Not all of them, obviously, Else Grinwold, for example, is intentionally shallow. But Mat is more than the roguish hero when adopting Olver or enjoying both the big cities and his travels to them, Perrin more than the simple blacksmith when directing the defense of Emond's Field or doting on Faile, Rand more than the reluctant hero when building universities and meting out impartial justice, to cite just a few examples just among the ta'veren.

Why do you read "crap" with less "depth than a kiddie pool"?

I'm thankful most of the rest of the world isn't as insultingly patronizing about it. You know I respect your scholarship, but I'd respect it more if you were less smugly condescending. It robs some of the impact when you seem to be more concerned with proving superiority than proving a point. I'm not your mother, nor am I blameless, but to paraphrase what I said elsewhere, I think RAFO would be better off if I, but not only I, were a bit less snide.

Hey, I didn't introduce Wikipedia into this conversation, and when I did I made a conscious effort to involve not just Wikipedia, but independent scholarship cited there. Just because I copy the text of the First Amendment from a Wikipedia citation of the Constitution doesn't invalidate the cite, because it's not really from Wikipedia, that's just a convenient place to find it listed.

I'm not convinced that's true, and even if it is, I'm also not convinced it's because good is inherently "stronger" rather than because man, as a species, is destined to choose good over evil in our capacity as the battleground for them.

Wikipedia's claims make no mention of the "layla" element in support of an association with night nor anything else, or rather, the only mention would be the PROTO-Semitic (i.e. pre-Hebraic) L-Y-L that could likely produce layla and many others. That is not the basis on which it says Lilith can be associated with the night (and/or as it also says with the wind.) Since you dispute the association of "itud" with the moon, and as a layman I'm limited to the online sources which all seem to translate it "moonlight" (more people for you to correct here: http://www.google.com/search?q=itud+sumerian&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rlz=1R1GGGL_en&client=firefox-a ) what is the correct translation? At the first link in the above search one John Alan Halloran has "iti6[UD.dNANNA]: moonlight" seemingly invoking both the moon and Inanna. Annoying fellow; he also maintains a "Sumerian Lexicon" here you might care to correct: http://www.scribd.com/doc/502645/Sumerian-Lexicon

The University of Pennsylvania also exhibits sore need of your services here:

http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/epsd/e1228.html

Meanwhile, if you're suggesting the association of Lilith with sexually predatory wind demons who seduce and torment sleepers AT NIGHT is entirely based on false cognates, you've got the work of a lifetime to do.

If I erred in associating Amon Baal with the Baal Hammon of Carthage (and surely you can see that's the strongest phonetic association with Baalzamon) my apologies, though I believe it's a natural error in light of the Phoenicia-Carthage axis. Though disputed and fragmentary, I know, that's the baal to which flame mouthed child consuming Moloch seems best traced, and that also seems a better explanation than "it sounds cool" for Baalzamon chasing the Two Rivers boys with a flaming a mouth and eyes. That's the best association, to me, but, again, given the sheer number of baals in Mesopotamia and Palestine during the Bronze Age, and the opposition to all of them from the JHWH group whose deity is obviously associated with Jordan's Creator, if there is any such element Jordan would be foolish to restrict it to a single baal and exclude dozens of others.

Perhaps not, but I never intended an academic treatise, nor an analysis (or lesson) on the Ancient World. I referenced seven distinct themes I perceive and acknowledged more exist (in fact, I believe I specifically told you elsewhere I entirely skipped the issue of cyclic time in which metempsychosis is so bound up, but F-T helpfully mentioned it for me here.) Now I've been reduced to discussing your field of expertise, and, no, I don't expect to "best" you there, but I didn't intend a competition either.