Your mother is a lioness, her whelps devour men, she was fruitful by reason of many waters; an evident allusion to the lions that lay in the thickets of Jordan (3). The thunder which agitates clouds, charged with floods, is called the voice of the Lord upon many waters and the attachment that no mortifications can annihilate, is a love which many waters cannot quench, neither can the floods drown (4). How it comes to pass that a mode of speaking, which on every other occasion signifies much, should in the case of baptism signify little, is a question easy to answer. The meaning of doubtful words is best fixed by ascertaining the facts, which they were intended. to represent. Salim was at least fifty miles north up the river Jordan from the place where John had begun to baptize. Ænon, near it, was either a natural spring, an artificial reservoir, or a cavernous temple of the sun, prepared by the Canaanites, the ancient idolatrous inhabitants of the land. The eastern versions, that is, the Syriack, Ethiopick, Persick, and Arabick of the gospel of John (5), as well as the Hebrew and Chaldean Ain-yon, or Gnain-yon, suggest these opinions, and it is difficult to say which is the precise meaning of the Evangelist's word non, and it is not certain whether the plain meaning be, John was baptizing at the Dove-spring near Salim, or John was baptizing at the Sun-fountain near Salim. To take the matter from the beginning. It seems to have been an universal custom derived from the first fathers of mankind, to describe the world by resemblances of the human body. Hence, an arm of the sea, the mouth of a river, the foot of a mountain, the brow of a hill, the face of a country. The scripture abounds with such similitudes; a plain between two prominent hills is a dwelling between shoulders, a bay near the mouth of (3) Ezek. xix. (5) Versio Syriaca. Vers. Persica. Vera. Arabica. Numb. xxiv. 7. (4) Psal. xxix. 3. Cant. viii. 7. Baptizabat autem et Johannes in In-Jon (fonte columba) quod est ad latus Salim : quoniam aquæ erant illic multæ. Et Johannes etiam in fonte Jon, qui juxta Salim est, baptizabat, eo quod aqua ibi multa esset, homines igitur illic baptizati sunt. Et Johannes baptizabat etiam in fonte Nun, qui est ad latus Salim ob multitudinem aquæ ibidem. Vers, Ethiopica. Et erat Johannes baptista in Henon prope Salim, quia erant ibi multæ aquæ. Jordan is a tongue, a mountain is a head, of which trees, bushes, and vegetables, are the hair, a prominence is a breast, a cliff is a nose, and the bed of the ocean is the hollow of God's hand. Through all the East, a spring, or fountain, or well-head, was called Ain (6). or with a nasal sound, gnain, an eye; and the name was carried by the Phenicians into all the countries where they travelled, and it remains incorporated into various languages and in a variety of compound words to this day (7). From ain, corrupted into an, aun, on, don, ern, een, eyen, eya, auye, ooghe, proceeded in various countries different words. In Egypt, On and Zoan with the Hebrews, and Tanis, Taphnis, Tahaphanes, with others. A Scythian ain became Tanais, the river dividing Asia from Europe, now the river Don of Muscovy. A Persian ain, adjacent to which was a temple in a grove, became with the Greeks, Anaia, Anaitis, Anaitidos, Anea, Nanea, Diana, the goddess of fountains (8). From a Syrian ain, near Antioch, came Daphne, the daughter of a river, and the parent of ever-green shrubs, as the laurel and the bay (9). Hence came Ain-tab, Ain-zarba, or Ana-zarba, Ain-ob, Inopus, the Pythian spring, or the fountain of Diana and Apollo at Delos (1). Antiquaries observe, that Bath in England was once called fr-ennaint twymin (2); that Scotland hath its Annan, a place of two medical springs separated by a small rock; that Waterford in Ireland was once called Man-apia; and that Ancaster in Lincolnshire hath a spring at each end of the town, and, as there is no more water from thence to Lincoln, the name tells its own Saxon and British history (→). Such eyes of water were of infinite value in the East. When Moses was in the plains of Moab, he ascended mount Nebo to survey the promised land. Wide spread before him, at the foot of Nebo, lay the great plain, slop (6) Vid. Buxtorf Giggei aliorque Lexic. Castelli Lex. Heptaglot. Ain. Heb. Oculus. Fons. Chald. Oculus. Foramen furni. foramen lapidis molaris, &c. Syriac. Oculus. Fons. Samar. ibid. Ethiop. Oculus. Fons. Arab. Oculus. Fons. Lachryma, viva aqua, &c. (7) Giggei Lexic. Arab. Jac. Golii Lexic. Arabico. Latin. Ludolfi Lex Ethiopico Latin. Herbelot. Bib. Orient, &c. (8) Bocharti Phaleg. Lib. iv. cap. xix. Assur. (9) Chanaan lib. i. cap. xvi. Phænices in Baotia. (1) Greg. Abul. Pharagii. Hist. Dynast. Bocharti Chanaan, lib. i. cap. xiv. (2) Camden's Britannia. (3) Dr. Campbell's Political Survey of Great-Britain, vol. i. chap. v. On waters. ing from him down to Jordan, then, rising again from the river, it joined the high grounds, swelling into prominences; behind which protuberated hills, beyond which huge mountains heaved their gigantick heads, some bare, others rugged, and others covered with timber, verdure, and fruits, wheat, barley, vines, figs, promegranates, and olives. The man of God took particular notice of what he calls the eyes, that is, the live waters springing into natural basons, and running in brooks among vallies and hills, and for their sakes he pronounced it an excellent country (4). Miners observe the tinct of spring waters, and the incrustations of the beds, in which their rivulets run. The Easterns did so. Jacob remarked the red eyes of the land of Judah, and it was