78 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



here the case of the Emperor Alexander Severus, who seriously 

 thought of erecting a temple to the ncAV god Cliristus.* 



With respect to the god of the Jews, the Greeks called him lao 

 ('lutS, rarely 'law, a word representing approximately the pronunciation 

 of nim in the first century before Christ), and regarded him as one 

 of the many gods of the universe. There is no evidence that they 

 identified him with any of their known gods. Thus, Diodorus of 

 Sicily, in speaking of the Jews, says that Moses, their lawgiver, re- 

 ceived his laws from the god /ac»,t so called. It would seem further 

 that heathen magicians made use of 'laS in their incantations, together 

 with other appropriate divinities.]: Strabo's knowledge on the subject 

 of the Hebrew god was very imperfect. He asserts that Moses taught 

 the Jews that god was identical with nature ; that is, he makes the 

 greatest of the Jewish proi:)hets a teacher of pantheism. § 



Josephus, however, in his fabulous account of the miraculous trans- 

 lation of the Hebrew books into Greek, represents a learned Alex- 

 andrian as saying to Ptolemy Philadelphus that the god of the Jews 

 was identical with the Hellenic Zeus. And in an oracle forged by 

 some Judaizing Greek, lao, the most high god, appears as Aides or 

 Hades in the winter, as Zeus in the spring, as Helios (Sim) in the 

 summer, and as lacchus in the autumn. || This is another species of 

 pantheism. 



But who is the Lady Queen of the inscription ? "Were we to adopt 

 the practice of the most popular interpreters of the Bible, namely, to 

 transfer the floating notions of the present day to the past, we should 

 at once affirm that she can be no other than the Virgin Mary. This, 



* Lampridius, Alex. Sever. 29 In larario suo (in quo . . . Christum, Abra- 

 ham, et Orpheum et hujusmodi deos habebat). Ibid. 43 Christo templum facere 

 voluit eumque inter deos accipere. 



t DiOD. 1, 94. 



X Inscr. 5858, 6, Aaifioves Koi irvfifJiaTa .... e^opKi^o) u/xa? to ayiov ovofia 

 . . . 'luw ... 6 rau oKcov fiaaiKevs i^fyepdrjTi [(«al] 6 ratv <p6infi>(ov ^acrikcvs 

 . . . fiera raiv Karax^dovlav 6ewv. See also Iren. 1, 4, 1. 



\ Strab. 16, 2,35 EtTj yap av tovto jjlovov deos to inpiexov fjfjias k.t.\. 



II INIacrobius, 1, 18 ^pd^eo Tmv navTcov vnaTov deov e/i/xev Idco, Xeip-OTOS 

 fikv T 'Aibrjv, Aia b' elapos apxpp.kvoio, 'HeXioi/ be Bepevs, p-eTonoipov 8' a^pbv 

 'law. The last word is obviously a mistake. The true reading seems to be 

 "laK^ov, the god of autumn when wine begins to be abundant. Lobeck's emenda- 

 tion "AScowi' is not tenable. 



