SUB-SECTION V.
If there was one who was more deeply concerned in the tragic
death of Nimrod that another, it was his wife Semiramis, who,
from an originally humble position, had been raised to share with
him the throne of Babylon. What, in this emergency shall she do?
Shall she quietly forego the pomp and pride to which she has been
raised? No. Though the death of her husband has given a rude
shock to her power, yet her resolution and unbounded ambition
were in nowise checked. On the contrary, her ambition took a
still higher flight. In life her husband had been honoured as a
hero; in death she will have him worshipped as a god, yea, as the
woman's promised seed, "Zero-ashta," * who was
destined to bruise the serpent's head, and who, in doing so, was
to have his own heel bruised. The patriarchs, and the ancient
world in general, were perfectly acquainted with the grand
primeval promise of Eden, and they knew right well that the
bruising of the heel of the promised seed implied his death, and
that the curse could be removed from the world only by the death
of the grand Deliverer. If the promise about the bruising of the
serpent's head, recorded in Genesis, as made to our first
parents, was actually made, and if all mankind were descended
from them, then it might be expected that some trace of this
promise would be found in all nations. And such is the fact.
There is hardly a people or kindred on earth in whose mythology
it is not shadowed forth. The Greeks represented their great god
Apollo as slaying the serpent Pytho, and Hercules as strangling
serpents while yet in his cradle. In Egypt, in India, in
Scandinavia, in Mexico, we find clear allusions to the same great
truth. "The evil genius," says Wilkinson, "of
the adversaries of the Egyptian god Horus is frequently figured
under the form of a snake, whose head he is seen piercing with a
spear. The same fable occurs in the religion of India, where the
malignant serpent Calyia is slain by Vishnu, in his avatar of
Crishna ; and the Scandinavian deity Thor was said to have
bruised the head of the great serpent with his mace."
"The origin of this," he adds, "may be
readily traced to the Bible." * In reference to a
similar belief among the Mexicans, we find Humboldt saying, that "The
serpent crushed by the great spirit Teotl, when he takes the form
of one of the subaltern deities, is the genius of evil--a real
Kakodaemon." * * Now, in almost all cases, when the
subject is examined to the bottom, it turns out that the serpent
destroying god is represented as enduring hardships and
sufferings that end in his death. Thus the god Thor, while
succeeding at last in destroying the great serpent, is
represented as, in the very moment of victory, perishing from the
venomous effluvia of his breath. * The same would seem to be the
way in which the Babylonians represented their great
serpent-destroyer among the figures of their ancient sphere. His
mysterious suffering is thus described by the Greek poet Aratus,
whose language shows that when he wrote, the meaning of the
representation had been generally lost, although, when viewed in
the light of Scripture, it is surely deeply significant:--
"A human figure, 'whelmed with toil appears;
Yet still with name uncertain he remains;
Nor known the labour that he thus sustains;
But since upon his knees he seems to fall,
Him ignorant mortals Engonasis call;
And while sublime his awful hands are spread,
Beneath him rolls the dragon's horrid head,
And his right foot unmoved appears to rest,
Fixed on the writhing monster's burnished crest." *
The constellation thus represented is commonly known by the
name of "The Kneeler," from this very
description of the Greek poet; but it is plain that, as "Engonasis"
came from the Babylonians, it must be interpreted, not in a
Greek, but in a Chaldee sense, and so interpreted, as the action
of the figure itself implies, the title of the mysterious
sufferer is just "The Serpent-crusher." * Sometimes,
however, the actual crushing of the serpent was represented as
much more easy process; yet, even then, death was the ultimate
result; and that death of the serpent-destroyer is so described
as to leave no doubt whence the fable was borrowed. This is
particularly the case with the Indian god Crishna, to whom
Wilkinson alludes in the extract already given. In the legend
that concerns him, the whole of the primeval promise in Eden is
very strikingly embodied. First, he is represented in pictures
and images with his foot on the great serpent's head, * and then,
after destroying it, he is fabled to have died in consequence of
being shot by an arrow in the foot; and, as in the case of
Tammuz, great lamentations are annually made for his death. *
Even in Greece, also, in the classic story of Paris and Achilles,
we have a very plain allusion to that part of the primeval
promise, which referred to the bruising of the conqueror's
"heel." Achilles, the only son of a goddess, was
invulnerable in all points except the heel, but there a wound was
deadly. At that his adversary took aim, and death was the result.
