The Names Of The Gods In Ancient Mediterranean Religions

"From Greece to Palmyra, Tyre to Babylon, the names of the gods reveal their fields of competence and action. Through the study of divine names, the twelve chapters of this book unfold a gallery of portraits that reveal the changing aspects of the divine throughout the ancient Mediterranean"--

Ancient religions are definitely complex systems of gods, which resist our understanding. Divine names provide fundamental keys to gain access to the multiples ways gods were conceived, characterized, and organized. Among the names given to the gods many of them refer to spaces: cities, landscapes, sanctuaries, houses, cosmic elements. They reflect mental maps which need to be explored in order to gain new knowledge on both the structure of the pantheons and the human agency in the cultic dimension. By considering the intersection between naming and mapping, this book opens up new perspectives on how tradition and innovation, appropriation and creation play a role in the making of polytheistic and monotheistic religions. Far from being confined to sanctuaries, in fact, gods dwell in human environments in multiple ways. They move into imaginary spaces and explore the cosmos. By proposing a new and interdiciplinary angle of approach, which involves texts, images, spatial and archeaeological data, this book sheds light on ritual practices and representations of gods in the whole Mediterranean, from Italy to Mesopotamia, from Greece to North Africa and Egypt. Names and spaces enable to better define, differentiate, and connect gods.

From Greece to Palmyra, Tyre or Babylon, the names of the gods, like 'Thundering Zeus', 'Three-faced Moon', 'Baal of the Force' or the enigmatic YHWH, reveal their history, family ties, fields of competence and capacity for action. Shared or specific, these names bring to light networks of gods: the Saviour gods, the Ancestral gods, the gods of a city or a family. Names tell stories about the relationship between men and gods, gods and places, places and cultures and so on. They show how gods travel and spread, how they appear and disappear, how they participate in the political, social, intellectual history of each community. Through the study of divine names, the twelve chapters of this book unfold a gallery of portraits that reveal the changing aspects of the divine throughout the ancient Mediterranean.

Divine Names are a key component in the communication between humans and gods in Antiquity. Their complexity derives not only from the impressive number of onomastic elements available to describe and target specific divine powers, but also from their capacity to be combined within distinctive configurations of gods. The volume collects 36 essays pertaining to many different contexts - Egypt, Anatolia, Levant, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome - which address the multiple functions and wide scope of divine onomastics. Scrutinized in a diachronic and comparative perspective, divine names shed light on how polytheisms and monotheisms work as complex systems of divine and human agents embedded in an historical framework. Names imply knowledge and play a decisive role in rituals; they move between cities and regions, and can be translated; they interact with images and reflect the intrinsic plurality of divine beings. This vivid exploration of divine names pays attention to the balance between tradition and innovation, flexibility and constraints, to the material and conceptual parameters of onomastic practices, to cross-cultural contexts and local idiosyncrasies, in a word to human strategies for shaping the gods through their names.

Religious beliefs and practices, which permeated all aspects of life in antiquity, traveled well-worn routes throughout the Mediterranean: itinerant charismatic practitioners peddled their skills as healers, purifiers, cursers, and initiators; and vessels decorated with illustrations of myths traveled with them. This collection of essays, drawn from the groundbreaking reference work Religion in the Ancient World, offers an expansive, comparative perspective on this complex spiritual world.

This book offers a clear and concise historical overview of the major religious movements of the ancient Mediterranean world existing from the time of the second millennium BCE up until the fourth century CE, including both the Judeo-Christian and pagan religious traditions. Recognizing the significant role of religious institutions in human history and acknowledging the diversity of religious ideas and practices in the ancient Mediterranean world, “religion” is defined as a collection of myths, beliefs, rituals, ethical practices, social institutions and experiences related to the realm of the sacred cosmos. Without focusing too much attention on technicalities and complex vocabulary, the book provides an introductory road map for exploring the vast array of religious data permeating the ancient Mediterranean world. Through an examination of literary and archeological evidence, the book summarizes the fundamental religious beliefs and practices of the ancient Near Eastern world, including the religious traditions of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Israel. Turning westward, the fascinating world of ancient Greek and Roman religion is considered next. The discussion begins with a description of Minoan-Mycenaean religion, followed by a consideration of classical Roman and Greek religion. Next, the numerous religious movements that blossomed during Hellenistic-Roman times are discussed. In addition, the fundamental theological contributions of various Greco-Roman philosophical schools of thought, including Orphism, Stoicism, Pythagoreanism, Platonism and Neo-Platonism, are described. Greco-Roman philosophy functioned as a quasi-religious outlook for many, and played a decisive role in the evolution of religion in the classical and Hellenistic period. The theological speculations of the philosophers regarding the nature of God and the soul made a huge impact in religious circles during the classical and Hellenistic era. Moving forward in history from archaic and classical times to the later Hellenistic-Roman period, the old religious order of the past falls by the wayside and a new updated religious paradigm begins to develop throughout the Mediterranean world, with a greater emphasis being placed upon the religious individual and the expression of personal religious feelings. There are several important social and historical reasons for this shift in perspective and these factors are explained in the chapter focusing upon personal religion in Hellenistic times. Since the entire religious topography of the ancient Mediterranean world is rarely outlined in a single volume, this book will be a welcome addition to anyone’s library.

In antiquity, the Mediterranean region was linked by sea and land routes that facilitated the spread of religious beliefs and practices among the civilizations of the ancient world. The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Mediterranean Religions provides an introduction to the major religions of this area and explores current research regarding the similarities and differences among them. The period covered is from the prehistoric period to late antiquity, that is, ca.4000 BCE to 600 CE. The first nine essays in the volume provide an overview of the characteristics and historical developments of the major religions of the region, including those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria-Canaan, Israel, Anatolia, Iran, Greece, Rome and early Christianity. The last five essays deal with key topics in current research on these religions, including violence, identity, the body, gender and visuality, taking an explicitly comparative approach and presenting recent theoretical and methodological advances in contemporary scholarship.