Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] "Desire of Women" in Heb. Text of Dan. 11:37
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:46:07 -0600
Shoshanna Walker wrote:
It's not "the desire of women" - it's "The most desirable among
women", and Daniel is referring to Israel
HH: It seems highly unlikely to me that Daniel is referring to Israel.
The context indicates that it is some object of worship. I tend to favor
the Tammuz interpretation, since that was a god worshiped by women in
Babylon and also Israel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammuz
In Babylonia, the month Tammuz was established in honor of the eponymous
god Tammuz, who originated as a Sumerian shepherd-god, Dumuzid or
Dumuzi, the consort of Inanna and, in his Akkadian form, the parallel of
Ishtar's consort. The Syrian Adonis ("lord"), who was drawn into the
Greek pantheon, is another counterpart of Tammuz[1] son and consort. The
name "Tammuz" seems to have been derived from the Akkadian form Tammuzi,
based on early Sumerian Damu-zid. The later standard Sumerian form,
Dumu-zid, in turn became Dumuzi in Akkadian.
Beginning with the summer solstice came a time of mourning in the
Ancient Near East as in the Aegean: the Babylonians marked the decline
in daylight hours and the onset of killing summer heat and drought with
a six-day "funeral" for the god, which was observed even at the very
door of the Temple in Jerusalem, to the horror of the reformer Ezekiel:
"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.
Then said he unto to me, 'Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn thee
yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these." —
Ezekiel 8.14-15
Dumuzid/Tammuz being the god of the vegetation cycle, this corresponds
to the changing of the seasons as the abundance of the earth diminishes
in his absence. He is a life-death-rebirth deity.
We know now that the cult of the god Tammuz, who, if not the direct
original of the Phoenician-Greek Adonis, is at least representative of a
common parent deity, may be traced back to 3000 B.C., while it persisted
among the Sabeans at Harran into the Middle Ages.
HH: She writes about the Adonis cult:
The most noticeable feature of the ritual was the prominence assigned to
women; "ce sont les femmes qui le pleurent, et qui l'accompagnent à sa
tombe. Elles sanglotent éperdument pendant les nuits,--c'est leur dieu
plus que tout autre, et seules elles veulent pleurer sa mort, et chanter
sa résurrection 1."
[It is the women who weep over him, and who accompany him to his tomb.
They sob desperately during the nights, -- it is their god more than any
other, and they alone wish to weep over his death, and sing his
resurrection.]
Thus in the tenth century the festival received the Arabic name of
El-Bûgat, or 'The Festival of the Weeping Women 2.'
HH: The Book of Ezekiel suggests that similar things may have been true
for the worship of Tammuz.
AMONG the gods of Babylonia none achieved wider and more enduring fame
than Tammuz, who was loved by Ishtar, the amorous Queen of Heaven--the
beautiful youth who died and was mourned for and came to life again. He
does not figure by his popular name in any of the city pantheons, but
from the earliest times of which we have knowledge until the passing of
Babylonian civilization, he played a prominent part in the religious
life of the people.