Now, if there be such evidence still, that even Pagans knew
that it was by dying that the promised Messiah was to destroy
death and him that has the power of death, that is the Devil, how
much more vivid must have been the impression of mankind in
general in regard to this vital truth in the early days of
Semiramis, when they were so much nearer the fountain-head of all
Divine tradition. When, therefore, the name Zoroastes,
"the seed of the woman," was given to him who had
perished in the midst of a prosperous career of false worship and
apostacy, there can be no doubt of the meaning which that name
was intended to convey. And the fact of the violent death of the
hero, who, in the esteem of his partisans, had done so much to
bless mankind, to make life happy, and to deliver them from the
fear of the wrath to come, instead of being fatal to the bestowal
of such a title upon him, favoured rather than otherwise the
daring design. All that was needed to countenance the scheme on
the part of those who wished an excuse for continued apostacy
from the true God, was just to give out that, though the great
patron of the apostacy had fallen a prey to the malice of men, he
had freely offered himself for the good of mankind. Now, this was
what was actually done. The Chaldean version of the story of the
great Zoroaster is that he prayed to the supreme God of heaven to
take away his life; that his prayer was heard, and that he
expired, assuring his followers that, if they cherished due
regard for his memory, the empire would never depart from the
Babylonians. * What Berosus, the Babylonian historian, says of
the cutting off of the head of the great god Belus, is plainly to
the same effect. Belus, says Berosus, commanded one of the gods
to cut off his head, that from the blood thus shed by his own
command and with his own consent, when mingled with the earth,
new creatures might be formed, the first creation being
represented as a sort of a failure. * Thus the death of Belus,
who was Nimrod, like that attributed to Zoroaster, was
represented as entirely voluntary, and as submitted to for the
benefit of the world.
It seems to have been now only when the dead hero was to be
deified, that the secret Mysteries were set up. The previous form
of apostacy during the life of Nimrod appears to have been open
and public. Now, it was evidently felt that publicity was out of
the question. The death of the great ringleader of the apostacy
was not the death of a warrior slain in battle, but an act of
judicial rigour, solemnly inflicted. This is well established by
the accounts of the deaths of both Tammuz and Osiris. The
following is the account of Tammuz, given by the celebrated
Maimonides, deeply read in all the learning of the Chaldeans: "When
the false prophet named Thammuz preached to a certain king that
he should worship the seven stars and the twelve signs of the
Zodiac, that king ordered him to be put to a terrible death. On
the night of his death all the images assembled from the ends of
the earth into the temple of Babylon, to the great golden image
of the Sun, which was suspended between heaven and earth. That
image prostrated itself in the midst of the temple, and so did
all the images around it, while it related to them all that bad
happened to Thammuz. The images wept and lamented all the night
long, and then in the morning they flew away, each to his own
temple again, to the ends of the earth. And hence arose the
custom every year on the first day of the month Thammuz, to mourn
and to weep for Thammuz." * There is here, of course,
all the extravagance of idolatry, as found in the Chaldean sacred
books that Maimonides had consulted; but there is no reason to
doubt the fact stated either as to the manner or the cause of the
death of Tammuz. In this Chaldean legend, it is stated that it
was by the command of a "certain king" that
this ringleader in apostacy was put to death. Who could this king
be, who was so determinedly opposed to the worship of the host of
heaven? From what is related of the Egyptian Hercules, we get
very valuable light on this subject. It is admitted by Wilkinson
that the most ancient Hercules, and truly primitive one, was he
who was known in Egypt as having, "by the power of the
gods" * (i.e., by the SPIRIT) fought against and
overcome the Giants. Now, no doubt, the title and character of
Hercules were afterwards given by the Pagans to him whom they
worshipped as the grand deliverer or Messiah, just as the
adversaries of the Pagan divinities came to be stigmatised as the
"Giants" who rebelled against Heaven. But let
the reader only reflect who were the real Giants that rebelled
against Heaven. They were Nimrod and his party; for the "Giants"
were just the "Mighty ones," of the
opposition to the apostacy from the primitive worship? If Shem
was at that time alive, as beyond question he was, who so likely
as he? In exact accordance with this deduction, we find that one
of the names of the primitive Hercules in Egypt was "Sem."
