purpose, Clemens of Alexandria, Bishop Kidder, Dr. Nicholls, Bishop Chandler, Dr. Campbel, and many others, have been obliged to suppose that God inspired the author to use a double sense, and that the predictions related both to the prophet’s son, born about the time when these were written, and to Christ, born many hundred years afterward. These learned men do not seem ever to have thought either of the unworthiness of the motive which they attribute to the Deity by this deceit, or of the gross absurdity of making the prophecy of Christ, who was to be born so many hundred years afterward, a sign to the people then living. However, the monstrous absurdity of this double sense has been refuted by Dr. Sykes, Dr. Benson, Bishop Marsh, and others; and Dr. Ekerman, and Dr. George S. Clarke, in his Hebrew Criticism and Poetry, Lond. 1810, maintain that the Old Testament contains no prophecy at all which literally relates to the person of Christ.[1]
Again, Dr. Adam Clarke maintains, that the prophecy of Isaiah—A virgin[2] shall conceive and bear a son, and call his name Immanuel, does not mean Christ.[3]
Dr. Clarke says, “It is humbly apprehended that the young woman usually called the Virgin is the same with the prophetess,[4] and Immanuel is to be named by his mother, the same with the prophet’s son, whom he was ordered to name Maher-shalal-hash-baz.”[5]
I think no one will deny that Dr. Adam Clarke, the annotator on the Bible, is a very learned man, and he is here an unwilling witness, and he comes to this conclusion in the teeth of all the prejudices of his education, after having read all the laboured attempts of our divines to make the prophecy of Isaiah a prophecy relating to Jesus Christ. I maintain then, that this fairly opens the door to the explanation which I shall now give, and which, I think, will be considered probable, when I shew that many other expressions of Isaiah are the same with the Hindoo doctrines and predictions. At all events, with every person whose understanding is not quite dwarfified by superstition, there is an end of the belief in what has been called the prophecy of Isaiah, as a necessary article of faith. The Hebrew for Immanuel is עמנואל omnual, which may certainly be rendered with us God. But it might also be rendered by Om our God, the word Om being the first syllable of the name of Ammon, the surname of Jupiter Ammon, of the Ἱερον Ομανου, and of the Ammonites, ch. viii. 8,—“And the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel, or God with us,” or the land of thee, Om our God—the A. U. M. or Om of India.
I can entertain little doubt that this prophecy was well known to the Gauls or Celts and Druids, long before the time of Christ, as is made sufficiently evident by an inscription Virgini Parituræ, which was found at Chartres upon a black image of Isis. This image was made by one of their kings, and the Rev. M. Langevin says it was existing in his day, about 1792.[6] They are almost the words of Isaiah, and Mons. Langevin says, were inscribed one hundred years before the birth of Christ. Along with the statue of Isis was a boat, which M. Langevin says was the symbol under which this Goddess was adored. This was the Argha of India, of which I shall treat hereafter.
- ↑ Class. Journal, Vol. XXXIII. p. 47. I beg leave to ask the candid reader, if one can be found, how he can expect unlearned persons to pay any attention to these prophecies, as they are called, when some of the most learned divines, much against their inclinations, are obliged to confess that they are no such thing? One fact, however, this clearly proves, that no man can be expected, by a merciful God, under pain of punishment, to believe subjects involved in so much difficulty.
- ↑ The word virgin here is, in the Hebrew, עלמה olme, and is preceded by the emphatic article ה e, therefore of course it means the not a virgin. In the Phœnician, Bochart says, עלמא olma signifies virgin. This is evidently the same word, the celestial virgin, the Alma Venus of Lucretius, and the Brahme-Maia of India, or the Virgin Astrea, alluded to by Virgil.
- ↑ Class. Journ. Vol. IV. p. 169, of No. VI. and No. VII.
- ↑ Chap. viii. 3.
- ↑ Class. Journ. Vol. I. p. 637. בז bz חש hs שלל sll מהר mer. I cannot for a moment believe that the real, that is, the secret, meaning of these words is, prædam acceleravit spolium festinundo.
- ↑ Recherches Hist. sur Falaise, par Langevin, prêtre.