an observation of mineral colours that made Moses add, when he was praising the land of eyes, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass (5). It was natural to assimilate different springs to the eyes of different animals to describe the qualities of the waters. A spring bursting violently from a steep rock was called An-zabba, the eye of a bear, there was a kind of fury in it; and a sparkling human eye in which the graces played, was likened to waters enlivened by the activity of little spangling fish, thine eyes are like the fish-pools of Heshbon (6). The spring where John baptized was called the dove's eye. The prophet Nahum describes waters running off in streams gurgling among stones, as doves that wander cooing, or, as the English version hath it, tabering through the solitary grove (7) According to this, non was a cavernous spring, and such were of great account in Judea, There was in the time of especially in some seasons. Ahab a famine, occasioned by a drought of three years. The king in extremity commanded Obadiah to go through one part of the land, while he surveyed another to search for grass to save the cattle alive, and he particNear ularly charged him to go to all eyes of water. such eyes there were caverns, and in one of them Obadiah had hid and fed an hundred prophets of the Lord in time of persecution (8) If Enon were an excavation (4) Deut. xxxii. 49. viii. 7. (5) Verse 9. (6) Cant. vii. 4. (7) Nahum ii. 6, &c. Diod. Sic. Lib. ii. The river Tigris swelling with incessant rains broke down the wall for twenty furlongs. (8) 1 Kings xvii. of this kind, John baptized in a natural baptistery, the walls and arches, the dome and windows of which, were sculptured without hands. Here he was covered from the heat, sheltered from wind and rain, free from noise and interruption, and plentifully supplied with water in the natural stone basons of the rock. Were it necessary, persons now alive might be named, who were baptized by immersion in similar places in Great-Britain. The natural caverns and artificial quarries of some rocks in Judea were very capacious, and in that at Adullam, David concealed four hundred fighting men, beside old people, women and children (9). Ancient Greek missals, and rude sculptures in subterranean caverns near Rome, describe John preaching and baptizing by immersion in cavernous places (1); but whether the Christian artists intended to describe the history of John, or their own practice, or both, is a question. Certain it is, such places were in Judea, and it is not improbable non near Salim was one. Springs issuing from the fissures of a rock, gurgling through the chinks as waters out of bottles, falling from crag to crag, murmuring from bed to bason, and from bason to bed, fretting along the ragged sides of a rocky channel, and echoing through rude and spacious caverns, would form what the Jews called a Dove-water, or, if it flowed from a natural spring, in their figurative style, a Dove's-eye. It is credible, such a clean and plentiful baptismal stream was much to the purpose, and much in the taste of such a man as John. The inhabitants accounted such waters the greatest of blessings; but as they might by accident become injurious, by affording a supply to foreign invaders of the land, they took care in such cases, to conceal both the water and the sound from their enemies, and to convey the stream by subterranean pipes into their cities to supply the inhabitants, and it is not improbable, that the first founders of towns consulted this advantage in determining where to place them. In the reign of Hezekiah, the Assyrians invaded Judah (2). The king took counsel with his princes and his mighty men, to stop the waters of the fountains, (9) 1 Sam. xxii. Roma subterranea. Paciaudi Antiq, Christian, which were without the city: and they did help him. So there was gathered much people together, who stopt all the fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water? This custom prevailed in all ages, and William, Archbishop of Tyre, who in the eleventh century was in a crusading army, mentions the same thing (). This non therefore might supply Salim with water, and as it was a time of peace, near the city, and plentiful enough to supply the inhabitants, it must have been highly convenient for the baptism of im mersion. Adjacent to some of the fountains of Judea were buildings, reservoirs, and large receptacles of water, cisterns of great size, and baths both simple and medicinal. Of the latter were the hot wells of Tiberias, Gadara, Callirhoe, and other places. Near Ramah there yet remains, of very ancient work, a reservoir a hundred and sixty feet long, and a hundred and forty broad (1). Such also of different sizes, and for different purposes, were those at Tabor, Jerusalem, Etham, and the gardens of Solomon. One of the fountains of Judah was called Ainrogel, the Fuller's-eye, because there fullers cleansed stuffs (5). Who, among this variety and uncertainty, can at this distance exactly determine what kind of water this at non was? One thing only is certain, that there was much or many waters. [Similar critical observations are continued for a number of pages more, with which a number of other things are connected. But it is judged it has been clearly shown that Enon contained water sufficient for dipping.] Editor. CHAP. IV. OF THE PERSONS WHOM JOHN BAPTIZED, AND PARTICULARLY JESUS. PRESUMPTUOUS as it may appear, for a monk in Africa to add to a history of what was done in Asia, and recorded by eye witnesses three hundred years (3) Willem. Tyren. Archiep Hist. Lib. viii. p. 749. ... |