God By Any Other Name: Polyonymy In Greco-Roman Antiquity And Early Christianity -- By: Clayton Croy

Journal: Bulletin for Biblical Research
Volume: BBR 24:1 (NA 2014)
Article: God By Any Other Name: Polyonymy In Greco-Roman Antiquity And Early Christianity
Author: Clayton Croy


God By Any Other Name:
Polyonymy In Greco-Roman Antiquity And Early Christianity

N. Clayton Croy

Trinity Lutheran Seminary

The phenomenon of polyonymy—the use of multiple names, epithets, and descriptions for a deity—is defined and distinguished from closely related ideas. The Greco-Roman practice is illustrated via five deities: Zeus, Dionysus, Apollo, Selene, and Isis. Related practices of the earliest Christians are explored via selected NT texts in Acts and John. Although monotheism placed some restrictions on early Christian use of polyonymy in the strict sense of proper names, a profusion of titles was readily employed to describe Jesus. This distinction corresponds roughly to the difference between contact syncretism and internal syncretism.

Key Words: Christology, divine names, divine titles, polyonymy, syncretism

“What’s in a name?” So Juliet queries as she reflects on the connection between an entity and its verbal designation (Romeo and Juliet II, ii, 1–2). Juliet concludes that the connection between a name and its corresponding reality, whether a rose or Romeo, is inconsequential, but what Juliet dismisses between devoted lovers many in antiquity would have retained vis-à-vis those objects of supreme devotion: the gods. Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians generally affirmed that it does indeed matter what one calls the deity, even if this pious sense of propriety led to varied, even contradictory, practices.1 In the earliest era, the gods were often regarded as anonymous, without names, or at least with unknown or ineffable names. Eventually, Homer gave currency to the names of the traditional Greek pantheon, and eventually, reverence for these gods and others led to a multiplicity of names, sometimes resulting in elaborate prayers, spells, and invocations.2 Primitive anonymity gave way to the tendency to

employ many names for one god. This article is concerned with the latter phenomenon, polyonymy, and its use in the Greco-Roman world.3

Although the writings of the NT neither mention the phenomenon of polyonymy per se nor consciously adopt or adapt it, certain developments in Christian theology and practice may be fruitfully compared to it.4 Christology, for example, has often been analyzed at least in part by the choice of names, titles, and descriptions of Jesus. Early Christians employed a wide variety of terms, images, and metaphors for Jesus, but were there any limits on the...

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