A Comparative View of Religions by Scholten (World Cultural Heritage Library)

Author:Johannes Henricus Scholten [Scholten, Johannes Henricus]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781433087967
Amazon: 1433087960
Publisher: Intl Business Pubns USA
Published: 2009-03-03T05:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER III.

THE RELIGION OF THE SEMITES.

I. THE PHŒNICIANS, SYRIANS, BABYLONIANS, CARTHAGINIANS, AND ARABIANS.

In the Semitic races the religious spirit rose above nature-worship in the effort to separate God from nature, and to elevate him above nature as Lord, Baal (plural Baalim, either from the different places where he was worshiped, or the various names under which he was worshiped), Bel, El, Adon (Adonis). Thus Bel among the Babylonians, Baal among the Ammonites and Moabites, was the god of light, the lord of heaven, the creator of mankind, who had his throne above the clouds and was invoked on mountains. [7] Also the title Molech and Baal Molech to designate the Supreme Being among the ancient Phoenicians and Carthaginians, and the nations nearest related to Israel, the Moabites and Ammonites, as well as the derived names Milcom (Kamos) [Chemosh, Eng. ver.], among the Ammonites, and Melkartht at Tyre and Carthage, indicate, like Baal, an original effort to conceive God as the ruler of nature. Agreeing with this conception of the Deity, there is manifest, as well in the worship of Baal as of Molech and the female Astarte (Melecheth) [8] [Ashtaroth, Eng. ver.], worshiped with him, partly in the abstinence from marriage, partly in the human sacrifice, especially the sacrifice of the first-born, the aim, through abnegation of the life of sense, and through the sacrifice, even though unnatural, of what is dearest to man, to appease a divinity who as lord and governor rules and subjects to himself the power of nature and every propensity of sense. [9]

In spite of the effort to elevate the Deity as Lord and King above nature, most of the Semitic nations gradually sank back into the old nature-worship, and, uniting with the worship of the highest God, Baal and Bel, that of a female divinity under the names of Baaltis, Beltis, Aschera, Mylitta, they made religion to consist in the sacrifice of chastity to the will of the Deity, as the fruitful, productive power of nature, and thus fell into gross immorality. [10]

Religion appears in another form among the Semites in the worship of the stars among the Babylonians and ancient Arabians. This astrolatry, originally a kind of fetichism, became nature-worship, and gradually rose to the worship of the intelligence manifested to our contemplation in the movement of the heavenly luminaries. Astrology arose, and religion no longer expressed itself in passive acquiescence, but was united with the effort to guide the life by the knowledge to be drawn, as men imagined, from the motion of the stars.

ISRAELITISH RELIGION.

a. Its origin. The patriarchal religion. Mosaism. Prophetism.

While most of the Semitic nations, in opposition to the effort to elevate God above nature as lord and governor, returned to the old nature-religion with its grossly sensual worship of the divine, and others got no farther than to the conception of a deity, who, like a consuming fire, stood opposed to nature, and was to be appeased and propitiated by human sacrifices, there was developed among

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