394 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874- 



legend is a Phoenician serpent god seems to be one of the 

 best established facts bearing on the subject. It is con 

 jectured that the Hebrews connected the serpent with 

 sorcery, and that this may have had a share in establishing 

 the idea of its cunning or wisdom. The etymological 

 arguments for such a conjecture are not very strong, and 

 are hardly confirmed by the suggestion that the tree of 

 knowledge is also connected with the well-known habit of 

 taking oracles from trees, more than once alluded to in 

 the Old Testament, and familiar to classical antiquity. 

 Professor Baudissin has not been able to throw any new 

 light on the worship of the brazen serpent abolished by 

 Hezekiah. 



In the essay on Hadad-Rimmon (Zech. xii. n), Hitzig s 

 interpretation, which suggests that Hadad-Rimmon is a 

 name of Tammuz or Adonis, is controverted, and the old 

 view defended which sees in the word the name of a place 

 where the fall of Josiah was mourned. The argument, 

 in its most important part, resolves itself into an examina 

 tion of the two names of deities which form the elements 

 of the word Hadad-Rimmon, or, as Baudissin would read, 

 Hadar-Rimmon. For Rimmon, who appears in the Bible 

 as a Damascene deity, our author accepts Schrader s 

 identification with the Assyrian Ramanu, who, according 

 to Schrader, is the thunder god. But as Delitzsch, in his 

 additions to Smith s &quot; Genesis,&quot; appears to have refuted 

 Schrader s interpretation of the Assyrian name, and as 

 Wellhausen, in a review of Baudissin s &quot; Studies &quot; (Gbtt. 

 Gel. Anz., 1877, St. 6), has disposed of the arguments from 

 Greek glosses by which our author endeavours to prove 

 the existence of a Syrian Raman who was also a god of 

 thunder, this part of the essay must be viewed as un 

 successful. It appears, too, that in reading Hadar for 

 Hadad, Baudissin has followed a false light of the Assyrio- 

 logists ; for v. Gutschmid, in the work noticed above, has 

 brought the clearest proof that Hadad is a title of the 

 Syrian Baal or Sun-god, and that it is quite illegitimate 



