The Chaldean philosophy, notwithstanding the obscurity that has rendered it difficult of research, has been highly extolled, not only by the orientals and Greeks, but by Jewish and Christian writers: but upon recurring to authorities that are unquestionable, there seems to be little or nothing in this branch of the barbaric philosophy which deserves notice. The following brief detail will include the most interesting particulars. From the testimony of Diodorus, and also from other ancient authorities, collected by Eusebius, it appears, that the Chaldeans believed in God, the Lord and Parent of all, by whose providence the world is governed. From this principle sprung their religious rites, the immediate object of which was a supposed race of spiritual beings or demons, whose existence could not have been imagined, without first conceiving the idea of a supreme Being, the source of all intelligence. The belief of a supreme Deity, the fountain of all the divinities which were supposed to preside over the several parts of the material world, was the true origin of all religious worship, however idolatrous, not excepting even that which consisted in paying divine honours to the memory of dead men. Beside the supreme Being, the Chaldeans supposed spiritual beings to exist, of several orders; gods, demons, heroes: these they probably distributed into subordinate classes, agreeably to their practice of theurgy or magic. The Chaldeans, in common with the eastern nations in general, admitted the existence of certain evil spirits, clothed in a vehicle of grosser matter; and in subduing or counteracting these, they placed a great part of the efficacy of their religious incantations. These doctrines were the mysteries of the Chaldean religion, imparted only to the initiated. Their popular religion consisted in the worship of the sun, moon, planets, and stars, as divinities, after the general practice of the east, Job xxxi, 27. From the religious system of the Chaldeans were derived two arts, for which they were long celebrated; namely, magic and astrology. Their magic, which should not be confounded with witchcraft, or a supposed intercourse with evil spirits, consisted in the performance of certain religious ceremonies or incantations, which were supposed, by the interposition of good demons, to produce supernatural effects. Their astrology was founded upon the chimerical principle, that the stars have an influence, either beneficial or malignant, upon the affairs of men, which may be discovered, and made the certain ground of prediction, in particular cases; and the whole art consisted in applying astronomical observations to this fanciful purpose, and thus imposing upon the credulity of the vulgar.
CHAMBER. See [Upper Room].
CHAPTERS. The New Testament was early portioned out into certain divisions, which appear under various names. The custom of reading it publicly in the Christian assemblies after the law and the prophets, would soon cause such divisions to be applied to it. The law and the prophets were for this end already divided into parashim and haptaroth, and the New Testament could not long remain without being treated in the same way. The distribution into church lessons was indeed the oldest that took place in it. The Christian teachers gave the name of pericopes, to the sections read as lessons by the Jews. Justin Martyr avails himself of this expression, when he quotes prophetical passages. Such is the case also in Clemens of Alexandria; but this writer also gives the name of ϖερικόπαι to larger sections of the Gospels and St. Paul’s Epistles. Pericopes therefore were nothing else but ἀναγνώσματα, church lessons, or sections of the New Testament, which were read in the assemblies after Moses and the Prophets. In the third century another division also into κεφαλαία occurs. Dionysius of Alexandria speaks of them in reference to the Apocalypse, and the controversies respecting it. Some, says he, went through the whole book, from chapter to chapter, to show that it bore no sense. In the fifth century Euthalius produced again a division into chapters, which was accounted his invention. He himself however lays claim to nothing more than having composed τὴν τῶν κεφαλαίων ἐκθεσίν, the summaries of the contents of the chapters in the Acts of the Apostles and the Catholic Epistles. In the Epistles of St. Paul, not even these are his property; but they are derived “from one of the wisest of the fathers, and worshippers of Christ,” as he himself says, and he only incorporated them into his stichometrical edition of the New Testament. The chapters must, therefore, have been in existence before Euthalius, if the father whom he mentions composed notices of their contents. But how old they are cannot easily be known. The Euthalian κεφαλαία are distinguished from the pericopes, or reading portions, by their extent. The Jews had divided the law into fifty-three parashim, according to the number of the Sabbaths, taking into account the leap year. Nearly so distributed were the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul’s and the Catholic Epistles, according to the Alexandrine ritual, which Euthalius follows in his stichometrical edition, namely, into fifty-six pericopes; three more than the number of κουριάκαι