The Storm-God in the Ancient Near East

Penn State University Press
Penn State University Press
 9781575060699
1-57506-069-8

In this comprehensive study of a common deity found in the ancient Near East as well as many other cultures, Green brings together evidence from the worlds of myth, iconography, and literature in an attempt.

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to arrive at a new synthesis regarding the place of the Storm-god. He finds that the Storm-god was the force primarily responsible for three major areas of human concern: (1) religious power because he was the ever-dominant environmental force upon which peoples depended for their very lives; (2) centralized political power; and (3) continuously evolving sociocultural processes, which typically were projected through the Storm-god's attendants. Green traces these motifs through the Mesopotamian, Anatolian, Syrian, and Levantine regions; with regard to the latter, he argues that Yahweh of the Bible can be identified as a storm-god, though certain unique characteristics came to be associated with him: he was the Creator of all that is created and the self-existing god who needs no other.