11. Chapter X. Or, On The Rise And Progress Of Idolatry — Chapter Viii.
CHAPTER X. OR, ON THE RISE AND
PROGRESS OF IDOLATRY — CHAPTER
VIII.
T he gods were sprung from men, all of them Eastern — the restorers of mankind after the Flood — the leaders of the Babylonian bands —
Greece the workshop of the gods — for them, the East was the upper world; the West, the lower — Eastern things sacred to the gods; Western, to demons — the placing of idols in temples — the Capitoline Jupiter — the testimony of Porphyry — the fame of things done in the East — the deeds of the gods — nectar, the Babylonian wine — the first gods of the idolaters, themselves the first apostates from the true God — some memory of the true
God's names retained after the confusion of tongues — this memory ascribed to idols — on the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton — the fables of Sanchuniathon — ֲא ֹדִני [Adonai]; Ἱερόν [Hieron]; ֲאָדָמ ה [Adamah];
ָיּה [Yah]; ֹּתהּו and ֹּבהּו [Tohu and Bohu]; Thoth, Theoth, Θεός [Theos], Bau;
ֶעֶרב [Ereb], Ἔρεβος [Erebos]; ֶאֶרץ [Erets], Earth, etc.
I. That all those who were first reckoned among the number of the gods lived in the East can be demonstrated by sure arguments. From that quarter of the world, immediately after the confusion of tongues, the leaders of
tribes and families led out colonies into every part of the earth. These, in process of time, became ַאְנֵׁשי ַה ֵּׁשם [men of renown], "men celebrated in fame." Whithersoever, moreover, they directed their journey, no one can doubt that the new flocks retained some report, however slight and obscure, of their great forefathers — namely, of Noah, Shem, Ham, and the rest.
Recollecting these, on the one hand, as the founders of their own stock, and, on the other, as the fortunate ὁδηγούς [guides] of their wanderings — since they were by now given over wholly to every kind of superstition, and the traditions concerning the condition and deeds of these men had gradually, as commonly happens, been augmented — they imagined for themselves that these forefathers had possessed something θεῖον [divine] beyond the common lot of mankind. But since they knew that these men had spent their lives on earth, and in company with all others, they judged it fitting to suppose either that they had descended from heaven to accomplish outstanding deeds among men, or that, on account of the merits of their exploits, they had after death been in some manner translated to the heavens.
II. The Greeks were the chief fabricators of gods — to such a degree that Greece is not unfitly called the birthplace and workshop of the gods, and that superstition which consists in their worship is precisely that Hellenism with which we are here dealing. For them, the East was the upper world; the West, and whatever lay toward the northern regions of the world, they called the lower world. Those who crossed over into those parts of the earth were reckoned to have sailed to the lower world, or to have passed thither by whatever means — for no other reason than that they had received all their gods from the East. The river Lethe is in Gallaecia in Spain; Avernus in Italy; the Cimmerians, the Scythians by the Maeotic marsh, afterwards
called Huns; and certain others in Italy itself. Hence in religious worship θεοῖς τὰ ἀνατολικά, δαίμοσι δὲ τὰ δυτικά [the eastern things to the gods, the western to the demons] — as Porphyry attests, in his work On the Cave of the Nymphs in Homer's Ithaca. And so, although, as we showed above, the ancient temples dedicated to the sun had their sacred doors facing south, yet the sacred places set up for these idols always had their entrances toward the east, and the images faced toward the east, which those entering worshipped while themselves looking toward the west. The sole exception was the Capitoline Jupiter, who from ancient times had stood with his face turned toward the west, until, by the advice of the haruspices, he was turned to face the east — Cicero being consul, as he himself attests in his oration against Catiline, addressed to the Quirites. The same fact Porphyry teaches us: Ὡς ἂν σχεδόν … πάντων τῶν ἱερῶν τὰ μὲν ἀγάλματα καὶ τὰς εἰσόδους ἐχόντων πρὸς ἀνατολὰς τετραμμένας· τῶν δὲ εἰσιόντων πρὸς δύσιν ἀφορώντων, ὅταν ἀντιπρόσωποι τῶν ἀγαλμάτων ἑστῶτες τοῖς θεοῖς τιμὰς καὶ θεραπείας προσάγωσι. — "Nearly all temples have their statues and entrances facing the sunrise; those who enter look toward the sunset, where, standing with their faces turned toward the statues, they pay honour and worship to the gods." To oppose this superstition, it was the custom of certain of the ancient Christians, on entering churches facing the east, to bow themselves in no less a degree toward the west, and, in some manner, to render an act of worship there also.
III. The first gods of the nations, then, sprung from men — whom, after the heavenly bodies had for some centuries been worshipped, they numbered among the gods — were the leaders of families and tribes, either such as had been famous in the East, or such as had served as leaders to peoples seeking new dwelling-places from the East. The fame of these,
mixed with fables, gradually passed into belief; and memory passed into worship. And so, whatever they had received, by report or by any tradition whatsoever, concerning the life, exploits, character, and wars of those great men — true and false, but for the most part false mingled with true — was related, as though it had fallen down from heaven, as the deeds and acts of divine beings. Nectar itself, the drink of the gods, was Babylonian wine.
