Serpent-Worship, and Other Essays, with a Chapter on Totemism. C. Staniland Wake
of a lion.70 Judging from this discrepancy, the head of a kerub being substituted for that of an ox, it has been suggested that the kerub and the ox are synonymous. Dr. Faber very justly observes on this difficulty, that Ezekiel “would scarcely have called the head of the ox by way of eminence the head of a kerub, unless the form of the ox so greatly predominated in the compound form of the kerub as to warrant the entire kerub being familiarly styled an ox.”71 This conclusion is the more probable when we consider that in the first vision the creatures are represented with feet like those of a calf.72 In fact, we have in this vision, as in the kerubim of Genesis, animal representations of deity, such as the Persians and other Eastern peoples delighted in, the most prominent being that of the ox—or, rather bull, as it would be more properly rendered.
But what was the sacred bull of the religions of antiquity, or rather what its mythological value? Dr. Faber says expressly on this subject: “There is perhaps no part of the Gentile world in which the bull and the cow were not highly reverenced and considered in the light of holy and mysterious symbols.”73 He cites the traditional founder of the Chinese empire, Fohi, as having a son with a bull’s head, this personage being also venerated by the Japanese under the title of the “ox-headed prince of heaven.” According to Mr. Doolittle, a paper image of a domestic buffalo, as large as life, with smaller images in clay of this animal, are carried in procession at the Great Chinese Festival in honour of spring, while a live buffalo accompanies the procession for some distance.74 It is curious to find that at the other side of the Europo-Asiatic continent the bull was considered sacred by the Celtic Druids, it being reverenced by the ancient Britons as the symbol of their Great God Hu. Thus also the Kimbri “adored their principal God under the form of a brazen bull;” as the ancient Colchians worshipped brazen-footed bulls which were said to emit fire from their nostrils, which has reference to the sacrifices with which they were propitiated. Dr. Faber says as to the Great Phœnician God, called by the Greek translator of Sanchoniatho Agruerus, from the circumstance of his being an agricultural God, that he “was worshipped by the Syrians and their neighbours the Canaanites, under the titles of Baal and Moloch; and, as his shrine was drawn by oxen, so he himself was represented by the figure of a man having the head of a bull, and sometimes probably by the simple figure of a bull alone”. The Persian Mithra is also represented as a bull-god, and it is highly suggestive that in one of the carved grottos near the Campus Marjorum he is figured under the symbol of the phallus surmounted by the head of a bull. Even among the Hebrews themselves the golden calf was, under the authority of Aaron, used as an object of worship, a form of idolatry which was re-established by Jeroboam, if it had ever been abandoned. Dr. Faber, indeed, thinks that the calves worshipped at Samaria were copies of the kerubim in the Temple at Jerusalem. If we turn to peoples kindred to the Hebrews, we find that the Phœnician Adonis was sometimes represented as a horned deity, as were also Dionysos and Bacchus, who were, in fact, merely the names under which Adonis was worshipped in Thrace and Greece. Plutarch says that “the women of Elis were accustomed to invite Bacchus to his temple on the seashore, under the name of ‘the heifer-footed divinity,’ the illustrious bull, the bull worthy of the highest veneration.” Hence in the ceremonies, during the celebration of the mysteries of Bacchus and Dionysos, the bull always took a prominent place, as it did also during the festivals of the allied deity of Egypt—the bull Apis being worshipped as an incarnation of Osiris. In India the bull is still held sacred by the Brahmans, and in Hindu mythology it is connected with both Siva and Menu.75 A superstitious veneration for this animal is in fact entertained by all pastoral or agricultural peoples who possess it. To seek the explanation of this curious phenomenon in the traditional remembrance of the kerubic representations of deity which guarded the tree of life would be in the highest degree irrational. These representations were merely copies of symbolical figures, which, like the story of the fall, were borrowed from an Eastern source. The real explanation is found in the fact that the bull was an emblem of the productive force in nature. The Zend word gaya, which means “bull,” signifies also the “soul” or “life,” as the same Arabic word denotes both “life” and a “serpent.” A parallel case is that of the Zend word orouéré, which means a “tree” as well as “life” or “soul.”76 According to the cosmogany of the Zend-Avesta, Ormuzd, after he had created the heavens and the earth, formed the first being, called by Zoroaster “the primeval bull.” This bull was poisoned by Ahriman, but its seed was carried by the soul of the dying animal, represented as an ized, to the moon, “where it is continually purified and fecundated by the warmth and light of the sun, to become the germ of all creatures.” At the same time the material prototypes of all living things, except perhaps man himself, issued from the body of the bull.77 This is but a developed form of the ideas which anciently were almost universally associated with this animal, among those peoples who were addicted to sun-worship. There is no doubt, however, that the superstitious veneration for the bull existed, as it still exists, quite independent of the worship of the heavenly bodies.78 The bull, like the goat, must have been a sacred animal in Egypt before it was declared to be an embodiment of the sun-god Osiris. In some sense, indeed, the bull and the serpent, although both of them became associated with the solar deities, were antagonistic. The serpent was symbolical of the personal male element, or rather had especial reference to the man,79 while the bull had relation to nature as a whole, and was symbolical of the general idea of fecundity. This antagonism was brought to an issue in the struggle between Osiris and Seti (Seth), which ended in the triumph of the god of nature, although it was renewed even during the Exodus, when the golden calf of Osiris or Horus was set up in the Hebrew camp.
The reference made to the serpent, to the tree of wisdom, and to the bull, in the legend of the “fall,” sufficiently proves its Phallic character, which was, indeed, recognised in the early Christian church.80 Judging from the facts above referred to, however, we can hardly doubt that the legend was derived from a foreign source. That it could not be original to the Hebrews may, I think, be proved by several considerations. The position occupied in the legend by the serpent is quite inconsistent with the use of this animal symbol by Moses.81 Like Satan himself even, as the Rev. Dunbar Heath has shown,82 the serpent had not, indeed, a wholly evil character among the early Hebrews. In the second place, the condemnation of the act of generation was directly contrary to the central idea of patriarchal history. The promise to Abraham was that he should have seed “numerous as the stars of heaven for multitude,” and to support this notion the descent of Abraham is traced up to the first created man, who is commanded to increase and multiply.
The legend of the fall is not unknown to Hindu mythology, but here the subject of the temptation is the divine Brahma, who, however, is not only mankind collectively, but a man individually.83 In human shape he is Sivayambhuva, and to try this progenitor of mankind, Siva, as the Supreme Being, “drops from heaven a blossom of the sacred vata, or Indian fig—a tree which has been always venerated by the natives on account of its gigantic size and grateful shadows, and invested alike by Brahman and by Buddhist with mysterious significations, as the tree of knowledge or intelligence (bodhidruma).84 Captivated by the beauty of the blossom, the first man (Brahma) is determined to possess it. He imagines that it will entitle him to occupy the place of the Immortal, and hold converse with the Infinite; and on gathering up the blossom,85 he at once becomes intoxicated by this fancy, and believes himself immortal and divine. But ere the flush of exultation has subsided, God Himself appears to him in terrible majesty; and the astonished culprit, stricken by the curse of heaven, is banished far from Brahmapattana, and consigned to an abyss of misery and degradation. From this, however, adds the story, an escape is rendered possible on the expiration of some weary term of suffering and of penance. And the parallelism which it presents to sacred history is well-nigh completed when the legend tells us further that woman, his own wife, whose being was derived from his, had instigated the ambitious hopes which led to their expulsion, and entailed so many ills on their posterity.”86 That parallelism cannot well be the result of mere coincidence, and the reference to the fig-tree in the Hindu legend not only renders it highly probable that this was the tree of knowledge87 of Hebrew legend, but confirms, by the symbolical ideas connected with it, the explanation of the nature of the “fall” given in the preceding pages. The real meaning of the legend was well understood by the Gnostics and Manicheans, and those Christian Fathers who were brought into contact with Eastern ideas through them.88
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