Idolatry

Idolatry

So deep-rooted was the Jewish hatred of idolatry, and so general had been the condemnation of the practice, that our Lord found no reason for insistence upon the generally accepted commandments on the subject. But soon as the gospel message began to be preached outside the pale of Judaism, the matter became one of the pressing questions of the day. Protests against the popular practice had not been wanting from the older Greek thinkers; Heraclitus, Xenophanes, and Zeno had all raised their voices against image-worship. But the popular mind was not affected by their teaching, and many were the apologists who wrote in favour of the established custom. It is not surprising to read (Act 17:16) that, when St. Paul visited Athens, his spirit was provoked within him, as he beheld the city full of idols, even though the statement is not strictly accurate. His whole training rendered him antagonistic to anything approaching idolatry; and in his letters the same feeling is expressed. No Christian was to keep company with idolaters (1Co 5:10 f.), who could not inherit the Kingdom of God (1Co 6:9, Eph 5:5). He reminds the Thessalonians that they had abandoned the old idolatrous worship to serve the living God (1Th 1:9). Yet from the Christian point of view there is only one God, and the true Christian cannot but recognize that thus no idol is anything in the world (1Co 8:4).

But there are two aspects of idolatry which caused the greatest anxiety in the primitive Church.

(a) The decision of the Jerusalem Council as to the duties incumbent upon heathen converts contains the significant phrase, that they abstain from the pollutions of idols (Act 15:20), from meats offered to idols (Act 15:29). The command is intended as a comprehensive one, meaning that idolatry in every form is to be avoided; participation in the idolatrous feasts is especially emphasised, simply because this was the crassest form of idolatry (A. Harnack, The Acts of the Apostles, Eng. translation , 1909, p. 257). But it was also the means of subtle temptation, which gave rise to a serious question. The probability was that most of the meat sold in the markets as well as that set before the guests at Gentile tables had been offered to idols. What was the Christian to do? Was he to buy no meat? Must he refuse all such invitations? It must not be forgotten that the breach between St. Paul and the Judaizers had never been really healed. The partisans on either side were ever on the look-out for opportunities to widen it. The leaders did their utmost to heal the quarrel. Therefore, in dealing with the questions raised by the Corinthian Church, St. Paul was compelled to remember that he must not give any offence to the Judaizing section, which was evidently represented there (1Co 1:11 ff.), since he had acquiesced in the Apostolic Decree. It is true that this was only in the nature of a compromise, but its recommendations must be carried out as far as possible. On the other hand, the Gentile section of the community, which was responsible for raising the question, was in favour of a broad-minded view. And St. Pauls dilemma was increased by the fact that his sympathies were with them. He lays the greatest stress, therefore, upon the principle that idolatry is wholly hateful and must be carefully guarded against (1Co 10:14). In the worship of Israel, to eat the sacrifices of the altar is to have communion with the altar. It is true that the idol is nothing, and the sacrifice therefore has no meaning, yet idolatry among the heathen is demon-worship rather than the worship of God; would they wish to have communion with demons? (1Co 10:15 ff.). It was all very well to shelter behind the fact that Christians really know that there is only one God; but all have not this knowledge: consequently the weaker brethren-that is, those who are perplexed and troubled by these questions-may be led into danger by our actions. Yet a compromise is possible. They are to buy what is offered, and eat what is set before them, asking no questions (1Co 10:28 ff.). If either the seller or the host say, This has been offered to idols, whether in a friendly or a hostile spirit, the Christians must have nothing to do with it. It is all a matter of expediency and, in part, of love. Gods glory must come first; neither Jew nor Greek nor the Church must be needlessly offended.

(b) The second aspect of idolatry afforded even more grievous trials, and was eventually the source of serious persecution: it was the rise of Emperor-worship. It is not difficult to see that such a cult was almost inevitable under existing circumstances. There had always been a tendency among Greeks and Romans to deify heroes of the past, but the practice gradually grew up of erecting temples in honour of living heroes (Plutarch, Lysander, xviii.; Herodotus, v. 47). It was perhaps not unnatural that a cult of the all-victorious city of Rome should arise, and as early as 195 b.c. there was a temple in its honour at Smyrna. Taking all these facts into consideration, the development of the Imperial cult under the Empire was only to be looked for. After the death of Julius Caesar a temple in his honour was erected at Ephesus (29 b.c.), and it was only a step to pay a like honour to Augustus during his lifetime (Tacitus, Ann. iv. 37). Such men as Gaius and Domitian were ready enough to encourage the idea (Suetonius, Domit. xiii.). In the province of Asia the cult was hailed with delight, and the result, as touching Christians, is seen in the Apocalypse (13). Such a cult was bound to change the whole relationship between Christianity and the Roman power. As a general rule it would be quite possible to escape offending susceptibilities with regard to the worship of the older gods, but the new cult was so universal and so popular that it soon became fraught with grave danger for members of the Christian community. Antichrist had indeed arisen, and fierce warfare could be the only result.

Literature.-For the whole subject: J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough2, 1900, also edition of Pausanias, 1898; V. Chapot, La Province romaine proconsulaire dAsie, 1904; for (a): Commentaries of Heinrici (1896), Schmiedel (1892), Ellicott (1887), Stanley (21858), Robertson-Plummer (1911) on 1 Corinthians 8-10; and for (b): H. B. Swete, The Apocalypse of St. John2, 1907, pp. lxxviii-xciii; B. F. Westcott, Epp. of St. John, 1883, pp. 250-282; E. Beurlier, Le Culte imprial, 1891; G. Boissier, La Religion romaine, 1892, i. 109-186; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Rmer, 1902, pp. 71-78, 280-289.

F. W. Worsley.

Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church

IDOLATRY

The worship of idols, or the act of ascribing to things and persons, properties which are peculiar to God alone. The principal sources of idolatry seem to be the extravagant veneration for creatures and beings from which benefits accrue to men. Dr. Jortin says, that idolatry had four privileges to boast of. The first was a venerable antiquity, more ancient than the Jewish religion; and idolaters might have said to the Israelites, Where was your religion before Moses and Abraham? Go, and enquire in Chaldes, and there you will find that your fathers served other gods.

2. It was wider spread than the Jewish religion. It was the religion of the greatest , the wisest, and the politest nations of the Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Phoenicians, the parents of civil government, and of arts and sciences.

3. It was more adapted to the bent which men have towards visible and sensible objects. Men want gods who shall go before them, and be among them. God, who is every where in power, and no where in appearance, is hard to be conceived.

4. It favoured human passions: it required no morality: its religious ritual consisted of splendid ceremonies, revelling, dancing, nocturnal assemblies, impure and scandalous mysteries, debaucined priests, and gods, who were both slaves and patrons to all sorts of vices. “All the more remarkable false religions that have been or are in the world, recommend themselves by one or other of these four privileges and characters.” The first objects of idolatrous worship are thought to have been the sun, moon, and stars. Others think that angels were first worshipped. Soon after the flood we find idolatry greatly prevailing in the world. Abraham’s father’s family served other gods beyond the river Euphrates; and Laban had idols which Rachel brought along with her. In process of time, noted patriots, or kings deceased, animals of various kinds, plants, stones, and, in fine, whatever people took a fancy to, they idolized.

The Egyptians, though high pretenders to wisdom, worshipped pied bulls, snipes, leeks, onions, &c. The Greeks had about 30, 000 gods. The Gomerians deified their ancient kings, nor were the Chaldeans, Romans, Chinese, &c. a whit less absurd. Some violated the most natural affections by murdering multitudes of their neighbours and children, under pretence of sacrificing them to their god. Some nations of Germany, Scandinavia, and Tartary, imagined that violent death in war, or by self-murder, was the proper method of access to the future enjoyment of their gods. In far later times, about 64, 080 persons were sacrificed at the dedication of one idolatrous temple in the space of four days in America. The Hebrews never had any idols of their own, but they adopted those of the nations around. The veneration which the Papists pay to the Virgin Mary, and other saints and angels, and to the bread in the sacrament, the cross, relics, and images, lays a foundation for the Protestants to charge them with idolatry, though they deny the charge.

It is evident that they worship them, and that they justify the worship, but deny the idolatry of it, by distinguishing subordinate from supreme worship: the one they call latria, the other dulia: but this distinction is thought by many of the Protestant to be vain, futile, and nugatory. Idolatry has been divided into metaphorical and proper. By metaphorical idolatry, is meant that inordinate love of riches, honours, and bodily pleasures, whereby the passions and appetites of men are made superior to the will of God; man, by so doing, making a god of himself and his sensual temper. Proper idolatry is giving the divine honour to another. The objects or idols of that honour which are given are either personal, 1:e. the idolatrous themselves, who become their own statues; or internal, as false ideas, which are set up in the fancy instead of God, such as fancying God to be a light, flame, matter, &c. only here, the scene being internal, the scandal of the sin is thereby abated; or external, as worshipping angels, the sun, stars, animals, &c. Tenison on Idolatry; A. Young on Idolatrous Corruptions; Ridgley’s Body of Div. qu. 106. Fell’s Idolatry of Greece and Rome; Stillingfleet’s Idolatry of the Church of Rome; Jortin’s Ser. vol. 6: ser. 18.

Fuente: Theological Dictionary

idolatry

(Greek: eidololatreia, image worship)

Broadly, extends to all divine worship given to anyone or anything but the true God. Opposed to the virtue of religion it bestows reverence due to God alone directly on the image itself or on the creature represented. All religious systems indicate a primitive, pure Monotheistic concept degraded by man and devil. Disordered affections, need of sense-images, ignorance of God’s excellence, and diabolical agency have led unbridled imagination to attribute divine power to myriad false gods of every kind. Idolatry was Israel’s national sin. Absolutely considered, idolatry and atheism are the greatest sins, a direct attempt to despoil and dethrone God and to substitute a creature. Circumstances determine the actual guilt. Inculpable ignorance and right intent divert the worship to the one true God.

Catholic veneration of images is not directed to the images as such, but is a form of respect paid to them as representative of the original to whom alone honor is due and attributed.

Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary

Idolatry

(Gr. eidololatria.)

Idolatry etymologically denotes Divine worship given to an image, but its signification has been extended to all Divine worship given to anyone or anything but the true God. St. Thomas (Summa Theol., II-II, q. xciv) treats of it as a species of the genus superstition, which is a vice opposed to the virtue of religion and consists in giving Divine honour (cultus) to things that are not God, or to God Himself in a wrong way. The specific note of idolatry is its direct opposition to the primary object of Divine worship; it bestows on a creature the reverence due to God alone. It does so in several ways. The creature is often represented by an image, an idol. “Some, by nefarious arts, made certain images which, through the power of the devil, produced certain effects whence they thought that these images contained something divine and, consequently, that divine worship was due to them.” Such was the opinion of Hermes Trismegistus. Others gave Divine honours not to the images but to the creatures which they represented. Both are hinted at by the Apostle (Romans 1:23-25), who says of the first: “They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts and of creeping things”; and of the second: “They worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator”. These worshippers of creatures were of three kinds. Some held that certain men were gods, and these they honoured through their statues, e. g., Jupiter and Mercury. Others opined that the whole world was one God, God being conceived of as the rational soul of the corporeal world. Hence they worshipped the world and all its parts, the air, the water, and all the rest; their idols, according to Varro, as reported by St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, VIII, xxi, xxii), were the expression of that belief. Others again, followers of Plato, admitted one supreme God, the cause of all things; under Him they placed certain spiritual substances of His creation and participating in His Divinity; these substances they called gods; and below these they put the souls of the heavenly bodies and, below these again the demons who, they thought, were a sort of aerial living beings (animalia). Lowest of all they placed the human souls, which, according to merit or demerit, were to share the society either of the gods or of the demons. To all they attributed Divine worship, as St. Augustine says (De Civ. Dei, VIII, 14).

An essential difference exists between idolatry and the veneration of images practised in the Catholic Church, viz., that while the idolater credits the image he reverences with Divinity or Divine powers, the Catholic knows “that in images there is no divinity or virtue on account of which they are to be worshipped, that no petitions can be addressed to them, and that no trust is to be placed in them. . . that the honour which is given to them is referred to the objects (prototypa) which they represent, so that through the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover our heads and kneel, we adore Christ and venerate the Saints whose likenesses they are” (Conc. find., Sess. XXV, “de invocatione Sanctorum”).

MORAL ASPECT

Considered in itself, idolatry is the greatest of mortal sins. For it is, by definition, an inroad on God’s sovereignty over the world, an attempt on His Divine majesty, a rebellious setting up of a creature on the throne that belongs to Him alone. Even the simulation of idolatry, in order to escape death during persecution, is a mortal sin, because of the pernicious falsehood it involves and the scandal it causes. Of Seneca who, against his better knowledge, took part in idolatrous worship, St. Augustine says: “He was the more to be condemned for doing mendaciously what people believed him to do sincerely”. The guilt of idolatry, however, is not to be estimated by its abstract nature alone; the concrete form it assumes in the conscience of the sinner is the all-important element. No sin is mortal &#151 i.e. debars man from attaining the end for which he was created &#151 that is not committed with clear knowledge and free determination. But how many, or how few, of the countless millions of idolaters are, or have been, able to distinguish between the one Creator of all things and His creatures? and, having made the distinction, how many have been perverse enough to worship the creature in preference to the Creator? &#151 It is reasonable, Christian, and charitable to suppose that the “false gods” of the heathen were, in their conscience, the only true God they knew, and that their worship being right in its intention, went up to the one true God with that of Jews and Christians to whom He had revealed Himself. “In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ . . . . . the gentiles who have not the law, shall be judged by their conscience” (Romans 2:14-16). God, who wishes all men to be saved, and Christ, who died for all who sinned in Adam, would be frustrated in their merciful designs if the prince of this world were to carry off all idolaters.

CAUSES

Idolatry in its grosser forms is so far removed from the Christianized mind that it is no easy matter to account for its origin. Its persistence after gaining a first footing, and its branching out in countless varieties, are sufficiently explained by the moral necessity imposed on the younger generation to walk in the path of their elders with only insignificant deviations to the right or to the left. Thus Christian generations follow upon Christian generations; if sects arise they are Christian sects. The question as to the first origin of idolatry is thus answered by St. Thomas:

“The cause of idolatry is twofold: dispositive on the part of man; consummative on the part of the demons.

“Men were led to idolatry first by disordered affections, inasmuch as they bestowed divine honours upon someone whom they loved or venerated beyond measure. This cause is indicated in Wisdom 14:15: ‘For a father being afflicted by bitter grief, made to himself the image of his son who was quickly taken away; and him who then had died as a man, he began now to worship as a god . . . ‘, and 14:21: ‘Men serving either their affection or their king, gave the incommunicable name to stones and wood’.

“Second: By their natural love for artistic representations: uncultured men, seeing statues cunningly reproducing the figure of man, worshipped them as gods. Hence we read in Wisdom 13:11 sq., ‘An artist, a carpenter has cut down a tree proper for his use in the wood . . . . . . and by the skill of his art fashioneth it and maketh it like the image of a man . . . . . and then maketh prayers to it, inquiring concerning his substance and his children or his marriage’.

“Third: By their ignorance of the true God: man, not considering the excellence of God, attributed divine worship to certain creatures excelling in beauty or virtue: Wisdom 13:1-2:’ . . . . . neither by attending to the works have [men] acknowledged who was the workman, but have imagined either the fire, or the wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and moon, to be the gods that rule the world’.

“The consummative cause of idolatry was the influence of the demons who offered themselves to the worship of erring men, giving answers from idols or doing things which to men seemed marvelous, whence the Psalmist says (Psalm 95:5): ‘All the gods of the gentiles are devils'” (II-II, Q. xciv, a. 4).

The causes which the writer of Wisdom, probably an Alexandrian Jew living in the second century B. C., assigns to the idolatry prevalent in his time and environment, are sufficient to account for the origin of all idolatry. Man’s love for sense images is not a vagary but a necessity of his mind. Nothing is in the intellect that has not previously passed through the senses. All thought that transcends the sphere of direct sense knowledge is clothed in material garments, be they only a word or a mathematical symbol. Likewise, the knowledge of things impervious to our senses, that comes to us by revelation, is communicated and received through the senses external or internal, and is further elaborated by comparison with notions evolved from sense perceptions; all our knowledge of the supernatural proceeds by analogy with the natural. Thus, throughout the Old Testament God reveals Himself in the likeness of man, and in the New, the Son of God, assuming human nature, speaks to us in parables and similitudes. Now, the human mind, when sufficiently ripe to receive the notion of God, is already stocked with natural imagery in which it clothes the new idea. That the limited mind of man cannot adequately represent, picture, or conceive the infinite perfection o God, is self-evident. If left to his own resources, man will slowly and imperfectly develop the obscure notion of a superior or supreme power on which his well-being depends and whom he can conciliate or offend. In this process intervenes the second cause of idolatry: ignorance. The Supreme Power is apprehended in the works and workings of nature; in sun and stars, in fertile fields, in animals, in fancied invisible influences, in powerful men. And there, among the secondary causes, the “groping after God” may end in the worship of sticks and stones. St. Paul told the Athenians that God had “winked at the times of this ignorance” during which they erected altars “To the unknown God”, which implies that He had compassion on their ignorance and sent them the light of truth to reward their good intention (Acts 17:22-31). As soon as the benighted heathen has located his unknown god, love and fear, which are but the manifestations of the instinct of self-preservation, shape the cultus of the idol into sacrifices or other congenial religious practices. Ignorance of the First Cause, the need of images for fixing higher conceptions, the instinct of self-preservation &#151 these are the psychological causes of idolatry.

IDOLATRY IN ISRAEL

The worship of one God is inculcated from the first to the last page of the Bible. How long man, on the strength of the revelation transmitted by Adam and subsequently by Noe, adored God in spirit and truth is an insoluble problem. Monotheism, however, appears to have been the starting-point of all religious systems known to us through trustworthy documents. The Animism, Totemism, Fetishism of the lower races; the nature-worship, ancestor-worship, and hero-worship of civilized nations are hybrid forms of religion, evolved on the psychological lines indicated above; all are incarnations in the uncultured or cultured mind, and manifestations of one fundamental notion, namely, that there is above man a power on whom man is dependent for good and evil. Polytheism is born of the confusion of second causes with the First Cause; it grows in inverse ratio of higher mental faculties; it dies out under the clear light of reason or revelation. The first undoubted mention of idolatry in the Bible is in Genesis 31:19: “Rachel stole away her father’s idols [teraphim]”, and when Laban overtook Jacob in his flight and made search for “his gods”, Rachel “in haste hid the idols under the camel’s furniture, and sat upon them” (31:34). Yet Laban also worshipped the same God as Jacob, whose blessing he acknowledges (30:27), and on whom he calls to judge between him and Jacob (30:53). A similar practice of blending reverence to the true God with the idolatrous worship of surrounding nations runs though the whole history of Israel. When Moses delayed to come down from the holy mount, the people, “gathering together against Aaron, said: Arise, make us gods, that may go before us”. And Aaron made a molten calf, “and they said: These are thy gods, O Israel, that have brought thee out of the land of Egypt. And . . . they offered holocausts, and peace victims, and the people sat down to eat, and drink, and they rose up to play” (Exodus 32:1 sqq.). In Settim “the people committed fornication with the daughters of Moab, . . . and adored their gods. And Israel was initiated to Beelphegor” (Numbers 25:1-3). Again, after the death of Josue, “the children of Israel . . . served Baalim . . . and they followed strange gods, and the gods of the people that dwelt round about them” (Judges 2:11 sq.) . Whenever the children of Israel did evil in the eyes of Jehovah, swift retribution overtook them; they were given into the hands of their enemies. Yet idolatry remained the national sin down to the times of the Machabees. This striking fact has for its causes, first, the natural endeavour of man to come in contact with the object of his worship; he wants gods that go before him, visible, tangible, easily accessible; in the case of the Israelites the strict prohibition of worshipping images added to idolatry the allurement of the forbidden fruit; secondly, the allurement of the pleasures of the flesh offered to the worshippers of the strange divinities; thirdly, mixed marriages, occasionally on a large scale; fourthly, the intercourse in peace and war and exile with powerful neighbours who attributed their prosperity to other gods than Jehovah. The less enlightened Israelites probably conceived of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as “their God”, Who laid no claim to universal rule. If so, they may frequently have become idolaters for the sake of temporal advantage.

But why did God permit such deviations from the truth? If in His judgment idolatry, as practised by the Jews, is the unmitigated evil which it appears to our judgment, no satisfactory answer can be given to this question, it is the eternal problem of sin and evil. The best that can be said is that the constantly recurring cycle of sin, punishment, repentance, forgiveness, were for God the occasion of a magnificent display of justice, mercy, and longanimity; to the Chosen People a constant reminder of their need of a Redeemer; to the members of the Kingdom of Christ a type of God’s dealings with sinners. It may also be pleaded that idolatry in Israel had more the character of ignorant superstition than of contempt of Jehovah. Like the superstitious or quasi-superstitious practices and devotions to which even Christian populations are prone, much of the idolatrous cult in Israel was an excess of piety, rather than an act of impiety, towards the Supreme Power distinctly felt but dimly understood. The well-meant but ill-directed worship never became the religion of Israel; it was never more than a temporary invasion of extraneous religious practices, often deeply overlaying the national religion, but never completely supplanting it. As a last consideration, the punishment of idolatry in Israel was always national and temporal. The prophets held out no eternal bliss or eternal torments as incentives to faithful service of God. And the Prophet of prophets, Christ the Judge, may well repeat from the seat of judgment the words He spoke on the Cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”.

IDOLATRY AMONG THE HEATHEN

The causes at work in the genesis of idolatry have produced effects as varied and manifold as the human family itself. The original idea of God has taken in the mind of man all the distorted and fanciful forms which a liquid is liable to assume in a collapsible vessel, or clay in the potter’s hands. As, in the course of ages, the power of healing has been attributed to almost every substance and combination of substances, so has the Divine power been traced in all things, and all things have been worshipped accordingly. As an illustration, the worship of animals may be briefly considered. From the beginning and throughout his history, man is associated with the lower animals. Adam is surrounded by them in Eden, and Eve speaks familiarly to the serpent. Sacrificed animals link man to God, from the sacrifice of Abel to the taurobolium of the latest superstition of pagan Rome. The scapegoat carries with it the sins of the people, the paschal lamb redeems them. The Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world, the dove which represents the Holy Ghost, the animal emblems of the Evangelists, the dragon of St. Michael and of St. George of England, not to mention others, are familiar to Christians.

