Anonymous Gods

Abstract

ANec Deo nomen quaeras. Deus nomen est--"Seek not a name for God: his Sname is God." This was said by an early Christian to a pagan friend whom he wished to convert.' After sixteen centuries of monotheism the statement seems quite natural ; but when it was uttered it must have appeared to a pagan contemporary as paradoxical or completely senseless. It is as if a Scotsman to-day were to call the patron saint of Scotland, not St. Andrew, but simply "the Saint." A character in Petronius remarks that the city of Cumae had more divine than human inhabitants. The same was true of more or less every town in antiquity. To invoke a deity correctly, it was essential to know his proper name. The early Christians were aware of this fact ; for when the pagan Celsus proposed that all gods were identical, whether they were called Papas or Zeus or Adonai, the Christian philosopher Origen replied that to call God "the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob" was a very different thing from translating the Hebrew titles and saying "the God of Laughter" (Isaac = Risus), since it is only in answer to the former invocation that God would hear and the demons obey.' Another Christian Father says: "Anyone wishing to implore the response of a deity ought to know to whom he addresses his supplication."' In view of these statements, the appearance and persistence of 'anonymous gods' is one of the most puzzling problems of religious history. In the observations which follow I intend to study some of the idiosyncrasies of these nameless divinities by placing them in a particular setting: the importation and adoption of foreign gods.