Sky Father - Reconsideration of Theory

Reconsideration of Theory

The theory of a common sky father is rejected by most archaeologists and anthropologists as an explanation of early European religious life. The archaeological record does not indicate that Indo-European languages spread throughout their area in Europe and Asia by military conquest alone. Many non-Indo-European cultures also have male-dominated pantheons, without being conquered or bent on conquest. There is no direct historical correlation between the worship of goddesses and the social status of women; nor is there a great deal of evidence that the worship of female deities is associated with agriculture, or that male gods accompany nomadism. There are no reasons to believe that the Indo-Europeans practiced a religion that was more male-dominated, patriarchal, or wont to promote male gods at the expense of goddesses, than any other polytheistic religion.

It is in fact true that a male sky god, whose name has been reconstructed as *Dyēus ph₂ter, and which survive in Vedic mythology as Dyaus Pita, in Greek mythology as Zeus, and in Roman mythology as Jupiter, seems to have been shared and inherited from a common stock of Proto-Indo-European religion. Each of these names is cognate to the others. This is not, in fact, the most widespread inherited Indo-European deity.

The dawn goddess whose name is reconstructed as Vedic Ushas or *aus-os- is even more widespread; she appears in Greek mythology as Eos, in Rome as Aurora, in Germanic mythology as Eostre, in Baltic mythology as Aušra, in Slavic mythology as Zorya, and in Vedic and Hindu mythology as Ushas. These names (except Zorya) are all cognate and share a common root. It is apparent that in Indo-European culture, there was neither a systematic bias against goddesses or a religious motivation towards male dominance greater than any other comparable culture.

In their inculturation efforts, Christian missionaries have often used the name of the local sky gods to translate the name of the Christian God.

For example, among the Chinese terms for God there are:

• Shangdi 上帝 (Hanyu Pinyin: shàng dì) (literally "King Above") was a supreme God worshipped in ancient China. It is also used to refer to the Christian God in the Standard Chinese Union Version of the Bible.
• Zhu, Tian Zhu 主,天主 (lit. "Lord" or "Lord in Heaven") is translated from the English word, "Lord", which is a formal title of the Christian God in Mainland China's Christian churches.
• Tian 天 (lit. "sky" or "heaven") is used to refer to the sky as well as a personification of it. Whether it possesses sentience in the embodiment of an omnipotent, omniscient being is a difficult question for linguists and philosophers.

The Liber Sancti Iacobi by Aymericus Picaudus tells that the Basques called God Urcia, a word found in compounds for the names of some week days and meteorological phenomena. The current usage is Jaungoikoa, that can be interpreted as "the lord of above". The imperfect grammaticality of the word leads some to conjecture that it is a folk etymology applied to jainkoa, now considered a shorter synonym.