This prophecy, which our divines have been so eager to make apply to Jesus Christ, was known also to the Egyptians and Greeks, as well as to the Hindoos and Jews. This fact strongly supports my rendering, and that it related to their sacred Om.[1]
Singular as my reader may imagine it to be that Isaiah should allude to the Om of India, he will not think it so very paradoxical and singular, when he learns, that the history of Cyrus, who is prophesied of by name by Isaiah, is taken from a passage in the life of Cristna, from some history of whom Herodotus must have copied it. For the particulars of this the reader may refer to Mr. Maurice’s History of Hindostan.[2] I beg him to reflect on this extraordinary fact before he proceeds. His utter inability to account for it he must confess.
The connexion noticed by Cassini between the prophecy of Isaiah, the oriental cycles, and the prophecy of the Sibyl in Virgil, has a strong tendency to confirm the explanation which I have given above of the word עמנואל omnual or Immanuel, used by Isaiah.
In addition to all this, in the course of the following work, when I treat of the Sibyls, I shall produce many very striking proofs of identity between the doctrines of Isaiah and those of the Orientalists. And I beg my reader to remember, what I have already proved, that all the learned ancients held that the sacred books had two meanings. He will also remember, that almost every thing is closely connected with judicial astrology.
3. The calculation of the age of the world before Christ, according to Eusebius, ending exactly with the Siamese cycle, is very curious. On the birth of Christ the Eastern astrologers, who, according to the two disputed chapters in Matthew and Luke, had calculated his nativity, came to Bethlehem, or the temple of Ceres, where Adonis or Adonai was adored, to make to him the solar offerings, as Isaiah, according to the same disputed chapters, had foretold. All this applies very well to the sun, to Cristna or Buddha, to Jesus of Bethlehem, but has nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth. When the Irenæuses, Papiases, and early Popes, were intruding the disputed chapters of Matthew and Luke into their canon, they took all the remainder of the story to which these books alluded. The book of Isaiah might probably mislead them.[3]
The book of Isaiah has given much trouble, as already mentioned, to our divines. They have wanted it for a prophecy of Christ, while it literally expresses that it alludes to Cyrus,[4] and that it was for a sign to the prophet’s contemporaries: in consequence, as I have just stated, they have been obliged to have recourse to a double sense. No doubt, in one point of view, the double sense is justified, as Isaiah’s prediction relating to the cycle next coming would, in a considerable degree, apply to every new revolving cycle, as it arose. As a work of judicial astrology, it is indeed very probable that the prediction had a double sense, for that is strictly in conformity with the spirit of astrology or magic.
Our divines, depending on the very questionable authority of their chronology, will tell me, that Isaiah foretold Cyrus as a Messiah, before he was born. I say nothing of the ease with which these prophecies might be corrupted, a circumstance which we know, either less or more, has happened to every sacred writing in existence: but observe, that the word Cyrus is a solar epithet, that in fact it means the sun.[5] Isaiah must have been an unskilful astrologer or Chaldean if he could not
- ↑ See Celtic Druids, Ch. v. Sect. viii. p. 163, note.
- ↑ Vol. II. p. 478. Ed. 4to.
- ↑ As usual we find them laying their hands on every thing they found. Thus in Luke ii. 25—38, we have a story of Simeon, and of Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, which is a complete interloper. Why it is here no one can tell; but Phanuel is Phan or Phen-our-god, the cycle of the neros; vide Celtic Druids, App. pp. 307, 308; and of Anna, or the year, we shall see more by and by.
- ↑ Isaiah xlv. 1—4. The circumstance of Cyrus being called by his name is different from every other prophecy.
- ↑ Cyrus was called Cai Cosroe, the primitive of which is, Coresh, a Persian name for the Sun. Maur. Hist. Hind. Vol. II. p. 478.
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