rivers and the spring of the two deeps, these might refer to real streams, or to the mythological sources of the salt water ocean and the fresh water sources under the earth, or to the waters above the heavens and the waters beneath the earth.” ref

“In the episode of the “Palace of Ba‘al”, the god Ba‘al Hadad invites the “seventy sons of Athirat” to a feast in his new palace. Presumably these sons have been fathered on Athirat by Ēl; in following passages they seem to be the gods (’ilm) in general or at least a large portion of them. The only sons of Ēl named individually in the Ugaritic texts are Yamm (“Sea”), Mot (“Death”), and Ashtar, who may be the chief and leader of most of the sons of Ēl. Ba‘al Hadad is a few times called Ēl’s son rather than the son of Dagan as he is normally called, possibly because Ēl is in the position of a clan-father to all the gods.” ref

“The fragmentary text R.S. 24.258 describes a banquet to which Ēl invites the other gods and then disgraces himself by becoming outrageously drunk and passing out after confronting an otherwise unknown Hubbay, “he with the horns and tail”. The text ends with an incantation for the cure of some disease, possibly hangover.” ref

Hebrew Bible

“The Hebrew form (אל) appears in Latin letters in Standard Hebrew transcription as El and in Tiberian Hebrew transcription as ʾĒl. El is a generic word for god that could be used for any god, including Hadad, Moloch, or Yahweh. In the Tanakh, ’elōhîm is the normal word for a god or the great God (or gods, given that the ‘im’ suffix makes a word plural in Hebrew).” ref 

“But the form ’El also appears, mostly in poetic passages and in the patriarchal narratives attributed to the Priestly source of the documentary hypothesis. It occurs 217 times in the Masoretic Text: seventy-three times in the Psalms and fifty-five times in the Book of Job, and otherwise mostly in poetic passages or passages written in elevated prose. It occasionally appears with the definite article as hā’Ēl ‘the god’ (for example in 2 Samuel 22:31,33–48).” ref

“The theological position of the Tanakh is that the names Ēl and ’Ĕlōhîm, when used in the singular to mean the supreme god, refer to Yahweh, beside whom other gods are supposed to be either nonexistent or insignificant. Whether this was a long-standing belief or a relatively new one has long been the subject of inconclusive scholarly debate about the prehistory of the sources of the Tanakh and about the prehistory of Israelite religion. In the P strand, Exodus 6:3 may be translated:

I revealed myself to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as Ēl Shaddāi, but was not known to them by my name, YHVH.” ref

“However, it is said in Genesis 14:18–20 that Abraham accepted the blessing of El, when Melchizedek, the king of Salem and high priest of its deity El Elyon blessed him. One scholarly position is that the identification of Yahweh with Ēl is late, that Yahweh was earlier thought of as only one of many gods, and not normally identified with Ēl. Another is that in much of the Hebrew Bible the name El is an alternative name for Yahweh, but in the Elohist and Priestly traditions it is considered an earlier name than Yahweh. Mark Smith has argued that Yahweh and El were originally separate, but were considered synonymous from very early on. The name Yahweh is used in the Bible Tanakh in the first book of Genesis 2:4; and Genesis 4:26 says that at that time, people began to “call upon the name of the LORD”.” ref

“In some places, especially in Psalm 29, Yahweh is clearly envisioned as a storm god, something not true of Ēl so far as we know (although true of his son, Ba’al Haddad). It is Yahweh who is prophesied to one day battle Leviathan the serpent, and slay the dragon in the sea in Isaiah 27:1. The slaying of the serpent in myth is a deed attributed to both Ba’al Hadad and ‘Anat in the Ugaritic texts, but not to Ēl.” ref 

“Such mythological motifs are variously seen as late survivals from a period when Yahweh held a place in theology comparable to that of Hadad at Ugarit; or as late henotheistic/monotheistic applications to Yahweh of deeds more commonly attributed to Hadad; or simply as examples of eclectic application of the same motifs and imagery to various different gods.” ref 

“Similarly, it is argued inconclusively whether Ēl Shaddāi, Ēl ‘Ôlām, Ēl ‘Elyôn, and so forth, were originally understood as separate divinities. Albrecht Alt presented his theories on the original differences of such gods in Der Gott der Väter in 1929. But others have argued that from patriarchal times, these different names were in fact generally understood to refer to the same single great god, Ēl. This is the position of Frank Moore Cross (1973). What is certain is that the form ’El does appear in Israelite names from every period including the name Yiśrā’ēl (“Israel”), meaning “El strives”.” ref

“According to The Oxford Companion to World Mythology,

It seems almost certain that the God of the Jews evolved gradually from the Canaanite El, who was in all likelihood the “God of Abraham”… If El was the high God of Abraham—Elohim, the prototype of Yahveh—Asherah was his wife, and there are archaeological indications that she was perceived as such before she was in effect “divorced” in the context of emerging Judaism of the 7th century BCE. (See 2 Kings 23:15.)” ref

“The apparent plural form ’Ēlîm or ’Ēlim “gods” occurs only four times in the Tanakh. Psalm 29, understood as an enthronement psalm, begins:

A Psalm of David.

Ascribe to Yahweh, sons of Gods (bênê ’Ēlîm),
Ascribe to Yahweh, glory and strength” ref

Psalm 89:6 (verse 7 in Hebrew) has:

For who in the skies compares to Yahweh,
who can be likened to Yahweh among the sons of Gods (bênê ’Ēlîm).” ref

“Traditionally bênê ’ēlîm has been interpreted as ‘sons of the mighty’, ‘mighty ones’, for ’El can mean ‘mighty’, though such use may be metaphorical (compare the English expression [by] God awful). It is possible also that the expression ’ēlîm in both places descends from an archaic stock phrase in which ’lm was a singular form with the m-enclitic and therefore to be translated as ‘sons of Ēl’.” ref 

“The m-enclitic appears elsewhere in the Tanakh and in other Semitic languages. Its meaning is unknown, possibly simply emphasis. It appears in similar contexts in Ugaritic texts where the expression bn ’il alternates with bn ’ilm, but both must mean ‘sons of Ēl’. That phrase with m-enclitic also appears in Phoenician inscriptions as late as the fifth century BCE.” ref

“One of the other two occurrences in the Tanakh is in the “Song of Moses“, Exodus 15:11a:

Who is like you among the Gods (’ēlim), Yahweh?” ref

“The final occurrence is in Daniel 11:36:

And the king will do according to his pleasure; and he will exalt himself and magnify himself over every god (’ēl), and against the God of Gods (’El ’Elîm) he will speak outrageous things, and will prosper until the indignation is accomplished: for that which is decided will be done.” ref

“There are a few cases in the Tanakh where some think ’El referring to the great god Ēl is not equated with Yahweh. One is in Ezekiel 28:2, in the taunt against a man who claims to be divine, in this instance, the leader of Tyre:

Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre: “Thus says the Lord Yahweh: ‘Because your heart is proud and you have said: “I am ’ēl (god), in the seat of ’elōhîm (gods), I am enthroned in the middle of the seas.” Yet you are man and not ’El even though you have made your heart like the heart of ’elōhîm (‘gods’).” ref

“Here ’ēl might refer to a generic god, or to a highest god, Ēl. When viewed as applying to the King of Tyre specifically, the king was probably not thinking of Yahweh. When viewed as a general taunt against anyone making divine claims, it may or may not refer to Yahweh depending on the context.” ref

“In Judges 9:46 we find ’Ēl Bêrît ‘God of the Covenant’, seemingly the same as the Ba‘al Bêrît ‘Lord of the Covenant’ whose worship has been condemned a few verses earlier. See Baal for a discussion of this passage.” ref

Psalm 82:1 says:

’elōhîm (“god”) stands in the council of ’ēl
he judges among the gods (Elohim).” ref

“This could mean that Yahweh judges along with many other gods as one of the council of the high god Ēl. However it can also mean that Yahweh stands in the Divine Council (generally known as the Council of Ēl), as Ēl judging among the other members of the council. The following verses in which the god condemns those whom he says were previously named gods (Elohim) and sons of the Most High suggest the god here is in fact Ēl judging the lesser gods.” ref

“An archaic phrase appears in Isaiah 14:13, kôkkêbê ’ēl ‘stars of God’, referring to the circumpolar stars that never set, possibly especially to the seven stars of Ursa Major. The phrase also occurs in the Pyrgi Inscription as hkkbm ’l (preceded by the definite article h and followed by the m-enclitic). Two other apparent fossilized expressions are arzê-’ēl ‘cedars of God’ (generally translated something like ‘mighty cedars’, ‘goodly cedars’) in Psalm 80:10 (in Hebrew verse 11) and kêharrê-’ēl ‘mountains of God’ (generally translated something like ‘great mountains’, ‘mighty mountains’) in Psalm 36:7 (in Hebrew verse 6).” ref

