MOST IMPORTANT WORDS. 741 



Abraham was a Chaldean, that his descen- 

 dants resided long in Egypt, during which time 

 they must have adopted the language, manners, 

 and opinions of that country, that from Egypt 

 they removed to the Phoenician land of Canaan, 

 where they very soon adopted the worship of 

 Itaal and Molecli, which was practised to a 

 greater or less extent, from the time of Joshua 

 until they were carried away captive into Baby- 

 lon, (from which the ten tribes never returned;) 

 and where they learned the Chaldee letters, in 

 which the Hebrew Bible is written. 



Like the ancient Hindoo word Alkache, the 

 Arabic name of God, Allah, is doubtless a modi- 

 fication of the Hebrew btf Al. We are also in- 

 formed by Diodorus, that among the Egyptians, 

 Jove was a personification of the celestial jEther, 

 which they called Youpiter, because the spirit of 

 life, and the generator of all things, according to 

 a priest of Memphis, and that the Greeks de- 

 rived their word fcw, to burn, from his name Zeus. 

 (Lib. i.) And Servius states, that Natural Phi- 

 losophers will have Jupiter mean the jEther, 

 whence he is called Ztuc, from av to be hot or 

 warm. (^En. i.) Similar expressions are found 

 in Euripides, who represents the unbounded 

 JEther which encircles all things as Jove. The 

 Roman poet Ennius also says, that all invoke the 

 shining ^Ether as Jove. And Virgil calls him 

 Pater Omnipotens jETHEH. (Georg. ii. line 

 325.) 



