the Hebrews would denote a fierce lord, or an absolute proprietor, they use Adonim and Baalim, instead of Adon and Baal; and as Jehovah is the all-powerful Lord and the absolute master of all, it may be said that the plural terms are applied to him on this account. To this it would be difficult to offer any satisfactory reply; but when we come to apply the same process of reasoning to account for Elohim, we shall perceive that the cases are not exactly parallel. In the case of Adonim, Baalim, &c. the plural intensive is used to describe one who possesses in a very high or the highest degree, the quality possessed by every one whom we may designate by the singular. Adona lord; Adonim (pl. intens.), a very lord Dominissimus-xugiaTaTos. But Elohim is not the intensive of Eloah. In this case the singular means as much as the plural; and accordingly is occasionally used to signify the Great Supreme. The rule here, therefore, for intensives fails, and must be set aside by us as inadequate to explain the phenomena of the case. The same is true of Shaddai. We cannot aver that this is the intensive plural of a singular denoting a mighty one, for it has no singular, and so far as we know anything of the language never had: for it, therefore, we must have some other mode of accounting than the plur. intens.

On these grounds I conclude that the preference is to be given to the theory which accounts for the use of the plural in the names of Deity on the principle that there was thereby shadowed forth the truth that the oneness of God was not mere naked monotheism, but a unity resulting from the combination, so to speak, of plurality—that it was not the oneness of a God, but the oneness of a godhead-that, in short, it was, as the clearer and fuller revelations of the New Testament on this head teach us-a Trinity. This being a fact made known to us in Scripture, there is no reason why we should not make use of it for the purpose of explaining any phenomena which may occur, and which may be susceptible of explanation from it.

The solution thus given of the usage in question must not be confounded with that frequently proposed by writers in defence of the doctrine of the Trinity, viz., that the sacred writers adopted it in order to teach or at least to indicate that doctrine. To this it has been justly objected that it assumes that the sacred writers did usually involve doctrines of this kind in the mere forms of words-a position not only destitute of evidence, but which seems altogether improbable. No such objections, however, can be urged against the theory advanced in this paper; for the solution which it proposes lies not in any supposed expedient resorted to by the

m Lee's Heb. Gram. p. 280, ed. 1844.

sacred

sacred writers, but in a formal law of Hebrew thought. That the inspired writers should invent a form of speech in order to teach a particular doctrine is extremely unlikely; but that the Hebrew people should form their name for Deity after the analogy of their own idioms is altogether natural. Knowing the fact of the divine plurality in unity they used their term for Deity exactly as they were wont to use any other term denoting an object which combined plurality with unity.

There is an objection urged by Hengstenberg against the older theory which may seem also to affect that now proposed. It is incapable,' he says, 'of explaining the use of the name DN of the Deity in the most general reference, and is necessitated to ignore it. Even one single passage like that in Sam. xxviii. 13, where the idea of Deity itself is too narrow for the D, and where this word must have the vague sense of something unearthly, non-human, is sufficient to set it aside.'" To this it is replied, that there might be some force in the objection did we propose to account for all the instances in which Elohim is used of a singular object, in the way suggested. But this is not the case; it is only of the use of this term to denote Deity that our rule professes to offer explanations; for its use to denote other objects let us account as we can. Surely it is a strange position to assume that the same word must in all its usages come under the same rule of construction. We have already seen the opposite in the case of Adonim, which is sometimes the plural intensive, and sometimes the plural of multeity in unity; why may not a similar variety of law regulate the use of Elohim? 2. In the case adduced by Hengstenberg, as utterly subversive of our rule, it is by no means clear that means what he says it means. Why may we not suppose that, to the excited imagination of the sorceress, the awful and venerable form that came at her invocation from the invisible world appeared as none other than God himself? 3. Hengstenberg seems to have forgot that this instance is no less fatal to his own theory of DN, than he says it is to that which he adduces it to overturn. If it be impossible from the fact of the Trinity to account for the calling of a supernatural object Elohim, it is no less so from the doctrine of the plural intensive. According to this doctrine the reasoning here should stand thus: Eloah in the singular signifies God; therefore to express the idea of God in the highest the plural Elohim is employed. Now here it is something less than God that is denoted; it is the mere vague supernatural; and hence the term properly denoting God in the highest is used. Such reasoning is self-contradictory.

אלהים

VOL. I.-NO. II.

n Lib. cit. i. 255.

U

On

ON SACRED TREES.

BY THE EDITor.

WHEN We reflect upon the number of trees mentioned with honour in the Scripture, and when we refer to the worship which the apostate Israelites so often rendered to their idols in 'groves,' and 'under every green tree,' any facts which may tend to throw light upon the obscurities which involve the subject, must be regarded as possessing some degree of interest and value. Such facts are not scarce; for a degree of veneration, more or less religious, has been paid to particular trees, at some time or other, in all the countries of whose history we have any knowledge. In laying some of the more remarkable of these facts before our readers, we shall be much assisted by a Dissertation on Sacred Trees, which forms one of the Appendices to the first volume of Sir William Ouseley's learned Travels in various Countries of the East.