“For the reference in some texts of Deuteronomy 32:8 to seventy sons of God corresponding to the seventy sons of Ēl in the Ugaritic texts, see `Elyôn.” ref

Sanchuniathon

Philo of Byblos (c. 64–141 AD) was a Greek writer whose account Sanchuniathon survives in quotation by Eusebius and may contain the major surviving traces of Phoenician mythology. Ēl (rendered Elus or called by his standard Greek counterpart Cronus) is not the creator god or first god. Ēl is rather the son of Sky (Uranus) and Earth (Ge). Sky and Earth are themselves children of ‘Elyôn ‘Most High’. Ēl is brother to the God Bethel, to Dagon and to an unknown god, equated with the Greek Atlas and to the goddesses Aphrodite/’Ashtart, Rhea (presumably Asherah), and Dione (equated with Ba‘alat Gebal). Ēl is the father of Persephone and of Athena (presumably the goddess ‘Anat).” ref

“Sky and Earth have separated from one another in hostility, but Sky insists on continuing to force himself on Earth and attempts to destroy the children born of such unions. At last, with the advice of his daughter Athena and the god Hermes Trismegistus (perhaps Thoth), Ēl successfully attacks his father Sky with a sickle and spear of iron. He and his military allies the Eloim gain Sky’s kingdom.” ref

“In a later passage, it is explained that Ēl castrated Sky. One of Sky’s concubines (who was given to Ēl’s brother Dagon) was already pregnant by Sky. The son who is born of the union, called Demarûs or Zeus, but once called Adodus, is obviously Hadad, the Ba‘al of the Ugaritic texts who now becomes an ally of his grandfather Sky and begins to make war on Ēl.” ref

“Ēl has three wives, his sisters or half-sisters Aphrodite/Astarte (‘Ashtart), Rhea (presumably Asherah), and Dione (identified by Sanchuniathon with Ba‘alat Gebal the tutelary goddess of Byblos, a city which Sanchuniathon says that Ēl founded).” ref

“El is depicted primarily as a warrior; in Ugaritic sources, Baal has the warrior role and El is peaceful, and it may be that the Sanchuniathon depicts an earlier tradition that was more preserved in the southern regions of Canaan.” ref

Eusebius, through whom the Sanchuniathon is preserved, is not interested in setting the work forth completely or in order. But we are told that Ēl slew his own son Sadidus (a name that some commentators think might be a corruption of Shaddai, one of the epithets of the Biblical Ēl) and that Ēl also beheaded one of his daughters.” ref 

“Later, perhaps referring to this same death of Sadidus we are told:

But on the occurrence of a pestilence and mortality Cronus offers his only begotten son as a whole burnt-offering to his father Sky and circumcises himself, compelling his allies also to do the same.” ref

“A fuller account of the sacrifice appears later:

It was a custom of the ancients in great crises of danger for the rulers of a city or nation, in order to avert the common ruin, to give up the most beloved of their children for sacrifice as a ransom to the avenging daemons; and those who were thus given up were sacrificed with mystic rites. Cronus then, whom the Phoenicians call Elus, who was king of the country and subsequently, after his decease, was deified as the star Saturn, had by a nymph of the country named Anobret an only begotten son, whom they on this account called Iedud, the only begotten being still so called among the Phoenicians; and when very great dangers from war had beset the country, he arrayed his son in royal apparel, and prepared an altar, and sacrificed him.” ref

“The account also relates that Thoth:

also devised for Cronus as insignia of royalty four eyes in front and behind … but two of them quietly closed, and upon his shoulders four wings, two as spread for flying, and two as folded. And the symbol meant that Cronus could see when asleep, and sleep while waking: and similarly in the case of the wings, that he flew while at rest, and was at rest when flying. But to each of the other gods he gave two wings upon the shoulders, as meaning that they accompanied Cronus in his flight. And to Cronus himself again he gave two wings upon his head, one representing the all-ruling mind, and one sensation.” ref

“This is the form under which Ēl/Cronus appears on coins from Byblos from the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 BCE) four spread wings and two folded wings, leaning on a staff. Such images continued to appear on coins until after the time of Augustus.” ref

Poseidon

Main article: Poseidon

“A bilingual inscription from Palmyra dated to the 1st century equates Ēl-Creator-of-the-Earth with the Greek god Poseidon. Going back to the 8th century BCE, the bilingual inscription at Karatepe in the Taurus Mountains equates Ēl-Creator-of-the-Earth to Luwian hieroglyphs read as da-a-ś, this being the Luwian form of the name of the Babylonian water god Ea, lord of the abyss of water under the earth. (This inscription lists Ēl in second place in the local pantheon, following Ba‘al Shamîm and preceding the Eternal Sun.)” ref

“Poseidon is known to have been worshipped in Beirut, his image appearing on coins from that city. Poseidon of Beirut was also worshipped at Delos where there was an association of merchants, shipmasters, and warehousemen called the Poseidoniastae of Berytus founded in 110 or 109 BCE. Three of the four chapels at its headquarters on the hill northwest of the Sacred Lake were dedicated to Poseidon, the Tyche of the city equated with Astarte (that is ‘Ashtart), and to Eshmun.” ref

“Also at Delos, that association of Tyrians, though mostly devoted to HeraclesMelqart, elected a member to bear a crown every year when sacrifices to Poseidon took place. A banker named Philostratus donated two altars, one to Palaistine Aphrodite Urania (‘Ashtart) and one to Poseidon “of Ascalon.” ref

“Though Sanchuniathon distinguishes Poseidon from his Elus/Cronus, this might be a splitting off of a particular aspect of Ēl in a euhemeristic account. Identification of an aspect of Ēl with Poseidon rather than with Cronus might have been felt to better fit with Hellenistic religious practice, if indeed this Phoenician Poseidon really is Ēl who dwells at the source of the two deeps in Ugaritic texts. More information is needed to be certain.” ref

Ancient Hebrew Pictograms 

“The ancient Hebrew alephbet has very little resemblence to the modern Hebrew alephbet, though the modern did evolve out of the ancient. The ancient twenty-two Hebrew letters were originally pictures of animals, tools, or parts of the body.” ref 

Ten Commandments and the Hittite treaties (3,259 years ago)? 

Ten Commandments: Ethics, Justice, or Laws?

So let’s sum up and recap the ten commandments for those of you who may have missed church last Sunday, like I always do… They, also known as the ritual decalogue, are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and Christianity. 

The 10 Commandments List, Short Form:

1. You shall have no other gods before Me.

2. You shall not make idols.

3. You shall not take the name of the lord your god in vain.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

5. Honor your father and your mother.

6. You shall not murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

10. You shall not covet. 

Ten Commandments and the Hittite treaties

The Significance of Hittite Treaties for Biblical Studies and Orthodox Judaism   

In a series of insightful and provocative essays dealing with the relationship between academic biblical study and Orthodoxy, which appeared on Torah Musings, my colleague Professor Joshua Berman has shown how the late second millennium BCE (the second millennium BCE: 4,000 to 3,000 years ago) Hittite vassal treaties can deepen our understanding of the biblical notion of covenant (ברית). Moreover, he argues for the possibility that these ancient documents can be used to prove the antiquity and coherence of the Torah. Building on the ground-breaking analysis of the historian of law Victor Korošec, Mendenhall used the similarities between the Hittite treaties and covenantal passages in the Bible as empirical evidence for the antiquity of the latter. Particular attention was given to the structure of the Hittite treaties, which featured the following sections (even though not all are present in any given document):

  1. Historical prologue
  2. Presentation of the parties to the treaty
  3. Conditions of the treaty
  4. Witnesses (list of various gods)
  5. Blessings and curses” ref  

“In comparison with treaty forms found in other parts of the Near East, the inclusion of a historical prologue and blessings alongside the curses can be viewed as distinctive. Strikingly, several covenantal texts in the Bible also feature these two sections, especially the Book of Deuteronomy – taken in its entirety as a treaty form – and Joshua 24. On the other hand, these two sections are absent from the Neo-Assyrian treaties, from the eighth and seventh centuries, which others believe were the main influence on Deuteronomy. These observations served as the basis for Mendenhall’s argument that the biblical sources reflect a late 2nd millennium BCE date of composition, not the much later dates that were accepted by most biblical scholars.” ref 

