CHAPTER XIII.

MOSHAI, CONCLUDED. - HEBRAISM AND TRINITARIANISM. — LIFE, ETERNAL IN REALITY. FORMATION OF THE INCARNATION LEGEND.

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THE consideration of the service borne by Moshai to future religion is now closed. This service is almost summed in the statement, that he was the first, distinctly to formulate the monotheistic belief for his people, belief to which they had from their origin more or less inclined, but which they never completely adopted. He did this by employing the formula which he had learned from his Egyptian masters as the secret name of the Divine,—“I am He who I am;"-this formula is Nuk pu nuk in Egyptian, in Hebrew Ehyeh asher chych. In asher is to be recognized, not merely the particle "who," "what" or "that," but the expression of the male or begetting principle in nature. The expanded meaning of the formula may be given thus: 1. "I," the One Self, "am," continue always, exist forever. 2. "I am He," that is, I am the great male or Father, the begetter, creator or producer of all things, (the Life-principle,) — "who," (once more,) "I, the Self, am," "I am." No evading of the self-definition was intended by the asher; such an evasion would, however, have been committed, had asher been intended to be understood as merely the connecting particle "what" or "that;"- the rendering, "I am what I am," is much the same as if God had been made to say, "I am no matter what."

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Moshai may also have given to his Hebrews those simple moral precepts or rules, (including the "Ten Com

mandments,") found in Exodus; - precepts of conduct, (most of them,) such as are instinctively inspired in the rudest hearts, and are found in the early records of all races. The character of Moshai in the desert, such as we find it depicted in the books emanating from the school of the prophets, must be regarded as in the main imaginary. The main structure of Hebrew religion, moreover, arose, not from the inspiration of Moshai, but from the genius of the people.

As for the Hebrew teachers in general, whose long line. Moshai heads, while the world owes them much for their indomitable love and warfare for the monotheistic principle, and for their superb models of devout and imaginative poetry, their originality in speculation was slight. Their "I am" or Ehyeh formula was Egyptian; their Divine idea and formula, Iá, Yaho or Yahvè, Phoenician; and even the mystic doctrines of the "Cabala," the ultimate outcome and flower of Hebrew religious thought, and the immediate originals of the Trinitarian features of the Christian system, -are but a modified Platonism.

The name of Iáo, (Iáw,) was the Phoenician expression of the same doctrines as were formulated in the Egyptian sacred name Nuk pu nuk and the Mosaic Ehych asher ehyeh. The Yodh or Iota was the symbol of unity and of The Self, with them as with the later peoples whose literature was founded on their alphabet. The Aleph or Alpha symbolized the origin, and the letter represented by the Greek Omega, the completion of all things, in this mystic combination. The ruder alphabet of the Hebrews ended with Tav or Tau, but the open vowel-sound of the PoenoGreek final letter, -long O or O-mega-was substituted by a vocalized Vav or Vau; hence in the broad pronunciation of these originally pastoral mountaineers Ya-o or Yeh-o became Yah-ov, Yah-vè, Yeh-ov, or Yeho-vah. The meaning of this name-formula is correctly given (many times) in Yohannan's Apocalypse; "I," the One Self, "am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the

end, the first and the last;"-a declaration, however, put by this apostle not in the mouth of I-a-o, Ya-o or Yah-vè, but in that of his late master Yaishooa, whose person, in some places, (i. 14, xxi. 5, 6,) — in this strange wild rhapsody, seems to take the place both of Yahve and of Christ's own "Heavenly Father," being distinctly identified with the early-Hebrew "Ancient of Days." I

The early-Hebrew authors were never Trinists or Trinitarians in the modern sense. The three "men" who appear to Av-ram, on their way to inquire into the state of public morals in "Sodom," have been appealed to by modern Trinitarians as a Hebrew assertion of their doctrine. Nothing could be more unfounded. The "three" become only two, in the very same fable, where the "men" sleep, after their fatiguing walk, at Lot's house, and are sought, for vile purposes, by the Sodomites. These two are, evidently, "messenger-gods." The rise of Trinitarianism from Hebraism is, however, a curious. study.

The fact is, that the early polytheism of the Hebrews, (which may justly be inferred from their use of the word Elohim, from particulars of the story of Yahakobh, and other points already noticed,) very soon gave way to a monotheism, only modified by a personification, such as might be expected in a rude Oriental people, ― of the mode-of-action of their Deity, always a god of the sky and atmosphere. Particulars or characteristics drawn from the sun-and-fire messenger-gods of Persia and Chaldæa were, however, associated with this personified mode-ofaction. This mode-of-action of the heaven-and-atmosphere god was no other than the Wind. The Wind or Breath

"One, like unto the Son of man," "His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow;"' (Rev. i. 14). Christ, under this appearance of extreme age, seems one with the heavenly Father or " Ancient of Days." The Third-person of the "Trinity” does not appear in Revelation, though the Mother is deified (xii.). Instead of the dove-formed "Third-person" of later church belief, Yohannan has seven "Spirits of God," in appearance like lamps, one for each of the seven churches; (i. 20, iii. 1, iv. 5). These can hardly be thought co-ordinate Deities.

