Search

I. Name Yahweh is the name of the official god of Israel, both in the northern kingdom and in Judah. Since the Achaemenid period, religious scruples led to the custom of not pronoucing the name of Yahweh; in the liturgy as well as in everyday life, such expressions as ‘the Lord’ ( ʾădōnāy, lit. ‘my Lord’, LXX κύριος) or ‘the Name’ were substituted for it. As a matter of consequence, the correct pronunciation of the tetragrammaton was gradually lost: the Masoretic form ‘Jehovah’ is in reality a combination of the consonants of the tetragrammaton with the vocals of ʾădōnāy, the ḥaṭēf p…

I. Name The expression har gabnunnîm in Ps. 68.16, literally ‘mountain of peaks’ and usually translated as ‘mighty mountain’ (RSV), is interpreted by del Olmo Lete (1988:54–55) as ‘mountain of the Gabnunnim’, the latter being a designation of underworld deities. II. Identity The reasoning that lies behind del Olmo Lete’s suggestion is based on the opposition in Ps. 68 of Mt. Sinai versus Mt. Bashan, the one being the holy mountain of Yahweh, the other the holy mountain of a group of Canaanite gods (vv 15–17). For his interpretation of Bashan as a dwe…

I. Name Jael at whose hands Sisera met his death ( Judg. 4–5) has been interpreted as a demythologized incarnation of the goddess Amaltheia (Garbini 1978). II. Identity The principal motive for speculations about the mythological background of Jael is the conjectural connection between the name Sisera (סיסרא) and the name (j)a-sas-sa-ra in a votive text written in Minoan ‘Linear A’. The latter corresponds with Gk. ΣΑΙΣΑΡΑ and belongs to Zeus Krētogenēs, the god born on the isle of Crete (G. Pugliese Carratelli, ΣΑΙΣΑΡΑ, 31 [1976] 123–128). Garbini argues that if the figure of Si…

I. Name According to Hommel (1929), the field of Machpelah ( Gen. 23.9, Gen. 17, Gen. 19; Gen. 25.9; Gen. 49.30; Gen. 50.13) was named after the goddess Ma-Cybele. II. Identity Cybele (Κυβέλη) or Cybebe (Κυβήβη) is a goddess of the fertile earth originating from Asia Minor, where she was known in the second millennium bce as Kubaba (Laroche 1960). Having made her way into the Greek world, the deity was identified with a number of other ‘mother goddesses’ such as Rhea, Agdistis, Ma, and Bellona. Her cult had orgiastic traits. The latter were accentuated in the course of t…

I. Name The usual word for ‘god’ in the Hebrew Bible is ʾĕlōhîm, a plural formation of ʾĕlōah, the latter being an expanded form of the Common Semitic noun ʾil (Eloah). The term ʾĕlōhîm occurs some 2570 times in the Hebrew Bible, with a variety of meanings. In such expressions as “all the gods of Egypt” ( Exod. 12.12) it refers to a plurality of deities—without there being a clear distinction between these gods and their images. Far more frequent is the use of the plural with reference to a single being: Chemosh is the ʾĕlōhîm of Moab (1 Kgs. 11.33); the plural here is a plural…

I. Name The Hebrew word keseʾ ‘full moon’ (?) occurs in two Bible passages ( Ps. 81.4; Prov. 7.20), and possibly in a third as well ( Job 26.9). The word is also known in other West-Semitic languages. J.-M. Durand identifies a Mesopotamian divinity Kisa with West-Semitic keseʾ, attested in a Ugaritic god list under the form ksa (1997: 279). II. Identity In an Old Babylonian augury text (divination by birds), some omens are interpreted to signify ‘presence of Kisa’ ( ma(- an) -za-az ki-sa). The fact that the term manzaz/ mazzaz is normally followed by the name of a deity in divinatory …

I. Name The city of Arvad (modern Ruad) is the most northern of Phoenician cities, situated on an island two miles off-shore. Less illustrious than Tyre and Sidon, Arvad and its inhabitants are mentioned only a few times in the Bible ( Gen. 10.18//1 Chr. 1.16; Ezek. 27.8, Ezek. 11). It has been said that the city is homonymous with an Assyrian deity (Lewy 1934). II. Identity In Neo-Assyrian annals, the city of Arvad is sometimes referred to as Ar-ma-da (S. Parpola, Neo-Assyrian Toponyms [AOAT 6; Neukirchen-Vluyn 1970] 37). This spelling corresponds exactly to that of the god A…