*
If "Sem," then, was the primitive Hercules,
who overcame the Giants, and that not by mere physical force, but
by "the power of God," or the influence of the
Holy Spirit, that entirely agrees with his character; and more
than that, it remarkably agrees with the Egyptian account of the
death of Osiris. The Egyptians say, that the grand enemy of their
god overcame him, not by open violence, but that, having entered
into a conspiracy with seventy-two of the leading men of Egypt,
he got him into his power, put him to death, and then cut his
dead body into pieces, and sent the different parts to so many
different cities throughout the country. * The real meaning of
this statement will appear, if we glance at the judicial
institutions of Egypt. Seventy-two was just the number of the
judges, both civil and sacred, who, according to the Egyptian
law, were required to determine what was to be the punishment of
one guilty of so high an offence as that of Osiris, supposing
this to have become a matter of judicial inquiry. In determining
such a case, there were necessarily two tribunals concerned.
First, there were the ordinary judges, who had power of life and
death, and who amounted to thirty, * then there was, over and
above, a tribunal consisting of forty-two judges, who, if Osiris
was condemned to die, had to determine whether his body should be
buried or no, for before burial, every one after death had to
pass the ordeal of this tribunal. * As burial was refused him,
both tribunals would necessarily be concerned; and thus there
would be exactly seventy-two persons, under Typho the president,
to condemn Osiris to die and to be cut in pieces. What, then,
does the statement amount to, in regard to the conspiracy, but
just to this, that the great opponent of the idolatrous system
which Osiris introduced, had so convinced these judges of the
enormity of the offence which he had committed, that they gave up
the offender to an awful death, and to ignominy after it, as a
terror to any who might afterwards tread in his steps. The
cutting of the dead body in pieces, and sending the dismembered
parts among the different cities, is paralleled, and its object
explained, by what we read in the Bible of the cutting of the
dead body of the Levite's concubine in pieces (Judges xix. 29),
and sending one of the parts to each of the twelve tribes of
Israel; and the similar step taken by Saul, when he hewed the two
yoke of oxen asunder, and sent them throughout all the coasts of
his kingdom (1 Sam. xi.7). It is admitted by commentators that
both the Levite and Saul acted on a patriarchal custom, according
to which summary vengeance would be dealt to those who failed to
come to the gathering that in this solemn way was summoned. This
was declared in so many words by Saul, when the parts of the
slaughtered oxen were sent among the tribes: "Whosoever
cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done
to his oxen." In like manner, when the dismembered
parts of Osiris were sent among the cities by the seventy-two "conspirators"--in
other words, by the supreme judges of Egypt, it was equivalent to
a solemn declaration in their name, that "whosoever
should do as Osiris had done, so should it be done to him; so
should he also be cut in pieces."
When irreligion and apostacy again arose into the ascendant,
this act, into which the constituted authorities who had to do
with the ringleader of the apostates were led, for the putting
down of the combined system of irreligion and despotism set up by
Osiris or Nimrod, was naturally the object of intense abhorrence
to all his sympathisers; and for his share in it the chief actor
was stigmatised as Typho, or "The Evil One." *
The influence that this abhorred Typho wielded over the minds of
the so-called "conspirators," considering the
physical force with which Nimrod was upheld, must have been
wonderful, and goes to show, that though his deed in regard to
Osiris is veiled, and himself branded by a hateful name, he was
indeed none other than that primitive Hercules who overcame the
Giants by "the power of God," by the
persuasive might of his Holy Spirit.
