Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets: And Other Old Testament Characters from Various SourcesBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets: And Other Old Testament Characters from Various Sources
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Bible. Old Testament -- Legends
“The vine, watered by the blood of these four animals, has assumed
these characters. The first glass of wine makes a man animated, his
vivacity great, his color is heightened. In this condition he is like
the peacock. When the fumes of the liquor rise into his head, he is
gay, leaps and gambols as an ape. Drunkenness takes possession of him,
he is like a furious lion. When it is at its height, he is like the
swine; he falls and grovels on the ground, stretches himself out, and
goes to sleep.”[247]
Mohammed, to justify his forbidding his disciples to drink wine, cites
the history of the two angels, Arot and Harot.
“God,” says he, “charged them with a commission on the earth. A young
lady invited them to dinner, and they found the wine so good that they
got drunk. They then remarked that their hostess was beautiful, and
they were filled with love which they declared to her. This lady, who
was prudent, replied that she would only listen to their protestations
when she knew the words by which they were enabled to ascend to heaven.
When she had learned these words, she mounted to the throne of God,
who, as a reward for her virtue, transformed her into a shining star
(the Morning Star), and condemned the two drunken angels to await the
day of judgment, suspended by their heels in the well of Babel, near
Bagdad, which Mussulman pilgrims visit.”
According to Tabari,[248] Ham, for having laughed at his father’s
drunkenness, was cursed by Noah, that his skin should become black,
as well as all the fruits which were to grow in the land he should
inhabit, and thus the purple grape arose. It was the white grape that
Ham transplanted, but it blackened in his hands.
Abulfaraj relates that after the Deluge, Noah divided the habitable
world between his sons. He gave to Ham the country of the Black, to
Shem that of the Brown, and to Japheth that of the Red.[249] Noah also,
he continues, said to his son Shem, “When I am dead, take the bier of
our father Adam from the ark, and, together with your son Melchizedek,
who is a priest of the Most High, go with the body of Adam whither an
angel shall guide you.”
This they did; and an angel directed them to mount Breitalmakdes
(Jerusalem), where they deposited the bier on a certain hill, and
instantly it sank out of their sight into the ground. Then Shem
returned to his home, but not so Melchizedek, who remained to guard the
body of Adam: and he built there a city called Jerusalem, and he was
called Melek Salim, the King of Peace, and there he spent the rest of
his life in the worship of God; he touched not women, nor shed blood,
but offered to God oblations of bread and wine.[250]
Eutychius, the Egyptian patriarch of Alexandria, in his Annals, which
are rife with Oriental traditions, gives a fuller account of the same
incident.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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