The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and BabyloniaPinches, Theophilus G. (Theophilus Goldridge)
Religion
The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia
Pinches, Theophilus G. (Theophilus Goldridge)
Bible. Old Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
From these tablets we learn something of their religion. To all appearance
one of the gods most worshipped in the extreme west of Asia was Rimmon,
the Rammānu (“thunderer”) of the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Addu or
Hadad of the Semitic nations of this district (the name Addu afterwards
became general as the appellation of the god in Babylonia and Assyria),
and the Tešupa or Tešub of Mitanni (Aram-Naharaim) and district to the
north (Armenia). At Tyre they seem to have worshipped a personage or deity
called Šalmayātu, whilst the Phœnician Astarte is commemorated in âl
Aštarti, “the city of Aštartu,” perhaps Ashtaroth, 29 miles east of
Tiberias (Petrie). As the word Ashtoreth is evidently a lengthening of the
name of the Assyro-Babylonian goddess Ištar, it is not to be wondered at
that this goddess should be mentioned by the king of Mitanni, Dušratta,
who refers to a statue of Ištar of Nineveh, which had been sent to Egypt,
and requests that it may be returned to him soon. The name of Nergal,
also, was evidently familiar to the king of Alašia, for he speaks of the
hand of that god as having killed all his people, when wishing to refer to
the prevalence of a pestilence there, Nergal being the Assyro-Babylonian
god of disease and death. In the same way Dušratta speaks of Šamaš, the
Assyro-Babylonian Sun-god, but he refers to him more as the luminary which
men love than as a god, though there is every probability that he was
worshipped in Mitanni.(55) Another Assyro-Babylonian deity whose name
occurs is Ninip, once in the name of Abdi-Ninip, “servant of Ninip,”
apparently a Gebalite, and again in _âl Bêth-Ninip_, “(city of) the temple
of Ninip,” in a district which Abdi-Aširta called upon to unite against
Gebal—perhaps the Beth-Ninip in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. In the
name of Abdi-Aširta it is to be noted that we have here, to all
appearance, the name of the _asherah_ or “grove” of the Authorised
Version, the “token” of the goddess Ištar,(56) with the ideogram for which
the word once interchanges. The Egyptian god Amāna (Amon) is mentioned
several times, invoked apparently as a god in whom the writer believed,
though he was the special god of the Egyptians and the Egyptian king. In
addition to the above deities, the names of men reveal Uraš, the god of
Dailem near Babylon, Bidina, another Babylonian deity, and Merodach, the
principal god of the Babylonians. Among west Semitic deities may be
mentioned Dagan (Dagon), Milku (Melech, Moloch), and others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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