In connection with this character of Shem, the myth that makes
Adonis, who is identified with Osiris, perish by the tusks of a
wild boar, is easily unravelled. * The tusk of a wild boar was a
symbol. In Scripture, a tusk is called "a horn;" *
among many of the Classic Greeks it was regarded in the very same
light. * When once it is known that a tusk is regarded as a
"horn" according to the symbolism of idolatry, the
meaning of the boar's tusks, by which Adonis perished, is not far
to seek. The bull's horns that Nimrod wore were the symbol of
physical power. The boar's tusks were the symbol of spiritual
power. As a "horn" means power, so a tusk,
that is, a horn in the mouth, means "power in the
mouth;" in other words, the power of persuasion; the
very power with which "Sem," the primitive
Hercules, was so signally endowed. Even from the ancient
traditions of the Gael, we get an item of evidence that at once
illustrates this idea of power in the mouth, and connects it with
that great son of Noah, on whom the blessing of the Highest, as
recorded in Scripture, did especially rest. The Celtic Hercules
was called Hercules Ogmius, which, in Chaldee, is "Hercules
the Lamenter." * No name could be more appropriate,
none more descriptive of the history of Shem, than this. Except
our first parent, Adam, there was, perhaps, never a mere man that
saw so much grief as he. Not only did he see a vast apostacy,
which, with his righteous feelings, and witness as he had been of
the awful catastrophe of the flood, must have deeply grieved him;
but he lived to bury SEVEN GENERATIONS of his descendants. He
lived 502 years after the flood, and as the lives of men were
rapidly shortened after that event, no less than SEVEN
generations of his lineal descendants died before him (Gen. xi.
10-32). How appropriate a name Ogmius, "The Lamenter or
Mourner," for one who had such a history! Now, how is
this "Mourning" Hercules represented as
putting down enormities and redressing wrongs? Not by his club,
like the Hercules of the Greeks, but by the force of persuasion.
Multitudes were represented as following him, drawn by fine
chains of gold and amber inserted into their ears, and which
chains proceeded from his mouth. * There is a great difference
between the two symbols-the tusks of a boar and the golden chains
issuing from the mouth, that draw willing crows by the ears; but
both very beautifully illustrate the same idea--the might of that
persuasive power that enabled Shem for a time to withstand the
tide of evil that came rapidly rushing in upon the world.
Now when Shem had so powerfully wrought upon the minds of men
as to induce them to make a terrible example of the great
Apostate, and when that Apostate's dismembered limbs were sent to
the chief cities, were no doubt his system had been established,
it will be readily perceived that, in these circumstances, if
idolatry was to continue--if, above all, it was to take a step in
advance, it was indispensable that it should operate in secret.
The terror of an execution, inflicted on one so mighty as Nimrod,
made it needful that, for some time to come at least, the extreme
of caution should be used. In these circumstances, then, began,
there can hardly be a doubt, that system of "Mystery,"
which, having Babylon for its centre, has spread over the world.
In these Mysteries, under the seal of secrecy and the sanction of
an oath, and by means of all the fertile resources of magic, men
were gradually led back to all the idolatry that had been
publicly suppressed, while new features were added to that
idolatry that made it still more blasphemous than before. That
magic and idolatry were twin sisters, and came into the world
together, we have abundant evidence. "He" (Zoroaster),
says Justin the historian, "was said to be the first
that invented magic arts, and that most diligently studied the
motions of the heavenly bodies." * The Zoroaster spoken
of by Justin is the Bactrian Zoroaster; but this is generally
admitted to be a mistake. Stanley, in his History of Oriental
Philosophy, concludes that this mistake had arisen from
similarity of name, and that from this cause that had been
attributed to the Bactrian Zoroaster which properly belonged to
the Chaldean, "since it cannot be imagines that the
Bactrian was the inventor of those arts in which the Chaldean,
who lived contemporary with him, was so much skilled." *
Epiphanius had evidently come to the same substantial conclusion
before him. He maintains, from the evidence open to him in his
day, that it was "Nimrod, that established the sciences
of magic and astronomy, the invention of which was subsequently
attributed to (the Bactrian) Zoroaster." * As we have
seen that Nimrod and the Chaldean Zoroaster are the same, the
conclusions of the ancient and the modern inquirers into Chaldean
antiquity entirely harmonise. Now the secret system of the
Mysteries have vast facilities for imposing on the senses of the
initiated by means of the various tricks and artifices of magic.
