59. Cf. Wissowa, _op. cit._, p. 306-7.--On the temple of Bel at Palmyra, cf. Sobernheim, _Palmyrenische Inschriften_ (_Mitt. der vorderasiat. Gesellsch._, X), 1905, pp. 319 ff.; Lidzbarski, _Ephemeris_, I, pp. 255 ff., II, p. 280.--Priests of Bel: Clermont-Ganneau, _Recueil d'arch. orient._, VII, p. 12, 24, 364. Cf. _supra_, n. 54. The power of Palmyra under Zenobia, who ruled from the Tigris to the Nile, must have had as a corollary the establishment of an official worship that was necessarily syncretic. Hence its special importance for the history of paganism. Although the Babylonian astrology was a powerful factor in this worship, Judaism seems to have had just as great an influence in its formation. There was at Palmyra a large Jewish colony, which the writers of the Talmud considered only tolerably orthodox (Chaps, _Gli Ebrei di Palmira_ [_Rivista Israelitica_, I], Florence, 1904, pp. 171 ff., 238 f. Cf. "Palmyra" in the _Jewish Encycl._; Jewish insc. of Palmyra; Euting, _Sitzb. Berl. Acad._, 1885, p. 669; Landauer, _ibid._, 1884, pp. 933 ff.). This colony seems to have made compromises with the idolaters. On the other hand we see Zenobia herself rebuilding a synagogue in Egypt (_Revue archeologique_, XXX, 1875, p. III; _Zeitschrift fuer Numismatik_, V, p. 229; Dittenberger, _Orientis inscript._, 729). This influence of Judaism seems to explain the development at Palmyra of the cult of [Greek: Zeus hupsitos kai epekoos], "he whose name is blessed in eternity." The name of Hypsistos has been applied everywhere to Jehovah and to the pagan Zeus (_supra_, p. 62, 128) at the same time. The text of Zosimus (I, 61), according to which Aurelian brought from Palmyra to Rome the statues of [Greek: Heliou te kai Belou] (this has been wrongly changed to read [Greek: tou kai Belou]), proves that the {253} astrological religion of the great desert city recognized a supreme god residing in the highest heavens, and a solar god, his visible image and agent, according to the Semitic theology of the last period of paganism (_supra_, p. 134). 60. I have spoken of this solar eschatology in the memorial cited _infra_, n. 88. 61. This opinion is that of Posidonius (see Wendland, _Philos Schrift ueber die Vorsehung_, Berlin, 1892, p. 68, n. 1; 70, n. 2). It is shared by the ancient astrologers. 62. This old pagan and gnostic idea has continued to the present day in Syria among the Nosairis; cf. Dussaud, _Histoire et religion des Nosairis_, 1900, p. 125. 63. The belief that pious souls are guided to heaven by a psychopompus, is found not only in the mysteries of Mithra (_Mon. myst. Mithra_, I, p. 310), but also in the Syrian cults where that role was often assigned to the solar god, see Isid. Levy, _Cultes syriens dans le Talmud_ (_Revue des etudes juives_, XLIII), 1901, p. 5, and Dussaud, _Notes_, p. 27; cf. the Le Bas-Waddington inscription, 2442: