I. Name
Hypnos (‘sleep’) is the god of sleep in Greek mythology. He is the son of Nyx (Night) and the twin brother of Thanatos (Death). In the Greek Bible hypnos does not occur as a deity but only in the sense of literal sleep (e.g. Gen. 28.16; Matt. 1.24), as a euphemism for sexual intercourse (Sap 4:6), or as a metaphor for spiritual torpidity (Rom. 13.11) and death (Joh. 11.11).
II. Identity
In the Homeric epos the god Hypnos, called Thanatos’ twin (Iliad 14:231; on their likeness Odyssee 13:80; cf. Virgil, Aeneid 6:2…