Re: Religion

In reply to my post

> 1. John: "Baal was never a 'God of the Underworld'"

Glen writes

> Wrong. According to Ugaritic mythology, there are the two stories

dating to

> at least 1400 BCE linking Baal firmly to the Underworld - The

Battle
of Yam

> "The Sea" and The Battle of Mot. Yam is associated with Leviathan,

a

> serpent, and lives in a palace UNDER THE SEA (!!). Mot is

inarguably
an

> UNDERWORLD (!!) god of the dead.
>
> The battle of Baal versus Yam is parallel to the story of Marduk

and
Tiamat

> as well as the IE story of Above-Man (supposedly *Tritos) slaying

the

> Three-Headed Serpent with the help of the magic of the war god

*PexwrGnnos.

> Although Baal's palace was on Mount Zephon (and therefore in the

sky)

> according to Canaanites, the two stories serve to show that he is

the MASTER

> OF THE UNDERWORLD and is therefore surely without question an

underworld god

> in act, from most ancient times.
>
> Since you clearly state, John, that the story of a battle between

Yam & Baal

> "came originally from Sumeria during the Ubaid and later
> spread of Sumerian myths northwards into Syria", you are supporting

the

> ancient prehistoric connection that Baal had with the Underworld.

Thank you

> for agreeing with me :)

Glen, next you will be stating because Zeus confined the Titans to
Tartarus he was god of the underword, or becuase he fought and slew
Typhon, who lived under the sea he was god of the underword. Baal
was
not asserting his control of the underword in his struggles with Yam
and Mot - instead he was asserting his primacy as head of the
Pantheon, in the same way that Zeus asserted himself as Chief God of
the Olympians (also ruling from a mountain).

These "ancient" connections go back to the post Mycenaean age, when
late bronze age Ugarit and Iron-Age Phoenician conceptions of a
tripartite world (the heavens = weather God Baal, the oceans = water
God Yam, and the underworld = God of the Dead, Mot), came to
influence
Hesiodic theogony of Zeus, Poseidon and Hades.

> The following article may be of interest. It links Mars with

destructive

> forces and attempts, as I do, to put forth the likelihood that the

deities

> we are talking about on this list have been founded on cosmology at

an early

> date.
>
> http://netropic.speakeasy.org/strand/3/apollo.html

Good site Glen. One that clearly derives Apollo from Ugaritic (i.e.
late Bronze Age) "Reseph". It is interesting that Appollo is not
found in Mycenaean names, suggesting that he came in the post
Mycenaean period. As your site says, Glen "Several scholars, in fact,
have suggested that Reseph originally split off from Nergal, rashpu
being one of the latter's epithets."

Thus we have

Apollo of Greece, derived from
Apollo of Asian Minor, derived from
Reseph of Ugarit, derived from
"rashpu" of Nergal - OF SUMERIA Glen!

Come on why don't you read your own sites properly!

> 2. Arkugal's claim that Venus-Mars links only go back to the

"Hellenic

> Period"...
>
> Sorry Arkey dude, the Ugaritic myths go back to at least 1400 BCE.

The myths

> include Athtar, Venus, son of Ashera (aka Astarte). The Battle of

Mot

> provides a link between Athtar and Baal. This is already at the

very
start

> of any Hellenic period.
>
> In Canaanite tradition, Athirat is generally married to El except

in
Qatra

> where she is married to Baal-Hadad (!). She frequents the ocean

shores

> (WATER and UNDERWORLD!). Again, Athirat sends her son Athtar

(associated

> with the planet VENUS again!) to be ruler of the UNDERWORLD when

she

> discovers that Baal has supposedly died IN THE UNDERWORLD. On a

side
note,

> the battle of Mot is related to the stories of a dying son,

Tammuzi,
"child

> of the Abyss", raccounting the origin of the seasons. There appears

to also

> be Athtart, a consort of Baal(!!!), a goddess of FERTILITY as well

as WAR

> and chase. Aka: Inanna's Descent. Question: Why does Inanna (Venus)

set her

> heart on ruling the underworld? The dying god story and thus the

connection

> between Venus and Mars goes back as far as the 4th millenium in

Mesopotamia.

Where do you get the etymology of Tammuz as "child of the Abyss". It
comes from Sumerian Dummuzi.

> Plus, since John has already stated that these myths are based on

even

> earlier Sumerian ones whose tradition had only been taken over by

Akkadians

> from as early as 2000 BCE, all I can do is just sit back on this

one
and

> gloat knowing that Arkugal is wrong, wrong, wrong. :)

To the point

> 3. Cosmology originates with the Sumerians.