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of God had a visible and an invisible agency. "the Elohim" or "Eloah" was the divine name, as in the earlier Genesis legends, this Wind or Breath of God, (Ruakh-elohim,) was the actor in many grand episodes. Thus it is the Ruakh-elohim which, moving upon the face of the waters, (in Gen. i.,) created the worlds and gathered the waters together into one place, and made the dry land appear.' The wind sent by God does the same service in removing the waters of the Flood. Again the mighty Wind brings up the locusts and the plagues upon Egypt, divides the waters for the passage of the Israelites, and, as "the Breath of thy Nostrils," heaps them again upon the flying Egyptians.

When Yahve takes the place of Elohim, the same agency continues with a new name, the Kol- (Col-) Yehovah or (Phoenician) Kol-pi-ya; - the Voice or Breath of Yah. But a new personage, apparently, makes his appearance when the Malach-Yahvè or Messenger-God appears to Moshai in a flame of fire in the bush. We immediately find, however, that the Malach speaks with the Voice of, and is in fact identical with, Yahvè himself. The same thing is evident from Num. xxii. 27, 28, where the Malach is identified with Yahvè himself, and from many other passages. The Malach who smites the host of Sennacherib can only be the Wind, (which was supposed to bring plagues,) or the simoom desert-wind. If any doubt remained of the identity, or rather, convertibility of the Malach or fire-messenger with the Kol or

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I The bold innovators who edited the Gospel ascribed to the apostle Yohannan, did not hesitate directly to contradict this passage which makes the Ruakh, Spirit or Breath of God, the creator, by attributing the work of creation to their master Yaishooa, whom they identified with the Logos, "Word," or second and creative God, of Plato.

2 The plurality of these messengers or "angels," as a "heavenly host," belongs to a later period, that of Persian influence; and was, still later, first fully developed in that extraordinary and powerful poetic fiction, the "Book of Enoch," (written in Media,) from which Yohannan, or "Saint John," borrowed most of the imagery and the very language of his Apocalypse. This pseudo-prophecy of the patriarch "Enoch" was, as is well known, long believed genuine by the Jews of the two centuries next preceding Christ's birth, and its descriptions of the heavenly economy

Ruakh, (breath or wind,) it would be dissipated by the appearance of the Pneuma in the alleged miracle of Pentecost in the "Acts," where it comes first as a mighty rushing Wind, invisibly, then visibly as flames or tongues of fire descending on the heads of the inspired. Again, the dove which descends on Christ's head at the Baptism, according to the earliest, now long obsolete Gospel, that "according to the Hebrews," (or the “Apomnemoneumata" -as quoted by Justin and others,) - was a fire-dove, which turned the Jordan-waters into a "great fire," or a "great light shining round about them." This fire-dove, these flames in the "bush," and the fiery sword of the Mālāch also, — in the expulsion of Adam as in the Balaam-legend, are borrowed from sun-worship.

The ancient Persian sculptures of Persepolis, Istakhar, and Nakhi-Rustem portray Mithras, their fire-and-sun messenger-god, -appearing to Zarathustra as the visible. representative of Ahuramazda, - with six wings, just as in the prophetic description of the seraph, (Isa. vi. 2); -"With twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly." Two of these wings, in the Mithras image, extend perpendicularly, framing the fine human head of Mithras, two horizontally, as in flying, while two descend to cover his legs, below which, nevertheless, his feet peep out, a pair of eagle's, (or it may be dove's,) claws. The form of the whole design is that of a cross. Over his shoulder appears the radiant sun, his material embodiment. In other representations of the great fire-god, the upper pair of wings is substituted by the Persian cap or mitre, while the other two pairs are replaced by flames of fire. In the doorway of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbek, Baal or the Sun is represented simply as an eagle or Phoenix.'

gave consistent and final form to their doctrine about "angels." The plural "angels" in "Jacob's Dream" doubtless refers to the two early Divine messengers, the Ruakh and Malach. In all other early texts the word translated "angel" is singular, "the messenger" [Malach] "of Yahvè," or, as our version has it, "the angel of the Lord."

The idea of fire, lightning, and the sun's rays as a winged creature or fire-bird,