The heathen mind has moved in similar grooves. In oldest Egypt we find the bull associated with the godhead and receiving divine homage &#151 whether as a special representative, a manifestation, a symbol, or a receptacle of the divinity, it is impossible to decide. From the seventh century B. C. onwards every god is figured with the head of some animal sacred to him; Thot has the head of an ibis, Amon a ram’s, Horus a hawk’s, Anubis a jackal’s, etc. Were the Egyptians and other zoolaters guided by the same symbolism that leads us to call on “the Lamb of God” for forgiveness of our sins? If so animal-worship runs through the following stages: Man’s close association with animal life fills his mental storehouse with composite notions &#151 e. g., the faithful dog, the sly fox, the cunning serpent, the patient ass &#151 in which the animal embodies a human attribute. Next, the adjective is dropped, and the animal name is used as a predicate of persons, as a personal, family, tribal, or divine name. At this point the process branches off according to the religious temper of the people. Where Monotheism rules, the animal, alive or figured, is but an emblem or a symbol; among untutored savages, like the Red Indians, it is the bearer of the tribe’s tutelary spirit and the object of various degrees of worship; in decaying religions &#151 e. g., Egyptian later polytheism &#151 it is identified with the god whose characteristic it represents, and shares with him in divine honours. The light of Revelation has cleared away the aberrations of this natural process wherever it has penetrated, but traces of it remain embedded in many, perhaps in all, languages. Thus Wodan’s sacred wolf still enters into 357 personal names borne by Germans. (See also IMAGES; RELIGION; WORSHIP.)

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For dogmatic and moral side, see works quoted in text. The history of idolatry is now studied as comparative religion, hut as yet there is no standard Catholic work on the subject. For monographs, see BABYLONIA; CHINA; EGYPT; GREECE; also the series of the London Catholic Truth Society, History of Religion (32 lectures in 4 vols., London, 1908 &#151 ); and two similar series, each called Science et Religion (Paris).

J. WILHELM. Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter Dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIICopyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia

Idolatry

is divine honor paid to any created object. It is thus a wider term than image-worship (q.v.). For many old monographs on the various forms of ancient idolatry, see Volbeding, Index Programmatum, p. 108 sq. SEE GODS, FALSE; SEE BEAST-WORSHIP.

We find the idea of idolatry expressed in the O.T. by (a lie, Psa 45:5; Amo 2:4), or (nullity), and still oftener by (abomination). In after times the Jews designated it as (foreign worship). Thus we see that it had no name indicative of its nature, for the Biblical expressions are more a monotheistic qualification of divine worship than a definition of it; the last Hebrew expression, however, shows idolatry as not being of Jewish origin. The word in the N.T. is entirely due to the Septuagint, which, wherever any of the heathen deities are mentioned, even though designated in the sacred text only as (nothings), translates by , an idol; a practice generally followed by later versions. A special sort of idolatry, namely, the actual adoration of images (Idololatria) thus gave name to the whole species (1Co 10:14; Gal 5:20; 1Pe 4:3). Subsequently the more comprehensive word (idolatria, instead of idololatria) was adopted, which included the adoration and worship of other visible symbols of the deity () besides those due to the statuary art. Herzog.

I. Origin of Idolatry. In the primeval period man appears to have had not alone a revelation, but also an implanted natural law. Adam and some of his descendants, as late as the time of the Flood, certainly lived under a revealed system, now usually spoken of as the patriarchal dispensation, and Paul tells us that the nations were under a natural law (Rom 2:14-15). Man in his natural state must always have had a knowledge of God sufficient for the condition in which he had been placed. Although God in times past suffered all nations [or, rather, all the Gentiles, ] to walk in their own ways, nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness’ (Act 14:17). For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and godhead’ (Rom 1:20). But the people of whom we are speaking’ changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things,’ and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever’ (Rom 1:21-25). Thus arose that strange superstition which is known by the term Fetishism [or low nature- worship], consisting in the worship of animals, trees, rivers, hills, and stones (Poole, Genesis of the Earth and of Man 1:2 nd ed. p. 160, 161). Paul speaks of those who invented this idolatry as therefore forsaken of God and suffered to sink into the deepest moral corruption (Rom 1:28). It is remarkable that among highly-civilized nations the converse obtains; moral corruption being very frequently the cause of the abandoning of true religion for infidelity. Kitto. That theory of human progress which supposes man to have gradually worked his way up from barbaric ignorance of God to a so-called natural religion is contradicted by the facts of Biblical history.

Nothing is distinctly stated in the Bible as to any antediluvian idolatry. It is, however, a reasonable sup-position that in the general corruption before the Flood idolatry was practiced. There is no undoubted trace of heathen divinities in the names of the antediluvians; but there are dim indications of ancestral worship in the postdiluvian worship of some of the antediluvian patriarchs. It has been supposed that the SET or SUTEKH of the Egyptian Pantheon is the Hebrew Seth. The Cainite Enoch was possibly commemorated as Annacus or Nannacus at Iconium, though, this name being identified with Enoch, the reference may be to Enoch of the line of Seth. 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. Some Jewish writers, grounding their theory on a forced interpretation of Gen 4:26, assign to Enos, the son of Seth, the unenviable notoriety of having been the first to pay divine honors to the host of heaven, and to lead others into the like error (Maimon. De Idol. i, 1). R. Solomon Jarchi, on the other hand, while admitting the same verse to contain the first account of the origin of idolatry, understands it as implying the deification of men and plants. Arabic tradition, according to Sir W. Jones, connects the people of Yemen with the same apostasy. The third in descent from Joktan, and therefore a contemporary of Nahor, took the surname of Abdu Shams, or servant of the sun, whom he and his family worshipped, while other tribes honored the planets and fixed stars (Hales, Chronol. 2, 59, 4to ed.). Nimrod, again, to whom is ascribed the introduction of Zabianism, was after his death transferred to the constellation Orion, and on the slender foundation of the expression Ur of the Chaldees (Gen 11:31) is built the fabulous history of Abraham and Nimrod, narrated in the legends of the Jews and Mussulmans (Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrash, 1. 23; Weil, Bibl. Leg. p. 47-74; Hyde, Rel. Pers. c. 2).

II. Classification of Idolatry. All unmixed systems of idolatry may be classified under the following heads; all mixed systems may be resolved into two or more of them. We give in this connection general illustrations of these species of false worship as evinced by the nations associated with the Jewish people, reserving for the next head a more complete survey of the idolatrous systems of the most important of these nations separately.

1. Low nature-worship, or fetishism, the worship of animals, trees, rivers, hills, and stones. The fetishism of the Negroes is thought to admit of a belief in a supreme intelligence: if this be true, such a belief is either a relic of a higher religion, or else is derived from the Muslim tribes of Africa. Fetishism is closely connected with magic, and the Nigritian priests are universally magicians.

Beast-worship was exemplified in the calves of Jeroboam and the dark hints, which seem to point to the goat of Mendes. There is no actual proof that the Israelites ever joined in the service of Dagon, the fish-god of the Philistines, though Ahaziah sent stealthily to Baalzebub, the fly-god of Ekron (2 Kings 1). Some have explained the allusion in Zep 1:9 as referring to a practice connected with the worship of Dagon; comp. 1 Samuel 5, 5. The Syrians are stated by Xenophon (Anab. 1, 4, 9) to have paid divine honors to fish. In later times the brazen serpent became the object of idolatrous homage (2Ki 18:4). But whether the latter was regarded with superstitious reverence as a memorial of their early history, or whether incense was offered to it as a symbol of some power of nature, cannot now be exactly determined. The threatening in Lev 26:30, I will put your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols, may fairly be considered as directed against the tendency to regard animals, as in Egypt, as the symbols of deity. Tradition says that Nergal, the god of the men of Cuth, the idol of fire according to Leusden (Philippians Hebr. Mixt. diss. 43), was worshipped under the form of a cock; Ashima as a he-goat, the emblem of generative power; Nibhaz as a dog; Adrammelech as a mule or peacock; and Anammelech as a horse or pheasant. The singular reverence with which trees have in all ages been honored is not without example in the history of the Hebrews. The terebinth at Mamre, beneath which Abraham built an altar (Gen 12:7; Gen 13:18), and the memorial grove planted by him at Beersheba (Gen 21:33), were intimately connected with patriarchal worship though in after ages his descendants were forbidden to do that which he did with impunity, in order to avoid the contamination of idolatry. Jerome (Onomasticon, s.v. Drys) mentions an oak near Hebron which existed in his infancy, and was the traditional tree beneath which Abraham dwelt. It was regarded with great reverence, and was made an object of worship by the heathen. Modern Palestine abounds with sacred trees. They are found all over the land covered with bits of rags from the garments of passing villagers, hung up as acknowledgments, or as deprecatory signals and charms; and we find beautiful clumps of oak-trees sacred to a kind of beings called Jacob’s daughters (Thomson, The Land and the Book, 2, 151). SEE GROVE. As a symptom of the rapidly degenerating spirit, the oak of Shechem, which stood in the sanctuary of Jehovah (Jos 24:26), and beneath which Joshua set up the stone of witness, perhaps appears in Judges (Jdg 9:37) as the oak (not plain,’ as in the A.V.) of soothsayers or augurs. This, indeed, may be a relic of the ancient Canaanitish worship; an older name associated with idolatry, which the conquering Hebrews were commanded and endeavored to obliterate (Deu 12:3).

2. Shamanism, or the magical side of fetishism, the religion of the Mongolian tribes, and apparently the primitive religion of China.

3. High nature-worship, the worship of the sun, moon, and stars, and of the supposed powers of nature. The old religion of the Shemitic races consisted, in the opinion of Movers (Plin. 1, c. 5), in the deification of the powers and laws of nature; these powers being considered either as distinct and independent, or as manifestations of one supreme and all-ruling being. In most instances the two ideas were co-existent. The deity, following human analogy, was conceived as male and female: the one representing the active, the other the passive principle of nature; the former the source of spiritual. the latter of physical life. The transference of the attributes of the one to the other resulted either in their mystical conjunction in the hermaphrodite, as the Persian Mithra and Phoenician Baal, or the two combined to form a third, which symbolized the essential unity of both. (This will explain the occurrence of the name of Baal with the masculine and feminine articles in the Sept.; comp. Hos 11:2; Jer 19:5; Rom 11:4. Philochorus, quoted by Macrobius [Sat. 3, 8], says that men and women sacrificed to Venus or the Moon, with the garments of the sexes interchanged, because she was regarded both as masculine and feminine [see Selden, De Dis Syr. 2, 2]. Hence Lunus and Luna.) With these two supreme beings all other beings are identical; so that in different nations the same nature-worship appears under different forms, representing the various aspects under which the idea of the power of nature is presented. The sun and moon were early selected as outward symbols of this all-pervading power, and the worship of the heavenly bodies was not only the most ancient, but the most prevalent system of idolatry. Taking its rise, according to a probable hypothesis, in the plains of Chaldsea. it spread through Egypt, Greece, Scythia, and even Mexico and Ceylon; and it is worthy of notice that even the religion of remote India presupposes a grand symbolic representation of the divine by the worship of these great physical powers (compare Lassen, Ind. Alterth. 1, 756 sq.; Roth, Geschichte der Religionen). SEE HINDUISM.

It was regarded as an offence amenable to the civil authorities in the days of Job (Job 31:26-28), and one of the statutes of the Mosaic law was directed against its observance (Deu 4:19; Deu 17:3); the former referring to the star worship of Arabia, the latter to the concrete form in which it appeared among the Syrians and Phoenicians. It is probable that the Israelites learned their first lessons in sun worship from the Egyptians, in whose religious system that luminary, as Osiris, held a prominent place. The city of On (Bethshemesh or Heliopolis) took its name from his temple (Jer 43:13), and the wife of Joseph was the daughter of his priest (Gen 41:45). The Phoenicians worshipped him under the title of Lord of heaven, , Baal-shamayim (, acc. to Sanchoniatho in Philo Byblius), and Adon, the Greek Adonis, and the Tammuz of Ezekiel (8:14). SEE TAMMUZ.

As Molech or Milcom, the sun was worshipped by the Ammonites, and as Chemosh by the Moabites. The Hadad of the Syrians is the same deity, whose name is traceable in Benhadad, Hadadezer, and Hadad or Adad, the Edomite. The Assyrian Bel or Belus is another form of Baal. According to Philo (De Vit. Cont. 3), the Essenes were wont to pray to the sun at morning and evening (Joseph. War, 2, 8, 5). By the later kings of Judah, sacred horses and chariots were dedicated to the sun-god, as by the Persians (2Ki 23:11; Bochart, Hieroz. pt. 1, bk. 2, c. 11; Selden, De Dis Syr. 2, 8), to march in procession and greet his rising (R. Solomon Jarchi on 2Ki 23:11). The Massagetae offered horses in sacrifice to him (Strabo, 11, p. 513), on the principle enunciated by Macrobius (Sat. 7, 7), like rejoiceth in like (similibus similia gaudent; compare Herod. 1, 216), and the custom was common to many nations.

The moon, worshipped by the Phoenicians under the name of Astarte (Lucian, de Dea Syra, c. 4), or Baaltis, the passive power of nature, as Baal was the active (Movers, 1, 149), and known to the Hebrews as Ashtaroth or Ashtoreth, the tutelary goddess of the Zidonians, appears early among the objects of Israelitish idolatry. But this Syro-Phoenician worship of the sun and moon was of a grosser character than the pure star worship of the Magi, which Movers distinguishes as Upper Asiatic or Assyro-Persian, and was equally removed from the Chaldean astrology and Zabianism of later times. The former of these systems tolerated no images or altars, and the contemplation of the heavenly bodies from elevated spots constituted the greater part of its ritual.

But, though we have no positive historical account of star-worship before the Assyrian period, we may infer that it was early practiced in a concrete form among the Israelites from the allusions in Amo 5:26 and Act 7:42-43. Even in the desert they are said to have been given up to worship the host of heaven, while Chiun and Remphan, or Rephan, have on various grounds been identified with the planet Saturn. It was to counteract idolatry of this nature that the stringent law of Deu 17:3 was enacted, and with a view to withdrawing the Israelites from undue contemplation of the material universe, Jehovah, the God of Israel, is constantly placed before them as Jehovah Sabaoth, Jehovah of Hosts, the king of heaven (Dan 4:35; Dan 4:37), to whom the heaven and heaven of heavens belong (Deu 10:14). However this may be, Movers (Phon. 1, 65, 66) contends that the later star-worship, introduced by Ahaz and followed by Manasseh, was purer and more spiritual in its nature than the Israelito-Phoenician worship of the heavenly bodies under symbolical forms, as Baal and Asherah; and that it was not idolatry in the same sense that the latter was, but of a simply contemplative character; He is supported, to some extent, by the fact that we find no mention of any images of the sun or moon or the host of heaven, but merely of vessels devoted to their service (2Ki 23:4). But there is no reason to believe that the divine honors paid to the Queen of Heaven (Jer 7:18; Jer 49:19; or, as others render, the frame or structure of the heavens) were equally dissociated from image-worship. Mr. Layard (Nin. 2, 451) discovered a bas-relief at Nimrod which represented four idols carried in procession by Assyrian warriors.

One of these figures he identifies with Hera, the Assyrian Astarte, represented with a star on her head (Amos 5, 26), and with the queen of heaven, who appears on the rocktablets of Pterium standing erect on a lion, and crowned with a tower, or mural coronet, as in the Syrian temple of Hierapolis (ib. p. 456; Lucian, de Dea Syra, 81, 32). But, in his remarks upon a figure which resembles the Rhea of Diodorus, Layard adds, The representation in a human form of the celestial bodies, themselves originally but a type, was a corruption which appears to have crept at a later period into the mythology of Assyria; for, in the more ancient bas-reliefs, figures with caps surmounted by stars do not occur, and the sun, moon, and planets stand alone (ib. p. 457,458). The allusions in Job 38:31-32 are too obscure to allow any inference to be drawn as to the mysterious influences which were held by the old astrologers to be exercised by the stars over human destiny, nor is there sufficient evidence to connect them with anything more recondite than the astronomical knowledge of the period. The same may be said of the poetical figure in Deborah’s chant of triumph, the stars from their highways warred with Sisera (Jdg 5:20). In the later times of the monarchy, Mazzaloth, the planets, or the zodiacal signs, received, next to the sun and moon, their share of popular adoration (2Ki 23:5); and the history of idolatry among the Hebrews shows at all times an intimate connection between the deification of the heavenly bodies and the superstition which watched the clouds for signs, and used divination and enchantments. It was but a step from such culture of the sidereal powers to the worship of Gad and Meni, Babylonian divinities, symbols of Venus or the moon, as the goddess of luck or fortune. Under the latter aspect the moon was reverenced by the Egyptians (Macrob. Sat. 1, 19),; and the name Baal-Gad is possibly an example of the manner in which the worship of the planet Jupiter, as the bringer of luck, was grafted on the old faith of the Phoenicians. The false gods of the colonists of Samaria were probably connected with Eastern astrology Adrammelech Movers regards as the sun-fire-the solar Mars, and Anammelech the solar Saturn (Pho. 1, 410, 411). The Vulg. rendering of Pro 26:8, Sicut qui mittit lapidem in acervum Mercurii, follows the Midrash on the passage quoted by Jarchi, and requires merely a passing notice (see Selden, de Dis Syrzs, 2, 15; Maim. de Idol. 3, 2; Buxtorf, Lex. Talm. s.v. ).

4. Hero-worship, the worship of deceased ancestors or leaders of a nation. Of pure hero-worship among the Shemitic races we find no trace. Moses, indeed, seems to have entertained some dim apprehension that his countrymen might, after his death, pay him more honors than were due to man, and the anticipation of this led him to review his own conduct in terms of strong reprobation (Deu 4:21-22). The expression in Psa 106:28, The sacrifices of the dead, is in all probability metaphorical, and Wis 14:15 refers to a later practice due to Greek influence. The Rabbinical commentators discover in Gen 48:16 an allusion to the worshipping of angels (Col 2:18), while they defend their ancestors from the charge of regarding them in any other light than mediators, or intercessors with God (Lewis, Orig. Hebrews 5, 3). It is needless to add that their inference and apology are equally groundless. With like probability has been advanced the theory of the daemon-worship of the Hebrews, the only foundation for it being two highly poetical passages (Deu 32:17; Psa 106:37). It is possible that the Persian dualism is hinted at in Isa 45:7.

5. Idealism, the worship of abstractions or mental qualities, such as justice, a system never found unmixed. This constituted the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, as also of the Scandinavians. SEE MYTHOLOGY.

III. Idolatry of certain ancient Heathen Nations in Detail. All idolatry is in its nature heathenish, and it has in all ages been a characteristic mark of heathendom, so that to the present day the vivid description of Romans 1 remains the most striking portraiture of heathen peoples. We have space in this article for a systematic view only of those early nations whose contact with the Hebrew race was the means of the importation of idolatry among the chosen people. SEE POLYTHEISM.

1. Mesopotamian Mythology.-The original idolatrous condition of the kindred of Abraham (q.v.) himself in the great plain of Aram is distinctly alluded to in Judges 24:2. According to Rawlinson (Essay in his Herod.), 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 II 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 Shemitic 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 Canaanitish Heres. Next to Asshur or Il was a triad, consisting of Anu, who appears to have corresponded to Pluto, a divinity whose name is doubtful, corresponding to Jupiter, and Hea or Hoa, corresponding in position and partly in character to Neptune. The supreme goddess Mulita or Bilta (Mylitta cr Beltis) was the wife of the Babylonian Jupiter. This triad was followed by another, consisting of Ether (Il-a?), 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 Chaldaean 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 Assyria 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. Rawlinson contents himself with stating the facts discoverable from the inscriptions, and does not theorize upon the subject further than to point out the strong resemblances between this Oriental system 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 Babylonian and Assyrian system, we discover that in its present form it is mainly cosmic, or a system of high nature-worship.

The supreme divinity appears 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 ancestors 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 concealing 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 Chaldaeans, called Hamites by Sir H. Rawlinson, who undoubtedly had strong affinities with the ancient Egyptians, the Shemitic 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 Shemitic: the name of Asshur proves this. It may be objected that such worship never characterized any other Shemitic stock; that we 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 established it seems always to have been very hard to remove. The high nature worship, as the last element, remains for the Aryan race. The primitive Aryan belief in its different forms was a reverence for the sun, moon, and stars, and the powers of nature, combined with a belief in one supreme being, a religion which, though varying at different times, and deeply influenced by ethnic causes, was never deprived of its essentially cosmic characteristics. SEE ASSYRIA.

2. Egyptian. The strongest and most remarkable peculiarity of the Egyptian religion is the worship of animals (see Zickler, De religione bestiarum ab Agyptiis consecratarum, Lips. 1745; Schumacker, De culiu animalium inter Egyptios et Judceos, Wolfenb. 1773), trees, and like objects, which was universal in the country, and was even connected with the belief in the future state. No theory of the usefulness of certain animals can explain the worship of others that were utterly useless, nor can a theory of some strange anomaly find even as wide an application. The explanation is to be discovered in every town, every village, every hut of the Negroes, whose fetishism corresponds perfectly with this low nature- worship of the ancient Egyptians.

Connected with fetishism was the local character of the religion. Each home, city, town, and probably village, had its divinities, and the position of many gods in the Pantheon was due rather to the importance of their cities than any powers or qualities they were supposed to have. For a detailed account of the Egyptian deities, with illustrative cuts, see Kitto’s Pictorial Bible, note on Deu 4:16; compare also EGYPT SEE EGYPT .

The Egyptian Pantheon shows three distinct elements. Certain of the gods are only personifications connected with low nature-worship. Others, the great gods, are of Shemitic origin, and are connected with high nature- worship, though showing traces of the worship of ancestors. In addition, there are certain personifications of abstract ideas. The first of these classes is evidently the result of an attempt to connect the old low nature-worship with some higher system. The second is no doubt the religion of the Shemitic settlers. It is essentially the same in character as the Babylonian and Assyrian religion, and, as the belief of a dominant race, took the most important place in the intricate system of which it ultimately formed a part. The last class appears to be of later invention, and to have had its origin in an endeavor to construct a philosophical system.

In addition to these particulars of the Egyptian religion, it is important to notice that it comprised very remarkable doctrines. Man was held to be a responsible being, whose future after death depended upon his actions done while on earth. He was to be judged by Osiris, ruler of the West, or unseen world, and either rewarded with felicity or punished with torment. Whether these future states of happiness and misery were held to be of eternal duration is not certain, but there is little doubt that the Egyptians believed in the immortality of the soul.

The religion of the Shepherds, or Hyksos, is not so distinctly known to us. It is, however, clear from the monuments that their chief god was SET, or SUTEKH, and we learn from a papyrus that one of the Shepherd-kings, APEPI, probably Manetho’s Apophis, established the worship of SET in his dominions, and reverenced’ no other god, raising a great temple to him in Zoan, or Avaris. SET continued to be worshipped by the Egyptians until the time of the 22nd dynasty, when we lose all trace of him on the monuments. At this period, or afterwards, his figure was effaced in the inscriptions. The change took place long after the expulsion of the Shepherds, and was effected by the 22nd dynasty, which was probably of Assyrian or Babylonian origin; it is, therefore, rather to be considered as a result of the influence of the Median doctrine of Ormud and Ahriman than as due to the Egyptian hatred of the foreigners and all that concerned them. Besides SET, other foreign divinities were worshipped in Egypt-the god RENPU, the goddesses KEN, or KETESH, ANTA, and ASTARTA. All these divinities, except ASTARTA, as to whom we have no particular information, are treated by the Egyptians as powers of destruction and war, as SET was considered the personification of physical evil. SET was always identified by the Egyptians with Baal; we do not know whether he was worshipped in Egypt before the Shepherd-period, but it is probable that he was.

This foreign worship in Egypt was probably never reduced to a system. What we know of it shows no regularity, and it is not unlike the imitations of the Egyptian idols made by Phoenician artists, probably as representations of Phoenician divinities. The gods of the Hyksos are foreign objects of worship in an Egyptian dress. SEE HYKSOS.

3. Idolatry of Canaan and the adjoining Countries. The center of the idolatry of the Palestinian races is to be sought for in the religion of the Rephaites and the Canaanites. We can distinctly connect the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth with the earliest kind of idolatry; and, having thus established a center, we can understand how, for instance, the same infernal rites were celebrated to the Ammonitish Molech and the Carthaginian Baal. The most important document for the idolatry of the Hittites is the treaty concluded between the branch of that people seated on the Orontes and Rameses II. From this we learn that SUTEKH (or SET) and ASTERAT were the chief divinities of these Hittites, and that they also worshipped the mountains and rivers and the winds. The SUTERKHS of several forts are also specified. SEE HITTITES.

SET is known from the Egyptian inscriptions to have corresponded to Baal, so that in the two chief divinities we discover Baal and Ashtoreth, the only Canaanitish divinities known to be mentioned in Scripture. The local worship of different forms of Baal well agrees with the low nature-worship with which it is found to have prevailed. Both are equally mentioned in the Bible history. Thus the people of Shechem worshipped Baal-berith, and Mount Hermon itself seems to have been worshipped as Baal-Hermon, while the low nature- worship may be traced in the reverence for groves, and the connection of the Canaanitish religion with hills and trees. The worst feature of this system was the sacrifice of children by their parents-a feature that shows the origin of at least two of its offshoots.

The Bible does not give a very clear description of Canaanitish idolatry. As an abominable thing, to be rooted out and cast into oblivion, nothing is needlessly said of it. The appellation Baal, ruler, or possessor, implies supremacy, and connects the chief Canaanitish divinity with the Syrian Adonis. He was the god of the Canaanitish city Zidon, or Sidon, where Ashtoreth, the abomination of the Zidonians, was also specially worshipped. In the Judge-period we read of Baalim and Ashteroth in the plural, probably indicating various local forms of these divinities, but perhaps merely the worship of many images. The worship of Baal was connected with that of the groves, which we take to have been representations of trees or other vegetable products. SEE HIGH PLACE. In Ahab’s time a temple was built for Baal, where there was an image. His worshippers sacrificed in garments provided by the priests; and his prophets, seeking to propitiate him, were wont to cry and cut themselves with swords and lances. Respecting Ashtoreth we know less from Scripture. Her name is not derivable from any Shemitic root. It is equivalent to the Ishtar of the cuneiform inscriptions, the name of the Assyrian or Babylonian Venus, the goddess of the planet. The identity of the Canaanitish and the Assyrian or Babylonian goddess is further shown by the connection of the former with star-worship. In the Iranian languages we find a close radical resemblance to Ashtoreth and Ishtar in the Persian, Zend stara, Sansk. stra, , stern, all equivalent to our star. This derivation confirms our opinion that the high nature-worship of the Babylonians and Assyrians was of Aryan origin. As no other Canaanitish divinities are noticed in Scripture, it seems probable that Baal and Ashtoreth were alone worshipped by the nations of Canaan. Among the neighboring tribes we find, besides these, other names of idols, and we have to inquire whether they apply to different idols or are merely different appellations.

Beginning with the Abrahamitic tribes, we find Molech, Malcham, or Milcom (, , ) spoken of as the idol of the Ammonites. This name, in the first form, always has the article, and undoubtedly signifies the king (, equivalent to ), for it is indifferently used as a proper name and as an appellative with a suffix (comp. Jer 49:1; Jer 49:3, with Amo 1:15). Milcom is from Molech or its root, with formative, and Malcham is probably a dialectic variation, if the points are to be relied upon. Molech was regarded by the Ammonites as their king. When David captured Rabbah, we are told that he took Malcham’s crown from off his head, the weight whereof [was] a talent of gold with the precious stones: and it was [set] on David’s head (2Sa 12:30; comp. 1Ch 20:2). The prophets speak of this idol as ruler of the children of Ammon, and doomed to go into captivity with his priests and princes (Jer 49:1; Jer 49:3; Amo 1:15). The worship of Molech was performed at high places, and children were sacrificed to him by their parents, being cast into fires. This horrible practice prevailed at Carthage, where children were sacrificed to their chief divinity, Baal, called at Tyre Melcarth, lord (Baal) of Tyre (Inscr. Melit. Biling. ap. Gesen. Lex. s.v. ), the first of which words signifies king of the city, for . There can therefore be no doubt that Molech was a local form of the chief idol of Canaan, and it is by no means certain that this name was limited to the Ammonitish worship, as we shall see in speaking of the idolatry of the Israelites in the Desert.

We know for certain of but one Moabitish divinity, as of but one Ammonitish. Chemosh appears to have held the same place as Molech, although our information respecting him is less full. Moab was the people of Chemosh (Num 21:29; Jer 48:46), and Chemosh was doomed to captivity with his priests and princes (Jer 48:7). In one place Chemosh is spoken of as the god of the king of the children of Ammon, whom Jephthah conquered (Jdg 11:24); but it is to be remarked that the cities held by this king, which Jephthah took, were not originally Ammonitish, and were apparently claimed as once held by the Moabites (2126; comp. Num 21:23-30); so that at this time Moab and Ammon were probably united, or the Ammonites ruled by a Moabitish chief. The etymology of Chemosh is doubtful, but it is clear that he was distinct from Molech. There is no positive trace of the cruel rites of the idol of the Ammonites, and it is unlikely that the settled Moabites should have had the same savage disposition as their wild brethren on the north. There is, however, a general resemblance in the regal character assigned to both idols and their solitary position. Chemosh, therefore, like Molech, was probably a form of Baal. Both tribes appear, to have had other idols, for we read of the worship, by the Israelites, of the gods of Moab, and the gods of the children of Ammon (Jdg 10:6); but, as there are other plurals in the passage, it is possible that this maybe a general expression. Yet, in saying this, we do not mean to suggest that there was any monotheistic form of Canaanitish idolatry. There is some difficulty in ascertaining whether Baal-Peor, or Peor, was a Moabitish idol. The Israelites, while encamped at Shittim, were seduced by the women of Moab and Midian, and joined them in the worship of Baal-Peor. There is no notice of any later instance of this idolatry. It seems, therefore, not to have been national to Moab, and, if so, it may have been borrowed, and Midianitish, or else local, and Canaanitish. The former idea is supported by the apparent connection of prostitution, even of women of rank, with the worship of Baal-Peor, which would not have been repugnant to the pagan Arabs; the latter finds some support in the name Shittim, the acacias, as though the place had its name from some acacias sacred to Baal, and, moreover, we have no certain instance of the application of the name of Baal to any non-Canaanitish divinity. Had such vile worship as was probably that of Baal-Peor been national in Moab, it is most unlikely that David would have been on very friendly terms with a Moabitish king.

The Philistine idolatry is connected with that of Canaan, although it has peculiarities of its own, which are indeed so strong that it may be questioned whether it is entirely or even mainly derived from the Canaanitish source. At Ekron, Baal-zebub was worshipped, and had a temple, to which Ahaziah, the wicked son of Ahab, sent to inquire. This name means either the lord of the fly, or Baal the fly. It is generally held that he was worshipped as a driver-away of flies, but we think it more probable that some venomous fly was sacred to him. The use of the term Baal is indicative of a connection with the Canaanitish system. The national divinity of the Philistines seems, however, to have been Dagon, to whom there were temples at Gaza and at Ashdod, and the general character of whose worship is evident in such traces as we observe in the names Caphar-Dagon, near Jamnia, and Beth-Dagon, the latter applied to two places, one in Judah and the other in Asher. The derivation of the name Dagon, , as that of a fish-god, is from , a fish. Gesenius considers it a diminutive, little fish, used by way of endearment and honor (Thes. s.v.), but this is surely hazardous. Dagon was represented as a man with the tail of a fish. There can be no doubt that he was connected with the Canaanitish system, as Derceto or Atargatis, the same as Ashtoreth, was worshipped under a like mixed shape at Ashkelon ( , , Diod. Sic. ii, 4). In form he is the same as the Assyrian god supposed to correspond to the planet Saturn. The house of Dagon at Gaza, which Samson overthrew, must have been very large, for about 3000 men and women then assembled on its roof. It had two principal, if not only, pillars in the midst, between which Samson was placed and was seen by the people on the roof. The inner portion of some of the ancient Egyptian temples consisted of a hypsethral hall, supported by two or more pillars, and inner chambers. The overthrow of these pillars would bring down the stone roof of the hall, and destroy all persons beneath or upon it, without necessarily overthrowing the sidewalls.

The idolatry of the Phoenicians is not spoken of in the Bible. From their inscriptions and the statements of profane authors we learn that this nation worshipped Baal and Ashtoreth. The details of their worship will be spoken of in the article PHOENICIA. Syrian idols are mentioned in a few places in Scripture. Tammuz, whom the women of Israel lamented, is no doubt Adonis, whose worship implies that of Astarte or Ashtoreth. Rimmon, who appears to have been the chief divinity of the Syrian kings ruling at Damascus, may, if his name signifies high (from ), be a local form of Baal, who, as the sun-god, had a temple at the great Syrian city Heliopolis, now called Baalbek.

The book of Job, which, whatever its date, represents a primitive state of society, speaks of cosmic worship as though it was practiced in his country, Idumaea or northern Arabia. If I beheld a sun when it shined, or a splendid moon progressing, and my heart were secretly enticed, and my hand touched my mouth, surely this [were] a depravity of judgment, for I should have denied God above (31:26-28). See Poole, Genesis of the Earth and of Man 1:2 nd ed. p. 184. This evidence is important in connection with that of the ancient prevalence of cosmic worship in Arabia, and that of its practice by some of the later kings of Judah.-Kitto.

4. Much indirect evidence on this subject might be supplied by an investigation of proper names. Mr. Layard has remarked, According to a custom existing from time immemorial in the East, the name of the supreme deity was introduced into the names of men. This custom prevailed from the banks of the Tigris to the Phoenician colonies beyond the Pillars of Hercules; and we recognize in the Sardanapalus of the Assyrians, and the Hannibal of the Carthaginians, the identity of the religious system of the two nations, as widely distinct in the time of their existence as in their geographical position (Nineveh, 2, 450). The hint which he has given can be but briefly followed out here. Traces of the sun worship of the ancient Canaanites remain in the nomenclature of their country. Beth-Shemesh, house of the sun; En-Shemesh, spring of the sun, and Ir-Shemesh, city of the son, whether they be the original Canaanitish names or their Hebrew renderings, attest the reverence paid to the source of light and heat, the symbol of the fertilizing power of nature. Samson. the Hebrew national hero, took his name from the same luminary, and was born in a mountain village above the modern Ain Shems (En- Shemesh: Thomson, The Land and the Book, 2, 361). The name of Baal, the sun-god, is one of the most common occurrence in compound words, and is often associated with places consecrated to his worship, and of which, perhaps, he was the tutelary deity. Bamoth-Baal, the high places of Baal; Baal-Hermon, Beth-Baal-Meon, Baal-Gad, Baal-Hamon, in which the compound names of the sun god of Phoenicia and Egypt are associated, Baal-Tamar, and many others, are instances of this. [That temples in Syria, dedicated to the several divinities, did transfer their names to the places where they stood, is evident from the testimony of Lucian, an Assyrian himself. His derivation of Hiera from the temple of the Assyrian Hera shows that he was familiar with the circumstance (De Dea Syr. c. 1). Baisampsa (=Bethshemesh), a town of Arabia, derived its name from the sun-worship (Vossius, De Theol. Gent. 2, c. 8), like Kir-Heres (Jer 48:31) of Moab.] Nor was the practice confined to the names of places: proper names are found with the same element. Esh-baal, Ish- baal, etc., are examples. The Amorites, whom Joshua did not drive cut. dwelt on Mount Heres, in Aijalon, the mountain of the sun. SEE TIAINATH-HERES.

Here and there we find traces of the attempt made by the Hebrews, on their conquest of the country, to extirpate idolatry. Thus Baalah or Kirjath-Baal, the town of Baal, became Kirjath-Jearim, the town of forests (Jos 15:60). The Moon. Astarte or Ashtaroth, gave her name to a city of Bashan (Jos 13:12; Jos 13:31), and it is not improbable that the name Jericho may have been derived from being associated with the worship of this goddess. SEE JERICHO. Nebo, whether it be the name under which the Chaldaeans worshipped the Moon or the planet Mercury, enters into many compounds: Nebu-zaradan, Samgarnebo, and the like. Bel is found in Belshazzar, Belteshazzar, and others. Were Baladan of Shemitic origin, it would probably be derived from Baal-Adon, or Adonis, the Phoenician deity to whose worship Jer 22:18 seems to refer; but it has more properly been traced to an Indo-Germanic root. Hadad, Hadadezer, Benhadad are derived from the tutelar deity of the Syrians, and in Nergalsharezer we recognize the god of the Cushites. Chemosh, the fire-god of Moab, appears in Carchemish, and Peor in Beth-Peor. Malcom, a name which occurs but once, and then of a Moabite by birth, may have been connected with Molech and Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. A glimpse of star-worship may be seen in the name of the city Chesil, the Shemitic Orion, and the month Chisleu, without recognizing in Rahab the glittering fragments of the sea-snake trailing across the northern sky. It would, perhaps, be going too far to trace in Engedi, spring of the kid, any connection with the goat-worship of Mendes, or any relics of the wars of the giants in Rapha and Rephaim. Furst, indeed, recognises in Gedi,Venus or Astarte, the goddess of fortune, and identical with Gad (Handw. s. t.). But there are fragments of ancient idolatry in other names in which it is not so palpable. Ishbosheth is identical with Eshbaal, and Jerubbesheth with Jerubbaal, and Mephibosheth and Meribbaal are but two names for one person (comp. Jer 11:13). The worship of the Syrian Rimmon appears in the names HadadRimmon, and Tabrimmon; and if, as some suppose, it be derived from , Rimmon, a pomegranate-tree, we may connect it with the towns of the same name in Judah and Benjamin, with En-Rimmon and the prevailing tree-worship. It is impossible to pursue this investigation to any length: the hints which have been thrown out may prove suggestive. See each of these names in its place.

5. Idolatrous Usages. Mountains and high places were chosen spots for offering sacrifice and incense to idols (1Ki 11:7; 1Ki 14:23), and the retirement of gardens and the thick shade of woods offered great attractions to their worshippers (2Ki 16:4; Isa 1:29; Hos 4:13). It was the ridge of Carmel which Elijah selected as the scene of his contest with the priests of Baal, fighting with them the battle of Jehovah as it were on their own ground. SEE CARMEL. Carmel was regarded by the Roman historians as a sacred mountain of the Jews (Tacit. Hist. 2, 78; Sueton. Vesp. 7). The host of heaven was worshipped on the housetop (2Ki 23:12; Jer 19:3; Jer 32:29; Zep 1:5). In describing the sun worship of the Nabataei, Strabo (16, 784) mentions two characteristics which strikingly illustrate the worship of Baal. They built their altars on the roofs of houses, and offered on them incense and libations daily. On the wall of his city, in the sight of the besieging armies of Israel and Edom, the king of Moab offered his eldest son as a burnt offering. The Persians, who worshipped the sun under the name of Mithra (Strabo, 15:732), sacrificed on an elevated spot, but built no altars or images. SEE MOUNT.

The priests of the false worship are sometimes designated Chemarim, a word of Syriac origin, to which different meanings have been assigned. It is applied to the non-Levitical priests who burnt incense on the high places (2Ki 23:5) as well as to the priests of the calves (Hos 10:5); and the corresponding word is used in the Peshito (Jdg 18:30) of Jonathan and his descendants, priests to the tribe of Dan, and in the Targum of Onkelos (Gen 47:22) of the priests of Egypt. The Rabbis, followed by Gesenius, have derived it from a root signifying to be black, and without any authority assert that the name was given to idolatrous priests from the black vestments which they wore. But white was the distinctive color in the priestly garments of all nations from India to Gaul, and black was only worn when they sacrificed to the subterranean gods (Bahr, Symb. 2, 87, etc.). That a special dress was adopted by the Baal-worshippers, as well as by the false prophets (Zec 13:4), is evident from 2Ki 10:22 (where the rendering should be the apparel): the vestments were kept in an apartment of the idol temple, under the charge probably of one of the inferior priests. Micah’s Levite was provided with appropriate robes (Jdg 17:11). The foreign apparel mentioned in Zep 1:8, doubtless refers to a similar dress, adopted by the Israelites in defiance of the sumptuary law in Num 15:37-40. SEE CHEMIARIM.

In addition to the priests, there were other persons intimately connected with idolatrous rites, and the impurities from which they were inseparable. Both men and women consecrated themselves to the service of idols: the former as , kedeshim, for which there is reason to believe the A.V. (Deu 23:17, etc.) has not given too harsh an equivalent; the latter as kedeshoth, who wove shrines for Astarte (2Ki 23:7), and resembled the of Corinth, of whom Strabo (8, 378) says there were more than a thousand attached to the temple of Aphrodite. Egyptian prostitutes consecrated themselves to Isis (Juvenal, 6:489; 9:22- 24). The same class of women existed among the Phoenicians, Armenians, Lydians, and Babylonians (Herod. 1, 93, 199; Strabo, 11:p. 532; Epist. of Jerem. ver. 43). They are distinguished from the public prostitutes (Hos 4:14), and associated with the performances of sacred rites, just as in Strabo (12, p. 559) we find the two classes co-existing at Comana, the Corinth of Pontus, much frequented by pilgrims to the shrine of Aphrodite. The wealth thus obtained flowed into the treasury of the idol temple, and against such a practice the injunction in Deu 23:18 is directed. Dr. Maitland, anxious to defend the moral character of Jewish women, has with much ingenuity attempted to show that a meaning foreign to their true sense has been attached to the words above mentioned; and that, though closely associated with idolatrous services, they do not indicate such foul corruption (Essay on False Worship). But if, as Movers, with great appearance of probability, has conjectured (Phon. 1, 679), the class of persons alluded to was composed of foreigners, the Jewish women in this respect need no such advocacy. That such customs existed among’ foreign nations there is abundant evidence to prove (Lucian, De Syra Dea, c. 5); and from the juxtaposition of prostitution and the idolatrous rites against which the laws in Leviticus 19 are aimed, it is probable that, next to its immorality, one main reason why it was visited with such stringency was its connection with idolatry (compare 1Co 6:9). SEE HARLOT.

But besides these accessories there were the ordinary rites of worship which idolatrous systems had in common with the religion of the Hebrews. Offering burnt sacrifices to the idol gods (2Ki 5:17), burning incense in their honor (1Ki 11:8), and bowing down in worship before their images (1Ki 19:18) were the chief parts of their ritual, and, from their very analogy with the ceremonies of true worship, were more seductive than the grosser forms. Nothing can be stronger or more positive than the language in which these ceremonies were denounced by Hebrew law. Every detail of idol-worship was made the subject of a separate enactment, and many of the laws, which in themselves seem trivial and almost absurd, receive from this point of view their true significance. We are told by Maimonides (Mror. Veb. c. 12) that the prohibitions against sowing a field with mingled seed, and wearing garments of mixed material, were directed against the practices of idolaters, who attributed a kind of magical influence to the mixture (Lev 19:19; Spencer, De Leg. Hebr. 2, 18). Such, too, were the precepts which forbade that the garments of the sexes should be interchanged (Deu 23:5; Maimonides, De Idol. 12, 9). According to Macrobius (Sat. 3. 8), other Asiatics, when they sacrificed to their Venus, changed the dress of the sexes. The priests of Cybele appeared in women’s clothes, and used to mutilate themselves (Creuzer, Symbo 2, 34,42): the same custom was observed by the Ithyphalli in the rites of Bacchus, and by the Athenians in their Ascophoria (Young, Idol. Corinthians in Rel. 1, 105; comp. Lucian, De Dea Syra, c. 15).