Χαίρειας ἐν Βαβυλῶνι οἶνον φησὶ γίνεσθαι τὸν καλούμενον νέκταρ — so Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, book I: "Chaereas relates that there is a wine in Babylon which the natives call nectar." Hence nectar is πόμα θεῖον [a divine drink], which Suidas foolishly supposes to be called, as it were, νέοκταρ [new-making], διὰ τὸ νέους ποιοῦν τοὺς πίνοντας [because it makes those who drink it young]. And the author of the Etymologicum:
Νέκταρ τὸ τῶν θεῶν πόμα οἱονεὶ τὸ συνέχον τοὺς πίνοντας αὐτὸ ἐν νεότητι. [Nectar, the drink of the gods, as it were that which keeps those who drink it in youth.] Others report other Greek origins for the word, all of them absurd, since it came into Greece from the East along with the gods themselves. Whence Strabo wisely warns that Greek etymologies are not to be sought in the names of barbarian peoples. That Noah was Saturn, Janus, and Bacchus; Ham, Jupiter Ammon; Japheth, Iapetus, and Neptune; Shem,
Pluto, and Dis — this has long since been shown by others. There is no need to trace here the transformation of these and other figures out of the most common fables. As for those who afterwards, in Greece itself, increased the number of the gods, their history is more recent, and better known, than that I need dwell upon it.
IV. In these obscure traditions, then, and in the slight and corrupted fame of celebrated men — who either had first restored the human race after the Flood, or had led the Babylonian bands into the various regions of the earth
— Hellenism laid its foundations. These men the idolaters first exalted to the skies with admiration and praise, and afterward with superstitious worship — since most of them had stood forth as the authors and ringleaders of the most shameful defection from the true God. Hence, amid all that confusion which we shall gradually show to have crept into the superstition of the nations, many things are found in which almost all conspired unanimously. For fame handed down to posterity many reports concerning these great founders of various stocks. And so, after superstitious men had, by their vows and by a certain vain opinion, translated their great forefathers to heaven, they set up for them images fashioned to the form of man — partly lest their memory and praises should fall out of men's minds, partly that they might set them, as it were, present before the senses (whereas, in worshipping the heavenly bodies, they had been content with pillars and rough stones). And this worship of images became, for the reasons stated above, well-nigh universal.
V. Furthermore: after the confusion of tongues, the builders of the tower, scattered hither and thither, retained in memory, in whatever fashion, some names of the true God, intending to hand them down to their sons and grandsons. These, however, in process of time, being ignorant of what or whom those great and venerable names referred to, imposed them all upon those new gods which they had adopted for themselves. Thus
Sanchuniathon, among the forefathers of the Phoenicians who were afterward numbered among the gods, mentions Ἐλιοῦν, or Ὕψιστον [Elioun, or Hypsistos — "the Most High"], that is, ֶעְליֹון [Elyon]; and writes that he begot heaven and earth; and Ἰλος [Ilos], who is none other than ֵאל [El]. ְיהָוה
[Yahweh] was the name of Jove, and Jovis, and Jupiter; this name Sanchuniathon renders as Ἰευώ [Ieuo], relating that he had learned much
παρὰ Ἱερομβάλου τοῦ ἱερέως θεοῦ τοῦ Ἰευώ [from Hierombalus, priest of the god Ieuo]. Diodorus, indeed, in book I, says that the God to whom
Moses ascribed his laws was called Ἰάω [Iao]; with which agrees an oracle in Macrobius, Saturnalia, book I:
[Know that Iao is the highest god of all.] By which Satan attempts to ascribe an incommunicable name to other idols. Eusebius, in the Demonstratio Evangelica, book IV, the last chapter:
Ἰωσὺς δέ ἐστιν Ἰάω σωτηρία, τοῦτ' ἐστὶ θεοῦ σωτήριον. [Joshua, moreover, is Iao-salvation, that is, the salvation of God.] Whence it is likely that in that other passage Eusebius wrote, from Sanchuniathon, Ἰάω, not Ἰευώ. Ἰάου occurs in Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, book V — perhaps also corruptly for Ἰάω; and Ἰαωΐα in Origen, but doubtless corruptly: Ἀπὸ τῶν
Ἑβραϊκῶν γραφῶν … τὸν Ἰαωΐα παρ' Ἑβραίοις ὀνομαζόμενον, καὶ τὸν Σαβαώθ, καὶ τὸν Ἀδωναῖον, καὶ τὸν Ἐλωαῖον· τὰ δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν γραφῶν ληφθέντα ὀνόματα ἐπώνυμά ἐστι τοῦ καὶ ἑνὸς Θεοῦ· ὅπερ μὴ συνιέντες οἱ ἐχθροὶ Θεῷ, ὡς καὶ αὐτοὶ ὁμολογοῦσιν, ᾠήθησαν ἄλλον μὲν εἶναι τὸν
Ἰάω, ἕτερον δὲ τὸν Σαβαώθ. [From the Hebrew scriptures, the one called among the Hebrews Iaoia, and Sabaoth, and Adonaios, and Eloaios; but the names taken from the scriptures are all names of one and the same God — which, not understanding, the enemies of God, as they themselves confess, supposed Iao to be one being, and Sabaoth another.] — Against Celsus, book VI. He speaks of heretics, who had drawn their monstrous fictions from the puddles of paganism. For the rest, whether they learned these names — being epithets of the one true God — from the Scriptures, or from ancient tradition, comes to the same thing. Out of each single name a new deity is constructed. As for "Ἰαωΐα," it is a corrupt reading for "Ἰάω."
