3. High nature-worship, the worship of the sun, moon, and stars, and of the supposed powers ol nature.
4. Hero-worship, the worship of deceased an cestors or leaders of a nation.
5. Idealism, the worship of abstractions of mental qualities, such as justice, a system never folnd umnixed.
Fetishism and Shamanism appear to be the only systems of idolatry which certainly have obtained and still obtain unmixed with any other. But it is ea.sy to detect and detach the other systems, as will be seen in thc next section.
Histog of la'alatry. —Nothing is distinctly stated in the Bible as to any antediluvian idolatry. It is, however, a reasonable supposition that in the general corruption before the Flood idolatry was practised. And that such was the case may in dced be inferred on other evidence. There is no trace of the names of heathen divinities in the names of the antediluvians ; but there are indica tions of ancestral worship in the postdiluvian wor ship of some of the antediluvian patriarchs. It can scarcely be doubted that rite SET or SUTEKII of the Egyptian Pantheon is the Hebrew Seth. The Cainite Enoch was probably commemorated as Annacus or Nannacus at Iconium, though, this name being identified with Enoch, the reference may be to Enoch of the line of Scth [ARK, Nomes]. It is reasonable to suppose that the worship of these antediluvians originated before the Flood, for it is unlikely that it would have been instituted after it.
The earliest idolatry mentioned in the Bible is noticed in the last address of Joshuato the assembled tribes, where he says, speaking Ir3r Divine commis sion, ' Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old ime, [even] Terah, the father of Abra ham, and the father of Nacho:. : and they served other gods' (xxiv. 2). Was this idolatry a wor ship of false gods, or a corruption of true religion ? The passage seems to necessitate the former sup position. We must, therefore, inquire what the idolatry of the Babylonians and Chaldees of that period is likely to have been, and whether there are any traces of it among the IIebrews.
It will be best to give a summary of the main facts of Sir Henry Rawlinson's Essay' on the re ligion of the Babylonians and Assyrians in the Rev. George Rawlinson's Herodotus, as the most authoritative statement of the results of recent research. The Pantheons of Babylon and Nineveh, though originally dissimilar in the names of the divinities, cannot as yet be treated separately. The principal god of the Assyrians was Asshur, replaced in Babylonia by a god whose name is read Il or Ra. The special attributes of Asshur were sovereignty and power, and he was regarded as the especial patron of the Assyrians and their kings. It is the Semitic equivalent of the Hamitic or Scythic Ra, which suggests a connection with Egypt, although it is to be noticed that the same root may perhaps be traced in the probably Canaanite Heres. Next to Asshur or Il was a triad, consist ing of Anu, who appears to have corresponded to Pluto, a divinity whose name is doubtful, corre sponding to Jupiter, and Ilea. or Hoa, correspond ing in position and partly in character to Neptune. The supreme goddess Mulita or Bilta (Mylitta or Beltis) was the wife of the Babylonian Jupiter. This triad was followed by another, consisting of "Ether (Iva ?), the sun, and the moon. Next in order, are the five minor gods, who, if not of astronomical origin, were at any rate identified with the five planets of the Chaldwan system.' In
addition, Sir H. Rawlinson enumerates several other divinities of less importance, and mentions that there are a vast number of other names,' adding this remarkable observation ; Every town and village indeed throughout Babylonia and As syria appears to have had its own particular deity, many of these no doubt being the great gods of the Pantheon disguised under rustic names, but others being distinct local divinities.' Sir H. Raw linson contents himself with stating the facts dis coverable from the inscriptions, and does not theorize upon the subject further than to point out the strong resemblances between this Oriental sys tem and that of Greece and Rome, not indeed in the Aryan ground-work of the latter, but in its general superstructure. If we analyze the Baby lonian and Assyrian system, we discover that in its present form it is mainly cosmic, or a system of high nature-worship. The supreme divinity ap pears to have been regarded as the ruler of the universe, the first triad was of powers of nature, the second triad and the remaining chief divinities were distinctly cosmic. But beneath this system were two others, evidently distinct in origin, and too deep-seated to be obliterated, the worship of an cestors and low nature-worship. Asshur, at the very head of the Pantheon, is the deified ancestor of the Assyrian race ; and, notwithstanding a system of great gods, each city had its own special idolatry, either openly reverencing its primitive idol, or con cealing a deviation from the fixed belief by making that idol another form of one of the national divinities. In this separation into its first elements of this ancient religion, we discover the superstitions of those races which, mixed but never completely fused, formed the population of Babylonia and Assyria, three races whose three languages were yet distinct in the inscribed records as late as the time of Darius Hystaspis. These races were the primitive Chaldxans, called Hamites by Sir H. Rawlinson, who undoubtedly had strong affinities with the ancient Egyptians, the Shemite Assyrians, and the Aryan Persians. It is not difficult to assign to these races their respective shares in the composition of the mythology of the countries in which they successively ruled. The ancestral worship is here distinctly Semitic : the name of ksshur proves this. It may be objected that such worship never characterized any other Semitic stock : that v:-e find it among Turanians and Aryans : but we reply, that the Shemites borrowed their idolatry, and a Turanian or Aryan influence may have given it this peculiar form. The low nature-worship must be due to the Turanians. It is never discerned except where there is a strong Turanian or Nigritian element, and when once esta blished it seems always to have been very hard to remove. The high nature-worship, as the last element, remains for the Aryan race. The primi tive Aryan belief in its different forms was a rever ence for the sun, moon, and stars, and the powers of nature, combined with a belief in one supreme being, a religion that, though varying at different times, and deeply influenced by ethnic causes, was never deprived of its essentially-cosmic charac teristics.