mark was, since both Montanism and Tertullian adhered
rather closely to primitive Christian views. Most significant
was his acceptance of the eschatological framework of Mon-
tanist thought. According to this, the age of the Paraclete
promised in John 14:16 was inaugurated by Montanus and
the prophets Priscilla and Maximilla. The dawning of this
dispensation signaled a time of new prophetic revelations
and of greater Christian discipline—fasting, prohibition of
second marriages, and willingness to suffer martyrdom.
Christ was expected to return soon and set up his millennial
kingdom with headquarters at Pepuza in Phrygia, Mon-
tanus’s hometown. In the interim the church would be divid-
ed. On the one side were the psychics, on the other the pneu-
matics. The former, catholics, would not accept the
discipline of the new prophecy; the latter, Montanists,
would. In line with this understanding of the church, the
Montanist Tertullian shifted his views of ministry so as to
give a greater weight to prophecy.
Given his allegiance to Montanism, a sect increasingly
regarded as heretical, it is remarkable that Tertullian had so
great an impact on later Christian theology. This must have
been due not to his personality but to his unquestioned or-
thodoxy on most matters and his genius for coining just the
right phrase.
SEE ALSO Montanism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
An excellent critical edition of the whole corpus of Tertullian’s
writings now exists in the Corpus Christianorum, Series La-
tina, vols. 1 & 2 (Turnhout, Belgium, 1954). A complete
translation can be found in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vols. 3
& 4 (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1956). Numerous recent works
have debated critical problems regarding Tertullian’s life and
thought. A searching examination of biographical and liter-
ary matters is to be found in Timothy D. Barnes’s Tertullian:
A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford, 1971). A valuable
older work, by James Morgan, The Importance of Tertullian
in the Development of Christian Dogma (London, 1928), is in
need of updating. Most recent studies have focused on par-
ticular aspects of Tertullian’s theology, but Gerald L. Bray’s
Holiness and the Will of God: Perspectives on the Theology of
Tertullian (Atlanta, 1979) has attempted a more comprehen-
sive treatment. T. P. O’Malley’s Tertullian and the Bible:
Language-Imagery-Exegesis (Utrecht, 1967) also supplies
helpful insight into this important aspect of Tertullian’s
writings.
E. GLENN HINSON (1987)
TESHUB was the Hurrian god of the storm. His name,
also spelled Teshshub, Te, and Teya, is attested in theophoric
Hurrian personal names in documents from Mesopotamia,
Syro-Palestine, and Anatolia. Since the few Hurrian religious
texts from outside the Hittite sphere are still somewhat poor-
ly understood, most of what we know about the god, his
mythological roles, and his cult is from Hittite Anatolia.
During the last two centuries of the Hittite kingdom
(c. 1400–1200 BCE) Teshub was the chief god of the pan-
theon, with his cult center at Kummiya. He was the son of
Anu (An), the sky god. His wife was the goddess Hebat. He
had four brothers: Aranzakh (the Tigris River), Tashmishu,
and two others whose names are unknown, and a sister, Sha-
wushka, who was the goddess of love and war. Teshub and
Hebat had a son, Sharruma, and a daughter, Allanzu.
Teshub is represented anthropomorphically in low relief
on the rock walls of the sanctuary of Yazilikaya, near Bogaz-
köy (Bittel, 1975, pp. 167–169), standing upon two un-
named anthropomorphic mountain gods and holding a club
in his right hand. At the head of a procession of male deities,
he meets and faces his wife, Hebat, the principal goddess of
the pantheon, who heads a procession of goddesses. Around
Teshub are represented other members of his immediate
family. His size and position on the relief are in keeping with
his rank as the chief god of the Hittite empire, but otherwise
his dress and complements are those of a normal Hittite
storm god.
In the mythological texts Teshub is always referred to
by one of the two cuneiform signs for “storm god,” not by
the name Teshub. In the first myth of the so-called Kumarbi
cycle, usually titled Kingship in Heaven (English trans. in
Pritchard, 1969, pp. 120f.), Anu, who had usurped the
throne of kingship over the gods from Alalu, is driven from
his throne by Alalu’s son Kumarbi. During the struggle Ku-
marbi bites off Anu’s penis and swallows it. Anu curses Ku-
marbi and promises that from the seed thus implanted in
Kumarbi five gods will be born, to defeat and depose him.
The first one mentioned (and therefore the eldest) is Teshub.
In the sequel, called the Song of Ullikummi (ibid.,
pp. 121ff.; Güterbock, 1951–1952), the god Kumarbi,
whom Teshub has displaced as head of the pantheon, seeks
to overthrow him by means of a stone monster named Ul-
likummi, whom Kumarbi had engendered through having
sexual intercourse with a huge boulder. Thus the pattern of
the offspring of a former king of the gods overthrowing his
father’s successor, which was set in Kingship in Heaven, con-
tinues. Teshub is first defeated by the monster and must
hide, but he eventually triumphs with the help of the god
Ea (Enki).
A prayer of King Muwatallis is addressed principally to
Teshub, called the Storm God of Kummanni. Although this
is the only prayer in the Hittite archives addressed primarily
to Teshub, other Hittite prayers contain sections in which
subordinate deities—Teshub and Hebat’s children or grand-
children, and once even Teshub’s bull, Seri—are asked to in-
tercede with Teshub or Hebat for the person praying. The
Hittite archives also contain descriptions of religious festivals
in honor of Teshub and Hebat (Laroche, 1971, pp. 123ff.).BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bittel, Kurt, et al. Das hethitische Felsheiligtum Yazilikaya. Berlin,
1975.
Gurney. O. R. Some Aspects of Hittite Religion. London, 1977.TESHUB 9087