yegads: Holy Moses, Thoth!

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
yakovzutolmai
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Re: Moses =Thoth

Post by yakovzutolmai »

billd89 wrote: Mon Sep 06, 2021 6:14 am
Hermes Trismegistus comes from Harran.
Can you cite this somewhere? Hermes is from Thoth; I've never seen Egyptian Thoth indicated as a foreign god.
Not a source, but context: http://www.hermetics.org/Sabians_of_Harran.html

There are a few papers on the "Sabians" of Harran. I'm not sure if we could say that Harran introduced the Greek world to "Thoth/Idris". Perhaps it came out of Alexandria. However, it was certainly a late Hermetic center, and there is a strong continuity at Harran with ancient cults.

We maybe should be asking this question and finding a better answer. If Iah/Idris were in Syria in the second millenium BC, that would be very interesting. There are Ammonites in Canaan. Sin/Sinai. Etc. Harran was definitely a very ancient site for the Bablyonian Sin.

Also, there does seem to be a difference between Zeus Hammon and Zeus Kaisos. In the Ammonite system, Thoth is a Saturnian/Lunar figure (like Sin). The Hadad system has Ptah/Kothar-wa-Khasis as a craftsman, and El is the Saturnian figure. These just seem like two different systems.
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billd89
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Re: Moses =Thoth

Post by billd89 »

I've dissected bits for consistency in my reply.
yakovzutolmai wrote: Mon Sep 06, 2021 6:47 amNot a source, but context: http://www.hermetics.org/Sabians_of_Harran.html
There are a few papers on the "Sabians" of Harran. ... However, it was certainly a late Hermetic center, and there is a strong continuity at Harran with ancient cults.
Harran adopted the Graeco-Egyptian Hermes, not vice-versa. Much earlier, I wonder if the Pyramid builders came from Mesopotamia, then Thoth might have an origin there? Thoth is NOT one of the 'old gods' however.
I'm not sure if we could say that Harran introduced the Greek world to "Thoth/Idris". Perhaps it came out of Alexandria.
Egyptian Thoth dates back to 2600 BC at least; Alexandria appears c.300 BC. Hermes Trismegistos (Graeco-Egyptian god) probably dates c.250 BC. "Thrice-Great Thoth" is first attested to c.300 BC as Lord of Hermopolis, that predates H.T. Idris is not recognized in either Garth Fowden's The Egyptian Hermes [1986] or Christian Bull's The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus [2018] (the major and 'recent' scholarly summaries); so, not germane to any major scholars? Ergo, Thoth/Idris shouldn't be conflated.
If Iah/Idris were in Syria in the second millenium BC, that would be very interesting. There are Ammonites in Canaan. Sin/Sinai. Etc. Harran was definitely a very ancient site for the Bablyonian Sin. Also, there does seem to be a difference between Zeus Hammon and Zeus Kaisos. In the Ammonite system, Thoth is a Saturnian/Lunar figure (like Sin). The Hadad system has Ptah/Kothar-wa-Khasis as a craftsman, and El is the Saturnian figure. These just seem like two different systems.
I'm not sure about any of that. I use timelines w/ estimated dates so I don't conflate disparate localities and distant centuries: proximity is key to any of my assumptions.
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billd89
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Attack against one part of Völter's Thesis, PhD 1988

Post by billd89 »

Contrary to Völter theory, see Inke W. Schumacher's Der Herr der Fremdländer [1988], pp.23-4

Link:
In religious studies there have always been efforts to prove the foreign origin of Sopdu by identification with Semitic gods. Thus Völter7 believes to recognize in Sopdu the Old Testament god Shaddai, the rain-giving and thus bestowing fertility god. Völter arrives at the convergence of these two gods through the relatively late fusion of Sopdu with Shu, who, among other things, is considered to represent the air and cloud space. According to Völter, Sopdu merges with the latter to form Sopdu-Shu and thus becomes the god of air-space, who as such is also responsible for the rain-giving. In his function as god of the air-space, Sopdu carries as symbol the four-feather crown of the Air and Wind gods. According to Völter, Shu and Sopdu are identical, the latter being a local form of Shu 8 .

