For previous discussions of identifications between gods, see:
Castra Vetera
Ysan History
The Approach To Ys
Myth
Star Of The Sea
The Darkness And The Wind
- and:
"The Romans identified Tiwaz with Mars, because he was the war god, but he was much else as well.
'The Romans thought Donar, whom the Scandinavians called Thor, must be the same as Jupiter, because he ruled over weather; but to the Goths, he was a son of Tiwaz. Likewise for Wodan, whom the Romans identified with Mercury.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 1980, p. 389.
-op. cit., p. 390.
When I first learned about Classical mythology, Zeus and Jupiter, Poseidon and Neptune, Hades and Pluto, Hera and Juno, Ares and Mars, Aphrodite and Venus, Hermes and Mercury, Hephaestus and Vulcan, Eros and Cupid etc had become interchangeable names of members of a single pantheon.
In the introduction to his retelling of Norse mythology, Neil Gaiman tells us that it is always Odin that is worshiped even under different names.
17 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And your first paragraph reminded me of how Frank Tipler argued in defense of Transubstantiation using physics. Another mind DAZING idea!
I believe in Transubstantiation, but I had never thought, before reading THE PHYSICS OF CHRISTIANITY, of how that mystery of faith could be explained by physics!
I'm not sure Neil Gaiman is right. I certainly got the impression from both the Eddas and Anderson's own Scandinavian stories, that the people of Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, clearly distinguished the different gods of their pantheon.
Sean
Sean,
He meant not that all the Norse gods are Odin but that the chief gods of other pantheons are really Odin. Further, I think that he was making his own contribution to the myth rather than reporting what was originally believed although it sounds plausible that some people would have thought that.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Than I partially misunderstood Neil Gaiman! The Romans, for instance, thought of their Jupiter being the same as the Greek Zeus, and so on.
How can you make a "contribution" to a mythical pantheon if you don't believe in the gods of that pantheon? I seriously doubt Mr. Gaiman thinks the Aesir are gods!
Sean
Sean,
But we enjoy the myths as stories which they are. Gaiman says: read these stories, then retell them. That is how they live. Probably some Odin-worshipers thought, "It is really Odin that is being addressed when people pray to Zeus-Jupiter."
I did not paraphrase Gaiman very clearly but I think that that is what he meant.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I can see Gaiman simply writing stories to entertain people. I should have kept that in mind.
And I can see Germans visiting the Roman Empire at its height conflating their Wotan with the Roman Jupiter.
Sean
Sean,
Story-telling is entertainment and meaning.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree. And sometimes I focus so hard on what a text might mean I forget to also be ENTERTAINED by it.
Sean
Jupiter and Zeus really -are- the same deity: the names are directly cognate. Jupiter -- Ju-piter -- *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr.- "Sky Father".
Likewise, Zeus (actually Zeû Pater) --*Dyēus Ph₂tḗr -- "Sky Father".
And Tyr/Tiwaz is the same: TIwaz Fader -- *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. Proto-Indo-European initial "d" ==> Proto-Germanic "f", initial "p" ==> Proto-Germanic "f".
They're all descendants of the original PIE sky-god, the god of sky and storm and war, the driver of the Sun Chariot and wielder of the spear that is the lightning.
The other identifications are a bit more chancy since they depend on functional similarities, but you have to keep in mind that divine names often get replaced by euphemisms or descriptive titles, because of taboo-avoidance.
Hence Orthodox Jews don't actually say or write the name of God; they use titles like "Lord", because Yaweh is too sacred/dangerous to say.
I once upset an orthodox Jewish man by pronouncing the Tetragrammaton so I now try to avoid that mistake. There is a school in Lancaster that specializes in languages and has the Tertragramaton on the front of the altar in its chapel.
Oopsie: in the above, it should have read "Proto-Indo-European initial "d" ==> Proto-Germanic "t".
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: And I'm almost sure I saw somewhere mention of how the ancient Sanskrit RIG-VEDAs have the same Tiwaz-Zeus-Jupiter, etc.!
Paul: and most Christian translations of the OT kept that Jewish habit of reverently not using the Tetragrammaton forthe name of God, using terms like LORD, instead.
Sean
There is a problem here. If, for an extended period, the divine name was never written or spoken, then it would be forgotten.
Kaor, Paul!
True, except the Jews never forgot what YHWH meant.
Seam
In a preliterate culture, taboo avoidance -does- lead to words being forgotten, so that euphemisms and epithets replace them.
This is exactly what happened in Germanic with the word for "bear", originally *rtko, which gives Latin 'ursus' and Greek 'arktos', and Welsh derivatives like the name "Arthur".
The proto-Germanic term ancestral to our "bear" means "the brown one"; in Russian, it's derived from a word meaning "honey-stealer". The original term was avoided because naming it might summon the dangerous beast, and eventually it was forgotten.
The same thing happened to Gods. Dyēus Ph₂tḗr became "Dyaus Pitar" in Sanskrit of the Rig-Vedic period; but other names became predominant for the chariot-driving sky deity. "Indra", the main "king of the gods" in the Vedas and the patron of war, the sky and the weather, comes from terms meaning "Owner of the Rain" -- ie., lord of thunder and lightning. So he was probably originally an -epithet- of "Sky Father's".
The same thing happens with obscenities. The Indo-European term for the female genitals seems to have meant "female shame", roughly, and anus comes from "that which is sat upon".
These things go in cycles, as taboo-avoidance hits the euphemism in turn. Most of the "four-letter Anglo-Saxon" words in English are actually medieval or early-modern loans, mostly from Dutch/Low German.
Wow.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And your amusing comments here reminded me of this paragraph from Chapter XX of THE HIGH CRUSADE, when Brother Parvus had to shock Baron Roger out of a fit of despair: "I thought back to my boyhood. There had been various short, pungent, purely English words in common use. I selected one and pronounced it. From the corner of an eye, as I squatted by the dials, I saw his jaw fall. I pronounced another English word for good measure."
It would be ironic if the "pungent" words used by Brother Parvus were actually of Dutch/Low German origin even in circa AD 1345!
Sean
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