Talk:Elagabalus (deity)

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El and Sol[edit]

There is confusion of names here. The stone needs to be Elagabal and the emperor Elagabalus.

The Semitic El was originally a Sun-god anyway, for it is the origin of the Greek Sun-god HElios or Elios. Yahweh was the equivalent Semitic Moon deity, to add duality, after the Egyptian Yah for Moon.

Thus the Elagabal was most certainly a Sun-god, and the shape does indeed suggest 'Sun Mountain'. Narwhal-tooth (talk) 23:38, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

@Narwhal-tooth:

Most people would rather call you a crank than acknowledge that the fact that اله الجبل "Ilah el gabal" and "Heliogabalus" are identical means Helios and Ilah (Eloha/El) are the same.

This also means that the Islamic "Allah" ultimately derives from the same "Al-Ilah" meaning "The God" with the word God replacing "El" or "Helios".

Muslims worship a Sun god. That is a fact.

The problem also arises when trying to differentiate between YHWH/El (who are not the same deity) because if El and Helios are the same then Christians & Jews alike worship the Sun as a primary deity. After all, YHWH is an amalgam of both El (the Sun god) and Yah (the Moon god). --ConfusedEnoch (talk) 07:17, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The east[edit]

"In the East, there were many solar deities, including the Greek Helios, who was largely displaced by Apollo. Some of these used the title 'Sol Invictus' (the unconquered sun). " True enough about solar deities. But the use of "some' in these cases always raises doubts. Latin was not used much in the east. Is anything being quoted here? ... or is this just hogwash? --Wetman

The title of this page is a larger problem. Who says that Elagabalus and Aurelian worshipped the same divinity? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:58, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think El Gabal, or El of the mountain, El manifested as the patron God of Emessa who favored the city apparently with a meteorite or Kaaba like black stone starts out as a Sun God. I think that this becomes a fusion with the Roman Sol Invictus. In any case there is so much more detail in the Elagablus article then there is in this one, that I am going to wipe out my earlier edits and just copy the thread from that one with the references, to wit:

The name El-Gabal originally referred to the patron deity of the emperor's birthplace, Emesa.^[1] El refers to the chief Semitic deity, while Gabal, meaning mountain (compare with the Hebrew gevul and Arabic jebel), is his Emesene manifestation.^[2] The god was later imported and assimilated with the Roman sun god, who was known as Sol Indiges in republican times, and later Sol Invictus during the 2nd and 3rd centuries.^[3] High priests in antiquity were identified with the god they served, and thus Avitus was styled Elagabalus.^{[citation needed]}
Godspeed John Glenn! Will 04:25, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Halsberghe, Gaston H. (1972). The Cult of Sol Invictus. Leiden: Brill. pp. p62. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
^ Lenormant, Francois (1881). "Sol Elagabalus". Revue de l'Histoire des Religions. 3: p310. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
^ Devlaminck, Pieter (2004). "De Cultus van Sol Invictus: Een vergelijkende studie tussen keizer Elagabalus (218-222) en keizer Aurelianus (270-275)" (in Dutch). University of Ghent. Retrieved 2007-08-07.

Shambolic?[edit]

This article is shamolic in regards to recent scholarship. Elagabalus was not known by this name during his lifetime, he was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus as Emperor, and Varius Avitus Bassianus in his role as Priest-Lord of Emesa. Elagabal was NOT identified with Sol Indiges, any of the ancient sources can attest to this, and certainly not during the Republican era where no openly foreign deity would have been placed inside the pomerium. Please read any of Hijmans work on the Roman sun cult and see the discussion on wikipedia about Sol Invictus. I think thsi article should be completely rewritten. —Preceding unsigned comment added by God Save the Tsar (talk • contribs) 01:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Elagabalus depicted in the Mosaic of so-called Tzippori Synagogue[edit]

The Sepphoris / Tzippori Synagogue in Israel is almost certainly a temple to Elagabalus. 124.189.9.57 (talk) 10:49, 12 August 2013 (UTC) Ian Ison[reply]

What happened next?[edit]

What happened to the cult statue stone after it was returned to Emesa? Is there any idea of its eventual fate? Did it survive the Severan dynasty? The Decline of Greco-Roman polytheism? The Muslim conquest of the Levant? Is there any trace of the cult of Elagabalus in modern Homs? --ESP (talk) 00:44, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Name[edit]

Zhomron I couldn't verify the name from the source you referenced. Can you please quote it here?

Did you even bother reading the cited source? Zhomron (talk) 14:21, 14 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I read the first few pages. The source confirms (as any Aramaic speaker will tell you, and as I had previously told you) that Gabal doesn't mean mountain in Aramaic. But maybe I misread or misunderstood. Can you show me from which page this comes from:

Aramaic: 𐡁𐡋‎𐡄𐡀𐡂‎𐡀𐡋 ʾĕlāhaʾgabāl or 𐡁𐡋‎𐡄𐡂‎𐡀𐡋 ʾĕlāhgabāl, "mountain god"

Julia Domna Ba'al (talk) 15:03, 14 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Page 1085 onwards. But since you appear to lack reading comprehension, how's about I just transcribe the relevant parts:

During the Hellenistic period, the cult of the Sun played a leading role in the religion of the Arab populations of Syria, but everything suggests that it was grafted to Emesa on the local cult of a betylus symbolizing the presence of a "Mountain god", 'lh'gbl, as the Aramaic inscription of a monument apparently comes from the ancient Nazala (28), 80 km south-east of Horns and 100 km southwest of Palmyra. The relief represents an armed god, called 'rsw, "Arsu", as well as a spread eagle which stands on top of a mountain, symbolized by a pile of stones. Above the eagle, we read 'lh'gbl, "the Mountain god". The “rounded” script of the Aramaic inscriptions suggests that the monument is dated to the middle of the 1st century AD.

I'm not going to bother going any further as it's not my responsibility to read to you. From there, there are a series of explanations and theories surrounding the term and both its interpretation and its vocalization. Try harder. Zhomron (talk) 15:26, 14 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, so you misunderstood. The word is not Aramaic. It's Arabic, written in Aramaic script. Your source explicitly lays it out so maybe you should read it. Also please assume good faith.

You are using WP:OR to write personal opinions not reflective of the source. Page 1086. Second paragraph first sentence:

"Le nom divin gabal n'est pas araméen"

It explains that's it's Arabic (or possibly Amorite?). Aramaic script was used for multiple languages and multiple people like Jews, Parthians, and of course Arabs.

Julia Domna Ba'al (talk) 15:55, 14 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]