What could ever have induced mankind to think of calling the
great Goddess-mother, or mother of gods and men, a House or
Habitation? The answer is evidently to be found in a statement
made in Gen. ii. 21, in regard to the formation of the mother of
mankind: "And the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon
Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs, and closed up
the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had
taken from man, made (margin, literally BUILDED ) he into a
woman." That this history of the rib was well known to
the Babylonians, is manifest from one of the names given to their
primeval goddess, as found in Berosus (lib. i. p. 50). That name
is Thalatth. But Thalatth is just the Chaldean form of the Hebrew
Tzalaa, in the feminine,--the very word used in Genesis for the
rib, of which Eve was formed; and the other name which Berosus
couples with Thalatth, does much to confirm this; for that name,
which is Omorka, * just signifies "The Mother of the
world." When we have thus deciphered the meaning of the
name Thalatth, as applied to the "mother of the
world," that leads us at once to the understanding, of
the name Thalasius, * applied by the Romans to the god of
marriage, the origin of which name has hitherto been sought in
vain. Thalatthi signifies "belonging to the rib,"
and, with the Roman termination, becomes Thalatthius or "Thalasius,
the man of the rib." And what name more appropriate
than this for Adam, as the god of marriage, who, when the rib was
brought to him, said, "This is now bone of my bones, and
flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was
taken out of man." At first, when Thalatth, the rib,
was builded into a woman, that "woman" was, in
a very important sense, the "Habitation" or "Temple
of God;" and had not the Fall intervened, all her
children would, in consequence of mere natural generation, have
been the children of God. The entrance of sin into the world
subverted the original constitution of things. Still, when the
promise of a Saviour was given and embraced, the renewed
indwelling of the Holy Spirit was given too, not that she might
thereby have any power in herself to bring forth children unto
God, but only that she might duly act the part of a mother to a
spiritually living offspring--to those whom God of his free grace
should quicken, and bring from death unto life. Now, Paganism
willingly overlooked all this; and taught, as soon as its
votaries were prepared for receiving it, that this renewed
indwelling of the spirit of God in the woman, was identification,
and so it deified her. Then Rhea, "the gazer,"
the mother of mankind, was identified with Cybele "the
binder with cords," or Juno, "the Dove," that
is, the Holy Spirit. Then, in the blasphemous Pagan sense, she
became Athor, "the Habitation of God," or
Sacca, or Sacta, "the tabernacle" or "temple,"
in whom dwelt "all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily." Thus she became Heva, "The Living
One;" not in the sense in which Adam gave that name to
his wife after the Fall, when the hope of life out of the midst
of death was so unexpectedly presented to her as well as to
himself; but in the sense of the communicator of spiritual and
eternal life to men; for Rhea was called the "fountain
of the blessed ones." * The agency, then, of this
deified woman was held to be indispensable for the begetting of
spiritual children to God, in this, as it was admitted, fallen
world. Looked at from this point of view, the meaning of the name
given to the Babylonian goddess in 2 Kings xvii. 30, will be at
once apparent. The name Succoth-benoth has very frequently been
supposed to be a plural word, and to refer to booths or
tabernacles used in Babylon for infamous purposes. But, as
observed by Clericus (lib. i. De Chaldoeis, sect. 2, cap. 37),
who refers to the Rabbins as being of the same opinion, the
context clearly shows that the name must be the name of an idol:
(ver. 29, 30), "Howbeit every nation made gods of their
own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the
Samaritans have made, every nation in their cities wherein they
dwelt. And the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth." It
is here evidently an idol that is spoken of; and as the name is
feminine, that idol must have been the image of a goddess. Taken
in this sense, then, and in the light of the Chaldean system as
now unfolded, the meaning of "Succoth-benoth,"
as applied to the Babylonian goddess, is just "The
tabernacle of child-bearing." * When the Babylonian
system was developed, Eve was represented as the first that
occupied this place, and the very name Benoth, that signifies "child-bearing,"
explains also how it came about that the Woman, who, as Hestia or
Vesta, was herself called the "Habitation,"
got the credit of "having invented the art of building
houses" (SMITH, sub voce "Hestia").
Benah, the verb, from which Benoth comes, signifies at once to
"bring forth children" and "to build
houses;" the bringing forth of children being
metaphorically regarded as the "building up of the
house," that is, of the family.
While the Pagan system, so far as a Goddess-mother was
concerned, was founded on this identification of the Celestial
and Terrestial mothers of the "blessed" immortals,
each of these two divinities was still celebrated as having, in
some sense, a distinct individuality; and, in consequence, all
the different incarnations of the Saviour-seed were represented
as born of two mothers. It is well known that Bimater, or
Two-mothered, is one of the distinguishing epithets applied to
Bacchus. Ovid makes the reason of the application of this epithet
to him to have arisen from the myth, that when in embryo, he was
rescued from the flames in which his mother died, was sewed up in
Jupiter's thigh, and then brought forth at the due time. Without
inquiring into the secret meaning of this, it is sufficient to
state that Bacchus had two goddess-mothers; for, not only was he
conceived by Semele, but he was brought into the world by the
goddess Ippa (PROCLUS in Timoeum, lib. ii. sec. 124, pp. 292,
293). This is the very same thing, no doubt, that is referred to,
when it is said that after his mother Semele's death, his aunt
Ino acted the part of a mother and nurse unto him. The same thing
appears in the mythology of Egypt, for there we read that Osiris,
under the form of Anubis, having been brought forth by Nepthys,
was adopted and brought up by the goddess Isis as her own son. In
consequence of this, the favourite Triad came everywhere to be
the two mothers and the son. In WILKINSON, vol. vi., plate 35,
the reader will find a divine Triad, consisting of Isis and Nepthys, and the child of Horus between them. In Babylon, the
statement of Diodorus (lib. ii. p. 69) shows that the Triad there
at one period was two goddesses and the son--Hera, Rhea, and
Zeus; and in the Capitol at Rome, in like manner, the Triad was
Juno, Minerva, and Jupiter; while, when Jupiter was worshipped by
the Roman matrons as "Jupiter puer," or "Jupiter
the child," it was in company with Juno and the goddess
Fortuna (CICERO, De Divinatione, lib. ii. cap. 41, vol. iii. p.
77). This kind of divine Triad seems to be traced up to very
ancient times among the Romans; for it is stated both by
Dionysius Halicarnassius and by Livy, that soon after the
expulsion of the Tarquins, there was at Rome a temple in which
were worshipped Ceres, Liber, and Libera (DION, HALICARN., vol. i. pp. 25, 26; and
LIVY, vol. i. p. 233).
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