Dievas

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Lithuanian Dievas, Latvian Dievs, Prussian Deiws was the supreme god in the Baltic mythology and one of the most important deities together with Perkūnas.

In English, Dievas may be used as a word to describe the God (or, the supreme god) in the pre-Christian religion of Balts, where Dievas was understood to be the supreme being of the world. In Lithuanian and Latvian, it is also used to describe God as it is understood by the major World Religions today.

[edit] Lithuanian conception of divinity

However the conception of divinity in the old Lithuanian religion still is not always clear to modern scholars. A number of them suggest, that Lithuanians applied a pantheistic concept for their religion. This concept, according to the ideas of modern researchers, had to include the following:

• recognition of a single Divine Being, that is the core entity of the Universe.
• recognition of multiple divine beings, that are on a different level of the main God or, in other words, hypostases of the single God.
• recognition of direct participating of the single God in lower levels in shape of lower beings (of manifestations of the God). The known later sources give exclusively human shape of God, but it may be a limitation added by Christianity. The told manifestations of the God have features of modesty, fairness, chastity, delicacy etc., that show some moral priorities of ancient Lithuanians.
• However this understanding excludes conception of a pantheon or of some other possible council of gods in the old pagan Lithuanian religion.

Many well established sources concerning Lithuanian mythology do not contradict this conception, although there is not much data available. The lack of data leaves a wide gap for interpretations, and as a consequence, many scholars do not agree on all of the points above.

In contrast, a historian of the early 19th century, Theodor Narbutt, took the presence of the pantheon in Lithuanian mythology as an axiom. And, in spite of being subsequently criticized that his sources were unreliable, and that his interpretations not always concur with evident data from Lithuanian folklore, Narbutt's mythology, that was presented in pictorial and detailed way, sometimes seems preferable to less definite reconstructions of the alternative position. This way his works had certain influence on thinking and ideas of some scholars.

Concerning the God (Dievas) in the old Lithuanian religion, modern interpretations lack sources too. Regardless, that the conception of the single Chief God was acknowledged by Lithuanians is well documented and is not in doubt. The word Dievas itself seems to be omitted respectfully or changed to its epithets like Aukščiausiasis ('the Highest'), Visagalis ('the Omnipotent') or Praamžis ('the Eternal one').

[edit] Manifestations

The God's manifestations are known from mythical stories, that were already from the times of Christianity in Lithuania, so they not always were considered to be a reliable source for the earlier periods. On the other hand we have no earlier sources to describe the picture of God in detail. The mythic stories tell us about God's manifestations in the shape of man only, particularly giving us a picture of the God in the shape of an old male sage (whose variant is an old male beggar too). But the linguistic data, e. g. the name for theSouthernwood in Lithuanian, Diemedis, literally the God-tree, as well as some hints in historical legends suggest, that God's manifestations might be believed to take other forms besides the human, like forms of animals, birds or plants.

[edit] Reconstructions

The known facts about Dievas and studies of the comparative mythology make a wide area for different reconstructions on this topic. From the other hand, scholars often leak criteria, to find which reconstructions are more based. In order to base their arguments many modern mythologists employ the fact, that Lithuanian word dievas (and its Latvian counterpart dievs along with the old-Prussian counterpart deiwas) is similar with Latin deus or with Sanskrit Dyaus Pita (compare Dyeus). This fact also allows to try to reconstruct yet older periods of the Lithuanian mythology.