There is an important distinction between the Decalogue and the “book of the covenant” (Exodus 21-23 and 34:10–24). The decalogue, it can be hypothesized was modeled on the suzerainty treaties of the Hittites (and other Mesopotamian Empires), that is, represents the relationship between god and Israel as a relationship between king and vassal, and enacts that bond. “The prologue of the Hittite treaty reminds his vassals of his benevolent acts (compare with Exodus 20:2 “I am the lord your god, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”) The Hittite treaty also stipulated the obligations imposed by the ruler on his vassals, which included a prohibition of relations with peoples outside the empire, or enmity between those within.” (Exodus 20:3 “you shall have no other gods before me.”) Viewed as a treaty rather than a law code, its purpose is not so much to regulate human affairs as to define the scope of the king’s power. Thus Exodus 34 is distinct from the Jahwist document, identifying it with king Asa’s reforms around 2,913 years ago. The book of the covenant, bears a greater similarity to Mesopotamian law codes (e.g. the Code of Hammurabi which was inscribed on a stone stele). ref, ref  

So the function of this “book” is to move from the realm of treaty to the realm of law: (Exodus 21 to 23; and 34), which is no official state law, but a description of normative Israelite judicial procedure in the days of the Judges, is the best example of this process” then, this body of law too predates the monarchy. The phrasing in the decalogue`s instructions suggests that it was conceived in a mainly polytheistic milieu, evident especially in the formulation of “no-other-gods-before-me” commandment. If the ten commandments are based on Hittite forms that would date it somewhere between the 2,140-2,120 years ago. The ten commandments believed to be written by god, the first thing that comes to mind is why is god so bad at writing things on stone. Why did he use two large stone tablets? When he, if god, more reasonably could have done it on one small manageable tablet. You would only think a stone craftsman of that time would need two large stone tablets to engrave on with crude tools stolen from Egypt right? Not a god!!! ref, ref  

The second rational thought is, if this “ten commandments” was to be taken seriously as a rule of law, why is it not organized with some resemblance to rational forethought such as murder before honoring your father and mother, right? So then onto the “first commandment,” two things come to mind. How god acknowledges the existence of other gods, he did not simply state there is no god but to stop worshiping other gods. As well the wording seems to imply you don’t have to remove other gods, you are just to put yahweh the god of Moses first. Believers cannot simply say I am interpreting it wrong. Because would not that say god did not know how to communicate or did not mean what he said the way he said it. So now to the” second commandment,” then the part about graven images is not really that simple as one verse as often reported. It could literally be any ART. People act as if it is just no god idols which it is not! Then, if jealousy is a sin, why is god allowed to sin and be jealous? Those who practice jealousy will not inherit the kingdom of god; Galatians 5:20-21. Then god’s sinful jealousy is likewise unjust by punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the fourth generation. ref, ref  

But hey, if you get to make the rules, you at least get to break them right? Exodus 20:4 you shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. Exodus 20:5 you shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the lord your god, am a jealous god, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. So to recap, the ten commandments are the rules of conduct given by Yahweh to Moses in Exodus 20:1-17, prescribing worship of Yahweh and honor for parents while prohibiting killing, adultery, theft, false witness, and covetousness. Of the ten commandments, the first four indicate an insecure god afraid of losing his authority. Only three commandments 6,8,9 can be related to sensible legal prohibitions (against murder, theft, and perjury/fraud). The remaining three commandments 5,7,10 in a rational secular America would only be seen as good advice. ref, ref 

Hittite treaties?

“The treaty was signed to end a long war between the Hittite Empire and the Egyptians, who had fought for over two centuries to gain mastery over the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. The conflict culminated with an attempted Egyptian invasion in 1274 BC that was stopped by the Hittites at the city of Kadesh on the Orontes River in what is now Syria. The Battle of Kadesh resulted in both sides suffering heavy casualties, but neither was able to prevail decisively in either the battle or the war. The conflict continued inconclusively for about fifteen more years before the treaty was signed. Although it is often referred to as the “Treaty of Kadesh”, it was actually signed long after the battle, and Kadesh is not mentioned in the text. The treaty is thought to have been negotiated by intermediaries without the two monarchs ever meeting in person. Both sides had common interests in making peace; Egypt faced a growing threat from the “Sea Peoples“, while the Hittites were concerned about the rising power of Assyria to the east. The treaty was ratified in the 21st year of Ramesses II’s reign (1258 BC) and continued in force until the Hittite Empire collapsed eighty years later.” ref  

“The Egyptian–Hittite peace treaty, also known as the Eternal Treaty or the Silver Treaty, is the only ancient Near Eastern treaty for which both sides’ versions have survived. It is sometimes called the Treaty of Kadesh after the well-documented Battle of Kadeshfought some sixteen years earlier, although Kadesh is not mentioned in the text. Both sides of the treaty have been the subject of intensive scholarly study. The treaty itself did not bring about a peace; in fact “an atmosphere of enmity between Hatti and Egypt lasted many years,” until the eventual treaty of alliance was signed. Translation of the texts revealed that this engraving was originally translated from silver tablets given to each side, which have since been lost to contemporary historians. The Egyptian version of the peace treaty was engraved in hieroglyphics on the walls of two temples belonging to Pharaoh Ramesses II in Thebes: the Ramesseum and the Precinct of Amun-Re at the Temple of Karnak. The scribes who engraved the Egyptian version of the treaty included descriptions of the figures and seals that were on the tablet that the Hittites delivered. The Hittite version was found in the Hittite capital of Hattusa (in present-day Turkey), preserved on baked clay tablets uncovered among the Hittite royal palace’s sizable archives. Two of the Hittite tablets are today displayed at the Museum of the Ancient Orient, part of the Istanbul Archaeology Museums. The third is on display in the Berlin State Museums in Germany. A copy of this treaty is prominently displayed on a wall in the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.” ref 

Traces of Totemism In Judaism  

Totemism (theoretical belief in a mythical relationship with powers/spirits through a totem item). Believe in spirit-filled life and/or afterlife can be attached to or be expressed in things or objects (you are a hidden totemist/Totemism: an approximately 50,000-year-old belief system)

“A totem is any species of plants or animals thought to possess supernatural powers. Each group within the society may have its own totem, including associated ceremonies. Totemic beliefs may not be as foreign to the Western mind as first expected; many Westerners have totems. School mascots, symbols, and emblems all constitute totems.” Ref

“The investigation of totemism is strictly the work of the anthropologist. Its mention in a study of this kind is necessitated by the fact that some maintain that the idea of a god was evolved from the idea of a totem and that honors to a god were but a form of magnification of honors to a totem. The eating of a sacrifice offered to a god was accordingly explained upon the basis of eating the god and thus incorporating his qualities. It is maintained by some and contested by others that every tribe of people has retained vestiges of original totemism and that therefore totemism is a true ancestor of religion. Scholars differ upon the thesis of the universality of early totemism. Totemistic practices are widely variant and totemism itself is a social philosophy rather than a religious tenet. Moreover, it is not necessary to suppose that the social and religious development of every people has been mechanically identical. After the entrance of human intellect and will upon the scene, it is impossible to make an accurate prediction of the succession of stages of progress, unless one is in possession of all the factors of choice. All that we can say is that totemism is a social state in which many peoples have once probably lived and some have surely lived. It is certainly one form which the eating of the sacred meal may have taken. It seems, however, to have been a sort of social excursion rather than a definite step in religious development. Since it was preceded by earlier social forms of life, it cannot be regarded as the origin of religion or of anything else.” Ref

Excerpts from the book Orpheus: A General History of Religions

By Salomon Reinach

“The Hebrews abstain from killing or eating animals such as the pig, whose ancestors (wild boars) had been the totems of their forefathers. These animals are designated either as sacred or unclean, two over-precise terms, which, if traced back to their origins, will be reduced to the idea of taboo, or prohibition. At a much later period it is suggested that the flesh of these animals was unwholesome, or that those ‘-who Rte it might contract vices of character. The Mosaic law merely formulates prohibitions which were already ancient; the Jews themselves believed these prohibitions to have been anterior to the Flood, for when Noah is about to take refuge in the Ark, the Eternal orders him to take with him two couples of every unclean beast and seven couples of every clean beast, without explaining what these words meant (Gen. vii. !!). Another evidence of the sacred character of the animals described 88 unclean was the clandestine custom reprobated by Isaiah (\xvi. 17): “They that sanctify themselves and purify themselves in the garden … eating swine’s flesh, and the abomination and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the Lord.” Here we have evidently the survival of one of these periodic sacrifices of totems, in which men sought to sanctify themselves by eating some sacred meat, the general use of which was forbidden. I will not insist on those names of men and tribes which are compounded of the names of animals, for it may always be objected to that these were merely nicknames; but the worship of that these were merely nicknames; but the worship of the bull and of the serpent among the Hebrews is an indubitable survival of totemism.” Ref

