Couple more facts for you: 1) It’s not just conceivable, it’s incredibly likely that *dyéws-ph₂tḗr is older than both the Greek and Roman pantheons. He’s in the ancient Vedic (Hindi / Indian) religion under a very similar name and even made it into the Norse pantheon as Tiwaz, though it’s harder to tell how and when he ended up amongst Odin et al. He might have been a borrowing because all these other folks kept talking about him and how great he was. (But he is why we have a day called “Tuesday”, so he was still fairly highly regarded, borrowed or not.)
2) Moses probably didn’t exist (his name having the Egyptian ending -ses is apparently a big clue) and stories about him are allegories and/or amalgams of real people whose names had been long forgotten.
Moses probably didn’t exist (his name having the Egyptian ending -ses is apparently a big clue)
I’m not one to argue in favour of the existence of mythical people but this argument confuses me. Isn’t “Moses” just the egyptianised version of “Moishe”? Like “Jesus” is greekised for “Yeshuah/Joshuah”?
Other way around. “Moses” apparently came first. It’s basically the last two syllables of “Ramesses” but missing the initial particle saying who (or what) was the cause of the person’s birth. For Ramesses, it’s Ra, obviously. The Semitic peoples took it and applied it to their mostly mythologised forefather.
Since their culture took the meaning of a name seriously - something we’ve started to lose at least in Anglophone countries - you’d expect there’d be a record of that missing particle for Moses, and yet, there doesn’t seem to be one.
This could indicate there there were a lot of -messes all amalgamated into one.
Imagine, if you will, a compilation of stories about the heroic exploits of Celtic men all named Mac-something and eventually a mythos develops around a unified “Mack”, eventually with allegorical and fantastical stories being built up around him. This hasn’t actually happened in Celtic culture as far as I know, but it puts a context on the whole thing.
Couple more facts for you: 1) It’s not just conceivable, it’s incredibly likely that *dyéws-ph₂tḗr is older than both the Greek and Roman pantheons. He’s in the ancient Vedic (Hindi / Indian) religion under a very similar name and even made it into the Norse pantheon as Tiwaz, though it’s harder to tell how and when he ended up amongst Odin et al. He might have been a borrowing because all these other folks kept talking about him and how great he was. (But he is why we have a day called “Tuesday”, so he was still fairly highly regarded, borrowed or not.)
2) Moses probably didn’t exist (his name having the Egyptian ending -ses is apparently a big clue) and stories about him are allegories and/or amalgams of real people whose names had been long forgotten.
I’m not one to argue in favour of the existence of mythical people but this argument confuses me. Isn’t “Moses” just the egyptianised version of “Moishe”? Like “Jesus” is greekised for “Yeshuah/Joshuah”?
Other way around. “Moses” apparently came first. It’s basically the last two syllables of “Ramesses” but missing the initial particle saying who (or what) was the cause of the person’s birth. For Ramesses, it’s Ra, obviously. The Semitic peoples took it and applied it to their mostly mythologised forefather.
Since their culture took the meaning of a name seriously - something we’ve started to lose at least in Anglophone countries - you’d expect there’d be a record of that missing particle for Moses, and yet, there doesn’t seem to be one.
This could indicate there there were a lot of -messes all amalgamated into one.
Imagine, if you will, a compilation of stories about the heroic exploits of Celtic men all named Mac-something and eventually a mythos develops around a unified “Mack”, eventually with allegorical and fantastical stories being built up around him. This hasn’t actually happened in Celtic culture as far as I know, but it puts a context on the whole thing.
Oh I see. That makes sense, thank you!