文档介绍：THE STORM-GODS OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST:
SUMMARY, SYNTHESIS, RECENT STUDIES
PART II
DANIEL SCHWEMER
Abstract
In many regions of the ancient Near East, not least in Upper Mesopotamia, Syria
and Anatolia where agriculture relied mainly on rainfall, storm-gods ranked among
the most prominent gods in the local panthea or were even regarded as divine
kings, ruling over the gods and bestowing kingship on the human ruler. While
the Babylonian and Assyrian storm-god never held the highest position among
the gods, he too belongs to the group of ‘great gods’ through most periods of
Mesopotamian history. Given the many cultural contacts and the longevity of tra-
ditions in the ancient Near East only a study that takes into account all relevant
periods, regions and text-groups can further our understanding of the different
ancient Near Eastern storm-gods. The study Wettergottgestalten Mesopotamiens und
Nordsyriens by the present author (2001) tried to tackle the problems involved, bas-
ing itself primarily on the textual record and excluding the genuinely Anatolian
storm-gods from the study. Given the lack of handbooks, concordances and the-
sauri in our field, the book is necessarily heavily burdened with materials collected
for the first time. prehensive indices, the long lists and footnotes as
well as the lack of an overall synthesis make the study not easily accessible, espe-
cially outside the German-munity. In 2003 Alberto Green published
prehensive monograph entitled The Storm-God in the Ancient Near East whose
aims are more ambitious than those of Wettergottgestalten: All regions of the ancient
Near East—including a chapter on Yahwe as a storm-god—are taken into account,
and both textual and iconographic sources are given equal space. Unfortunately
this book, which was apparently finished and submitted to the publisher before
Wettergottgestalten came to its author’s attention, suffers from some serious flaws with
regard to methodology, philolog