To preserve the Israelites from contamination, they were prohibited for three years after their conquest of Canaan from eating of the fruit-trees of the land, whose cultivation had been attended with magical rites (Lev 19:23). They were forbidden to round the corner of the head, and to mar the corner of the beard (Lev 19:27), as the Arabians did in honor of their gods (Herod. 3:8; 4:175). Hence the phrase (literally), shorn of the corner, is especially applied to idolaters (Jer 9:26; Jer 25:23). Spencer (De Leg. Hebrews 2, 9, 2) explains the law forbidding the offering of honey (Leviticus 2, 11) as intended to oppose an idolatrous practice. Strabo describes the Magi as offering in all their sacrifices libations of oil mixed with honey and milk (15, p. 733) Offerings in which honey was an ingredient were made to the inferior deities and the dead (Homer, Od. 10, 519; Porph. De Antr. Nymph. c. 17). So also the practice of eating the flesh of sacrifices over the blood (Lev 19:26; Eze 33:25-26) was, according to Maimonides, common among the Zabii. Spencer gives a double reason for the prohibition: that it was a rite of divination, and divination of the worst kind, a species of necromancy by which they attempted to raise the spirits of the dead (comp. Horace, Sat. 1, 8). There are supposed to be allusions to the practice of necromancy in Isa 65:4, or, at any rate, to superstitious rites in connection with the dead. The grafting of one tree upon another was forbidden, because among idolaters the process was accompanied by gross obscenity (Maimon. Mor. Neb. c. 12). Cutting the flesh for the dead (Lev 19:28; 1Ki 18:28), and making a baldness between the eyes (Deu 14:1), were associated with idolatrous rites, the latter being a custom among the Syrians (Sir G. Wilkinson in Rawlinson’s Herod. 2, 158 note). The thrice repeated and much vexed passage, Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk (Exo 23:19; Exo 34:26; Deu 14:21), interpreted by some as a precept of humanity, is explained by Cudworth in a very different manner. He quotes from a Karaite commentary which he had seen in MS.: It was a custom of the ancient heathens, when they had gathered in all their fruit, to take a kid and boil it in the dam’s mill, and then in a magical way go about and besprinkle with it all the trees, and fields, and gardens, and orchards; thinking by this means they should make them fructify, and bring forth again more abundantly the following year (On the Lord’s Supper, c. 2). Dr. Thomson mentions a favorite dish among the Arabs called lebn immrs, to which he conceives allusion is made (The Land and the Book, 1, 135). The law which regulated clean and unclean meats (Lev 20:23-26) may be considered both as a sanitary regulation and also as having a tendency to separate the Israelites from the surrounding idolatrous nations. It was with the same object, in the opinion of Michaelis, that while in the wilderness they were prohibited from killing any animal for food without first offering it to Jehovah (Laws of Moses, art. 203). The mouse, one of the unclean animals of Leviticus (11, 29), was sacrificed by the ancient Magi (Isa 66:17; Movers, Phon. 1, 219).

It may have been some such reason as that assigned by Lewis (Orig. Hebrews 5, 1), that the dog was the symbol of an Egyptian deity, which gave rise to the prohibition in Deu 23:18. Movers says (1, 404) the dog was offered in sacrifice to Moloch, as swine to the moon and Dionysus by the Egyptians, who afterwards ate of the flesh (Herod. 3:47; Isa 65:4). Eating of the things offered was a necessary appendage to the sacrifice (compare Exo 18:12; Exo 32:6; Exo 34:15; Num 25:2, etc.). Among the Persians the victim was eaten by the worshippers, and the soul alone left for the god (Strabo, 15:732). Hence it is that the idolatry of the Jews in worshipping other gods is so often described synecdochically under the notion of feasting. Isa 57:7, Upon a high and lofty mountain thou hast set thy bed, and thither wentest thou up to offer sacrifice;’ for in those ancient times they were not wont to sit at feasts, but lie down on beds or couches. Eze 23:41; Amos 2, 8, They laid themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar,’ i.e. laid themselves down to eat of the sacrifice that was offered on the altar; compare Eze 8:11 (Cudworth, ut supra, c. 1; comp. 1Co 8:10). The Israelites were forbidden to print any mark upon them (Lev 19:28), because it was a custom of idolaters to brand upon their flesh some symbol of the deity they worshipped, as the ivy-leaf of Bacchus (3Ma 2:29). According to Lucian (De Dea Syra, 59), all the Assyrians wore marks of this kind on their necks and wrists (comp. Isa 44:5; Gal 6:17; Rev 14:1; Rev 14:11). Many other practices of false worship are alluded to, and made the subjects of rigorous prohibition, but none are more frequently or more severely denounced than those which peculiarly distinguished the worship, of Molech. It has been attempted to deny that the worship of this idol was polluted by the foul stain of human sacrifice, but the allusions are too plain and too pointed to admit of reasonable doubt (Deu 12:31; 2Ki 3:27; Jer 7:31; Psa 106:37; Eze 23:39).

Nor was this practice confined to the rites of Molech; it extended to those of Baal (Jer 19:5), and the king of Moab (2Ki 3:27) offered his son as a burnt-offering to his god Chemosh. The Phoenicians, we are told by Porphyry (De Abstin. 2, c. 56), on occasions of great national calamity sacrificed to Kronos one of their dearest friends. Some allusions to this custom may be seen in Mic 6:7. Kissing the images of the gods (1Ki 19:18; Hos 13:2), hanging votive offerings in their temples (1Sa 31:10), and carrying them to battle (2Sa 5:21), as the Jews of Maccabseus’s army did with the things consecrated to the idols of the Jamnites (2Ma 12:40), are usages connected with idolatry which are casually mentioned, though not made the objects of express legislation. But soothsaying, interpretation of dreams, necromancy, witchcraft, magic, and other forms of divination, are alike forbidden (Deu 18:9; 2Ki 1:2; Isa 65:4; Eze 21:21). The history of other nations-and, indeed, the too common practice of the lower class of the population of Syria at the present day-shows us that such a statute as that against bestiality (Lev 18:23) was not unnecessary (comp. Herod. 2, 46; Rom 1:26). Purificatory rites in connection with idol-worship, and eating of forbidden food, were visited with severe retribution (Isa 66:17). It is evident, from the context of Eze 8:17, that the rotaries of the sun, who worshipped with their faces to the east (Eze 8:16), and put the branch to their nose, did so in observance of some idolatrous rite. Movers (Phoen. 1, 66) unhesitatingly affirms that the allusion is to the branch Barsom, the holy branch of the Magi (Strabo, 15:p. 733), while Havernick (Comm. zu Ezech. p. 117), with equal confidence, denies that the passage supports such an inference, and renders, having in view the lament of the women for Tammuz, Sie entsenden den Trauergesang zu ihren Zorn. The waving of a myrtle branch, says Maimonides (De Idol. 6:2), accompanied the repetition of a magical formula in incantations. An illustration of the use of boughs in worship will be found in the Greek ikrTropia (Esch. Eun. 43; Suppl. 192; Schol. on Aristoph. Plut. 383; Porphyr. De Ant. Nymph. c. 33). For detailed accounts of idolatrous ceremonies, reference must be made to the articles upon the several idols. SEE SACRIFICE.

IV. History of Idolatry among the Jews.-

1. The first undoubted allusion to idolatry or idolatrous customs in the Bible is in the account of Rachel’s stealing her father’s teraphim (Gen 31:19), a relic of the worship of other gods, whom the ancestors of the Israelites served on the other side of the river, in old time (Jos 24:2). By these household deities Laban was guided, and these he consulted as oracles (, Gen 30:27, A.V. learned by experience), though without entirely losing sight of the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, to whom he appealed when occasion offered (Gen 31:53), while he was ready, in the presence of Jacob, to acknowledge the benefits conferred upon him by Jehovah (Gen 30:27). Such, indeed, was the character of most of the idolatrous worship of the Israelites. Like the Cuthsan colonists in Samaria, who feared Jehovah and served their own gods (2Ki 17:33), they blended in a strange manner a theoretical belief in the true God with the external reverence which, in different stages of their history, they were led to pay to the idols of the nations by whom they were surrounded. For this species of false worship they seem, at all events, to have had an incredible propension. On their journey from Shechem to Bethel, the family of Jacob put away from among them the gods of the foreigner: not the teraphim of Laban, but the gods of the Canaanites through whose land they passed and the amulets and charms which were worn as the appendages of their worship (Gen 35:2; Gen 35:4). SEE JACOB.

During their long residence in Egypt, the country of symbolism, they defiled themselves with the idols of the land, and it was long before the taint was removed (Jos 24:14; Eze 20:7). To these gods Moses, as the herald of Jehovah, flung down the gauntlet of defiance (Kurtz, Gesch. d. Alt. B. 2, 39), and the plagues of Egypt smote their symbols (Num 33:4). Yet, with the memory of their deliverance fresh in their minds, their leader absent, the Israelites clamored for some visible shape in which they might worship the God who had brought them up out of Egypt (Exodus 32). The Israelites, as dwellers in the most outlying and separate tract of the Shemitic part of Lower Egypt, are more likely to lave followed the corruptions of the Shepherd strangers than those of the Egyptians, more especially as, saving Joseph, Moses, and not improbably Aaron and Miriam, they seem to have almost universally preserved the manners of their former wandering life.

There is scarcely a trace of Egyptian influence beyond that seen in the names of Moses and Miriam, and perhaps of Aaron also, for the only other name besides the former two that is certainly Egyptian, and may be reasonably referred to this period, that of Harnepher, evidently the Egyptian HAR-NEFRU, Horus the good, in the genealogies of Asher (1Ch 7:36), probably marks an Egyptian taken by marriage into the tribe of Asher, whether a proselyte or not we cannot attempt to decide. There has been a difference of opinion as to the golden calf, some holding that it was made to represent God himself, others maintaining that it was only an imitation of an Egyptian idol. We first observe that this and Jeroboam’s golden calves are shown to have been identical in the intention with which they were made, by the circumstance that the Israelites addressed the former as the God who had brought them out of Egypt (Exo 32:4; Exo 32:8), and that Jeroboam proclaimed the same of his idols (1Ki 12:28). We next remark that Aaron called the calf not only god, but the LORD (Exo 32:5); that in the Psalms it is said they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth hay (Psa 106:20); that no one of the calf-worshipping kings and princes of Israel bears any name connected with idolatry, while many have names compounded with the most sacred name of God; and that in no place is any foreign divinity connected with calf- worship in the slightest degree. The adoption of such an image as the golden calf, however, shows the strength of Egyptian associations, else how would Aaron have fixed upon so ignoble a form as that of the God who had brought Israel out of Egypt? Only a mind thoroughly accustomed to the profound respect paid in Egypt to the sacred bulls, and especially to Apis and Minevis, could have hit upon so strange a representation; nor could any people who had not witnessed the Egyptian practices have found, as readily as did the Israelites, the fulfillment of their wishes in such an image. The feast that Aaron celebrated, when, after eating and drinking, the people arose, sang, and danced naked before the idol, is strikingly like the festival of the finding of Apis, which was celebrated with feasting and dancing, and also, apparently, though this custom does not seem to have been part of the public festivity, with indecent gestures. SEE GOLDEN CALF.

The golden calf was not the only idol which the Israelites worshipped in the Desert. The prophet Amos speaks of others. In the Masoretic text the passage is as follows: But ye bare the tent [or tabernacle] of your king and Chiun your images, the star of your gods [or YOUR God], which ye made for yourselves (5, 26). The Sept. has for your king, as though their original Heb. had been instead of , and for Chiun, besides a transposition.’ In the Acts the reading is almost the same as that of the Sept., Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them 107:43). We cannot here discuss the probable causes of these differences except of the more important ones, the substitution of Moloch for your king, and Raiphan or Remphan for Chiun. It should be observed, that if the passage related to Ammonitish worship, nothing would be more likely than that Molech should have been spoken of by an appellative, in which case a strict rendering of the Masoretic text would read as does the A.V.; a freer could follow the Sept. and Acts; but, as there is no reference to the Ammonites or even Canaanites, it is more reasonable to suppose that the Sept. followed a text in which, as above suggested, the reading was , Malcham, or your king. The likelihood of this being the true reading must depend upon the rest of the passage. Remphan and Chiun are at once recognized as two foreign divinities worshipped together in Egypt, RENPU, probably pronounced REIPU, and KEN the former a god represented as of the type of the Shemites, and apparently connected with war, the latter a goddess represented naked standing upon a lion. They were worshipped with KHEM, the Egyptian god of productiveness, and the foreign war-goddess ANATA.

Excluding KHEMI, who is probably associated with KEN from her being connected, as we shall see, with productiveness, these names, RENPU, KEN, and ANATA, are clearly not, except in orthography, Egyptian. We can suggest no origin for the name of RENPU The goddess KEN, as naked, would be connected with the Babylonian Mylitta, and as standing on a lion, with a goddess so represented in rock-sculptures at Maltheivyeh, near Nineveh. The former similarity connects her with generation; the latter, perhaps, does so likewise. If we adopt this supposition, the name KEN may be traced to a root connected with generation found in many varieties in the Iranian family, and not out of that family. It may be sufficient to cite the Greek -, -: she would thus be the goddess of productiveness. ANATA is the Persian Anaitis. We have shown earlier that the Babylonian high nature-worship seems to have been of Aryan origin. In the present case we trace an Aryan idolatry connected, from the mention of a star, with high nature-worship. If we accept this explanation, it becomes doubtful that Molech is mentioned in the passage, and we may rather suppose that some other idol, to whom a kingly character was attributed, is intended. Here we must leave this difficult point of OUT inquiry, only summing up that this false worship was evidently derived from the shepherds in Egypt, and may possibly indicate the Aryan origin of at least one of these tribes, almost certainly its own origin, directly or indirectly, from an Aryan source.

The next was a temporary apostasy. The charms of the daughters of Moab, as Balaam’s bad genius foresaw, were potent for evil: the Israelites were yoked to BaalPeor in the trammels of his fair worshippers, and the character of their devotions is not obscurely hinted at (Numbers 25). The great and terrible retribution which followed left so deep an impress upon the hearts of the people that, after the conquest of the promised land, they looked with an eye of terror upon any indication of defection from the worship of Jehovah, and denounced as idolatrous a memorial so slight as the altar of the Reubenites at the passage of Jordan (Jos 22:16).

2. It is probable that during the wanderings, and under the strong rule of Joshua, the idolatry learnt in Egypt was so destroyed as to be afterwards utterly forgotten by the people. But in entering Palestine they found themselves among the monuments and associations of another false religion, less attractive indeed to the reason than that of Egypt, which still taught, notwithstanding the wretched fetishism that it supported, some great truths of man’s present and future, but of a religion which, in its deification of nature, had a strong hold on the imagination. The genial sun, the refreshing moon, the stars, at whose risings or settings fell the longed- for rains, were naturally reverenced in that land of green hills and valleys, which were fed by the water of heaven. A nation thrown in the scene of such a religion and mixed with those who professed it, at that period of national life when impressions are most readily made, such a nation, albeit living while the recollection of the deliverance from Egypt and the wonders with which the Law was given was yet fresh, soon fell away into the practices that it was strictly enjoined to root out. In the first and second laws of the Decalogue, the Israelites were commanded to worship but one God, and not to make any image whatever to worship it, lest they and their children should fall under God’s heavy displeasure. The commands were explicit enough. But not alone was idolatry thus clearly condemned: the Israelites were charged to destroy all objects connected with the religion of the inhabitants of Canaan. They were to destroy utterly all the heathen places of worship, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree.

They were to overthrow the altars of the heathen, break their pillars, burn their groves, hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place (Deu 12:2-3), a passage we cite on account of the fullness of the enumeration. Had the conquered nations been utterly extirpated, their idolatry might have been annihilated at once. But soon after the lands had been apportioned, that separate life of the tribes began which was never interrupted, as far as history tells us, until the time of the kings. Divided, the tribes were unable to cope with the remnant of the Canaanites, and either dwelt with them on equal terms, reduced them to tribute, or became tributaries themselves. The Israelites were thus surrounded by the idolatry of Canaan; and since they were for the most part confined to the mountain and hilly districts, where its associations were strongest, they had but to learn from their neighbors how they had worshipped upon the high hills and under every green tree. From the use of plural forms, it is probable that the Baals and Ashtoreths of several towns or tribes were worshipped by the Israelites, as Baal-Peor had been, and Baalberith afterwards was. It does not seem, however that the people at once fell into heathen worship: the first step appears to have been adopting a corruption of the true religion. During the lives of Joshua and the elders who outlived him, indeed, they kept true to their allegiance; but the generation following, who knew not Jehovah, nor the works he had done for Israel, swerved from the plain path of their fathers, and were caught in the toils of the foreigner (Judges 2). From this time forth their history becomes little more than a chronicle of the inevitable sequence of offence and punishment. They provoked Jehovah to anger and the anger of Jehovah was hot against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them (Jdg 2:12; Jdg 2:14). The narratives of the book of Judges, contemporaneous or successive, tell of the fierce struggle maintained against their hated foes, and how women forgot their tenderness and forsook their retirement to sing the song of victory over the oppressor.

By turns, each conquering nation strove to establish the worship of its national god. During the rule of Midian, Joash, the father of Gideon, had an altar to Baal, and an Asherah (Jdg 6:25), though he proved but a lukewarm worshipper (Jdg 6:31). Even Gideon himself gave occasion to idolatrous worship; yet the ephod which he made from the spoils of the Midianites was perhaps but a voice offering to the true God (Jdg 8:27). It is not improbable that the gold ornaments of which it was composed were in some way connected with idolatry (comp. Isa 3:18-24), and that, from their having been worn as amulets, some superstitious virtue was conceived to cling to them even in their new form. But, though in Gideon’s lifetime no overt act of idolatry was practiced, he was no sooner dead than the Israelites again returned to the service of the Baalim, and, as if in solemn mockery of the covenant made with Jehovah. chose from among them Baal-Berith, Baal of the Covenant (comp. ), as the object of their special adoration (Jdg 8:33). Of this god we know only that his temple, probably of wood (Jdg 9:49), was a stronghold in time of need, and that his treasury was filled with the silver of the worshippers (Jdg 9:4). Nor were the calamities of foreign oppression confined to the land of Canaan. The tribes on the east of Jordan event astray after the idols of the land, and were delivered into the hands of the children of Ammon (Jdg 10:8).

But they put away from among them the gods of the foreigner, and with the baseborn Jephthah for their leader gained a signal victory over their oppressors. The exploits of Samson against the Philistines, though achieved within a narrower space and with less important results than those of his predecessors, fill a brilliant page in his country’s history. But the tale of his marvelous deeds is prefaced by that ever-recurring phrase, so mournfully familiar, the children of Israel did evil again in the eyes of Jehovah, and Jehovah gave them into the hand of the Philistines. Thus far idolatry is a national sin. The episode of Micah, in Judges 17, 18 sheds a lurid light on the secret practices of individuals, who, without formally renouncing Jehovah, though ceasing to recognize him as the theocratic king (Jdg 17:6) linked with his worship the symbols of ancient idolatry. The house of God, or sanctuary, which Micah made in imitation of that at Shiloh, was decorated with an ephod and teraphim dedicated to God, and with a graven and molten image consecrated to some inferior deities (Selden, De Dis Syris, synt. 1, 2). It is a significant fact, showing how deeply rooted in the people was the tendency to idolatry, that a Levite, who, of all others, should have been most sedulous to maintain Jehovah’s worship in its purity, was found to assume the office of priest to the images of Micah; and that this Levite, priest afterwards to the idols of Dan, was no other than Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses. Tradition says that these idols were destroyed when the Philistines defeated the army of Israel and took from them the ark of the covenant of Jehovah (1 Samuel 4). The Danites are supposed to have carried them into the field, as the other tribes bore the ark, and the Philistines the images of their gods, when they went forth to battle (2 Samuel 5, 21; Lewis, (Orig. Bebr. 5, 9). But the Seder Olnm Rabba (c. 24) interprets the captivity of the land (Jdg 18:30), of the captivity of Manasseh; and Benjamin of Tudela mistook the remains of later Gentile worship for traces of the altar or statue which Micah had dedicated, and which was worshipped by the tribe of Dan (Selden, P, Dis Syr. synt. 1, 2; Stanley, S. and Pal. p. 398). In later times the practice of secret idolatry was carried to greater lengths. Images were set up on the corn-floors, in the wine-vats, and behind the doors of private houses (Isa 57:8; Hos 9:1-2); and to check this tendency the statute in Deu 27:15 was originally promulgated. It is noticeable that they do not seem during this period to have generally adopted the religions of any but the Canaanites, although in one remarkable passage they are said, between the time of Jair and that of Jephthah, to have forsaken the Lord, and served Baalim, and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, Zidon, Moab, the children of Ammon, and the Philistines (Jdg 10:6), as though there had then been an utter and profligate apostasy. The cause, no doubt, was that the Canaanitish worship was borrowed in a time of amity, and that but one Canaanitish oppressor is spoken of whereas the Abrahamites of the east of Palestine, and the Philistines, were almost always enemies of the Israelites. Each time of idolatry was punished by a servitude, each reformation followed by a deliverance. Speedily as the nation returned to idolatry, its heart was fresher than that of the ten tribes which followed Jeroloam, and never seem to have had one thorough national repentance.

3. The notices of their great wars show that the enmity between the Philistines and the Israelites was toe great for any idolatry to be then borrowed from the former by the latter, though at an earlier time this was not the case. Under Samuel’s administration a fast was held, and purificatory rites performed, to mark the public renunciation of idolatry (1Sa 7:3-6). Saul’s family were, however, tainted, as it seems, with idolatry, for the names of Ishbosheth or Esh-baal, and Mephibosheth or Merib-baal, can scarcely have been given but in honor of Baal. From the circumstances of Michal’s stratagem to save David, it seems not only that Saul’s family kept teraphim, but, apparently, that they used them for purposes of divination, the Sept. having liver for pillow, as if the Hebr. had been instead of the present . SEE PILLOW. The circumstance of having teraphim, more especially if they were used for divination, lends especial force to Samuel’s reproof of Saul (1Sa 15:23). During the reign of David idolatry in public is unmentioned, and no doubt was almost unknown. SEE DAVID.

