THE MORNING STAR IN THE GOSPELS. 



243 



modern Western civilisation. The East moves slowly, and hence 

 we find the morning star still used there for this purpose. In 

 Moab* labourers go out to work in the fields when it rises. In 

 India officers on the march are not unfrequently called very 

 early, while it is still dark, by being told that the morning star 

 has risen.f In Turkey " rising by the morning star, if one is to 

 do early work ... is conimon."J Hence the planet became a type 

 of a herald, and Dr. Pinches tells us that the Assyrian name for 

 the morning star, " Dilhat," means " she who proclaims " ; at the 

 present time modern Persians still allude to it as a type of a 

 forerunner.! 



These obviously practical uses of the planet invested it with 

 importance, and when the worship of the sun and moon spread 

 over the heathen world, the planet came in for a large share 

 of adoration, being specially identified with the goddess of love. 

 In Babylon, under the name of Istar, it was a chief object of 

 worship, at one time a rival to the greater divinities of the sun and 

 moon. Babylonian boundary stones still exist (several of them 

 being in the British Museum), and on them the sun, moon, 

 and Istar are depicted, each orb being represented of the same 

 size ; they are accompanied by inscriptions containing the curses 

 of the divinities represented by these figures on anyone who 

 should dare to move the stones. Babylonian and Accadian 

 hymns to the goddess exist ; in one of them she is styled " Queen 

 of the gods and princess of heaven and earth." Consequently 

 Layard and Dr. Pinches || have both identified Istar with the 

 ^' queen of heaven." (Jer. vii, 18 ; xliv, 17 25.) So much was 

 Babylon identified with the worship of this planet, that the 

 nation is spoken of by the prophet, Isaiah xiv, 12, under the name 

 of Lucifer, a son of the morning or the day star. The name 

 Ashtaroth, etc., which is found some eighteen times in? the Old 

 Testament, corresponds to Istar of the Babylonian tablets. The 

 meaning of Ashtaroth-Karnaim, the two-horned Ashtaroth 

 (Gen. xiv, 5), is of special interest. Dr. Pinches suggests that 

 it may point to the probability that the ancients were long 

 ago aware that Yenus assumes a crescent form at times ; the 

 supposition that they were aware of this appearance is 

 strengthened by the fact that Layard found near Pterium a 



* Letter from Mr. Harding, lately a missiouary in Moab. 

 t Letter from Lient.-Col. W. D. Forster, late E.A. 

 X Letter from the Eev. C. S. Sanders, Aintab, Turkey in Asia. 

 § Letter, Rev. Newton Wright, D.D., Persia. 



]| Hastings^ Dictionary of the Bible. "Astronomy." By Dr. Pinches. 