I. Name The Hebrew term ʿôlām, customarily translated as ‘eternity’, corresponds etymologically with the divine name Oulomos occurring in a Phoenician cosmology attributed to Mochos of Sidon. Although the authenticity of this deity has long been a matter of uncertainty, the occurrence of the theonym Ḫalma in texts from Emar shows that a god ‘Eternity’ was indeed part of the West Semitic pantheon. His name occurs in first millennium cuneiform texts from Nineveh as Alam and Alama. Whilst the occurrences of ʿôlām in the Hebrew Bible show little to no trace of a mythologica…

I. Name It has been speculated that the city of Nahor ( Gen. 24.10) was named after a deity Nahor. Nahor the grandfather of Abraham ( Gen. 11.22–25; Josh. 24.2) and Nahor the brother of Abraham ( Gen. 11.26–29; Gen. 22.20–24; Gen. 24.15, Gen. 24, Gen. 47; Gen. 29.5; Gen. 31.53) would have been named after the city of Nahor, and thus, indirectly, after the god of that name (Lewy 1934). II. Identity There is no extra-biblical evidence whatsoever attesting to the cult of a god Nahor. Lewy’s argument is based on circular reasoning. He writes: “In view of the evidence that the cities of Ḫarrān, Naḫur…

I. Name The MT refers to the Euphrates as Pĕrāt, ‘Euphrates’, nĕhar Pĕrāt, ‘River Euphrates’, and as ( han)nāhār, ‘(the) River’. The designation hannāhār haggādôl, ‘the Great River’, was applied to the Euphrates ( Gen. 15.18; Deut. 1.7; Josh. 1.4) as well as to the Tigris ( Dan. 10.4). The two streams appear as a pair in the dual nah!rayim, ‘the two rivers’, confined to the expression ʾăram nahărayim, ‘(Western) Mesopotamia’. Hebr Pĕrāt (and its Qumran variant Purat, פורת, 1QapGen. xxi 12, 17, 28; 1QM. ii 11) derives from Akk. Purattu < Purantu, cf. the forms Purantum in the…

I. Name The viper ( ʾepʿeh) occurs three times in the Hebrew Bible, always in poetic contexts to describe negative environments or sensations. Third-millennium texts from Mesopotamia attest to the veneration of a god Ibaʾum, etymologically related to Heb. ʾepʿeh. II. Identity A third-millennium Akkadian seal depicting a fully developed snake-dragon is dedicated to a god i-ba-um (R. M. Boehmer, Die Entwicklung der Glyptik während der Akkad-Zeit [Berlin 1965] Tafel XLVIII no. 570). This snake-god is probably identical with d ip-pu, the vizier of the chthonic deity Ningišzida…

I. Name Rakib-El is known to have been the god of the kings of Samʾal, a Neo-Hittite dynasty in South-East Anatolia. It has been suggested that the Rechabites, a religious minority group in ancient Israel, were originally named after Rakib-El (Ramey 1968). A variant proposal connects the name with the god Rkb, presumably short for Rakib-El or the epithet rkb ʿrpt, ‘Rider of the clouds’ (Blenkinsopp 1972) II. Identity Rakib-El is a poorly known deity whose name occurs a number of times in Phoenician and Aramaic inscriptions from Zinjirli ( KAI 24:16; 25:4, 6; 214:2, 3, 11, 18; 215:22;…

I. Name The word hyn occurs a number of times in Ugaritic texts as an epithet of Kothar-wa-Hasis (Kothar). It has been suggested that the same word is found in Hab. 2.5 (Albright 1943; 1968) and Job 41.4[ Job 12] (Pope 1965) as a divine title. II. Identity The word hyn occurs in KTU 1.3 vi:22–23; 1.4 i:23; 1.17 v:18, each time in a synonymous parallelism with Kothar-wa-Hasis. The interpretation of the term is based on comparative Semitic philology: Syr. hawnâ means ‘intelligence’, hence Ug. hyn is usually translated as ‘intelligent’, This meaning fits well with the name Kothar-…

