In these statements, the eminent historian seems studiously to avoid a recognition of the direction to which all his facts so distinctly point. All the countries mentioned by him border on the Mediterranean, and were in constant and intimate communication with Egypt and Phœnicia, the relations of which with Israel are too well known to need emphasis. They were, in fact, the channels through which Hebrew ideas must ordinarily pass, in order to gain access to Greece and the continent of Europe. To whatever source the Greeks may have been immediately indebted for the novel ideas of a special stain or defilement, resulting from crime, and of ritual purifying from it, we know that they were incorporated in the laws and ritual of Moses ages before there is a trace of them in any of the countries mentioned. The disposition of Herodotus to refer them to Egypt and Phœnicia is therefore entitled to more respectful consideration than our author gives it. That the Gentile rites in question, however grossly corrupted, were derived from divine originals, must be manifest to any one who will compare the significance and beauty of the Scriptural rites as connected with the spiritual truths of revelation, which they symbolized, with the bareness and absurdity by which they are characterized, in their distorted Gentile forms, detached from the spiritual connection to which they natively belonged.
On the matters of which it treats, no authority is higher than Dr. Wm. Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. As to the present subject, it testifies that their purifyings, “in every case of which we have any certain knowledge were connected with sacrifices and other religious rites, and consisted in the sprinkling of water, by means of a branch of laurel or olive; and at Rome, sometimes by means of the aspergillum, and in the burning of certain materials the smoke of which was thought to have a purifying effect.”[[43]]
Of the Greek heroes the Abbe Barthelemi says,—“They shuddered at the blood they had spilt, and abandoning their throne and native land, went to implore the aid of expiation in some distant country. After the sacrifices enjoined them by the ceremony, a purifying water was poured upon the guilty hand, after which they again returned into society and prepared themselves for new combats.”[[44]]
Of the Romans, Ovid says:—“Our fathers believed purifications to be effectual for blotting out every crime and every cause of penalty. Greece was the source of the custom. She believes the guilty, when purified with lustral rites, to be freed from the guilt of their evil deeds. Thus Peleus purified the grandson of Actor; and thus Acastus, with the waters of Hæmus, cleansed Peleus himself, from the blood of Phocus.—Ah credulous people! who suppose that the dreadful crime of murder can be obliterated by (fluminea aqua), running waters.”[[45]]
The same poet describes the festival of Pales, the tutelary goddess of shepherds. Some days before her festival, cows were sacrificed and the unborn offspring torn from their bowels and burned with fire by the eldest of the Vestals, “that their ashes may purify the people on the day of Pales.” On the festival day he sings: “I am called to the Palilia.... Often, truly, have I carried in my full hand the ashes of the calf and the bean stalks, hallowed purifiers. Truly I have leaped over the fires kindled in three rows, and the dripping branch of laurel has scattered the water.... Go, ye people, seek the fumigation from the altar of the virgin! Vesta will give it. By the grace of Vesta, you shall be purified. The blood of a horse shall be your fumigatory, with the ashes of the calf, and third the empty husk of the hard bean. Shepherd, purify your full fed flocks in the early twilight. Water should first sprinkle them, and a twig broom should sweep the ground.”[[46]] Again, he tells of “a fountain of Mercury near the Capanian gate. If we choose to believe those who have tried it, it has a divine virtue. Hither comes the merchant with purse-girdled tunic, and being purified, draws water which he may carry away in a perfumed vase. In this, a branch of laurel is moistened, and with the wet laurel all things are sprinkled that are to have new owners. He sprinkles his own locks, also, with the dripping bush, and with a voice familiar with deceit offers his prayers. ‘Wash away my past perjuries,’ says he: ‘Wash away the falsehoods of the past day. Whether I have called thee (Mercury), to witness, or have called upon the great majesty of Jove, wishing him not to hear; or, if I have been false to any other god or goddess, let the swift zephyrs carry away my dishonest words, and let my perjuries be obliterated by to-morrow. Let not the superior powers give heed to what I may say.’”[[47]]
In Virgil, Æneas, preparing for flight from the overthrow of Troy, says to his father,—“Do you, my father, in your hand take the consecrated things and the ancestral gods? To me, just returned from such and so recent a battle and slaughter, it were sacrilege to touch them, until I shall have washed in a living stream.”[[48]] In another place the closing rites at the funeral pyre of Misenus are thus described,—“The same (Chorinaeus) passed thrice around his companions with water, sprinkling them with a gentle spray, and with a branch of the auspicious olive purified the men and uttered the parting words.”[[49]]
Of funeral lustrations at Rome, Adams in his Antiquities, gives this account: “When the remains of the dead were laid in the tomb, those present were, three times, sprinkled by a priest with pure water, from a branch of olive or laurel, to purify them.... The friends when they returned home, as a further purification, after being sprinkled with water, stepped over a fire.[[50]]... The house itself also was purified and swept with a certain kind of a broom.” The classic writers frequently refer to similar observances among the Greeks. Thus, in Euripides, the people are perplexed as to the death of Alcestis, king Admetus’ wife, because “they do not see the lustral water before the door, as is customary at the doors of the dead.”[[51]]
The census of the population of Rome was taken every five years, and was followed by a lustration of the city. From this custom the word lustrum (a lustration), came to signify a period of five years. There was also a lustration for new born infants, when their names were given. For boys it was usually on the ninth day after birth; for girls, by some, on the eighth day, and by others, on the fifth, or the third day, while some performed it on the last day of the week wherein the child was born. “On the lustral day, a feast was prepared, over which the goddess Nundina was supposed to preside. The assembled women handed the child backward and forward around the fire burning on the altar of the gods; after which they sprinkled it with water, in which were mingled saliva and dust.”[[52]]
Philo Judaeus, was a resident of the Greek colony of Alexandria. He was a man of learning, and especially versed in the religious doctrines and rites of the Gentiles, as well as of Moses, of which he wrote largely. We have seen that, in contrasting the purifying rites of other nations with those of Israel, he says that “nearly all other people are sprinkled with unmixed water, mostly drawing it from the sea, some from rivers and others again from vessels replenished from fountains.”[[53]] This preference of the water of the sea, probably originated in a desire to differentiate the Gentile imitations from the divine originals as observed by Israel. Of it an illustration appears in Euripides. Iphigenia speaks of Orestes and his companions, defiled with dreadful crimes,—“First would I (nipsai) imbue them with holy purifyings.”
King Thoas. “From springs of waters? Or, from spray of the sea?”