“It seems very probable that Jehovah was long represented by a bull. Portable gilded images of bulls were consecrated by Jeroboam (1 Kings, xii. !e8); the prophet Hosea inveighed against the worship of the bull in the kingdom of Israel (Hos. viii. 5; x. 5). The famous golden calf of the Israelites, the object of Moses’ anger, had nothing to do with the bull Apis, which was a live animal; it was a totemic idol of are compounded of the names of animals, for it may always be objected that these were merely nicknames; but the worship of the ‘bull and of the serpent among the Hebrews is an indubitable survival of totemism. It seems very probable that Jehovah was long by a bull. Portable gilded images of bulls were consecrated by Jeroboam (1 Kings, xii. !e8); the prophet Hosea inveighed against the worship of the bull in the kingdom of Israel (Hos. viii. 5; x. 5). The famous golden calf of the Israelites, the object of Moses’ anger, had nothing to do with the bull Apis, which was a live animal; it was a totemic idol of Isrealites, the object of Moses’ anger, had nothing to do with the bull Apis, which was a live animal; it was a totemic idol of a kind commonly found in the land of Canaan, where the bull “as the symbol, that is to say, the incarnation of a Baal. Although the law of Moses was hostile to every kind of idolatry, the worship of the serpent was practiced by Moses himself, who transformed his magic wand into a serpent (Ex. vii. 9-U) and made a brazen serpent to heal the people of the bites of serpents (Numbers xxi. 9). A brazen serpent, perhaps a totem of David’s family, was worshipped in the temple of Jerusalem and was only destroyed by He7.ekiah about 700 B.C. (2 Kings, xviii. 4).” Ref 

“The prophetess Deborah, whose name means a bee, was no doubt like those priestesses of Diana of Ephesus who were called (melimii), the ministrant of a totemic worship of this insect. Samson, the lion.slayer, was probably a lion, whose strength.. lay in his luxuriant tawny mane. This lion was strength lay in his luxuriant tawny mane. This lion was identified with the SUD, as in Babylonia, hence the analogy of Samson’s name with that of the Babylonian solar god, Slumuuh. I might multiply these examples, and speak of Balaam’s eloquent ass, which may be compared with the Greek tradition of an ass- I headed god worshipped by the Israelites possibly those of Samaria-and the >part played by the ass in Zechariah ix. 9, and in the account of Christ’s entry into Jenlsalem. The dove which descended from Heaven upon Jesus at his baptism was also an ancient Syrian totem. I have already mentioned the fish, a Syrian totem adopted by the Jews, and the early Christians (p. iO). Of course, the Jews were unconscious totemists. Like all other peoples, they must have ceased to be totemists, in the strict sense of the word, as soon they owned domestic animals. Totemic worship is generally incompatible with the possession of cattle. SO. In opposition to the heathen races who surrounded Israel and whose practices were constantly alluring them, the Jewish priesthood, the authors of the Old Testament, were Jewish priesthood, the authors of the Old Testament, were hostile to all magic, and also to the popular belief in a future life, which was likely to result in the evocation of the dead or necromancy. But this strategy of animism is so natural to man that the Bible nevertheless contains numerous instances of it. Moses and Aaron were magicilUls who rivalled Pharaoh’. magicians (Ex. vii. 11-00). Balaam was a magician who pronounced incantations against Israel, and afterwards passed over to the service of Jehovah (Numbers xxii. et 8eq.; Micah vi. 5.” Ref 

“Jacob resorted to a kind of sympathetic magic to procure the birth of speckled sheep (Gen. xxx. 89). Divination, which is the use of magic to discover the will of spiritual beings, was practiced by means Urim and Thummim , a kind of dice enclosed in a sacred receptacle called an ephod. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live it is written in Exodus xxii. Fatal words which the Christian Churches have obeyed only too faithfully! They offered at once an affirmation of the reality of witchcraft, and a tendency which still survives even in these days to look upon witchcraft as an appanage of the weaker sex. Both churches and secular tribunals have burnt favorite witches than wizards. The herem, or vow of destruction, tabooed everything; hence the sin of preserving anything in Jericho (Joshua vii). Some think that the notion of unclean animals was brought from Egypt with the rite of circumcision. This rite was probably part of a tribal initiation-ceremony, afterwards performed at an earlier time of life, but it was not a Semitic heritage, as it is unknown to the Eastern Semites and to the Philistines.’ The worship of stones, trees, wells, and serpents may have been agricultural or nomadic.· So too of such traits as fasting (Neh. ix. I); absence of the lex talionis (Gen. iv. 23); the practice of the Rechabites (Jer. xxxv.); the use of bitter water as an oracle; the scape-goat, etc. These are primitive, but whether nomadic or not is uncertain.’ The ark may well have been a survival of nomadic life. It’ served as an oracle and was taboo to the touch (I Sam. ivviL). It is said to have contained (meteoric?) stones. The ark of Shiloh may have been the home of the Lord of the practice of the Rechabites (Jer. xxxv.); the use of bitter water as an oracle; the scape-goat, etc. These are primitive, but whether nomadic or not is uncertain.’ The ark may well have been a survival of nomadic life. It served as an oracle and was taboo to the touch (I Sam. ivvii.). It is said to have contained (meteoric?) stones. The ark of Shiloh may have been the home of the Lord of Shechem, Baal-Berith, afterward identified with Yahweh.” Ref

Below is From TOTEMISM: By: Joseph Jacobs

A primitive social system in which members of a clan reckoned kinship through their mothers, and worshiped some animal or plant which they regarded as their ancestor and the image of which they bore tattooed on their persons. The following are the chief arguments in favor of the existence of totem clans among the ancient Israelites:

I. Animal and Plant Names: Arguments in Favor of Totemism.

“A considerable number of persons and places in the Old Testament have names derived from animals or plants. Jacobs (“Studies in Biblical Archæology,” pp. 94-103) has given a list of over 160 such names, including Oreb (the raven) and Zeeb (the wolf), princes of the Midianites; Caleb (the dog), Tola (the worm), Shual (the fox), Zimri (the chamois), Jonah (the dove), Huldah (the weasel), Jael (the ibex), Nahash (the serpent), Kezia (the cassia), Shaphan (the rock-badger), Ajalon (the great stag), and Zeboim (the hyena). Many of these, however, are personal names; but among the Israelitish tribes mentioned in Num. xxvi. are the Shualites, or fox clan of Asher; the Shuphamites, or serpent clan of Benjamin; the Bachrites, or camel clan; and the Arelites, or lion clan of Gad. Other tribes having similar names are the Zimrites, or hornet clan, and the Calebites, or dog tribe. In the genealogy of the Horites (Gen. xxxvi.) several animal names occur, such as Shobal (the young lion), Zibeon (the hyena), Anah (the wild ass), Dishan (the gazel), Akan (the roe), Aiah (the kite), Aran (the ass), and Cheran (the lamb). The occurrence of such a large number of animal names in one set of clan names suggests the possibility that the Horites, who were nomads, were organized on the totem-clan system.” Ref

II. Exogamy

“is the system under which any member of a clan may not marry within his own clan, but must marry a member of a kindred clan. Smith deduces the existence of such clans among the Horites from the mention of Anah clans and Dishan clans in the list. He also draws attention to Shimeis among the Levites, Reubenites, and Benjamites. Female descent is the only means of tracing kinship in exogamous clans; and Smith sees a survival of this in the case of the marriage of Abraham and Sarah, who were not of the same mother, while Abimelech appealed to his mother’s clan as being of his flesh (Judges viii. 19), and Naomi told Ruth to return to her mother’s house (Ruth i. 8) .” Ref

III. Ancestor and Animal Worship:

“Smith attributes the friendship between David and Nahash, King of the Ammonites, to the fact that they were both members of a serpent clan spread throughout Canaan. That animals were worshiped among the Hebrews is well known, as is shown by the legends of the golden calf and the brazen serpent. The second commandment prohibits this. Smith draws attention to the case of animal worship in Ezek. viii. 7-11, where Ezekiel sees “every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about,” and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah ben Shaphan (the rock-badger), “with every man his censer in his hand, and a thick cloud of incense went up.” Here there is animal worship connected with the name of a person who appears to be connected with an unclean beast, the “shaphan.” See also Ancestor Worship.” Ref

IV. Forbidden Food:

Members of a totem clan did not eat the totem animal. As such totems gradually spread throughout the nation, a list of forbidden animals would arise which might be analogous to the list of forbidden animals given in Lev. xi. and Deut. xv. Jacobs, however, has shown that in the list of animal names given by him forty-three are clean as against forty-two unclean.” Ref

