The worship of the heavenly bodies was among the earliest corruptions of religion, which would naturally take its rise in the eastern parts of the world, where the atmosphere is pure and transparent, and the heavens as bright as they are glowing. In these countries the moon is of exceeding beauty. If the sun 'rules the day,' the moon has the throne of night, which, if less gorgeous than that of the sun, is more attractive, because of a less oppressively brilliant light, while her retinue of surrounding stars seems to give a sort of truth to her regal state, and certainly adds not inconsiderably to her beauty. The moon was therefore worshipped as a goddess in the East at a very early period; in India under the name of Maja; among the Assyrians at Mylitta; with the Phoenicians she was termed Astarte or Ashteroth, who was also denominated the Syrian mother. The Greeks and Romans worshipped her as Artemis and Diana. Job () alludes to the power of the moon over the human soul: 'If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness, and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my month hath kissed my hand: this also were an iniquity, for I should have denied the God that is above.' The moon, as being mistress of the night, may well have been considered as the lesser of the two great lights of heaven (). It was accordingly regarded in the old Syrian superstition as subject to the sun's influence, which was worshipped as the active and generative power of nature, while the moon was reverenced as the passive and producing power. The moon, accordingly, was looked upon as feminine. Herein Oriental usage agrees with our own. But this usage was by no means universal.
The epithet 'queen of heaven' appears to have been very common. Nor was it, any more than the worship of the moon, unknown to the Jews, as may be seen in a remarkable passage in Jeremiah (), where the Israelites (men and women, the latter exert most influence) appear given over to this species of idolatry: 'We will certainly burn incense to the queen of heaven, and pour out drink-offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our fathers; for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, we have wanted all things.' The last verse of the passage adds to the burnt-offerings and drink-offerings, 'cakes to worship her.' Vows were also made by the Jews to the moon, which superstition required to be fulfilled ().
The baneful influence of the moon still finds credence in the East. Moonlight is held to be detrimental to the eyes. In we read, 'The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night;' so that the impression that the moon may do injury to man is neither partial nor vague. Rosenmüller refers this to the cold of night, which, he says, is very great and sensible in the East, owing, partly, to the great heat of the day. If this extreme (comparative) cold is considered in connection with the Oriental custom of sleeping out of doors, on the flat roofs of houses, or even on the ground, without in all cases sufficient precautionary measures for protecting the frame, we see no difficulty in understanding whence arose the evil influence ascribed to the moon.
This Encyclopedia of Biblical Literature is a 6 volume set in 1 book. It has over 2Read More
John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
Wikipedia