Reddit reviews Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, Second Edition

>For the New Testament, there is no better way than reading the new testament itself.

There's a fair amount of Christian mythology that's developed outside of the Bible, and IMO, it seems to be the more interesting stuff. The Harrowing of Hell and the Wandering Jew are the first that spring to mind. Even the Rapture, which something like 50% of Americans believe in, came about in the 17th Century.

As you say, finding a single source analysing Christianity as mythology seems to be fairly difficult. That said, I've found at least one book that might be worth a look, if it can be found in a local library.

Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible On Amazon here

The other way to go about it would be to look into Western mythology specifically, because most of the newer stuff will have Christian roots. I'll try to throw a reference in here later if I find anything.

Consult DDD. Azazel is available in the preview, page 128.

"goat god" isn't one of the considerations, so I'd have to say no. It doesn't account for the second zayin.

> In the Hebrew Bible, Nimrod is the name of a Mesopotamian - hero known to have been a famous hunter as well as the founder of major Mesopotamian cities and of the first state in (post-diluvian) primaeval times. The name Nimrod might be interpreted as a 1st pI. qal of the root MRD ('to rebel', i.e. 'we shall rebel') and has indeed been understood in this sense by Jewish tradition, which considered Nimrod to be a paradigm of god-offending hybris. This distorting negative valuation, underscored by an artificial etymology, is not yet found in the biblical texts, however. The name Nimrod most probably derives from that of a major Mesopotamian deity, i.e. Ninurta (Sum Nin-urta 'Lord of arable -Earth', Akk Ninurta, Inurta, Nurti, Urti etc.). This etymological derivation alone could support an identification of the Biblical hero either with the Mesopotamian god or with a king such as the Assyrian Tukulti-Ninurta I (ca.1243-1207 BCE, as suggested by SPEISER 1958, but see below). Still, the precise development from the Sumerian prototype to its Hebrew affiliate remains unclear as potential intermediates (e.g. for a shift from nwrt > nmrt > nmrd) are still lacking while attested variants (such as ‘nst on Aramaic dockets or ‘nrt in Aramaean and Ammonite inscriptions of the 7th century BCE; Sefire I A 38, KAI no. 55; cf. H. TADMOR, IEJ 15 [1966] 233-234) represent separate developments.

> For the time being, the ultimate identification of Nimrod with Ninurta seems the most reasonable one. However, it does not rest upon linguistic reasoning, but represents a majority view based on circumstantial arguments such as the comparison of the Mesopotamian god's image and functions with those of the biblical hero. Among alternative proposals, obsolete historical identifications such as Nazimaruttas (a Kassite king of ca. 1300 BCE), Amenophis III (Mb-mlt-r' called Nibmu’ areya in the Amarna correspondence) may be disposed of, but one should note an ingenious hypothesis linking Nimrod to the Babylonian god -> Marduk (LIPINSKI 1966). Impossible on strictly philological grounds, it postulates a deliberate scribal manipulation (tiqqum sopherim: deletion of the final kaph, addition of a prefixed nun) but docs not explain why the scribes should have left unchanged the name of Marduk, e.g. in Jer 50:2

• Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible

Gog of Magog is likely a Hebrew cipher for Babylon. The Hebrew letters for Gog of Magog are גגממגג. (Which in English script is GGMMGG). Cut the palindrome in half and shift each letter up one in the Hebrew alphabet, and the what you’re left with is בבל (BBL), which is “Babylon”. The nation that the Jews just so happened to be in exile to at the time that Ezekiel was prophesying.

Likely, Gog of Magog is just a stand in for all of the enemies of the Jews (reinforced by the super-army of nations in Ezekiel 38), with Babylon being the most pressing one, considering their exile.

Gog of Magog is not actually an enemy or plague that will usher in the end of time. Gog of Magog is an enemy archetype first utilized by Ezekiel, but later as a common apocalyptic threat whose overwhelming power (and subsequent overthrowing) set up an oracle of hope for the Jews who were experiencing sustained suffering with no discernible escape.

For more reading about Gog of Magog, let me recommend Daniel Block's Commentary on Ezekiel, or the relevant entries in the Dictionary of the Deities and Demons in the Bible and the New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis.

Also, while you can change vowels all day long and still argue common root, consonants are pretty set in stone. MQQ is a very different word from MGG, in the same way that in English, ball is a very different word from bass.

> Dictionary of Demons and Deities in the Bible

https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Deities-Demons-Bible-Second/dp/0802824919 - it's not cheap, but there is a digital version that's more reasonably priced.

Šulmu, /u/KlingonLinux! I gotchoo on "Canaanite" and Israelite (they were more or less the "same" people religio-culturally for most of Antiquity, and definitely genetically/ethnically) and Punic/Phoenician (Iron Age Levantine ["Canaanite" and Israelite peoples and so on] peoples abroad throughout the Mediterranean as far West as Southern Spain/the island of Ibiza and North Africa) sources, awīlu.

Some necessary clarification : I routinely put "Canaanite" in scare-quotes, because there was no definitive, proto-national much less national identity for so-called "Canaanites" in the way that Israelites and Judahites eventually had by the 1st millennium BCE, and the people of Syro-Palestine during the Middle to Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age would overwhelmingly identify and operate by clan, by tribe, or by city-state before calling themselves and operating as Knaʿni (Ugaritic, meaning "people of Canaan"). "Canaanite" religious forms consonantly varied quite noticeably by city-state, in ways that, say, Egyptian ones did not, even taking into account "alternative" (but not competing) Egyptian local theologies and so on. Speaking in perhaps excessively general terms, there was a State religion overarching the regional ones in Egypt which, in effect, bound them together as a cooperative dynamic unit. "Canaan" as such had no such large-scale, cohesive "religious infrastructure" of Egypt's much less Mesopotamian Kingdoms' and Empires' like, and it didn't "help" that the exceptionally powerful Egyptian Empire of the Late Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom Periods and contemporaneous Mesopotamian and Hittite Empires were constantly vying for control of the North Sinai and Syro-Palestine. The economic centers of "Canaan" were, indeed, frequently subservient to Egypt throughout Bronze Age history, with Egyptian Kings investing governors and mayors of its own throughout "Canaanite" territories following the Thutmosid Conquest, much to the personal danger of said governors and mayors (who were neither particularly liked nor trusted by their Levantine subjects nor by Egyptian officials) and much to the cantankerous chagrin of the Levantine peoples living under Egyptian Imperial rule. Which is to say nothing of Egyptian-mandated relocations of restive Levantine people and so forth.

Furthermore, Hebrew Biblical literature intensely confuses what "Canaanite" even means in a religio-cultural sense, using the term simply to inveigh against religious beliefs and conventions, regardless of actual origin, Deuteronomic Jews did not wish to see carry over from their ancestral religion(s)/culture(s) and from neighboring religions/cultures (e.g., Mesopotamian and Egyptian religions/cultures. See Leviticus 18, Deuteronomy 7, and Ezekiel 23 as but three illustrations of the aforementioned) into newly-minted Judaism and what had then become the Israelite-Judahite "national" identities (primarily in politically-motivated defiance, it should be noted, of their later Master, the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which had made of the internally-fractured Kingdoms of Israel and Judah satellite states through rigorous opportunistic military conquest and serious economic and political strong-arming, beginning with the great and cunning King Tukultī-apil-Ešarra/"Tiglath-Pileser" III). A few scholars and especially many would-be Revivalists not academically-trained frequently, unwittingly hang their understanding of "Canaanite" upon all this confusion -- and the latter not in anything like a Jewish context nor through a Jewish hermeneutic, either, while still treating iffy Jewish accounts embedded in Scripture entirely too literally, which makes it an even more weird and defunct confusion.

Now, it's very important to form a baseline understanding of the historical circumstances of the Near East concerning "Canaan," what came out of it, its influential neighbors, and religio-cultural receptors. I know it feels like unnecessary drudgery to many people, but the religious tidbits don't make much sense and their use in/continued relevance to Modernity can't be adequately evaluated without learning and understanding their historical contexts, which is where a lot of would-be Revivalists go very wrong, in my opinion -- especially since "Canaanite" and other non-Kemetic ANE religious Revivals are still very much in their formative stages and aren't being led by people with necessary, thorough backgrounds in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. For this, I recommend beginning with Donald B. Redford's Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, Marc Van De Mieroop's A History of the Ancient Near East: ca. 3000 to 323 BC, Amanda H. Podany's Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East, and Mark Woolmer's Ancient Phoenicia: An Introduction. They're not short texts, apart from Woolmer's that is, but they will give you a decent, fairly comprehensive understanding of the circumstances of the ANE.

Concerning "Canaanite" and Israelite, etc., religious details and developments, just about anything by Mark S. Smith, Rainer Albertz (namely, this massive text he co-authored with Rüdiger Schmitt), Daniel E. Fleming, and Dennis Pardee are quite sound.

Stories from Ancient Canaan, 2nd Edition edited by Mark S. Smith and Michael D. Coogan is probably where you're looking to start vis-a-vis "Canaanite" religion(s), as most people like to get at the mythic material first and foremost. After that, I would definitely recommend picking up The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Biblical Resource Series), along with Pardee's Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (Writings from the Ancient World) and Nicolas Wyatt's Religious Texts from Ugarit -- there should be a free PDF of the latter still floating around the nets somewhere.

While William Foxwell Albright has since become outdated in areas, his works are nevertheless necessary, now "classic" reads. Of particular use and importance is his Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: An Historical Analysis of Two Contrasting Faiths

Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan by John Day and the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, Second Edition are handy, but relatively scarce and expensive.

Tryggve N. D. Mettinger is a much-beloved scholar of mine, though be aware that in The Riddle of the Resurrection: "Dying and Rising Gods" in the Ancient Near East -- one of the very few decent and comprehensive texts in ANE "comparative religious studies" -- wherein he addresses a few major Levantine Gods like Ba'l-Hadad, he unfortunately demonstrates a very poor comprehension of Greek, so if you ever pick that title up please do remember to take his interpretations in the chapter concerning the Phoenician God Melqart with a metric ton of salt.

Aaron J. Brody's Each Man Cried Out to His God: The Specialized Religion of Canaanite and Phoenician Seafarers was a short, widely-accessible, and enjoyable volume; he covers quite a few lesser-known and under-explored elements of Levantine religions therein.

It sounds like a lot, I'm sure, and there's so much more to read and discuss beyond all these, but hopefully this will provide a decent springboard for you into the crazy, wonderful world of Levantine religions.

I hope this helped, and if you need anything else on this, or concerning Mesopotamia and Egypt, feel free to ask anytime.