The Ruins; Or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of NatureVolney, C.-F. (Constantin-François)
Religion
The Ruins; Or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature
Volney, C.-F. (Constantin-François)
Ethics; History -- Philosophy; Religions; Revolutions
The following passage of the geographer and philosopher,
Strabo, removes every doubt as to the identity of the ideas
of Moses and those of the heathen theologians.
"Moses, who was one of the Egyptian priests, taught his
followers that it was an egregious error to represent the
Deity under the form of animals, as the Egyptians did, or in
the shape of man, as was the practice of the Greeks and
Africans. That alone is the Deity, said he, which
constitutes heaven, earth, and every living thing; that
which we call the world, the sum of all things, nature; and
no reasonable person will think of representing such a being
by the image of any one of the objects around us. It is for
this reason, that, rejecting every species of images or
idols, Moses wished the Deity to be worshipped without
emblems, and according to his proper nature; and he
accordingly ordered a temple worthy of him to be erected,
etc. Geograph. lib. 16, p. 1104, edition of 1707.
The theology of Moses has, then, differed in no respect from
that of his followers, that is to say, from that of the
Stoics and Epicureans, who consider the Deity as the soul of
the world. This philosophy appears to have taken birth, or
to have been disseminated when Abraham came into Egypt (200
years before Moses), since he quitted his system of idols
for that of the god Yahouh; so that we may place its
promulgation about the seventeenth or eighteenth century
before Christ; which corresponds with what we have said
before.
As to the history of Moses, Diodorus properly represents it
when he says, lib. 34 and 40, "That the Jews were driven out
of Egypt at a time of dearth, when the country was full of
foreigners, and that Moses, a man of extraordinary prudence
seized this opportunity of establishing his religion in the
mountains of Judea." It will seem paradoxical to assert,
that the 600,000 armed men whom he conducted thither ought
to be reduced to 6,000; but I can confirm the assertion by
so many proofs drawn from the books themselves, that it will
be necessary to correct an error which appears to have
arisen from the mistake of the transcribers.
*** This was the monosyllable written on the gates of the
temple of Delphos. Plutarch has made it the subject of a
dissertation.
**** These are the literal expressions of the book of
Deuteronomy, chap. XXXII. "The works of Tsour are perfect."
Now Tsour has been translated by the word creator; its
proper signification is to give forms, and this is one of
the definitions of Osiris in Plutarch.
X. Religion of Zoroaster.
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