I. Name On the basis of Gen. 49.24, Maag reconstructed the expression Rōʿeh Yiśrāʾēl, ‘Shepherd of Israel’ as the name of the personal god of Israel/Jacob, comparable in his view to the ‘Fear of Isaac’ and the ‘Mighty One of Jacob’ (1980:121). Since the name can only be obtained by textual emendation, Maag’s proposal is hardly convincing (cf. Köckert 1988:65–67). Though ‘shepherd’ is not unusual as an epithet for Near Eastern gods, it has nowhere attained the status of an independent divine name. II. Identity In antiquity the occupation of shepherd was regarded as a manly an…

I. Name II. Identity In Old Babylonian texts the god Šaḫan occurs a number of times as theophoric element in personal names and place-names; it is always preceded by the divine determinative (references Krebernik 1984). So far, only one independent attestation of the deity is known. One Warad-Šaḫan refers to himself in the inscription on his cylinder seal as “servant of the god Šaḫan” (YOS 14 no. 68). Little is known about the deity. Though identified once with the god Irḫan (Euphrates), the two are to be distinguished; confusion could arise because d Ir-ḫa-an has sometimes mist…

I. Name Amurru is the eponymous god of the nomadic peoples of the western desert that began to manifest themselves in Mesopotamia from the late third millennium bce onward. These peoples are known in cuneiform sources as ‘Amorites’ ( Amurru, Sum. mar-tu). Their god, known as Amurru (Akkadian) or Martu (Sumerian), is best characterized as a storm god, comparable in type with Hadad or Yahweh. References to Amurru in the Hebrew Bible are either indirect or debated. As the god is eponymous, his name can be heard in the ethnic designation ʾĕmōrî, ‘Amorite’. The name Amraphel ( Gen. 14.1, Gen. 9…

I. Name Hebat (or Hepat) is an important goddess venerated by the Hurrians as well as the Hittites. Her name is found as a theophoric element in the biblical anthroponym Eliahba ( 2 Sam. 23.32 = 1 Chr. 11.33), written אליחבא, and originally pronounced *Elli-Heba, ‘Elli of Hebat’ (Maisler 1930). II. Identity In the Hurrian pantheon, the goddess Hebat occupies a high rank: she is the wife of the weather-god Teshub and the mother of Sharruma (Danmanville 1972–75:326). Her epithet ‘Lady of heaven’ or ‘Queen of Heaven’ underscores her celestial character. In the course of tr…

I. Name The name of the Babylonian goddess Beltu (var. Belit, Belti) is the feminine form of Bel (‘Lord’), and means ‘Lady’. She is identified either with Ishtar or Ṣarpanitu. Her mention in the Hebrew Bible is conjectural; P. de Lagarde ( Symmicta [Göttingen 1877] 105) was the first to emendate biltî in Isa. 10.4 into bēltî, ‘my Lady’. The proposal cannot be seen in isolation from the emendation, in the same verse, of ʾassîr (‘prisoner’) into ʾōsîr (Osiris). II. Identity Since the name Beltu is not really a name but an epithet (‘Lady’), the identification with a spec…

I. Name The mouth or utterance of a god—the two notions are often expressed with the same word (Sum. ka, Akk. pû)—is sometimes made into an independent deity in Mesopotamia. The etymological equivalent in Hebrew ( peh) does not seem to have enjoyed a comparable divine status. II. Identity In third millennium texts the Akkadian word pûm, ‘mouth, word’, occurs repeatedly as a theophoric element in personal names; its divinity is marked by the divine determinative (Gelb 1992:126–127). First found as a deified entity in Middle Babylonian (Kassite) seal inscriptions, the d…

I. Name On the basis of the alleged parallelism of mĕrîrî with Resheph and Behemoth in Deut. 32.24, Gordis has urged that “it seems highly reasonable to assume that Meriri is also a mythological term, probably representing a type of demon” (1943:178). Others make a similar suggestion (cf. HALAT 601 s.v. מרירי); it is without solid foundation, though. II. Identity Since a supposed demon Meriri is not attested in extrabiblical texts from the ancient Near East, the proof rests entirely on Deut. 32.24. It cannot be denied that this verse lists a number of demons known from th…

