Alternative Religion/ Library

The Original God-Idea of the Israelites.

Not only were religious doctrines veiled beneath allegories and convenient symbols, but names also had a religious significance.

We are given to understand that in Chaldea and Assyria every child was named by the oracle or priest, and that no one thought of changing the appellation which had come to him through this heavenly source.⁷⁹

⁷⁹ Inman, Ancient Faiths, vol. i., p. 3.

Inman, in his Ancient Faiths, calls attention to the fact that in the Old Testament kings, priests, captains, and other great men have had names bestowed upon them, each of which has some religious signification; that this name was given the individual "at circumcision, or soon after birth."

In the ancient names of what are designated as the Shemitic races, children were called after the god alone, and sometimes in connection with an attribute. Especially were these names applied to royalty or to persons of distinction; for instance, names were given signifying, God the good, God the just or the merciful, God the strong, The Warrior God, etc.

As the higher conception of a Creator was forgotten, and as human beings, or perhaps I should say their power to control circumstances coupled with the ability to reproduce or create, had become god, they assumed the titles or names of the Deity; hence, it is not perhaps singular that in later times kings and heroes were invested with all the attributes of the gods.

We have seen that according to various writers Om or Amm was the holy one whose name in India it was sacrilege to pronounce. It was the eternal sun, or the Great Mother. As this word stands also for "tribe or people," it seems to mean, too, that which binds, holds, or endures.

As Om or Amm signifies the Great Mother, so An or On means the Great Father. Concerning the word Am-mon, Inman writes as follows:

"The association of the words signifying mother and father indicates that it is to such conjunction we must refer creative power. With such an androgyne element the sun was associated by ancient mythologists. Jupiter was himself sometimes represented as being female; and the word hermaphrodite is in itself a union between Hermes and Aphrodite, the male and female creative powers. We may fairly conclude, from the existence of names like the above, that there was at one time in Western as there was in Eastern Asia a strong feud between the adorers of On and Am, the Lingacitas and the Yonijas, and that they were at length partially united under Ammon, as they were elsewhere under Nebo or the Nabhi of Vishnu."⁸⁰

⁸⁰ Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, vol. i., p. 237.

Inman relates that once when a friend of his was conversing with a very high-caste Hindoo he casually uttered this word Amm or Om, whereupon the man was so awe struck that he could scarcely speak, and, in a voice almost of terror, asked where his friend had learned the word. Of this word Inman says:

"To the Hindoos it was that incommunicable name of the Almighty, which no one ventured to pronounce except under the most religious solemnity. And here let me pause to remark that the Jews were equally reverent with the name belonging to the Most High; and that the third commandment was very literal in its signification."

The same writer remarks that in Thibet, too, where a worship very nearly identical in ceremony and doctrine with that of the Roman papists exists amongst the Lamas, the name of Om is still sacred.

The Iav of the Jews was equally revered, but in the later ages of their career they seem to have lost sight of its true meaning.

According to Inman's testimony and that of other etymological students, the true signification of the cognomen Jacob is the female principle.

It is believed by various writers that the story of Jacob and Esau as related in Genesis has an esoteric as well as an exoteric meaning--that Jacob has reference to the female creative energy throughout Nature, or, rather, to the great mass of people who in an early age of the human race believed in the superior importance of the female in the office of reproduction, and that Esau signifies the male. Attention is called to the fact that Esau is represented as a "hairy" man, rough-voiced and easily beguiled, while Jacob, on the other hand, is smooth-faced, soft-voiced, and the favorite of his mother.

There is indeed much in this myth which seems to indicate that it is an allegory beneath which are veiled certain facts connected with the struggle between two early contending sects regarding the relative importance of the sexes in reproduction. Of this Inman says:

"My own impression is that Esau, or Edom, and Jacob are mystic names for a man and a woman, and that round these, historians wove a web of fancy; that ultimately the cognomen Jacob was recognized, and that to allow the Jewish people to trace their descent from a male rather than a female, the appellation of Israel was substituted in later productions."⁸¹

⁸¹ Ancient Faiths, vol. i., p. 607.

As most of the myths or allegories in Genesis are now traced to a source far more remote than the beginning of legitimate Jewish history, it is not unreasonable to suppose that this story, too, was copied by the Jews from the traditions of earlier races; nor, when we remember the true meaning of the cognomen Jacob, that the entire story should be regarded as an attempt to set forth certain facts connected with the great physiological or religious conflict between the sexes.

The significance of the idols worshipped by Jacob and his family is not for a certainty known, but it is believed by certain writers that the Seraphim and Teraphim were the usual images which were used to represent the male and female energies. "Then Jacob said unto his household and to all that were with him: Put away the strange gods that are among you." In referring to this passage, Inman, in a note, says:

"The critic might fairly say, looking at Genesis xxxv., 2, 'Put away the strange gods that are among you,' that there were images of God which were not strange, and that in these early times there were orthodoxy and heterodoxy in images as there are now. In ancient times the emblem of life-giving energy was an orthodox emblem; it is now a horror and its place is taken by an image of death. We infer from the context that Laban's gods were orthodox."

So, also, must have been the stone pillar set up by Jacob at Bethel (place of the sun). From a study of similar stones, examples of which are to be found in nearly every country of the globe, it is known that they represent the male energy, and from all the facts connected with the story of Laban's gods it is probable that they were emblems of this power. We may suppose then that the "strange gods," the unorthodox gods, which Jacob ordered put away, were those representing the female energy.

It seems strange that any person can study the history of the Israelitish Exodus by the light of later developments in biblical research without recognizing the fact that the "Lord" which brought the children of Israel out from the bondage of Egypt was the male power, which by a certain sect had been proclaimed the only actual creative agency, and therefore the "only one and true God."

Although, at the time at which Abraham is said to have lived, the knowledge of an abstract dual or triune God still remained, yet, during the five hundred years which elapsed until the time of Moses, the grossest idolatry had come to prevail. Notwithstanding the fact that Moses had learned much from the Egyptians, he seems not to have risen above a very gross conception of a deity. His god was by turns angry, jealous, revengeful, vacillating, and weak. He was in fact the embodiment of human passions and desires. We have seen that the third person in the ancient Trinity had, in Egypt, India, and Persia, come to be recognized in place of the three principles originally worshipped--that, as it really embodied the essence of the other two, little was heard of the Creator and Preserver. Doubtless this God was the one which Moses intended the Israelites to worship, but as they were unable to conceive of an abstract principle he invested it with a personality which, as we have seen, was burdened with the frailties and weaknesses common to themselves.

Next>

<Return to Start

Return to Texts Index