The work, however, is a valuable one in its way; but the reader should not forget that “there seems reason for suspecting” that the author does not always know exactly what he is talking about, whenever he strays too far from Archæology, on which he is no doubt an authority.
THE JEWISH WORLD enters bravely enough (in its issue of the 11th November 1887) on its new character of professor of symbology and History. It accuses in no measured terms one of the editors of Lucifer of ignorance; and criticises certain expressions used in our October number, in a foot-note inserted to explain why the “Son of the Morning” Lucifer is called in Mr. G. Massey’s little poem, “Lady of Light.” The writer objects, we see, to Lucifer-Venus being called in one of its aspects “the Jewish Astoreth;” or to her having ever been offered cakes by the Jews. As explained in a somewhat confused sentence: “There was no Jewish Astoreth, though the Syrian goddess, Ashtoreth, or Astarte, often appears in Biblical literature, the moon goddess, the complement of Baal, the Sun God.”
This, no doubt, is extremely learned and conveys quite new information. Yet such an astounding statement as that the whole of the foot-note in Lucifer is “pure imagination and bad history” is very risky indeed. For it requires no more than a stroke or two of our pen to make the whole edifice of this denial tumble on the Jewish World and mangle it very badly. Our contemporary has evidently forgotten the wise proverb that bids one to let “sleeping dogs lie,” and therefore, it is with the lofty airs of superiority that he informs his readers that though the Jews in Palestine lived surrounded with (? sic) this pagan form of worship, and may, at times, (?!) have wandered towards it, they had nothing in their worship in common with Chaldean or Syrian beliefs in multiplicity of deities? (!!)
This is what any impartial reader might really term “bad history,” and every Bible worshipper describe as a direct lie given to the Lord God of Israel. It is more than suppressio veri suggestio falsi, for it is simply a cool denial of facts in the face of both Bible and History. We advise our critic of the Jewish World to turn to his own prophets, to Jeremiah, foremost of all. We open “Scripture” and find in it: “the Lord God” while accusing his “backsliding Israel and treacherous Judah” of following in “the ways of Egypt and of Assyria,” of drinking the waters of Sihor, and “serving strange Gods” enumerating his grievances in this wise:
“According to the number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah, (Jer. ii. 28.).
“Ye have turned back to the iniquities of your forefathers who went after other gods to serve them (xi.) ... according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have ye set up altars to that shameful thing, even altars unto Baal”[Baal”] (Ib.).
So much for Jewish monotheism. And is it any more “pure imagination” to say that the Jews offered cakes to their Astoreth and called her “Queen of Heaven”? Then the “Lord God” must, indeed, be guilty of more than “a delicate expansion of facts” when thundering to, and through, Jeremiah:—
“Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough TO MAKE CAKES to the Queen of Heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto the gods.” (Jer. vii. 17-18).
“The Jews may AT TIMES” only (?) have wandered towards pagan forms of worship but “had nothing in common in it with Syrian beliefs in multiplicity of deities.” Had they not? Then the ancestors of the editors of the Jewish World must have been the victims of “suggestion,” when, snubbing Jeremiah (and not entirely without good reason),they declared to him: