Intimations are given in the Holy Scriptures, that this deviation from the worship of the ONE True God, and that its attendant practices, took place at a very early period. Job vindicates himself from all suspicion of idolatry by the most solemn asseverations :-" If I beheld the Sun when it shined, or the Moon walking in brightness, and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand: this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge; for I should have denied the God that is above." (Job xxxi. 26-28) From this passage Dr. Hales argues, that Zabianism was at that period punishable by the public law; and the Rev. G. Townsend, in his learned Dissertations "On the "* observes, Origin, Progress, and Decline of Idolatry," that "Moses, it is well known, wrote the Pentateuch, to continue the knowledge of the true God among the Israelites. As they were surrounded by idolatry in its most corrupt and odious form, he never loses sight of its superstitious observances. Unless, indeed, we understand the history of the times when Moses wrote, we lose much of the beauty and interest of his narrative. In perusing the Pentateuch, we must never forget, that idolatry had become almost universal, and that Moses, by his laws, as well as by his example, constantly endeavoured to guard his people from the contagion. Many expressions therefore, which otherwise, in a narrative so brief, as that of Moses, might appear unnecessary, were, at the time they were written, of the utmost consequence. Thus, when in the account of the Creation, Moses adds, He made the stars also ;-and, thus the heavens were finished, and all the host of them;' he evidently means to say to the wor

Classical Journal, No. XLVI. p. 332, and No. XLIV. p. 324. See also, "Young's Historical Dissertation on Idolatrous Corruptions in Religion," vol. i. pp. 30—35.

shippers of the Tsabaoth,* Your gods are inferior to Jehovah, for they are the work of his hands."

ment.

Some learned men have even supposed, that the worship of the heavenly bodies prevailed, almost universally, at the the time of the general Deluge, and was the occasion of the destruction of the old world by that dreadful judgThis was the opinion of Onkelos, Maimonides, and other celebrated Rabbins, who interpret the words relating to the birth of Enos, (Gen. vi. 11.) "Then began men to call on the name of the Lord;" by translating them, "In those days men seceded from calling on the name of the Lord," by which they understand, "that the most glorious name of God was then given unto creatures." In this interpretation, they are followed by the very learned Selden. Lightfoot also translates the passage, "Then began profaneness in calling on the name of the Lord:" and Heidegger, in his eighth Dissertation on the Theology of the Cainites, and the Antediluvian Idolatry, adduces many arguments to prove that Idolatry was the corrup tion before the flood. This view of the perversion of Divine worship by the Antediluvians, has likewise been thought to be forcibly corroborated by the degree of perfection attained by the Chaldeans at so very early a period after the Deluge, and at a time when the Postdiluvians must have been much occupied in choosing their new settlements. "Burnet, justly observes in his Archæologia," says Mr. Townsend, "that, it is reasonable to believe that the Antediluvian fathers were not utterly foolish, and ignorant of the sciences. Of these, whatever they might have been, Noah was the heir.' Whatever the aged Patriarchs knew, was most probably communicated to Noah. He was the inhabitant of both worlds, and transferred the lamp of the sciences from one to the other. Mr. Maurice too, in his Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon,' very justly observes, (p. 22,) The very early proficiency of

* Or Host of Heaven.-ED.

the Egyptians and Chaldeans in astronomy, can only be accounted for by the supposition that a considerable portion of the Antediluvian arts and sciences, among which must be numbered astronomy, was, by the permission of Providence, preserved on tablets of stone to illumine the ignorance and darkness of the earliest Postdiluvian ages.' To suppose that our Antediluvian ancestors, for sixteen hundred years together, could be uninterested spectators of the celestial bodies, would be to imagine them destitute of common curiosity."

