Serpent-Worship, and Other Essays, with a Chapter on Totemism. C. Staniland Wake
The participation of the Hebrew patriarchs in the rites connected with the “pillar-worship” of the ancient world, renders it extremely probable that they were not strangers to the later planetary worship. Many of the old Phallic symbols were associated with the new superstition, and Abraham, being a Chaldean, it is natural to suppose that he was one of its adherents. Tradition, indeed, affirms that Abraham was a great astronomer, and at one time at least a worshipper of the heavenly bodies, and that he and the other patriarchs continued to be affected by this superstition is shown by various incidents related in the Pentateuch. Thus, in the description given of the sacrificial covenant between Abraham and Jehovah, it is said that, after Abraham had divided the sacrificial animals, a deep sleep fell upon him as the sun was going down, and Jehovah spoke with him. “Then when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp, that passed between those pieces.” The happening of this event at the moment of the sun’s setting reminds us of the Sabæan custom of praying to the setting sun, still practised, according to Palgrave, among the nomads of central Arabia. That some great religious movement, ascribed by tradition to Abraham, did take place among the Semites at an early date is undoubted. What the object of this covenant was it is difficult to decide. It should be remembered that the Chaldeans worshipped a plurality of gods, supposed to have been symbolised by the seven planets. Among these deities the sun-god held a comparatively inferior position—the moon-god Hurki coming before him in the second triad.113 It was at Ur, the special seat of the worship of the moon-god,114 that Abraham is said to have lived before he quitted it for Haran. This fact, considered in the light of the traditions relating to the great patriarch, may perhaps justify us in inferring that the reformation he endeavoured to introduce was the substitution of a simple sun-worship, for the planetary cultus of the Chaldeans, in which the worship of the moon must to him have appeared to occupy an important place. The new faith was, indeed, a return to the old Phallic idea of a god of personal generation, worshipped through the symbolical betylus, but associated also with the adoration of the sun as the especial representative of the deity. That Abraham had higher notions of the relation of man to the divine being than his forerunners is very probable, but his sojourn in Haran proves that there was nothing fundamentally different between his religious faith and that of his Syrian neighbours. I am inclined, indeed, to believe that to the traditional Abraham must be ascribed the establishment of sun-worship throughout Phœnicia and Lower Egypt in connection with the symbols of an earlier and more simple Phallic deity. Tradition, in fact, declares that he taught the Egyptians astronomy,115 and we shall see that the religion of the Phœnicians, as, indeed, that of the Hebrews themselves, was the worship of Saturn, the erect, pillar-god who, under different names, appears to have been at the head of the pantheons of most of the peoples of antiquity. The reference in Hebrew history to the seraphim of Jacob’s family recalls the fact that Abraham’s father was Terah, a “maker of images.” The teraphim were doubtless the same as the seraphim, which were serpent images,116 and probably the household charms or idols of the Semitic worshippers of the sun-god, to whom the serpent was sacred.
Little is known of the religious habits of the Hebrews during their abode in Egypt. Probably they differed little from those of the Egyptians themselves, and even in the religion of Moses, so-called, which we may presume to have been a reformed faith, there are many points of contact with the earlier cultus. The use of the ark of Osiris and Isis shows the influence of Egyptian ideas, and the introduction of the new name for God, Jahve, is evidence of contact with later Phœnician thought. The ark was doubtless used to symbolise nature, as distinguished from the serpent and pillar symbols, which had relation more particularly to man. The latter, however, were by far the most important, as they were most intimately connected with the worship of the national deity, who was the divine father, as Abraham was the human progenitor, of the Hebrew people. That this deity, notwithstanding his change of name, retained his character of a sun-god, is shown by the fact that he is repeatedly said to have appeared to Moses under the figure of a flame. The pillar of fire which guided the Hebrews by night in the wilderness, the appearance of the cloudy pillar at the door of the Tabernacle, and probably of a flame over the mercy seat to betoken the presence of Jehovah, and the perpetual fire on the altar, all point to the same conclusion. The notion entertained by Ewald that the idea connected with the Hebrew Jahve was that of a “Deliverer” or a “Healer” (Saviour)117 is quite consistent with the fact I have stated. The primeval Phenic deity El or Cronus was not only the preserver of the world, for the benefit of which he offered a mystical sacrifice,118 but “Saviour” was a common title of the sun-gods of antiquity.
