Plutarch thinks the feast of the booths to be the Bacchic rites, not the Eleusinian. Thus “Bacchus was directly called upon,” he says. The _Sabazian_ worship was _Sabbatic_; the names Evius, or Hevius, and Luaios are identical with _Hivite_ and _Levite_. The French name Louis is the Hebrew _Levi_; Iacchus again is Iao or Jehovah; and Baal or Adon, like Bacchus, was a phallic god. “Who shall ascend into the hill (the high place) of the Lord?” asks the holy king David, “who shall stand in the place of his _Kadushu_ קדשו”? (_Psalms_ xxiv. 3). Kadesh may mean in one sense to _devote, hallow, sanctify_, and even to initiate or to set apart; but it also means the ministers of lascivious rites (the Venus-worship) and the true interpretation of the word Kadesh is bluntly rendered in _Deuteronomy_ xxiii. 17; _Hosea_ iv. 14; and _Genesis_ xxxviii., from verses 15 to 22. The “holy” Kadeshuth of the _Bible_ were identical as to the duties of their office with the Nautch-girls of the later Hindu pagodas. The Hebrew _Kadeshim_ or galli lived “by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove,” or bust of Venus-Astartè, says verse the seventh in the twenty-third chapter of 2 Kings. The dance performed by David round the ark was the “circle-dance” said to have been prescribed by the Amazons for the Mysteries. Such was the dance of the daughters of Shiloh (_Judges_ xxi. 21, 23 _et passim_), and the leaping of the prophets of Baal (_1 Kings_ xviii. 26). It was simply a characteristic of the Sabean worship, for it denoted the motion of the planets round the sun. That the dance was a Bacchic frenzy is apparent. Sistra were used on the occasion, and the taunt of Michael and the king’s reply are very expressive. “The king of Israel uncovered himself before his maid-servants as one of the _vain_ (or debauched) fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself.” And he retorts: “I will play (act wantonly) before יהוה, and I will be yet more vile than this, and I will be base in my own sight.” When we remember that David had sojourned among the Tyrians and Philistines, where their rites were common; and that indeed he had conquered that land away from the house of Saul, by the aid of mercenaries from their country, the countenancing and even, perhaps, the introduction of such a Pagan-like worship by the weak “psalmist” seems very natural. David knew nothing of Moses, it seems, and if he introduced the Jehovah-worship it was not in its monotheistic character, but simply as that of one of the many gods of the neighboring nations--a tutelary deity to whom he had given the preference, and chosen among “all other gods.”