The Ghebers of Hebron

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UNITED STATES OE AMERICA.

Preface

There was a line of “Highplaces” running from the pyramids of Gizeh through Pliilistia, Ramah , 1 Salem, Shiloh, Beth Shems, Moab,—to Bel’s Tower at Babylon. They were sacred to Bal or Bel (El) the Sun. In Syria, Moab, and Mesopota¬ mia they built temples on elevations natural or artificial. Salamah is said to have built one bamah (highplace) to Ka¬ mos in Moab, and another to the “ King ” (Malak, Moloch) among the Ammonites. The bamoth were probably the old¬ est highplaces and temples of the Asarim, Asarielites, or Syrians. The Great Highplace was at Gabaon . 2 There Bel- Saturn 3 met 4 his worshippers on Saturn’s Day.

Mse (Masses, or Moses 5 ) was of the race of the Chaldaeans. The Chaldaean Mithra had his Seven Rays, and Moses his Seven Days. The other planets which circling round the sun lead the dance as‘ round the King of heaven receive from him with the light also their powers ; while as the light comes to them from the sun so from him they receive their powers that he pours out into the Seven Spheres of the Seven Planets

1 The city was upon a hill; and still another ascent up to the Highplace.—1 Sam. ix. 13, 14, 25 ; x. 5.

2 The abode of Iahoh was on the Bamah at Gabaon.—1 Chron., xvi. 39.

3 Alohim, the Semite dual.

4 Numb., xxiii. 4, 16.

6 The Chaldaeans considered fire and light each as having the two genders, like Bel, Mithra, As (Ash), Alahim, Asar. Consequently, Simon Magus lets the Divine female fire be severed from the Male Fire, just as Genesis, ii. 21-23 severs the Woman-fire (Ashah, Aishah, Isis) from the Masculine Adam (Adon, Lunus). Alahim (Elohim) is the Spiritus Divine, a dual principium in Genesis, i. 1, 2 ; and in the male-female fike of Simon’s theory Spirit is the God.—Hippolytus, vi. 18; John iv. 24. Thus the severed pairs are Bel and Beltis, Mithra and Mithraitis, Adon and Danae, Adam and Damia (Ker5s), As and Isis, Asar and Sahra or Sarah, Menes (MSn) and Mene, Amon and Mona, Lunus and Luna : £ • Genesis, i- ii- is from the Chaldaean.

IV

PREFACE.

of which the sun is the centre . 1 The ancient world was one of fire, gnosis, civilisation, and inferences which resulted in re¬ ligious systems that, although externally and nominally dis¬ tinct, were founded in one common philosophy—the distinc¬ tion between spirit and matter. Spiritus means breath, from spiro, to breathe. Spiritus as the breath of life was considered fire ; but it is an unknown quantity in the oriental philosophy, intended to express the abstract idea, “ life.” It cannot be proved to correspond to any idea that can be grasped by the mind, since the word (meaning breath of life) designates a status,—not an entity but only a result. Life is a condition, a state, a result of previous conditions. Therefore the use of the word pneuma or spiritus to indicate a certain thing is un¬ authorised. The ancients invented a term for life, which, since vitality is a result, a state of matter, fails to express what it was coined to express,—a substance, an entity.

The birth of man is entirely owing to nature, which has made provision for it. Like the grass, we are born from a parentage , 2 not from a philosophy or a theology. Since Nat¬ ure is the authority for human existence the human thought should be based on facts, and not on oriental substitutes for truth. The past teaches us human errors. The theory of spir¬ it and matter pervaded the orient from the time of the early Ghebers down through the Christian centuries. The idea of spirit as a Cause is found in all the great oriental religions. We find it in those of El, Bel, lad, and Iahoh,—in the Seven Rays of the Chaldaean Mithra and the Seven Days of Genesis. From the Sun came fire and spirit . 3 This was the astronom-

1 Julian, Oratio 4. 135.

2 The life of the embryo animal reproduces very exactly that of the cellular tissues of the plants. The form is sketched and marked out in the first times of the evolution. —Dareste, p. 103. Let man catch some germ diseases, and he will soon recognise that he is a part of nature.

3 Diodor. Sic. I. 11. p. 15. Wesseling. Cyrus swore by Mithra (Rawlinson, Seventh Monarchy, 627; Xenophon, Cyropaedia, viii. 3. § 53) as the Jews did by Iah.—Exodus, xvii. 16.

