The legend of the fall is not unknown to Hindu mythology, but here the subject of the temptation is the divine Brahma, who, however, is not only mankind collectively, but a man individually.[83] In human shape he is Sivayambhuva, and to try this progenitor of mankind, Siva, as the Supreme Being, “drops from heaven a blossom of the sacred vata, or Indian fig—a tree which has been always venerated by the natives on account of its gigantic size and grateful shadows, and invested alike by Brahman and by Buddhist with mysterious significations, as the tree of knowledge or intelligence (bodhidruma).[84] Captivated by the beauty of the blossom, the first man (Brahma) is determined to possess it. He imagines that it will entitle him to occupy the place of the Immortal, and hold converse with the Infinite; and on gathering up the blossom,[85] he at once becomes intoxicated by this fancy, and believes himself immortal and divine. But ere the flush of exultation has subsided, God Himself appears to him in terrible majesty; and the astonished culprit, stricken by the curse of heaven, is banished far from Brahmapattana, and consigned to an abyss of misery and degradation. From this, however, adds the story, an escape is rendered possible on the expiration of some weary term of suffering and of penance. And the parallelism which it presents to sacred history is well-nigh completed when the legend tells us further that woman, his own wife, whose being was derived from his, had instigated the ambitious hopes which led to their expulsion, and entailed so many ills on their posterity.”[86] That parallelism cannot well be the result of mere coincidence, and the reference to the fig-tree in the Hindu legend not only renders it highly probable that this was the tree of knowledge[87] of Hebrew legend, but confirms, by the symbolical ideas connected with it, the explanation of the nature of the “fall” given in the preceding pages. The real meaning of the legend was well understood by the Gnostics and Manicheans, and those Christian Fathers who were brought into contact with Eastern ideas through them.[88]
The Persians, who were indebted to the Chaldeans for many of their religious ideas, possessed the story of the fall in a form agreeing more closely with that which may have been the original of the Hebrew legend. According to the Boundehesch, one of the sacred books of the Parsees, a tree gave birth to the primeval man Meschia. The body of this androgynous being afterwards became divided, one part being male and the other female—Meschia and Meschiana,[89] as the man and woman were called—were at first pure and holy, but seduced by Ahriman, who had metamorphosed himself into a serpent, they rendered to the Prince of Darkness the worship which was due only to Ormuzd, the God of Light. Meschia and Meschiana thus lost their primitive purity, which neither they nor their descendants could recover without the assistance of Mithra, the god who presided at the mysteries or at the initiations—that is to say, at the way of rehabilitation which is opened before those who seek earnestly the salvation of their souls.[90] At the instigation of Ahriman, the man and woman had, for the first time, committed, in thought, word, and deed, the carnal sin, and thus tainted with original sin all their descendants.[91] Lajard, referring to this legend, adds in a note: “Le triple caractère que presente ici le péché originel est très nettement indiqué dans le passage cité du Boundehesch. Il y est accompagné de détails que font de ce passage un des morceaux les plus curieux de ce traité. Quelques-uns de ces détails ... rattache à ce même mot (serpent) ou à sa racine la dénomination des parties sexuelles de la homme et de la femme.” The Persian account of the fall and its consequences agrees so closely with the Hebrew story when stripped of its figurative language that we cannot doubt that they refer to the same legend,[92] and the use of figurative language in the latter may well lead us to believe that it was of later date than the former.[93] In Ahriman, who was known to Persian teaching as “the old serpent having two feet,” we evidently have the origin of the speaking serpent of Genesis, while in “the seed of the woman who shall bruise the serpent’s head,” the follower of Zarathustra would have seen a reference to Mithra, just as the Christian finds there a prophecy of Christ. Even the antagonism between the Cherubim and the Serpent can be found in Persian teaching, for it was to the malignant action of the Serpent Az that the death, not only of the first man, but of the “primeval bull,” was due.[94] The latter was formed by Ormuzd after the creation of the heavens and the earth, and that from which proceeded the material prototypes of all the beings “who live in the water, on the earth, and in the air.”[95]
It is very probable, however, that when the legend was appropriated by the compiler of the Hebrew Scriptures it had a moral significance as well as a merely figurative sense. The legend is divisible into two parts—the first of which is a mere statement of the imparting of wisdom by the serpent and by the eating of the fruit of a certain tree, these ideas being synonymous, or at least consistent, as appears by the attributes of the Chaldean Héa.[96] The nature of this wisdom may be found in the rites of the Hindu Sacti Puja.[97] The second part of the legend, which is probably of much later date, is the condemnation of the act referred to, as being in itself evil and as leading to misery, and even to death itself. The origin of this later notion must be sought in the esoteric doctrine taught in the mysteries of Mithra, the fundamental idea of which was the descent of the soul to earth and its re-ascent to the celestial abodes after it had overcome the temptations and debasing influences of the material life.[98] Lajard shows that these mysteries were really taken from the secret worship of the Chaldean Mylitta, but the reference to “the seed of the woman who shall bruise the serpent’s head,” is too Mithraic for us to seek for an earlier origin for the special form of the Hebrew myth. The object of the myth evidently was to explain the origin of death,[99] from which man was to be delivered by a coming Saviour, and the whole idea is strictly Mithraic, the Persian deity himself being a Saviour God.[100] The importance attached to virginity by the early Christians sprang from the same source. The Avesta is full of reference to “purity” of life, and there is reason to believe that in the secret initiations the followers of Mithra were taught to regard marriage itself as impure.[101]
