The Splintered Divine: A Study of Istar, Baal, and Yahweh Divine Names and Divine Multiplicity in the Ancient Near East

Description

This book investigates the issue of the singularity versus the multiplicity of ancient Near Eastern deities who are known by a common first name but differentiated by their last names, or geographic epithets. It focuses primarily on the Ištar divine names in Mesopotamia, Baal names in the Levant, and Yahweh names in Israel, and it is structured around four key questions: How did the ancients define what it meant to be a god - or more pragmatically, what kind of treatment did a personality or object need to receive in order to be considered a god by the ancients? Upon what bases and according to which texts do modern scholars determine when a personality or object is a god in an ancient culture? In what ways are deities with both first and last names treated the same and differently from deities with only first names? Under what circumstances are deities with common first names and different last names recognizable as distinct independent deities, and under what circumstances are they merely local manifestations of an overarching deity? The conclusions drawn about the singularity of local manifestations versus the multiplicity of independent deities are specific to each individual first name examined in accordance with the data and texts available for each divine first name. Preface Acknowledgments Contents Abbreviations Additional Abbreviations 0 Introduction 0.1 Ištar-of-Nineveh and Ištar-of-Arbela 0.2 Divine Names and Divine Multiplicity 0.3 Outline and Method 1 Considering Multiplicity and Defining Deity 1.1 An Early History of Identifying and Equating Divine Names 1.2 Toward Minimizing Multiplicity 1.3 Toward Maximizing Multiplicity 1.4 Agency, Names, Offerings, and Rituals 1.5 Conclusions Excursus: “Syncretism” 2 Comparative Insights 2.1 The Multiple Manifestations of the Madonna 2.2 Hittite Multiplicity 2.3 Conclusions 3 The Divine Hierarchy and Embedded God Lists (EGLs) 3.1 Moving Away from Lexical God Lists 3.2 The Last Are Least 3.3 Building Composite God Lists 3.4 Witness-List Traditions 3.5 Personal and Royal Correspondence 3.6 Cultic Texts and EGLs 3.7 Implications for the Present Study 4 The Ištar Goddesses of Neo-Assyria 4.1 The Ištar Goddesses by Several Other Names and Titles 4.2 Theological Speculations about Ištar Goddesses 4.3 The Goddess at Nineveh 4.4 The Goddess at Arbela 4.5 Who is Mullissu, and when is she Mullissu? 4.6 Assyrian-Ištar 4.8 Conclusions 5 Geographic Epithets in the West 5.1 The Baal Deities of Ugarit 5.2 Baal-of-Ugarit and the other Baal Deities at Ugarit 5.3 Baal: Epithet or Name? 5.4 The Baal Deities of the First Millennium 5.5 Why is a Baal Deity’s Geography Important? 5.6 First-millennium Goddesses in Northwest Semitic Texts 5.7 Conclusions 6 A Kuntillet ‘Ajrud Awakening 6.1 “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh//our-God” 6.2 The Geographic Origin of Yahweh: Teman 6.3 Yahweh and the Kingdom of Israel: Samaria 6.4 Yahweh and the Kingdom of Judah: Zion and the Hosts 6.5 Yahweh and the bet-Locative 6.6 Conclusions 7 Conclusions 7.1 Summary 7.2 Implications Bibliography Maps Appendix: Tables 1.1–7.1 Indices Primary Texts Index General Index