I. Name A number of oblique references to the Eyptian god Seth have been found in the description of the hippopotamus (Behemoth) in the Book of Job. II. Identity Seth (Σηθ) is the Greek transcription of Eg. Stḫ, son of Geb and Nut, and brother and rival of Osiris. According to the Osiris mythology, known from allusions in Egyptian ritual texts and in its full-fledged form from the account of Plutarch (ca. 60–120 ce), Seth is responsible for the untimely death of Osiris. The son of Osiris, Horus, avenges his father by slaying his murderer. Seth is in many ways the op…

I. Name Boaz is the name given to one of the pillars flanking the entrance to the temple of Solomon (1 Kgs. 7.21). The name has been interpreted as a corruption of the name Baal (H. Greßmann, Dolmen, Masseben und Napflöcher, ZAW 29 [1909] 122; for other examples see Scott 1939:145–146) or, alternatively, as an epithet of Baal (Bruston 1924). II. Identity The only proposal that takes Boaz as an independent surname or epithet of a deity has been made by Bruston (1924). He based himself on a Neo-Punic inscription from Tunesia, in which he read a reference to “Anat [אנת, sic] the daughter of Boaz”…

I. Name Min is an Egyptian god of procreation and creation. It has been speculated that his name occurs in the place name Thakemeina (1 Kgs. 11.19–20 LXX; MT Tahpenes), which Albright analyses as * Tʒ-kʒi-(n.t)-mn, “The Female Attendant (or the like) of Min” (1955:32), presumably the name of an Egyptian queen. The suggestion is implausible, however. II. Identity Min is the Greek form of Eg. mnw or mn, the local god of Akhmin and later Coptos. In the iconography Min is represented anthropomorphically as an ithyphallic figure carrying two feathers as his headgear.…

I. Name In the Amarna letters the name of the Judean town of Keila ( Josh. 15.44; 1 Sam. 23; 1 Chr. 4.29; Neh. 3.17–18) is written uru Qi-il-te/tu, probably to be pronounced /Qiʿiltu/ ( EA 279:12; 280:11, 17; 287:11; 289:28; 290:10.18). Jirku related the name to a god whose name he read as d Ki-el-ti (1930). II. Identity The text in which Jirku found the god Kelti mentioned is KUB 17 no. 20 ii, part of a ritual for the ‘olden gods’ (for a transcription and translation see H. T. Bossert, MIO 4 [1956] 202–203). Line 7 of column ii mentions dKi-el-tidumu dA.A as one of the recipients of the offering…

I. Name The biblical anthroponym Shamgar ( Judg. 3.31; Judg. 5.6) is most likely understood as a Hurrian name ( Šimig-ari) meaning ‘Shimige has given’ (Feiler 1939). Shimige is the Hurrian sun-god (von Schuler 19832). II. Identity In the religion of the Hittites a number of solar deities are worshipped, the main ones being the sun-goddess of Arinna, connected with the underworld, and the sun-god of the heavens, usually referred to in the texts as dutu. When it comes to the Hurrian sun-god, this Sumerogram has to be read as Shimige. As regards his nature and function, Shimige has a lo…

I. Name In the Mesopotamian mythological tradition, Ḫumbaba is the superhuman guardian of the Cedar forest in the West (Lebanon). He was killed at the hands of Gilgamesh and Enkidu (Tigay 1982:6–7.32–33.93–94.112–114; and see index s.v.). His name has been connected with that of Hobab the Kenite, a relative of Moses ( Num. 10.29; Judg. 4.11). II. Identity Ḫumbaba (Old Babylonian Ḫuwawa) occurs already in the Sumerian Tale known as Gilgamesh and the Land of the Living, one of the sources of the integrated Gilgamesh Epic that took shape in the Old Babylonian period (Tigay 1982:32–33). T…

I. Name Ram has been speculated to be the name of a deity on the basis of the name Abram, interpreted theophorically as ‘Ram is father’ (Lewy 1934). II. Identity The only extra-biblical evidence in support of an alleged deity Ram is the Assyrian anthroponym Shu-Rama, ‘He of Rama’ (Lewy 1934:59 n. 72). There can be no doubt about the correctness of Lewy’s reading. In addition to the two references given by Lewy (CCT 1 Pl. 46a:20; Pl. 46b: 14), the name also occurs in AKT 1.72:2.3.6; KBo. 9.6:2; KBo. 28.159:2; 167:3. Though the element Ra-ma is never preceded by the divine determinative dingir, the…