The earlier days of Solomon were the happiest of the kingdom of Israel. The Temple worship was fully established, with the highest magnificence, and there was no excuse for that worship of God at high places which seems to have been before permitted on account of the constant distractions of the country. But the close of that reign was marked by an apostasy of which we read with wonder. Hitherto the people had been the sinners, their leaders reformers; this time the king, led astray by his many strange wives, perverted the people, and raised high places on the Mount of Corruption, opposite God’s temple. He worshipped Ashtoreth, goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh, the god of the Moabites, and Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites, building high places for the latter two, as well as for all the gods of his strange wives. Solomon, no doubt, was very tolerant, and would not prevent these women from following their native superstitions, even if they felt it a duty to burn their and his children before Molech. Foreign idolatry was openly imitated. Three of the summits of Olivet were crowned with the high places of Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Molech (1Ki 11:7; 2Ki 23:13), and the fourth, in memory of his great apostasy, was branded with the opprobrious title of the Mount of Corruption. Calamity speedily followed this great apostasy: the latter years of Solomon were troubled by continual premonitions of those political reverses which were the inevitable penalty of this high treason against the theocracy. This is clearly brought out by the marked and frequent denunciations of the later prophets. SEE SOLOMON.

Rehoboam, the son of an Ammonitish mother, perpetuated the worst features of Solomon’s idolatry (1Ki 14:22-24); and in his reign was made the great schism in the national religion-when Jeroboam, fresh from his recollections of the Apis worship of Egypt, erected golden calves at Bethel and at Dan, and by this crafty state policy severed forever the kingdoms of Judah and Israel (1Ki 12:26-33). To their use were temples consecrated and the service in their honor was studiously copied from the Mosaic ritual. High-priest himself, Jeroboam ordained priests from the lowest ranks (2Ch 11:15); incense and sacrifices were offered, and a solemn festival appointed, closely resembling the feast of tabernacles (1Ki 12:23; 1Ki 12:33; comp. Amo 4:4-5). SEE JEROBOAM.

The worship of the calves, the sin of Israel (Hos 10:8), which was apparently associated’ with the goat-worship of Mendes (2Ch 11:15; Herod. 2, 46) or of the ancient Zabii (Lewis, Orig. Hebrews 5, 3), and the Asherim (1Ki 14:15; A.V. groves), ultimately spread to the kingdom of Judah, and centered in Beersheba (Amo 5:5; Amo 7:9). At what precise period it was introduced into the latter kingdom is not certain. The Chronicles tell us how Abijab taunted Jeroboam with his apostasy, while the less partial narrative in 1 Kings represents his own conduct as far from exemplary (1Ki 15:3). Asa’s sweeping reform spared not even the idol of his grandmother Maachah, and, with the exception of the high places, he removed all relics of idolatrous worship (1Ki 15:12-14), with its accompanying impurities. His reformation wag completed by Jehoshaphat (2Ch 17:6). See each king in alphabetical order. The successors of Jeroboam followed in his steps, till Ahab, who married a Zidonian princess, at her instigation (1Ki 21:25) built a temple and altar to Baal, and revived all the abominations of the Amorites (1Ki 21:26). For this he attained the bad pre-eminence of having done more to provoke Jehovah, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him (1Ki 16:33). Compared with the worship of Baal, the worship of the calves was a venial offence, probably because it was morally less detestable, and also less anti-national (1Ki 12:28; 2Ki 10:28-31). SEE ELIJAH.

Henceforth Baal- worship became so completely identified with the northern kingdom that it is described as walking in the way or statutes of the kings of Israel (2Ki 16:3; 2Ki 17:8), as distinguished from the sin of Jeroboam, which ceased not till the Captivity (2Ki 17:23), and the corruption of the ancient inhabitants of the land. The idolatrous priests became a numerous and important caste (1Ki 18:19), living under the patronage of royalty, and fed at the royal table. The extirpation of Baal’s priests by Elijah, and of his followers by Jehu (2 Kings 10), in which the royal family of Judah shared (2Ch 22:7), was a death-blow to this form of idolatry in Israel, though other systems still remained (2Ki 13:6). But, while Israel thus sinned and was punished, Judah was morally more guilty (Eze 16:51). The alliance of Jehoshaphat with the family of Ahab transferred to the southern kingdom, during the reigns of his son and grandson, all the appurtenances of Baal-worship (2Ki 8:18; 2Ki 8:27). In less than ten years after the death of that king, in whose praise it is recorded that he sought not the Baalim, nor walked after the deed of Israel (2Ch 17:3-4), a temple had been built for the idol, statues and altars erected, and priests appointed to minister in his service (2 Kings’ 11:18). Jehoiada’s vigorous measures checked the evil for a time, but his reform was incomplete, and the high places still remained, as in the days of Asa, a nucleus for any fresh system of idolatry (2Ki 12:3). Much of this might be due to the influence of the king’s mother, Zibiah of Beersheba, a place intimately connected with the idolatrous defection of Judah (Amo 8:14). After the death of Jehoiada, the princes prevailed upon Joash to restore at least some portion of his father’s idolatry (2Ch 24:18). The conquest of the Edomites by Amaziah introduced the worship of their gods, which had disappeared since the days of Solomon (2Ch 25:14; 2Ch 25:20). After this period, even the kings who did not lend themselves to the encouragement of false worship had to contend with the corruption which still lingered in the hearts of the people (2Ki 15:35; 2Ch 27:2). Hitherto the temple had been kept pure. The statues of Baal and the other gods were worshipped in their own shrines; but Ahaz, who sacrificed unto the gods of Damascus, which smote him (2Ch 28:23), and built altars to them at every corner of Jerusalem, and high places in every city of Judah, replaced the brazen altar of burnt-offering by one made after the model of the altar of Damascus and desecrated it to his own uses (2Ki 16:10-15).

The conquest of the ten tribes by Shalmaneser was for them the last scene of the drama of abominations which had been enacted uninterruptedly for upwards of 250 years. In the northern kingdom no reformer arose to vary the long line of royal apostates; whatever was effected in the way of reformation was done by the hands of the people (2Ch 31:1). But even in their captivity they helped to perpetuate the corruption. The colonists, whom the Assyrian conquerors placed in their stead in the cities of Samaria, brought with them their own gods, and were taught at Bethel, by a priest of the captive nation the manner of the rod of the land, the lessons thus learnt resulting in a strange admixture of the calf-worship of Jeroboam with the homage paid to their national deities (2Ki 17:24-41). Their descendants were ill consequence regarded with suspicion by the elders who returned from the captivity with Ezra, and their offers of assistance rejected (Ezr 4:3). SEE SAMARITANS.

The first act of Hezekiah on ascending the throne was the restoration and purification of the Temple, which had been dismantled and closed during the latter part of his father’s life (2Ch 28:24; 2Ch 29:3). The multitudes who flocked to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, so long in abeyance, removed the idolatrous altars of burnt-offering and incense erected by Ahaz (2Ch 30:14). The iconoclastic spirit was not confined to Judah and Benjamin, but spread throughout Ephraim and Manasseh (2Ch 31:1), and to all external appearance idolatry was extirpated. But the reform extended little below the surface (Isa 29:13). Among the leaders of the people there were many in high position who conformed to the necessities of the time (Isa 28:14), and under Manasseh’s patronage the false worship, which had been merely driven into obscurity, broke out with tenfold virulence. Idolatry of every form, and with all the accessories of enchantments, divination, and witchcraft, was again rife; no place was too sacred, no associations too hallowed, to be spared the contamination. If the conduct of Ahaz in erecting an altar in the temple court is open to a charitable construction, Manasseh’s was of no doubtful character. The two courts of the Temple were profaned by altars dedicated to the host of heaven, and the image of the Asherah polluted the holy place (2Ki 21:7; 2Ch 33:7; 2Ch 33:15; comp. Jer 32:34). Even in his late repentance he did not entirely destroy all traces of his former wrong. Tradition states that the remonstrances of the aged Isaiah (q.v.) only served to secure his own martyrdom (Gemara on Yebamoth, 4). The people still burned incense on the high places; but Jehovah was the ostensible object of their worship. The king’s son sacrificed to his father’s idols but was not associated with him in his repentance, and in his short reign of two years restored all the altars of the Baalim and the images of the Asherah. With the death of Josiah ended the last effort to revive among the people a purer ritual, if not a purer faith. The lamp of David, which had long shed but a struggling ray, flickered for a while, and then went out in the darkness of Babylonian captivity. SEE JUDAH, KINGDOM OF.

It will be useful here to recapitulate the main varieties of the idolatry, which so greatly marred the religious character of this monarchical period of the Jewish state. It has been a question much debated whether the Israelites were ever so far given up to idolatry as to lose all knowledge of the true God. It would be hard to assert this of any nation, and still more difficult to prove. That there always remained among them a faithful few, who in the face of every danger adhered to the worship of Jehovah, may readily be believed, for even at a time when Baal-worship was most prevalent there were found seven thousand in Israel who had not bowed before his image (1Ki 19:18). But there is still room for grave suspicion that among the masses of the people, though the idea of a supreme Being-of whom the images they worshipped were but the distorted representatives—was not entirely lost, it was so obscured as to be but dimly apprehended. And not only were the ignorant multitude thus led astray, but the priests, scribes, and prophets became leaders of the apostasy (Jeremiah 2-8). Warburton, indeed, maintained that they never formally renounced Jehovah, and that their defection consisted in joining foreign worship and idolatrous ceremonies to the ritual of the true God (Die. Leg. b. 5, 3). But one passage in their history, though confessedly obscure, seems to point to a time when, under the rule of the judges, Israel for many days had no true God, and no teaching priest, and no law (2Ch 15:3). The correlative argument of Cudworth, who contends from the teaching of the Hebrew doctors and rabbis that the pagan nations anciently, at least the intelligent amongst them, acknowledged one supreme God of the whole world, and that all other gods were but creatures and inferior ministers, is controverted by Mosheim (Intell. Syst. 1, 4, 30, and notes). There can be no doubt that much of the idolatry of the Hebrews consisted in worshipping the true God under an image, such as the calves at Bethel and Dan (Josephus, Ant. 8, 8, 5; ), and by associating his worship with idolatrous rites (Jer 41:5) and places consecrated to idols (2Ki 18:22). From the peculiarity of their position they were never distinguished as the inventors of a new pantheon, nor did they adopt any one system of idolatry so exclusively as ever to become identified with it (so the Moabites with the worship of Chemosh (Num 21:29); but they no sooner came in contact with other nations than they readily adapted themselves to their practices, the old spirit of antagonism died rapidly away, and intermarriage was one step to idolatry.

a. Sun-worship, though mentioned with other kinds of high nature- worship, as in the enumeration of those suppressed by Josiah, seems to have been practiced alone as well as with the adoration of other heavenly bodies. In Ezekiel’s remarkable vision of the idolatries of Jerusalem, he saw about four-and-twenty men between the porch and the altar of the Temple, with their backs to the Temple and their faces to the east, worshipping the sun (Eze 8:16). Josiah had before this taken away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entering in of the house of the Lord, and had burned the chariots of the sun with fire (2Ki 23:11). The same part of the temple is perhaps here meant. There is nothing to show whether these were images or living horses. The horse was sacred to the sun among the Carthaginians, but the worship of the visible sun instead of an image looks rather like a Persian or an Arab custom. SEE SUN.

b. In the account of Josiah’s reform we read of the abolition of the worship of Baal, the sun, the moon, Mazzaloth, also called Mazzaroth (Job 38:32), which we hold to be the mansions of the moon, SEE ASTRONOMY, and all the host of heaven (2Ki 23:5). Manasseh is related to have served all the host of heaven (21:3). Jeremiah speaks of the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, as to be defiled, because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink-offerings unto other gods (Jer 19:13). In this prophet’s time the people of Judah and Jerusalem, among other abominations, made cakes for the queen of heaven, or the worship of heaven: a different form justifying the latter reading. The usual reading is Api, , which the Sept. once follows, the Vulg. always; some copies give , worship, that is, a deity or goddess. The former reading seems preferable, and the context in two passages in Jeremiah shows that an abstract sense is not admissible (Jer 44:17-19; Jer 44:25). In Egypt, the remnant that fled after the murder of Gedaliah were warned by the prophet to abandon those idolatrous practices for which their country and cities had been desolated. The men, conscious that their wives had burned incense to false gods in Egypt, declared that they would certainly burn incense and pour out drink- offerings to the queen of heaven, as they, their fathers, their kings, and their princes had done in a time of plenty, asserting that since they had left off these practices they had been consumed by the sword and by famine: for this a fresh doom was pronounced upon them (ch. 44). It is very difficult to conjecture what goddess can be here meant: Ashtoreth: would suit, but is never mentioned interchangeably; the moon must be rejected for the same reason. Here we certainly so a strong resemblance to Arab idolatry, which was wholly composed of cosmic worship and of fetishism, and in which the mansions of the moon were reverenced on account of their connection with seasons of rain. This system of cosmic worship may have been introduced from the Nabathaeans or Edomites of Petra, from the Sabians, or from other Arabs or Chaldmeans. SEE QUEEN OF HEAVEN.

c. Two idols, Gad,, or Fortune, and Meni,, or Fate, from , he or it divided, assigned, numbered, are spoken of in a single passage in the later part of Isaiah (Isa 65:1). Gesenius, depending upon the theory of the post-Isaiah authorship of the later chapters of the prophet, makes these to be idols worshipped by the Jews in Babylonia, but it must be remarked that their names are not traceable in Babylonian and Assyrian mythology. Gesenius has, however, following Pococke (Spec. Hist. Arabum, p. 93), compared Meni with Manah, a goddess of the pagan Arabs, worshipped in the form of a stone between Mekkeh and El-Medineh by the tribes of Hudheyl and Khuzaah. But EI-Beydawi, though deriving the name of this idol from the root mana, he cut, supposes it was thus called because victims were slain upon it (Comment. in Coran. ed. Fleischer, p. 293). This meaning certainly seems to disturb the idea that the two idols were identical, but the mention of the sword and slaughter as punishments of the idolaters who worshipped Gad and Meni is not to be forgotten. Gad may have been a Canaanitish form of Baal, if we are to judge from the geographical name Baal-gad of a place at the foot of Mount Hermon (Jos 11:17; Jos 12:7; Jos 13:5). Perhaps the grammatical form of Meni may throw some light upon the origin of this idolatry. The worship of both idols resembles that of the cosmic divinities of the later kings of Judah. SEE MEN.

d. In Ezekiel’s vision of the idolatries of Jerusalem he beheld a chamber of imagery in the Temple itself having every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and [or even] all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about, and seventy Israelitish elders offering incense (Eze 8:7-12). This is so exact a description of an Egyptian sanctuary, with the idols depicted upon its walls, dimly lighted, and filled with incense-offering priests, that we cannot for a moment doubt that these Jews derived from Egypt their fetishism, for such this special worship appears mainly, if not wholly to have been. SEE IMAGERY, CHAMBER OF.

e. In the same vision the prophet saw women weeping for Tammuz (Eze 8:13-14), known to be the same as Adonis, from whom the fourth month of the Syrian year was named. This worship was probably introduced by Ahaz from Syria. SEE TAMMUZ.

f. The image of jealousy, , spoken of in the same passage, which was placed in the Temple, has not been satisfactorily explained. The meaning may only that it was an image of-a false god, or there may be a play in the second part of the appellation upon the proper name. We cannot, however, suggest any name that might be thus intended. SEE JEALOUSY, IMAGE OF.

g. The brazen serpent, having become an object of idolatrous worship, was destroyed by Hezekiah (2Ki 18:4). SEE BRAZEN SERPENT.

h. Moloch-worship was not only celebrated at the high place Solomon had made, but at Topheth, in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, where children were made to pass through the fire to the Ammonitish abomination.. This place, as well as Solomon’s altars, Josiah defiled, and we read of no later worship of Moloch, Chemosh, and Ashtoroth. SEE MOLOCH.

i. For the supposed divinity of Isa 66:17 (compare Meier, De uno deo Assyriorum, Helmst. 1734), SEE ACHR).

The new population placed by the king of Assyria in the cities of Samaria adopted a strange mixture of religions. Terrified at the destruction by lions of some of their number, they petitioned the king of Assyria, and an Israelitish priest was sent to them. They then adopted the old worship at high places, and still served their own idols. The people of Babylon made Succothbenoth; the Cuthites, Nergal; the Hamathites, Ashima; the Avites, Nibhaz and Tartak; and the people of Sepharvaim burned their children to their native gods, Adrammelech and Anammelech. Nergal is a well known Babylonian idol, and the occurrence of the element Melech (king) in the names of the Molechs of Sepharvaim is very remarkable (2Ki 17:24-41).

4. The Babylonian Exile was an effectual rebuke or the national sin. It is true that even during the captivity the devotees of false worship plied their craft as prophets and diviners (Jer 29:8; Ezekiel 13), and the Jews who fled to Egypt carried with them recollections of the material prosperity which attended their idolatrous sacrifices in Judah, and to the neglect of which they attributed their exiled condition. (Jer 44:17-18). One of the first difficulties, indeed, with which Ezra had to contend, and which brought him well-nigh to despair, was the haste with which his countrymen took them foreign wives of the people of the land, and followed them in all their abominations (Ezra 9). The priests and rulers, to whom he looked for assistance in his great enterprise, were among the first to fall away (Ezr 9:2; Ezr 10:18; Neh 6:17-18; Neh 13:23). Still, the post-exilian prophets speak of idolatry as an evil of the past, Zechariah before telling the time when the very names of the false gods would be forgotten (Zec 13:2). In. Malachi we see that a cold formalism was already the national sin, and such was ever after the case with the Jewish people. The Babylonian Exile, therefore, may be said to have purified the Jews from their idolatrous tendencies. How this great change was wrought does. not appear. Partly no doubt, it was due to the pious examples of Ezra and Nehemiah; partly, perhaps, to the Persian contempt for the lower kinds of idolatry, which insured a respect for the Hebrew religion on the part of the government; partly to the sight of the fulfillment of God’s predicted judgments upon the idolatrous nations which the Jews had either sought as allies or feared as enemies. SEE EXILE.

5. 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 practiced throughout the civilized world. The conquests of Alexander in Asia caused Greek influence to be extensively felt, and Greek idolatry to be first tolerated, and then practiced by the, Jews (1Ma 1:43-50; 1Ma 1:54). Some place-hunting Jews were base enough to adopt it. At first the Greek: princes who ruled Palestine wisely forbore to interfere with the Hebrew religion. The politic earlier Ptolemies even encouraged it; but when the country had fallen into the hands of the Seleucidae, Antiochus Epiphancs, 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 supported by a miserable faction, he had to depend wholly upon his military power. The attempt of Artiochus to establish this form of worship was vigorously resisted by Mattathias (1Ma 2:23-26), who was joined in his rebellion by the Assideans (1Ma 2:42), and destroyed the altars at which the king commanded them to sacrifice (1Ma 2:25; 1Ma 2:45). The erection of. synagogues has been assigned as a reason for the comparative purity of the Jewish worship after the Captivity (Prideaux, Conn. 1, 374), while another cause has been discovered in the hatred for images acquired by the Jews in their intercourse with the Persians. The Maccabaean 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. Thenceforward idolatry was to the Jew the religion of his enemies, naturally made no perverts.

6. 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 (1 Corinthians 8). 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.

V. Ethical Views respecting Idolatry. That this is a cardinal sin, and, indeed, the highest form, if not essential principle of all sin, as aiming a direct blow at the throne of God itself, is evident from its prohibition in the very fore-front of the Decalogue. Hence the tenacity with which the professors of all true religion in every age have opposed it under every disguise and at whatever cost. It has always and naturally been the associate of polytheism, and those corrupt forms of Christianity, such as the Roman and Greek Churches, which have endeavored to apologize for the adoration of pictures, images, etc., on the flimsy pretext that it is not the inanimate objects themselves which arc revered, but only the beings thus represented, arc but imitators in this of the sophistry of certain refined speculators among the grosser heathen e.g. of Egypt, Greece, etc., who put forth similar claims. SEE IMAGE-WORSHIP. Three things are condemned in Scripture as idolatry:

1. The worshipping of a false God;

2. the worshipping of the true God through an image;

3. the indulgence of those passions which draw the soul away from God, e.g. covetousness, lust, etc. The Israelites were guilty of the first when they bowed the knee to Baal; of the second when they set up the golden calves; and both Israelites and Christians are often guilty of the third.

1. Light in which Idolatry was regarded in the Mosaic Code, and the penalties with which it was visited of one main object of the Hebrew polity was to teach the unity of God, the extermination of idolatry was but a subordinate end. Jehovah, the God of the Israelites, was the civil head of the state. He was the theocratic king of the people, who had delivered them from bondage, and to whom they had taken a willing oath of allegiance. They had entered into a solemn league and covenant with him as their chosen king (comp. 1Sa 8:7), by whom obedience was requited with temporal blessings, and rebellion with temporal punishment. This original contract of the Hebrew government, as it has been termed, is contained in Exo 19:3-8; Exo 20:2-5; Deuteronomy 39, 10-30; the blessings promised to obedience are enumerated in Deu 28:1-14, and the withering curses on disobedience in Deu 28:15-68. That this covenant was strictly insisted on it needs but slight acquaintance with Hebrew history to perceive. Often broken and often renewed on the part of the people (Jdg 10:10; 2Ch 15:12-13; Neh 9:38), it was kept with unwavering constancy on the part of Jehovah. To their kings he stood in the relation, so to speak, of a feudal superior: they were his representatives upon earth, and with them, as with the people before, his covenant was made (1Ki 3:14; 1Ki 11:11). Idolatry, therefore, to an Israelite was a state offence (1Sa 15:23), a political crime of the gravest character, high treason against the majesty of his king. It was a transgression of the covenant (Deu 17:2), the evil pre- eminently in the eyes of Jehovah (1Ki 21:25, opp. to. , the right, 2Ch 27:2).