ἡμέραι, Sundays, probably for three festivals, which might be observed at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide. The Gospels too had naturally in the same way many pericopes. Such in older times was the practice in Asia also; for Justin says, that the believers there assemble themselves for prayer and reading on Sunday only, ἐν τῇ τοῦ ἡλίου ἡμερᾷ. Since then the whole New Testament was distributed into so few sections, these must necessarily have been great, and a pericope in Euthalius sometimes includes in it four, five, and even six chapters. We have spoken hitherto only of the chapters of the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles. In the Gospels there occur to us κεφαλαία of two sorts, the greater and the lesser. The lesser are the Ammonian which Eusebius rejected, after which he composed his ten canons in order to point out in the Monotessaron of Ammonius the respective contents of every Evangelist. He has explained himself in the Epistle to Carpianus on their use, and on the formation of his ten canons, where he names his sections sometimes κεφαλαία, sometimes ϖερικόπαι. Matthew has three hundred and fifty-five of these, Mark two hundred and thirty-six, Luke three hundred and forty-two, and John two hundred and thirty-two. The other chapters are independent of these, which from their extent are also named the greater. Of these, Matthew contains sixty-eight, Mark forty-nine, Luke eighty-three, and John only eighteen. There are but very few manuscripts which have not both of them together. As to the church lessons, to come back to them once more, various alterations took place in them. As the festival days multiplied, the old division could no longer subsist, and in many churches the pericopes were shortened. At last as the ritual of ceremonies was enlarged, only certain portions were extracted from the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles, which sometimes were very short. A codex of this sort was termed ἐκλογάδιον; in reference to the Gospels alone, εὐαγγελιϛάριον; and in respect to the other books, ϖραξαπόϛολος. This seems to have taken place among the Latins much earlier than among the Greeks. There are perfectly credible testimonies, which establish such an arrangement among the former at the middle of the fifth century, at which date nothing of the kind is perceptible among the latter. The expression, ϖραξαπόϛολος, appears indeed frequently in the Typicum of St. Sabas, who died in the beginning of the fifth century. But the Greeks do not disavow, that this Typicum or monastic ritual was not by himself, that it perished in the invasions of the barbarians, and was composed anew by John of Damascus, with references memoriter, [from memory,] to that of Sabas. He lived toward the middle of the eighth century, and with an earlier notice of lectionaries among the Greeks we are not acquainted. Finally, our present chapters come, as it is well known, from Cardinal Hugo de St. Cher, who in the twelfth century composed a concordance, and to this end distributed the Bible according to his own discretion into smaller portions. They are now moreover generally admitted in the editions of the Hebrew and Greek texts. The verses, however, are from Robert Stephens, who first introduced them in his edition of the New Testament, A. D. 1551. His son, Henry Stephens, was the first to record this for the information of posterity, in the preface to his Greek Concordance to the New Testament; in which he says, that two facts connected with it equally demand our admiration: “The first is, that my father, while travelling from Paris to Lyons, finished this division of each chapter into verses, and indeed the greater part of it [inter equitandum] when riding on his horse. The second fact is, that, a short time prior to this journey, while he had the matter still in contemplation, almost all those to whom he mentioned it told him plainly that he was an indiscreet man, as though he had a wish to spend his time and labour on an affair which would prove utterly useless, and which would not obtain for him any commendation, but, on the contrary, would expose him to much ridicule. But behold the result: in opposition to the opinion which condemned and discountenanced my father’s undertaking, as soon as his invention was published, every edition of the New Testament, whether in the Greek, Latin, French, German, or in any other language, which did not adopt it, was immediately discarded.” It perhaps will not be unedifying to add, that this passage has yielded mankind another proof that LEARNING is not always synonymous with WISDOM: for the phrase respecting riding, which occurs in it, has furnished matter of warm dispute to literary men; some of them contending that inter equitandum means, that Robert Stephens performed the greater part of his task while actually on horseback; but others, giving a more extended construction to the expression, assert that he was engaged in this occupation only when stopping for refreshment at inns on the road. Though the first interpretation would probably obtain the greatest number of suffrages from really learned and impartial men; yet it is quite sufficient for mankind to know, in either way, that this division into verses was completed in the course of that journey.