I. Name Though the evidence for the worship of a deity *Gesh or *Gush is scant if not absent, the biblical names *Girgash (Girgashites; Maisler 1930) and Goshen (Jirku 1963) have been adduced to demonstrate that the forebears of the Israelites once worshipped a god Gš. II. Identity There is only a single instance where the name Gush appears in the capacity of a god. In the Ugaritic personal name Bin-Gushi, the element Gushi is preceded by the divine determinative (J. Nougayrol, PRU III [1955] 199:5 = RS 16.257+, Face A, 5’: idumu-d Gu-ši). Since there is otherwise no trace of a god Gu…

I. Name The ancient Phoenician city of Sidon, situated 25 miles north of Tyre, plays a considerable role in biblical literature. It came to stand for Phoenicia in general (Schmitz 1992:17). Lewy has argued that the city bears the name of the demon Ṣı̄dānu known from the Myth of Nergal and Ereshkigal (1934). II. Identity In Assyrian records, the city of Sidon is written ṣi-du-nu (S. Parpola, Neo-Assyrian Toponyms [AOAT 6; Neukirchen-Vluyn 1970] 322–323). The name thus resembles the Akkadian word for vertigo ( ṣı̄dānu), once treated as a demon in the Amarna fragment of the M…

I. Name The word šeger occurs six times in the Hebrew Bible, always in connection with the offspring of cattle. The stereotyped expression šĕgar ʾălāpêkā, forming a fixed pair with ʿaštĕrôt ṣôʾnkā, ‘the offspring of your flock’ ( Deut. 7.13; Deut. 28.4, Deut. 18, Deut. 51), refers to the increase of herds. Whereas the peṭer-reḥem designates the human firstborn (literally ‘that which opens up the womb’), the peṭer šeger bĕhēmâ is the firstborn of cattle ( Exod. 13.12). In the Hebrew text of Sir. 40.19 šgr is mentioned alongside nṭʿ (‘orchard’) in the meaning of …

I. Name On the assumption that he was originally a semi-divine hero or a god (Meyer 1906), Laban, the son of Bethuel ( Gen. 28.5) and father of Leah and Rachel ( Gen. 29.16) has been connected with the Old Assyrian god Laba(n) (E. Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament [Berlin 1903; 3rd ed. by H. Winckler & H. Zimmern] 363). The name of the latter deity has been interpreted as a shortened form of Labnān, which would mean that Laban was “originally an ancient West-Semitic deity venerated in the Lebanon” (Lewy 1934:45). II. Identity Laban occurs already in Old Assyrian persona…

I. Name Ham is the second son of Noah, and the brother of Shem and Japheth. His name occurs 17 times in the Bible. He is sometimes said to originally represent a (semi-) divine figure, either because his name is that of a supposed West-Semitic sun-god called Ḥammu (Lewy 1944), or because it is connected to Eg. ḥm, ‘(divine) majesty’ (Gordon 1988). II. Identity The evidence adduced by Lewy for a solar deity called Hammu is onomastic: the theophoric element Ḫammu or Ammu (as in Ḫammu-rabi, Aqba-ammu, and the like) would go back to the name ḥammu, ‘hot one’, a designation of the sun-god.…

I. Name In Ps. 57.3 the designation Elohim Elyon occurs in parallelism with “the god who avenges me”. Dahood took the expression ʾēl gōmēr to be a reminiscence of a divine name Gomer El (1953). He translated the expression as ‘the Avenger El’ (1968: 49). II. Identity The root gmr is well attested in the Semitic languages (Ges18 223). From the basic denotation ‘to come to an end, to bring to an end’, it has developed the secondary senses ‘to destroy’ (Phoen. mgmr means ‘destruction’) and ‘to avenge’ (in Ugaritic and Hebrew). Though the latter meaning is sometimes related to a separate root (gmr…

