Note 185.2 — Chapter X · The Concept of Divine Power and the Ancient Cosmogonies.

As a divine cosmogony implies some organic theory of the Universe, so the polytheisms that attempted such speculations would be confronted also with the problem of finding some principle of order by which they might regulate the relations of the various divinities, one to the other. We find such attempts in Mesopotamian religion. Certain deities are affiliated to others, Marduk to Ea, Nebo to Marduk, though such divine relationships are less clear and less insisted on than in Hellenic theology; and the grouping of divinities shifts according to the political vicissitudes of the peoples and cities. We may discern a tendency at times to use the triad as a unifying principle, giving us such trinities as Anu, Bel, Ea, or Sin, Shamash, Adad;185.2 we have glimpses of a trinitarian cult in early Carthage,185.3 and slight indications of it in the Minoan-Mycenaean pillar-ritual.185.4 But I cannot find anything to suggest that among the cultured or uncultured Semites it was ever in the ancient period a powerful and constructive idea, able to beget a living dogma that might capture the popular mind and spread and germinate in adjacent lands.186.1 We have perhaps as much right to regard the number seven as a grouping principle of Babylonian polytheism, in the later period at least, when we find a group of seven high deities corresponding to the seven planets.186.2 We might discover a Hittite trinity of Father, Mother, and Son if we concentrated our attention on the Boghaz-Keui reliefs; but the other Hittite evidence, both literary and monumental, gives no hint of this as a working idea in the religion. In fact, in most polytheisms of the Mediterranean type it is easy to discover trinities and easy to deceive oneself about them.