Difference between revisions of "Bel"

<p> or BELUS, a name by which many Heathens, and particularly the Babylonians, called their chief idol. But whether under this appellation they worshipped Nimrod, their first Baal, or lord, or Pul, king of Assyria, or some other monarch, or the sun, or all in one, is uncertain. It is, however, probable, that [[Bel]] is the same as the Phenician Baal, and that the worship of the same deity passed over to the Carthaginians, who were a colony of Phenicians. Hence the names Hannibal, Asdrubal, &c, compounded with Bel or Baal, according to the custom of the east, where great men added the names of the gods to their own. Bel had a temple erected to him in the city of Babylon, on the very uppermost range of the famous tower of Babel, wherein were many statues of this pretended deity; and one, among the rest, of massy gold, forty feet high. The whole furniture of this magnificent temple was of the same metal, and valued at eight hundred talents of gold. This temple, with its riches, was in being till the time of Xerxes, who, returning from his unfortunate expedition into Greece, demolished it, and carried off the immense wealth which it contained. It was, probably, the statue of this god which Nebuchadnezzar, being returned to [[Babylon]] after the end of the [[Jewish]] war, set up and dedicated in the plain of Dura; the story of which is related at large, Daniel 3. See [[Babel]] . </p> <p> BEL AND THE DRAGON, an apocryphal and uncanonical book. It was always rejected by the Jewish church, and is extant neither in the Hebrew, nor in the [[Chaldee]] languages; nor is there any proof that it ever was so, although the council of [[Trent]] allowed it to be part of the canonical book of Daniel, in which it stands in the Latin Vulgate. There are two Greek texts of this fragment, that of the Septuagint, and that found in Theodotion's Greek version of Daniel. The Latin and Arabic versions are from the text of Theodotion. Daniel probably, by detecting the mercenary contrivances of the idolatrous priests of Babylon, and by opening the eyes of the people to the follies of superstition, might furnish some foundation for the story; but the whole is evidently charged with fiction, though introduced with a pious intent. St. Jerom gives it no better title than, "The fable of Bel and the Dragon." Selden thinks that this history ought rather to be considered as a poem or fiction, than a true account: as to the dragon, he observes, that serpents, <em> dracones, </em> made a part of the hidden mysteries of the [[Pagan]] religion, as appears from [[Clemens]] Alexandrinus, [[Julius]] Firmicus, Justin Martyr, and others. See [[Serpent]] . </p>

<p> (Heb. id. בֵּלּ, contracted from בְּעֵל, the [[Aramaic]] form of בִּעִל; Sept. Βήλ and Βῆλος ) is the name under which the national god of the [[Babylonians]] is cursorily mentioned in &nbsp;Isaiah 46:1; Jeremiah 1, 2; &nbsp;Jeremiah 51:44. The only passages in the (apocryphal) Bible which contain any farther notice of this deity are &nbsp;Baruch 6:40, and the addition to the book of Daniel, in the Sept., 14:1, sq., where we read of meat and drink being daily offered to him, according to a usage occurring in classical idolatry, and termed Lectisternia (&nbsp;Jeremiah 51:44?). But a particular account of the pyramidal temple of Bel, at Babylon, is given by Herodotus, 1:181-183. (See Babel). It is there also stated that the sacrifices of this god consisted of adult cattle (πρόβατα ), of their young, when sucking (which last class were the only victims offered up on the golden altar), and of incense. The custom of providing him with Lectisternia may be inferred from the table placed before the statue, but it is not expressly mentioned. [[Diodorus]] (2, 9) gives a similar account of this temple; but adds that there were large golden statues of Zeus, Hera, and [[Rhea]] on its summit, with a table, common to them all, before them. Gesenius, in order to support his own theory, endeavors to show that this statue of [[Zeus]] must have been that of Saturn, while that of Rhea represented the sun. Hitzig, however, in his note to &nbsp;Isaiah 17:8, more justly observes that [[Hera]] is the female counterpart to Zeus-Bel, that she is called so solely because it was the name of the chief Greek goddess, and that she and Bel are the moon and sun. He refers for confirmation to [[Berosus]] (p. 50, ed. Richter), who states that the wife of Bel was called Ormorca, which means moon; and to Ammian. Marcell, 23:3, for a statement that the moon was, in later times, zealously worshipped in Mesopotamia. The classical writers generally call this Babylonian deity by their names, Zeus and [[Jupiter]] (Herod. and Diod. 1. c.; Pliny Hist. Nat. 6, 30), by which they assuredly did not mean the planet of that name, but merely the chief god of their religious system. Cicero, however (De Nat. Deor. 3, 16), recognises [[Hercules]] in the [[Belus]] of India, which is a loose term for Babylonia. This favors the identity of Bel and Melkart. (See Baal). The following engraving, taken from a Babylonian cylinder, represents, according to Munter, the sun-god and one of his priests. The triangle on the top of one of the pillars, the star with eight rays, and the half moon, are all significant symbols. (See [[Cuneiform]] Inscriptions). </p>

<p> '''''bel''''' , '''''bāl''''' ( בּל , <i> '''''bēl''''' </i> ): Appellative name of a Babylonian god (compare [[Baal]] ), in the Old [[Testament]] and [[Apocrypha]] identified with [[Marduk]] or Merodach, the tutelary deity of Babylon (compare &nbsp;Isaiah 46:1; &nbsp;Jeremiah 51:44; [[Baruch]] 6:41). See [[Babylonia]] And Assyria , The [[Religion]] Of . </p>