204 



archal era of Job afforded ample interval for the rise and decadence of 

 numerous peoples, whose existence the Mosaical history of the chosen 

 nation notices only by the brief record of a name, and who had been 

 swept away by the devastating sword of successive revolutions, as di- 

 versified and destructive in their effects as those physical changes pro- 

 duced by the fiery deluge that overwhelmed the cities of the plain. 

 Migration on a world-wide scale prevailed even during the Noachic age. 

 Thus Cush, the grandson of jSToah, is described by Sanchoniathon* as a 

 colonizing monarch, traversing the earth ; and these waves of popula- 

 tion surging from the Mesopotamian plains, and again in subsequent 

 ages refluent upon their former tracks, would inevitably tend to create 

 certain residual and stagnant eddies (as it were) of the primitive settlers 

 in all the intermediate regions. 



The unhewn megalithic structures,! scattered over all lands from 

 farthest East to remotest "West, furnish a " testimony of the rocks," 

 more enduring and significant than any extant historic record, of the in- 

 vading as contradistinguished from the primitive colonizing migrations. 

 The Menhir of Brittany and the Irish Gallatin are but Gentile analogues 

 of the pillar set up by the Patriarch at Bethel. J Now, these Oriental 

 Otitswarrnings succeeded each other at irregular intervals, and over un- 

 equal extents, until the commencement of authentic Greek and Roman 

 annals, when Scythian, Scandinavian, and other Northern hordes rolled 

 back the tide, combining in their turn to produce similar debasing effects 



* Eusebius, 1. i. 



f In the Pentateuchal histories these unhewn structures, monolith, trilith, or of more 

 complicated form, are described as set up for various purposes — altars, sepulchres, boun- 

 daries, testimonials of triumphs, covenants, deliverances; but when the purity of Patri- 

 archal Theism was polluted by idolatrous admixture, so that the symbol itself came to be 

 worshipped, injunctions were issued under the Law and the Prophets to destroy utterly 

 all such monuments. The command, however, was but partially obeyed until the return 

 from the Captivity, from which period to the close of the brief Asmonean dynasty the 

 iconoclastic ardour of the chosen race left scarcely a vestige of the numerous megaliths 

 that once marked with their uncouth figures all the Syrian hills and plains. In other 

 regions, especially of Northern Europe, where the earlier Oriental colonists had erected 

 Cyclopean structures after their ancestral fashion, no such styloclastic zeal was evinced; 

 and even upon the introduction of Christian missions these rude memorials were not only 

 preserved intact, but it was sought to evangelize the stolid and superstitious idolaters by 

 grafting pious figments on what seems to have been the earliest and most debased phase 

 of a material idolatry ; for the primitive graven image is not described in the Bible as es- 

 sentially distinct from the stone pillar (see Deuteronomy, vii. 5, and marginal references, 

 in the original). — In the Celtic languages the word for idol, which is usually applied 

 to the rude monolith, is exactly like the Hebrew w r ord both in etymology and sound. For 

 example: — The Irish word Iorhaig (Eevau), and the Hebrew, pa (Eevan), both 

 signify idolum, vanitas, nihilum ; and thus St. Paul's definition receives an expressive 

 confirmation (1 Cor. viii. 4) where he terms an idol ovSev Iv tcbofxuj — " nothing in the 

 world'' — a vain semblance of that which has no existence. See some curious notices on 

 this subject by the writer in " Belfast Archaeological Journal" for October, 1853, p. 303; 

 and "Notes and Queries," 1853, p. 413; and second series, No. 62, p. 194; together 

 with the Articles referred to therein. 



% Gen. xxviii. 18. 



