Qos (deity)

Qos (Edomite: 𐤒𐤅‬‬𐤎 Qāws, later Qôs;^[1] Hebrew: קוֹס‎ Qōs)^[2] also Qaus (Akkadian: 𒋡𒍑 Qa-uš), or Koze (Greek: Kωζαι Kōzai) was the national god of the Edomites.^[3] He was the Idumean structural parallel to Yahweh. The name occurs only twice in the Old Testament (if a possible allusion in an otherwise corrupted text in the Book of Proverbs is excluded)^[4] in the Book of Ezra and Nehemiah as an element in a personal name, Barqos ("son of Qos", compare the Hebrew "Benaiah" meaning "son of Jah"),^[5] referring to the 'father' of a family or clan of perhaps Edomite/Idumaean nəṯīnīm or temple helpers returning from the Babylonian exile.^[6][7] Outside the Bible, Qos is frequently invoked in names found on documents recovered from excavations in Elephantine, where a mixed population of Arabs, Jews and Idumeans lived under the protection of a Persian-Mesopotamian garrison.

A possible non-figurative, stylized depiction of Qos from a cave in Maresha, Israel

Origins, meaning and cult

The word "Qos" is never used on its own in the Tanakh, however it does unambiguously appear twice as an element in a personal name in Ezra 2:53 and Nehemiah 7:55 as Barqos, "son of Qos". The name Qōs itself may mean bow.^[8]

Qōs became identified with Quzah, "the archer" in the north Arabian pantheon, worshiped both as a mountain and a weather god. The similarity of the name would have permitted an assimilation of Qōs to the Arabian god of the rainbow, qaws quzaḥ.^[9]

The worship of Qōs appears to originally have been located in the Ḥismā area of southern Jordan and north-western Arabia, where a mountain, Jabal al-Qaus, still bears that name.^[6] He entered the Edomite pantheon as early as the 8th century b.c. M. Rose speculates that, prior to Qōs's advent, Edom may have worshipped Yahweh—early Egyptian records reference a place called yhw3w in the land of the Shasu^[10]—and the former then overlaid the latter and assumed supremacy there when the Idumeans lost their autonomy under Persian rule, perhaps compensating for the destruction of national independence, a mechanism similar to that of the strengthening of Yahweh worship after the fall of the Jewish kingdom.^[6] Qōs is described as a "King", is associated with light, and defined as "mighty". His works are described as ones where he "adorns, avenges, blesses, chooses(?) gives."^[7]

 

Nabataean depiction of the goddess Atargatis dating from c. AD 100. The eagle on her head is believed to be a symbol of Qos.

Costobarus I, whose name meant "Qōs is mighty"^[9] was a native Idumean descended from a priestly family attached to this cult.^[11] After Herod had placed him in command over (στρατηγὀς) Idumea, Costobarus, supported by Cleopatra, eventually tried to prise the kingdom from Herod's Judea. In order to garner local support for his defection, he revived the old cult of Qōs, perhaps to get Idumea's rural population, still attached to its traditional gods, to back him.^[12] The name recurs in the Nabataean language in an inscription at Khirbet et-Tannur, where he is syncretized with the deity Dushara, who is represented flanked by bulls, seated on a throne while wielding in his left hand a multi-pronged thunderbolt, suggestive of a function as a weather god.^[9] He is also on an altar in Idumean Mamre.^[12]

The deity's name was used as the theophoric element in many Idumean names,^[13] including the names of the Edomite kings Qōs-malaku, a tributary of Tiglath-Pileser III and Qōs-gabar^[14] a tributary of Esarhaddon.^[15]

Qos and Yahweh

Unlike the chief god of the Ammonites (Milcom) and the Moabites (Chemosh), the Tanakh refrains from explicitly naming the Edomite Qōs.^[6][16] The omission may be explained, according to some scholars, by assuming there were close similarities between Yahweh with Qōs, that would have made rejection of the latter difficult.^[8]

Multiple poetic refrains in the Hebrew Bible claim that Yahweh embarked, in some form, from Se'ir in the region of Edom.^[6][17] Recently, the view has been advanced that Yahweh was originally a Kenite god whose cult spread north of Midian to the Israelites.^[18] According to this approach, Qōs might possibly have been a title for Yahweh, rather than a name.^[19] A further point connecting Yahweh with Qōs, aside from their common origin in that territory, is that the Edomite cult of the latter shared characteristics of the former. Thus, we find that Doeg the Edomite has no problem in worshiping Yahweh, he is shown to be at home in Jewish sanctuaries. Circumcision, an essential Jewish rite, was practiced in Edom.^[2] Additionally, supplication of Yahweh is not uncommon where mentions of Qos are lacking: a pottery sherd from the late 9th/early 8th centuries BCE at Kuntillet Ajrud blesses its recipient by "Yahweh of Teman", which some have taken as implying that, at least from an Israelite perspective, Qos and Yahweh were considered identical, though it by no means necessarily proves it. On the other hand, there are some discrepancies which make a direct association between the two difficult. The identification of names in the Egyptian list of Shasu clans in Se'ir creates a continuity problem, since Qos names only emerge some 500 years later.^[20] Oded Balaban and Ernst Axel Knauf have claimed that certain names found on Ramesside topographical lists are theophoric and contain references to Qos, which if true would put the deity's earliest attestation more than 600 years before Yahweh's.^[21]

