Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
sions), that “the whole Hebrew story as it now stands is a manifest fiction;” and further
that this “Moabite stone, if even its contents can be reconciled at all with the Hebrew
story, lends no support whatever to the traditionary view as to the Divine infallibility
of the Bible.” The italics are mine.
Much of the warfare between Moab and Israel as described in Kings and on this
stone seems to have been on account of the high regard these Shemites had for the
great cones of Nebo or Pisgah and Peor, if, as here and there appears, these were two
separate mountains or two peaks of one very sacred mountain. On the summit was
the Bet, house or temple of Peor, or Priapus, who Calmet thinks very justly was the
god of the range. “There was also,” he says, “a Peor or Phegor a city of Judah, but it
is not read (sic) in the Hebrew nor in the Vulgate but only in the Greek—Jos. xv. 60.
Eusebius says it was near Bethlehem;” in Jerome’s time he says it was called Paora,
that is Pi, the Sun-stone. The valley of Bethlehem, we must remember, was peculiarly
a place of Fire-worship and of human sacrifice, and therefore par excellence the Beth
or House of El, Lord or Bread-giver. On Nebo, Moses, their Sun had sunk; and
here had long rested. his Ark, of which the Palestine Explorers say they have found the
platform; here were the Jahveh’s sacred vessels, which Kemosh willingly accepted
as well as the women and maidens. It was Israel, says the stone record, who built
this “High place to Ataroth;” it was Kemosh who enabled the Moabites to drive out
the worshippers of this Jehovah; and it was only because Kemosh had been
“angered with his land,” says the pious Mesha, that these Israelites were ever permitted
within its bounds. So did these sanctimonious and inspired fighters speak of
one another and their gods. 1
This Nebo, Peor, and Kemosh, was worshipped by all the peoples for hundreds of
miles around the Dead Sea. Jerome calls the deity Baal-Peor, or Priapus; others, on
etymological grounds, Baal Zebub; others, as Gesenius, Mars and Saturn; 2 his female
energy, or it may be the dual form, appears on this atone as “Ataroth” or perhaps
Ashtar-Chemosh. Mr Heath writes: “Ashter or Gasteret comes from a common root gast»r,
uterus, Øst…ra,” &c. 3 This is she who presides over the wombs of all animals; the Afa of
the African, 4 the goddess of flocks, of woods, and riches. She carried a staff with a cross
on the top 5 2000 years before Christ and had a Crescent and Nimbus, and sometimes
an Ark overhead; she was the Goddess of Pity and Compassion, feelings which
always enter into matters connected with motherhood; hence the Greek root 'Oikteir,
Oikteir, Pity, is no doubt connected with the Ashtor, Ashter or Oteroth of this
Moabite atone.
Gad, one of the sons of the mythic Jacob, was the father, it is said, of the setter-up
of this stone, and Moabites apparently not seldom held the Jews in slavery. We know of
1 See much valuable matter on this point detailed
in Mr. L. Heath’s Phenecian Inscriptions,
B. Quaritch, London, 1873.
2 Smith’s Bible Dict.
4 P. 106, ante.
533
3
Phen. Inscript. p. 73.
5
Calmet’s Bible Dic.