Part 19 (2/2)
Clemens Alexandrinus has transmitted to us (Stromat. lib.
6,) a curious detail of the forty-two volumes which were borne in the procession of Isis. ”The priest,” says he, ”or chanter, carries one of the symbolic instruments of music, and two of the books of Mercury; one containing hymns of the G.o.ds, the other the list of kings. Next to him the horoscope (the regulator of time,) carries a palm and a dial, symbols of astrology; he must know by heart the four books of Mercury which treat of astrology: the first on the order of the planets, the second on the risings of the sun and moon, and the two last on the rising and aspect of the stars. Then comes the sacred author, with feathers on his head (like Kneph) and a book in his hand, together with ink, and a reed to write with, (as is still the practice among the Arabs). He must be versed in hieroglyphics, must understand the description of the universe, the course of the sun, moon, stars, and planets, be acquainted with the division of Egypt into thirty-six nomes, with the course of the Nile, with instruments, measures, sacred ornaments, and sacred places. Next comes the stole bearer, who carries the cubit of justice, or measure of the Nile, and a cup for the libations; he bears also in the procession ten volumes on the subject of sacrifices, hymns, prayers, offerings, ceremonies, festivals. Lastly arrives the prophet, bearing in his bosom a pitcher, so as to be exposed to view; he is followed by persons carrying bread (as at the marriage of Cana.) This prophet, as president of the mysteries, learns ten other sacred volumes, which treat of the laws, the G.o.ds, and the discipline of the priests. Now there are in all forty-two volumes, thirty-six of which are studied and got by heart by these personages, and the remaining six are set apart to be consulted by the pastoph.o.r.es; they treat of medicine, the construction of the human body (anatomy), diseases, remedies, instruments, etc., etc.”
We leave the reader to deduce all the consequences of an Encyclopedia. It is ascribed to Mercury; but Jamblicus tells us that each book, composed by priests, was dedicated to that G.o.d, who, on account of his t.i.tle of genius or decan opening the zodiac, presided over every enterprise. He is the Ja.n.u.s of the Romans, and the Guianesa of the Indians, and it is remarkable that Ya.n.u.s and Guianes are h.o.m.onymous.
In short it appears that these books are the source of all that has been transmitted to us by the Greeks and Latins in every science, even in alchymy, necromancy, etc. What is most to be regretted in their loss is that part which related to the principles of medicine and diet, in which the Egyptians appear to have made a considerable progress, and to have delivered many useful observations.
”There happened early on the borders of the Nile, what has since been repeated in every country; as soon as a new system was formed its novelty excited quarrels and schisms; then, gaining credit by persecution itself, sometimes it effaced antecedent ideas, sometimes it modified and incorporated them; then, by the intervention of political revolutions, the aggregation of states and the mixture of nations confused all opinions; and the filiation of ideas being lost, theology fell into a chaos, and became a mere logogriph of old traditions no longer understood. Religion, having strayed from its object was now nothing more than a political engine to conduct the credulous vulgar; and it was used for this purpose, sometimes by men credulous themselves and dupes of their own visions, and sometimes by bold and energetic spirits in pursuit of great objects of ambition.
IX. Religion of Moses, or Wors.h.i.+p of the Soul of the World (You-piter).
”Such was the legislator of the Hebrews; who, wis.h.i.+ng to separate his nation from all others, and to form a distinct and solitary empire, conceived the design of establis.h.i.+ng its basis on religious prejudices, and of raising around it a sacred rampart of opinions and of rites. But in vain did he prescribe the wors.h.i.+p of the symbols which prevailed in lower Egypt and in Phoenicia;* for his G.o.d was nevertheless an Egyptian G.o.d, invented by those priests of whom Moses had been the disciple; and Yahouh,** betrayed by its very name, essence (of beings), and by its symbol, the burning bush, is only the soul of the world, the moving principle which the Greeks soon after adopted under the same denomination in their you-piter, regenerating being, and under that of Ei, existence,*** which the Thebans consecrated by the name of Kneph, which Sais wors.h.i.+pped under the emblem of Isis veiled, with this inscription: I am al that has been, all that is, and all that is to come, and no mortal has raised my veil; which Pythagoras honored under the name of Vesta, and which the stoic philosophy defined precisely by calling it the principle of fire. In vain did Moses wish to blot from his religion every thing which had relation to the stars; many traits call them to mind in spite of all he has done. The seven planetary luminaries of the great candlestick; the twelve stones, or signs in the Urim of the high priests; the feast of the two equinoxes, (entrances and gates of the two hemispheres); the ceremony of the lamb, (the celestial ram then in his fifteenth degree); lastly, the name even of Osiris preserved in his song,**** and the ark, or coffer, an imitation of the tomb in which that G.o.d was laid, all remain as so many witnesses of the filiation of his ideas, and of their extraction from the common source.
* ”At a certain period,” says Plutarch (de Iside) ”all the Egyptians have their animal G.o.ds painted. The Thebans are the only people who do not employ painters, because they wors.h.i.+p a G.o.d whose form comes not under the senses, and cannot be represented.” And this is the G.o.d whom Moses, educated at Heliopolis, adopted; but the idea was not of his invention.
** Such is the true p.r.o.nunciation of the Jehovah of the moderns, who violate, in this respect, every rule of criticism; since it is evident that the ancients, particularly the eastern Syrians and Phoenicians, were acquainted neither with the J nor the P which are of Tartar origin. The subsisting usage of the Arabs, which we have re-established here, is confirmed by Diodorus, who calls the G.o.d of Moses Iaw, (lib. 1), and Iaw and Yahouh are manifestly the same word: the ident.i.ty continues in that of You-piter; but in order to render it more complete, we shall demonstrate the signification to be the same.
