--- In cybalist@..., "William P. Reaves" <beowulf@...> wrote:
> >That is certainly possible. I don't deny the Dyeus Pater element
is there,
> but since the Romans connected him to Mercury rather than Jupiter,
I think
> it must have been obscured by Odin's other characteristics.
>
> Recall the Romans also connected Thor to Jupiter, and Thor is never
called
> "father" in the general sense, as Odin is. So at best the Roman
comparisons
> were superficial.
While I admit Thor was not nesessarily called father, nor was he head
of the pantheon, I don't think this invalidates the Thor-Jupiter
connection, anymore than Odin being called father means he is
absolutely similar to Jupiter. I am not saying there isn't some
similarity, perhaps even a shared title, but again I see too many
characteristics in Odin that are not only absent from
anything we know of Jupiter or Zeus, but also present in other Greek
and Roman deities.
Although the Roman comparison of Thor to Jupiter may seem superficial-
Just based on the fact they are both thunder gods, there are other
shared attributes(The oak tree, for instance) that also reenforce
this connection.
Also, the father epithet was applied to Mars and Janus in addition to
Jupiter. Or Dis Pater, for that matter. This makes me lean toward an
idea that the Father epithet could be attached to any diety that was
at the head of a pantheon or of great importnace, as many scholars
think both Janus and Mars were.
I could see an argument, perhaps, that the older Dyaus Pater was
more like Hermes or Saturn or Odin, and less like the Zeus presented
to us by archaic/classical Greece, and the deity the title applied to
evolved to fit the new storm god more familiar to us.
Cort Williams