The Greek ones are older than the Roman ones. Jupiter = (Zeus + pater) * a couple of sound changes, where pater = father. It’s my favorite fact.
It’s conceivable that the Greeks also copy and pasted their cannon of deities from whatever was en vogue at the time. I doubt there was a process. A story was created, it somehow stuck in the zeitgeist, and a century later through a game of telephone, Bob was elevated to be god of hemorrhoids.
The Egyptians had a lot of gods for everything. Moses had to beat the poly-deity lifestyle out of the Israelites with stone tablets. The heathens in the North of Europe had concocted their own family of gods. If you go even further afield, you’ll find more and different gods.
They all kind of had a father big boss figure and then a complicated network of subs. If you have no printing press and no microwave ovens, humans naturally gravitated to stories like that to make sense of the world. The systems grew organically.
Couple more facts for you: 1) It’s not just conceivable, it’s incredibly likely that *dyéws-ph₂tḗr is older than both the Greek and Roman pantheons. He’s in the ancient Vedic (Hindi / Indian) religion under a very similar name and even made it into the Norse pantheon as Tiwaz, though it’s harder to tell how and when he ended up amongst Odin et al. He might have been a borrowing because all these other folks kept talking about him and how great he was. (But he is why we have a day called “Tuesday”, so he was still fairly highly regarded, borrowed or not.)
2) Moses probably didn’t exist (his name having the Egyptian ending -ses is apparently a big clue) and stories about him are allegories and/or amalgams of real people whose names had been long forgotten.
Moses probably didn’t exist (his name having the Egyptian ending -ses is apparently a big clue)
I’m not one to argue in favour of the existence of mythical people but this argument confuses me. Isn’t “Moses” just the egyptianised version of “Moishe”? Like “Jesus” is greekised for “Yeshuah/Joshuah”?
Other way around. “Moses” apparently came first. It’s basically the last two syllables of “Ramesses” but missing the initial particle saying who (or what) was the cause of the person’s birth. For Ramesses, it’s Ra, obviously. The Semitic peoples took it and applied it to their mostly mythologised forefather.
Since their culture took the meaning of a name seriously - something we’ve started to lose at least in Anglophone countries - you’d expect there’d be a record of that missing particle for Moses, and yet, there doesn’t seem to be one.
This could indicate there there were a lot of -messes all amalgamated into one.
Imagine, if you will, a compilation of stories about the heroic exploits of Celtic men all named Mac-something and eventually a mythos develops around a unified “Mack”, eventually with allegorical and fantastical stories being built up around him. This hasn’t actually happened in Celtic culture as far as I know, but it puts a context on the whole thing.
The Greek ones are older than the Roman ones. Jupiter = (Zeus + pater) * a couple of sound changes, where pater = father. It’s my favorite fact.
It’s conceivable that the Greeks also copy and pasted their cannon of deities from whatever was en vogue at the time. I doubt there was a process. A story was created, it somehow stuck in the zeitgeist, and a century later through a game of telephone, Bob was elevated to be god of hemorrhoids.
The Egyptians had a lot of gods for everything. Moses had to beat the poly-deity lifestyle out of the Israelites with stone tablets. The heathens in the North of Europe had concocted their own family of gods. If you go even further afield, you’ll find more and different gods.
They all kind of had a father big boss figure and then a complicated network of subs. If you have no printing press and no microwave ovens, humans naturally gravitated to stories like that to make sense of the world. The systems grew organically.
Couple more facts for you: 1) It’s not just conceivable, it’s incredibly likely that *dyéws-ph₂tḗr is older than both the Greek and Roman pantheons. He’s in the ancient Vedic (Hindi / Indian) religion under a very similar name and even made it into the Norse pantheon as Tiwaz, though it’s harder to tell how and when he ended up amongst Odin et al. He might have been a borrowing because all these other folks kept talking about him and how great he was. (But he is why we have a day called “Tuesday”, so he was still fairly highly regarded, borrowed or not.)
2) Moses probably didn’t exist (his name having the Egyptian ending -ses is apparently a big clue) and stories about him are allegories and/or amalgams of real people whose names had been long forgotten.
I’m not one to argue in favour of the existence of mythical people but this argument confuses me. Isn’t “Moses” just the egyptianised version of “Moishe”? Like “Jesus” is greekised for “Yeshuah/Joshuah”?
Other way around. “Moses” apparently came first. It’s basically the last two syllables of “Ramesses” but missing the initial particle saying who (or what) was the cause of the person’s birth. For Ramesses, it’s Ra, obviously. The Semitic peoples took it and applied it to their mostly mythologised forefather.
Since their culture took the meaning of a name seriously - something we’ve started to lose at least in Anglophone countries - you’d expect there’d be a record of that missing particle for Moses, and yet, there doesn’t seem to be one.
This could indicate there there were a lot of -messes all amalgamated into one.
Imagine, if you will, a compilation of stories about the heroic exploits of Celtic men all named Mac-something and eventually a mythos develops around a unified “Mack”, eventually with allegorical and fantastical stories being built up around him. This hasn’t actually happened in Celtic culture as far as I know, but it puts a context on the whole thing.
Oh I see. That makes sense, thank you!