In the same sense the Chaldeans likewise termed God a fire; for Ur, in Chaldee, signifying both light and fire, they took light and fire promiscuously.[1] “The name and image whereby they represented the Supreme God was that of Bel, as appears by the prohibition given by God himself not to call him so any more. ‘Thou shalt call me no longer Baali:’ Bel with the Chaldeans is the same as Baal with the Phenicians, both derived from the Hebrew Baal.”[2]
“They who first translated the Eastern learning into Greek for the most part interpret this Bel by the word Ζευς, Jupiter. So Herodotus, Diodorus, Hesychius, and others: Berosus (saith Eusebius) was priest of Belus, whom they “interpret (Δία) Jupiter.”[3]
From the worship of the one Supreme God, (in Assyria,) they very early fell off to the worship of numbers of gods, dæmons, angels, planets, stars, &c. They had twelve principal Gods for the twelve signs of the Zodiac, to each of which they dedicated a month.[4] The identity of the name Baali among the Chaldeans and the Israelites, as observed by Stanley, raises a strong presumption, that all these religions were fundamentally the same, with only such greater or less adventitious variations as circumstances produced.
Sir W. Jones informs us that the letters Mihr in the Persian language denote the sun,[5] and he also informs us, that the letters Mihira denote the sun in the Hindoo language.[6] Now it is pretty clear that these two words are precisely the same: and are in fact nothing but the word Mithra the sun.
5. Dr. Hyde thought that Zoroaster and Pythagoras were contemporaries, but Mr. Stanley was of opinion this was not the fact, but that the latter lived several generations after the former. This subject has been well discussed by M. Beausobre,[7] who has undertaken to shew that they might have lived at the same time, and that there is nothing in the chronology to render it improbable.
It appears that the question respecting Pythagoras and Zoroaster was simply, whether they, or either of them, admitted a first moving, uncreated cause, superior to and independent of any other, or whether they admitted two equal, co-eternal beings, the authors of good and evil. The meaning of the expressions used by these great philosophers must always remain a subject of very considerable doubt. It seems surprising that such men as Stanley and Beausobre should pretend to reduce to a certainty that which, from peculiar circumstances, must always be involved in difficulty. In the first place, the line between the unity and duality, as explained, is so fine, that in our native language, which we understand, it is difficult to distinguish it; then how much more difficult must it be in a foreign and dead language! Besides, we have it not in the language of the philosophers themselves, but retailed to us in a language foreign to that in which it was delivered, and that also by foreigners, living many years after their deaths. After all the ingenuity displayed by M. Beausobre, who has exhausted the subject, considerable doubt must always remain upon this point, whether the two principles professed by the philosophers were identically the same or not. But yet one thing seems certain, all accounts tending to confirm the fact, that the principles were both derived from the same school, situated on the East of the Euphrates; and, that they are, in fact, so nearly the same, that no one can tell with absolute certainty wherein they differ. No one can doubt that the doctrines of Pythagoras and those of Zoroaster, as maintained when the former was at Babylon after its conquest by Cyrus, were, as it has been already remarked, the same or nearly so; nor can any one doubt that Pythagoras was either the fellow-labourer and assistant of Zoroaster, or a pupil of his school.
