Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
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 Istar 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.
Synopsis
Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records (SANER) is a peer-reviewed series devoted to the publication of monographs pertaining to all aspects of the history, culture, literature, religion, art, and archaeology of the Ancient Near East, from the earliest historical periods to Late Antiquity. The aim of this series is to present in-depth studies of the written and material records left by the civilizations and cultures that populated the various areas of the Ancient Near East: Anatolia, Arabia, Egypt, Iran, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Syria. Thus, SANER is open to all sorts of works that have something new to contribute and which are relevant to scholars and students within the continuum of regions, disciplines, and periods that constitute the field of Ancient Near Eastern studies, as well as to those in neighboring disciplines, including Biblical Studies, Classics, and Ancient History in general.