Allah's identity -- probably Nimrod

Submitted by Michael S (United States), Jan 27, 2015 at 19:15

Hi, Waz

I see that I left off my last post, still talking about the "kingdom" matter. If I were to sum up that discussion, it would be to note that a "kingdom" presupposes a king. It's that King (the Hebrew God YHVH), that a lot of people seem to have trouble believing in. You went on to say,

"If you did a point by point comparison of the Roman god of war Mars and islam's allah - many of the same boxes would be ticked for eah . The Assyrian deity Moloch demanded child sacrifices - something we see in the proclivity towards suicide bombings by the more devoted islamics."

In order for me to keep up with this conversation, I would have to know something. Let me do a lookup...

The best known Mesopotamian creator-god was Marduk (in Akkadian; "Amar Utu" in Sumerian -- meaning "bull calf of Utu"), a minor deity: the patron god of Babylon; and the son of Utu, god of Sippar. I get the idea from this, that every major city had its own god; so "Allah" was probably not this Babylonian god but another -- perhaps patterned after the god of Ur or Haran, Abraham's previous cities.

"The name Allah or Alla was found in the Epic of Atrahasis engraved on several tablets dating back to around 1700 BC in Babylon, which showed that he was being worshipped as a high deity among other gods who were considered to be his brothers but taking orders from him"
-- Stephanie Dalley (1989), Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others, Oxford University Press, Pages: 3-10

"Dumuzid the Shepherd, a king of the 1st Dynasty of Uruk named on the Sumerian King List, was later over-venerated so that people started associating him with "Alla" and the Babylonian god Tammuz
-- Thorkild Jacobsen, The Harps that Once: Sumerian Poetry in Translation (1997), Yale University Press, Part. 1, Pages: 53-61

That's interesting. There's reference to Tammuz in the Bible:

Ezekiel 8:
1.[14] Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD's house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz.

Hyslop's "The Two Babylons" notes that the symbol for "Tammuz" was the precursor of the letter "T". A lot of iconography with crosses in it should therefore be ascribed to the Babylonian deity, rather than to Jesus.

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

If you read Hyslop, you will see that in general, masculine deities -- probably including Mars, though I won't bother to look it up -- ultimately refer back to the Biblical Nimrod who, as the founder of Babylon (Marduk's bailywick), has often been depicted as the creator-god. Since Nimrod was the "great hunter", though, and the first great conqueror and warrior of the Bible, "Mars" or "Ares" is probably just Nimrod in his "warrior" aspect.

Please forgive the indentation here. I don't know how to work the editing system here -- I try to block-quote one paragraph, and the whole passage (and everything added afterwards, like this sentence) get block-quoted.

Because of this editing mess, I'll quickly close here. I've discussed. Mars.. Moloch has a similar derivation, and probably "Allah" as well. In brief, they're all Nimrod:

Genesis 10:
[8] And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.
[9] He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD.
[10] And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel (Babylon), and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.
[11] Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah...

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