We have just had a late November blizzard where I live, near Kansas City. The Weather Channel has taken to giving even inland storms personal names. They are calling this storm Bruce. Bruce the storm.
I had a wild thought about this in relation to religion in the Ancient Near East. In most every culture there was a storm god. So is this urge to name and personalize storms an enduring human trait?
I am still reading Hillel Millgram’s The Elijah Enigma. He points out that from King Ahab’s point of view the period of no rain that followed Elijah’s pronouncement was not directly the result of control of the weather by Elijah’s God. He called Elijah a “troubler of Israel” because Elijah’s intolerance of Phoenician religion disrespected the weather god and and caused him to withhold rain. Elijah countered that Ahab and his father had disrespected YHWH, and…
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James' Ramblings 