Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
gets on better after his lesson. Jethro and Moses, that is Egyptians, Midianites, and
Jews were, we see by this story, clearly serving one God, whom both indifferently call
their Elohim, or Aleim and Jhavh. Jethro found no fault with “the Jhavh, my
Banner,” and he and Moses parted great friends.
All Hebraists are now agreed that the name of the Jewish God had precisely the
same signification as that of the gods of other nations around them, notably of the
Phenicians, viz.; “He who makes life,” or “generates into life.” Yachveh is more
frequently used, says Bishop Colenso, than Yahveh, but this is a difference due only to
pronunciation. The favourite God of the masses was Ba-al, which signifies “erection
“upward;” whilst Peor, its adjunct, has also the meaning of “open” or “spread,” so
that Baal-Peor is nothing more or less than the simple Sri-Linga or Linga-in-Argha.
Let me repeat, then, that the idea is preposterous that these tribes were more
monotheistic than their neighbours. Baal and the “Grove,” or Astarte, were, we see,
their dominant gods, together with Eduths, stones, arks, and ephods; and seeing that
this faith in such Phallic emblems, though slightly spirituafued in the minds of their
prophets and sages, continued down to long past the days of Mahomed, when we
know that they still wornhipped El, or Elohim, Baal, and the Grove or Ark, and
revered the unhewn rock or cap of Mount Moriah, which Moslems have placed
a temple over, and all Phallic mountains like Sinai, Horeb, Nebo, Peor, and
Hermon; that their faith was exhibited in setting up holy stones and
circumambulating them on all great occasions; in revering, if not worshipping
ancestors who worshipped Betyls or Matsebas, whose greatest and wisest monarch
erected temples to Molok and Chemosh on sacred mounts;” that they universally
circumcised and considered no uncircumcised or sexually imperfect person fit to enter
their Phallic shrine or appear before the god; who, when they had not an ark to place in
their second temple, placed, like their countrymen of Meka, a stone in it; 1 when we are
told that their El, or Il, or Al, or Jah—the common Phallic or Solo-Phallic god of all
the peoples of these parts, minutely described to them how to erect Phallic pillars and
sacrificial altars, and all the paraphernalia of a Sivaik temple, in “lavers, basins, candlesticks,”
and such utensiles, scents, perfumes, and unguents for the deity, also strange
Seraphim and Cherubim figures; looking, I repeat, at all this, and how imperfect aay
ark or Argha would be without its Pallas, or Argha-nat, a Caput-oline without its
Palatine, woman without man; can we hesitate to pronounce that Eduth to have been
a Lingam, which Moses and Aaron both called their Elohim or Yahveh? We see at
once that these words were synonymous though it is possible that the Eduth was meant
only as the god’s symbol; and that just as we might ask in India—pointing to a Sivaik
shrine; “what is that?” and the Brahman would reply, “Maha-Deva” (the great god),
so possibly it (verse 34 of xvi.) may mean “The Eduth—the Jhavh’s symbol,” but this
strengthened and not weakens my argument. Look again at that which is presented to
the Eduth—manna or bread, the only bread they havc, and to the god of Beth-lehem (the
1 The Rev. J. Wilson’s Arch. Dict. Art. Sanctum S.