we know that they both underwent a great change, one by Zoroaster and the other by Moses, who reformed or formed them anew. The two chiefs or reformers resided at a great distance from each other, and unless they had had some communication it is evident that in their reforms they would not establish the same rites and ceremonies. This may account for several ordinances being found in the law of Moses which are not found in the law of Zoroaster, and vice versâ.
After the migration of Moses and his tribes from Egypt, before he undertook the invasion of the beautiful country of Palestine, he spent many years in rambling about the deserts or uncultivated pasture lands bordering on the Northern end of the Red Sea, and Arabia Petræa. The settled natives of these countries were sunk into the grossest and most degrading idolatry and superstition, much worse than even that of the Assyrians, or that of the Persians, before it was reformed by Zoroaster. In order to prevent his people from being contaminated by this example, Maimonides informs us, on the authority of the old Jewish authors, that Moses made many of his laws in direct opposition to the customs of these people. And for this same reason we are told, in Exodus, that he punished the alliance of his people with any of the natives of these countries, with the most horrible severity: a policy, though sufficiently cruel and unjust, as exercised by him in several cases, certainly wisely contrived for the object he had in view.
The observance of the Sabbath on the seventh instead of the first day of the week, and in its extreme degree of strictness, was ordained effectually to separate the Jews from the neighbouring nations:[1] and experience has shewn that nothing could have been better contrived for that purpose.
The learned Maimonides says, “they [the Arabians] worshiped the sun at his rising; for which reason, as our Rabbins expressly teach in Gemara, Abraham our father designed the West for the place of the Sanctum Sanctorum, when he worshiped in the mountain Moriah. Of this idolatry they interpret what the Prophet Ezekiel saith of the men with their backs toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the East, worshiping the Sun toward the East.” (Ezek. viii. 16.) Perhaps a better knowledge of the Arabian superstitions might enable us to account for many other of the ordinances of Moses, which appear to us unmeaning and absurd.[2] In this instance of adoration toward the rising Sun, we see that the religion of the Magi had become corrupted by the Arabians, and that in order to avoid this very corruption, and preserve the worship of one God, (which was the great object of Moses, that to which all the forms and ordinances of discipline, both of the Magi and Moses, were subservient,) he established a law directly in opposition to that whence his religion had originally sprung. For the Persians always worshiped turning their faces to the East, which the Jews considered an abomination, and uniformly turned to the West when they prayed. And certainly this would be against the author’s hypothesis, if we did not know exactly the reason for it.
Though Maimonides says that Abraham designed the West for the place of adoration, he does not say that he ordered it; if he had, it would have been mentioned in the Pentateuch. It seems much more likely to have been ordered by Moses, for the same reason that he made the several laws as observed above, in opposition to the corruptions of the Persians or Arabians; but it might be adopted by Moses for the same reason also that he adopted very many other religious rites of the Egyptians,[3] who sometimes worshiped towards the West, as well as Jews.
- ↑ See my Horæ Sabbaticæ, in the British Museum.
- ↑ Vide Stanley’s Hist. Phil. Chal. Part xix. Ch. ii. pp. 38, 801, 4to.
- ↑ Perhaps it was not ordained by either Moses or Abraham, as no directions relating to it are to be found in the Pentateuch, but by the builders of the temple, in which the Sacred part, or Cabala, was placed in the West. Beaus. Hist. Manich. Vol. II. Liv. vi. Ch. viii. p. 385; Windet de vit. Func. Stat. Sect. vii. p. 77; Pirke, Eliez. p. ii.; Porph. de Ant. Nymp. p. 268.