The religious ideas which found expression in the legend of the fall were undoubtedly of late development,[102] although derived from still earlier phases of religious thought. The simple worship in symbol of the organs of generation, and of the ancestral head of the family, prompted by the desire for offspring and the veneration for him who produced it, was extended to the generative force in nature. The bull which, as we have seen, symbolised this force, was not restricted to earth, but was in course of time transferred to the heavens, and as one of the constellations was thought to have a peculiar relation to certain of the planetary bodies. This astral phase of the Phallic superstition was not unknown to the Mosaic religion. A still earlier form of this superstition was, however, known to the Hebrews, probably forming a link between the worship of the symbol of personal generative power and that of the heavenly phallus; as the worship of the bull connected the veneration for the human generator with that for the universal father. One of the primeval gods of antiquity was Hermes, the Syro-Egyptian Thoth, and the Roman Mercury. Kircher identifies him also with the god Terminus. This is doubtless true, as Hermes was a god of boundaries, and appears, as Dulaure has well shown, to have presided over the national frontiers. The meaning of the word “Thoth”—erecting—associates it with this fact. The peculiar primitive form of Mercury or Hermes was “a large stone, frequently square, and without either hands or feet. Sometimes the triangular shape was preferred, sometimes an upright pillar, and sometimes a heap of rude stones!”[103] The pillars were called by the Greeks Hermæ, and the heaps were known as Hermèan heaps—the latter being accumulated “by the custom of each passenger throwing a stone to the daily-increasing mass in honour of the god.” Sometimes the pillar was represented with the attributes of Priapus.[104]
The identification of Hermes or Mercury with Priapus is confirmed by the offices which the latter deity fulfilled. One of the most important was that of protector of gardens and orchards, and probably this was the original office performed by Hermes in his character of “a God of the country.”[105] Figures set up as charms to protect the produce of the ground would, in course of time, be used not only for this purpose, but also to mark the boundaries of the land protected, and these two offices being divided, two deities would finally be formed out of one. The Greek Hermes was connected also with the Egyptian Khem, and no less, if we may judge from the symbols used in his worship, with the Hebrew Eloah. Thus, in the history of the Hebrew patriarchs, we are told that when Jacob entered into a covenant with his father-in-law, Laban, a pillar was set up and a heap of stones made, and Laban said to Jacob, “Behold this heap and behold this pillar, which I have cast betwixt me and thee; this heap be witness, and this pillar be witness, that I will not pass over this heap to thee, and that thou shall not pass over this heap and this pillar unto me for harm.”[106] We have here the Hermæ and Hermèan heap, used by the Greeks as landmarks and placed by them on the public roads. In the linga of India we have another instance of the use of the pillar symbol. The form of this symbol is sufficiently expressive of the idea which it embodies, an idea which is more explicitly shown when the Linga and the Yoni are, as is usually the case among the worshippers of the Hindu Siva, combined to form the Lingam. The stone figure is not, however, itself a god, but only representative of a spirit,[107] who is thought to be able to satisfy the yearning for children, so characteristic of many primitive peoples, this probably having been its original object and the source of its use as an amulet for the protection of children against the influence of the evil eye. In course of time, however, when other property came to be coveted equally with offspring, the power to give this property would naturally be referred to the primitive Phallic spirit, and hence he became, not merely the protector, as above seen, of the produce of the fields, and the guardian of boundaries, but also the God of wealth and traffic, and even the patron of thieves, as was the case with the Mercury of the Romans. The Hebrew patriarchs desired great flocks as well as numerous descendants, and hence the symbolic pillar was peculiarly fitted for their religious rites. It is related even of Abraham, the traditional founder of the Hebrew people, that he “planted a grove[108] (eshel) in Beersheba, and called there on the name of Jehovah, the everlasting Elohim.”[109] From the Phallic character of the “grove” (ashera),[110] said to have been in the House of Jehovah, we must suppose that the eshel of Abraham also had a Phallic reference.[111] Most probably the so-called “grove” of the earlier patriarch, though perhaps of wood, and the stone “bethel” of Jacob had the same form, and were simply the betylus,[112] the primitive symbol of deity among all the Semitic and many Hamitic peoples.
