Hej Cort,
>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.
I agree with the current theory of *Dyuas for the most part. I simply
disagree that the Germanic Tyr was the original *Dyuas (*Tiwaz) displaced by
a younger god local named Odin. The evidence for that is weak, and the logic
unsound.
When one compares all of the gods in the Germanic pantheon, Odin best
parrallels the theoritical *Dyuas in all but name. I do not think the name
is a stumbling block, expecially in the North, simply because the Northern
gods have so many names. It's part and parcel of the Northern poetics. I
think it is more likly that the name *Dyuas simply shifted, but that the IE
Sky-father himself stayed intact, and developed into the god we know as
Odin.
Wassail, William
"I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory';
but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the
other in the purposed domination of the author."
J.R.R. Tolkien