But it was much more than all this. While the idolatry of foreign nations is stigmatized merely as an abomination in the sight of God, which called for his vengeance, the sin of the Israelites is regarded as of more glaring enormity, and greater moral guilt. In the figurative language of the prophets, the relation between Jehovah and his people is represented as a marriage bond (Isa 54:5; Jer 3:14), and the worship of false gods, with all its accompaniments (Leviticus 20:56), becomes then the greatest of social wrongs (Hosea 2; Jeremiah 3, etc.). This is beautifully brought out in Hos 2:16, where the heathen name Baali, my master, which the apostate Israel has been accustomed to apply to her foreign possessor, is contrasted with Ishi, my man, my husband, the native word which she is to use when restored to her rightful husband, Jehovah. Much of the significance of this figure was unquestionably due to the impurities of idolaters, with whom such corruption was of no merely spiritual character (Exo 34:16; Num 25:1-2, etc.), but manifested itself in the grossest and most revolting forms (Rom 1:26-32).

Regarded in a moral aspect, false gods are called stumbling-blocks (Eze 14:3), lies (Amo 2:4; Rom 1:25), horrors or frights (1Ki 15:13; Jer 50:38), abominations (Deu 29:17; Deu 32:16; 1Ki 11:5; 2Ki 23:13), guilt (abstract for concrete, Amo 8:14, , ashmadh; comp.2Ch 29:18, perhaps with a play on Ashima, 2Ki 17:30); and with a profound sense of the degradation consequent upon their worship, they are characterized by the prophets, whose mission it was to warn the people against them (Jer 44:4), as shame (Jer 11:13; Hos 9:10). As considered with reference to Jehovah, they are other gods (Jos 24:2; Jos 24:16), strange gods (Deu 32:16), new gods (Jdg 5:8), devils-not God (Deu 32:17 – 1Co 10:20-21); and, as denoting their foreign origin, gods of the foreigner (Jos 24:14-15). Their powerlessness is indicated by describing them as gods that cannot save (Isa 45:20), that made not the heavens (Jer 10:11), nothing (Isa 41:24; 1Co 8:4), wind and emptiness (Isa 41:29), vanities of the heathen (Jer 14:22; Act 14:15); and yet, while their deity is denied, their personal existence seems to have been acknowledged (Kurtz, Gesch. d. A.B. ii, 86, etc.), though not in the same manner in which the pretensions of local deities were reciprocally recognized by the heathen (1Ki 20:23; 1Ki 20:28; 2Ki 17:26). Other terms of contempt are employed with reference to idols, , elilim (Lev 19:4), and , gilluliem (Deu 29:17), to which different meanings have been assigned, and many which indicate ceremonial uncleanness. SEE IDOL.

Idolatry, therefore, being from one point of view a political offence, could be punished without infringement of civil rights. No penalties were attached to mere opinions. For aught we know, theological speculation may have been as rife among the Hebrews as in modern times, though such was not the tendency of the Shemitic mind. It was not, however, such speculations, heterodox though they might be, but overt acts of idolatry, which were made the subjects of legislation (Michaelis, Laws of Moses, 245, 246). The first and second commandments are directed against idolatry of every form. Individuals and communities were equally amenable to the rigorous code. The individual offender was devoted to destruction (Exo 22:20); his nearest relatives were not only bound to denounce him and deliver him up to punishment (Deu 13:2-10), but their hands were to strike the first blow when, on the evidence of two witnesses at least, he was stoned (Deu 17:2-5). To attempt to seduce others to false worship was a crime of equal enormity (Deu 13:6-10). An idolatrous nation shared a similar fate. No facts are more strongly declared in the Old Test. than that the extermination of the Canaanites was the punishment of their idolatry (Exo 34:15-16; Deuteronomy 7; Deu 12:29-31; Deu 20:17), and that the calamities of the Israelites were due to the same cause (Jer 2:17). A city guilty of idolatry was looked upon as a cancer of the state; it was considered to be in rebellion, and treated according to the laws of war. Its inhabitants and all their cattle were put to death. No spoil was taken, but everything it contained was burnt with itself; nor was it allowed to be rebuilt (Deu 13:13-18; Jos 6:26). Saul lost his kingdom, Achan his life, and Hiel his family for transgressing this law (1 Samuel 15; Joshua 7; 1Ki 16:34).

The silver and gold with which the idols were covered were accursed (Deu 7:25-26). Not only were the Israelites forbidden to serve the gods of Canaan (Exo 23:24), but even to mention their names, that is, to call upon them in prayer or any form of worship (Exo 23:13; Jos 23:7). On taking possession of the land they were to obliterate all traces of the existing idolatry; statues, altars, pillars, idol temples, every person and every thing connected with it, were to be swept away (Exo 23:24; Exo 23:32; Exo 34:13; Deu 7:5; Deu 7:25; Deu 12:1-3; Deu 20:17), and the name and worship of the idols blotted out. Such were the precautions taken by the framer of the Mosaic code to preserve the worship of Jehovah the true God, in its purity. Of the manner in which his descendants have put a fence about the law with reference to idolatry, many instances will be found in Maimonides (De Idol.). They were prohibited from using vessels, scarlet garments, bracelets, or rings, marked with the sign of the sun, moon, or dragon (ib. Deu 7:10); trees planted or stones erected for idol-worship were forbidden (Deu 8:5; Deu 8:10); and, to guard against the possibility of contamination, if the image of an idol were found among other images intended for ornament, they were all to be cast into the Dead Sea (Deu 7:11). Smith. SEE ANATHENIA.

2. New-Test. Definitions on the Subject.-

(1.) The name idolater is given not only to persons who worship heathen gods, but also such as worship idols of their own. Act 17:16 : Now, while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred within him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. 1Co 5:10-11 : Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world. But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner: with such a one no not to eat. l Corinthians 6:9: Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters. 1Co 10:7 : Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them. Rev 21:8 : But the fearful … and idolaters shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.

(2.) The term idolatry is figuratively used to designate covetousness, which takes Mammon’ for its god (Mat 6:24; Luk 16:13). Col 3:5 : Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Hence it is said (Eph 5:5), For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. St. Paul further designates all evil concupiscence in general by the name of idolatry; e.g. Php 3:19 : Whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things; comp. Rom 16:18, For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple. The same is said (2Ti 3:4) of those who are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. According to Rom 1:21, idolatry takes its source in the impurity of the will, or in the heart, not in the mind; it is consequently a result of the abuse of human free agency. It is said, in the above-mentioned passage, Because that when they knew God they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. The not glorifying and the not praising’ manifest the badness of the will or heart. In the Book of Wisdom (Wis 14:14) it is said that idolatry came into the world through the idle vanity of man. Idolatry and sin have consequently the same origin, namely, the misuse of moral freedom. They therefore assist each other, yet, at the same time, present separately a difficult problem for reason to understand. To some extent idolatry may be considered as the theoretical, and sin as the practical effect of evil, which, in its complete manifestation, embraces both the mind and the heart, but takes its source exclusively in the latter; for all evil results from the will, by its own free action, separating itself from the divine will. Krehl, Handworterbuch des N.T. p. 12.

3. In the later Christian Church. The fathers generally define idolatry, from Rom 1:23, as a taking away from God the glory which belongs to him (Tertull. De Idololatria, c. 11), or divine honor given to another (Cyprian; Hilar. Diac.); sometimes, also, as a transferring of prayer from the Creator to the creature (Gregor. Naz.). Christian writers in general had no doubt on the subject (see Finnicus Maternus, De errore proianarum religionum, ed. Mnter, c. 1-5). When Clement of Alexandria regards astonishment at the light emitted by the heavenly bodies, thankfulness towards the inventor of agriculture, consciousness of sin, a personification of effects, etc., as the origin of myths, he does not mean to consider them as the original source of idolatry, but only of its contemporary forms. From the primitive worship of the heavens as the abode of the invisible God, according to the oldest traditions, the worship of the different nations, as they became disseminated over the globe, and divided geographically and otherwise, turned to other symbols. Again, nations preserving the remembrance, and, so to speak, living under the influence of their founders and heroes, as soon as they forgot the true God, made these the objects of their veneration and worship. Thus they came to worship their progenitors (as in China) and their heroes, which latter worship is by some (Boss, for instance) considered as the only source of mythology. How from thence they passed to the worship of symbolic animals, thence to anthropomorphism, and finally to the adoration of statues as images of the deity, has been best explained by Creuzer in his Symbolik u. Hythologie d. alten Volker (3rd edit. 1, 5 sq.). The fathers did not fail to perceive the influence which the original tradition of the true God had on the development of the symbolism and myths of the heathen religious systems. Lactantius (Defalsa relig. 1, 11) considers the consensus gentium in the belief in gods as a proof that they are touched by them.

The early Protestant theologians had especially to contend against naturalism, which asserted that the recognition of one supreme God is innate in man, and denied our knowledge of the unity of God being due either to revelation or to tradition, since it is found at the foundation of the learned polytheistic systems. They considered all further developments in these systems as resulting from intentional additions made in support of their hierarchy by an interested priesthood, or by rulers from motives of policy (see Herbert of Cherbury, De relig. gentilium, p. 6,168 sq.). These views were ably opposed by Gerhard Jo. Vossius (De theologia gentili et physiologia Christiana, 1, 3 sq.), Van Dale (De origine et progressu idololatrice, 1, 2, 3), Selden (De diis Syris [Lips. 1662], p. 25 sq.). They however meant, as did also Farmer (The general Prevalence of the Worship of Human Spirits in the Ancient Heathen Nations [Lond. 1783]), that the daemons, whether evil spirits or departed human souls, had very early become the objects of veneration on the part of the heathen. The Jews came gradually to the idea that the heathen deities were not nonentities, as the prophets had stated them to be, but really existing evil spirits, a view which was continued by the fathers, especially in relation to the so-called oracles. The earliest German theologians also admitted this doctrine of a worship of daemons. This, however, was gradually discarded after the researches of S. J. Baumgarten (Gesch. d. Religionsparteien, p. 176 sq.), and idolatry is now generally considered as the result of a’ sophisticated tradition.

Rationalism, based on Pelagian principles, either embraced the views of the naturalists, or else those of Heyne, J. H. Boss, etc., who maintain, the former that the myths and idolatry were either the natural consequences of historical events or the peculiar garb of philosophical ideas (historical and philosophical mythicism), while the latter derives idolatry partly from the universal wisdom whose higher thoughts assumed that form in order to be the more readily appreciated by the people, and partly from the interests of the priesthood; he considers, also, the tradition of real heroes as an abundant source. Others (like Lobeck, etc.) see in the mythology of the heathen but a childish play of the imagination. But the opinion which most generally obtained is that behind the outward form of mythology is hidden a real philosophical or religious idea, and that personalities and historical facts are only erroneously introduced into it (Buttmann; G. Hermann). Finally, others considered idolatry in its full development as the result of the intentional maneuvers of the priesthood (so Fr. Creuzer, in the first editions of his Symbolik), or of a hierarchical system of nature, which amounts nearly to the same (K.O. Muller, Prolegonz. zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie, p. 316-344). The latter considers the very origin and nature of the gods and consequently of idolatry, as the result of an unconscious popular necessity, which from the first was connected or identified with illusion, instead of remaining a true and special idea. From this view-whose only defect is its too great disregard of the original religion-it is easy to come to those which govern the newer systems of religious philosophy, such as are upheld by Hegel (Vorlesungen 2. Religions philosophie), according to which religion has received a steady development from an earthly basis, so that idolatry was but one of its first forms, and not at all an estrangement from God, but a necessary part of the progress towards him. This view of it completely makes away with idolatry by the presumed connection of all religions arriving by successive developments at absolute religion. This view is supported by Hinrichs (D. Religion im innern Verhaltnisse z. Wissenschaft [Heidelb. 1821], p. 141 sq.) and Kraft (D. Religionen aller Valker in philosophischer Darstellung [Stuttg. 1848]). Feuerbach and other extreme Rationalists even consider religion itself as a sickly ideal phenomenon in human life.

We must rank under idolatry all adoration not addressed to the one invisible God of the Bible, or such adoration of him as is rendered in any manner not conforming to the revelations of the Bible. It results partly from additions and the influence of the world, partly from the original traditional command to seek God, which seeking, when unaided by him (in revelation), ends in error, so that, unconsciously, it is worldly existence that is apprehended instead and in the place of God. The mode of this apprehension varies in different nations, according to their geographical, historical, and intellectual circumstances, and may degenerate into the adoration of the most vain and arbitrary objects (fetishes), which priests or sorcerers may set up. Between the original symbolic and the most abject idolatry there are various-stages. While the majority of the heathen are either on the brink or in the midst of fetishism, the more enlightened part look upon the idols only as symbols, sometimes of several deities, and sometimes of one God.

Idolatry was formerly considered as divided into two distinct classes, real and comparative; the former was absolute polytheism-the belief in the real divinity of the images-while the latter was either (Baumgarten) the worship of the several deities as subordinate to one, or (G.H. Vossius) the considering of the images worshipped as mere symbols of the invisible God. In Col 3:5 we find a metaphorical use made of the word idolatry to express undue attachment to earthly possessions and advantages. The same name has also been given, with good reason, to the use made of images in the Roman and Greek Churches. Herzog, Real- Encyklop. s.v. Abgotterei. On this last point, SEE MARIOLATRY; SEE SAINT-WORSHIP, etc.

Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

Idolatry

image-worship or divine honour paid to any created object. Paul describes the origin of idolatry in Rom. 1:21-25: men forsook God, and sank into ignorance and moral corruption (1:28).

The forms of idolatry are, (1.) Fetishism, or the worship of trees, rivers, hills, stones, etc.

(2.) Nature worship, the worship of the sun, moon, and stars, as the supposed powers of nature.

(3.) Hero worship, the worship of deceased ancestors, or of heroes.

In Scripture, idolatry is regarded as of heathen origin, and as being imported among the Hebrews through contact with heathen nations. The first allusion to idolatry is in the account of Rachel stealing her father’s teraphim (Gen. 31:19), which were the relics of the worship of other gods by Laban’s progenitors “on the other side of the river in old time” (Josh. 24:2). During their long residence in Egypt the Hebrews fell into idolatry, and it was long before they were delivered from it (Josh. 24:14; Ezek. 20:7). Many a token of God’s displeasure fell upon them because of this sin.

The idolatry learned in Egypt was probably rooted out from among the people during the forty years’ wanderings; but when the Jews entered Palestine, they came into contact with the monuments and associations of the idolatry of the old Canaanitish races, and showed a constant tendency to depart from the living God and follow the idolatrous practices of those heathen nations. It was their great national sin, which was only effectually rebuked by the Babylonian exile. That exile finally purified the Jews of all idolatrous tendencies.

The first and second commandments are directed against idolatry of every form. Individuals and communities were equally amenable to the rigorous code. The individual offender was devoted to destruction (Ex. 22:20). His nearest relatives were not only bound to denounce him and deliver him up to punishment (Deut. 13:20-10), but their hands were to strike the first blow when, on the evidence of two witnesses at least, he was stoned (Deut. 17:2-7). To attempt to seduce others to false worship was a crime of equal enormity (13:6-10). An idolatrous nation shared the same fate. No facts are more strongly declared in the Old Testament than that the extermination of the Canaanites was the punishment of their idolatry (Ex. 34:15, 16; Deut. 7; 12:29-31; 20:17), and that the calamities of the Israelites were due to the same cause (Jer. 2:17). “A city guilty of idolatry was looked upon as a cancer in the state; it was considered to be in rebellion, and treated according to the laws of war. Its inhabitants and all their cattle were put to death.” Jehovah was the theocratic King of Israel, the civil Head of the commonwealth, and therefore to an Israelite idolatry was a state offence (1 Sam. 15:23), high treason. On taking possession of the land, the Jews were commanded to destroy all traces of every kind of the existing idolatry of the Canaanites (Ex. 23:24, 32; 34:13; Deut. 7:5, 25; 12:1-3).

In the New Testament the term idolatry is used to designate covetousness (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13; Col. 3:5; Eph. 5:5).

Fuente: Easton’s Bible Dictionary

Idolatry

(See IDOL.)

Fuente: Fausset’s Bible Dictionary

Idolatry

IDOLATRY.Hebrew religion is represented as beginning with Abraham, who forsook the idolatry, as well as the home, of his ancestors (Gen 12:1, Jos 24:2); but it was specially through the influence of Moses that Jehovah was recognized as Israels God. The whole subsequent history up to the Exile is marked by frequent lapses into idolatry. We should therefore consider (1) the causes of Hebrew idolatry, (2) its nature, (3) the opposition it evoked, and (4) the teaching of NT. The subject is not free from difficulty, but in the light of modern Biblical study, the main outlines are clear.

1. Causes of Hebrew idolatry.(1) When, after the Exodus, the Israelites settled in Canaan among idolatrous peoples, they were far from having a pure monotheism (cf. Jdg 11:24). Their faith was crude. (a) Thus the idea that their neighbours gods had real existence, with rights of proprietorship in the invaded land, would expose them to risk of contamination. This would be the more likely because as yet they were not a united people. The tribes had at first to act independently, and in some cases were unable to dislodge the Canaanites (Jdg 1:1-36). (b) Their environment was thus perilous, and the danger was intensified by intermarriage with idolaters. Particularly after the monarchy was established did this become a snare. Solomon and Ahab by their marriage alliances introduced and promoted idol cults. It is significant that post-exilic legislation had this danger in view, and secured that exclusiveness so characteristic of mature Judaism (Ezr 10:2 f.). (c) The political relations with the great world-powers, Egypt and Assyria, would also tend to influence religious thought. This might account for the great heathen reaction under Manasseh.

(2) But, specially, certain ideas characteristic of Semitic religion generally had a strong influence. (a) Thus, on Israels settling in Canaan, the existing shrines, whether natural (hills, trees, wellseach understood to have its own tutelary baal or lord) or artificial (altars, stone pillars, wooden poles), would be quite innocently used for the worship of J [Note: Jahweh.] . (b) Idols, too, were used in domestic worship (Jdg 17:5; cf. Gen 31:19, 1Sa 19:13). (c) A darker feature, inimical to Jehovism, was the sanction of sexual impurity, cruelty and lust for blood (see below, 2 (1)).

Here then was all the apparatus for either the inappropriate worship of the true God, or the appropriate worship of false gods. That was why, later on in the eighth and seventh centuries b.c., when the earlier Jehovism was changing into typical Judaism, all such apparatus was felt to be wrong, and was attacked with increasing violence by prophets and reformers, as their conception of God became more clear and spiritual.

2. Its nature.(1) Common to all Canaanite religions, apparently, was the worship of Baal as representing the male principle in nature. Each nation, however, had its own provincial Baal with a specific name or titleChemosh of Moab, Molech of Ammon, Dagon of Philistia, Hadad-Rimmon of Syria. Associated with Baalism was the worship of Ashtoreth (Astarte), representing the female principle in nature. Two features of these religions were prostitution [of both sexes] (cf. Num 25:1 f., Deu 23:17 f., 1Ki 14:24, Hos 4:13, Amo 2:7, Bar 6:43) and human sacrifice (cf. 2Ki 17:17, Jer 7:31, and art. Topheth). Baalism was the chief Israelite idolatry, and sometimes, e.g. under Jezebel, it quite displaced Jehovism as the established religion.

(2) The underlying principle of all such religion was nature-worship. This helps to explain the calf-worship, represented as first introduced by Aaron, and at a later period established by Jeroboam i. In Egyptwhich also exercised a sinister influence on the Hebrewsreligion was largely of this type; but living animals, and not merely images of them, were there venerated. Connected with this idolatry is totemism, so widely traced even to-day. Some find a survival of early Semitic totemism in Eze 8:10.

(3) Another form of Hebrew nature-worship, astrolatry, was apparently of foreign extraction, and not earlier than the seventh cent. b.c. There is a striking allusion to this idolatry in Job 31:26-28. There were sun-images (2Ch 34:4), horses and chariots dedicated to the sun (2Ki 23:11); an eastward position was adopted in sun-worship (Eze 8:16). The expression queen of heaven in Jer 7:18; Jer 44:19 is obscure; but it probably points to this class of idolatry. In the heathen reaction under Manasseh the worship of the host of heaven is prominent (2Ki 17:16). Gad and Meni (Isa 65:11) were possibly star-gods. Related to such nature-worship perhaps was the mourning for Tammuz [Adonis] (Eze 8:14, Isa 17:10 RVm [Note: Revised Version margin.] ). Nature-worship of all kinds is by implication rebuked with amazing force and dignity in Gen 1:1-31, where the word God as Creator is written in big letters over the face of creation. Stars and animals and all things, it is insisted, are created things, not creators, and not self-existent.

(4) There are no clear traces of ancestor-worship in OT, but some find them in the teraphim (household gods) and in the reverence for tombs (e.g. Machpelah); in Isa 65:4 the context suggests idolatry.

(5) A curious mixture of idolatry and Jehovism existed in Samaria after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom. The foreign colonists brought with them the worship of various deities, and added that of J [Note: Jahweh.] (2Ki 17:24-41). These gods cannot be identified with certainty. By this mixed race and religion the Jews of the Return were seriously hindered, and there resulted the Samaritan schism which, in an attenuated form, still exists.