PREFACE .

v ical religion of the Chaldaeans, Jews, Persians, Syrians, Phoe¬ nicians and Egyptians.

The records of the Jews contain the literature of the fireworship. We trace this people back to a most interesting source the city of the Achabara then occupied by a race of mighty warriors called the Kheta (Hetha) who defended them¬ selves later against Ramses the Great. It stood in the moun¬ tains west of the Dead Sea where Chebron, one of the oldest cities of Judah (now called Hebron), stands. The word Acbar means ‘mighty,’ and the Egyptians knew the Achabara by that name, for at an early period they never entirely conquered them. From the word Cabar or Gabar (also meaning ‘ mighty ’) comes the word Geber or Gheber which (as the Kheta of Khebron were fire worshippers) was in time used to denote the an¬ cient people who were, like all the Old Canaanites, very much controlled by that form of religion.—Genesis, xxii. 7; Deut. v. 24.

Our subject is what a Greek dramatist called ‘ the immor¬ tal light of fire,’ with which we propose to connect the ‘ Canaanite fires in the land of Seth.’ The results of a supposed action of solar heat or spirit upon the earth-forms of matter are plainly seen in the Oriental Philosophy. It has therefore appeared absolutely indispensable in this treatise to provide the reader with the facts, evidences, 1 and criticism requisite to enable the student of the records of the past to understand the ancient utterances to which his attention is directed. Be¬ fore the works of Movers, 2 of the author of ‘ Supernatural Re¬ ligion,’ and of the author of ‘ Antiqua Mater ’ no such treatise as the present could have been readily prepared. The extracts given further on are translations that deliver the very spirit of

1 The proper names in the Hebrew Bible have been read without the points, be¬ cause these were not in existence in the centuries before our era.

2 Movers is quoted by Gerhard in his Griechische Mythologie, and has been praised by Theodore Parker. Chwolsohn quotes Movers in his work on the Ssabians.—Maspero, too, quotes Movers.

VI

PREFACE.

the orient, breathing that essence of the oriental philosophy that was associated with the fire of the King Sun.

The red-hot ' Divine Conception holds the first place !—Clialdaean Oracle.

The Clialdaean held that all things are the progeny of One Fire, that the Primal Fire did not enclose his power within matter by works but by mind, for the Architect (the Logos) of the fiery world is the Mind of mind. Consequently “ the Fireheated Ennoia holds the first rank, and afterwards comes the first of the immaterials or spirituals. So, too, the soul was held to be, by the Power of the Father, bright fire; remains immortal, and is the mistress of life. Compare Genesis, ii. 7. Moreover the Clialdaean Logos was the Father - begotten Light, for he alone, having gathered from the power of the Father the flower of mind, is able to understand the Paternal Mind (—Proklus, in Timaeum, 242, Cory, 253, 254; Hermes Trismegistus, I. 6 ; Jeremiah, li. 7, 13). Like a Jew, Simon the Gittite held the intelligible, mind-perceived, and visible nature of Fire ; that the beginning of all things is boundless Fire. 1 2 And the Hindu sage declared that when the Divine Being formed out of the waters the Spirit, He looked on it, and its mouth opened like an egg: out of its mouth pro¬ ceeded the Word, and from the Word came forth Fire !

S. F. Dunlap,

Graduated at Harvard in 1845.

1 Primal Conception. Creative Mind, heated by fire (purithalpes). For God is the life of all things in conception. —Philo, Legal Allegories, 1. 29. The soul is life or has life.—Justin Martyr, Dial., p. 36.

2 Matthew, iii. 11.

Chapter One. The Mountains Of The Amorites

“ The people of the land the Beni Khat.”— Gen. xxiii. 7.

Once the valley of the Jordan was a series of lakes, and the Dead Sea of far greater extent than now. The waters of the Gulf of Akabah covered the entire Wady el Arabah to the Dead Sea, and the salt rocks of Jebel Usdum were formed in the sea’s bed. The waters of the Jordan Yalley did not flow down into the Gulf of Akabah after the land had emerged from the sea. 1 The whole of Palestine rose up from under the waters in the Miocene period. The Dead Sea in the Pluvial period had a length of nearly 200 English miles from north to south at the time when its surface was at a higher level than that of the Mediterranean at the present day. This Pluvial period extended from the Pliocene through the Glacial period down to recent times. The Lebanon throughout the year was snow-clad over its higher elevations, while glaciers descended into some of its valleys. The region of the Hauran, lying at its southern base, was the site of several extensive volcanoes, 2 while the district around and the Jordan Yalley were invaded by floods of lava. 3 During the time that the shores of the Gulf of Suez were depressed 200 feet (or more) lower than at present, those of the Gulf of Akabah experienced a like submergence. 4 The region about Sadem (Sodom) was the abode of the Lotan

1 Alohim said: Let the dry appear.—Gen. i. 9.

2 The lava patches reach from Northern Palestine to Aden, and the Red Sea is a vast crevasse of plutonic depression.—R. F. Burton, in Acad., p. 48.

