idea. The translators of the Septuagint and Onkelos are undoubtedly entitled to high respect. In this case, however, they advocate an untenable opinion, if they both do advocate the meaning of beginning, because our system was not the first of created things; and they make the divine penman say what was not true—in fact, to contradict himself in what follows. But if we adopt the explanation of the Jerusalem Targum and of the other learned Jews, and of the earliest of the fathers of the church, there is nothing in it inconsistent with the context; but, on the contrary, it is strictly in accordance with it, and with the general system of oriental philosophy, on which the whole Mosaic system was founded.
I think the author of Genesis had more philosophy than to write about the beginning of the world. I cannot see any reason why so much anxiety should be shewn, by some modern translators, to construe this word as meaning beginning. I see clearly enough why others of them should do so, and why the ancient translators did it. They had a preconceived dogma to support, their partiality to which blinded their judgment, and of philosophy they did not possess much. However, it cannot be denied that, either in a primary or secondary sense, the word means wisdom as well as beginning, and, therefore, its sense here must be gathered from the context.
I will now return to the word Samim, as I promised in the early part of this book.
7. The two words called in the first chapter of Genesis השמים e-samim, the heavens, ought to be translated the planets. In that work the sun, and moon, and the earth, are said to be formed, and also separately from them the samim or planets; and afterward the stars also. Dr. Parkhurst has very properly explained the word to mean disposers. They are described in the Chaldean Oracles as a septenary of living beings. By the ancients they were thought to have, under their special care, the affairs of men. Philo was of this opinion, and even Maimonides declares, that they are endued with life, knowledge, and understanding; that they acknowledge and praise their Creator. On this opinion of the nature of the planets, all judicial astrology, magic, was founded—a science, I believe, almost as generally held by the ancients, as the being of a God is by the moderns.[1]
Phornutus, Περι Ουρανου,[2] says, “For the ancients took those for Gods whom they found to move in a certain regular manner, thinking them to be the causers of the changes of the air and the conservation of the universe. These, then, are Gods (θεοι) which are the disposers (θετηρες) and formers of all things.”
The word יתשמיא itsmia is used by the Targum of Jerusalem for the word את שמים at smim of Genesis, and I think fully justifies my rendering of that word by planets instead of the word heavens. It comes from the root שם sm, which signifies to fix, to enact, pono, sancior—and means placers, fixers, enactors.
With respect to the שמים smim, Parkhurst is driven to a ridiculous shift, similar to the case of the first word ראשית rasit. It was necessary to conceal the truth from his Christian reader, but this was very difficult without laying himself open to a charge of pious fraud. In this instance he will be supported by the Jews, because at this day neither Jews nor Christians will like to admit that the very foundation of their religions is laid in judicial astrology. But such I affirm is the fact, as any one may at once see, by impartially considering what Parkhurst has unwillingly been obliged to allow in his Lexicon. He does not admit that the singular of the word means a disposer or placer, or the disposer or placer, but he takes the plural and calls them the disposers or placers. And, shutting his eyes to the planetary bodies and to the word רקיע rqio, which means the space, air, or firmament, and which can have no other meaning, he calls the שמים smim, the firmanent, and says it is the disposers. It is absurd to speak of the air, or space, or firmament, in the plural; and that Parkhurst must have known. In some author (I yet believe somewhere in