3. Opposition to idolatry.While fully allowing for the facts alluded to in 1, it is impossible to accountnot for mere temporary lapses, butfor the marked persistence of idolatry among the Hebrews, unless we recognize the growth which characterizes their laws and polity from the simple beginning up to the finished product. Laws do but express the highest sense of the communityhowever deeply that sense may be quickened by Divine revelationwhether those laws are viewed from the ethical or from the utilitarian standpoint. If the legislation embodied in the Pentateuch had all along been an acknowledged, even though a neglected, code, such a complete neglect of it during long periods, taken with the total silence about its distinctive features in the sayings and writings of the most enlightened and devoted men, would present phenomena quite inexplicable. It is needful, therefore, to observe that the true development from original Mosaism, though perhaps never quite neglected by the leaders of the nation, does not appear distinctly in any legislation until the closing decades of the 7th cent. b.c. This development continued through and beyond the Exile. Until the Deuteronomic epoch began, the enactments of Mosaism in regard to idolatry were clearly of the slenderest proportions. There is good reason for thinking that the Second of the Ten Commandments is not in its earliest form; and it is probable that Exo 34:10-28 (from the document J [Note: Jahwist.] , i.e. c [Note: circa, about.] . b.c. 850) contains an earlier Decalogue, embodying such traditional Mosaic legislation as actually permitted the use of simple images (distinct from molten cultus-idols, Exo 34:17). Such development accounts for the phenomena presented by the history of idolatry in Israel. For example, Samuel sacrifices in one of those high places (1Sa 9:12 ff.) which Hezekiah removed as idolatrous (2Ki 18:4). Elijah, the stern foe of Baalism, does not denounce the calf-worship attacked later on by Hosea. Even Isaiah can anticipate the erection in Egypt of a pillar (Isa 19:19) like those which Josiah in the next century destroyed (2Ki 23:14). As with reforming prophets, so with reforming kings. Jehu in Israel extirpates Baalism, but leaves the calf-worship alone (2Ki 10:28 f.). In Judah, where heathenism went to greater lengths, but where wholesome reaction was equally strong, Asa, an iconoclastic reformer, tolerates high places (1Ki 15:12-14; cf. Jehoshaphats attitude, 1Ki 22:43). It was the work of the 8th cent. prophets that prepared the way for the remarkable reformation under Josiah (2Ki 22:1-20; 2Ki 23:1-37). Josiahs reign was epoch-making in everything connected with Hebrew religious thought and practice. To this period must be assigned that Deuteronomic legislation which completed the earlier attempts at reformation. This legislation aims at the complete destruction of everything suggestive of idolatry. A code, otherwise humane, is on this point extremely severe: idolatry was punishable by death (Deu 17:2-7; cf. Deu 6:15; Deu 8:19; Deu 13:6-10 etc.). Such a view of idolatry exhibits in its correct perspective the teaching of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the elaborate Levitical enactments, the exilic and post-exilic literature. Distinctive Judaism has succeeded to Jehovism, monotheism has replaced henotheism, racial and religious exclusiveness has supplanted the earlier eclecticism. The Exile marks practically the end of Hebrew idolatry. The lesson has been learned by heart.

A striking proof of the great change is given by the Maccaban war, caused by the attempt of Antiochus Epiphanes to force idolatry on the very nation which in an earlier period had been only too prone to accept it. Relations with Rome in the 1Jam 2:1-26 nd centuries a.d. illustrate the same temper. Had not Caligulas death so soon followed his insane proposal to erect his statue in the Temple, the Jews would assuredly have offered the most determined resistance; a century later they did actively resist Rome when Hadrian desecrated the site of the ruined Temple.

4. Teaching of the NT.As idolatry was thus nonexistent in Judaism in the time of Christ, it is not surprising that He does not allude to it. St. Paul, however, came into direct conflict with it. The word itself (eidlolatreia) occurs first in his writings; we have his illuminating teaching on the subject in Rom 1:18-32, Act 17:22-31, 1Co 8:1-13 etc. But idolatry in Christian doctrine has a wider significance than the service of material idols. Anything that interferes between the soul and its God is idolatrous, and is to be shunned (cf. Eph 5:5, Php 3:19, 1Jn 5:20 f., and the context of Gal 5:20 etc.). See also art. Images.

H. F. B. Compston.

Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible

Idolatry

IDOL, IDOLATRY

These things have been generally confined to the idea of the worshipping of creatures or images, but, in fact, may be properly applied to every thing which men set up in their hearts to regard, and which tend to the lessening their reverence for the Lord. (Exo 20:3-4; Eze 14:1; Eze 14:5)

Fuente: The Poor Mans Concordance and Dictionary to the Sacred Scriptures

Idolatry

-dola-tri ( , teraphm, household idols, idolatry; , eidololatrea): There is ever in the human mind a craving for visible forms to express religious conceptions, and this tendency does not disappear with the acceptance, or even with the constant recognition, of pure spiritual truths (see IMAGES). Idolatry originally meant the worship of idols, or the worship of false gods by means of idols, but came to mean among the Old Testament Hebrews any worship of false gods, whether by images or otherwise, and finally the worship of Yahweh through visible symbols (Hos 8:5, Hos 8:6; Hos 10:5); and ultimately in the New Testament idolatry came to mean, not only the giving to any creature or human creation the honor or devotion which belonged to God alone, but the giving to any human desire a precedence over God’s will (1Co 10:14; Gal 5:20; Col 3:5; 1Pe 4:3). The neighboring gods of Phoenicia, Canaan, Moab – Baal, Melkart, Astarte, Chemosh, Moloch, etc. – were particularly attractive to Jerusalem, while the old Semitic calf-worship seriously affected the state religion of the Northern Kingdom (see GOLDEN CALF). As early as the Assyrian and Babylonian periods (8th and 7th centuries bc), various deities from the Tigris and Euphrates had intruded themselves – the worship of Tammuz becoming a little later the most popular and seductive of all (Eze 8:14) – while the worship of the sun, moon, stars and signs of the Zodiac became so intensely fascinating that these were introduced even into the temple itself (2Ki 17:16; 2Ki 21:3-7; 2Ki 23:4, 2Ki 23:12; Jer 19:13; Eze 8:16; Amo 5:26).

The special enticements to idolatry as offered by these various cults were found in their deification of natural forces and their appeal to primitive human desires, especially the sexual; also through associations produced by intermarriage and through the appeal to patriotism, when the help of some cruel deity was sought in time of war. Baal and Astarte worship, which was especially attractive, was closely associated with fornication and drunkenness (Amo 2:7, Amo 2:8; compare 1Ki 14:23 f), and also appealed greatly to magic and soothsaying (e.g. Isa 2:6; Isa 3:2; Isa 8:19).

Sacrifices to the idols were offered by fire (Hos 4:13); libations were poured out (Isa 57:6; Jer 7:18); the first-fruits of the earth and tithes were presented (Hos 2:8); tables of food were set before them (Isa 65:11); the worshippers kissed the idols or threw them kisses (1Ki 19:18; Hos 13:2; Job 31:27); stretched out their hands in adoration (Isa 44:20); knelt or prostrated themselves before them and sometimes danced about the altar, gashing themselves with knives (1Ki 18:26, 1Ki 18:28; for a fuller summary see EB).

Even earlier than the Babylonian exile the Hebrew prophets taught that Yahweh was not only superior to all other gods, but reigned alone as God, other deities being nonentities (Lev 19:4; Isa 2:8, Isa 2:18, Isa 2:20; Isa 19:1, Isa 19:3; Isa 31:7; Isa 44:9-20). The severe satire of this period proves that the former fear of living demons supposed to inhabit the idols had disappeared. These prophets also taught that the temple, ark and sacrifices were not essential to true spiritual worship (e.g. Jer 3:16; Amo 5:21-25). These prophecies produced a strong reaction against the previously popular idol-worship, though later indications of this worship are not infrequent (Eze 14:1-8; Isa 42:17). The Maccabean epoch placed national heroism plainly on the side of the one God, Yahweh; and although Greek and Egyptian idols were worshipped in Gaza and Ascalon and other half-heathen communities clear down to the 5th or 6th century of the Christian era, yet in orthodox centers like Jerusalem these were despised and repudiated utterly from the 2nd century bc onward. See also GOLDEN CALF; GODS; IMAGES; TERAPHIM.

Literature

Wm. Wake, A Discourse concerning the Nature of Idolatry, 1688; W.R. Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites; E.B. Tylor, Primitive Culture; J.G. Frazer, Golden Bough (3 vols); L.R. Farnell, Evolution of Religion, 1905; Baudissin, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte; Beathgen, Der Gott Israels u. die Gtter der Heiden, 1888.

Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

Idolatry

In giving a summary view of the forms of idolatry which are mentioned in the Bible, it is expedient to exclude all notice of those illegal images which were indeed designed to bear some symbolical reference to the worship of the true God, but which partook of the nature of idolatry; such, for example, as the golden calf of Aaron (cf. Neh 9:18); those of Jeroboam; the singular ephods of Gideon and Micah (Jdg 8:27; Jdg 17:5); and the Teraphim.

Idolatry was the most heinous offence against the Mosaic law, which is most particular in defining the acts that constitute the crime, and severe in apportioning the punishment. Thus, it is forbidden to make any image of a strange god to prostrate oneself before such an image, or before those natural objects which were also worshipped without images, as the sun and moon (Deu 4:19); to suffer the altars, images, or groves of idols to stand (Exo 34:13); or to keep the gold and silver of which their images were made, and to suffer it to enter the house (Deu 7:25-26); to sacrifice to idols, most especially to offer human sacrifices; to eat of the victims offered to idols by others; to prophesy in the name of a strange god; and to adopt any of the rites used in idolatrous worship, and to transfer them to the worship of the Lord (Deu 12:30-31). As for punishment, the law orders that if an individual committed idolatry he should be stoned to death (Deu 17:2-5); that if a town was guilty of this sin, its inhabitants and cattle should be slain, and its spoils burnt together with the town itself (Deu 13:12-18). To what degree also the whole spirit of the Old Testament is abhorrent from idolatry, is evident (besides legal prohibitions, prophetic denunciations, and energetic appeals like that in Isa 44:9-20) from the literal sense of the terms which are used as synonyms for idols and their worship. Thus idols are called the inane (Lev 19:4); vanities (Act 14:15; Jer 2:5); nothing (Isa 66:3); abominations (1Ki 11:5); and their worship is called whoredom.

The early existence of idolatry is evinced by Jos 24:2, where it is stated that Abram and his immediate ancestors dwelling in Mesopotamia ‘served other gods.’ The terms in Gen 31:53, and particularly the plural form of the verb, seem to show that some members of Terah’s family had each different gods. From Jos 24:14, and Eze 20:8, we learn that the Israelites, during their sojourn in Egypt, were seduced to worship the idols of that country; although we possess no particular account of their transgression. In Amo 5:25, and Act 7:42, it is stated that they committed idolatry in their journey through the wilderness; and in Num 25:1, sq., that they worshipped the Moabite idol Baal-peor at Shittim. After the Israelites had obtained possession of the Promised Land, we find that they were continually tempted to adopt the idolatries of the Canaanite nations with which they came in contact. The book of Judges enumerates several successive relapses into this sin. The gods which they served during this period were Baal and Ashtoreth, and their modifications; and Syria, Sidon, Moab, Ammon, and Philistia, are named in Jdg 10:6, as the sources from which they derived their idolatries. Then Samuel appears to have exercised a beneficial influence in weaning the people from this folly (1 Samuel 7); and the worship of the Lord acquired a gradually increasing hold on the nation until the time of Solomon, who was induced in his old age to permit the establishment of idolatry at Jerusalem. On the division of the nation, the kingdom of Israel (besides adhering to the sin of Jeroboam to the last) was specially devoted to the worship of Baal, which Ahab had renewed and carried to an unprecedented height; and although the energetic measures adopted by Jehu, and afterwards by the priest Jehoiada, to suppress this idolatry, may have been the cause why there is no later express mention of Baal, yet it is evident from 2Ki 13:6; 2Ki 17:10, that the worship of Asherah continued until the deportation of the ten tribes. This event also introduced the peculiar idolatries of the Assyrian colonists into Samaria. In the kingdom of Judah, on the other hand, idolatry continued during the two succeeding reigns; was suppressed for a time by Asa (1Ki 15:12); was revived in consequence of Joram marrying into the family of Ahab; was continued by Ahaz; received a check from Hezekiah; broke out again more violently under Manasseh; until Josiah made the most vigorous attempt to suppress it. But even Josiah’s efforts to restore the worship of the Lord were ineffectual; for the later prophets, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, still continue to utter reproofs against idolatry. Nor did the capture of Jerusalem under Jehoiachim awaken this peculiarly sensual people; for Ezekiel (1 Kings 8) shows that those who were left in Jerusalem under the government of Zedekiah had given themselves up to many kinds of idolatry; and Jeremiah (Jer 44:8) charges those inhabitants of Judah who had found an asylum in Egypt, with having turned to serve the gods of that country. On the restoration of the Jews after the Babylonian captivity, they appear, for the first time in their history, to have been permanently impressed with a sense of the degree to which their former idolatries had been an insult to God, and a degradation of their own understandingan advance in the culture of the nation which may in part be ascribed to the influence of the Persian abhorrence of images, as well as to the effects of the exile as a chastisement. In this state they continued until Antiochus Epiphanes made the last and fruitless attempt to establish the Greek idolatry in Palestine (1 Maccabees 1).

The particular forms of idolatry into which the Israelites fell are described under the names of the different gods which they worshipped [ASHTORETH, BAAL, etc.]: the general features of their idolatry require a brief notice here. According to Movers, the religion of all the idolatrous Syro-Arabian nations was a deification of the powers and laws of nature, an adoration of those objects in which these powers are considered to abide, and by which they act. The deity is thus the invisible power in nature itself, that power which manifests itself as the generator, sustainer, and destroyer of its works. This view admits of two modifications: either the separate powers of nature are regarded as so many different gods, and the objects by which these powers are manifestedas the sun, moon, etc.are regarded as their images and supporters; or the power of nature is considered to be one and indivisible, and only to differ as to the forms under which it manifests itself. Both views coexist in almost all religions. The most simple and ancient notion, however, is that which conceives the deity to be in a human form, as male and female, and which considers the male sex to be the type of its active, generative, and destructive power; while that passive power of nature whose function is to conceive and bring forth, is embodied under the female form. The human form and the diversity of sex lead naturally to the different ages of lifeto the old man and the youth, the matron and the virginaccording to the modifications of the conception; and the myths which represent the influences, the changes, the laws, and the relations of these natural powers under the sacred histories of such gods, constitute a harmonious development of such a religious system.

Those who saw the deity manifested by, or conceived him as resident in, any natural objects, could not fail to regard the sun and moon as the potent rulers of day and night, and the sources of those influences on which all animated nature depends. Hence star-worship forms a prominent feature in all the false religions mentioned in the Bible. Of this character chiefly were the Egyptian, the Canaanite, the Chaldean, and the Persian religions. The Persian form of astrolatry, however, deserves to be distinguished from the others; for it allowed no images nor temples of the god, but worshipped him in his purest symbol, fire. It is understood that this form is alluded to in most of those passages which mention the worship of the sun, moon, and heavenly host, by incense, on heights (2Ki 23:5; 2Ki 23:12; Jer 19:13). The other form of astrolatry, in which the idea of the sun, moon, and planets is blended with the worship of the god in the form of an idol, and with the addition of a mythology (as may be seen in the relations of Baal and his cognates to the sun), easily degenerates into lasciviousness and cruel rites.

The images of the gods were, as to material, of stone, wood, silver, and gold. Those of metal had a trunk or stock of wood, and were covered with plates of silver or gold (Jer 10:4); or were cast. The general rites of idolatrous worship consist in burning incense; in offering bloodless sacrifices, as the dough-cakes and libations in Jer 7:18, and the raisin-cakes in Hos 3:1; in sacrificing victims (1Ki 18:26), and especially in human sacrifices [MOLOCH]. These offerings were made on high places, hills, and roofs of houses, or in shady groves and valleys. Some forms of idolatrous worship had libidinous orgies [ASHTORETH]. Divinations, oracles (2Ki 1:2), and rabdomancy (Hos 4:12) form a part of many of these false religions. The priesthood was generally a numerous body; and where persons of both sexes were attached to the service of any god, that service was infamously immoral. It is remarkable that the Pentateuch makes no mention of any temple of idols; afterwards we read often of such.

Fuente: Popular Cyclopedia Biblical Literature

Idolatry

The worship of idols – a sin which is mentioned as committed after the flood. There seems to have been a universal giving up of the knowledge of the true God. Paul, speaking of men, says that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, notwithstanding that what may be known of God in nature, His eternal power and Godhead, was manifested to them. They degraded the worship of the true God everywhere, and idolatry became universal. In this, man had no excuse. Images were made like corruptible man, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Rom 1:20-23. From this state Abram was rescued by the God of glory appearing to him. Scripture shows the folly of a man cutting down a tree, and burning part of it to cook his food and to warm himself, and yet making a god of the rest, and worshipping it, Isa 44:14-17; and yet Israel, to whom God had revealed Himself, not only as Creator but in redemption, adopted these wicked follies. There were also molten images and images of stone.

Imaginary creatures were regarded as gods, and these were feared and propitiated. Some believed in a fetish of good and a fetish of evil. Others had an elaborate system of mythology, as the Greeks, with husbands and wives and sons and daughters of the gods and goddesses. Man himself was exalted by some into a god, as with the Greeks and the Romans.

In Israel at first there might have been the thought that the idol was only a representative of God, just as the Egyptians professed to have representations of their unseen gods. When the golden calf was made Aaron built an altar before it, and said, “To-morrow is a feast to Jehovah;” but the people said, “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” Exo 32:4-5. Yet they had been commanded to make no graven image, because they saw no similitude when God spake to them at Horeb. This species of idolatry is seen further developed in the case of Micah, who had a house of gods. See MICAH.

The secret of all the abominations in idolatry is, that Satan is the grand mover of it. To Israel it was said that they were no more to offer sacrifices unto demons. Lev 17:7. They “sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto demons .” Psa 106:37. They made their children pass through the fire to Molech, 2Ki 23:10; Eze 23:37; Eze 23:39; “slaying the children in the valleys under the clefts of the rocks.” Isa 57:5.

As to the sacrificing being to demons, the same thing is said of the idolatry at Corinth, with its Grecian mythology. 1Co 10:20. Satan being the real promoter of it all, he knows how to lead a poor unintelligent heathen to be satisfied with an imaginary fetish; the Greeks and Romans to be pleased with their stately statues; and the Brahmins and Hindus to pride themselves in their superior and refined mysticism. Satan has also succeeded in introducing into the professing church the worship of the Virgin Mary and of the saints. To this must be added another species of idolatry to which Christians are sometimes enticed, namely, that of letting anything but Christ have the first place in the heart; for in Him God is revealed, He “is the image of the invisible God” – “He is the true God.” “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” 1Jn 5:21. The word is from , ‘that which is seen, ‘ and covetousness is specially characterised as idolatry. Col 3:5.

Fuente: Concise Bible Dictionary

Idolatry

Wicked practices of:

– Human sacrifices

Lev 18:21; Lev 20:2-5; Deu 12:31; Deu 18:10; 2Ki 3:26-27; 2Ki 16:3; 2Ki 17:17-18; 2Ki 21:6; 2Ki 23:10; 2Ch 28:3; 2Ch 33:6; Psa 106:37-38; Isa 57:5; Jer 7:31; Jer 19:4-7; Jer 32:35; Eze 16:20-21; Eze 20:26; Eze 20:31; Eze 23:37; Eze 23:39; Mic 6:7

– Practices of, relating to the dead

Deu 14:1

– Licentiousness of

Exo 32:6; Exo 32:25; Num 25:1-3; 1Ki 14:24; 1Ki 15:12; 2Ki 17:30; 2Ki 23:7; Eze 16:17; Eze 23:1-44; Hos 4:12-14; Amo 2:8; Mic 1:7; Rom 1:24; Rom 1:26-27; 1Co 10:7-8; 1Pe 4:3-4; Rev 2:14; Rev 2:20-22; Rev 9:20-21; Rev 14:8; Rev 17:1-6

Other customs of:

– Offered burnt offerings

Exo 32:6; 1Ki 18:26; Act 14:13

– Offered libations

Isa 57:6; Isa 65:11; Jer 7:18; Jer 19:13; Jer 32:29; Jer 44:17; Jer 44:19; Jer 44:25; Eze 20:28

– Offerings of wine

Deu 32:38

– Offerings of blood

Psa 16:4; Zec 9:7

– Meat offerings

Isa 57:6; Jer 7:18; Jer 44:17; Eze 16:19

– Peace offerings

Exo 32:6

– Incense burned on altars

1Ki 12:33; 2Ch 30:14; 2Ch 34:25; Isa 65:3; Jer 1:16; Jer 11:12; Jer 11:17; Jer 44:3; Jer 48:35; Eze 16:18; Eze 23:41; Hos 11:2

– Prayers to idols

Jdg 10:14; Isa 44:17; Isa 45:20; Isa 46:7; Jon 1:5

– Praise

Jdg 16:24; Dan 5:4

– Singing and dancing

Exo 32:18-19

– Music

Dan 3:5-7

– Cutting the flesh

1Ki 18:28; Jer 41:5

– Kissing

1Ki 19:18; Hos 13:2; Job 31:27

– Bowing

1Ki 19:18; 2Ki 5:18

– Tithes and gifts

2Ki 23:11; Dan 11:38; Amo 4:4-5

Annual feasts

1Ki 12:32; Eze 18:6; Eze 18:11-12; Eze 18:15; Eze 22:9; Dan 3:2-3

Objects of:

– Sun, moon, and stars

Deu 4:19; 2Ki 17:16; 2Ki 21:3; 2Ki 21:5; 2Ch 33:3; 2Ch 33:5; Job 31:26-28; Jer 7:17-20; Jer 8:2; Eze 8:15-16; Zep 1:4-5; Act 7:42