Notwithstanding all the care and precautions of those who
conducted these initiations, enough has transpired to give us a
very clear insight into their real character. Everything was so
contrived as to wind up the minds of the novices to the highest
pitch of excitement, that, after having surrendered themselves
implicitly to the priests, they might be prepared to receive
anything. After the candidates for initiation had passed through
the confessional, and sworn the required oaths, "strange
and amazing objects," says Wilkinson,
"presented themselves. Sometimes the place they were in
seemed to shake around them; sometimes it appeared bright and
resplendent with light and radiant fire, and then again covered
with black darkness, sometimes thunder and lightning, sometimes
frightful noises and bellowings, sometimes terrible apparitions
astonished the trembling spectators." * Then, at last,
the great god, the central object of their worship, Osiris,
Tammuz, Nimrod or Adonis, was revealed to them in the way most
fitted to soothe their feelings and engage their blind
affections. An account of such a manifestation is thus given by
an ancient Pagan, cautiously indeed, but yet in such a way as
shows the nature of the magic secret by which such an apparent
miracle was accomplished: "In a manifestation which one
must not reveal.... there is seen on a wall of the temple a mass
of light, which appears at first at a very great distance. It is
transformed, while unfolding itself, into a visage evidently
divine and supernatural, of an aspect severe, but with a touch of
sweetness. Following the teachings of a mysterious religion, the
Alexandrians honour it as Osiris or Adonis." * From
this statement, there can hardly be a doubt that the magical art
here employed was not other than that now made use of in the
modern phantasmagoria. Such or similar means were used in the
very earliest periods for presenting to the view of the living,
in the secret Mysteries, those who were dead. We have statements
in ancient history referred to the very time of Semiramis, which
imply that magic rites were practised for this very purpose; *
and as the magic lantern, or something akin to it, was manifestly
used in later times for such an end, it is reasonably to conclude
that the same means, or similar, were employed in the most
ancient times, when the same effects were produced. Now, in the
hands of crafty, designing men, this was a powerful means of
imposing upon those who were willing to be imposed upon, who were
averse to the holy spiritual religion of the living God, and who
still hankered after the system that was put down. It was easy
for those who controlled the Mysteries, having discovered secrets
that were then unknown to the mass of mankind, and which they
carefully preserved in their own exclusive keeping, to give them
what might seem ocular demonstration, that Tammuz, who had been
slain, and for whom such lamentations had been made, was still
alive, and encompassed with divine and heavenly glory. From the
lips of one so gloriously revealed, or what was practically the
same, from the lips of some unseen priest, speaking in his name
from behind the scenes, what could be too wonderful or incredible
to be believed? Thus the whole system of the secret Mysteries of
Babylon was intended to glorify a dead man; and when once the
worship of one dead man was established, the worship of many more
was sure to follow. This casts light upon the language of the
106th Psalm, where the Lord, upbraiding Israel for their
apostacy, says: "They joined themselves to Baalpeor, and
ate the sacrifices of the dead." Thus, too, the way was
paved for bringing in all the abominations and crimes of which
the Mysteries became the scenes; for, to those who liked not to
retain God in their knowledge, who preferred some visible object
of worship, suited to the sensuous feelings of their carnal
minds, nothing could seem a more cogent reason for faith or
practice than to hear with their own ears a command given forth
amid so glorious a manifestation apparently by the very divinity
they adored.