The participation of the Hebrew patriarchs in the rites connected with the “pillar-worship” of the ancient world, renders it extremely probable that they were not strangers to the later planetary worship. Many of the old Phallic symbols were associated with the new superstition, and Abraham, being a Chaldean, it is natural to suppose that he was one of its adherents. Tradition, indeed, affirms that Abraham was a great astronomer, and at one time at least a worshipper of the heavenly bodies, and that he and the other patriarchs continued to be affected by this superstition is shown by various incidents related in the Pentateuch. Thus, in the description given of the sacrificial covenant between Abraham and Jehovah, it is said that, after Abraham had divided the sacrificial animals, a deep sleep fell upon him as the sun was going down, and Jehovah spoke with him. “Then when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp, that passed between those pieces.” The happening of this event at the moment of the sun’s setting reminds us of the Sabæan custom of praying to the setting sun, still practised, according to Palgrave, among the nomads of central Arabia. That some great religious movement, ascribed by tradition to Abraham, did take place among the Semites at an early date is undoubted. What the object of this covenant was it is difficult to decide. It should be remembered that the Chaldeans worshipped a plurality of gods, supposed to have been symbolised by the seven planets. Among these deities the sun-god held a comparatively inferior position—the moon-god Hurki coming before him in the second triad.[113] It was at Ur, the special seat of the worship of the moon-god,[114] that Abraham is said to have lived before he quitted it for Haran. This fact, considered in the light of the traditions relating to the great patriarch, may perhaps justify us in inferring that the reformation he endeavoured to introduce was the substitution of a simple sun-worship, for the planetary cultus of the Chaldeans, in which the worship of the moon must to him have appeared to occupy an important place. The new faith was, indeed, a return to the old Phallic idea of a god of personal generation, worshipped through the symbolical betylus, but associated also with the adoration of the sun as the especial representative of the deity. That Abraham had higher notions of the relation of man to the divine being than his forerunners is very probable, but his sojourn in Haran proves that there was nothing fundamentally different between his religious faith and that of his Syrian neighbours. I am inclined, indeed, to believe that to the traditional Abraham must be ascribed the establishment of sun-worship throughout Phœnicia and Lower Egypt in connection with the symbols of an earlier and more simple Phallic deity. Tradition, in fact, declares that he taught the Egyptians astronomy,[115] and we shall see that the religion of the Phœnicians, as, indeed, that of the Hebrews themselves, was the worship of Saturn, the erect, pillar-god who, under different names, appears to have been at the head of the pantheons of most of the peoples of antiquity. The reference in Hebrew history to the seraphim of Jacob’s family recalls the fact that Abraham’s father was Terah, a “maker of images.” The teraphim were doubtless the same as the seraphim, which were serpent images,[116] and probably the household charms or idols of the Semitic worshippers of the sun-god, to whom the serpent was sacred.
Little is known of the religious habits of the Hebrews during their abode in Egypt. Probably they differed little from those of the Egyptians themselves, and even in the religion of Moses, so-called, which we may presume to have been a reformed faith, there are many points of contact with the earlier cultus. The use of the ark of Osiris and Isis shows the influence of Egyptian ideas, and the introduction of the new name for God, Jahve, is evidence of contact with later Phœnician thought. The ark was doubtless used to symbolise nature, as distinguished from the serpent and pillar symbols, which had relation more particularly to man. The latter, however, were by far the most important, as they were most intimately connected with the worship of the national deity, who was the divine father, as Abraham was the human progenitor, of the Hebrew people. That this deity, notwithstanding his change of name, retained his character of a sun-god, is shown by the fact that he is repeatedly said to have appeared to Moses under the figure of a flame. The pillar of fire which guided the Hebrews by night in the wilderness, the appearance of the cloudy pillar at the door of the Tabernacle, and probably of a flame over the mercy seat to betoken the presence of Jehovah, and the perpetual fire on the altar, all point to the same conclusion. The notion entertained by Ewald that the idea connected with the Hebrew Jahve was that of a “Deliverer” or a “Healer” (Saviour)[117] is quite consistent with the fact I have stated. The primeval Phenic deity El or Cronus was not only the preserver of the world, for the benefit of which he offered a mystical sacrifice,[118] but “Saviour” was a common title of the sun-gods of antiquity.
