“547. NISROCH—ISAIAH 37:38”

Nisroch—Isa_37:38

At the close of the narrative of the Assyrian invasion, we are told that, when the king, Sennacherib, had returned to Nineveh after the destruction of his noble army by the blast of God, he was slain by two of his sons while worshipping “in the temple of his god Nisroch.” The parricides fled into Armenia, and another son, Esar-haddon, ascended the throne.

This circumstance, regarding the death of Sennacherib, with the name here given to the god he worshipped, suggests, in connection with the facts yesterday produced, some inquiry respecting the religion of the Assyrians and the quality of their chief god.

The recent discoveries add little as yet to our knowledge of the principles of the Assyrian religion—but they do furnish us with some information respecting the forms assigned to the gods, and the manner of their worship. Beyond this, the discoveries go no farther than to confirm the conviction previously entertained by scholars, that the religion of the Assyrians was, in its leading features, the same as that of the Chaldeans, namely, the worship of the heavenly bodies, especially the planets, under certain symbolical representations. This kind of religion is called Sabaeism, and is of the most ancient date. It is recognized in the Book of Job, and is the only corruption of the primitive religion alluded to in that book. It occurs in the noted text—“If I had beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness, and my heart had been recently enticed, or my mouth had kissed my hand (in worship), this also bad been iniquity.” It is admitted by all history and tradition, that this kind of worship originated in this part of the world, whence it spread in other directions.

Mr. Layard thinks that the monuments enable him to trace a wide distinction between the religion of the earlier and the later Assyrians. Originally it appears to have been simple Sabaeism, “in which the heavenly bodies were worshipped as mere types of the power and attributes of the Supreme Deity.” Of fire-worship, which was the earliest corruption of Sabaeism, there is no trace in the earlier monuments; but there are abundant signs of it in the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad and Kouyunjik, as well as in a multitude of inscribed cylinders of the same age. Although, therefore, the new materials are few for the illustration of the earlier Sabaeism, there is enough known respecting the later period, to afford us some distinct ideas respecting the religious notions of this people in the period most interesting to us—that in which the Scripture history and prophecy bring them conspicuously under our notice. It is a state of corruption in which the ideas of God and his attributes, as manifested in his operations, are no longer sought in the heavenly bodies alone, nor alone even in the element of fire, but in certain material symbols and images, in which these ideas were represented and typified. Whatever the learned may in this, as in other ages and countries, have said and thought of these embodied types or symbols, universal experience teaches that by the great body of the people—whose notions constitute the popular religion of every nation—these representations were regarded as personal existences, and worshipped as such. Mr. Layard labors to prove the identity of this religion with that of the Persians. It might be so in principle. But if it were so in practice, at the time of these sculptures, the Persians had been enabled to release themselves, by the time the prophets speak of them, from the more grossly idolatrous corruptions which, it may be, they at one time shared with the Assyrians.

We shall have to touch on this matter again when we come to contemplate the Persians. At present we limit our inquiry to Nisroch, who seems to be mentioned in Scripture as the chief of the Assyrian gods.

There is found in all the Semitic languages—Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac—a word, nisr, meaning an eagle—or rather the whole genus falco, including eagles, vultures, and hawks. In the Bible, it is the word for an eagle, and also for vultures; for in Mic_1:16, the NISR is said to be bald; and in Job_39:30, and Pro_30:17, it is said to feed on dead bodies. It has, therefore, been long supposed, on philological grounds, that NISR-OCH, which obviously comes from this source, designates an eagle; or, the syllable och, or ach, being intensive, “the great eagle.” When, therefore, we find, among the sculptures of Nineveh, a very conspicuous idol, representing a human figure with the head of an eagle it became easy to conclude that this was no other than Nisroch. This figure is also of frequent occurrence, especially in the early Assyrian monuments, and is supposed to have represented the Supreme Deity in one of his principal attributes; and in corroboration, Layard cites a fragment of the Zoroastrian oracles preserved by Eusebius, in which it is stated that “God is He that has the head of a hawk. He is the first, indestructible, unbegotten, indivisible, dissimilar; the dispenser of all good; incorruptible; the best of the good, the wisest of the wise,” etc., and this, it must be allowed, is to the point, although the theology contained in it is Persian rather than Assyrian; and we hold the two systems to be less identical than Mr. Layard supposes. This author throughout represents the system as less offensively idolatrous than it really was—an error excusable in one who seems not to have been well versed in the ancient religious systems and idolatries; and it may here be questioned whether the idols, which he regards as types of the Divine attributes, were not rather ideal representations of the planetary bodies. It was as such that images came to be brought into Sabaeism; and under this view it is likely that the chief god of the Assyrians was no other than a symbolical embodiment of the sun, as the chief of the planetary bodies, and the immediate source of terrestrial life. This is the more likely, as the eagle is, in most, of the ancient systems, a symbol of the sun. In some cases the eagle-head is united, not to the human form, but to the body of a lion; and in this shape it bears, as Mr. Layard himself suggests, a resemblance to the gryphon of the Greek mythology, which was avowedly of earlier origin, and connected with Apollo or the sun.

