The 176 names of Greek Gods and Goddesses, and the 162 individual gods listed in the Egyptian pantheon of gods are actually slim. Even the list of 249 Hindu Gods and Goddess names listed in the Hindu pantheon of gods and spirits is slender, although the Godchecker Holy Database currently contains 385 Hindu deity names.

However, more than 1,500  known by name ancient Egyptian deities were an integral part of ancient Egyptian religion and were worshiped for millennia. Many of them ruled over natural and social phenomena, or some abstract concepts. And the names of 3,000 Mesopotamian deities have been recovered from cuneiform texts. 

Many of these names are from lengthy lists of deities compiled by ancient Mesopotamian scribes. The longest of these lists is a text entitled An = Anum, a Babylonian scholarly work listing the names of  2,000 deities.

The history of Mesopotamian religion can be divided into four phases. During the first phase, starting in the fourth millennium BCE, deities’ domains mainly focused on basic needs for human survival. During the second phase, which occurred in the third millennium BC, the divine hierarchy became more structured and deified kings entered the pantheon. 

During the third phase, in the second millennium BCE, the gods worshipped by an individual person and gods associated with commoners became more prevalent. During the fourth and final phase, in the first millennium BCE, the gods became closely associated with specific human empires and rulers. 

One can understand why all the attempts to use truth to build ongoing monotheistic imageless  communities made by the thousands of Allah’s Prophets failed after a few generations or centuries. 

One of the most important lessons Jewish and Muslim educators should teach; is why there should be so many different names for the One God of the three monotheistic religions, both now and even in the Messianic future (“All the nations will walk in the name of their gods, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.” Micah 4:5); when different names for one God seem to produce so many problems. 

Anwar Ibrahim, a former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, (2/17/15) that “Over the first two weeks in February (2015), arsonists and vandals in Malaysia attacked 10 Christian churches and Sikh temples. The attacks were provoked by a controversy over the use of the word “Allah” by Malaysia’s Christian community, which numbers over two million, or about 10% of the Malaysian population.”

Ibrahim writes: “In late 2007, the Home Ministry banned the use of the word Allah by the Herald, a Catholic newspaper, and later confiscated 15,000 copies of Malay-language Bibles imported from Indonesia in which the word for God is translated as ‘Allah’. A Dec. 31, 2009 ruling by the Kuala Lumpur High Court overruled the earlier ban, asserting constitutional guarantees regarding the freedom of religion in Malaysia.

“So how did we get to the point where some angry Muslims in Malaysia end up attacking houses of worship of other people of the book; in direct violation of the Qur’an statement: “For had it not been for Allah’s repelling some men by means of others, cloisters, churches, oratories and mosques, wherein the name of God is........

© Eurasia Review