The biblical reader will recollect many important trees, besides that which stood in the midst of the garden of Eden,' emphatically styled the tree of life;' and 'the tree of knowledge of good and evil.' Such texts as Exod. xxxiv. 13; Deut. xii. 4; xvi. 21; 1 Kings xiv. 23; 2 Kings xvi. 4; Isa. i. 29, &c., will remind him of the idolatrous worship rendered in groves and under every green tree; and then the mind will revert to the oak near Shechem under which Jacob buried the idols and ear-rings of his people (Gen. xxxv. 4); to the oak near Bethel, which marked the grave of Deborah, and which was significantly called Allon-bachuth ( the oak of weeping') Gen. xxxv. 8; to the palm-tree under which another Deborah, the prophetess, dwelt (Judg. iv. 5); to the oak under which sat 'the man of God' (1 Kings xiii. 14); to the oak in Ophrah, under which the angel of God appeared unto Gideon, and conversed with him (Judg. vi. 11, 19, 30); and to the oak that was 'in' or 'by' the very sanctuary of the Lord (Josh. xxiv. 26). These and other trees, which we may suppose lofty and umbrageous, such as the oaks, poplars, and elms, because the shadow thereof is good' (Hos. iv. 13), must immediately occur to the biblical reader; nor will he be unmindful of that humble bush, which the Lord consecrated by his presence, when he revealed himself to Moses in flaming fire on the mountain of Horeb (Exod. iii. 2, 4).

6

These Scriptural facts we may take as a text, the ideas involved in which may be developed and explained by the analogous usages of other nations; whether the trees be understood as distinguishing

the

the scenes of memorable transactions; as dedicated to certain divinities; or, as in some cases, almost identified with those divinities themselves.

a

Classical antiquity offers many examples of trees reported sacred; and so frequently were groves and woods dedicated to religious purposes, that at last those very terms (in Greek λoos (alsos), and lucus in Latin) implied consecration. That groves in ancient times were considered as temples, we learn from Pliny; and there is authority for believing that images were placed in groves sooner than within the walls of religious edifices. Also that in the formation of statues wood was employed before stone or marble, appears from Pausanias, and is declared by many antiquaries. That various trees were consecrated, each to a particular divinity, is known from numerous passages familiar to every classical reader. The statue of each god was often made from the tree esteemed sacred to him. To the custom of hanging wreaths and fillets, and chaplets or garlands upon the sacred trees, as votive offerings or as tokens of veneration, we shall not particularly refer, as we remember no allusion to such a practice in Scripture.

In Egypt trees were not without honour. The palm was there deemed sacred, according to Porphyry; and Herodotus mentions those palms that surrounded the temple of Perseus (ii. 91); the grove of immense trees, and the trees reaching to heaven about the temple of Bubastes or Diana (ii. 138); and those at the great temple of Apollo. We may believe that a sacred mulberrytree' gave its name Hiera Sycaminos, to a town or station near the river Nile; and a very ancient monument, delineated by Norden, exhibits a tree concerning which many conjectures have been offered.

Proceeding to the East, properly so called, we discover among the Pagan Arabs of early ages, a tree worshipped by certain tribes as an idol, under the name of Aluzza. And Ouseley cites the Chronicle of Tabri for the statement, that the inhabitants of Najran in Yemen, being idolaters, like their neighbours, 'had, outside the city, a date tree of considerable size; and every year, on a certain day, they held a solemn festival; and on that day all the people assembled round the tree, and they covered it with garments of rich embroidery, and brought all their idols under it; and they went in ceremonious procession about that tree and offered up prayers; and an evil spirit or devil spoke to them from the midst of it, and they having paid reverence to that tree returned.' In this passage 'the garments of rich embroidery' with

a Nat. Hist. xii. 1.

b D. Vossius in M. Maimonides, 'De Idololatria,' i. 3. Travels, pl. lviii.

с

U 2

which

which the tree was covered, may suggest to the reader' the hangings for the grove,' which were woven by the apostate daughters of Israel (2 Kings xxiii. 7), if we may conclude that the 'grove were really composed of trees, and was not, as some suppose, merely a grove idol.' That the Arabians from the patriarchal faith of Abraham, fell into the worship of trees and stones, their oldest historians testify; and the Holy Scriptures evince throughout the tendency of the Israelites to the same degeneracy.

Advancing from Arabia into Persia, we find many existing relics of the religious veneration paid to trees and bushes. Mr. Morier observes that according to superstitious belief, the rags deposited on certain bushes by persons suffering from diseases, and taken thence by other patients, who in turn substitute their own, prove an infallible remedy. Elsewhere (ii. 239) the same traveller mentions the tomb of some Persian saint; and growing close to it a small bush on which were fastened various rags and shreds of garments; these, as was generally fancied, had acquired virtues particularly efficacious against sickness. In the seventeenth century it was remarked by Chardin at Ispahan, that the religious Moslems chose rather to pray under a very old tree than in the neighbouring mosque. They devoutly reverence, he remarks, those trees which seem to have existed during many ages, piously believing that the holy men of former times had prayed and meditated under their shade. At Ispahan he also noticed a large and ancient plane, all bristling with nails and points, and hung with rags, as votive offerings from Dervishes, who came under this tree to perform their devotions. He next describes another plane, said to be in his time above a thousand years old; it was black with age, and preserved with extreme care. This attention, he adds, arises from a superstitious respect entertained by the Persians for those ancient trees already mentioned. They call them, he says, Dracte fazel (more properly Dirakht i fazel) or the excellent trees.' Among others of them described by him, is one at Shiraz, to which the devout tied chaplets, amulets, and pieces of their garments; while the sick (or some friends for them) burned incense, fastened small lighted tapers to the tree, and practised other superstitions in the hope of thereby restoring health. Throughout all Persia,' adds this most instructive traveller, these Dracte fazels are venerated by the multitudes, and they appear studded all over with nails, used in fixing on them shreds of cloth and other votive offerings. Under their shade the pious love to repose whole nights, fancying that they behold resplendent lights, the souls of Aoulia, or blessed saints,

6

d Journey, i. 230.

who