Ancient gods - historical kings?

[Tammuz]

After reading this (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=3874777#post3874777) thread, I thought about speculating if other ancient gods might have historical basis. This is indeed something which have been proposed. So let's take the mythology I'm most familiar with: The Norse/Germanic mythology.

Thor Heyerdahl put forward a theory about how the Aesirs (a tribe of gods in Norse mythology) were real historical people who migrated from somewhere in Ukraine or Asia to Scandinavia under the leadership of Odin sometime before year 0 C.E (I think the exact proposed year was 64 B.C.E), and that the Scandinavians began to worship them as gods. Heyerdahl's work Jakten på Odin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakten_p%C3%A5_Odin)) was heavily criticized for being pseudoarcheology, and his time chronology seems to be inconsistent with what is known about that ancient religion, as well as migrations to Scandinavia.

Snorri Sturlasson claimed that the Aesirs migrated to Scandinavia after the destruction of Troy (it is upon that Heyerdahl built his theory). However, this must be seen in its proper context. Iceland who had decided to adopt Christianity around year 1000 after threats of war from Norway, was tolerant in that the worship of the old gods were still allowed. Snorri was a Christian, but he wanted to preserve the lore (why else would he had written it down?). So probably he resorted to claim that one should not be tempted to worship these gods, for they were mere human beings.


However, the idea that those gods may be based on historical figures seems not to be totally out of the question. See for instance Wkipedia's entry Mythical kings of Sweden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythical_kings_of_Sweden). It is indeed known that the ancient Swedish kings claimed descendant from Freyr. So perhaps Freyr actually was an ancient king, who later was projected into the realm of mythology.

Since the Norse mythology is an off-shot from the Proto-Indo-European religion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_religion), perhaps Odin (who, so far I know, doesn't have a "root-god" found there, and only later became the chief god) was an ancient warleader of the Indo-European migrants who came to northern Europe (in the form of the Battle-Axe Culture) sometime between 3000-2000 B.C.E, and that the conflict between the Aesirs and the Vanirs as depicted in the Edda, in fact is a mythologization of a conflict between the Indo-European migrants and the indigenous inhabitants of northern Europe. Note however, that this is speculation.

It may also be possible to speculate that Dyeus, who became Zeus in Greek mythology and Tyr in Norse mythology was some ancient Proto-Indo-European figure (probably a chieftain or a leader of some sort), but we know far too little about the ancient Proto-Indo-Europeans to have any kind of discussion regarding it.

[Huon]

You have a link :
http://comecarpentier.com/mithya.htm

I do not know that man. I found his page while googling for Evhemerus, who was a greek writer, and was the first (?) who imagined that gods could be at the beginning heroes of their tribe.

[Malachi151]

Hi Tammuz, thanks for the other references to this and expanding on the topic.

I think that this is really the best explanation of where god belief came from and it also explain why religions are the way that they are.

This explains the class basis of religion, as gods are really human rulers.

It also explains why god belief evolved in many cultures, but it didn't exist in the most privative cultures.

So much of the characteristics of religion is explained by this theory (the link between nationalism and religion, religion and laws, the use of religion by the state, etc.) that I certainly put a lot of credence in it.

[lpetrich]

Congratulations, you people. You just reinvented euhemerism.

It was first proposed around 300 BCE by someone named Euhemerus, who proposed that the Olympians were once human heroes. I imagine that a Hellenic-pagan euhemerist could conclude that Zeus had been a king with an eye for the ladies, Hera a queen, Demeter a gardener, Athena a weaver, Hephaestus a blacksmith, Aphrodite a courtesan, Ares a general, Poseidon a fisherman, Dionysus a vintner, Hermes a messenger, Apollo an archer, Artemis a midwife, etc.

There is certainly nothing absolutely impossible in euhemerism, given all the hero-worship and personality cultism that people are willing to practice. And in societies where good record-keeping was difficult, that process could certainly run out of control. The Egyptian architect Imhotep, designer of an early pyramid, was worshipped in later centuries as a god.