See also

• Quzah

References

1. W. Randall Garr (2004). Dialect Geography of Syria-Palestine, 1000-586 B.C.E. Eisenbrauns. p. 35. ISBN 978-1-57506-091-0. OCLC 1025228731.
2. Lévi Ngangura Manyanya. (2009). La fraternité de Jacob et d'Esaü (Gn 25-36): quel frère aîné pour Jacob? Labor et Fides, p.257.
3. Detlef Jericke. (2003). Abraham in Mamre: Historische und exegetische Studien zur Region von Hebron und zu Genesis 11, 27–19, 38, p.19. BRILL.
4. With a minimal adjustment of emendation Vriezen elicited from the corrupt אלקום (Proverbs, 30:31) an allusion to “the god Qos”. (Dicou 1994, p.177, n.1).
5. Ezra 2:53; Nehemiah 7:55.
6. E. A. Knauf. (1999). Qos [in] Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter Willem van der Horst [eds.], Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, pp.674-677. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing: “This clan or family must have been of Edomite or Idumaean origin.” (p.677).
7. Morton Smith. (1984). "Jewish Religious Life in the Persian Period" [in] W.D.Davies, Louis Finkelstein [eds.] The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 1, Introduction: The Persian Period, pp.219–277, p.240. Cambridge University Press.
8. Bert Dicou. Edom, Israel's Brother and Antagonist: The Role of Edom in Biblical Prophecy and Story, A&C Black 1994 pp.167–181, p.177:"Gestalten der syrisch-arabischen Wettergottes, zu dessen Attributen der Bogen genauso gehört wie der Sturm."
9. Javier Teixido. (2015). The Pagan God: Popular Religion in the Greco-Roman Near East, p.90. Princeton University Press.
10. The toponym t3 š3św (YWH in the land of Shasu) is at times identified with Seìir and Edom. (Dicou 1994, pp.179-180).
11. Adam Kolman Marshak. (2011). "Rise of the Idumeans: Identity and Politics in Herod's Judea." [in] Benedikt Eckhardt [ed.] Jewish Identity and Politics between the Maccabees and Bar Kokhba: Groups, Normativity, and Rituals, pp.117–129, p.125. BRILL.
12. Sean Freyne. (2003). "The Revolt from a regional perspective." [in] Andrea M. Berlin, J. Andrew Overman [eds.] The First Jewish Revolt: Archaeology, History and Ideology, pp.43–55, p.49. Routledge.
13. David F. Graf. (2013). "Petra and the Nabataeans in the Early Hellenistic Period: the literary and archaeological evidence." [in] Michel Mouton, Stephan G. Schmid [eds.] Men on the Rocks: The Formation of Nabataean Petra, pp.35–55, p.47. Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH.
14. Philip J. King. (1993). Jeremiah: An Archaeological Companion, p.48. Westminster John Knox Press.
15. Diana V.Edelman. (1995). "Solomon's Adversaries Hadad, Rezon and Jeroboam: A trio of 'bad guy' characters illustrating the theology of immediate retribution." [in] Steven W. Holloway, Lowell K. Handy [eds.] The Pitcher is Broken: Memorial Essays for Gösta W. Ahlstrom, pp.166–190, p.180 n.34. Sheffield Academic Press.
16. Elie Assis, Identity in Conflict: The Struggle between Esau and Jacob, Edom and Israel, Penn State Press, 2016 ISBN 978-1-575-06418-5 p.10: At 1 Kgs 1-8 there is exceptionally no mention of any Edomite gods:'King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of the Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women . .For Solomon followed Astarte the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom the aboimination of the Ammonites. . Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who offered incense and sacrificed to their gods.'
17. Book of Judges 5:5; Psalms, 68:9.
18. Nissim Amzallag. (2009). Yahweh, the Canaanite God of Metallurgy?. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 33 (4), 387–404.
19. James S. Anderson. (2015 ). Monotheism and Yahweh's Appropriation of Baal, p.101. Bloomsbury Publishing.
20. Levin, Yigal (2020). "The Religion of Idumea and Its Relationship to Early Judaism". Religions. 11 (10): 8. doi:10.3390/rel11100487. ISSN 2077-1444.
21. Oded Balaban, Egyptian references to the Edomite deity Qaus, AUSS 9 (1971 pp.47-50).