On Supreme Sky God from the Aspect of Religious History and in Prehistoric Estonian Material
On Supreme Sky God from the Aspect of Religious History and in Prehistoric Estonian Material

Summary/Abstract: According to basic religious-phenomenological principles a supreme beingresides in heaven or is the heaven, an omnipotent creator, who is often as-signed the function of thunder, is called either Father or Grandfather, is sac-rificed the primal offering, and has turned into deus otiosus.Comparative linguistics has revealed that the earliest conception of a Balto-Finnic and Estonian supreme god dates back to the Finno-Volgaic etymologi-cal stratum, to the Neolithic period (3rd millennium BC), in archaeologicalterms. This is evidenced by the Estonian word juma(l) ‘god’, which had for-merly signified heaven, but also the Indo-European loan taevas ‘heaven’ inthe Estonian language. The divergence of the con-ception of thunder god Ukuor Ukko apparently took place in the 1st mil-lennium BC; this is also indi-cated by archaeological data. According to the 13th-century Henrici Chronicon Livoniae and other chronicles the thun-der god of the coastal Estonians hasalso been called Taara or Tooru, which may be a derivation of the OldScandinavian Thor.

• Details
• Contents