B
B is the second letter and the first consonant in the English and most other alphabets. It is a mute and labial, pronounced solely by the lips, and is distinguished from p by being sonant, that is, produced by the utterance of voice as distinguished from breath.
B, in music, the seventh note of the model diatonic scale or scale of C. It is called the leading note, as there is always a feeling of suspense when it is sounded until the keynote is heard.
Baader, Franz Xaver von (fra˙nts-zä'fer fon bä'der), German philosopher and theologian, born in Munich, 1765, died 1841. He studied engineering, became superintendent of mines, and was ennobled for services. He was deeply interested in the religious speculations of Eckhart, St. Martin, and Böhme, and in 1826 was appointed professor of philosophy and speculative theology in the University of Munich. During the last three years of his life he was interdicted from lecturing for opposing the interference in civil matters of the Roman Catholic Church.
Ba´al, or Bel, a Semitic word, which primarily signified lord or proprietor, and was afterwards applied to many different divinities, or, with qualifying epithets, to the same divinity regarded in different aspects, describing him as an occupier of some physical object or locality, or as a possessor of some attribute. Thus in Hos. ii, 16 it is applied to Jehovah himself, while Baal-berith (the Covenant-lord) was the god of the Shechemites, and Baal-zebub (the Fly-god) the idol of the Philistines at Ekron. Baal was the sacred title applied to the Sun as the principal male deity of the Phœnicians and their descendants, the Carthaginians, as well as of the ancient Canaanitish nations, and was worshipped as the supreme ruler and vivifier of nature. The word enters into the composition of many Hebrew, Phœnician, and Carthaginian names of persons and places; thus, Jerubaal, Hasdrubal (help of Baal), Hannibal (grace of Baal), and Baal-Hammon, Baal-Thamar, &c.
Baalbek´ (ancient, Heliopŏlis, 'city of the sun'), a place in Syria, in a fertile valley at the foot of Antilibanus, 40 miles from Damascus, famous for its magnificent ruins. Of these the chief is the Temple of the Sun, built either by Antoninus Pius or by Septimius Severus. Some of the blocks used in its construction are 60 feet long by 12 thick; and its fifty-four columns, of which six are still standing, were 72 feet high and 22 in circumference. Near it is a temple of Jupiter, of smaller size though larger than the Parthenon at Athens, and there are other structures of an elaborately ornate type. Originally a centre of Sun-worship, it became a Roman colony under Julius Cæsar, was garrisoned by Augustus, and acquired increasing renown under Trajan as the seat of an oracle. Under Constantine its temples became churches, but after being sacked by the Arabs in 748, and more completely pillaged by Tamerlane in 1401, it sank into hopeless decay. The work of destruction was completed by an earthquake in 1759.
Baal-zebub. See Beelzebub.
Baba, a cape near the north-west point of Asia Minor.
Babadagh (ba˙-ba˙-däg'), a town of Roumania, capital of the Dobrudsha, carrying on a considerable Black Sea trade; it was bombarded by the Russians in 1854. Pop. 10,000.
Bab´bage, Charles, English mathematician and inventor of the calculating-machine, born 1792, died 1871. He graduated at Cambridge in 1814, and occupied the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge for eleven years, but delivered no lectures. As early as 1812 he conceived the idea of calculating numerical tables by machinery, and in 1823 he received a grant from Government for the construction of such a machine. After a series of experiments lasting eight years, and an expenditure of £17,000