But there are other possibilities for the appearance of euhemerism. Xenophanes noted in 550 BCE that
Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals, stealings and adulteries and deceivings of one another. . . . Mortals deem that gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form . . . yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds. . . . The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair.
So it could be a matter of limited imagination, making one's gods in one's likeness. And not only physical likeness, but also psychological likeness and social likeness.

There is another reason that one should not be too literal about mythology. Some of it could have been invented as Just So Stories (prescientific etiological or origin myths) and charter myths. The latter kind of myth is one that is invented to justify some practice. The first creation story in Genesis is a rather obvious charter myth for the seventh-day Sabbath, while its second creation story includes a Just So Story about why snakes crawl on their bellies. Related to that may be the common belief that many technologies were invented or developed by various deities, who then proceeded to give them to humanity -- their origins are often much older than written records, or even the mythology that has a clear correlate with known history, as some Greek mythology does with Mycenaean-era Greece.

Another charter myth is how Prometheus got Zeus to accept the icky parts of a sacrificed animal instead of the tasty parts. This could have been invented as a justification for offering the icky parts instead of the tasty parts to the Gods; it need not reflect a history of once offering the tasty parts.

If this seems rather self-serving, consider Livy's history of early Rome. In 1.116, he tells us that Romulus, its founder, mysteriously disappeared in a cloud during a thunderstorm, greatly disturbing the people of that city. But one day, an eminent citizen reported that Romulus had briefly appeared to him and told them that it was the will of heaven that Rome will rule the world and that if Romans learn the arts of war, they can acquire what is rightfully theirs.

Something similar is likely behind the widespread belief in the Divine Right of Kings; many monarchs have claimed that they are either descended from gods or appointed by gods. This may be a way of seeming more legitimate than saying something like "I have a right to rule because I took over. Or because one of my ancestors took over."

There are other possibilities; some gods seem like personifications of natural forces. Zeus: the weather, Demeter: the earth, Poseidon: the sea, etc.

Finally, let's not forget about cultural slumming; that may be behind the original attempts to connect the Aesir with the Trojan War. The Romans did something like that also; the Roman poet Virgil composed an imitation-Homeric epic, the Aeneid, about Aeneas, a Trojan War hero, who has lots of adventures on his way from Troy to central Italy.

So please don't be too literal-minded about mythology.

[Newton's Cat]

Yeah - I wonder who Yahweh was?

Yahweh saboath, "the warrior with the strong right arm"

[Astreja]

I also favour the theory that the Æsir were actual people. (And the hypothesis that I'm a direct descendant by virtue of my Scandinavian ancestry.)

My proposed migration path starts in India and goes through the Mesopotamian region to Greece to the Etruscan region to northern Europe.

[premjan]

Aesir == Asura?
Vanir == Vanara?

Could be cognates.

[Merzbow42]

One of the early Christian heresies was that Jesus was actually born a man and became divine only upon his 'adoption' by God. Not quite the same thing as what this thread is discussing, but still interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoptionism

[hinduwoman]

Some ancient kings and holy men might end up transformed into gods, but certainly not all. For Zeus to be a god it is only necessary to make up a deity controlling thunder, not that there be an actual king.
And can you imagine Ganesha, the elephant headed god real in any way?

[Tammuz]

I also favour the theory that the Æsir were actual people. (And the hypothesis that I'm a direct descendant by virtue of my Scandinavian ancestry.)

My proposed migration path starts in India and goes through the Mesopotamian region to Greece to the Etruscan region to northern Europe.

I would propose that the Aesir (those of them without PIE-roots) were war-leaders of the Indo-European migrants who came to northern Europe. That would mean that they ultimately came from the Pontic Steppes (the urheimat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans), and not India.

Some ancient kings and holy men might end up transformed into gods, but certainly not all. For Zeus to be a god it is only necessary to make up a deity controlling thunder, not that there be an actual king.

I don't know, but didn't Stone Age people believe in spirits and and mystical powers rather than gods?

Here is a direct example of a man becoming a god. Imhotep (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imhotep) was originally an architect, and 2000 years later he was raised to the status of a god.

[premjan]

Even if the Aesir / Vanir came from Central Asia rather than India, there could still be a link between the mythologies. For instance Asuras are also a race like the Aesir. And so are the Vanaras.

