the Sun, and the second and third, the Moon and Saturn, the two extremes of the planetary system.1 This is the Panaugeia or Universal Light of Philon, whose theories so greatly assisted Neo-Platonism. There is no doubt,' observes Movers, that Iao is Adonis,' 2 and Adonis, again, is the Semitic and Mosaic Adonai, the Lord. Here, too, we find another of the names of the Supreme God of the Hebrews applied to a Phoenician divinity. But what, in the abstract, more probable since the Phoenician language was almost identical with the Hebrew '? It has been asserted that the Hebrews borrowed their divinity Yahveh from Phoenicia, but this neither has been, nor will be, proved; and, apart from any religious conclusions, it would be quite as sensible to assert that the Latins borrowed their Jupiter from the Hellenik Zeus, since the two names are really identical, and belong in fact to but one divinity. But this is absurd; there is no borrowing in the matter; the forms spring up together and independently. Again, it is said: Jehovah is the Sun, for if he is identical with Iao, and Iao is the Sun, Jehovah must be the Sun,' and so nearly all the religion of the Old Testament would thus fade away into a mere solar cult of a physical Sun of righteousness Was it this idea which 6 alarmed the opponents of the genuineness of the oracle of the Klarian god? Let us, however, test the remarkable, and to some apparently conclusive, argument: Yahveh is Iao, the Sun is Iao, argal, Yahveh is the Sun; or again, water is a liquid, wine is a liquid, argal, water is wine. To leave this argument and proceed: Iao, as we have noticed, is far more than the sun, and I shall be quite willing to agree that Yahveh is the Supreme God, Iao is the Supreme God, argal Iao is Yahveh. is derived from the other; they are forms of the same identical appellation. 1 Cedrenus, i. 296. Neither name simply varient Next, as to the 2 Phon. 542 meaning of the name; Clemens Alexandrinus says, 'the mystic name of four letters,' the sacred Tetragrammaton YaHVeH, which was affixed to those alone to whom the adytum was accessible, is called Iaou, which is interpreted, "Who is and shall be."'1 Mr. King observes, 'Theodoret states that the four letters of the Holy Name were pronounced by the Samaritans IA BE; by the Jews, IA Q. Jerome (Ps. viii.), "The name of the Lord amongst the Hebrews is of four letters, Jod, He, Vau, He; which is properly the name of God, and may be read as I AHO, and is held by the Jews for ineffable."'2 Bunsen, very reasonably, considers it questionable whether the real etymology of the word is Hebrew, but remarks, The sublime idea, "I am that I am," i.e. the Eternal, is certainly the right one in a Hebrew point of view.' As Iau appears in the cuneiform, it has very probably a further meaning. The Rev. J. M. Rodwell translates 'exalter of Yav,' by the help of Assur and Yav the great gods &c.,' and observes, "The god Yav may be the Yaveh of the Moabite stone.' But this reading is exceedingly doubtful. Professor Oppert prefers Bin; the Rev. A. H. Sayce, Rimmon; and Mr. George Smith has given Daddi, Teiseba, and Vul as the Syrian, Armenian, and Assyrian values.' Movers connects Iao (pronounced with an aspirate) with IAkchOs, with the Bakchik cry Eua,' with Hyes, the name of Dionysos connected with fertilising moisture, and with the Phrygian cry Hyes Attes,' or Atys lives,' which belonged to the rites of 6 1 Strom. v. 6. 2 The Gnostics, 84, note 1. 3 Egypt's Place, iv. 193, note. 'The existent,' Bishop Browne, Speaker's Commentary, i. 26. 'He is, or He makes to be,' Bishop Colenso, New Bible Commentary critically examined, i. 66. In the scrolls entombed with the [Egyptian] dead in 4 3 those days [ie. the time of Moses] the name of God is never mentioned save in the guise of the phrase Nukpu-nuk, which means I am that I am, Literary Remains of Emmanuel Deutsch, 166. 4 Records of the Past, iii. 37 et seq. Annals of Assur-nazir-pal [Sardanapalos]. Sabazios and the great Mother.1 This view possesses a very high amount of probability; Iao is more especially the autumn-sun-power with its mysterious life-awaking juice.' Iao, again, is identical with Sabazios,2 or the more especial Thrakian and Phrygian varient of Dionysos; and that Adonis was known also by the name Iao cannot be doubted.' 