[FN#389] The texts justifying or enjoining castration are Matt. xviii. 8-9; Mark ix. 43-47; Luke xxiii. 29 and Col. iii. 5.  St. Paul preached (1 Corin. vii. 29) that a man should live with his wife as if he had none.  The Abelian heretics of Africa abstained from women because Abel died virginal.  Origen mutilated himself after interpreting too rigorously Matt. xix. 12, and was duly excommunicated.  But his disciple, the Arab Valerius founded (A.D. 250) the castrated sect called Valerians who, persecuted and dispersed by the Emperors Constantine and Justinian, became the spiritual fathers of the modern Skopzis.  These eunuchs first appeared in Russia at the end of the xith century, when two Greeks, John and Jephrem, were metropolitans of Kiew:  the former was brought thither in A.D. 1089 by Princess Anna Wassewolodowna and is called by the chronicles Nawje or the Corpse.  But in the early part of the last century (1715-1733) a sect arose in the circle of Uglitseh and in Moscow, at first called Clisti or flagellants, which developed into the modern Skopzi.  For this extensive subject see De Stein (Zeitschrift fuer Ethn.  Berlin, 1875) and Mantegazza, chaps. vi.

[FN#390] See the marvellously absurd description of the glorious “Dead Sea” in the Purchas v. 84.

[FN#391] Jehovah here is made to play an evil part by destroying men instead of teaching them better.  But, “Nous faisons les Dieux a notre image et nous portons dans le ciel ce que nous voyons sur la terre.”  The idea of Yahweh, or Yah, is palpably Egyptian, the Ankh or ever-living One:  the etymon, however, was learned at Babylon and is still found amongst the cuneiforms.

[FN#392] The name still survives in the Shajarat al-Ashara, a clump of trees near the village Al-Ghajar (of the Gypsies?) at the foot of Hermon.

[FN#393] I am not quite sure that Astarte is not primarily the planet Venus; but I can hardly doubt that Prof.  Max Mueller and Sir G. Cox are mistaken in bringing from India Aphrodite the Dawn and her attendants, the Charites identified with the Vedic Harits.  Of Ishtar in Accadia, however, Roscher seems to have proved that she is distinctly the Moon sinking into Amenti (the west, the Underworld) in search of her lost spouse Izdubar, the Sun-god.  This again is pure Egyptianism.

[FN#394] In this classical land of Venus the worship of Ishtar-Ashtaroth is by no means obsolete.  The Metawali heretics, a people of Persian descent and Shiite tenets, and the peasantry of “Bilad B’sharrah,” which I would derive from Bayt Ashirah, still pilgrimage to the ruins and address their vows to the Sayyidat al-Kabirah, the Great Lady.  Orthodox Moslems accuse them of abominable orgies and point to the lamps and rags which they suspend to a tree entitled Shajarat al-Sitt—­the Lady’s tree—­an Acacia Albida which, according to some travellers, is found only here and at Sayda (Sidon) where an avenue exists.  The people of Kasrawan, a Christian province in the Libanus, inhabited by a peculiarly prurient race, also hold high festival under the far-famed Cedars, and their women sacrifice to Venus like the Kadashah of the Phoenicians.  This survival of old superstition is unknown to missionary “Handbooks,” but amply deserves the study of the anthropologist.