CHARIOTS OF WAR. The Scripture speaks of two sorts of these chariots, one for princes and generals to ride in, the other used to break the enemies battalions, by letting them loose armed with iron, which made dreadful havoc among the troops. The most ancient chariots of which we have any notice are Pharaoh’s, which were overwhelmed in the Red Sea, Exodus xiv, 7. The Canaanites, whom Joshua engaged at the waters of Merom, had cavalry and a multitude of chariots, Joshua xi, 4. Sisera, the general of Jabin, king of Hazor, had nine hundred chariots of iron in his army, Judges iv, 3. The tribe of Judah could not get possession of all the lands of their lot, because the ancient inhabitants of the country were strong in chariots of iron. The Philistines, in the war carried on by them against Saul, had thirty thousand chariots and six thousand horsemen, 1 Sam. xiii, 5. David, having taken one thousand chariots of war from Hadadezer, king of Syria, hamstrung the horses, and burned nine hundred chariots, reserving only one hundred to himself, 2 Sam. viii, 4. Solomon had a considerable number of chariots, but we know of no military expedition in which they were employed, 1 Kings x, 26. As Judea was a very mountainous country, chariots could be of no great use there, except in the plains; and the Hebrews often evaded them by fighting on the mountains. The kings of the Hebrews, when they went to war, were themselves generally mounted in chariots from which they fought, and issued their orders; and there was always a second chariot empty, which followed each of them, that if the first was broken he might ascend the other, 2 Chron. xxxv, 24. Chariots were sometimes consecrated to the sun; and the Scripture observes, that Josiah burned those which had been dedicated to the sun by his predecessors, 2 Kings xxiii, 11. This superstitious custom was borrowed from the Heathens, and principally from the Persians.
CHARITY, considered as a Christian grace, ought in our translation, in order to avoid mistake, to have been translated love. It is the love of God, and the love of our neighbour flowing from the love of God; and is described with wonderful copiousness, felicity, and even grandeur, by St. Paul, 1 Cor. xiii; a portion of Scripture which, as it shows the habitual temper of a true Christian, cannot be too frequently referred to for self-examination, and ought to be constantly present to us as our rule. 2. In the popular sense, charity is almsgiving; a duty of practical Christianity which is solemnly enjoined, and to which special promises are annexed.
CHARM. See [Divination].
CHEBAR, a river of Chaldea, Ezek. i, 1. It is thought to have risen near the head of the Tigris, and to have run through Mesopotamia, to the south-west, and emptied itself into the Euphrates.
CHEDORLAOMER, a king of the Elamites, who were either Persians, or people bordering upon the Persians. This was one of the four confederated kings, who made war upon the five kings of the pentapolis of Sodom; and who, after having defeated them, and made themselves masters of a great booty, were pursued and dispersed by Abraham, Gen. xiv.
CHEMARIM. This word occurs only once in our version of the Bible: “I will cut off the remnant of Baal, and the name of the Chemarims (Chemarim) with the priests,” Zeph. i, 4; but it frequently occurs in the Hebrew, and is generally translated “priests of the idols,” or “priests clothed in black,” because chamar signifies blackness. By this word the best commentators understand the priests of false gods, and in particular the worshippers of fire, because they were, it is said, dressed in black. Le Clerc, however, declares against this last opinion. Our translators of the Bible would seem sometimes to understand by this word the idols or objects of worship, rather than their priests. This is also the opinion of Le Clerc. Calmet observes that camar in Arabic signifies the moon, and that Isis is the same deity. “Among the priests of Isis,” says Calmet, “were those called melanephori, that is, wearers of black; but it is uncertain whether this name was given them by reason of their dressing wholly in black, or because they wore a black shining veil in the processions of this goddess.”
CHEMOSH, כמוש, an idol of the Moabites, Numbers xxi, 29. The name is derived from a root which in Arabic signifies to hasten. For this reason, many believe Chemosh to be the sun, whose precipitate course might well procure it the name of swift. Some identify Chemosh with Ammon; and Macrobius shows that Ammon was the sun, whose rays were denoted by his horns. Calmet is of opinion that the god Hamanus and Apollo Chomeus, mentioned by Strabo and Ammianus Marcellinus, was Chamos, or the sun. These deities were worshipped in many parts of the east. Some, from the resemblance of the Hebrew Chamos with the Greek Comos, have thought Chamos to signify Bacchus. Jerom and most interpreters consider Chamosh and Peor as the same deity; but some think that Baal-Peor was Tammuz, or Adonis. To Chemosh Solomon erected an altar upon the Mount of Olives, 1 Kings xi, 7. As to the form of the idol Chemosh, the Scripture is silent; but if, according to Jerom, it were like Baal-Peor, it must have been of the beeve kind; as were, probably, all the Baals, though accompanied with various insignia. There can be little doubt that part of the religious services performed to Chemosh, as to Baal-Peor, consisted in revelling and drunkenness, obscenities and impurities of the grossest kinds. From Chemosh the Greeks seem to have derived their Κῶμος, called by the Romans Comus, the god of feasting and revelling.