Tammuz

TAMMUZ. - Mesopotamian god (Sumerian DUMU-ZI, Akkadian Tamūzu) of vegetation, young, flourishing again in spring after the winter death (= descent to the underworld or death), dying when the summer sun parches the earth. The cult of T. was Sumerian (DUMU-ZI = "son"), earlier than 5000 B.C. His annual festival was celebrated in the fourth month, called T. (June-July). Closely associated with the cult of T. was that of Ištar, the "queen of heaven" (Akkadian Išarat šamē) of whom Jer. 7:18 speaks, the Assyrian Venus with whom the Phoenician Astarte was identified.

He is perhaps connected with the legendary king Dumu-zi (said to have reigned 28,880 years), a famous hunter, successor of Lugalbanda the dragon-tamer, and predecessor of Gilgamesh. Like Šamaš, T. receives the title of "shepherd" (rē'ō). T.'s sister is Geštin-anna ("vine of heaven"), called Bēlit-gēri ("Lady of the countryside"). Around 1000 B.C., T. replaces the Canaanite deities known from the Ugaritic texts, Alijan and Mōt. The principal god of many Syro-Phoenicians was 'Adōn "lord" (= ba'al), from which the Greco-Latin Adonis was later derived (v. ADONE). The proper name concealed beneath the title 'Adōn was, it seems, T.; the Syro-Phoenician T. (Adonis of Byblos) was identified, at least in part, with the Egyptian Osiris, whose myth must have influenced (from the 16th century B.C.) the ancient-Asiatic myth of T.; thus Isis comes to be identified with Ištar or Astarte. Related to T. is Telipinu of the Hittite pantheon, who dies in autumn and comes back to life in spring.

T. had been introduced among the Israelites, in Jerusalem itself (Is. 17:10 ff.), through contacts with the Syro-Phoenicians and through the Assyro-Babylonian conquerors. He was "the delight of the women" of Syria (Dan. 11:37 ff.). Ez. 8:14 stigmatizes in 590 B.C. the idolatrous "abomination" (tō'ēbhāh) of the cult of T. at the northern gate of the Temple: there sat the women who wept for T. While the Septuagint transcribes Θαμυιούς, St. Jerome translates Adonis and then explains the myth of the death and resurrection of T.-Adonis, celebrated by the women with weeping followed by rejoicing and songs (PL 25, 82). But the celebration of the resurrection of T., ignored by Ez. 8:14, must be a later addition, not original. According to F. E. Brown, the pagan temple near the synagogue at Dura Europos, built between 150 and 160 A.D., modified between 175 and 182, was dedicated to Adonis-T.; no other temple of Adonis is known, either from monuments or from texts. C. Autran repeats (1941) what H. Gunkel (1903), C. Vellay (1904), W. Frazer (1907), H. Gressmann (1908) had fantasized, and who were well refuted by W. Baudissin (1911), namely that Jesus was a transposition of the myth of Adonis-T.; they cite St. Jerome (PL 22, 581)

and St. Paulinus (PL 41, 320 ff.), who speak instead of the profanations of Hadrian. T. K. Cheyne (The Biblical Problems and Their New Solution, Ital. trans. Piacenza 1909, pp. 107-109) sees in the descent of Jesus into the underworld the myth of the descent of T. and of the descent of Ishtar, who goes there to seek her dead spouse T. According to R. Dussaud (1921), the custom of weeping every year in Gilead for the daughter of Jephthah (Judg. 11:40) would be the survival of an Amorite cult of T.! T. Meek maintained that Cant. and various psalms were derived from the songs of the cult of T.; he is well refuted by H. H. Rowley.

Antonino Romeo