Figure of the Assyrian God Nisroch

In the extracts which we yesterday gave from the inscriptions, the name of the chief Assyrian deity occurs under the form of Assarac, and we concur with Colonel Rawlinson in regarding this name as representing the Biblical Nisroch. Indeed, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which was made while probably this idol was still worshipped on the banks of the Tigris, gives Asarach in one case, and Esorach in another, as the equivalents of the Hebrew Nisroch. The presence of the initial N, in one form of the name, and its absence in the other, does indeed create a difficulty. It will be asked, Which is the right form of the name? and, from a natural disposition to set a higher value upon native memorials, and these sculptured in stone, there will probably be a general disposition to concur in Colonel Rawlinson’s opinion, that Assarac is the right name, changed into Nisroch in Hebrew transcription, for the sake of euphony, or by the mistake of some ancient copyist. But if we drop the N, we may, indeed, preserve the identity of the idol, but we lose the reasonable etymology which connects it with the eagle.

Eagle-headed Lion, or Gryphon

Besides, in these languages we find this letter N, being the weakest of the liquids, often dropped at the beginning of words, and often exchanged for other liquids, but we do not in this situation find it added where it did not exist. It is, therefore, more likely that the N was dropped by the Assyrians themselves, than that it was added by the Hebrews. It also seems to us a delusion to consider that the native form of a name must necessarily be the most correct. A name remains embalmed, unaltered in a foreign tongue after it has once been adopted into it, while that name undergoes changes in the language to which it is native; and it is quite possible that the Assyrian inscriptions yet undeciphered, may offer us the name in the form of Nisroch. Besides, we must not be too exacting with regard to the uniformity of orthography of proper names. We see the spelling of such names among ourselves continually changing with the lapse of time; and in no very remote age we might find the same name given very differently by the contemporaries of the man who bore it, and even by himself at different times. Thus, there were six different ways of spelling the name of Shakespeare by the men of his own age, and three of them sanctioned by his own signature, which is different in every specimen that exists. Why should we exact uniformity from the ancients in a matter in which so much latitude is allowed to the moderns? Note: The writer may be allowed to refer to his own name, as affording an example of thus lack of uniformity. He has seen it written in all these forms, by persons (some of different nations) who have taken it by the ear, or from cursive signatures—Kitto, Kittoe, Kito, Kitts, Kitty, Quito, Cato, Cater, Cottle, Chetto, etc. Consistently, however, with his view, that Assarac is the only proper form of the name, and Nisroch a corruption, Colonel Rawlinson abandons the connection of the name with the eagle, and does not care to maintain that the eagle-headed figure is the representative of this idol. If Nisroch, identified with Assarac, be represented at all in the Assyrian sculptures, he is more inclined to regard him as represented at the head of the Assyrian pantheon, in that peculiar device of a winged figure in a circle, which, as he states, was also used by the Persians to denote Ormuzd, the chief god of their system.

Persian Sacred Symbol

The identity of this figure with that of the Persians is beyond question; but that it was used by either them or the Assyrians to denote their chief god, we altogether and most strongly doubt. Indeed, we have shown that the reasons which have driven him from the eagle-headed idol to this resource, have not the weight he ascribes to them.

Autor: JOHN KITTO