– Images of angels

Col 2:18

– Images of animals

Rom 1:23

– Gods of Egypt

Exo 12:12

– Golden calf

Exo 32:4

– Brazen serpent

2Ki 18:4

– Net and drag

Hab 1:16

– Pictures

Num 33:52; Isa 2:16

– Pictures on walls

Eze 8:10

– Ear-Rings

Gen 35:4 Shrine

Denunciations against

– General references

Gen 35:2; Exo 20:3-6; Exo 20:23; Deu 5:7-9; Exo 23:13; 1Co 10:7; Lev 19:4; Lev 26:1; Lev 26:30; Deu 16:21-22; Deu 4:15-23; Deu 4:25-28; Deu 11:16-17; Deu 11:28; Deu 28:15-68; Deu 30:17-18; Deu 31:16-21; Deu 31:29; Deu 32:15-26; 1Ki 9:6-9; Deu 12:31; Deu 27:15; Exo 34:17; 1Sa 15:23; Job 31:26-28; Psa 16:4; Psa 44:20-21; Psa 59:8; Psa 79:6; Psa 81:9; Psa 97:7; Isa 42:17; Isa 45:16; Joe 3:12; Jon 2:8; Mic 5:15; Hab 1:16; Act 15:29; Act 15:20; 1Co 8:1-13; Act 17:16; Rom 1:25; 1Co 6:9-10; 1Co 10:14; 1Co 10:20-22; 1Jn 5:21; Rev 21:8; Rev 22:15 Iconoclasm

Warnings against, and punishments of

Deu 17:2-5; 2Ch 28:23; Neh 9:27-37; Psa 78:58-64; Psa 106:34-42; Isa 1:29-31; Isa 2:6-22; Isa 30:22; Isa 57:3-13; Isa 65:3-4; Jer 1:15-16; Jer 3:1-11; Jer 5:1-17; Jer 7; Jer 8:1-2; Jer 8:19; Jer 13:9-27; Jer 16; Jer 17:1-6; Jer 18:13-15; Jer 19:1-15; Jer 22:9; Jer 32:35; Jer 44; Jer 48:8; Eze 6:1-14; Eze 7:19; Eze 8:5-18; Eze 9:1-11; Eze 14:1-14; Eze 16; Eze 20; Eze 22:4; Eze 23; Eze 44:10-12; Hos 1:2; Hos 2:2-5; Hos 4:12-19; Hos 5:1-3; Hos 8:5-14; Hos 9:10; Hos 10:1-15; Hos 11:2; Hos 12:11-14; Hos 13:1-4; Hos 14:8; Amo 3:14; Amo 4:4-5; Amo 5:5; Mic 1:1-9; Mic 5:12-14; Mic 6:16; Zep 1; Mal 2:11-13

Prophecies relating to

Exo 12:12; Num 33:4; Isa 2:18; Isa 2:20; Isa 31:7; Isa 17:7-8; Isa 19:1; Isa 27:9; Jer 10:11; Jer 10:15; Jer 51:44; Jer 51:47; Jer 51:52; Isa 21:9; Eze 43:7-9; Hos 10:2; Mic 5:13; Zep 2:11; Zec 13:2

Folly of

Deu 4:28; 1Ki 18:27; Jdg 6:31; 1Sa 5:3-4; 2Ch 25:15; 1Sa 12:21; 2Ki 3:13; Isa 16:12; Isa 36:18; 2Ch 28:22-23; Psa 115:4-5; Psa 115:8; Psa 96:5; Psa 135:15-18; Isa 2:8; Isa 40:12-26; Isa 41:23-24; Isa 41:26-29; Isa 43:9; Isa 44:9-20; Isa 45:20; Isa 46:1-2; Isa 46:6-7; Isa 47:12-15; 2Ki 19:18; Isa 37:19; Zec 10:2; Isa 57:13; Jer 2:28; Deu 32:37-38; Jdg 10:14; Jer 10:3-16; Jer 48:13; Jer 51:17; Hab 2:18-19; Jer 11:12; Jer 14:22; Jer 16:19-20; Hos 8:5-6; Exo 32:20; Psa 106:20; Act 14:15; Act 17:22-23; Act 17:29; Rom 1:22-23; 1Co 8:4; 1Co 12:2; Gal 4:8; Rev 9:20; Dan 5:23

Fuente: Nave’s Topical Bible

Idolatry

Idolatry. The worship of other objects or beings than the one true God. Probably the heavenly bodies were among the earliest objects of idolatrous reverence. Thus the sun and moon, the Baal and Astarte of Phnician worship, were regarded as embodying these active and passive principles respectively. And the idol deities of other nations bore similar characters. It is easy to see how such worship would be tainted by licentiousness of thought, and that the rites of it would be immoral and obscene. Unnatural lusts would be indulged, till the frightful picture drawn by the apostle Paul of heathenism was abundantly realized among even the most refined nations of antiquity. Rom 1:18-32. It was in order to guard the Israelites against such abominable things that many of the enactments of the Mosaic law were directed.

Deu 22:5. The ancient Hebrews had no fixed form of idolatry; but they frequently imitated the superstitions of other nations. Gen 31:30; Jos 24:23; Jdg 2:11-12; Jdg 8:27; Jdg 17:5; Jdg 18:30-31. Solomon, seduced by his strange wives, caused temples to be erected in honor of their gods, and himself impiously offered incense to them. 1Ki 11:6-7. Under the reign of Ahab, idolatry reached its greatest height; and the impious Jezebel endeavored to destroy the worship of Jehovah. Even the sacrifice of children, forbidden as it was under the most severe and summary penalties, became common. Lev 20:2; Jer 7:31; Eze 16:21. The severe chastisement of the captivity in a great measure uprooted Hebrew idolatry. Perhaps those who went into Egypt were the worst class of the Jews. Jer 44:15-30. Yet even there idolatry did not last among them. And, though after the return there was much lukewarmness shown, and alliances were made afresh with ungodly nations,, and false prophets appeared, Ezr 9:1-2; Neh 6:14, yet so far as we can judge by the national covenant, Neh 10:1-39, and the general tone of the post-exilian prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, idolatry ceased to nourish. In the New Testament the Christians, who were continually brought into contact with idolaters through the extent of the Roman empire, were cautioned as to their behavior. Not only were they to abhor idol-worship itself, but they were also to abstain from meats which had been offered to idols. Act 15:29. It was true that the meat itself was not thereby defiled, for an idol was nothing; and therefore Christians need not be too particular in inquiring into the history of what was set before them But, if any one apprised them that it had been so presented, they were not to eat, lest an occasion of offence should be given to a weak brother or to a censorious heathen. 1Co 8:4-13; 1Co 10:25-32.

Fuente: People’s Dictionary of the Bible

Idolatry

Idolatry. Idolatry, strictly speaking, denotes the worship of deity in a visible form, whether the images to which homage is paid are symbolical representations of the true God or of the false divinities, which have been made the objects of worship in his stead.

I. History of idolatry among the Jews. — The first undoubted allusion to idolatry or idolatrous customs in the Bible, is in the account of Rachel’s stealing her father’s teraphim. Gen 31:19.

During their long residence in Egypt, the Israelites defiled themselves with the idols of the land, and it was long before the taint was removed. Jos 24:14; Eze 20:7.

In the wilderness, they clamored for some visible shape, in which they might worship the God, who had brought them out of Egypt, Exo 32:1, until Aaron made the calf, the embodiment of Apis and emblem of the productive power of nature.

During the lives of Joshua and the elders who outlived him, they kept true to their allegiance; but the generation following, who knew not Jehovah nor the works he had done for Israel, swerved from the plain path of their fathers and were caught in the toils of the foreigner. Jdg 2:1. From this time forth, their history becomes little more than a chronicle of the inevitable sequence of offence and punishment. Jdg 2:12; Jdg 2:14. By turns, each conquering nation strove to establish the worship of its national God.

In later times, the practice of secret idolatry was carried to greater lengths. Images were set up on the corn-floors, in the wine-vats, and behind the doors of private houses, Isa 57:8; Hos 9:1-2, and to check this tendency, the statute in Deu 27:15 was originally promulgated.

Under Samuel’s administration, idolatry was publicly renounced, 1Sa 7:3-6, but in the reign of Solomon, all this was forgotten, even Solomon’s own heart being turned after other gods. 1Ki 11:14. Rehoboam perpetuated the worst features of Solomon’s idolatry, 1Ki 14:22-24, erecting golden calves at Beth-el and at Dan, and by this crafty state’ policy, severed forever the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. 1Ki 12:26-33.

The successors of Jeroboam followed in his steps, till Ahab. The conquest of the ten tribes by Shalmaneser was, for them, the last scene of the drama of abominations, which had been enacted uninterruptedly for upwards of 250 years.

Under Hezekiah, a great reform was inaugurated, that was not confined to Judah and Benjamin, but spread throughout Ephraim and Manasseh, 2Ch 31:1, and to all external appearances, idolatry was extirpated. But the reform extended little below the surface. Isa 29:13.

With the death of Josiah, ended the last effort to revive among the people a purer ritual, if not a purer faith. The lamp of David, which had long shed but a struggling ray, flickered for a while, and then went out in the darkness of Babylonian Captivity.

Though the conquests of Alexander caused Greek influence to be felt, yet after the captivity, better condition of things prevailed, and the Jews never again fell into idolatry. The erection of synagogues had been assigned as a reason for the comparative purity of the Jewish worship after the captivity, while another cause has been discovered in the hatred for images acquired by the Jews in their intercourse with the Persians.

II. Objects of idolatry. — The sun and moon were early selected as outward symbols of all-pervading power, and the worship of the heavenly bodies was not only the most ancient, but the most prevalent system of idolatry. Taking its rise in the plains of Chaldea, it spread through Egypt, Greece, Scythia, and even Mexico and Ceylon. Compare Deu 4:19; Deu 17:3; Job 31:20-28. In the later times of the monarchy, the planets or the zodiacal signs received, next to the sun and moon, their share of popular adoration. 2Ki 23:5.

Beast-worship, as exemplified in the calves of Jeroboam, has already been alluded to of pure hero-worship among the Semitic races we find no trace. The singular reverence with which trees have been honored is not without example in the history of the Hebrew. The terebinth (oak) at Mamre, beneath which Abraham built an altar, Gen 12:7; Gen 13:18, and the memorial grove planted by him at Beersheba, Gen 21:33, were intimately connected with patriarchal worship.

Mountains and high places were chosen spots for offering sacrifice and incense to idols, 1Ki 11:7; 1Ki 14:23, and the retirement of gardens and the thick shade of woods offered great attractions to their worshippers. 2Ki 16:4; Isa 1:29; Hos 4:13. The host of heaven was worshipped on the house-top. 2Ki 23:12; Jer 19:3; Jer 32:29; Zep 1:5.

(The modern objects of idolatry are less gross than the ancient, but are none the less idols. Whatever of wealth or honor or pleasure is loved and sought before God and righteousness becomes an object of idolatry. — Editor).

III. Punishment of idolatry. — Idolatry to an Israelite was a state offence, 1Sa 15:23, a political crime of the greatest character, high treason against the majesty of his king. The first and second commandments are directed against idolatry of every form. Individuals and communities were equally amenable to the rigorous code.

The individual offender was devoted to destruction, Exo 22:20, his nearest relatives were not only bound to denounce him and deliver him up to punishment, Deu 13:2-10, but their hands were to strike the first blow, when, on the evidence of two witnesses at least, he was stoned. Deu 17:2-5.

To attempt to seduce others to false worship was a crime of equal enormity. Deu 13:6-10.

IV. Attractions of idolatry. — Many have wondered why the Israelites were so easily led away from the true God, into the worship of idols.

(1) Visible, outward signs, with shows, pageants, parades, have an attraction to the natural heart, which often fail to perceive the unseen spiritual realities.

(2) But the greatest attraction seems to have been in licentious revelries and obscene orgies with which the worship of the Oriental idols was observed. (This worship, appealing to every sensual passion, joined with the attractions of wealth and fashion and luxury, naturally was a great temptation to a simple, restrained, agricultural people, whose worship and law demands the greatest purity of heart and of life. — Editor).

Fuente: Smith’s Bible Dictionary

Idolatry

whence Eng., “idolatry,” (from eidolon, and latreia, “service”), is found in 1Co 10:14; Gal 5:20; Col 3:5; and, in the plural, in 1Pe 4:3.

Heathen sacrifices were sacrificed to demons, 1Co 10:19; there was a dire reality in the cup and table of demons and in the involved communion with demons. In Rom 1:22-25, “idolatry,” the sin of the mind against God (Eph 2:3), and immorality, sins of the flesh, are associated, and are traced to lack of the acknowledgment of God and of gratitude to Him. An “idolater” is a slave to the depraved ideas his idols represent, Gal 4:8-9; and thereby, to divers lusts, Tit 3:3 (see Notes on Thess. by Hogg and Vine, p. 44).

Fuente: Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament Words

Idolatry

from , composed of , image, and , to serve, the worship and adoration of false gods; or the giving those honours to creatures, or the works of man’s hands, which are only due to God. Several have written of the origin and causes of idolatry; among the rest, Vossius, Selden, Godwyn, Tenison, and Faber; but it is still a doubt who was the first author of it. It is generally allowed, however, that it had not its beginning till after the deluge; and many are of opinion, that Belus, who is supposed to be the same with Nimrod, was the first man that was deified. But whether they had not paid divine honours to the heavenly bodies before that time, cannot be determined; our acquaintance with those remote times being extremely slender. The first mention we find made of idolatry is where Rachel is said to have taken the idols of her father; for though the meaning of the Hebrew word , be disputed, yet it is pretty evident they were idols. Laban calls them his gods, and Jacob calls them strange gods, and looks on them as abominations. The original idolatry by image worship is by many attributed to the age of Eber, B.C. 2247, about a hundred and one years after the deluge, according to the Hebrew chronology; four hundred and one years according to the Samaritan; and five hundred and thirty-one years according to the Septuagint; though most of the fathers place it no higher than that of Serug; which seems to be the more probable opinion, considering that for the first hundred and thirty-four years of Eber’s life all mankind dwelt in a body together; during which time it is not reasonable to suppose that idolatry broke in upon them; then some time must be allowed after the dispersion of the several nations, which were but small at the beginning, to increase and settle themselves; so that if idolatry was introduced in Eber’s time, it must have been toward the end of his life, and could not well have prevailed so universally, and with that obstinacy which some authors have imagined. Terah, the father of Abraham, who lived at Ur, in Chaldea, about B.C. 2000, was unquestionably an idolater; for he is expressly said in Scripture to have served other gods. The authors of the Universal History think, that the origin and progress of idolatry are plainly pointed out to us in the account which Moses gives of Laban’s and Jacob’s parting, Gen 31:44, &c. From the custom once introduced of erecting monuments in memory of any solemn covenants, the transition was easy into the notion, that some deity took its residence in them, in order to punish the first aggressors; and this might be soon improved by an ignorant and degenerate world, till not only birds, beasts, stocks, and stones, but sun, moon, and stars, were called into the same office; though used, perhaps, at first, by the designing part of mankind, as scare-crows, to overawe the ignorant.

Sanchoniathon, who wrote his Phenician Antiquities apparently with a view to apologize for idolatry, traces its origin to the descendants of Cain, the elder branch, who began with the worship of the sun, and afterward added a variety of other methods of idolatrous worship: proceeding to deify the several parts of nature, and men after their death; and even to consecrate the plants shooting out of the earth, which the first men judged to be gods, and worshipped as those that sustained the lives of themselves and of their posterity. The Chaldean priests, in process of time, being by their situation early addicted to celestial observations, instead of conceiving as they ought to have done concerning the omnipotence of the Creator and Mover of the heavenly bodies, fell into the impious error of esteeming them as gods, and the immediate governors of the world, in subordination, however, to the Deity, who was invisible except by his works, and the effects of his power. Concluding that God created the stars and great luminaries for the government of the world, partakers with himself and as his ministers, they thought it but just and natural that they should be honoured and extolled, and that it was the will of God they should be magnified and worshipped. Accordingly, they erected temples, or sacella, to the stars, in which they sacrificed and bowed down before them, esteeming them as a kind of mediators between God and man. Impostors afterward arose, who gave out, that they had received express orders from God himself concerning the manner in which particular heavenly bodies should be represented, and the nature and ceremonies of the worship which was to be paid them. When they proceeded to worship wood, stone, or metal, formed and fashioned by their own hands, they were led to apprehend, that these images had been, in some way or other, animated or informed with a supernatural power by supernatural means; though Dr. Prideaux imagines, that, being at a loss to know how to address themselves to the planets when they were below the horizon, and invisible, they recurred to the use of images. But it will be sufficient to suppose, that they were persuaded that each star or planet was actuated by an intelligence; and that the virtues of the heavenly body were infused into the image that represented it. It is certain, that the sentient nature and divinity of the sun, moon, and stars, was strenuously asserted by the philosophers, particularly by Pythagoras and his followers, and by the Stoics, as well as believed by the common people, and was, indeed, the very foundation of the Pagan idolatry. The heavenly bodies were the first deities of all the idolatrous nations, were esteemed eternal, sovereign, and supreme; and distinguished by the title of the natural gods. Thus we find that the primary gods of the Heathens in general were Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Mercury, Venus, and Diana; by which we can understand no other than the sun and moon, and the five greatest luminaries next to these. Plutarch expressly censures the Epicureans for asserting that the sun and moon, whom all men worshipped, are void of intelligence.

Sanchoniathon represents the most ancient nations, particularly the Phenicians and Egyptians, as acknowledging only the natural gods, the sun, moon, planets, and elements; and Plato declares it as his opinion, that the first Grecians likewise held these only to be gods, as many of the barbarians did in his time. Beside these natural gods, the Heathens believed that there were certain spirits who held a middle rank between the gods and men on earth, and carried on all intercourse between them; conveying the addresses of men to the gods, and the divine benefits to men. These spirits were called demons. From the imaginary office ascribed to them, they became the grand objects of the religious hopes and fears of the Pagans, of immediate dependence and divine worship. In the most learned nations, they did not so properly share, as engross, the public devotion. To these alone sacrifices were offered, while the celestial gods were worshipped only with a pure mind, or with hymns and praises. As to the nature of these demons, it has been generally believed, that they were spirits of a higher origin than the human race; and, in support of this opinion, it has been alleged, that the supreme deity of the Pagans is called the greatest demon; that the demons are described as beings placed between the gods and men; and that demons are expressly distinguished from heroes, who were the departed souls of men. Some, however, have combated this opinion, and maintained, on the contrary, that by demons, such as were the more immediate objects of the established worship among the ancient nations, particularly the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, we are to understand beings of an earthly origin, or such departed human souls as were believed to become demons.

Although the Hindoo inhabitants of the East Indies deny the charge of idolatry, using the same description of arguments as are so inconclusively urged by superstitious Europeans in defence of image worship, it is still evident that the mass of the Hindoos are addicted to gross idolatry. The gods of Rome were even less numerous, certainly less whimsical and monstrous, than those at Benares. In Moore’s Hindoo Pantheon are given exact portraits of many scores of deities worshipped, with appropriate ceremonies, and under various forms and names, by different sects of that grossly superstitious race. Some of these portraits are of images colossal to a degree perhaps unequalled by any existing statues; others are exceedingly diminutive. Some are metallic casts, and some apparently extremely ancient, which exhibit every gradation of art from the rudest imaginable specimen, up to a very respectable portion of skill, so as to approach to elegance of form, and to ease and expression of attitude.

The principal causes which have been assigned for idolatry are, the indelible idea which every man has of God, and the evidence which he gives of it to himself; an inviolable attachment to the senses, and a habit of judging and deciding by them, and them only; the pride and vanity of the human mind, which is not satisfied with simple truth, but mingles and adulterates it with fables; men’s ignorance of antiquity, or of the first times, and the first men, of whom they had but very dark and confused knowledge by tradition, they having left no written monuments, or books; the ignorance and change of languages; the style of the oriental writings, which is figurative and poetical, and personifies every thing; the scruples and fears inspired by superstition; the flattery and fictions of poets; the false relations of travellers; the imaginations of painters and sculptors; a smattering of physics, that is, a slight acquaintance with natural bodies and appearances, and their causes; the establishment of colonies, and the invention of arts, mistaken by barbarous people; the artifices of priests; the pride of certain men, who effected to pass for gods; the love and gratitude borne by the people to certain of their great men and benefactors; and, finally, the historical events of the Scriptures ill understood. One great spring and fountain of all idolatry, says Sir William Jones, was the veneration paid by men to the sun, or vast body of fire, which looks from his sole dominion like the god of this world;’ and another, the immoderate respect shown to the memory of powerful or virtuous ancestors and warriors, of whom the sun and the moon were wildly supposed to be the parents. But the Scriptural account of the matter refers the whole to wilful ignorance and a corrupt heart: They did not like to retain God in their knowledge. To this may be added, what indeed proceeds from the same sources, the disposition to convert religion into outward forms; the endeavour to render it more impressive upon the imagination through the senses; the substitution of sentiment for real religious principle; and the license which this gave to inventions of men, which in process of time became complicated and monstrous. That debasement of mind, and that alienation of the heart from God, and the gross immoralities and licentious practices which have ever accompanied idolatry, will sufficiently account for the severity with which it is denounced, both in the Old and New Testaments.

The veneration which the Papists pay to the Virgin Mary, and other saints and angels, and to the bread in the sacrament, the cross, relics, and images, affords ground for the Protestants to charge them with being idolaters, though they deny that they are so. It is evident that they worship these persons and things, and that they justify the worship, but deny the idolatry of it, by distinguishing subordinate from supreme worship. This distinction is justly thought by Protestants to be futile and nugatory, and certainly has no support from Holy Writ.

Under the government of Samuel, Saul, and David, there was little or no idolatry in Israel. Solomon was the first Hebrew king, who, in complaisance to his foreign wives, built temples and offered incense to strange gods. Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who succeeded him in the greater part of his dominions, set up golden calves at Dan and Bethel. Under the reign of Ahab, this disorder was at its height, occasioned by Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, who did all she could to destroy the worship of the true God, by driving away and persecuting his prophets. God, therefore, incensed at the sins and idolatry of the ten tribes, abandoned those tribes to the kings of Assyria and Chaldea, who transplanted them beyond the Euphrates, from whence they never returned. The people of Judah were no less corrupted. The prophets give an awful description of their idolatrous practices. They were punished after the same manner, though not so severely, as the ten tribes; being led into captivity several times, from which at last they returned, and were settled in the land of Judea, after which we hear no more of their idolatry. They have been, indeed, ever since that period, distinguished for their zeal against it. See IMAGE.

Fuente: Biblical and Theological Dictionary