Plutarch’s Theosophical Essays · 8 of 8

Appendix

P. 190.

Context

King’s appendix gives external evidence for his Thou Art reading of the E. He cites the Zohar’s use of Atha (Thou) as a name for God, and a famous Roman gem inscribed with the title Ho On (He That Is) for Apollo. The Hebrew evidence is interesting. Atta in Hebrew and Atha in Aramaic are simply the second-person pronoun, used in liturgical address. The Zohar, the great thirteenth-century Castilian Jewish mystical commentary, picks up earlier rabbinic uses of the divine address. The Roman gem with the Ho On inscription is a real artifact. The cross-cultural parallel King is drawing is genuine. Hellenistic and late-antique theology converged repeatedly on the idea that the highest divine name is some form of the verb to be, addressed in the second person. The convergence is one of the data-points that makes a thinker like King want to see a single underlying ancient wisdom-tradition behind all the great religions.

E for “Thou Art.”—The Zohar uses “Atha,” “Thou,” as a synonym for God, in exactly the same sense that the E is here interpreted—a declaration of His self-existence. A well-known gem (Paris), bearing the portrait of Pescennius Niger, with a serpent placed across a burning altar in front, has also a long inscription, chiefly in initials; but which give, in full, the title Ο ΩΝ, “He that is,” to the “Holy King Apollo,” who had restored that virtuous emperor to health. This fact is expressed by the offering of the Serpent, that regular attribute of the god of medicine.

P. 174. The Delphic E.—Schliemann’s little gold model of a shrine (“Mycenæ,” No. 423) presents, upon each of its three panels, this letter, of the same form as when engraved on Roman talismans; but laid upon its back, like the caste-mark still in use. But the finder takes the central bar for a column, and ignores the remainder of the figure, comparing this part to the central pillar of the famous sculpture over the “Gate of the Lions.” The sigil, thus arranged, at once suggests the origin of Apollo’s signet, the anchor—the birth-mark of his progeny, the Seleucidæ. A symbol of undying vitality, it has been lately found amongst the Masons’ marks cut on the ashlar of the Templars’ Chapelle de la Courvoirie, at Langley, Côte d’Or, see Nos. 20, 21 in the copy published in the “Bulletin de la Soc. Art. de France,” for 1881, p. 212.

P. 269. Phylacteries.—This solution of the difficulty must be abandoned. I am informed, upon the highest authority, that the phylacteries are not worn on the Sabbath, which typifying the same idea renders the use of the minor type unnecessary. In favour of the alternative explanation “without bending a limb,” I may adduce the fact that the Karaite Jews (who pique themselves upon the strictest observance of the Law of Moses, rejecting all tradition) used, till our own times, to observe the Sabbath by sitting motionless on the same seat from its commencement to its close. Plutarch evidently is alluding to the massacre of unresisting congregations in the Maccabæan War; after which event the Rabbis discovered a sense in the words of Moses that permitted resistance against attack even on the Sabbath day.

Appendix

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