The attempt of identification made by Völter can no longer be sustained, however, since Sopdu is a War-god and as such the guardian of the Egyptian eastern frontier. In the Late Period, Sopdu is syncretistically associated with the War-god but not with Air-god Shu. Moreover, in the the source material of ancient Egypt there is not a single reference to the aspect of Sopdu as a god of Air, which would have made Völter's approximation of Sopdu-Shu to the god Shaddai justified.

I'm baffled; Schumacher seems to deny (or explain away?) very definitive archaeological evidence, the Naos of the Decades, which shows Shu-Sopdu (c.375 BC) existed and was worshipped in an area where many Jews lived. I haven't read through the entire PhD, but I see the Sopdu-Shu association frequently enough in other scholars' work and over 100 years to assume her (unique?) contradiction does not appear valid.

Hans Goedicke's review of Inke W. Schumacher's Der Gott Sopdu, der Herr der Fremdländer in Journal of Near Eastern Studies , Jan., 1994, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Jan., 1994), p.60
This initial discussion is followed by an extensive documentation of Sopdu throughout Egypt's history. A subchapter is devoted to the occurrences in the Pyramid Texts, following Sethe's translations and interpretations closely. The later religious text-groups, such as Coffin Texts and Book of the Dead, are, however, not included in the discussion, and one might wonder about the usefulness of the Pyramid Text passages in the primarily historical and cult-topographical discussion. In view of their significance, it is understandable that the references to Sopdu in the Sahure mortuary temple {c.2465 BC} are discussed in great detail. Sopdu is mentioned there with the epithet nb-hswt, parallel to Thoth as nb-9lwntyw. The latter is a reference to people and the question to be asked is if Sopdu should not be understood as “Lord of Foreigners,” lit. “hill-country-dwellers”.

Schumacher missed that? o.k. so a colleague is not persuaded. Debatable point, or she's waaaay off-track.


I am interested in the thesis that Sopdu-Thoth was the 'god of foreigners', particularly where the Hyksos (1650–1550 BC: Semites) had settled in Eastern Egypt. Of course, 'Jews' (proto-Jews, Ur-Juden: whatever you call them) did not appear only once and suddenly in this one area - rather there were successive waves of immigration from various Semite homelands (of Phoenica/Israel) over many centuries. One example may suffice and help to date the 'new national Jewish' Moses: 'Moses' (c.500-400 BC) was unknown or irrelevant to Northern Israelite 'Chaldaean' mercenaries in Elephantine. They certainly had Yahu (conflated with Kneph in Serpent form) but no Mosaic tradition whatsoever. Meanwhile - contemporaneously, I think - 'Moses' was already well-known to a Red Sea trade network, tribal Semites who lived apart from the immigrant Assyrian 'Jews' in the same period.

If Egyptian Semites (proto-Jews) had worshipped Thoth (in some form) for several centuries before Alexander's Greeks created the Hermes-Thoth cult (c.300 BC), then that proto-Judaic connection explains how and why Exodus (c.272 BC) reorganized, consolidated and subsumed the ancient Thoth-Sopdu folklore into a more durable yet familiar 'new' Mosaic myth. A talented librarian scribe would have gathered relevant papyri on Sinai history, Thoth-Sopdu myth, etc. to weave an integrated narrative from what was already known and useful/accepted (by some) ... Egyptian Thoth was buried under the new national and unifying Jewish myth.

I do believe a very real and long-successful Midianite 'Jewish/Judaic' commodity network - probably, with an historic 'Moses' as forefather - had actually existed in Egypt c.500-50 BC. Logically, these 'Jews' came from the Red Sea through the Eastern Desert in Antiquity. This Mosaic brotherhood was mentioned by Philo Judaeus. Given his promotion, Philo's own shipping magnate family must have been active in the Membership. In this sense, I also suppose the (marine) fraternity was removed from Jews in what became Roman Palestine, and on the decline c.25 AD. New factions were surging into a power vacuum after 38 AD, the Diaspora was in turmoil with strange new Jewish cults.
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