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The Highest, Heaven, Aeon, Time, etc., in Semitic Religion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2011
Extract
The writer's interest has been much aroused by two important monographs appearing in this Review: (I) ‘A Vision of Mandulis Aion,’ by A. D. Nock (vol. xxviii, 53–104); and (II) ‘The Gild of Zeus Hypsistos,’ by C. Roberts, T. C. Skeat, A. D. Nock (xxix, 39–88). The evidence is of necessity predominantly drawn from Graeco-Roman sources, while the Oriental background or parallels figure less because of the lack of material.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1938
References
1 The text was first published by Ronzevalle in 1931, but in far better form by E. Weidner in Archiv f. Orientforschung VIII (1932), 17 ff.; cf. G. R. Driver, ib. 203 ff. The text has been repeated in Zeits. f. d. Alttest. Wissensch. (1932), 178 ff.
2 N.b. the Biblical ‘Glory,’ ‘Face’ (Presence — also Punic), ‘Name’ (e.g. Is. 18:7; 30:27 — current in the Samaritan sect as replacing the divine Name): ‘Word’ (e.g. 1 Sam. 3:31; Wisdom, 18:15 ff.). For the common Judaistic use of ‘the Place’ see the writer's article in JBL 25 (1905), 17 ff. This Semitism went west and appears in Theophilus, Ad Autolycum, ii. 4, θεὸς … ἔστι τόπος τῶν ὂλων, αὐτὸς ὲαυτοῦ τόπος and in Arnobius, i. 31 ‘[Deus] locus rerum et spatium.’ In the Samaritan liturgy the Deity is not only God of Tohu wa-Bohu, but also actually Tohu wa-Bohu, ‘Chaos’ (see the writer's The Samaritans, 214 f.). Such developments throw light upon ‘God = Eternity,’ see infra (3). It should be insisted upon that the ‘Face-Person’ (cf. ‘in the Person of J. Christ’ at 2 Cor. 4:6) went west into the Christian theology, translated into πρόσωπον, persona, but not always retaining the Semitic flavor.
3 Sanchuniathon discusses and criticizes the mythology of an earlier ‘hierophant,’ Thabion, who must have bequeathed his composition to posterity. It may be noted merely as a matter of interest that R. Dussaud would assign one of the Ras Shamra poems to this Thabion (Rev. de l'Hist. des Religions, CXI (1935), 8 f.).
4 For the point of view of current archaeology see, for example, W. F. Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible (ed. 1, 1932), 140 ff.
5 JAOS 53 (1933), 116. I may add that I had long surmised that qônèh here was equivalent, if not replacement of ‘Baal,’ itself originally an innocuous epithet.
6 See Dalman, Worte Jesu, 179; Eng. tr. 217; my Comm. on Dan., ad loc.
7 Burchardt, Fremdworte u. Eigennamen im Ägyptischen, no. 385.
8 See pp. 86 f. for the reference to Eudemos of Rhodes, cited by Damascius, also given by Z. S. Harris in the vocabulary of his Phoenician Grammar (1936); Contenau, La civilisation phénicienne (1926), 105. This deity is described as ὁ νοητὸς νοῦς, ‘the intelligible reason.’
9 JQR 25 (1934–5), 267 f. Reference may here be made to the obscure passage in Eccles. 8:11: “He [God] has set the ‘olam in their [men's] heart.” “The Heb. vocable has been most variously translated: AV EV ‘the world’; Am. RV ‘eternity’; Moffatt, ‘mystery’: Chicago, ‘ignorance.’ So the doctors disagree. The most recent considerable discussion is by A. H. McNeile in his Introduction to Ecclesiastes (1904), 62 ff.; he accepts the view of Grimm, Nowack, Wildeboer, that we have here the notio aeternitatis. One may compare another tantalizing phrase in earlier Scripture, at Is. 29:11, ‘the vision of all,’ i.e. ‘of the universe’ (?), as a divine gift to prophets. The phrase at Acts 10:36, ‘Lord of all’ may be noted in comparison; it is a common Aramaic (Palmyrene, Christian-Syriac) phrase for Deity.
10 In regard to the moot question whether the Palmyrene mārē ‘ālam (with the equivalent in Judaism and Islam) means ‘Lord of the world,’ or ‘of eternity,’ Cumont's judicious opinion may well be accepted that “the two ideas were inseparable in the mind of the Syrian priests, and a single expression embraced both” (Les religions orientales, note 73 to ch. v). I may also note a recent interesting volume, Time and Its Mysteries (N. Y. Univ. Press, 1936), composed of chapters by Drs. Millikan, Mermatriam, Shapley, and the late Dr. Breasted — the latter's contribution being a reprint from the Scientific Monthly, Oct. 1935. Dr. Breasted notes the interrelation of the notions of time and space in ancient thought.
11 E.g. Gesenius-Buhl, and Brockelmann, Lex. syriacum, 1928. These authorities connect zaman with Akk. sīmān. But with the widespread diffusion of the vocable in W. Semitic — Eth. zaman, Arab, zamān, there is no reason to suppose such a dubious etymology. The same word exists also in Aramaic (Syriac) in the form zabnā, with variation arising by labial dissimilation, a frequent phenomenon in Semitic. Arabic zaman is used technically of grammatical time, as Professor P. K. Hitti informs me; the Arabic in its wealth has two other words also for time, while most languages possess but one. Interestingly enough absolute time, eternity are there expressed with dahr, which primarily means the same as Heb. dor, and doubtless is radically related to it. See also note 15 infra.
12 First published by Cureton in his Specilegium Syriacum (1855), text and translation: translation in Ante-Nicene Fathers, VIII, 735 ff.
13 Twice the Syriac word is pointed with the plural points as ‘times’ — by error of the scribe? The meaning, however, remains mobile, e.g. “Do not murmur against thy time.”
14 See Montgomery and Harris, Ras Shamra Mythological Texts (1935), 88. A similar usage probably appears in South Arabic.
15 Ibid. p. 93. For the Tyche of Jerash, Palmyra, Dura see Rostovtzeff, Caravan Cities (1932), Index, s.v. Meni of the Heb. = original Arab. fem. form manay, ‘Fate,’ appearing in the Old Arabic poets, parallel to the ancient Arabian goddess Manāt, who appears also in the Nabataean. The Editor has called my attention to a monograph by W. Caskel, Das Schicksal in der altarab. Poesie (Morgenl. Texte u. Forschungen, I, 5, 1926). It contains extensive studies of manay and its fellow-forms, and of zamān and dahr noted above, and exhibits the dominant part of Fate in the old Arabian thought. The distinguished Arabist Professor D. B. Macdonald has discovered and well expressed this native Semitic philosophy in his study of the book of Ecclesiastes in ch. v of his The Hebrew Philosophical Genius (Princeton, 1936). To quote him (p. 87): the Ecclesiast “was a Hebrew, working out from the already existent bases of Hebrew thought, looking with clear eyes at life and applying to it the acrid scepticism characteristic of the Arab mind.” And in connection with (3) supra may be cited (ib.): “Ecclesiastes sees that the Universe is in Time itself…. How Ecclesiastes would have defined Time we have no clue; but he had developed the particular ‘time’ of the Hebrews to this absolute conception, which is parallel to his passing from ‘all things’ to ‘the All,’ meaning the universe.”