4 Edward Hull, Mount Seir.

THE GHEBERS OF HEBRON.

Arabs. 1 And Genesis supposes Lot to have seen the volcanic fires. 2

Between Hermon and Sinai lay a country occupied by a con¬ siderable number of tribes, among the most southerly being the Adites (Auditae, 3 or Oaditae) and Midianites ; among those to the north being the Kananites of Acho (Ako, Akko) and Tyre, and also the Amorites. The Bible describes the Phoenicians in the north as Kananites, in the south as Pelestim or Philistians. The land Caleb (Egyptian Khalebu) was near the district of the Katti (Klieth or Keth) at Hebron, while the Khatti (Katti Kheta) extended to the south as far as the country of the lower Ruthen 4 (Arad) and Idumea (Mt. Seir, Edom). The land of Kanan took in the country between the Mediterranean and the sea of Tiberias, from Hermon (Chermon) down to Iebus, Hebron, and Arad. Kanaan begat Kliat (Klieth).—Gen. x. 15. Over all this region Adonis (Saturn) was adored under various names by the fire-worshippers ; for they called Dionysus Adon (Adonis) in the Lebanon, Adoni and Adonai in Jerusalem, Sat, Set, in Philistia and Seb or Sabi 5 in Arabia. Euripides, Herod¬ otus, and Movers leave no doubt upon the point. 6 There was a strong desire on the part of the mountaineers of Jerusa¬ lem in the second century B.C., to get possession of Kanan. Genesis, ix. 25-27, curses Kanan, and declares him to be the servant of Shem and Iapet. It carries out this disposition of the Son of Cham (the Hot) by taking possession of Kananite territory 7 from the surroundings of Sidon and Tyre, all they could get of the Khatti territory, the Iebusite, Amorite, Gergashite, Choite (Acho, Acre), Arak or Arukaanl and, Beth

2 Compare Gen. xiii. 10, with xix. 17, 24, 25.

3 Asu (Esau) married Audah, daughter of Ailon the Khethite (Khittite), and lived in Mt. Seir in Edom (Adorn).—Gen. xxxvi. 1, 2, 8.

4 Osiander mentions an Arab deity Ruda.

5 See also Genesis, x. 7. The Arabs called Kronos Adon and Seb. Kronos is the Hebrew Karan ‘to shine.’ Herakles, King of Fire, was called Apis on the Kile, Kronos in Arabia.—Nonnus, Dionysiac xl. 393. Also called Ammon.—xl. 392.

6 Dunlap, Vestiges, 199, 201. ‘ Arabica gens calls jne Adoneum.’—Ausonius, Ep. 30. Ausonius identifies Adoneus with Dionysus, Adonis, and Osiris. And Nonnus evidently holds the same view. The Phoenicians proclaimed Ousorus a deity.—Movers, 120, quotes Eusebius, de Laud. Constant, c. 13. Osiris was declared to have been a man by Euhemerism ; and Eusebius held Ousorus to have been a man.

7 Genesis, xii. 2, plainly indicates the intention to take the country. Kanan could not have become a Son of Cham until after the Kananites had emigrated into and colonized the Delta.

THE MOUNTAINS OF THE AMORITES.

Ban, Samaria and Karmel to the southern part of the Dead Sea ; and Judas Makkabeus took Asdod and Askalon. It was an old Phoenician tradition that Saturn had granted the Land of the South to the God Taut, and Taut appears to have got a good share of it, even so far south as Egypt. The Phoenician Taut is the Egyptian Tat, Tot, Thoth. A more recent tradition, in Genesis, ix. 25, 26, of priestly origin, opens the Chananite ter¬ ritory to conquest by the Jews.

