Years passed by and the names of the idols of Canaan had been forgotten, when the Hebrews were assailed by a new danger. Greek idolatry under Alexander and his successors was practised throughout the civilized world. Some place-hunt ing Jews were ba.se enough to adopt it. At first the Greek princes who ruled Palestine wisely for bore to interfere with the Hebrew religion. The politic earlier Ptolemies even encouraged it, but when the country had fallen into the hands of the Seleucidx, Antiochus Epiphanes, reversing his father's policy of toleration, seized Jerusalem, set up an idol-altar to Jupiter in the Temple itself, and forbade the observance of the Law. Weakly sup ported by a miserable faction, he had to depend wholly upon his military power. The Maccabman revolt, small in its beginning, had the national heart on its side, and after a long and varied struggle achieved more than the nation had ever before effected since the days of the Judges. Thencefor ward idolatry was to the Jew the religion of his enemies, and naturally made no perverts.
The early Christians were brought into contact with idolaters when the Gospel was preached among the Gentiles, and it became necessary to enact regulations for preventing scandal by their being involved in Pagan practices, when joining in the private meals and festivities of the heathen. But the Gentile converts do not seem to have been in any danger of reverting to idolatry, and the cruel persecutions they underwent did not tend to lead them back to a religion which its more refined votaries despised. It is, however, not impossible that many who had been originally educated as idolaters did not, on professing Christianity, really abandon all their former superstitions, and that we may thus explain the very early outbreak of many customs and opinions not sanctioned in the N. T.
Two subjects remain to be noticed ; the different Hebrew terms used for idols, and the idolatrous practices mentioned in the O. T. which cannot certainly be restricted to a single kind of false worship.
It would be unsuitable to the present article to give a lexicographical examination of every separate term connected with idolatry. Our main objects are to show how these terms indicate the feeling of the believing Hebrews towards idolaters, and what particulars they afford as to the forms and mate rials of idols.
1. General terms of doubtful signification :— a. eleel, derived from the unused root Vm, and-so meaning vain or empty ; or from the negative but this is very doubtful ; or else as a diminutive, a meaning we are disposed to prefer, from god.' The difference between Wr6$ and b4L,4 suggests that the Hebrews may have adopted the latter term in place of the former when speaking of false gods. The Arabs have formed
the name Allah for the true God by a slight change from the general terrn Bah, a god' or 4idol' (Lane's Arabic Lexicon, bk. i. pp. 82, 83).
b. comes from a root signifying he or it rolled,' from which are derived words mean ing anything circular, dung, etc. The Vulg. ren ders it :order, sorties idolorum. It occurs in the Pentateuch, there and elsewhere with wonis ex pressing contempt. In Ezekiel it is thus used of the idols of Egypt : Thus saith the Lord GOD ; I will also destroy the idols (t*:), and cause the little idols ([1] D4N) to cease out of Noph' (xxx.
13). May not n+r;"6 mean scarabmi, the com monest of Egyptian idols ? The sense of dung is appropriate to the dung-beetle ; that of rolling is doubtful, for, if the meaning of the verb be retained, we should, in this form, rather expect a passive sense a thing rolled ;' but it may be observed that ;hese grammatical rules of the sense of deriva tives are not always to be strictly insisted on, for Sidon, though held to signify the place of fishing,' is, in the list of the Noachians, the name of a man, the fisherman,' 'ANift;r, of Philo of Byblus. That a specially-applicable word is used, may perhaps be conjectured from the occurrence of 049N, which, if meaning little gods, would aptly describe the pigmy PrEH-SEKER-HESAR, Sokari-Osiris, of Memphis. Ezekiel uses the term 1:66 of the idols of Egypt which the Israelites were commanded to put away at or about the time of the Exodus, but did not, and seem to have car ried into the Desert, for the same word is used, unqualified by the mention of any country, of those worshipped by them in the Desert (xx. 7, 8, 16, r8, 24); it is, however apparently, employed also for aU the idols worslipped in Canaan by the Israelites (ver. 31; xxiii. 37). Scarabxi were so abundant among the Egyptians and Phcenicians, that there is no reason why they may not have been employed also in the worship of the Canaanite false gods ; but it cannot be safely supposed, with out further evidence, that the idols of Canaan were virtually termed scarabmi.
2. General terms of known signification :— a. j1.2.;;,` emptiness,' or vanity,' used with other terms of like signification for idols and idolatry in general. Heliopolis in Egypt, or On, jiN., is punctuated j).,.%:1 in Ezek. xxx. 17, if we may depend upon the Masoretic pointing, on account of its idolatiy, and Beth-el is called Beth-aver, in Hosea (iv. 15 ; x. 5), which passages could not be cited by those who derive the golden calves from Helio polis, as that city, though called in Eg-yptian AN, for its civil name, has as its sacred name, derived as usual from that of the local idol, the abode of the sun,' HA-RA, or, as some read, PA-RA.