she returned, and of serenity when she departed. The Greeks have another tradition, that, in the island of Crete, doves nourished Jupiter with ambrosia, brought from the streams of the ocean; a story which may be traced with ease to this line of their great poet :

Αμβροσίην Διι πατρι φερεσιν.

"They bring ambrosia to father Jove."

Odyss.

When the Argonauts were about to attempt a passage among the rocky isles of the Thracian Bosphorus, they were advised by the prophet Phineas, to send out a dove; which, if she passed them in safety, they might follow. In the second book of the Iliad, several cities in Boeotia, and the Peloponnesus, are celebrated for their innumerable flocks of doves; and a cluster of islands near Smyrna, were for the same reason called Peristerides, or the pigeon island. From this statement, it may be inferred, that the dove came into Greece and the surrounding countries, very soon after the flood.

It is evident from the Scriptures, that Syria, from the earliest postdiluvian times, abounded with doves. When Abraham was received into covenant with God, not many generations after the flood, he offered in sacrifice, by the divine command, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.* And, in the law of Moses, the sacrifice of turtle doves, and young pigeons, is every where prescribed. It is alleged from Ctesias, by Diodorus, and R. Azarias, a Jewish writer, that Semiramis, the far-famed queen of Babylon, derived her name from the note of the turtle; for it may be traced to (1) zemir, the song of birds, and particularly of the dove. Thus in the Song, "The time (,) of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land." The dove was long regarded by the orientals, and particularly by the Assyrians, probably on account of her services to Noah and his family, with great veneration. A golden dove adorned the head of the Syrian goddess, and shared in the honours of that pretended deity. From the time of Semiramis, who, in the fabulous history of Assyria, was in a wonderful † Song ii. 12,

* Gen. xv. 9.

manner nourished and preserved by an immense flock of doves, that beautiful bird was actually worshipped as a goddess. This fact, which Ctesias records, is attested by Xenophon, who declares, that the inhabitants of Syria would not suffer them to be molested. The infatuated people looked upon them as the most sacred of the feathered race; and thought it unlawful even to touch them. The use of these birds was by law prohibited to the Syrians, from the earliest times; and, while they made no scruple to eat other fowls, they carefully abstained from the dove; because she was not only sacred to their principal goddess, but was her'self elevated to the rank of a divinity, and numbered among the gods. A figure of the same bird, surrounded with the rainbow, in allusion to the flood, waved in the banners of the Assyrian monarchs.* To that symbol, the prophet Jeremiah undoubtedly refers in these words: Their land is desolate, because of the fierceness of the oppressor;" strictly the fierceness of the dove, "and because of his fierce anger." And in another part of the prophecy:"Arise, and let us go again to our own people, and to the land of our nativity, from the oppressing sword;" (non a,) from the sword of the dove. For fear of the oppressing sword, (the sword of the dove,) they shall turn every one to his people, and they shall flee every one to his own land.Ӡ Another allusion to the symbol which was blazoned

*In the first place, this assertion is not proved; and our author acknowledges that it is disputed by Bochart. See page 62. In the second place, the word n which it is here recommended to render dove, is a regular participle feminine, from the verb to oppress; and in three of the instances adduced, it has its feminine substantives expressed; (Jer. xlvi. 16, and 1. 16. 7, the oppressing sword, and Zeph. ifi. 1. rn yn the oppressing city;) and in the other instance (Jer. xxv. 38.) its substantive, is understood according to the common reading; but in some copies, it is expressed instead of before the participle. In the third place, the literal meaning in each of these instances is perfectly consonant with the connexion: and it requires some evidence, which we have not yet seen, to convince us that the figurative allusions, for which the author contends, are not far-fetched and incongruous. I. C.

Jer. xxv. 38. and xlvi. 16. and 1. 16.

on the standard of the Assyrian monarchs, occurs in the prophecies of Zephaniah, where Jerusalem is called the dove; because, in her conduct she resembled Babylon, the capital of their empire: "Woe to her that is filthy and polluted, to the city (that resembles) the dove."*

The conclusion to which these statements lead, is obvious and incontrovertible, that in Syria, as in Greece, the dove had fixed her dwelling in every age. every age. Bochart indeed admits, that the era of her appearance in Syria and the neighbouring countries, is involved in obscurity. Although it is quite clear from the laws of Moses respecting sacrifice, that she was common in those parts in his time; yet it may be questioned whether Abraham, when he entered into covenant with Jehovah, did offer in sacrifice a young pigeon; because the original term (m) gozal, signifies the young of the dove, properly so called, of the turtle, of the wood-pigeon, and other varieties of that species. But, since the turtle is uniformly joined with the pigeon, and in the Mosaic laws respecting sacrifice, which were dictated by Jehovah himself, the God of Abraham and his posterity, it can scarcely be doubted, that the gozal, which the patriarch offered by the divine command on that memorable occasion, was in reality a young pigeon. It is there joined with the turtle; its blood is shed in order to ratify the covenant on which the whole Mosaic dispensation rested, to which all succeeding sacrifices, under the law, had a reference; it was therefore, strictly, the young of a dove. And, besides, if Syria did not lie directly in the road from the mountain on which the ark rested, to Greece, it was certainly not far distant. It is therefore to be expected, that the dove would appear in Syria, and in Greece, nearly about the same time.

The doves of Semiramis, our learned author considers as involved in equal uncertainty. The later Syrians worshipped (,) yonim, or domestic doves, in honour of Semiramis; but it was the wood-pigeons, as may be gathered from Ctesias, that guarded the infancy

*See Bochart.

of that potent queen; for the places which they frequented, says that writer, were desert and stony. Hence, the name of Semiramis, which was borrowed from that circumstance, is explained by Hesychius, the mountain dove. Nor can it be determined, from the history of that sovereign, in what age the dove began to frequent the plains of Syria and Palestine, because the time when she flourished is very uncertain. According to Ctesias, a very fabulous writer, she was the wife of Ninus, who reigned at Babylon, in the days of Abraham. But others make her the daughter of Beloch, who flourished more than five hundred years later than Ninus. Herodotus brings her down within two hundred years of the elder Cyrus, who swayed the sceptre more than fifteen hundred years after the death of Ninus, the supposed husband of Semiramis. This powerful and victorious queen, who subjected so many nations to her dominion, and shook the earth with the terror of her name, did not govern at Babylon in the time of Abraham, but Amraphel, a petty prince, and one of the confederate kings who invaded the vale of Sodom, whom Abraham surprised on their retreat, and completely defeated.

Bochart also doubts the truth of the story told by some writers, respecting the figure of a dove blazoned on the banners of the Assyrian kings, because no ancient author can be cited in whose works it is recorded. And it is most probable, that Cyrus, after the conquest of Babylon, retained the same military ensigns under which his ancestors, the Medes and Assyrians, had been accustomed to combat. It appears from Xenophon, that their ensign was a golden eagle raised upon a long spear, which was adopted by all the kings of Persia; and he contends that the texts quoted from the prophecies of Jeremiah, allude not to the dove, as many writers have supposed, but to the severe oppression which his people had to suffer from the Assyrian arms. It cannot, however, be doubted, that the dove was long a favourite emblem among the Assyrians; was held in great veneration, and even worshipped as a goddess in Syria; though it may be

1

difficult to ascertain at what precise time the idolatrous custom was introduced.

The dove is universally admitted to be one of the most beautiful objects in nature. The brilliancy of her plumage, the splendour of her eye, the innocence of her look, the excellence of her dispositions, and the purity of her manners, have been the theme of admiration and praise in every age. To the snowy whiteness of her wings, and the rich golden hues which adorn her neck, the inspired Psalmist alludes in these elegant strains: "Though ye have lien among the pots, yet ye shall be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold."* These bold figures do not seldom occur in the classical poets of antiquity. Virgil celebrates the argenteus anser, the silver coloured goose; Ovid, the crow which once rivalled the dove in whiteness; Lucretius, the changeful hues of her neck, which she turns to the sun beam, as if conscious of its unrivalled beauty.‡

Mr. Harmer is of opinion, that the holy Psalmist alludes, not to an animal adorned merely by the hand of nature, but to the doves that were consecrated to the Syrian deities, and ornamented with trinkets of gold; and agreeably to this view, he interprets the passage, "Israel is to me as a consecrated dove; and though your circumstances have made you rather appear like a poor dove, blackened by taking up its abode in a smoky hole of the rock; yet shall ye become beautiful and glorious as a Syrian silver coloured pigeon, on whom some ornament of gold is put."

But this view makes the Holy Ghost speak with some approbation, or at least without censure, of a heathenish rite, and even to borrow from it a figure to illustrate the effects of divine favour among his chosen people. No other instance of this kind occurs in the sacred Scriptures, and therefore it cannot be admitted here without much stronger evidence than that respectable writer has produced. It is much more natural to suppose, that the Psalmist alludes to particoloured doves, with white wings, and the rest of their feathers

* Psa. lxviii. 13.

Met. b. 2. Fable 7,

- Book 2, verse 800.