BOOK V. This epopt, it seems, was a field-officer of acknowledged bravery, who in battle had often faced death without shrinking: yet, when he returned from the chamber of final initiation, like his brethren of old as described by Themistius and Aristides and the ancient writer in Stobèus, he exhibited the most undissembled marks of extreme terror. A cold sweat bedewed his forehead; a livid paleness overspread his countenance; and his whole frame shook with excess of agitation. What he had seen or heard, my informant knew not: this alone was a clear case, that the man had been heartily frightened; and his terror apparently resembled that, which is ordinarily produced by unrestrained superstition. But I tread on forbidden ground: and it behoves one of the profane to recollect with becoming reverence the old formula of the Orphic poet, the alleged father of the Greek and Thracian Mysteries ; To those alone I speak, whom nameless rites Our secret Orgies'. Φθεγξομαι δις θεμις εστι θυρας δ' επίθεσθε βέβηλοις Пlaoi ous. Orph. Frag. apud Justin. Martyr. in Orph. Oper. p. 357 CHAPTER VII. Concerning the Places used by the Pagans for Religious Worship. A VERY general idea has prevailed throughout the gentile world, that the compound transmigrating personage, venerated as the great universal father, was the first who built temples and instituted sacrifices to the gods. Such accordingly is a prominent feature in the character both of Deucalion, Janus, Phoroneus, Prometheus, Osiris, Cronus, Brahma, Thoth, Dionusus, Mango-Copac, Buddha, and other cognate divinities; who are all severally, on the established principles of heathen theology, the patriarch Adam reappearing at the commencement of the new world in the form of the patriarch Noah. To this traditional opinion it has been gravely objected by Cluverius, that Holy Writ simply represents Noah as building an altar and as sacrificing to the Lord, and that it is altogether silent respecting the erection of any such temple as Lucian ascribes to his Scythic Deucalion'. Hence some have rather inclined to place the building of the first temple in the age of Jupiter-Belus; and, by supposing it to be the Babylonic tower, to identify that Jupiter with the scriptural Nimrod *. 'Cluver. Germ. Ant. lib. i. c. 34. 2 Polyd. Virg. de invent. lib. i. c. 5. Hospinian. de orig. temp. c. 5. Pag. Idol. VOL. III. 2 B BOOK V. Though the latter supposition be literally true: yet the old traditional opinion ought not to be too hastily rejected, on the presumption that the argument of Cluverius is irrefragably conclusive. The opinion may not indeed be perfectly accurate: yet, would we understand the sense in which the first temples are ascribed to the great father, we must inquire what were the primeval temples of the gentile world; for, since the most ancient temples are ascribed to him, it is evident, that those primeval temples of whatever nature could alone have been intended by the framers of the tradition. Now I suspect, that, when this matter is duly weighed, we shall find the legend in question not very far removed from the truth. I. To whatever part of the world we direct our attention, we shall almost invariably find, that the first places used for religious worship were thick groves of trees, lofty mountains, rocky caverns, and small islands washed either by the waves of the ocean or by the waters of some consecrated lake. Such being the case, it is sufficiently obvious, that, when the Gentiles represented the great father as the builder of the most ancient temples, these, and no other, were the temples which they meant: and, although in absolute propriety of language he cannot be said to have really constructed them; yet, if he were the first that used them, since all more recent temples were necessarily built by some one, and since these works of nature were viewed in the light of temples, he would be reputed not unnaturally to have been their founder. But these were the identical places employed as oratories by that compound character, the supposed transmigrating great father. The sacred grove of Paradise, in the lofty mountainous region of Armenia, was the temple of Adam: while the summit of mount Ararat in the same country, which at the time of the egress from the Ark was surrounded like an island by the waters of the retiring deluge, was the temple of Noah where he offered up the first postdiluvian sacrifice to Jehovah. Whether these patriarchs used a literal cave, does not appear from the scriptural history: I am inclined to think that they did, both from the circumstance of Lot's retiring to a rocky grotto when in the tenth generation from Noah the waters of the dead sea