The climate of ancient Palestine was always of varied char¬ acter owing to the variation of level in different spots, but its hills and mountains, together with the wooded character of the country at an early period, must have made most of it a toler¬ able abode for man. In January, 1884, at Jerusalem the snow fell to a depth of over two feet all over the country. Such a fall had not occurred for five years. In the most ancient period the woods must have kept the snow longer on the ground to feed the streams of the country, so that it was in all prob¬ ability better watered than since its woods have been cut down. 1 It is possible that Arad may in the time of Ramses II. have had water for a moat around the town. Of early Arabia we know but little except its worship of Saturn, Kronos, Dionysus and Aphrodite Ourania, and in the sketches of ancient Judea we are introduced to Adon (Iachoh) the Lebanon Life-god and to Asliera (the Syrian Venus), Sarah.

Without going too deep into geology it may be said that marine shells are found in the stratifications around the Dead Sea, that salt water ran from the Salt Sea down the Valley of Akabah past Petra and Acharon’s tomb 2 to the Red Sea at the Gulf of Akabah, 3 that hills formed by the coral insect are found some way inland in Arabia, 4 that the Red Sea once was broader than now, that the shores were once under water, 4 that the land has risen 5 (the water subsided), that the Isthmus of Suez was all deep water, and that formerly Egypt had w r aterfalls besides the cataracts of the Nile. Egypt has been gradually drying up. The prodigious water-worn ravines in the cliffs of the Nile valley show this; and there are remark -

1 The Lebanon was once snow-clad throughout the year.—Hall, Mount Seir, 183, and pp. 124, 129, 133, 134.

2 Aharon ; Ahron, Aaron : from Achar and Chares, meaning ‘ Sun.’

2 Hull, Mt. Seir.

4 Niebuhr, Voyage in Arabie, I. 244.

5 R. H. Burton, Land of Midian, passim.

THE GHEBERS OF HEBRON.

able evidences of the Nile having been habitually some 50 feet above its present level, thus filling up the whole valley at all times of the year. That its stream was fed by local rains throughout its course is seen by the deep gorges in the cliffs, often a mile long, and ending in dried-up waterfalls. In the history of the Faium the same drying up is seen. 1 Arabia anciently was less dried up than to-day, and appears to have been the heart of the Semite race. 2

From B.c. 2000-450, the time of Herodotus, the Arabians of Audah, 3 the Chanania or Kananites, the Tyrians, the tribe of Iaudah (Jews), Israelites, Philistians and Egyptians wor¬ shipped idols.

Ancient religion appears as a matter of organization, priestly theory, and manipulation,-coupled with the supersti¬ tions of the multitude; and these in time became somewhat systematized under the efforts of the priesthoods. These, in turn, became the leading castes, as in Egypt; and as religion reduced to a system requires gradations of rank as well as a constant attendance at the temples, a jobbing goes on with the people to obtain offerings to support the priest caste, while claims are made on the king for lands for the temples, and it ends by the pharaoh, the priests and the military holding all the landed property in Egypt, while in the Arabian Desert the sheiks or patriarchs wander from place to place with their families, their slaves, their cattle, horses, camels, and supersti¬ tions.

Meanwhile great temples to the Sungod and the Moongoddess 4 (Binah, Venah) have been erected. Nature is carefully

1 Petrie, Pyramids, 149.

2 Renan, Hist. Peuple Israel, I., 10. In the earliest Semite period we may suspect that the alphabet may perhaps not have been completed. That p and b were modified by subsequent additions to the alphabet may be assumed, or else these letters were changed in the pronunciation. Phuo varies into pephuka, showing an early recognition of the close relations of p and ph (f). So g, k, ch were originally modifications of one sound ; thus we have the district Kabul in Palestine, and the name Chabolo and Gebal. T, d, and th are, between Egyptian and Hebrew, in constant interchange, being modi¬ fications of one original sound.

3 Compare Wright, Chr. in Arabia, 2-5. The Arabian peninsula is considered by Niebuhr an immense pile of mountains encircled by a belt of arid, flat ground extending from Suez around the whole peninsula to the mouth of the Euphrates, and continued on the north by the province of Petra and the deserts of Syria.—lb. 11.

4 W. H. Roscher’s Lexicon der griechischen und romischen Mythologie confirms the view that Aphrodite was the great Asiatic moon-goddess, like Astarte and Artemis, and is the ‘ Queen of heaven.’ See “ Academy,” August 15, 1885, p. 106.

THE MOUNTAINS OF THE AMORITES.

attended to by the priests, the stars are gazed at, the constel¬ lations formed and numbered, and a system of the universe invented.