[Malachi151]

Some ancient kings and holy men might end up transformed into gods, but certainly not all. For Zeus to be a god it is only necessary to make up a deity controlling thunder, not that there be an actual king.
And can you imagine Ganesha, the elephant headed god real in any way?

You are confusing several things here. I don't think that anyone ever said that "every god" originated as a human ruler, we are making the case that god belief originated from the worship of human leaders, once this god belief existed, then many different purely fictional gods proliferated.

#1) Every culture did not develop at the same rate, so some cultures were "primative" 100 years ago, some cultures were "civilized" 7,000 years ago.

#2) Once god beliefs rose in some cultures, they probably spread directly to other cultures, such that some cultures went straight from no god belief to belief in abstract gods. This is really obvious when talking about 18th and 19th century missionaries in Africa where there were many tribes that didn't even have words for god and couldn't understand the concept initially.

When discussing Mesopotamian religion for example, it may be that the Sumerian gods originated from real human rulers, but then the Babylonian and Hebrew religions were based on the Sumerian religion, and thus are just further layers of abstractions of Sumerian gods which had already become sufficiently mythologized by that point.

[lpetrich]

Even if the Aesir / Vanir came from Central Asia rather than India, there could still be a link between the mythologies. For instance Asuras are also a race like the Aesir. And so are the Vanaras.
They are related only in the sense that the words are related: Pokorny's Indo-European Comparative Dictionary lists these cognates:

Sanskrit asura
Avestan ahura (as in Ahura Mazda, the God of Zoroastrianism)
Germanic *ans- (Old Norse as, plural aesir)

Ancestral Indo-European was likely spoken on the north shore of the Black Sea around 4500-3500 BCE or thereabouts. Its speakers gradually spread out and their languages diverged. It can be rather difficult to reconstruct ancestral Indo-European culture and religion, because those migrants tended to make various cultural changes on the way, they tended to mix with the local population as they traveled outward, and they often adopted the gods of those they overran.

They worshipped several deities, including one whose name is reconstructed as *dyeus p@ter, which roughly means "Father Sky". He became the Old English Tiu, the Old Norse Tyr, the Roman Jovis Pater (> Jupiter), the Greek Zeus, the Vedic Dyaus Pitar, etc.

Another one was a goddess of the dawn. Her name appears as words for "dawn", like Latin Aurora, Greek Eos, and Vedic Ushas, from *ausos- This word shows up in Germanic as English "east" and its cognates (the direction of the dawn).

They also worshipped a god of thunder and war who fights a snake monster; he went under several names, like Germanic Thor (<*Thunarr), Celtic Taranis (<*Tanaris), Vedic Indra, etc. The Germanic and Celtic forms are from words for "thunder" (Latin tonare "to thunder", Indo-European *(s)ten@-), and the Vedic one from a word for man (male) that is cognate with Greek aner/andr- (from Indo-European *@ner-). So he's Thunder, The Man, among other names.

And gods named Father Sky, Dawn, and Thunder seem like personified natural forces rather than human heroes.

[hinduwoman]

Tammuz, Yes primitive people believed in spirits and natural forces rather than gods. But afterwards these same entities became transformed into gods. For example, the moon was simply the moon in Rig Vedas, but within a century or so it became a god with human form and wives.

[hinduwoman]

You are confusing several things here. I don't think that anyone ever said that "every god" originated as a human ruler, we are making the case that god belief originated from the worship of human leaders, once this god belief existed, then many different purely fictional gods proliferated.

#1) Every culture did not develop at the same rate, so some cultures were "primative" 100 years ago, some cultures were "civilized" 7,000 years ago.

#2) Once god beliefs rose in some cultures, they probably spread directly to other cultures, such that some cultures went straight from no god belief to belief in abstract gods. This is really obvious when talking about 18th and 19th century missionaries in Africa where there were many tribes that didn't even have words for god and couldn't understand the concept initially.

When discussing Mesopotamian religion for example, it may be that the Sumerian gods originated from real human rulers, but then the Babylonian and Hebrew religions were based on the Sumerian religion, and thus are just further layers of abstractions of Sumerian gods which had already become sufficiently mythologized by that point.

