Sin!

[ikhet_sekhmet]

Now, this is interesting. You may've encountered the loopy anti-Islamic claim that Allah is really an idol - a Middle Eastern moon-god - perhaps via Jack Chick. I was perusing an extensive lay refutation of the claim, and discovered that (amongst other things) it relies on one of the great traps which everyone from qualified scholars to Neo-Pagan online shops falls into: assuming that if deities share a similarity - even just similar names - then they're the same deity.

Coincidentally, I've just read Henri Frankfort's "Excursis" on the Dying God of the Ancient Near East in Kingship and the Gods. It was, tbh, a bit hard to follow and a bit light on footnotes, but Frankfort's basic argument is solid: there are major differences between gods such as Osiris, Tammuz, and Adonis; lumping them together as variations on the same god ignores those differences and impedes rather than increases understanding. Which is a useful reminder when you're reading about Egyptian deities, all right, with their complicated, shifting interconnections; or if just generally, if you happen to be a Neo-Pagan. Especially if you're shopping. :)

ETA: My own debunking of the claim is over on my main lj.

Comments

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

there are major differences between gods such as Osiris, Tammuz, and Adonis; lumping them together as variations on the same god ignores those differences and impedes rather than increases understanding

Exactly! But tell that to Jan Assmann, whose "cosmotheism" strikes me as just one more permutation of this approach.

[ikhet-sekhmet.livejournal.com]

I was trying to think where I'd encountered Jan Assmann recently - it was in a footnote in Porter's One God Or Many which made me say "Hmmm." :)

I meant to mention in the posting that the "moon god" furphy relies on insisting a figure is a god, when it's unclear whether it's a god, a priest, a king, or someone else - this is the same shenanigans in The Double Goddess, in which the author states outright she'll be calling figures goddesses, queens, or priests as the mood takes her.