There is one remarkable incident which is said to have happened during the wanderings of the Hebrews in the Sinaitic wilderness which appears to throw much light on the character of the Mosaic cultus and to connect it with other religions. I refer to the use of the brazen serpent as a symbol for the healing of the people. The worship of the golden calf may, perhaps, be said to be an idolatrous act in imitation of the rites of Egyptian Osiris worship, although probably suggested by the use of the ark. The other case, however, is far different, and it is worth while repeating the exact words in which the use of the serpent symbol is described. When the people were bitten by the “fiery” serpents,119 Moses prayed for them, and we read that, therefore, “Jehovah said unto Moses, make thee a fiery serpent (literally, a seraph), and set it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.”120 It would seem from this account that the Hebrew seraph was, as before suggested, in the form of a serpent; but what was the especial significance of this healing figure? At an earlier stage of our inquiry reference was made to the fact of the serpent being indirectly, through its attribute of wisdom, a Phallic symbol, but also directly an emblem of “life,” and to the peculiar position it held in nearly all the religions of antiquity. In later Egyptian mythology the contest between Osiris and the Evil Being, and afterwards that between Horus and Typhon, occupy an important place. Typhon, the adversary of Horus, was figured under the symbol of a serpent, called Aphôphis or the Giant,121 and it cannot be doubted that, if not a form of, he was identified with the god Seth. Professor Reuvens refers to an invocation of Typhon-Seth,122 and Bunsen quotes the statement of Epiphanius that “the Egyptians celebrate the festivals of Typhon under the form of an ass, which they call Seth.”123 Whatever may be the explanation of the fact, it is undoubted that, notwithstanding the hatred with which he was afterwards regarded, this god Seth or Set was at one time highly venerated in Egypt. Bunsen says that up to the thirteenth century B.C. Set “was a great god universally adored throughout Egypt, who confers on the sovereigns of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties the symbols of life and power. The most glorious monarch of the latter dynasty, Sethos, derives his name from this deity.” He adds: “But subsequently, in the course of the twentieth dynasty, he is suddenly treated as an evil demon, inasmuch as his effigies and name are obliterated on all the monuments and inscriptions that could be reached.” Moreover, according to this distinguished writer, Seth “appears gradually among the Semites as the background of their religious consciousness;” and not merely was he “the primitive god of Northern Egypt and Palestine,” but his genealogy as “the Seth of Genesis, the father of Enoch (the man), must be considered as originally running parallel with that derived from the Elohim, Adam’s father.”124 That Seth had some special connection with the Hebrews is proved, among other things, by the peculiar position occupied in their religious system by the ass—the first-born of which alone of all animals was allowed to be redeemed125—and the red heifer, whose ashes were to be reserved as a “water of separation” for purification from sin.126 Both of these animals were in Egypt sacred to Seth (Typhon), the ass being his symbol, and red oxen being at one time sacrificed to him, although at a later date objects of a red colour were disliked, owing to their association with the dreaded Typhon.127 That we have a reference to this deity in the name of the Hebrew lawgiver is very probable. No satisfactory derivation of this name, Moses, Môsheh (Heb.), has yet been given. Its original form was probably Am-a-ses or Am-sesa,128 which might become to the Hebrews Om-ses or Mo-ses, meaning only the (god) Ses, i.e., Set or Seth.129 On this hypothesis we may have preserved, in the first book of Moses (so-called), some of the traditional history said to have been contained in the