The Phoenicians, living on the promontories or islandsof the eastern Mediterranean coast, became the great traders of the Oriental world. But they never attained political unity, and their religion consisted of a series of more or less local city cults. It preserved, also, many primitive charac teristics, such as would have disappeared if a unity of state life had ever been secured. The two elements of nature and tribe religion appear in it side by side. A favorite title for deity is Milk (Mclek), "King," appearing in Melkarth of Tyre, the most widely worshiped of Phoenician deities, almost a national god. Eshmun, god of healing, Baalsliamen, BoaMammon and others, are nature gods. The Boalat of Gebal owed her prom inence to the little stream flowing down from the mountains which turned blood-red in the spring. Gebal hccame a sacred city for all Phoenicia. The ritual seems to have been very elaborate at the greater temples. Lists of clean and unclean ani mals, of the kinds of sacrifice suitable for certain occasions, with regulations governing the ritual have been discovered. The temples have almost all disappeared. One at Amrit remains. Others are represented on coins. The symbol of divinity, whether a stone or picture or image, stood in the midst of a court with only a railing about it. At Amrit it stood in the midst of a lake. Most of these symbols were rough and crude. mere blocks or rough-hewn pieces of stone. Evidently the priesthood at such temples was well organized. A striking personage of the Phoenician religion is the 'IN, "prophet," "seer." Traces of the various systems of doctrine are thought to survive in the different forms of myths handed down, but these probably belong to a later period. The accounts of the ritual show that it was bloody. Human sacrifice lingered in Phrrnicia long after it had dis appeared elsewhere, and was carried to the Ram nician colonies. The offering of young children and the devotion of maidens to the god was a well established Phoenician custom.
As a trading people the Phcenicians were fa miliar with the religions of other states, and bor rowed many things from them. Egypt, especially, contributed much from the Osiris cult. It has been thought that the Kabiri, dwarf gods, were taken from Egypt. The Plicenician religion had much which reminds us of the Hebrew religion, only in a cruder, less developed and less pdrified form.
(5) The Future Life; Morals; Summary. The more primitive Semitic cults have left behind few, if any, memorials which illustrate their belief con cerning the future. It is from the Phoenician re mains and from survivals in other higher faiths that our knowledge must come. The existence of life after death was fully believed in by these early Semites. The dead are conscious ; they dwell in the graves where the dead bodies lie; with them are buried various utensils, spoons, lamps, drinking glasses, amulets ; a sort of wor ship is given to them. The greatest pains are taken that the body be not disturbed, since then the spirit finds no resting place. Food is offered at the grave, or buried with the dead. The favor ite food of the dead is blood. No doubt there was
a sort of worship of the dead, who were thought to have the power to injure or benefit the sur vivors; but there is no real basis for the view held by some that the worship of the Semitic deities was an outgrowth of the worship of an cestors, or, indeed, was preceded by this.
It is difficult to estimate the moral character of this primitive religion, since religion is so closely connected with other social customs wherein primitive morality abides. One thing, however, is evident. The conception of a tribal unity, pre sided over by the god who is at the same time father and king of his tribe, affords a starting point for a higher ethics. The individual exists for the tribe, sinks himself and his own interests unconsciously, perhaps, but yet really, in the life of the whole, and feels therein the blessing of his tribal god. It is also true that in the fundamental Semitic conception of the deity as power lies the possibility of higher morality. The power at first is arbitrary and incomprehensible in its dealings, but man must submit, and with the growing sense of social order religion keeps pace and consecrates all law as from the supreme lawgiver and judge. Thus the Semite learns to be obedient to the power above him; and because he is at the same time tribal god, he has less relation to nature and a deeper human value. It is no wonder, therefore, that, in connection with such beginnings as this, small and rude though they are, the religion of Jehovah appeared to proclaim the supreme law of righteousness.
It is from this point also that the tendency of the Semitic religion toward monotheism can be understood. The primitive Semitic religions uni formly emphasized the element of supreme power. Closest to the Semitic mind of all the innumerable crowd of powers was that power who protected, blessed, and united himself with the tribe. Thus a tendency toward the recognition of one god as a practical fact appeared at an early date. From the tribe the god passed to the state, 'and in the Hebrew state he was purified, glorified, and set apart in supreme and single majesty by the proph ets of Jehovah. Thus at the time when the Aryan was still hound in fetters of all-embracing though refined naturism, or. at the most, philosophizing in pantheistic phra'e upon the universe, the He brew was learning the secret which he was to teach the world in the doctrine of the one holy God. G. S. G.
SENAAH (Heb. sen-aw-aw', thorny), the name of a man (B. C. 445), or a town, whose descendants, or inhabitants, returned from the Captivity and rebuilt the Fish-gate at Jerusalem (Ezra ii:35; Nell. vii:38).
In Neh. iii :3 the name is given with the article, has-Senaah. (See HASSENAAU.) The names in these lists are mostly those of towns; but Senaah does not occur elsewhere in the Bible as attached to a town. The Magdal-Senna, or "great Senna." of Eusebius and Jerome, seven miles north of Jericho ("Senna"), however, is not inappropriate in position. Bertheau suggests that Senaah rep resents not a single place, but a district ; but there is nothing to corroborate this (Smith, Bib. Diet).