inundated the cities of the plain, and from the high veneration in which mountain-caverns were universally held by the ancient pagans. But, however this may be, it is of no material consequence to CHAP. VII. our present inquiry. The Ark, as it manifestly appears from the varied modes of initiation into the Mysteries, was symbolized by the gloomy grotto either natural or artificial. Hence, as the Ark was a temple of Noah, the great father would be considered by his descendants as having first used a cavern for the purposes of devotion. Thus the mere following of the old gentile tradition to the point where it avowedly leads us, namely the great universal father whose character has already been most abundantly ascertained, serves at once to disclose to us both the origin and the nature of the various holy places of the heathens: of such use and importance it is to trace things to their first principles, and thence by simplification to attain a right understanding of their import. The conclusion, almost forced as it were upon us in the present instance, is this that every consecrated grove was a copy of Paradise; that every sanctified mountain or high place was a local transcript of Ararat, itself geographically coincident with the garden of Eden; that every islet doubly shadowed out the insular Ark and the once sea-girt top of the Armenian peak; and that every gloomy cavern represented the dark interior of the Noëtic Ship wedged fast amidst the cliffs and rocks of the hill of debarkation. It is almost superfluous to observe, how exactly such a conclusion tallies with the general drift of old idolatry. We in fact do nothing more than find the most ancient places of gentile worship to be precisely, what, from the nature of that worship, might have been independently anticipated. If the great father of pagan superstition be a transmigrating compound of Adam and Noah, respecting which there can scarcely be a reasonable doubt then, as the Orgies wholly relate to the history of this complicated being; so all his places of worship will naturally have been constructed with the very same reference, or selected studiously with the same allusion. Of the propriety of this hypothesis every particular, as the subject gradually opens upon us, will furnish an additional demonstration: and thus the general concinnity and laboured harmony of that singular system of theology, which at one period overspread the whole world save one narrow district, will be fully and finally established. With respect to the peculiar mode of local worship ascribed to the early BOOK V. pagans, a mode however which ceased not to prevail even in more modern ages, it may seem almost superfluous to bring forward proofs of a matter which is so universally well known: yet it will not be improper to select a few, by way of an apposite introduction to the main subject. Holy Scripture is full of references to such a mode of devotion, as having obtained firm footing throughout Palestine even before the exodus, and as never being completely eradicated until perhaps after the return from the Babylonian captivity. When Balak wished Balaam to curse Israel, he took him up to the summits of various lofty hills, which are all generally described as being high places of Baal. One of them is simply mentioned under that common appellation: another was the top of Pisgah; where the heavenly bodies were worshipped in conjunction with the hero-gods under the name of Zophim or divine overlookers, no doubt the Zophe-Samen or celestial overlookers of the Phenician theology: and a third was the top of Peor, infamous for the impure sepulchral Orgies of Baal-Peor or Osiris or Adonis. On each of these, in reference to the seven astronomical mariners of the great mundane Ship who were reckoned so many forms or emanations of the solar pilot, were erected seven altars; and every altar was stained with the blood of a ram and a bullock'. Here Balak worshipped after the manner of his country, ascribing, as was usual among the Gentiles, the attributes of Jehovah to the deified great father. Of a similar nature was mount Tabor or Tabaris, a local copy of the Armenian Tebriz or Tebaris: mount Hermon: mount Nebo: mount Lebanon: and the lofty promontory of BaalZephon or Baal of the north; that is to say, the lord of the northern Armenian mount of assembly 2. Into such idolatrous hill-worship as well as grove-worship we find the Israelites perpetually seduced. Thus we are told, that king Ahaz made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel; and that he sacrificed and burned incense in the high places, and on the hills, 'Numb. xxii. 41. xxiii. 3, 13, 14, 27, 28. ⚫ See Isaiah xiv. 13. |