I. Name It has been speculated that the city of Haran (7 times in Genesis; see also 2 Kgs. 19.12; Isa. 37.12; Ezek. 27.23) was named after a deity Haran (Lewy 1934). The available evidence does not support the contention. II. Identity The grounds on which a cult of a god Haran is postulated are not very firm. In an Old Assyrian letter (CCT 4 Pl. 35b:19–20), Lewy found a reference to a “priest of Ḫarranātum” ( ku-um-ra ša Ḫa-ra-na-tim; the alleged goddess is also mentioned in CCT 4 Pl. 48b:20). Lewy concluded that Ḫarranātum must have been a goddess, and deemed it likely that she sh…

I. Name In biblical tradition, Terah is the son of Nahor and the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran ( Gen. 11.24–27). Originally from Ur, where he worshipped gods other than Yahweh ( Josh. 24.2), Terah died in Haran where he had settled after his migration from Ur ( Gen. 11.31–32). Attempts have been made to connect Terah with a deity Trḫ supposedly mentioned in Ugaritic texts, and with the moon-god Teri or Ilteri; such identifications have now by and large been abandoned. II. Identity Soon after the discovery of the alphabetic texts of Ras Shamra, the figure of Terah was connec…

I. Name It has been speculated that the biblical figure of Serug, a relative of the Israelite patriarchs ( Gen. 11.20–23), bears the name of the city Sarug known from first millennium cuneiform sources. The city, in turn, would have been named after a deity (Lewy 1934). II. Identity There is no extra-biblical evidence whatsoever attesting to the cult of a god Serug (or Sarug). Lewy’s argument is based on circular reasoning. He writes: “In view of the evidence that the cities of Ḫarrān, Naḫur, and Sarūg bear the names of ancient deities … it is permitted to conclude that th…

I. Name Vohu Manah, ‘Good Thought’, is the name of one of the seven principal deities of Zoroastrianism (the Amesha Spentas). A slightly blurred form of his name is extant in the Hebrew transcription of Mehuman (מהומן), the name of one of the seven chamberlains of Ahasuerus in Est. 1.10 (Duchesne-Guillemin 1953:106). II. Identity In Zoroastrian theology, a group of seven deities, called the Amesha Spentas (‘beneficent immortals’), occupies a prominent position. Although the antiquity of the doctrine of the Heptad has been the subject of debate (Narten 1982), its main features were…

I. Name Kiririša (var. Kirišša) is an Elamite goddess, consort of Napiriša, and mother of Ḫutran ( WbMyth. I/1, 55). Jensen 1892:64 urged that the name of Zeresh (זרשׁ, Est. 5.10, Est. 14; Est. 6.13), the wife of Haman, goes back to the name of the goddess Kiririša. This theory is to be rejected on phonological grounds II. Identity Kiririša is an important Elamite deity. Her name means ‘great lady’ (kiri-riša) and she was the consort of Napiriša, the ‘great lord’. She is a mother goddess and her most important epithet is ‘mother of the gods’ ( amma nappipir). Her cult is attested fr…

I. Name The Elamite god Humban (Ḫumban, var. Umban) was the head of the pantheon of the Awan dynasty (ca. 2200 bce). In the subsequent period his political importance diminished as a result of the rise of other deities, but he remained an important deity into the Achaemenid period. Jensen 1892:58 urged that the name Haman (Est. 3.1), the son of Hammedatha (Haoma) and adversary of Esther and Mordechai (Marduk), goes back to the theonym Ḫumban. This theory is to be rejected on phonological grounds. II. Identity Ḫumban is an Elamite deity whose cult is documented for over two mill…

I. Name The Hebrew word ʾădāmâ, ‘(fertile) soil, earth’, occurs over 220 times in the Bible. The term resembles the name of a goddess called Adamma, Admu, or Adammateri, attested in cuneiform texts as early as the third millennium bce. Assuming that the etymology of Adamma is Semitic, the name is most plausibly explained as ‘soil’ or ‘earth’. This meaning makes good sense since the goddess in question is traditionally regarded as the consort of Rasap (Resheph) the god of the underworld. In the Hebrew Bible, ʾădāmâ has been almost entirely demythologized. II. Identity The earliests …

I. Name The Hebrew word ʿēdût, formally an abstract noun (GK § 86 k) but perhaps originally a plural (cf. ʿēdôt), occurs about fifty times in the Hebrew Bible. It primarily designates a written document containing an agreement between two parties. Because in most Bible passages Yahweh is one of these parties, ʿēdût developped the connotation of ‘covenant’ and ‘covenantal stipulations’ (Simian-Yofre 1986:1125–1128). Its Semitic cognates, ʿdy in Aramaic and adû in Akkadian, refer to a sworn agreement between two political parties. In first millennium Mesopota…