V. Tattooing and Clan Crests: Absence of Historic Connection.

“A totem is tattooed on the skin of the totem worshiper; and there is evidence in Lev. xix. 28 that the Israelites were forbidden to make tattoo-marks, while an allusion to this practise may be contained in Isa. xliv. 5 and in Ezek. ix. 4. The mark of Cain may perhaps have been a tattoo-mark. In none of these instances, however, are there indications that the tattoo-marks were in an animal form or connected with animal worship. The tribes of Israel when on the marchhad standards (Num. i. 52, ii. 2 et seq.); and rabbinic literature gives details of the crests (see Flag), which were derived from the blessings of Jacob (Gen. xlix.) and Moses (Deut. xxxiii.). In these most of the tribes are compared to an animal: Judah to a lion; Issachar to an ass; Dan to a serpent; etc. In Moses’ blessing, however, Dan is compared to a lion’s whelp, which seems to show that the tribes were not arranged on a totemic system.” Ref

VI. Blood Feud:

“The practical side of the totem system insured the existence of relatives scattered throughout a tribe, who would guarantee the taking up of the blood feud in case one of the members of the totem clan was injured or killed. The existence of the blood feud can be recognized in Israel (see Go’el), but there is no evidence of a connection with totemism. Altogether, while traces and survivals are found of institutions similar to those of the totem clan, there is not sufficient evidence to show that it existed in Israel during historic times, though it is possible that some such system was found among the Edomites.” Ref

Anthropomorphic cult statues were a major focus of religious practice in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant. These images provided a focal point for worshippers to experience the deity ‘face-to-face’ in the context of religious festivals and temple service. Deities were thought to be manifest in their cult statues, where they could taste and smell votive offerings and hear worshipper’s prayers. There was no one biblical understanding of divine images. The various law codes, for example, prohibit different things:

Decalogue Exod 20:4 = Deut 5:8 “You will not make a hewn image (pesel) whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or on earth below or in the waters below the earth.” [Only hewn images are prohibited.]

Covenant Code Exod 20:23 “You will not make gods of silver alongside me (ˀittî) nor will you make gods of gold for yourselves.” [This verse seems to suggest that Yahweh had the exclusive right to be represented in cult statues]

Holiness Code Lev 19:4 “Do not turn to idols (hā-ˀĕlîlîm) nor make cast images of gods (ˀĕlōhê massēkâ) for yourselves!”

Holiness Code Lev 26:1 “You will not make idols (ˀĕlîlîm) or a hewn image (pesel) for yourselves. And you will not erect a standing stone (maṣṣēbâ) for yourselves or put a figured stone (ˀaben maśkît) to worship it.”

Covenant Curses Deut 27:15 “Cursed be the man who makes a hewn image (pesel) or cast image (massēkâ), abhorrent to the lord, the work of the hands of the artisan and sets it up in secret.”

‘Ritual’ Decalogue Exod 34:17 “You will not make cast images of gods (ˀĕlōhê massēkâ) for yourself.”

These laws are normative.  The proliferation of prohibitions suggests that images continued to be made, which fits archaeological and biblical data.

Excavators found a bronze bull figurine dated to ca. 1200 b.c.e. at Dothan near Samaria in what is believed to be a cult site.  It is unclear, however, whether this site was Israelite at this time period. Nevertheless, the figurine recalls the bull statues that Jereboam installed in Dan and Bethel (1 Kgs 12:28-29).  Ref

Judaism and its many offshoots…

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey 

“How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements in their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In this new study, Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. He considers the varieties of animism found in these cultures as well as their shared desire to live respectfully within larger natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey also considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of these different animisms.” ref

My thoughts on Religion Evolution with external links for more info:

“Religion is an Evolved Product” and Yes, Religion is Like Fear Given Wings…

Atheists talk about gods and religions for the same reason doctors talk about cancer, they are looking for a cure, or a firefighter talks about fires because they burn people and they care to stop them. We atheists too often feel a need to help the victims of mental slavery, held in the bondage that is the false beliefs of gods and the conspiracy theories of reality found in religions.

“Understanding Religion Evolution: Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, Paganism & Progressed organized religion”

Understanding Religion Evolution:

“An Archaeological/Anthropological Understanding of Religion Evolution”

It seems ancient peoples had to survived amazing threats in a “dangerous universe (by superstition perceived as good and evil),” and human “immorality or imperfection of the soul” which was thought to affect the still living, leading to ancestor worship. This ancestor worship presumably led to the belief in supernatural beings, and then some of these were turned into the belief in gods. This feeble myth called gods were just a human conceived “made from nothing into something over and over, changing, again and again, taking on more as they evolve, all the while they are thought to be special,” but it is just supernatural animistic spirit-belief perceived as sacred.

 

Quick Evolution of Religion?

Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago) pre-religion is a beginning that evolves into later Animism. So, Religion as we think of it, to me, all starts in a general way with Animism (Africa: 100,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in supernatural powers/spirits), then this is physically expressed in or with Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in mythical relationship with powers/spirits through a totem item), which then enlists a full-time specific person to do this worship and believed interacting Shamanism (Siberia/Russia: 30,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in access and influence with spirits through ritual), and then there is the further employment of myths and gods added to all the above giving you Paganism (Turkey: 12,000 years ago) (often a lot more nature-based than most current top world religions, thus hinting to their close link to more ancient religious thinking it stems from). My hypothesis is expressed with an explanation of the building of a theatrical house (modern religions development). Progressed organized religion (Egypt: 5,000 years ago)  with CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago).

Historically, in large city-state societies (such as Egypt or Iraq) starting around 5,000 years ago culminated to make religion something kind of new, a sociocultural-governmental-religious monarchy, where all or at least many of the people of such large city-state societies seem familiar with and committed to the existence of “religion” as the integrated life identity package of control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine, but this juggernaut integrated religion identity package of Dogmatic-Propaganda certainly did not exist or if developed to an extent it was highly limited in most smaller prehistoric societies as they seem to lack most of the strong control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine (magical beliefs could be at times be added or removed). Many people just want to see developed religious dynamics everywhere even if it is not. Instead, all that is found is largely fragments until the domestication of religion.

Religions, as we think of them today, are a new fad, even if they go back to around 6,000 years in the timeline of human existence, this amounts to almost nothing when seen in the long slow evolution of religion at least around 70,000 years ago with one of the oldest ritual worship. Stone Snake of South Africa: “first human worship” 70,000 years ago. This message of how religion and gods among them are clearly a man-made thing that was developed slowly as it was invented and then implemented peace by peace discrediting them all. Which seems to be a simple point some are just not grasping how devastating to any claims of truth when we can see the lie clearly in the archeological sites.

I wish people fought as hard for the actual values as they fight for the group/clan names political or otherwise they think support values. Every amount spent on war is theft to children in need of food or the homeless kept from shelter.

Here are several of my blog posts on history:

I am not an academic. I am a revolutionary that teaches in public, in places like social media, and in the streets. I am not a leader by some title given but from my commanding leadership style of simply to start teaching everywhere to everyone, all manner of positive education. 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Low Gods “Earth” or Tutelary deity and High Gods “Sky” or Supreme deity

“An Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth. Earth goddesses are often associated with the “chthonic” deities of the underworldKi and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra, Indic Prithvi/Bhūmi, etc. traced to an “Earth Mother” complementary to the “Sky Father” in Proto-Indo-European religionEgyptian mythology exceptionally has a sky goddess and an Earth god.” ref

“A mother goddess is a goddess who represents or is a personification of naturemotherhoodfertilitycreationdestruction or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother. In some religious traditions or movements, Heavenly Mother (also referred to as Mother in Heaven or Sky Mother) is the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky father or God the Father.” ref

Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorized as “sky father” deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a “sky father” god with an “earth mother” goddess (pairings of a sky mother with an earth father are less frequent). A main sky goddess is often the queen of the gods and may be an air/sky goddess in her own right, though she usually has other functions as well with “sky” not being her main. In antiquity, several sky goddesses in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East were called Queen of Heaven. Neopagans often apply it with impunity to sky goddesses from other regions who were never associated with the term historically. The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky.” ref

“In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept in polytheistic religions of a sky god who is addressed as a “father”, often the father of a pantheon and is often either a reigning or former King of the Gods. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics, such as Ra. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother“. “Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter and Germanic Týr, Tir or Tiwaz, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity’s name, *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, there are exceptions (e.g. In Egyptian mythology, Nut is the sky mother and Geb is the earth father).” ref