Reynolds, in his work On Idolatry, book II, chapter 3, was the first to suspect this corruption; Sandford, in the first book of his treatise On the Descent of Christ into Hell, restored the true reading; after him Grotius, on Matthew 22, and others.
VI. And hence it appears — a point worth noting in passing — that the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton was once known. The Jews, today and for many centuries past, are ignorant of it, and have so utterly forgotten the name of their own God that they are cast off by him to such a degree that they cannot even call upon his name. This was what he first disclosed to them when he adopted the whole nation as his peculiar people and church,
Exodus 3. For although the name ְיהָוה [Yahweh] was known to all the faithful from the founding of the world, yet God had made no use of it in any confirmation of his covenant, in any promise, but had used only the name ֵאל ַׁש ַּדי [El Shaddai]. After, therefore, that nation ceased to be God's people and church, all memory of that name of God — which he had graciously disclosed in that covenant-pact by which he adopted them as his peculiar people — they either wilfully cast away, or were punished with oblivion of it.
VII. Further: ֶעְליֹון [Elyon], ָהֵאל [ha-El], ֵאל [El] — the mighty God, the Most High — were turned into Ἥλιον [Helios — the Sun]. ֲא ֹדִני [Adonai] became Adonis; Εὐάν and Εὔιος [Evan and Evius] derived their origin from ֶאְהֶיה [Ehyeh]; Ἐλελεῦ from ַהְללּוָיּה [Halleluyah]. That cry, says Plutarch in his Theseus, σπεύδοντες ἀναφωνεῖν καὶ παιωνίζοντες εἰώθασι [they are wont to shout out in haste and in triumphant exultation]. Ἱερόν [sacred], a word applied to all things sacred, is said by some to be derived from Ἶσις
[Isis] — meaning nothing at all in Greek — and is nothing other than ָיּה [Yah]. From ֲאָדָמה [Adamah, "earth" or "ground"] came Ἅιδης [Hades] —
since, after God had said to Adam, "thou shalt return ֶאל־ָהֲאָדָמה [el haadamah, "to the ground"]," that is, εἰς Ἅιδην [to Hades]. Jupiter Sabazius comes from Jehovah Sabaoth. I should weary the reader were I to enumerate everything of this kind that occurs.
VIII. Sanchuniathon feigns that the names of the chief things recorded in the creation of the world were the appellations of men, wise men, and kings, and from this he spins out long fables. Hesiod likewise wove his
Theogony from no other source. From ֶאֶרץ comes "Earth," the greatest goddess among the English and the other peoples of Germany, as Tacitus attests, Germania, chapter 40: "In common, he says, they worship Erthum, that is, Mother Earth." ֹּתהּו and ֹּבהּו [tohu and bohu] are Thoth and Theoth
(whence also Θεός [God]), and Bau. ֶעֶרב [Ereb, "evening"] is Ἔρεβος [Erebos]; and from that order of words found in Genesis 1, "and there was evening, and there was morning, one day" — ַוְיִהי־ֶעֶרב ַוְיִהי־ ֹבֶקר יֹום ֶאָחד — many peoples came to reckon night before day. Of the Germans, Tacitus says: "They do not count the number of days, but of nights; thus, they reckon, thus they appoint, so that night appears to lead the day." And indeed, it does lead it, for light comes out of darkness. The same custom continues among the English to this day: for a week we say "sennight" — that is, "seven nights" — and "fortnight," that is, "fourteen nights," for two weeks. And the ancient Britons too, whom we now call the Welsh, for whom a week is "Wythnos," that is, eight nights, and two weeks
"Pythefnos," that is, fifteen nights — which is likewise a monument of Celtic origin. The same custom obtained among the ancient Gauls, flowing from the same fount of tradition, and not, as Caesar supposed, because they thought themselves sprung from Father Dis. Such, then, were the
beginnings of Hellenism, or of that confused superstition which overran well-nigh the whole world.