The scheme, thus skilfully formed, took effect. Semiramis
gained glory from her dead and deified husband; and in course of
time both of them, under the names of Rhea and Nin, or "Goddess-Mother
and Son," were worshipped with an enthusiasm that was
incredible, and their images were everywhere set up and adored. *
Wherever the negro aspect of Nimrod was found an obstacle to his
worship, this was very easily obviated. According to the Chaldean
doctrine of the transmigration of souls, all that was needful was
just to teach that Ninus had reappeared in the person of a
posthumous son, of a fair complexion, supernaturally borne by his
widowed wife after the father had gone to glory. As the
licentious and dissolute life of Semiramis gave her many
children, for whom no ostensible father on earth would be
alleged, a plea like this would at once sanctify sin, and enable
her to meet the feelings of those who were disaffected to the
true worship of Jehovah, and yet might have no fancy to bow down
before a negro divinity. From the light reflected on Babylon by
Egypt, as well as from the form of the extant images of the
Babylonian child in the arms of the goddess-mother, we have every
reason to believe that this was actually done. In Egypt the fair
Horus, the son of the black Osiris, who was the favourite object
of worship, in the arms of the goddess Isis, was said to have
been miraculously born in consequence of a connection, on the
part of that goddess, who Osiris after his death, * and, in point
of fact, to have been a new incarnation of that god, to avenge
his death on his murderers. It is wonderful to find in what
widely-severed countries, and amongst what millions of the human
race at this day, who never saw a negro, a negro god is
worshipped. But yet, as we shall afterwards see, among the
civilised nations of antiquity, Nimrod almost everywhere fell
into disrepute, and was deposed from his original pre-eminence,
expressly ob deformitatem, * "on account of his
ugliness." Even in Babylon itself, the posthumous
child, as identified with his father, and inheriting all his
father's glory, yet possessing more of his mother's complexion,
came to be the favourite type of the Madonna's divine son.
This son, thus worshipped in his mother's arms, was looked
upon as invested with all the attributes, and called by almost
all the names of the promised Messiah. As Christ, in the Hebrew
of the Old Testament, was called Adonai, The Lord, so Tammuz was
called Adon or Adonis. Under the name of Mithras, he was
worshipped as the "Mediator." * As Mediator
and head of the covenant of grace, he was styled Baal-berith,
Lord of the Covenant --(Judges viii. 33). In this character he is
represented in Persian monuments as seated on the rainbow, the
well-known symbol of the covenant. * In India, under the name of
Vishnu, the Preserver or Saviour of men, though a god, he was
worshipped as the great "Victim-Man," who
before the worlds were, because there was nothing else to offer,
offered himself as a sacrifice. * The Hindu sacred writings teach
that this mysterious offering before all creation is the
foundation of all the sacrifices that have ever been offered
since. * Do any marvel at such a statement being found in sacred
books of a Pagan mythology? Why should they? Since sin entered
the world there has been only one way of salvation, and that
through the blood of the everlasting covenant--a way that all
mankind once knew, from the days of righteous Abel downwards.
When Abel, "by faith," offered unto God his
more excellent sacrifice than that of Cain, it was his faith "in
the blood of the Lamb slain," in the purpose of God "from
the foundation of the world," and in due time to be
actually offered up on Calvary, that gave all the "excellence"
to his offering. If Abel knew of "the blood of the
Lamb," why should Hindoos not have known of it? One
little word shows that even in Greece the virtue of "the
blood of God" had once been known, though that virtue, as
exhibited in its poets, was utterly obscured and degraded. That
word is Ichor. Every reader of the bards of classic Greece knows
that Ichor is the term peculiarly appropriated to the blood of a
divinity. Thus Homer refers to it:--
"From the clear vein the immortal Ichor flowed,
Such stream as issues from a wounded god,
Pure emanation, uncorrupted flood,
Unlike our gross, diseased terrestrial blood." *
Now, what is the proper meaning of the term Ichor? In Greek it
has no etymological meaning whatever; but, in Chaldee, Ichor
signifies "The precious thing." Such a name,
applied to the blood of a divinity, could have only one origin.