Tutelary deity

“A tutelary (also tutelar) is a deity or spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of “tutelary” expresses the concept of safety and thus of guardianship. In late Greek and Roman religion, one type of tutelary deity, the genius, functions as the personal deity or daimon of an individual from birth to death. Another form of personal tutelary spirit is the familiar spirit of European folklore.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) iKorean shamanismjangseung and sotdae were placed at the edge of villages to frighten off demons. They were also worshiped as deities. Seonangshin is the patron deity of the village in Korean tradition and was believed to embody the SeonangdangIn Philippine animism, Diwata or Lambana are deities or spirits that inhabit sacred places like mountains and mounds and serve as guardians. Such as: Maria Makiling is the deity who guards Mt. Makiling and Maria Cacao and Maria Sinukuan. In Shinto, the spirits, or kami, which give life to human bodies come from nature and return to it after death. Ancestors are therefore themselves tutelaries to be worshiped. And similarly, Native American beliefs such as Tonás, tutelary animal spirit among the Zapotec and Totems, familial or clan spirits among the Ojibwe, can be animals.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Austronesian beliefs such as: Atua (gods and spirits of the Polynesian peoples such as the Māori or the Hawaiians), Hanitu (Bunun of Taiwan‘s term for spirit), Hyang (KawiSundaneseJavanese, and Balinese Supreme Being, in ancient Java and Bali mythology and this spiritual entity, can be either divine or ancestral), Kaitiaki (New Zealand Māori term used for the concept of guardianship, for the sky, the sea, and the land), Kawas (mythology) (divided into 6 groups: gods, ancestors, souls of the living, spirits of living things, spirits of lifeless objects, and ghosts), Tiki (Māori mythologyTiki is the first man created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne and represents deified ancestors found in most Polynesian cultures). ” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Mesopotamian Tutelary Deities can be seen as ones related to City-States 

“Historical city-states included Sumerian cities such as Uruk and UrAncient Egyptian city-states, such as Thebes and Memphis; the Phoenician cities (such as Tyre and Sidon); the five Philistine city-states; the Berber city-states of the Garamantes; the city-states of ancient Greece (the poleis such as AthensSpartaThebes, and Corinth); the Roman Republic (which grew from a city-state into a vast empire); the Italian city-states from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, such as FlorenceSienaFerraraMilan (which as they grew in power began to dominate neighboring cities) and Genoa and Venice, which became powerful thalassocracies; the Mayan and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (including cities such as Chichen ItzaTikalCopán and Monte Albán); the central Asian cities along the Silk Road; the city-states of the Swahili coastRagusa; states of the medieval Russian lands such as Novgorod and Pskov; and many others.” ref

“The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BCE; also known as Protoliterate period) of Mesopotamia, named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian civilization. City-States like Uruk and others had a patron tutelary City Deity along with a Priest-King.” ref

Chinese folk religion, both past, and present, includes myriad tutelary deities. Exceptional individuals, highly cultivated sages, and prominent ancestors can be deified and honored after death. Lord Guan is the patron of military personnel and police, while Mazu is the patron of fishermen and sailors. Such as Tu Di Gong (Earth Deity) is the tutelary deity of a locality, and each individual locality has its own Earth Deity and Cheng Huang Gong (City God) is the guardian deity of an individual city, worshipped by local officials and locals since imperial times.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Hinduism, personal tutelary deities are known as ishta-devata, while family tutelary deities are known as Kuladevata. Gramadevata are guardian deities of villages. Devas can also be seen as tutelary. Shiva is the patron of yogis and renunciants. City goddesses include: Mumbadevi (Mumbai), Sachchika (Osian); Kuladevis include: Ambika (Porwad), and Mahalakshmi. In NorthEast India Meitei mythology and religion (Sanamahism) of Manipur, there are various types of tutelary deities, among which Lam Lais are the most predominant ones. Tibetan Buddhism has Yidam as a tutelary deity. Dakini is the patron of those who seek knowledge.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) The Greeks also thought deities guarded specific places: for instance, Athena was the patron goddess of the city of Athens. Socrates spoke of hearing the voice of his personal spirit or daimonion:

You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.” ref

“Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to ancient Roman religion. The tutelary deity of a man was his Genius, that of a woman her Juno. In the Imperial era, the Genius of the Emperor was a focus of Imperial cult. An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as Augustus did Apollo. Precedents for claiming the personal protection of a deity were established in the Republican era, when for instance the Roman dictator Sulla advertised the goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games (ludi) in her honor.” ref

“Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege. Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see Quintus Valerius Soranus). The Capitoline Triad of Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at the Latin town of Lanuvium and the Etruscan city of Veii, and was often housed in an especially grand temple on the arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of Praeneste was Fortuna, whose oracle was renowned.” ref

“The Roman ritual of evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside the city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as the Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele) as “tower-crowned” represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within the civitas of the Remi in Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of the Remi (present-day Rheims), the tutelary was Mars Camulus.” ref 

Household deity (a kind of or related to a Tutelary deity)

“A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in paganism as well as in folklore across many parts of the world. Household deities fit into two types; firstly, a specific deity – typically a goddess – often referred to as a hearth goddess or domestic goddess who is associated with the home and hearth, such as the ancient Greek Hestia.” ref

“The second type of household deities are those that are not one singular deity, but a type, or species of animistic deity, who usually have lesser powers than major deities. This type was common in the religions of antiquity, such as the Lares of ancient Roman religion, the Gashin of Korean shamanism, and Cofgodas of Anglo-Saxon paganism. These survived Christianisation as fairy-like creatures existing in folklore, such as the Anglo-Scottish Brownie and Slavic Domovoy.” ref

“Household deities were usually worshipped not in temples but in the home, where they would be represented by small idols (such as the teraphim of the Bible, often translated as “household gods” in Genesis 31:19 for example), amulets, paintings, or reliefs. They could also be found on domestic objects, such as cosmetic articles in the case of Tawaret. The more prosperous houses might have a small shrine to the household god(s); the lararium served this purpose in the case of the Romans. The gods would be treated as members of the family and invited to join in meals, or be given offerings of food and drink.” ref

“In many religions, both ancient and modern, a god would preside over the home. Certain species, or types, of household deities, existed. An example of this was the Roman Lares. Many European cultures retained house spirits into the modern period. Some examples of these include:

“Although the cosmic status of household deities was not as lofty as that of the Twelve Olympians or the Aesir, they were also jealous of their dignity and also had to be appeased with shrines and offerings, however humble. Because of their immediacy they had arguably more influence on the day-to-day affairs of men than the remote gods did. Vestiges of their worship persisted long after Christianity and other major religions extirpated nearly every trace of the major pagan pantheons. Elements of the practice can be seen even today, with Christian accretions, where statues to various saints (such as St. Francis) protect gardens and grottos. Even the gargoyles found on older churches, could be viewed as guardians partitioning a sacred space.” ref

“For centuries, Christianity fought a mop-up war against these lingering minor pagan deities, but they proved tenacious. For example, Martin Luther‘s Tischreden have numerous – quite serious – references to dealing with kobolds. Eventually, rationalism and the Industrial Revolution threatened to erase most of these minor deities, until the advent of romantic nationalism rehabilitated them and embellished them into objects of literary curiosity in the 19th century. Since the 20th century this literature has been mined for characters for role-playing games, video games, and other fantasy personae, not infrequently invested with invented traits and hierarchies somewhat different from their mythological and folkloric roots.” ref

“In contradistinction to both Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, who defended theories of animistic origins of ancestor worship, Émile Durkheim saw its origin in totemism. In reality, this distinction is somewhat academic, since totemism may be regarded as a particularized manifestation of animism, and something of a synthesis of the two positions was attempted by Sigmund Freud. In Freud’s Totem and Taboo, both totem and taboo are outward expressions or manifestations of the same psychological tendency, a concept which is complementary to, or which rather reconciles, the apparent conflict. Freud preferred to emphasize the psychoanalytic implications of the reification of metaphysical forces, but with particular emphasis on its familial nature. This emphasis underscores, rather than weakens, the ancestral component.” ref

William Edward Hearn, a noted classicist, and jurist, traced the origin of domestic deities from the earliest stages as an expression of animism, a belief system thought to have existed also in the neolithic, and the forerunner of Indo-European religion. In his analysis of the Indo-European household, in Chapter II “The House Spirit”, Section 1, he states:

The belief which guided the conduct of our forefathers was … the spirit rule of dead ancestors.” ref

“In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:

It is thus certain that the worship of deceased ancestors is a vera causa, and not a mere hypothesis. …

In the other European nations, the Slavs, the Teutons, and the Kelts, the House Spirit appears with no less distinctness. … [T]he existence of that worship does not admit of doubt. … The House Spirits had a multitude of other names which it is needless here to enumerate, but all of which are more or less expressive of their friendly relations with man. … In [England] … [h]e is the Brownie. … In Scotland this same Brownie is well known. He is usually described as attached to particular families, with whom he has been known to reside for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house, and performing similar household tasks. His favorite gratification was milk and honey.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

refrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefref

“These ideas are my speculations from the evidence.”

