cult of dying

[year2027]

God first

thanks everybody

This paper deals with the diffusion of cults of dying gods in the ancient Near East, including ancient Israel. Stories of dying gods were widespread from Mesopotamia to Greece and Israel. The cult of Dumuzi, for instance, originates in the tale (often presented dramatically) of the dying god in the ancient Mesopotamia. The purpose of this paper, however, does not make clear the all phases by which traditions of the dying gods, but rather tries to explicate one factor of this cult: the origin and nature of public lamentation over the dying god, especially the lamenting women for dead sons or husbands. The most obvious feature or central idea of this cult is representation of the death and resurrection of gods, along with the seasonal cycle, especially during the winter and in the spring. Dumuzi, god of fertility, who embodied nature's powers for new life in the spring, became the Semitic god Tammuz. The cult of Tammuz spread to Greece as the festival of Adonia (god of Adonis) and celebrated by women in Israel. Tammuz cult seems to have revolved around two yearly festivals: one was celebrating the marriage of Tammuz to the goddess Inanna/Ishtar; the other was public lamentation for his death by groups of wailing women. On the one hand the marriage rite developed publically for political reason to enable the king to take on the identity of the god, while on the other, in an unofficial capacity, women continued to lament the death of Tammuz in festive rites. The annual festival of Adonia was held to celebrate such adonic figures as Osiris and Dumuzi at Byblos and elsewhere. Israelites, especially women, commemorated Tammuz festival with rites of public lamentation (Ez 8: 14). Since the biblical texts claim that Yahawh is only god, pagan gods were therefore in principle excluded, yet, in reality, evidence of Israelite religious practices attest that the pagan gods was worshiped from beginning to the end of the Joshua's reformation (B.C.722). The problem is to decide who in Israel supported the pagan gods or goddesses: Baal, Asherah, Astharte. It is well known, for instance, that the king Omuri worshiped the Cananite god Baal, since the prophets criticized him for doing so. Goddesses were worshiped for long time in Israel. The question is: who were the worshippers? My research represented in this paper has attempted to solve this enigma from a socio-religious point of view. Just as the festival of Adonia involved women who were placed in the lower stratum of social order, so in Israelite women supported the festivals of goddesses as a means of sustaining their own lives in the patriarchal system of ancient Israel.

with love and a holy kiss Roy

[year2027]

God first

thanks everybody

The Riddle of Resurrection: "Dying and Rising Gods" in the Ancient Near East (Book)

Excerpt from Article:

The arrival of a new monograph by Tryggve Mettinger is an occasion for scholarly delight. Mettinger is one of the finest biblical scholars in the world, and he is unafraid to venture into ancillary fields (archaeology, Assyriology, and other dangerous forests) to pursue his quarry. In this book, as in his others, Mettinger's careful and insightful: discussions are based on massive and intensive research, and he displays remarkable control of the primary texts and current scholarly arguments. The target of his new book is the old Frazerian paradigm of dying-and-rising gods. In recent scholarship (from the attack by Roland de Vaux in 1933 to more recent fusillades by Jonathan Z. Smith and Mark S. Smith), this paradigm has been discarded, with Smith the Younger announcing "The Death of 'Dying and Rising Gods' in the Biblical World" (S JOT 12 [1998]: 257-313; cf. M. S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism [Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001], 104-31). Mettinger carefully surveys the relevant data and major scholarly positions, and concludes that this proclamation of death is premature.

Mettinger's strategy is meticulous and comprehensive. He surveys the history of scholarship on this issue and lays down his careful theoretical approaches to ritual, myth, and the comparative study of religion in chapter 1. Then he turns to a series of insightful and circumspect discussions of the data on the various relevant gods: Ugaritic Baal (chapter 2); Tyrian Melqart (chapter 3); Greek and Byblian Adonis (chapter 4); Sidonian Eshmun (chapter 5); Egyptian Osiris (chapter 6); and Mesopotamian Dumuzi/Tammuz (chapter 7). He concludes that "The world of ancient Near Eastern religions actually knew a number of deities that may be properly described as dying and rising gods" (p. 217). He notes that each god is distinctive in various ways, such that "one should not hypostasize these gods into a specific type 'the dying and rising god'" (p. 218), but notes that there is a coherent set of family resemblances. The conclusion and the discussions it rests upon are entirely convincing, and represent a landmark in the comparative study of ancient Near Eastern religions.

The gods that loom largest in Mettinger's discussions are Baal and Dumuzi, since these have the most abundant data (Osiris is treated as a special case, since his resurrection is in the world of the dead). Although I find Mettinger's conclusions about these gods and their cults convincing, there are a few items worth quibbling about.

Mettinger calls Baal a storm or weather god and observes that "storm gods are not generically gods who die and rise" (p. 218). He therefore suggests that the dying-and-rising aspect was adapted from the cult of Mesopotamian Dumuzi. This is certainly a possible historical reconstruction, but it is not logically necessary. As Mettinger argues, "the events of the [baal and Mot] myth reflect the seasonal changes in the vegetation life of Syria. It is an etiology for the summer drought (Baal's descensus) and the winter rains (Baal's return to life)" (p. 66). But it is not necessary to see this aspect as foreign to his role as storm god. The cult of a storm god must somehow account for the times when there are no storms or rain, so we may just as easily conclude that Baal must have a dying-and-rising aspect (or some similar seasonal oscillation), and that it is no mere add-on. Why are Baal's rains not present for half the year? That is one of the problems the myth attempts to solve.

with love and a holy kiss Roy