Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
Thus, then according to the inspired writers, these kings and great ones lived in
or near hell, and clearly did not waste away or dissolve into gases as we have been
usually taught to believe is to be the case with all flesh. It is urged by some that
“hell is unfortunately used for Sheol . . . that it would be better to render it
grave, pit, a depth or the centre of the earth.” 1 In these days, however, investigators
do not trust to one or even several translators, and to the careless multitude one word
is nearly as good as another; nor would it satisfy any reasonable man to know that
all the great ones of earth—whether Rephaim, Nephelim or giants—rested in the
centre of this globe!
Sheol was considered by the Babylonians, says M. Lenormant, as a world of seven
spheres, and was clearly a solar idea, corresponding to the seven days of the week, or
seven planets; and from Babylonian learning, St. Paul and the Arabians probably got their
ideas of “seven heavens.” Mr. Isidore Heath shows that Jewish nomenclature rested
not upon a theory of creation but upon planetary influence: “not only is the redemption
from Sheol found to exist in the early Babylonian Epic, but a peculiarity in the
case is that the Christian statement in the New Testament 2 is utterly incomprehensible,
except in conjunction with that Epic. St. Peter does most clearly couple together the
preaching unto the spirits in prison with the flood in the days of Noah. 3 These Spirits
of the prison (?) were only “sometimes disobedient,” but “the long-suffering of God
waited in the days of Noah”—a vague and mysterious statement!
The Babylonian Epic tells us that “the Universal Mother” lost “her Lord of Life
in the days of the flood,” as Isis lost Osiris in the beginning of the winter solstice (end of
September), when the floods of the Nile cover all the good lands of Egypt. The Tyrian
inscriptions show that Phenicians and Jews had the same views in regard to the Rephaim,
and the divine persons comprised in their idea of God, but this was not an individuality.
The former spoke of “our lady Tanit-Pen-Baal,” the Pen being merely
an image of Ba-al such as they moulded or sculptured, and probably rather grossly.
Phenician inscriptions also show that these people had the same rules for offerings and
sacrifices, &c., as is commonly supposed to have only obtained among the Jews. 4
Although a temple at Marseilles is called Ba-als, yet the worship is to the Els,
Elohim, or Solar gods generally; PIautus 5 has Elonim not Eloim. Milcom or Milco-im,
bears the same relation to Molok, as Eloim to Eloh; 6 so that if Molok is an angel,
Milco-im is an assembly of angels, and therefore Elohim signifies the gods generally,
and Jhavh or Jehovah is neither greater than, nor different from Elohim. 7 “Eloh seems
to mean essentially in Semitic that which one swears by (as when Abraham made his
servant take an oath). Jehovah is a future, from ‘havah,’ as Natura from Nascor, and
1 Smith’s Bible Dict.
2 1 Peter iii. 19.
3 Phen. Inscrip., p. 34. Ibid., pp. 40 to 52.
4 See Mr. Isidore Heath’s translation of “Tariff of
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Masses or Fees authorized at the Sacrifices to Eloim
in the Temple of Baal at Marsailles.”
5 Poenulus, Act v., verse I.
6 Phen. Inscrip., p. 54. 7 Ibid., p. 57.