There is one remarkable incident which is said to have happened during the wanderings of the Hebrews in the Sinaitic wilderness which appears to throw much light on the character of the Mosaic cultus and to connect it with other religions. I refer to the use of the brazen serpent as a symbol for the healing of the people. The worship of the golden calf may, perhaps, be said to be an idolatrous act in imitation of the rites of Egyptian Osiris worship, although probably suggested by the use of the ark. The other case, however, is far different, and it is worth while repeating the exact words in which the use of the serpent symbol is described. When the people were bitten by the “fiery” serpents,[119] Moses prayed for them, and we read that, therefore, “Jehovah said unto Moses, make thee a fiery serpent (literally, a seraph), and set it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.”[120] It would seem from this account that the Hebrew seraph was, as before suggested, in the form of a serpent; but what was the especial significance of this healing figure? At an earlier stage of our inquiry reference was made to the fact of the serpent being indirectly, through its attribute of wisdom, a Phallic symbol, but also directly an emblem of “life,” and to the peculiar position it held in nearly all the religions of antiquity. In later Egyptian mythology the contest between Osiris and the Evil Being, and afterwards that between Horus and Typhon, occupy an important place. Typhon, the adversary of Horus, was figured under the symbol of a serpent, called Aphôphis or the Giant,[121] and it cannot be doubted that, if not a form of, he was identified with the god Seth. Professor Reuvens refers to an invocation of Typhon-Seth,[122] and Bunsen quotes the statement of Epiphanius that “the Egyptians celebrate the festivals of Typhon under the form of an ass, which they call Seth.”[123] Whatever may be the explanation of the fact, it is undoubted that, notwithstanding the hatred with which he was afterwards regarded, this god Seth or Set was at one time highly venerated in Egypt. Bunsen says that up to the thirteenth century B.C. Set “was a great god universally adored throughout Egypt, who confers on the sovereigns of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties the symbols of life and power. The most glorious monarch of the latter dynasty, Sethos, derives his name from this deity.” He adds: “But subsequently, in the course of the twentieth dynasty, he is suddenly treated as an evil demon, inasmuch as his effigies and name are obliterated on all the monuments and inscriptions that could be reached.” Moreover, according to this distinguished writer, Seth “appears gradually among the Semites as the background of their religious consciousness;” and not merely was he “the primitive god of Northern Egypt and Palestine,” but his genealogy as “the Seth of Genesis, the father of Enoch (the man), must be considered as originally running parallel with that derived from the Elohim, Adam’s father.”[124] That Seth had some special connection with the Hebrews is proved, among other things, by the peculiar position occupied in their religious system by the ass—the first-born of which alone of all animals was allowed to be redeemed[125]—and the red heifer, whose ashes were to be reserved as a “water of separation” for purification from sin.[126] Both of these animals were in Egypt sacred to Seth (Typhon), the ass being his symbol, and red oxen being at one time sacrificed to him, although at a later date objects of a red colour were disliked, owing to their association with the dreaded Typhon.[127] That we have a reference to this deity in the name of the Hebrew lawgiver is very probable. No satisfactory derivation of this name, Moses, Môsheh (Heb.), has yet been given. Its original form was probably Am-a-ses or Am-sesa,[128] which might become to the Hebrews Om-ses or Mo-ses, meaning only the (god) Ses, i.e., Set or Seth.[129] On this hypothesis we may have preserved, in the first book of Moses (so-called), some of the traditional history said to have been contained in the sacred books of the Egyptian Thoth, and of the records engraved on the pillars of Seth. It is somewhat remarkable that, according to a statement of Diodorus, when Antiochus Epiphanes entered the temple at Jerusalem, he found in the Holy of Holies a stone figure of Moses, represented as a man with a long beard, mounted on an ass, and having a book in his hand.[130] The Egyptian Mythus of Typhon actually said that Set fled from Egypt riding on a grey ass.[131] It is strange, to say the least, that Moses should not have been allowed to enter the promised land, and that he should be so seldom referred to by later writers until long after the reign of David,[132] and above all that the name given to his successor was Joshua—i.e., Saviour. It is worthy of notice that “Nun,” the name of the father of Joshua, is the Semitic word for fish, the Phallic character of the fish in Chaldean mythology being undoubted. Nin, the planet Saturn, was the fish-god of Berosus, and, as may possibly be shown, he is really the same as the Assyrian national deity Asshur, whose name and office have a curious resemblance to those of the Hebrew leader, Joshua.