I am still researching the “god‘s origins” all over the world. So you know, it is very complicated but I am smart and willing to look, DEEP, if necessary, which going very deep does seem to be needed here, when trying to actually understand the evolution of gods and goddesses. I am sure of a few things and less sure of others, but even in stuff I am not fully grasping I still am slowly figuring it out, to explain it to others. But as I research more I am understanding things a little better, though I am still working on understanding it all or something close and thus always figuring out more. 

Sky Father/Sky God?

“Egyptian: (Nut) Sky Mother and (Geb) Earth Father” (Egypt is different but similar)

Turkic/Mongolic: (Tengri/Tenger Etseg) Sky Father and (Eje/Gazar Eej) Earth Mother *Transeurasian*

Hawaiian: (Wākea) Sky Father and (Papahānaumoku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*

New Zealand/ Māori: (Ranginui) Sky Father and (Papatūānuku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*

Proto-Indo-European: (Dyus/Dyus phtr) Sky Father and (Dʰéǵʰōm/Plethwih) Earth Mother

Indo-Aryan: (Dyaus Pita) Sky Father and (Prithvi Mata) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Italic: (Jupiter) Sky Father and (Juno) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Etruscan: (Tinia) Sky Father and (Uni) Sky Mother *Tyrsenian/Italy Pre–Indo-European*

Hellenic/Greek: (Zeus) Sky Father and (Hera) Sky Mother who started as an “Earth Goddess” *Indo-European*

Nordic: (Dagr) Sky Father and (Nótt) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Slavic: (Perun) Sky Father and (Mokosh) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Illyrian: (Deipaturos) Sky Father and (Messapic Damatura’s “earth-mother” maybe) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Albanian: (Zojz) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*

Baltic: (Perkūnas) Sky Father and (Saulė) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Germanic: (Týr) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*

Colombian-Muisca: (Bochica) Sky Father and (Huythaca) Sky Mother *Chibchan*

Aztec: (Quetzalcoatl) Sky Father and (Xochiquetzal) Sky Mother *Uto-Aztecan*

Incan: (Viracocha) Sky Father and (Mama Runtucaya) Sky Mother *Quechuan*

China: (Tian/Shangdi) Sky Father and (Dì) Earth Mother *Sino-Tibetan*

Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian: (An/Anu) Sky Father and (Ki) Earth Mother

Finnish: (Ukko) Sky Father and (Akka) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*

Sami: (Horagalles) Sky Father and (Ravdna) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*

Puebloan-Zuni: (Ápoyan Ta’chu) Sky Father and (Áwitelin Tsíta) Earth Mother

Puebloan-Hopi: (Tawa) Sky Father and (Kokyangwuti/Spider Woman/Grandmother) Earth Mother *Uto-Aztecan*

Puebloan-Navajo: (Tsohanoai) Sky Father and (Estsanatlehi) Earth Mother *Na-Dene*

refrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefref 

 

Sky Father/Sky Mother “High Gods” or similar gods/goddesses of the sky more loosely connected, seeming arcane mythology across the earth seen in Siberia, China, Europe, Native Americans/First Nations People and Mesopotamia, etc.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref

Hinduism around 3,700 to 3,500 years old. ref

 Judaism around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (The first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew” dated to around 3,000 years ago Khirbet Qeiyafa is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley. And many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed around 2,500) ref, ref

Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)

“Judaism is an Abrahamic, its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Some scholars argue that modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions.” ref

“Yahwism is the name given by modern scholars to the religion of ancient Israel, essentially polytheistic, with a plethora of gods and goddesses. Heading the pantheon was Yahweh, the national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah, with his consort, the goddess Asherah; below them were second-tier gods and goddesses such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, all of whom had their own priests and prophets and numbered royalty among their devotees, and a third and fourth tier of minor divine beings, including the mal’ak, the messengers of the higher gods, who in later times became the angels of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yahweh, however, was not the ‘original’ god of Israel “Isra-El”; it is El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, whose name forms the basis of the name “Israel”, and none of the Old Testament patriarchs, the tribes of Israel, the Judges, or the earliest monarchs, have a Yahwistic theophoric name (i.e., one incorporating the name of Yahweh).” ref

“El is a Northwest Semitic word meaning “god” or “deity“, or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. A rarer form, ‘ila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil-, meaning “god”. Specific deities known as ‘El or ‘Il include the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period. ʼĒl is listed at the head of many pantheons. In some Canaanite and Ugaritic sources, ʼĒl played a role as father of the gods, of creation, or both. For example, in the Ugaritic texts, ʾil mlk is understood to mean “ʼĒl the King” but ʾil hd as “the god Hadad“. The Semitic root ʾlh (Arabic ʾilāh, Aramaic ʾAlāh, ʾElāh, Hebrew ʾelōah) may be ʾl with a parasitic h, and ʾl may be an abbreviated form of ʾlh. In Ugaritic the plural form meaning “gods” is ʾilhm, equivalent to Hebrew ʾelōhîm “powers”. In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for “god” by biblical commentators. However the documentary hypothesis for the Old Testament (corresponds to the Jewish Torah) developed originally in the 1870s, identifies these that different authors – the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source – were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis.” ref

 

Jainism around 2,599 – 2,527 years old. ref

Confucianism around 2,600 – 2,551 years old. ref

Buddhism around 2,563/2,480 – 2,483/2,400 years old. ref

Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref

Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref

Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref

Sikhism around 548–478 years old. ref

Bahá’í around 200–125 years old. ref

Knowledge to Ponder: 

Stars/Astrology:

  • Possibly, around 30,000 years ago (in simpler form) to 6,000 years ago, Stars/Astrology are connected to Ancestors, Spirit Animals, and Deities.
  • The star also seems to be a possible proto-star for Star of Ishtar, Star of Inanna, or Star of Venus.
  • Around 7,000 to 6,000 years ago, Star Constellations/Astrology have connections to the “Kurgan phenomenon” of below-ground “mound” stone/wood burial structures and “Dolmen phenomenon” of above-ground stone burial structures.
  • Around 6,500–5,800 years ago, The Northern Levant migrations into Jordon and Israel in the Southern Levant brought new cultural and religious transfer from Turkey and Iran.
  • “The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious 6,000-year-old mural from Jordan may have connections to the European paganstic kurgan/dolmens phenomenon.

“Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Different cultures have employed forms of astrology since at least the 2nd millennium BCE, these practices having originated in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. Most, if not all, cultures have attached importance to what they observed in the sky, and some—such as the HindusChinese, and the Maya—developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems still in use, can trace its roots to 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient GreeceRome, the Islamicate world and eventually Central and Western Europe. Contemporary Western astrology is often associated with systems of horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person’s personality and predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects; the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems.” ref 

Around 5,500 years ago, Science evolves, The first evidence of science was 5,500 years ago and was demonstrated by a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world. ref

Around 5,000 years ago, Origin of Logics is a Naturalistic Observation (principles of valid reasoning, inference, & demonstration) ref

Around 4,150 to 4,000 years ago: The earliest surviving versions of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, which was originally titled “He who Saw the Deep” (Sha naqba īmuru) or “Surpassing All Other Kings” (Shūtur eli sharrī) were written. ref

Hinduism:

  • 3,700 years ago or so, the oldest of the Hindu Vedas (scriptures), the Rig Veda was composed.
  • 3,500 years ago or so, the Vedic Age began in India after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization.

Judaism:

  • around 3,000 years ago, the first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew”
  • around 2,500 years ago, many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed

Myths: The bible inspired religion is not just one religion or one myth but a grouping of several religions and myths

  • Around 3,450 or 3,250 years ago, according to legend, is the traditionally accepted period in which the Israelite lawgiver, Moses, provided the Ten Commandments.
  • Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, a collection of ancient religious writings by the Israelites based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh, or Old Testament is the first part of Christianity’s bible.
  • Around 2,400 years ago, the most accepted hypothesis is that the canon was formed in stages, first the Pentateuch (Torah).
  • Around 2,140 to 2,116 years ago, the Prophets was written during the Hasmonean dynasty, and finally the remaining books.
  • Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections:
  • The first five books or Pentateuch (Torah).
  • The proposed history books telling the history of the Israelites from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon.
  • The poetic and proposed “Wisdom books” dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world.
  • The books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God:
  • Henotheism:
  • Exodus 20:23 “You shall not make other gods besides Me (not saying there are no other gods just not to worship them); gods of silver or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves.”
  • Polytheism:
  • Judges 10:6 “Then the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the sons of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines; thus they forsook the LORD and did not serve Him.”
  • 1 Corinthians 8:5 “For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords.”
  • Monotheism:
  • Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.

