Coming Home · The Inherited Name

Dyeus Pater: The Name You Already Speak

author: High Priest Zevios Metathronos

Deus, Dios, Dieu, Jupiter and Tuesday belong to one ancient family of divine words, and Zeus stands at its head. Follow the name you already speak back to the Father it names.

For

Christians, Europeans and South Asians who already speak the name

You Will Find

The Sky Father in Vedic, Greek, Latin and the living languages

Next Step

Discover a Life with the Gods

Homer, Iliad 1.544, tr. Samuel Butler

τὴν δ’ ἠμείβετ’ ἔπειτα πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε

… replied the sire of gods and men.

I. The Name on Your Lips

The Creed opens with a divine name older than the Church that taught it to you.

The Apostles’ Creed, Latin and English, Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2005) · Read the text

Credo in Deum Patrem omnipoténtem, Creatorem cæli et terræ

I believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

In Spanish the same words run Creo en Dios, Padre Todopoderoso; in French, Je crois en Dieu, le Père tout puissant.^[1][2][3] God and Father, side by side.

Now set the older prayers beside them. Thetis prays to Zeus in the Iliad and begins Ζεῦ πάτερ, which Butler renders Father Jove.^[4] The Romans called Him Iuppiter, which Lewis and Short explain as Jovis-pater, and also Diespiter, another name for Juppiter.^[5] The Rigveda calls on our Father Heaven, pitā dyauḥ.^[6]

Deum Patrem, Dios Padre, Iuppiter, Zeus Pater, Dyauḥ Pitā: a God and the title Father, carried together across the languages of Europe and India. You have been speaking the family name all your life.

II. The Root

Comparative linguists trace these names to a root, written dyeu- in the American Heritage Dictionary, meaning to shine, the bright day and the day-lit sky.^[7][8][9] The dictionary sends Zeus, Jupiter, Jove, deity and Tiu back to that one root.^[7]

The root has 2 branches, and they must be kept apart:

• The divine name. The sky itself, worshipped as a God, with the title Father: reconstructed as *di̯éu̯- *ph₂tér-, “father heaven”, and continued in Greek Ζεὺς πατήρ, Vedic dyáuḥ pitā́, Latin Iūpiter and Umbrian iuve patre.^[9] This is the name of Zeus.
• The common noun. A word formed from the same root, *dei̯u̯o-, “god”, which became the ordinary word for a God in Latin, Celtic, Baltic and Indo-Iranian.^[10] This is the word behind Deus, Dios and Dieu.

Deus is therefore no borrowing of the Greek name Zeus. Both grew from the same root: Zeus is the Sky Father’s own name, deus the word for a God that grew beside it.

III. The Sky Father across the Languages

The first table gives the Father compound and the divine names closest to it, each with the source that prints it.

Sources: Rigveda, tr. Griffith^[6]; Iliad^[4]; Lewis and Short^[5]; eDiAna for Umbrian and Hittite^[9]; the Texas Indo-European Lexicon for Oscan, Palaic and Luwian^[8].

In Anatolia the word for the bright sky became the ordinary word for God: Hittite šiu(n)-, Palaic tiu(n)-, Luwian tiw-, all glossed “god”.^[9] There the shining sky and the Divine became one word.

IV. The Word for God

The second table follows the common noun. It marks what each language inherited directly, what the Romance languages took from Latin deus, and what English borrowed.

Sources: the Texas Indo-European Lexicon for Sanskrit, Avestan, Latin, Old Irish, Baltic and Germanic^[8]; Lexicon Leponticum for the Brittonic forms^[10]; the American Heritage Dictionary for English and French^[7]; the national dictionaries for Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian^{[11][12][13][14]}.

“Does Deus Relate to Zeus?”

Yes. Deus and Zeus grow from the same root, dyeu-. Zeus is the Sky Father’s name; deus is the word for a God formed beside it.

The American Heritage Dictionary sends both Zeus and deity, from Latin deus, to that root.^[7] Deus doesn’t come from the Greek word Zeus; the 2 are siblings, and Dios, Dieu and Dio are deus’s own descendants. The Temple teaches that the God called by them is Zeus, Father and King of the Gods.

