SUB-SECTION IV.
How Nimrod died, Scripture is entirely silent. There was an
ancient tradition that he came to a violent end. The
circumstances of that end, however, as antiquity represents them,
are clouded with fable. It is said that tempests of wind sent by
God against the Tower of Babel overthrew it, and that Nimrod
perished in its ruins. * This could not be true, for we have
sufficient evidence that the Tower of Babel stood long after
Nimrod's day. Then, in regard to the death of Ninus, profane
history speaks darkly and mysteriously, although one account
tells of his having met with a violent death similar to that of
Pentheus, * Lycurgus, * and Orpheus, * who were said to have been
torn in pieces. * The identity of Nimrod, however, and the
Egyptian Osiris, having been established, we have thereby light
as to Nimrod's death. Osiris met with a violent death, and that
violent death of Osiris was the central theme of the whole
idolatry of Egypt. If Osiris was Nimrod, as we have seen, that
violent death which the Egyptians so pathetically deplored in
their annual festivals was just the death of Nimrod. The accounts
in regard to the death of the god worshipped in the several
mysteries of the different countries are all to the same effect.
A statement of Plato seems to show, that in his day the Egyptian
Osiris was regarded as identical with Tammuz; * and Tammuz is
well known to have been the same as Adonis, * the famous
HUNTSMAN, for whose death Venus is fabled to have made such
bitter lamentations. As the women of Egypt wept for Osiris, as
the Phenician and Assyrian women wept for Tammuz, so in Greece
and Rome the women wept for Bacchus, whose name, as we have seen,
means "The bewailed," or "Lamented
one." And now, in connection with the Bacchanal
lamentations, the importance of the relation established between
Nebros, "The spotted fawn," and Nebrod,
"The mighty hunter," will appear. The Nebros, or "spotted
fawn," was the symbol of Bacchus, as representing
Nebrod or Nimrod himself. Now, on certain occasions, in the
mystical celebrations, the Nebros, or "spotted
fawn," was torn in pieces, expressly, as we learn from
Photius, as a commemoration of what happened to Bacchus, * whom
that fawn represented. The tearing in pieces of Nebros, "the
spotted one," goes to confirm the conclusion, that the
death of Bacchus, even as the death of Osiris, represented the
death of Nebrod, whom, under the very name of "The
Spotted one," the Babylonians worshipped. Though we do
not find any account of Mysteries observed in Greece in memory of
Orion, the giant and mighty hunter celebrated by Homer, under
that name, yet he was represented symbolically as having died in
a similar way to that in which Osiris died, and as having then
been translated to heaven. * From Persian records we are
expressly assured that it was Nimrod who was deified after his
death by the name of Orion, and placed among the stars. * Here,
then, we have large and consenting evidence, all leading to one
conclusion, that the death of Nimrod, the child worshipped in the
arms of the goddess mother of Babylon, was a death of violence.
Now, when this mighty hero, in the midst of his career of
glory, was suddenly cut off by a violent death, great seems to
have been the shock that the catastrophe occasioned. When the
news spread abroad, the devotees of pleasure felt as if the best
benefactor of mankind were gone, and the gaiety of nations
eclipsed. Loud was the wail that everywhere ascended to heaven
among the apostates from the primeval faith for so dire a
catastrophe. Then began those weepings for Tammuz, in the guilt
of which the daughters of Israel allowed themselves to be
implicated, and the existence of which can be traced not merely
in the annals of classical antiquity, but in the literature of
the world from Ultima Thule to Japan.
Of the prevalence of such weepings in China, thus speaks the
Rev. W. Gillespie: "The dragon-boat festival happens in
midsummer, and is a season of great excitement. About 2000 years
age there lived a young Chinese Mandarin, Wat-yune, highly
respected and beloved by the people. To the grief of all, he was
suddenly drowned in the river. Many boats immediately rushed out
in search of him, but his body was never found. Ever since that
time, on the same day of the month, the dragon-boats go out in
search of him." "It is something," adds the
author, "like the bewailing of Adonis, or the weeping
for Tammuz mentioned in Scripture." * As the great god
Buddh is generally represented in China as a Negro, that may
serve to identify the beloved Mandarin whose loss is thus
annually bewailed. The religious system of Japan largely
coincides with that of China. In Iceland, and throughout
Scandinavia, there were similar lamentations for the loss of the
god Balder. Balder, through the treachery of the god Loki, the
spirit of evil, according as had been written in the book of
destiny, "was slain, although the empire of heaven
depended on his life." His father Odin had "learned
the terrible secret from the book of destiny, having conjured one
of the Volar from her infernal abode. All the gods trembled at
the knowledge of this event. Then Frigga [the wife of Odin]
called on every object, animate and inanimate, to take an oath
not to destroy or furnish arms against Balder. Fire, water,
rocks, and vegetables were bound by this solemn obligation. One
plant only, the misletoe, was overlooked. Loki discovered the
omission, and made that contemptible shrub the fatal weapon.
Among the warlike pastimes of Valhalla [the assembly of the gods]
one was to throw darts at the invulnerable deity, who felt a
pleasure in presenting his charmed breast to their weapons. At a
tournament of this kind, the evil genius putting a sprig of the
misletoe into the hands of the blind Hoder, and directing his
aim, the dreaded prediction was accomplished by an unintentional
fratricide. * The spectators were struck with speechless wonder;
and their misfortune was the greater, that no one, out of respect
to the sacredness of the place, dared to avenge it. With tears of
lamentation they carried the lifeless body to the shore, and laid
it upon a ship, as a funeral pile, with that of Nanna his lovely
bride, who had died of a broken heart. His horse and arms were
burnt at the same time, as was customary at the obsequies of the
ancient heroes of the north." Then Frigga, his mother,
was overwhelmed with distress. "Inconsolable for the
loss of her beautiful son," says Dr. Crichton, "she
despatched Hermod (the swift) to the abode of Hela [the goddess
of Hell, or the infernal regions], to offer a ransom for his
release. The gloomy goddess promised that he should be restored,
provided everything on earth were found to weep for him. Then
were messengers sent over the whole world, to see that the order
was obeyed, and the effect of the general sorrow was 'as when
there is a universal thaw.'" * There are considerable
variations from the original story in these two legends; but at
bottom the essence of the stories is the same, indicating that
they must have flowed from one fountain.
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