Forlong - Rivers of Life

164
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
rod which of course godly spears do, as those of Siva and Bacchus. This stone is
distinctly called a witness, Latin, Testis, so we see that even Jewish translators of
their sacred scriptures, have here granted what I urge; for they call the Eduth before
which the manna-vase was placed by the same Englih word testimony. The spear in
the hands of all gods and great mythic leaders signified the obelisk or Phallic god;
and Joshua, in holding up his spear as at the destruction of Ai (viii. 26) and elsewhere,
is shewn as perfectly understanding and following up the Yahveh-Nissi worship, instituted
by Moses after the destruction of the Amalekites. Both chiefs and people were
evidently severe and relentless in human sacrifices to their Phallo-solar god, which is
a proof that he was Siva. This is manifest in the but slightly disguised story of poor
Achan (Josh. vii.) and all his sons and daughters, who clearly became cherem or
“devoted,” because of the first repulse of the tribes before Ai.
From Joshua’s dying speech (xxiv. 14), it seems very clear that when the book bearing
his name was written, the writers, of probably about the time of Manasseh—650 B.C.
as we gather from such learned theologians as Bishop Colenso and Dr Davidson, did
not acknowledge all the previous gods of Israel, calling them with but little respect
“those (gods) which your fathers served on the other side the river,” although the
people are made by those writers to say, that it is Jhavh. who brought them out of
Egypt. If the writer did not mean that his tribe had changed their god, then we may
charitably suppose tbat they now intended to serve Jhavh spiritually, and no longer in
his mere Betyl or creative symbol.
Most learned men, not blinded by preconceived views indoctrinated into them in
childhood, are now of opinion that Edomites, Moabites, and the mongrel and later
Cana-anites and Jews were practically one people, of the Solar or Shemitic family,
with always very similar social laws and customs, and therefore the same religion
—that is Solar, or Shams, 1 or Shemish faiths—after they rose above the grosser
Phallic ones of Betulia, and Baal-Peor and his arks. It was then they began to call
their El or Elohim, Jhavh, Yehveh, or Yachveh, and Zabaoth or Tsabaoth, and became
pretty tolerably pure Sabeans. Long after this, however, the mass stuck to their
Matzebahs, Steli, Asheras or “Groves,” and to Kiun or Kewan of their earlier days.
The Star, Molok, Serpent, and Shaft, had gradually, but very gradually only, to give
way to great ’ΙΑΩ as the Greeks very properly called the later JHAVH. Not, however,
till the sixth, or even fifth century B.C., did the Jews form any clear perception of the
unity and omnipresence of Jhavh, or of his being the only God, and there being “none
else beside him;” for though Isaiah, and Jeremiah, the probable Deuteronomist, and one
or two others use thia language, yet the dates of these writings are now thrown back by
the best scholars to about the time of the Captivity, or a hundred years later, of which
I will speak elsewhere. The tribes were more benefitted by contact with wiser and
1 In Sansk, Ksham is to “endure” or “be able,” attributes of The Sun.