Genesis starts from Chaldaism. Compare Gen. xv. 7 ; Septuagint psalm xix.; Philo, Who is Heir, 45, 48, and Change of Scripture Names, 3. Phoenicians and Syrians name Kronos El, Bel and Bolaten. The God El 1 was the primal God of the Semite race known to the Hebrews as Hael (Hel), the Greek Aelios and Helios. The Cretan God Abel (Abelios) is in Babylon Bel, the Bal, Abel, or Habol of the Jews, the Greek Apollon, Cretan Apellon. The Tower of Bel at Babylon with its seven stages is duplicated in the Syrian and Hebrew-Gheber High Places and in the Pyramids of Egypt,—without however the seven stages of Bel’s tower at Babylon; Bel’s temples were on the High Places. The Sacred Number 7 was everywhere from the Euphrates to the Nile. Bel and Istar were among the Hebrews Bal and Astarta, Astarta too in Egypt. Ash (fire, life) becomes Asara, Azara, Ashera in Judaea and Phoenicia, Aisah in Genesis, and Isis in Ptolemaic Greek. Isis came out from Phoenicia into Egypt, and the Assyrian Asar becomes Asar in Hieroglyphs, and the Ptolemaic Osiris,— the name Surya in India. A ‘ Tomb of Osiris ’ was at Abydos, where the nobles of Egypt were buried, the kings of Sjrria were buried in the ‘ High Places ’ of the Sun. From all this it is evident that Babel was as much the centre of the Semite Beligion as Constantinople or Mecca are centres of Moham¬ medanism. Only that when the Priests of the Jewish Temple in the Second Century before our era compiled or wrote the Hebrew Old Testament they substituted the God of fire, life, and rain instead of Bal (Baal), abused the Chaldaean stargazers (2 Kings, xxiii.), and left out as much of the religion of Baby¬ lon as they possibly could. 2 For Bel and Astarta, As and Aisah, or Osiris and Esi (Isis), they wrote Adam and Eua (Heuah), because they did not choose to surrender the doc-

1 Ps. xix. 1. The Hebrew Names El, Elah (in Hebrew letters Alh), Alha, Elohim (Alhim) are translated ‘ God ’ in the English Bible.

2 Jeremiah, li. 7, 53. Adonai Iahoh is translated Lord, Adon and Bel also Lord. Adonis ‘Lord’ among the Phoenicians and name of Bol.—Hesychius ; Movers, I. 195. Balan ‘our Lord.’ Adni ‘my Lord.’ Hoi Adon ! Ah Lord! They subtiliter celebrate the slain Adon, and his resurrection.—Movers, 194, 308 ; Hieronymus, ad Ezekiel, viii. 750. Adonis lives! Kronos has a Son, named Kronos.—Movers, 1.186 ; Sanchoniathon, Orelli, p. 3-2.

THE GHEBERS OF HEBRON.

trine of divine dualism (Apasson and Taautha, Hermathena, Choclnnah and Bena, Adon and Yena, Bel and Beltis, Osar and Asherah) in the primal Creator. It would not do to give up the rib of Genesis, ii. 22, 23. What would have become of the “ Mother of all that live ” ? The theory of dualism re¬ quired the two sources (the male and the female) as late as the time of Simon Magus and the haeretical or independent opinions. A man in those days was required to believe in the ‘ Great Mother,’ else he was an unusual heretic.—Gen. ii. 20- 22, iii. 20; Proverbs, viii. 1, 30. Like Brahma, Adam gives names to the animals.

Bel was regarded as the “ Lord of the world who dost dwell in the temple of the Sun.” —Sayce, Hibbert Lect., p. 101. So the Septuagint, Arabic and Yulgate copies of the nineteenth Psalm say : In the sun Iahoh has placed his tabernacle ! The Semite and Sabian population thought alike. The conjunction of the ideas fire and light with life was offset by their oppo¬ sites darkness and death. As surely as the Babylonians and Jews both had the Flood-legend, and the Sacred Seven, and the Adonis-myth, the doctrine of a bisex first cause and the theory of precosmical powers, just as certainly the Babylonian Bel was the God of life (Iachi, Iachoh, Iahoh, Iao, and Ioue or Jove), since Bel was the Babylonian Creator (the Demiourgos), and out from the Unknown Darkness spoke the word of light and life.

