<\/p>
Potter again: \u201cNot all gods stayed at home. In the centuries after Alexander the Great\u2019s conquest of Persia, eastern peoples appear to have been drawn west in greater numbers, possibly because new centers of power such as Alexandria and Pergamon made the Aegean lands far more important than they had been in the past.\u201d <\/p>\n
They brought gods wth them gods like \u201cZeus Hadad\u201d who \u201cwas originally from northern Syria and was understood not as a local manifestation of the Greek god, but rather as the supreme god to whom the closest approximation was Zeus.\u201d <\/p>\n
There was lots of Zeuses: \u201cIn some areas we find dedications to Zeus the Highest, \u2018Dios Hypistos\u2019; in others worship of Theos Hypistos \u2013 Highest God \u2013 and in others, more simply, Highest, Hypsistos. At Stratoniceia in Caria, for instance, there are dedications to Zeus the Highest and another divinity whose name is rendered variously as \u2018the Divine,\u2019 or \u2018The Divine Messenger,\u2019 \u2018the Divine Heavenly Messenger,\u2019 \u2018the Divine Good\u2019 or even \u2018the Divine Royal.\u2019\u201d Elsewhere, there are dedications to \u201cZeus the Highest and the Hearer,\u201d anlaogous to Jewish designations of their God as \u201cHighest.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Potter again: \u201cNot all gods stayed at home. In the centuries after Alexander the Great\u2019s conquest of Persia, eastern peoples appear to have been drawn west in greater numbers, possibly because new centers of power such as Alexandria and Pergamon made the Aegean lands far more important than they had been in the past.\u201d They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n