Discover a Life with the Gods

V. The Day

The same shining root gives the word for day. The God of the bright sky and the daylight carry one name.

Sources: the Texas Indo-European Lexicon^[8]; the Real Academia Española for día^[11]; the American Heritage Dictionary for the English words^[15].

The American Heritage Dictionary traces journey through Old French jornee to Latin diurnus, of a day, from diēs. Sojourn, journal and diurnal run back through the same diurnus, and diary straight to diēs.^[15] Every day you write, travel or stay somewhere, you use the light the Sky Father’s name was made from.

VI. The Week

• Tuesday is Tīw’s day. Old English Tīwesdæg, “Tiu’s day”, translated Latin diēs Mārtis, and Tīw’s name belongs to the root dyeu-.^[7][16]
• In the Romance languages, Thursday is Jupiter’s day. French jeudi comes from Latin Jovis dies, jour de Jupiter; Spanish jueves from [dies] Iovis, [día] de Júpiter; Italian giovedì from Iovis dies, giorno di Giove.^[17][11][12]
• English Thursday is Thor’s day. Old English thunres dæg rendered Late Latin Iovis diēs, “Jupiter’s day”. Thor’s own name means thunder and comes from a different root.^[16] The Germanic peoples gave Jupiter’s day to their Thunderer; the day still belongs to the King of the sky.

VII. An Early Inversion

In India the devas remained Gods. The Rigveda hymn that calls on Father Heaven is addressed to the Viśvedevas, a name built on deva.^[6]

In the Iranian world, Zarathustra’s Gathas turned the same word against them. Yasna 30.6 says the daêvâ failed to choose rightly between the 2 spirits:

Yasna 30.6, Avestan after Geldner; tr. L. H. Mills, Sacred Books of the East 31 · Read the passage

ayå nôit eresh vîshyâtâ daêvâcinâ

And between these two spirits the Demon-gods (and they who give them worship) can make no righteous choice …

One word, opposite meanings, on either side of a religious reform: deva, a God, in the Veda; daēva, a demon, in the Avesta.^[18][8] The Greek δαίμων suffered the same fate when it became “demon”. The Temple reads these as the pattern of hostile revaluation: a reform takes the word for the Gods and makes it the word for their enemies.

VIII. Other Names, Other Roots

Not every name of the Divine belongs to this family, and the Temple says so plainly.

• English God comes from Old English and goes back to a different root, gheu(ə)-.^[19]
• Greek θεός stands under a separate root, dheu̯es-, in Pokorny’s dictionary. The Twin Tongues page follows its history.^[20]
• Arabic Allah is al-, “the”, with ʾilāh, “god”, from the Semitic root ʾl.^[19] The Temple’s El page follows the older Semitic name, and the Muslims’ track follows Allah into Arabia before Islam.

The Zevist Teaching

The God named God and Θεός is Zeus, Father and King of the Gods. That identification stands on theology, on what the Divine is and does.

The cognates of Deus show the inheritance in the words themselves. Allah stands outside these names: Islam made it the name of one God set against the Gods, and the Temple keeps it apart from Zeus.

IX. From the Name to the Father

Read it yourself. Every form on this page is listed with the dictionary that prints it. For fuller study:

• The American Heritage Dictionary. Its online Indo-European roots appendix gives the English words descended from dyeu-.^[7]
• The scholarly references. Michiel de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin (2008); Robert Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (2010), under Ζεύς; M. L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (2007), chapter 4.
• The Temple’s own pages. Dyeus Pater, Zevists, Jupiter, Tengri and Zeus, Eternal Truth and His Identities.

A name is an address. The Vedic singer used it to claim kinship: Dyaus is my Father, my begetter: kinship is here.^[6] The words in your Creed carry the same address. Speak it again, this time to the Father who bears the name.

Zevism gives that address a life: prayer to Zeus, the company of the Gods under Him, study, meditation and a character ordered by truth. Discover the life the name opens.

Deus, Dios, Dieu, Jupiter, Zeus: one Father behind every form. Call Him by His name.

Continue

• Next. Move from the name to the living relationship. Why Zevism
• Then. How the old name was turned against the Gods. The Inversion
• For Christians. The faith before the faith. For Christians