Topic
Atargatis
2 passages cited, from 1 classic reference work.
These works date from 1915 and are in the public domain. They reflect the Protestant scholarship of their time: their history, archaeology and dates can be out of date, and where they interpret, other traditions read the text differently. The verses are shown in the King James Version, the wording these works were written against.
The verses
The passages the works cite, those cited by more of them first.
- 2 Samuel 14:14ISBE
For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again; neither doth God respect any person: yet doth he devise means, that his banished be not expelled from him.
- 2 Maccabees 12:26ISBE
Then Maccabeus marched forth to Carnion, and to the temple of Atargatis, and there he slew five and twenty thousand persons.
In the reference works
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915) · 2 references
a-tar'-ga-tis (Atargatis; the Revised Version (British and American) wrongly ATERGATIS):
Is stated in 2 Macc 12:26 to have been worshipped at Karnion, the Ashtaroth-Karnaim of the Old Testament (compare Ant, XII, viii, 4). The name is found on coins of Membij as `atar-`atah, where `Atar (i. e. Ashtoreth) is identified with the goddess `Atah, whose name is sometimes written `Ati. or `Atah or `Ati was also worshipped at Palmyra, and (according to Melito) in Adiabene.
The compound Atargatis, often corrupted by the Greeks into Derketo, had her chief temples at Membij (Hierapolis) and Ashkelon where she was represented with the body of a woman and the tail of a fish, fish being sacred to her. Herodotus made her the Aphrodite Urania of the Greeks. `Ati may have been originally a Hittite goddess with whom the Assyrian Ishtar (`Atar) came afterward to be identified tory of the kingdom (2Sa 14:14). For the legal and geographical information, see CITIES OF REFUGE; HOMICIDE.
A. H. Sayce
Texts: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), from the CrossWire SWORD modules (public domain). Verse references were parsed from the works' own markup and checked against the KJV verse list.