ASHTORETH—FISH AS SIN-BEARERS 427 
The origin, the nature, and the worship of Dagon, the fish 
god of the Philistines, whose temple stood at Ashdod,! are 
discussed in Chapter xxxiii. 
The Scape-Goat is perhaps the best known of the Israelitish 
offerings to the deity. The annual ceremony of “ the driving 
away ”’ became a service of the highest pomp and solemnity. 
For it two goats were necessary: the first to be drawn by lot 
was killed as a Sin Offering unto Yahweh, the second, the 
Scape-Goat, after being laden by the High Priest with all the 
sins of the people for the past year, was sent away into the 
wilderness, “ to Azazel’’ (Levit. xvi. 8, 10, R.V.). 
This symbolic bearing away of the sins of the people is 
somewhat analogous to that in Lev. xiv. 4 ff., where for the 
purification of the leper one bird is killed, and the other, charged 
with the disease, let loose in the open field. In Zech. v. 5 ff., 
Wickedness is carried away bodily into the land of Shinar. 
The resemblance of this periodic offering 2 and of many other 
Jewish institutions to those of Babylon is striking. The 
letting loose and driving away of the Mashhulduppu, or Scape- 
Goat, was similarly the occasion of an annual ceremony of 
imposing ritual. The first account of this appears in an 
inscription of the Cassite period, which avows itself merely a 
copy of an earlier record, the original of which may well have 
existed in the time of Hammurabi. 
To fish figuring as symbolical bearers away of sins we 
have references, according to Pitra,? in the Talmud, though not 
vol. II., p. 177, s.v. Atargatis, “If Atargatis be, as we suppose, originally 
identical with Astarte, and if the latter be the representative of the generative 
night-sky—in particular of the Moon—then the representation of the former 
as a water and fish deity will be connected with the conception, so wide-spread 
in antiquity, of the Moon being the principle of generative moisture,” 
1 3 Sam. v. 4. : 
2 Frazer, The Golden Bough, I. pp. 14 and 70, gives many instances similar 
to the periodic offering by the Scape-Goat among the Chinese, Malayans, 
and Esquimaux. 
3 Pitra, op. cit., p. 515 (who refers to Buxtorf, Synag. Jud., chapter XXIV.), 
is incorrect, according to the Jewish Ency. (New York, 1906, vol. XII. 66 f.), 
which states the Tashlik—the propitiatory rite referred to—does not occur 
in the Talmud or the geonic writers. Fish illustrate man’s plight and arouse 
him to repentance, “‘ As the fishes that are taken in an evil net,” Eccl. ix. 12; 
and, as they have no eyebrows and their eyes are always open, they symbolise 
the Guardian of Israel, who slumbereth not. See R. I. Harowitz, Shelah, 
p- 214, 
2F 