Gale (Court of the Gentiles) supposes the Zabian idolatry to have arisen from indistinct and misunderstood traditions; his words are:-" It will be necessary to consider, though but cursorily, the rise and progress of all Idol-Gods and Idolatry: all of which is comprehended, by some learned men, under these two common heads of Zabaism and Hellenism. Zabaism, so termed from the Zabii, a sect of Chaldean philosophers, was the first and more natural piece of idolatry, which consisted in a religious worship given unto the sun, moon, and stars, stiled in Scripture, the Hosts of Heaven. Hellenism, which superadded hereto an infinity almost of fictitious and coined gods, was of more late date, and proper to the Grecians, most skilful in the art of making gods. As for Zabaism, which gave a Deity and Divine worship to the sun, moon, and stars, it began very early, even in the infancy of the church, and had made good progress in the world about the age of Job and Moses, as appears by Job xxxi, 26, 27; as also by Deut. xi. 6.—and as Owen, (Theolog. Lib. 3. c. 4, p. 188, &c.) observes, this Pagan humour, of idolizing these glorious celestial bodies, seems to have had its rise from some broken traditions, conveyed by the Patriarchs touching the dominion of the sun by day, and of the moon by

Classical Journal, No. XLII. pp. 323, 324.-Young On Idolatrous Corruptions in Religion, vol. i. pp. 7, 8, 15, Lond. 1734, 8vo.-Waltoni Polyglott. tom. i.-Onkelos in Gen. iv. 26.

So

night; according to Gen. i. 16 and Psalm cxxxvi. 7, 8, 9, where the sun and moon are stiled the greater lights' not only by condescension to vulgar capacities, as some will have it, but from their peculiar office, the Sun being appointed to govern by day, and the Moon by night. that albeit the Moon be, in regard of its substance and borrowed light, inferior to many of the stars, yet, by virtue of its office, it is above them, and so termed a 'greater light. Now it is very probable, that the fame of this dominion, conferred by God on the Sun and Moon, was diffused amongst the Gentiles, first in the oriental parts; whence their corrupt imaginations, very prone to idolatry, conferred a deity on these creatures which to them seemed most glorious. Thence they termed the Sun 75 Moloch, or Melec, the King; also by Baal, the Lord; and b nos the Sun :) likewise

El, God, (whence the Greek

elio עליון Bel Sames, Lord of Heaven ; and בעל שמיס

Eliun, the Most High, all which are names, which the Scripture gives the true God of Israel, and, without all peradventure, had their original thence."

The almost immemorial antiquity of this species of idolatry is not only maintained by the concurrent testimony of the most ancient accredited authors, profane as well as sacred, but also by the remains, which have been discovered in various countries, especially in the East, of symbolic representations of sidereal objects of religious veneration. Of these, the engraved cylindrical signets recovered and brought from the East by Capt. Lockett, Mr. Rich, and others, from the sites of the ancient Babylon and Nineveh, and from Phenicia, and deposited in various European museums, are curious and interesting specimens. Landseer, in his erudite "Sabæan Researches," supposes these signets to

Gale's Court of the Gentiles, Part I. Book ii, Chap. 1, pp. 105, 106.— Oxon. 1669, 4to.

have been engraved for the purpose of exhibiting the state of the heavens at the time of the birth of the persons to whom the signets respectively belonged; "and hence the astrological priest who registered the birth of a Babylonian child, also cast his nativity; and, in so doing, assigned to him the subject of his future signet."-Some of the horoscopical signets which he has examined, he regards as being more than three thousand years old, and defends the conjecture by learned astronomical calculations.-"There is a remarkable conformity," he observes, "between our antique cylindrical monuments and the earlier poets, prophets, and astronomers, with regard to the comparative veneration, in which the extra-zodiacal asterisms were held in the remoter periods of time: and the impressive coincidence at which we here arrive, between the art and literature of far distant ages and nations-between that practice of the Chaldean astronomers which may be safely inferred from the more ancient of the cylindrical engravings; and that habitual observation of the stars which is recorded of the patriarchs, prophets, and philosophers, of the Sacred Scriptures and of Greece,-I repeat, the impressive coincidence between these, at which we here arrive,-is probably the best of all evidence that is now attainable, on a subject so remote in time and place, and so recondite in its nature."*

Dr. Long, whose great astronomical knowledge rendered him deservedly celebrated, expresses a similar opinion of the antiquity of the Zabian idolatry: "The most ancient idolaters," says he, "are, with great probability, thought by some learned men to have received the name of Zabii from worshipping the host of heaven;" and subsequently adds, "I have before observed, that Zabaism, or the worship of the host of heaven, was the most ancient kind of idolatry; the custom of deifying dead men was later, though that also is

• Landscer's Sabean Researches, pp. 55, 104, 242, 250, 251, 327, et passim.-London, 1823, 4to.