But what was the character of the primitive Semitic deity? Bunsen seems to think that Plutarch in one passage alludes to the identity of Typhon (Seth) and Osiris.[133] This is a remarkable idea, and yet curiously enough Sir Gardner Wilkinson says that Typhon-Seth may have been derived from the pigmy Pthath-Sokari-Osiris,[134] who was clearly only another form of Osiris himself. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Horus, the son of Osiris, is declared to be at the same time Set, “by the distinction made between them by Thoth.”[135] However that may be, the Phallic origin of Seth can be shown from other data. Thus it appears that the word Set means, in Hebrew as in Egyptian, pillar, and, in a general sense, the erect, elevated, high.[136] Moreover, in a passage of the Book of the Dead, Set, according to Bunsen, is called Tet, a fact which intimates that Thoth inherited many of the attributes of Set.[137] They were, however, in some sense the same deities, it being through Thoth that Set was identified with Horus. We have here an explanation of the statement that Tet, the Phœnician Taaut, was the snake-god, Esmun-Esculapius, the serpent being the symbol of Tet, as we have seen it to have been that of Seth also. In this we have a means of identifying the Semitic deity Seth with the Saturn of related deities of other peoples. Ewald says that “the common name for God, Eloah, among the Hebrews, as among all the Semites, goes back into the earliest times.”[138] Bryant goes further, and declares that El was originally the name of the supreme deity among all the nations of the East.[139] This idea is confirmed, so far as Chaldea is concerned, by later researches, which show that Il or El was at the head of the Babylonian Pantheon. With this deity must be identified the Il or Ilus of the Phœnicians, who was born the same as Cronus, who, again, was none other than the primeval Saturn, whose worship appears to have been at one period almost universal among European and Asiatic peoples. Saturn and El were thus the same deity, the latter, like the Semitic Seth, being, as is well known, symbolised by the serpent.[140] A direct point of contact between Seth and Saturn is found in the Hebrew idol Kiyun mentioned by Amos, the planet Saturn being still called Kevan by Eastern peoples. This idol was represented in the form of a pillar, the primeval symbol of deity, which was common undoubtedly to all the gods here mentioned.[141] These symbolical pillars were called betyli or betulia. Sometimes also the column was called Abaddir, which, strangely enough, Bryant identifies with the serpent-god.[142] There can be no doubt that both the pillar and the serpent were associated with many of the sun-gods of antiquity.
Notwithstanding what has been said it is undoubtedly true, however, that all these deities, including the Semitic Seth, became at an early date recognised as sun-gods, although in so doing they lost nothing of their primitive character. What this was is sufficiently shown by the significant names and titles they bore. Thus, as we have seen, Set (Seth) itself meant the erect, elevated, high, his name on the Egyptian monuments being nearly always accompanied by a stone.[143] The name, Kiyun or Kevan, of this deity, said by Amos to have been worshipped in the wilderness, signifies “god of the pillar.” The idea expressed by the title is shown by the name Baal Tamar, which means “Baal as a pillar,” or “Phallus,” consequently “the fructifying god.” The title “erect,” when given to a deity, seems always to imply a Phallic idea, and hence we have the explanation of the S. mou used frequently in the “Book of the Dead” in relation to Thoth or to Set.[144] There is doubtless a reference of the same kind in the Phœnician myth, that “Melekh taught men the special art of creating solid walls and buildings;” although Bunsen finds in this myth “the symbolical mode of expressing the value of the use of fire in building houses.”[145] That these myths embody a Phallic notion may be confirmed by reference to the Phœnician Kabiri. According to Bunsen, “the Kabiri and the divinities identified with them are explained by the Greeks and Romans as ‘the strong,’ ‘the great;’” while in the book of Job, Kabbîr, the strong, is used as an epithet of God. Again, Sydyk, the father of the Kabiri, is “the Just,” or, in a more original sense, the Upright; and this deity, with his sons, correspond to Ptah, the father of the Phœnician Pataikoi. Ptah, however, seems to be derived from a root which signifies in Hebrew “to open,” and Sydyk himself, therefore, may, says Bunsen, be described as “the Opener” of the Cosmic Egg.[146] The Phallic meaning of this title is evident from its application to Esmun-Esculapius, the son of Sydyk, who, as the snake-god, was identical with Tet, the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes.