NONE more famous in Grecian history than Cadmus, who brought them the use of those letters that convey’d their history to us, and preserv’d the little knowledge we can chiefly have of profane antiquity. He was son of Agenor, by which word the Greeks chose to pronounce the difficult one of Canaan. Alexander Polyhistor cites out of Eupolemus; “from Saturn (who is Cham) came Belus and Canaan, and Canaan begat the father of the Phœnicians, or Phœnix. Eusebius, pr. ev. 9 has it too. Again, Eusebius, pr. ev. 1. quotes from Sanchoniathon, Cna, (Canaan,) who was styled among the Phœnicians ΧΗΝΑ.” So in Stephanas of Byzantium, Phœnicia is called ΧΗΝΑ, and the Phœnicians ΧΗΝΑΙ, which is Canaanites. ΧΗΝΑ, Cna, is Agenor.
Cadmus lived in the time of, or very little after Hercules. Tho’ the Parian marble is an invaluable monument, yet ’tis not an infallible one. If the learned Bentley finds it erring about Stesichorus, we must not depend on its æra of Cadmus, who lived a thousand years before that stone was made. Nor is the authority of Eusebius’s chronology in this particular, greater. Bochart holds him older than the builder of Tyre; there perhaps he heightens his date a little too much.
To have a proper notion of the history of this great man, bishop Cumberland shews us, that the Horites or Hivites, sons of Canaan, i. e. the colony or people of Cadmus son of Agenor, or Canaan, went out of the land of Canaan about the same time that Misraim or Osiris, son of Cham, went to plant Egypt. They went likewise into Egypt. They lived quietly there for some time, but war arising between the Misraimites and the pastors, they retir’d back again, probably a little before the expulsion of the pastors. Some went to the north of Canaan, about mount Hermon under Libanus; some remain’d in the more southern parts, more particularly call’d Horites, or Avim, or Hivites.
In Gen. xv. 18. when God made his great covenant with Abraham, he tells him, he will give him the land of the Kenites, and Kenizzites, and Kadmonites, and Hittites, and Perizzites, and Rephaims, Amorites, &c. By Kadmonites he means the people of Cadmus son of Canaan. But afterward, in all those places where these nations are recited, they are called Hivites; Cadmus was likewise call’d Hyas, Hivæus: Hyas or Cadmus, one or both, being honorary names, or names of consecration, as was the mode of that time. The same is to be said of Melchizedec, Abimelech, Pharaoh, and many more. About this time there was likewise Hyas a son of Atlas.
The name of Hermon is probably deriv’d from his wife Hermione, as a compliment to her. And of this mountain is that saying in Psalm cxxxiii. 3. The psalmist draws an elegant comparison of the holy unction of Aaron running from his head to his beard, and so down his garments, “like as the dew of Hermon which falls on the hill of Sion.” A difficulty that gave St. Augustin a great deal of trouble; but must needs be an absurd reading, and ought to be corrected Sirion for Sion. Sirion is a lower part of the high ground at the bottom of mount Hermon, as that lies under the elated crest of Libanus. Psal. xxix. 6. “Libanon also, and Sirion, like a young unicorn.” A mountain not a little remarkable, since we read, Deut. iii. 9. “which Hermon the Sidonians call Sirion, and the Amorites call it Shenir;” Hermon and Sirion being parts of mount Libanon.
Since we are upon criticism, the reader will excuse me in mentioning another of like nature, and not foreign to our purpose. These Horites, Hivites, Avim or Cadmonites, as called from Cadmus, Gen. xv. 19. or Canaanites, as called from his father Canaan, extending themselves upon the Phœnician shore, became traders or merchants in the most eminent degree of all ancient people in the world, and traded as far as Britain; so that the name of Canaanite and merchant became equivalent. Isaiah xxiii. 8. “Who hath taken this counsel against Tyre, saith the prophet, the crowning city; whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth.”
Hence we observe, 1. The prophet calls it the crowning city, for they sent a golden crown to Alexander the great as a present.
2. The word traffickers, mercatores, is Canaanites in the original. And the like in Jerem. x. 17. “Gather up thy wares out of the land, O inhabiter of the fortress.” ’Tis Canahe in the original.
3. This naturally leads me to mention a noble prophecy, overlook’d thro’ a too literal translation in our bible, Zech. xiv. 21. “Yea, every pot in Jerusalem, and in Judah, shall be holiness unto the LORD of hosts: and all they that sacrifice shall come and take of them, and seethe therein. And in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the LORD of hosts.” It ought to be translated merchant, as in the vulgate latin and chaldee. For ’tis a prophecy concerning the days of the Messiah; and regards that famous act of his life, when he drove the traders out of the temple.
The Kadmonites got the name of Hivites, as I apprehend, from their celebrity in building temples of the serpentine form. At first they were consecrated to true religion; but too soon all these, and other patriarchal temples in the land of Canaan were polluted to idolatrous purposes; and probably from them the worship of snakes became famous. Now the word Avim, Hevæus in the Syriac, signifies a snake. And from this custom of the Phœnicians making serpentine temples, the notion might arise of the Phœnicians worshipping serpents, as Eusebius observes, pr. ev. I. And from this the Greeks made their fables of Cadmus overcoming a great snake, sowing its teeth, and armed men sprouting up, &c.