The Chaldaeans had the mysterious Name Iao, the Jews had the unspeakable word Ihoh (the tetragramaton ; in which the h, or ft, was read a) and the Phoenicians had “ trina littera ” and the mysterious Name Iao, the Iao of the Chaldaeans. Thus the mysterious ineffable Name at Jerusalem, consisting of four letters, stands between the equally mysterious Iao on the Eu¬ phrates and the Iao of the Phoenicians. Now since the Jewish Temple sought to absorb the other High Places, and as the kingdom of Hebron preceded that of Jerusalem, a new and unknown Name was not likely to captivate the priesthoods of the “ Bamoth Bal ” unless it was revered also in Babylon and Phoenicia ; there is reason to infer that lad and Iahoh (mean¬ ing life, Eternal Life) are merely shortened forms from the Hebrew roots chiah and hiah (chaiah and haiah) “ to live.”

To exhibit the connection between the Mysteries and the religions of the East it is only necessary to quote Plato’s

THE MOUNTAINS OF THE AMORITES.

Pkaedrus, which closely resembles Biblical and even modern Turkish doctrine, as follows : For if it were merely that mania is an evil, it would be well spoken ; but now the great¬ est benefits come to us by means of mania given by divine be¬ stowal. For both the Prophetess at Delphi and the holy ladies at Dodona have done many fine things for Greece, privately and publicly, when in a state of frenzy, but when in a sober state of mind little or nothing. The ancients who gave the names did not regard Mania as anything disgrace¬ ful or a reproach. The ancients testify that Mania is as much superior to discretion, what comes from God to that which is from men, as prophesy is more perfect and estimable than augury, or one name than the other, or the work of one to the performance of the other. Let us not therefore prefer a sane man to one who is moved by an inspiration.

Every soul is immortal; for that which is always moved is immortal; but what moves something else and is moved by something else, when it has a cessation of movement its life ceases. That, then, which moves itself, since it does not leave itself, never ceases being moved but is the source and begin¬ ning of motion for the others that are being moved. And Be¬ ginning is unborn. 1 For all that is born must be born from Beginning, but (the Arche) itself from none; for if a Begin¬ ning should be born from anything, then it would not be a Beginning. Since, then, it is unborn (uncreate), it must be in¬ destructible also. For if a Beginning should perish, it will neither be born from anything nor anything else from it, if in¬ deed all things must be born from a Beginning (an Arche). So, then, the Beginning (Arche) of motion is the very thing that moves itself: and this can neither perish nor be born, or both all heaven and all genesis collapsing would stop and never would there again be (that) whereby what is moved shall be born. Since what is moved by itself, has been seen to be immortal, one will not hesitate to say that this very thing is the quality of soul : that having its impulse (motion given to it) from without is soulless, but that which is moved from within, of itself, has a soul, since this is the nature of soul. And if this is so, that there is nothing else that itself moves itself except soul, of necessity the soul (life) must be unborn

1 Compare the first words of Genesis i. 1 : In the Beginning, Elohim bore. Here we see the juxtaposition of MasSs and Plato.

THE GHEBERS OF HEBRON.

and immortal. Therefore we have said enough respecting athanasia. 1 Plato then goes on to argue that a soul gets a body when it has lost its wings (that is, in the fall of man from paradise). While it remains perfect it soars aloft and governs the universe. This is not essentially different from Semite ideas. Plato then gets on the subject of the millennium as connected with the Mysteries. 2 Next, he enters more fully in¬ to the joys of the Initiated in the Mysteries, pure and blessed, in company with “ that happy choir ” in company with Zeus (Bel) and other Gods, beholding the pure light and the blessed visions seen in those Mysteries, 3 that, according to Cicero, gave a promise of dying with a better hope. Therefore Plato had been instructed in the Oriental Mysteries, and his specu¬ lations are about as closely connected with the Mysteries of the Syrian and Egyptian Semites and with Hebrew opinions (such as we find in the Bible) as we could expect of one ini¬ tiated into the Mysteries that Plutarch (de Iside), Ezekiel, Isaiah and Irmiah 4 describe. Plato held the theory of spirit and matter, as representing two opposites. So did the Per¬ sians, Jews, the Jordan Ascetics, and Mani. But no evidence of the existence of such an entity as spirit can be shown. The Jews held fire was spirit; but fire is the product of mat¬ ter, the friction of two pieces of wood, or flint and steel.

1 Immortality.

2 Plato, Phaedrus, cap. xxviii. xxix. p. 92. Stallbaum. Judgment too, and pun¬ ishment in Hades.

4 Irmiaho, Jeremiah.