It bears its evidence on the very face of it, as coming from that
grand patriarchal tradition, that led Abel to look forward to the
"precious blood" of Christ, the most "precious"
gift that live Divine could give to a guilty world, and which,
while the blood of the only genuine "Victim-Man,"
is at the same time, in deed and in truth, "The blood of
God" (Acts xx. 28). Even in Greece itself, though the
doctrine was utterly perverted, it was not entirely lost. It was
mingled with falsehood and fable, it was hid from the multitude;
but yet, in the secret mystic system it necessarily occupied an
important place. As Servius tells us that the grand purpose of
the Bacchic orgies "was the purification of souls,"
* and as in these orgies there was regularly the tearing
asunder and the shedding of the blood of an animal, in memory of
the shedding of the life's blood of the great divinity
commemorated in them, could this symbolical shedding of the blood
of that divinity have no bearing on the "purification"
from sin, these mystic rites were intended to effect? We have
seen that the sufferings of the Babylonian Zoroaster and Belus
were expressly represented as voluntary, and as submitted to for
the benefit of the world, and that in connection with crushing
the great serpent's head, which implied the removal of sin and
the curse. If the Grecian Bacchus was just another form of the
Babylonian divinity, then his sufferings and blood-shedding must
have been represented as having been undergone for the same
purpose--viz., for the "purification of souls."
From this point of view, let the well-known name of Bacchus in
Greece be looked at. The name was Dionysus or Dionusos. What is
the meaning of that name? Hitherto it has deified all
interpretation. But deal with it as belonging to the language of
that land from which the god himself originally came, and the
meaning is very plain. D'ion-nuso-s signifies "THE
SIN-BEARER," * a name entirely appropriate to the
character of him whose sufferings were represented as so
mysterious, and who was looked up to as the great "purifier
of souls."
Now, this Babylonian God, known in Greece as "The
sin-bearer," and in India as the "Victim-Man,"
among the Buddhists of the East, the original elements of
whose system are clearly Babylonian, was commonly addressed as
the "Saviour of the world." * It has been all
along well enough known that the Greeks occasionally worshipped
the supreme god under the title of "Zeus the
Saviour;" but this title was thought to have reference
only to deliverance in battle, or some such-like temporal
deliverance. But when it is known that "Zeus the
Saviour" was only a title of Dionysus, * the "sin-bearing
Bacchus," his character, as "The
Saviour," appears in quite a different light. In Egypt,
the Chaldean god was held up as the great object of love
adoration, as the god through whom "goodness and truth
were revealed to mankind." * He was regarded as the
predestined heir of all things; and, on the day of his birth, it
was believed that a voice was heard to proclaim, "The
Lord of all the earth is born." * In this character he
was styled "King of kings, and Lord of lords," it
being as a professed representative of this hero-god that the
celebrated Sesostris caused this very title to be added to his
name on the monuments which he erected to perpetuate the fame of
his victories. * Not only was he honoured as the great "World
King," he was regarded as Lord of the invisible world,
and "Judge of the dead;" and it was taught
that, in the world of spirits, all must appear before his dread
tribunal, to have their destiny assigned them. * As the true
Messiah was prophesied of under the title of the "Man
whose name was the branch," he was celebrated not only
as the "Branch of Cush," but as the "Branch
of God," graciously given to the earth for healing all
the ills that flesh is heir to. * He was worshipped in Babylon
under the name of Eli-Bar, or "God the Son." Under
this very name he is introduced by Berosus, the Chaldean
historian, as the second in the list of Babylonian sovereigns. *
Under this name he has been found in the sculptures of Nineveh by
Layard, the name Bar "the Son," having the
sign denoting El or "God" prefixed to it. *
Under the same name he has been found by Sir H. Rawlinson, the
names "Beltis" and the "Shining Bar" being
in immediate juxtaposition. * Under the name of Bar he was
worshipped in Egypt in the earliest times, though in later times
the god Bar was degraded in the popular Pantheon, to make way for
another more popular divinity. * In Pagan Rome itself, as Ovid
testifies, he was worshipped under the name of the
"Eternal Boy." * Thus daringly and directly was a
mere mortal set up in Babylon in opposition to the "Son
of the Blessed."
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