Around 2,570 to 2,270 Years Ago, there is a confirmation of atheistic doubting as well as atheistic thinking, mainly by Greek philosophers. However, doubting gods is likely as old as the invention of gods and should destroy the thinking that belief in god(s) is the “default belief”. The Greek word is apistos (a “not” and pistos “faithful,”), thus not faithful or faithless because one is unpersuaded and unconvinced by a god(s) claim. Short Definition: unbelieving, unbeliever, or unbelief.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Expressions of Atheistic Thinking:

  • Around 2,600 years ago, Ajita Kesakambali, ancient Indian philosopher, who is the first known proponent of Indian materialism. ref
  • Around 2,535 to 2,475 years ago, Heraclitus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor or modern Turkey. ref
  • Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, according to The Story of Civilization book series certain African pygmy tribes have no identifiable gods, spirits, or religious beliefs or rituals, and even what burials accrue are without ceremony. ref
  • Around 2,490 to 2,430 years ago, Empedocles, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. ref
  • Around 2,460 to 2,370 years ago, Democritus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher considered to be the “father of modern science” possibly had some disbelief amounting to atheism. ref
  • Around 2,399 years ago or so, Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher was tried for sinfulness by teaching doubt of state gods. ref
  • Around 2,341 to 2,270 years ago, Epicurus, a Greek philosopher known for composing atheistic critics and famously stated, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?” ref

This last expression by Epicurus, seems to be an expression of Axiological Atheism. To understand and utilize value or actually possess “Value Conscious/Consciousness” to both give a strong moral “axiological” argument (the problem of evil) as well as use it to fortify humanism and positive ethical persuasion of human helping and care responsibilities. Because value-blindness gives rise to sociopathic/psychopathic evil.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

While hallucinogens are associated with shamanism, it is alcohol that is associated with paganism.

The Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries Shows in the prehistory series:

Show one: Prehistory: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” the division of labor, power, rights, and recourses.

Show two: Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”

Show tree: Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”

Show four: Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”

Show five: Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”

Show six: Emergence of hierarchy, sexism, slavery, and the new male god dominance: Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves!

Show seven: Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State)

Show eight: Paganism 4,000 years old: Moralistic gods after the rise of Statism and often support Statism/Kings: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism)

Prehistory: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” the division of labor, power, rights, and recourses: VIDEO

Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO

Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO

Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO

Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Pre-Capitalism): VIDEO

Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves: VIEDO

Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State): VIEDO

Paganism 4,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism): VIEDO

I do not hate simply because I challenge and expose myths or lies any more than others being thought of as loving simply because of the protection and hiding from challenge their favored myths or lies.

The truth is best championed in the sunlight of challenge.

An archaeologist once said to me “Damien religion and culture are very different”

My response, So are you saying that was always that way, such as would you say Native Americans’ cultures are separate from their religions? And do you think it always was the way you believe?

I had said that religion was a cultural product. That is still how I see it and there are other archaeologists that think close to me as well. Gods too are the myths of cultures that did not understand science or the world around them, seeing magic/supernatural everywhere.

I personally think there is a goddess and not enough evidence to support a male god at Çatalhöyük but if there was both a male and female god and goddess then I know the kind of gods they were like Proto-Indo-European mythology.

This series idea was addressed in, Anarchist Teaching as Free Public Education or Free Education in the Public: VIDEO

Our 12 video series: Organized Oppression: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of power (9,000-4,000 years ago), is adapted from: The Complete and Concise History of the Sumerians and Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia (7000-2000 BC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szFjxmY7jQA by “History with Cy

Show #1: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Samarra, Halaf, Ubaid)

Show #2: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Eridu: First City of Power)

Show #3: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Uruk and the First Cities)

Show #4: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (First Kings)

Show #5: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Early Dynastic Period)

Show #6: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (King Lugalzagesi and the First Empire)

Show #7: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Sargon and Akkadian Rule)

Show #8: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Naram-Sin, Post-Akkadian Rule, and the Gutians)

Show #9: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Gudea of Lagash and Utu-hegal)

Show #10: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Third Dynasty of Ur / Neo-Sumerian Empire)

Show #11: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Amorites, Elamites, and the End of an Era)

Show #12: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Aftermath and Legacy of Sumer)

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

The “Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries”

Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ Atheist Leftist @Skepticallefty & I (Damien Marie AtHope) @AthopeMarie (my YouTube & related blog) are working jointly in atheist, antitheist, antireligionist, antifascist, anarchist, socialist, and humanist endeavors in our videos together, generally, every other Saturday.

Why Does Power Bring Responsibility?

Think, how often is it the powerless that start wars, oppress others, or commit genocide? So, I guess the question is to us all, to ask, how can power not carry responsibility in a humanity concept? I know I see the deep ethical responsibility that if there is power their must be a humanistic responsibility of ethical and empathic stewardship of that power. Will I be brave enough to be kind? Will I possess enough courage to be compassionate? Will my valor reach its height of empathy? I as everyone, earns our justified respect by our actions, that are good, ethical, just, protecting, and kind. Do I have enough self-respect to put my love for humanity’s flushing, over being brought down by some of its bad actors? May we all be the ones doing good actions in the world, to help human flourishing.

I create the world I want to live in, striving for flourishing. Which is not a place but a positive potential involvement and promotion; a life of humanist goal precision. To master oneself, also means mastering positive prosocial behaviors needed for human flourishing. I may have lost a god myth as an atheist, but I am happy to tell you, my friend, it is exactly because of that, leaving the mental terrorizer, god belief, that I truly regained my connected ethical as well as kind humanity.

Cory and I will talk about prehistory and theism, addressing the relevance to atheism, anarchism, and socialism.

At the same time as the rise of the male god, 7,000 years ago, there was also the very time there was the rise of violence, war, and clans to kingdoms, then empires, then states. It is all connected back to 7,000 years ago, and it moved across the world.

Cory Johnston: https://damienmarieathope.com/2021/04/cory-johnston-mind-of-a-skeptical-leftist/?v=32aec8db952d  

The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist (YouTube)

Cory Johnston: Mind of a Skeptical Leftist @Skepticallefty

The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist By Cory Johnston: “Promoting critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics by covering current events and talking to a variety of people. Cory Johnston has been thoughtfully talking to people and attempting to promote critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics.” http://anchor.fm/skepticalleft

Cory needs our support. We rise by helping each other.

Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ @Skepticallefty Evidence-based atheist leftist (he/him) Producer, host, and co-host of 4 podcasts @skeptarchy @skpoliticspod and @AthopeMarie

Damien Marie AtHope (“At Hope”) Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist. Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Poet, Philosopher, Advocate, Activist, Psychology, and Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Historian.

Damien is interested in: Freedom, Liberty, Justice, Equality, Ethics, Humanism, Science, Atheism, Antiteism, Antireligionism, Ignosticism, Left-Libertarianism, Anarchism, Socialism, Mutualism, Axiology, Metaphysics, LGBTQI, Philosophy, Advocacy, Activism, Mental Health, Psychology, Archaeology, Social Work, Sexual Rights, Marriage Rights, Woman’s Rights, Gender Rights, Child Rights, Secular Rights, Race Equality, Ageism/Disability Equality, Etc. And a far-leftist, “Anarcho-Humanist.”

I am not a good fit in the atheist movement that is mostly pro-capitalist, I am anti-capitalist. Mostly pro-skeptic, I am a rationalist not valuing skepticism. Mostly pro-agnostic, I am anti-agnostic. Mostly limited to anti-Abrahamic religions, I am an anti-religionist. 

To me, the “male god” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 7,000 years ago, whereas the now favored monotheism “male god” is more like 4,000 years ago or so. To me, the “female goddess” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 11,000-10,000 years ago or so, losing the majority of its once prominence around 2,000 years ago due largely to the now favored monotheism “male god” that grow in prominence after 4,000 years ago or so. 

My Thought on the Evolution of Gods?

Animal protector deities from old totems/spirit animal beliefs come first to me, 13,000/12,000 years ago, then women as deities 11,000/10,000 years ago, then male gods around 7,000/8,000 years ago. Moralistic gods around 5,000/4,000 years ago, and monotheistic gods around 4,000/3,000 years ago. 

Gods?
 
“Animism” is needed to begin supernatural thinking.
“Totemism” is needed for supernatural thinking connecting human actions & related to clan/tribe.
“Shamanism” is needed for supernatural thinking to be controllable/changeable by special persons.
 
Together = Gods/paganism

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):

Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism

My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or QuotesMy YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com

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