Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
called after Phenix or Phoinix Fýinix, because a country of Palms in Hebrew and
Phenician; that rmt Tamar (a noun maculine) and Palmyra (the city of the Sun, 1
Kings ix. 18) was so named from the like abundant vegetation, still this does not yield
to us the origin of the word, far less the root from which the palm received im name.
Mr Newton tells us that “the central object in the Asyrian ‘grove’ is a male date-palm
the well-known emblem of the Sun, Phallua and Life,” 1 that all its characteristics
as “feather-like branches and singularly wrinkled bark, are readily recogniaed in
the highly conventional forms of the religious emblem, even in the ornament of the
king’s robe,” and in a moot valuable picture which Dr Inman gives us of an Asyrian
Phallus at page 124 of his small book. Fürst thinks that the worship at Baal-Tamar or
Baal the Palm, was a Priapus column, in which opinion Dr Inman and Mr Newton concur;
we may rest assured, I think, that the uprightness and fruitfulness of the palm was the
cause why Phallic worshippers revered it. Sankoniathon, as quoted by Gale (I. 29),
says that the Phenicians “compassed the world by Saturne” and Astarte: which we
now see, means Solar and Lunar observations. Their first great westward expedition
is said to have been by aid of the Tyrian Herakles to Tangiers, Malta, Gedes, etc. They
erected two pillars to him near Tangiers. Appianus (2d century A.C.) and Diodorus
said that Phenician rites and sacrifices still obtained at the temple and pillars of Hercules
(Gale I. 32). It is held by this learned man and Bocbart that the Phenicians gave the
name hynpc Spania to Spain, because it so abounded with conies or }pc, Spana; it
was also Iberia, which in Phenician signfies Termini or Bounds, }rbu, for they wished
all people to consider this the ultima Thule; perhaps they at one time really thought it
was the limit of the globe.
Their African capital they called Chadre Anak or seat of Anak, also Kartha-hadat
tdhatrk, or Carthage, which city, says Tertullian, anually sent tithes to the Tyrian Herakles.
Dido restored, but did not build, the very ancient city. It was held to be “built
after Utika, Atika or Otika, aqytu, which signifies the ancient city,” though it is thought
to have followed Gedes or Cadiz. Tangiers was Tingis or Tagar rgt, a place of
negotiation. It was but a small remnant of the great XHNA then, that the Jews called
Philistines, and “the dwellers in Canaan.” This great old race we may, with certainty,
say, had some 3000 B.C. estahlishe.d their strong centre about Troy—Tyre and Sidon,
and thrown off the Pelasgi to the north and west, and these Pe-lishtes, Pe-let’ites,
Pelesites or Philistines to the south: we must remember that s and t are interchangable
letters, and that the P is only meant to be aspirated when the h is added—not
to be made into an f. Xenophon and numerous writers tell us that Kana-an or
Kna-an or Kenaan was the country of the P’iliates. These were undoubtedly a
strong maritime as well as pastoral people in the days of Abram; and the Jews, according
to their own account alone, were evidently nothing in comparison with them, until
at least the days of David. Even then the unbiassed reader will see 2 that the Pilistes
1 Dr. Inman’s Symbolism, Appendix p. 128.
2 See Gen. xxi. xxvi. and Smith’s Bible Dic.
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