Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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By Five-Year Period

This page groups deities by the earliest year a surviving written or inscribed source places them, sorting gods by how far back their documented worship can actually be traced. Archaeologists call this kind of earliest possible date a terminus post quem, which Wikipedia defines as "the earliest date the event may have happened or the item was in existence." Browsing by first attestation separates deities known from the oldest surviving records from ones who only appear in much later texts.

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Two Figures Crossing the Boundaries Between Three Faiths

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Abrahamic Deities gathers two figures that each raise a question about identity crossing the boundaries between Judaism, Christianity and Islam, rather than belonging cleanly to one.

God (Abrahamic) is treated in this atlas as a single subject across all three traditions, following mainstream scholarly and interfaith convention and the shared trace to the God of Abraham, though the three theologies genuinely differ and describing them together does not make them the same. Judaism holds an absolute and undivided unity and does not pronounce the four letter name at all. Christianity confesses one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, treating the Trinity as the doctrine of God rather than an addition to it. Islam holds tawhid, and the Qur'an's rejection of any partner to God is read in classical theology as a rejection of exactly the Christian formula. Whether the three traditions worship the same God remains a live and unsettled question inside all three, and this entry sets out the positions without choosing between them.

Sophia, wisdom personified as a female figure, shows a divine attribute taking on a life of its own rather than a single deity crossing traditions. In Proverbs she calls in the street and says she stood beside God at the world's founding; Gnostic myth makes her an aeon whose fall produces the craftsman god and the material world; and Orthodox Christianity took Holy Wisdom as a title of Christ, which is what Constantinople's great church is named for, not a saint of that name. Whether Sophia is a figure of speech, a divine attribute or a person is a question every tradition that inherited her has had to answer.

Era Attested Start Year
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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