3 Iao in Gnostic Art, which is mainly interesting as illustrative of more archaic ideas, frequently appears as identified with Abraxas. The name IAW, when it appears on gems surrounded with the timeserpent tail in mouth, typifies the endless course of the supreme solar power through the ever-revolving year.5 Another gem is explained by Mr. King as the Gnostic Pleroma, or combination of all the Aeons; expressed by the outline of a man holding a scroll, or perhaps serpent, and filled in with innumerable letters, in which the name only of Iao may be recognised.' Mr. James Fowler elegantly illustrates the application by mediaeval Christendom of some of the earlier thoughts respecting Time and his Master. After noticing various mediaeval Zodiacal representations, and emblems of the months, he observes, 'The course of the sun through the Zodiac represented the course of the Sun of Righteousness through the festivals of the Church, which marked the divisions of the ecclesiastical year as the signs of the Zodiac did the divisions of the natural. . . . As the natural sun is replaced in these examples by the Sun of Righteousness, so are the signs of the Zodiac by the Apostles, the first to reflect the light from Our 1 Vide inf. VIII. i. Hyes, Iakchos. ii. Eua. As to Atys, vide inf. IX. vi. 2 Inf. V. ii. VIII. ii. Sabazios. 3 Mythol. of the Aryan Nations, ii. 113. As to Adon-Tammuz, vide inf. subsec. v., XI. ii. XII. i. 1. Plate • Vide King, The Gnostics. ... opposite title-page, fig. 4; plate op- 5 Vide inf. VIII. ii. Serpent. Lord; and as the stars of the Zodiac possessed an interest to the ancient astronomer which no other stars possessed, so the Apostles here shine forth as a kind of synecdoche of that greater company of Saints which are as the stars in multitude.'1 Subsection IV.-Dionysos and Zeus. The connection in the Orphik Theogony between Dionysos and Zeus is naturally exceedingly close, for all things in God or Zeus, and God in all things or Dionysos, though so widely different in meaning and effect, may seem to many almost interchangeable phases and phrases. We have seen Dionysos represented as the Spirit of the Kosmogony, which, as our great Pantheistic poet tells us, appears in sun and star, in wind and tree. How, then, does the poet describe Zeus? Zeus is the first and the last '-the Alpha and Omega. He is head and middle, the origin of earth and of starry heaven, the breath of winds, the fury of the tireless flame, the root of sea, sun, and moon, First Cause of all things, oneness of force, unity of divinity, mighty ruler of all, one kingly frame from whom all things have sprung, fire and water, earth, air, night and day. He is Mind, and Love delighting in its works.' How is he these? and, if he be these, is he not the equivalent of the kosmic Dionysos? No; for the poet connects him with the manifestations of visibility because he is their maker. They breathe and whisper to the wise of a divine origin, declare his glory and show his handiwork, so that in the beautiful words of Mr. Martineau, 'We must look upon the sublime face of the Book of Nature as the living appeal of thought to thought.' Zeus is not their inherent and indwelling 1 Archaeologia, xliv. 1; Mediaeval Representations of the Months and Seasons, 184-5. divinity; on the contrary, they have sprung from him, and he is their origin, not their vital force. He is not merely the working demiurge who brings order out of chaos and sustains the course of nature; he is the great First Cause of all things, a oneness of force, and a unity of divinity. All these things' are not Him, but 'are encircled in Him, for all things lie in the mighty frame of Zeus.' This is a grand old creed,2 a noble declaration of faith, a belief in the one God and Father of whom are all things, whose luminous and ever-present divinity encircles His great store of starry worlds, which lie in His bosom like children,' and whose vastly delighting love eternally rejoices in His works, and sees with divine satisfaction In gradual growth His full-leaved will Pindaros truly tells us that Zeus obtained something more than what the gods possessed.' But, although the nature of Zeus is here nobly described, and clearly distinguished from that of Dionysos, yet the two concepts, at once so similar and dissimilar, soon necessarily clash in the mind of the poet and become intermixed and confounded. Zeus assumes a kosmogonic phase, and Dionysos becomes a kind of Zeus. In the line So father Zeus governs all things, and Bakchos, he governs also, the poet labours hard to give both divinities a kind of equal sway. And, again, when the solar concept pre 1 Orphik Frag. vi. 2 Platon alludes to the passage as 'an archaic statement' (Laws, iv.). 3 The Voluntas Dei may be thought by some but a poor reason for the constitution and course of the universe, but no other can be suggested; for the view of Spinoza' that God is the Universe, producing a series of necessary movements or acts, in consequence of intrinsic energy' (Draper, Conflict between Religion and Science, 179), is merely a re-statement of things as they are, or, at most, an imaginary reason drawn only from nescience. |