I. Name The Heb. word hêkāl occurs 78 times in the Old Testament and designates a palace or temple. The word is common in West-Semitic languages ( HALAT 234–35 s.v. היכל; Hoftijzer-Jongeling, DNWSI 278 s.v. hykl) and derives from Sum. é-gal, literally ‘big house’, the residence of a divine or worldly ruler. It is well known from Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources that temples were ascribed numinous qualities. Jalabert & Mouterde 1939 suggested that in Syria during the Roman period the deified temple was known. A single reference from the New Testament testifies …

I. Name The word ‘altar’ ( mizbēaḥ) occurs more than 400 times in the text of the Old Testament. It derives from the root zbḥ ‘to slaughter’: the most important offering consisted of sacrificial animals. Although offerings could be made on natural elevations, constructed altars seem to be have been customary. A main characteristic of the ancient Israelite altar was the presence of ‘horns’ ( qĕrānôt). For the OT altar in general see Haak 1992. In the Bible there are hardly any traces of deification of the altar, but other sources from the ancient Near Ea…

I. Name The Hebrew root qdš indicates ‘to be reserved for a god, to be sacred’ and is frequently used in the Hebrew Bible. A number of nominative forms are derived from this root: qādēš ‘prostitute’ and qōdeš ‘sacred object, sacred place, holiness’. The adjective qādôš, ‘the Holy One’, is attested as a name for Yahweh in the MT. The root qdš occurs frequently in West-Semitic languages as a verb, as an adjective ‘holy’, or as a substantive ‘sanctuary, sacred object, sacred personnel’ (Hoftijzer-Jongeling, DNWSI 993–97 s.v.qdš 1–3). A number of scholars assume that in Uga…

I. Name Jensen 1892:62 suggested that the name of Queen Vashti, the spouse of Ahasuerus in Est. 1.9 (cf. Est. 1.11, Est. 12, Est. 15, Est. 16, Est. 17, Est. 19; Est. 2.1, Est. 4, Est. 17), is related to the presumed Elamite goddess *Wašti (or Mašti). Since there are more plausible explanations to the name Vashti, there is no need to make a link with a goddess whose name was in fact pronounced as Mašti. II. Identity Mašti is an Elamite mother goddess, attested in Middle and New Elamite royal inscriptions and in personal names. The correct reading of the signs dmaš-ti, once read Barti, is pro…

I. Name The name qēdār, Qedar, carried by a tribe of the Ishmaelites as well as by its eponymous ancestor ( Gen. 25.13; 1 Chron. 1.29; Isa. 21.16, Isa. 17; Isa. 42.11; Isa. 60.7; Jer. 2.10; Jer. 49.28; Ezek. 27.21; Ps. 120.5; Cant. 1.5), has been related to the alleged Amorite deity Qudur or Qadar (Lewy 1934:48). The suggestion lacks sufficient ground. II. Identity According to Lewy (1934:48 n. 48), the name of an Amorite deity Qudur/Qudar/ Qadar is attested as theophoric element in four Mesopotamian names: qù-du-ur-ı̀-li (AO 9356:1); qú-da-ri-li (BIN IV 25:34); qá-dá-ar-an (Bauer 1…

The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (henceforth DDD) is in some ways unlike any other dictionary in the field of biblical studies. This is the first catalogue of its kind, one which discusses all the gods and demons whose names are found in the Bible. Complementing the usual surveys and histories of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Ugaritic, Syro-Palestinian, Persian, Greek, and Roman religion, DDD assesses the impact of contemporary religions on Israel and the Early Church by focusing on those gods that actually left traces in the Bible. The deities and demons dealt with in th…

The first edition of DDD, published in the summer of 1995, had to go through two printings in order to meet the demands of the market. The success of the book, also in terms of its academic standing, is a source of pride and gratitude for the editors and the many contributors. The ongoing demand for DDD provided its editorial team also with an excellent opportunity to take a fresh look at the first edition in view of the preparation of a second, revised, edition. Many of the lacunae and occasional errors in DDD1, signalled to us by friends and colleagues, could thus be repaired. The pre…