time of Jesus Christ, (in the same way as the Turks have occupied Greece,) when they were finally expelled from it by the Romans, and their tribe dispersed. The country then became partly occupied by Roman colonies, and partly by the remains of the old idolatrous Canaanites, the worshipers of Adonis, Venus, &c., &c. The Jews occupied Canaan, as the Moriscoes occupied Spain. They never completely mixed or amalgamated with the old inhabitants, who continued in slavery or subjection. Every page almost of the Jewish history shews that the Canaanites continued, and had temples. During what is called the time of the Judges it is evident that an almost incessant warfare was carried on between the old inhabitants and the Israelites. The Jebusites possessed, in spite of the latter, the fortress of the city of Jerusalem, until the time of David, who took it by storm; and the city of Tyre, with its king, set even the power of Solomon at defiance, and never was taken by the Israelites at all.
The difference between the religion of Moses and that of the surrounding nations, consisted merely in this: the latter had become corrupted by the priests, who had set up images in allegorical representation of the heavenly bodies or Zodiacal signs, which in long periods of time the people came to consider as representations of real deities. The true and secret meaning of these emblems, the priests, that is the initiated, took the greatest pains to keep from the people. The king and priest were generally united in the same person: and when it was otherwise, the former was generally the mere tool and slave of the latter. But in either case, the sole object of the initiated was, as it yet is, to keep the people in a state of debasement, that they might be more easily ruled. Thus did the Magi in ancient and thus do the chief priests in modern times wallow in wealth on the labour of the rest of mankind.
If we may judge of the state of Egypt and Canaan, and the countries in the neighbourhood of Canaan, from the collection of ancient tracts or traditionary histories, called the Jewish canon, we must allow that they had become, in matters of religion, sunk to the very lowest state of debasement. The sacrifices and rites of Baal and Moloch, and the idolatry of Tyre, Sidon, &c., were of the most horrible kind. The priests in almost all ages have found that the more gloomy and horrible a religion is, the better it has suited their purpose. We have this account of the state of the religion, not only from the history of the Jews, but from that of the Gentiles, therefore it can scarcely be disputed. It was to keep his people from falling into this degraded state, that Moses framed many of his laws. To the original religions of these nations, before their degradation, he could have had no objection; or else he would never have adopted so many of their astronomical and astrological emblems: nay, have even gone so far as to call his God by the same names.
Though the adoption of the astronomical and astrological emblems of the Magi and the Egyptians may be no proof of the wisdom or sagacity of Moses, they are sufficiently clear proofs of the identity of his religion with the religion of the Magi, &c., before their corruption. What are we to make of the brazen serpent set up by Moses in the wilderness, and worshiped by the Israelites till the time of Hezekiah? What of the Cherubim under the wings of which the God of the Jews dwelt? These Cherubim had the faces of the beings which were in the four cardinal points of the Zodiac, when the Bull was the equinoctial sign, viz. the ox, the lion, the man, and the eagle.[1] These were clearly astrological.
12. Every ancient religion, without exception, had Cabala or secret doctrines: and the same fate attended them all. In order that they might not be revealed or discovered, they were not written, but only handed down by tradition; and in the revolutions of centuries and the violent convulsions of empires they were forgotten. Scraps of the old traditions were then collected, and mixed with new inventions of the priests, having the double object in view, of ruling the people and of concealing their own ignorance.
- ↑ See a picture of them in Parkhurst’s Hebrew Lexicon in voce, כרב krb. See also Jurieu, Rel. Vet. Vol. I. Part. II. Cap. i.