In Hebrew, that is to say, in one of the dialects of the common language of lower Asia, Yahouh is the participle of the verb hih, to exist, to be, and signifies existing: in other words, the principle of life, the mover or even motion (the universal soul of beings). Now what is Jupiter? Let us hear the Greeks and Latins explain their theology. ”The Egyptians,” says Diodorus, after Manatho, priest of Memphis, ”in giving names to the five elements, called spirit, or ether, You-piter, on account of the true meaning of that word: for spirit is the source of life, author of the vital principle in animals; and for this reason they considered him as the father, the generator of beings.” For the same reason Homer says, father, and king of men and G.o.ds. (Diod.
lib. 1, sect 1).
”Theologians,” says Macrobius, ”consider You-piter as the soul of the world.” Hence the words of Virgil: ” Muses let us begin with You-piter; the world is full of You-piter.”
(Somn. Scrip., ch. 17). And in the Saturnalia, he says, ”Jupiter is the sun himself.” It was this also which made Virgil say, ”The spirit nourishes the life (of beings), and the soul diffused through the vast members (of the universe), agitates the whole ma.s.s, and forms but one immense body.”
”Ioupiter,” says the ancient verses of the Orphic sect, which originated in Egypt; verses collected by Onomacritus in the days of Pisistratus, ”Ioupiter, represented with the thunder in his hand, is the beginning, origin, end, and middle of all things: a single and universal power, he governs every thing; heaven, earth, fire, water, the elements, day, and night. These are what const.i.tute his immense body: his eyes are the sun and moon: he is s.p.a.ce and eternity: in fine,” adds Porphyry. ”Jupiter is the world, the universe, that which const.i.tutes the essence and life of all beings. Now,” continues the same author, ”as philosophers differed in opinion respecting the nature and const.i.tuent parts of this G.o.d, and as they could invent no figure that should represent all his attributes, they painted him in the form of a man. He is in a sitting posture, in allusion to his immutable essence; the upper part of his body is uncovered, because it is in the upper regions of the universe (the stars) that he most conspicuously displays himself. He is covered from the waist downwards, because respecting terrestrial things he is more secret and concealed. He holds a scepter in his left hand, because on the left side is the heart, and the heart is the seat of the understanding, which, (in human beings) regulates every action.” Euseb. Proeper. Evang., p 100.
The following pa.s.sage of the geographer and philosopher, Strabo, removes every doubt as to the ident.i.ty of the ideas of Moses and those of the heathen theologians.
”Moses, who was one of the Egyptian priests, taught his followers that it was an egregious error to represent the Deity under the form of animals, as the Egyptians did, or in the shape of man, as was the practice of the Greeks and Africans. That alone is the Deity, said he, which const.i.tutes heaven, earth, and every living thing; that which we call the world, the sum of all things, nature; and no reasonable person will think of representing such a being by the image of any one of the objects around us. It is for this reason, that, rejecting every species of images or idols, Moses wished the Deity to be wors.h.i.+pped without emblems, and according to his proper nature; and he accordingly ordered a temple worthy of him to be erected, etc. Geograph. lib. 16, p. 1104, edition of 1707.
The theology of Moses has, then, differed in no respect from that of his followers, that is to say, from that of the Stoics and Epicureans, who consider the Deity as the soul of the world. This philosophy appears to have taken birth, or to have been disseminated when Abraham came into Egypt (200 years before Moses), since he quitted his system of idols for that of the G.o.d Yahouh; so that we may place its promulgation about the seventeenth or eighteenth century before Christ; which corresponds with what we have said before.
As to the history of Moses, Diodorus properly represents it when he says, lib. 34 and 40, ”That the Jews were driven out of Egypt at a time of dearth, when the country was full of foreigners, and that Moses, a man of extraordinary prudence seized this opportunity of establis.h.i.+ng his religion in the mountains of Judea.” It will seem paradoxical to a.s.sert, that the 600,000 armed men whom he conducted thither ought to be reduced to 6,000; but I can confirm the a.s.sertion by so many proofs drawn from the books themselves, that it will be necessary to correct an error which appears to have arisen from the mistake of the transcribers.
*** This was the monosyllable written on the gates of the temple of Delphos. Plutarch has made it the subject of a dissertation.
**** These are the literal expressions of the book of Deuteronomy, chap. x.x.xII. ”The works of Tsour are perfect.”
Now Tsour has been translated by the word creator; its proper signification is to give forms, and this is one of the definitions of Osiris in Plutarch.
X. Religion of Zoroaster.
”Such also was Zoroaster; who, five centuries after Moses, and in the time of David, revived and moralized among the Medes and Bactrians, the whole Egyptian system of Osiris and Typhon, under the names Ormuzd and Ahrimanes; who called the reign of summer, virtue and good; the reign of winter, sin and evil; the renewal of nature in spring, creation of the world; the conjunction of the spheres at secular periods, resurrection; and the Tartarus and Elysium of the astrologers and geographers were named future life, h.e.l.l and paradise. In a word, he did nothing but consecrate the existing dreams of the mystical system.
XI. Budsoism, or Religion of the Samaneans.
”Such again are the propagators of the dismal doctrine of the Samaneans; who, on the basis of the Metempsychosis, have erected the misanthropic system of self-denial, and of privations; who, laying it down as a principle that the body is only a prison where the soul lives in an impure confinement, that life is only a dream, an illusion, and the world only a pa.s.sage to another country, to a life without end, placed virtue and perfection in absolute immobility, in the destruction of all sentiment, in the abnegation of physical organs, in the annihilation of all our being; whence resulted fasts, penances, macerations, solitude, contemplations, and all the practices of the deplorable delirium of the Anchorites.
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