The OP is claiming that all gods were historical kings once.
The earliest Rig Vedic tribes also did not gods in the same sense of the term; but many of what they worshipped were personifications of natural forces like Night.

[premjan]

I don't know about the assertion that PIEs were (only) from the shores of the Black Sea - the Rig Veda verses about midnight sun makes it appear that some of them came from the shores of the Arctic.

[Malachi151]

I'm not familiar enough with Rig Vedas to really comment on it, other than from what I've seen its probably only dates to around 1,700 BCE, still quite recent compared to the Sumerian's ~3,000 BCE religious texts.

Also, note that the Sumerian gods were also called names like "sky", "earth", etc.

Dealing with religions in and around this area, the entire Middle East and Near East, is difficult because its hard to know who influenced who, when, and how.

Its very difficult, if not impossible, to determine if a religion formed in a vacuum, or if it was imported whole from somewhere else, or if it was influenced by some external religion.

Without knowing more about these so-called "gods" and the true early state of the religion, I really can't comment more on what the Rig Vedas tells us.

I'm also suspect of claims that such and such a text is "amazingly well preserved and just like the original" :rolleyes:.

People of all religions are equally full of it, this includes Hindus, and Buddhists, etc., they are just as bad as the Christians and Muslims.

We have good confidence in the Sumerian, Babylonian, and Hebrew texts because we have actually found the ancient copies of these texts, well not so much the Hebrew, our oldest copies of that don't go back very far, but our only knowledge of the Sumerian religion comes from the archaeological finds, thus we don't have this problem of transmission to deal with.

Problems that you get into with transmission is that as more "modern" views get adopted, the texts are revised to reflect those modern views, and it is denied that any other view ever existed, in order to preserve the integrity of the religion, and thus its is claimed that the modern view is really an ancient view, which it really isn't.

This is what many scholars believe happened with the Hebrew texts, and which actually archaeological evidence confirms, i.e. that the Hebrew religion was originally polytheistic, and then was transformed into a monotheistic religion, and that today Jews claim that it was always monotheistic, etc., but reading today's Jewish texts, don't really give you a proper knowledge of what 1,500 BCE Hebrew religion was, all that does is give you a misrepresentation.

[Malachi151]

The OP is claiming that all gods were historical kings once.
The earliest Rig Vedic tribes also did not gods in the same sense of the term; but many of what they worshipped were personifications of natural forces like Night.

The OP does not say "all gods", it says "other gods".

I think that the thing to focus on here are powerful, law-giver, moralist, personal, interactive, gods.

[premjan]

Most of these texts are composite and not composed at a single point in time - this is true for instance of epics like the Mahabharata which gradually inflated from a few thousand to about 100,000 verses in length. The Rig Veda may have remained unchanged as the original meaning of it is lost in some cases - only the pronunciations are preserved (this is claimed as a feature rather than a bug) - thus making it only possible to transmit without modifications. Though of course, someone could have preserved rhyme and meter without being faithful to the sound either. But they are preserved by multiple different lineages. And there are multiple different interpretations of the Rig Veda. In fact as recently as the beginning of the century, Aurobindo proposed more esoteric interpretations.

[dystopian]

(don't have time right now to read the whole thread, sorry if this has been addressed)

The norse/germanic people (both have the same origin) existed in the area as far back as 1000BCE, located primarily in southern scandinavia, denmark, and northern germany. between 500BCE and 60BCE they expanded southward further into germany aswell as holland, and these people are known as the Jastort culture. Or Proto-germanic. In the 2nd century BCE these migrating germanic tribes were already sporadically invading Gaul, Italy and Iberia.

In any case, you can clearly see that your buddy thor is grossly mistaken in the dates, and if he's so blatantly wrong about something so simple and widely known, the rest of his claims must be seen in a similar light.

As for mythical kings or historical kings taking on the form of gods, this is hardly evidence of the gods themselves being derived from them, in fact it might far easier serve as evidence of the exact opposite! Just look at the number of people named Thor in modern day sweden!