As a divine cosmogony implies some organic theory of the Universe, so
the polytheisms that attempted such speculations would be confronted
also with the problem of finding some principle of order by which they
might regulate the relations of the various divinities, one to the
other. We find such attempts in Mesopotamian religion. Certain deities
are affiliated to others, Marduk to Ea, Nebo to Marduk, though such
divine relationships are less clear and less insisted on than in
Hellenic theology; and the grouping of divinities shifts according to
the political vicissitudes of the peoples and cities. We may discern a
tendency at times to use the triad as a unifying principle, giving us
such trinities as Anu, Bel, Ea, or Sin, Shamash, Adad;[185.2] we have
glimpses of a trinitarian cult in early Carthage,[185.3] and slight
indications of it in the Minoan-Mycenaean pillar-ritual.[185.4] But I
cannot find anything to suggest that among the cultured or uncultured
Semites it was ever in the ancient period a powerful and constructive
idea, able {186} to beget a living dogma that might capture the
popular mind and spread and germinate in adjacent lands.[186.1] We
have perhaps as much right to regard the number seven as a grouping
principle of Babylonian polytheism, in the later period at least, when
we find a group of seven high deities corresponding to the seven
planets.[186.2] We might discover a Hittite trinity of Father,
Mother, and Son if we concentrated our attention on the Boghaz-Keui
reliefs; but the other Hittite evidence, both literary and monumental,
gives no hint of this as a working idea in the religion. In fact, in
most polytheisms of the Mediterranean type it is easy to discover
trinities and easy to deceive oneself about them.
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