13 



also, that God was male and female, might have arisen from 

 the tradition, Gen. i. 27, that God created man in Ins own 

 image; in the image of God created he him ; male and female 

 created he them : from whence they inferred, that since they 

 were created to the image of God, and were both male and 

 female, that reciprocally the Divinity resembled them, and 

 consequently was both male and female. Thus Apuleius 

 de Mundo, p. 753, quotes, from one of the orphic hymns, 

 Zeus otfTtiir T-BKTo, z.«>; »f*jSfOTO! wf^TO Ni/fti?B. Aod Valcrlus Soranus, an an- 

 cient latin poet, has the following Lines. 



Jupiter omiiipotens, Regum, reriimque Deumque 

 Progenitor, Genetrixque Deum.* 



But most speculatists thought it more reasonable to dis- 

 tinguish the male from the female divinities : thus the 

 Phenicians, when Polytheists, called the sun Baal, and the 

 moon Astarte, and the Chaldeans Belthis,-f the Egyptians 

 Isis and Osiris as already said. 



Light then, and the luminaries that afforded it, were at first 

 considered as emblems of the Divinity, for the reasons above 

 mentioned; and afterwards as the habitations of Divinities ; 

 not from any puerile admiration of their splendor, as Eusebius,;]: 

 Diodorus, II and others supposed ; for these objects, being 

 familiar to them from their infancy, could no more excite 

 their attention, than the powers of gravity or magnetism do 



that 



* See Moreri's Dictionary, Valerius Soranus. 

 + Hesychius in Voce Belthis, 

 JP. J8. lILib. l.§n. 



