Expositor's Bible: The Book of Jeremiah, Chapters XXI.-LII.Bennett, W. H. (William Henry)
Religion
Expositor's Bible: The Book of Jeremiah, Chapters XXI.-LII.
Bennett, W. H. (William Henry)
Bible. Jeremiah -- Commentaries
Istar, however, is connected with the moon as well as with the planet
Venus.[182] For the present therefore we must be content to leave the
matter an open question,[183] but any day some new discovery may solve
the problem. Meanwhile it is interesting to notice how little
religious ideas and practices are affected by differences in
profession. St. Isaac the Great, of Antioch, who died about A.D. 460,
tells us that the Christian ladies of Syria--whom he speaks of very
ungallantly as "fools"--used to worship the planet Venus from the
roofs of their houses, in the hope that she would bestow upon them
some portion of her own brightness and beauty. His experience
naturally led St. Isaac to interpret the Queen of Heaven as the
luminary which his countrywomen venerated.[184]
The episode of the "great assembly" closes the history of Jeremiah's
life. We leave him (as we so often met with him before) hurling
ineffective denunciations at a recalcitrant audience. Vagrant fancy,
holding this to be a lame and impotent conclusion, has woven romantic
stories to continue and complete the narrative. There are traditions
that he was stoned to death at Tahpanhes, and that his bones were
removed to Alexandria by Alexander the Great; that he and Baruch
returned to Judea or went to Babylon and died in peace; that he
returned to Jerusalem and lived there three hundred years,--and other
such legends. As has been said concerning the Apocryphal Gospels,
these narratives serve as a foil to the history they are meant to
supplement: they remind us of the sequels of great novels written by
inferior pens, or of attempts made by clumsy mechanics to convert a
bust by some inspired sculptor into a full-length statue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account