Glen writes

> What a load of BS! How can we possibly assert this claim with proof

or

> logic? Is there a specific historical date at which the Sumerians

discovered

> the planets? If not, we can't be so bold to presume that the

Sumerians

> invented everything, especially when they have been prehistorically
> influenced by the Ubaid culture from the north, derived from the

Halaf

> culture which John associates with the spread of agriculture in the
> MiddleEast. If agriculture truely did originate in Eastern Anatolia

starting

> at around 9000 BCE, then we should expect that the real and

mythological

> importance placed on the sky and its objects is also from this date

and

> location.

Glen try reading Samuel Noah Kramer's "History Begins in Sumer", or
his work on "The Sumerians" before you start shooting of "expletive
deleated's" all over the list.

>
> 4. John: "Glen, see my point about the late insertion of Nergal as

divinity

> of the underworld in post Sumerian times"
>
> And so what was he in Sumerian times then? A god of hot air? :P

No Nergal, as I have said before was the god of plague, of
pestilence,
and originally had this limited domain. It was only when the
Babylonians started replacing female Goddesses with male Gods, (eg
Ereshkigal with Nergal, and Ishtar as war Goddes with Ninurta), that
he became God of the Underworld.

> 5. Nergal was never a fire god.
>
> Why does this site disagree with you?
>
> http://sunsite.org.uk/packages/Project-Gutenberg/etext00/7rbaa10.txt
>
> It states: "It is in consequence of this side of [Nergal's]

character that

> he appears also as god of fire, the destroying element,[...]"

Glen, the reference you quote is of PINCHES, THEO. G. Babylonian
and Assyrian Cylinder-Seals and Signets in the Possession of Sir
Henry
Peek, Bart. Frontispiece + ii + 17 + 10, 4to. London, Harrison, 1870.

Not only is this of 1870 (surely you could have found something a
little more up to date than something 130 years old), but it is also
crawling with errors (Niffur). Enlil is called Bel (an association
which only began after the Aramean invasions at the end of the Bronze
Age. It is like saying something written about Victorian Britain
applies to the Pre-Roman Celts, Glen. At least try to get your
sources into some kind of propper chronology.

> John:
> >Interesting Glen, Baal was a storm god, not a mountain or underword
> >god as you assert.
>
> Oh John, get real. The very fact that Baal is a storm god means

that
he is

> linked with Chaos, the Chaos of the Underworld as shown by his

association

> with Mot and Yam. These are stories to demonstrate that Baal in the

end is

> the ruler of his underworld domain.

Glen, how many times do I have to keep saying, in Canaanite belief
Baal was God of All Domains, just like Zeus was. But this does not
make him the Underworld God, or even a Underworld God (Just as Zeus
was not God of the Underworld).

> >Mot was god of the underword, a dark and gloomy place, not a place

of

> >fire and red. Nergal's colour was black (read the site you
> >quoted again Glen) not red.
>
> Right, black like in Steppe mythology in connection with the earth

because

> they both share a bipartitive worldview where the sky is bright and

the

> EARTH is dark without a concept of Underworld like in

SemitoEuropoid
belief.

> Nergal would partly have been confused with the local tradition of

this more

> ancient colour symbolism. A quote from
>

(http://sunsite.org.uk/packages/Project-Gutenberg/etext00/7rbaa10.txt)

> yields:
>
> "The identity [of Nergal] with the Greek Aries and the
> Roman Mars is proved by the fact that his planet was
> /Mustabarru-mutanu/, 'the death spreader,' which is
> probably the name of Mars in Semitic Babylonian."

Theophilus G. Pinches again Glen. See my comments about this source
above.

> John goes on a rant:
> >Old Europe monotheistic! Surely you jest. Even Gambutas makes no
> >such claim. There is a huge gap between henotheism and monotheism.
> >There is no examples of monotheism anywhere in the world until the
> >closure of the Oecumene in the Axial Age of Karl Jaspers (post 700
> >BCE).
>
> What should we be looking for as a characteristic of "monotheism"

then?

Mono = One
Theos = God

Hope this helps.

I continued

> >As Zaehner shows, it was Zarathushtra who developed the first
> >monotheism, [...]
>
> An emotional plea and an unverifiable assumption, typical of your
> input thus far.

Glen, read Zaehner. "Dawn and Twilight of Zorastrianism" the leading
work on the subject in English, and a world authority. Read Karl
Jaspers on the Axial Age, and then you will be able to see how
unverified they are. And please do some more research.

Monotheistic beliefs are fairly recent, certainly post Bronze Age.
Even Akhenaten's Atenism is being re-evaluated as not strictly
monotheistic.

Regards

John