LlTERATtmB. — Besides the works referred to in the text, see Lit^htluot, Gttluians, lOtlied. Loudon, ISIK), p. 267; Mayor, The BfH*Ut «'/ St. Jiivita, 18i*2, p. xvif. See also an intert-sting and clever bat perverse not« In Kelm, Jtsus of Xasara, iii, 276.
J. Macpherson.
ALTAR. — i. Altar is the invariable rendering in the UT of •:;;?* (Aram, njno Ezr 7"). and in the NT of OvjiaoTJipLov. In AV it also occurs as tlie rendering of Sxnn (Ezk 43'*'), RV 'upper a.', and of '>»<ni< (Ezk 43"»>- '« — Kethib Wik), KV 'a. hearth.' In the NT pu/xis is found once (Ac 17^) in the sen.se of a heathen a. This distinction is very clearly brought out in 1 Mao 1'" ' they did sacrihce upon the idol altar {(tI jhv pufiiy) whith was upon the altar of God (t. SvaiaaTtiplov).' Simi- larly the Vulg. and early Lat. Fathers avoid the use of ara, preferring allarin and altare. Another designation is met with, viz. jn^c', prop. ' table,' Ezk41=»44'«, Mai V-". It would also seem that the appellation n??, prop. ' high place,' may in some cases oe used to expre.ss 'a.,' as Jer 7" (LXX Tin ^uiihv Tou T40(f9), 2 K 23' (but here text is doubt- ful), etc. C')3^ Is 65' is wrongly rendered in AV 'a" of brick'; RV ' "Pon the bricks.' In one or two places in the OT CJ;? of the present MT seems an alteration from an original njiv;. So dearly Gn 33*, and most probably 2 K 12"'. On the other hand, naio shoulcl perha]>s be restored in 2 K lu" (Stade in ZA TW. v. pp. 278, 289 f.).
ii. Altars in Preiii.storic Timk.s.— According to the primitive conceptions of the nomad Semites, the presence of a deity was implied in every spot thiit attracted them by its water or shade, and in every imposing landm.ark that guiiled them in their wanderings. Every well and grove, every mountain and rock, had its presiding deity. The humble olfering of the worshipper could be cast into the well, exposed upon the rock, or hung upon the sacred tree. It wa-s thus brought into imme- diate contact with the numen therein residing. A great atep in advance was taken when it was con- * UL * pUc« of ilftughter.'
ceived that the deity rould not only reside in such objects of nature s own creation as those above 8i)eci(ied, but could be persuaded ' to come and take for his embodiment a structure set up for him by the worshipper ' (W. R. Smith, lid. Sem. p. 1S9). The consideration of this all-important advance belongs elsewhere ; it is sullicient to note here that recent researches, esp. those of Well- liausen and W. K. Smith, have abundantly proved that the heathen Semite regarded the stone or cairn which he had him.self erected, as a dwelling- place of a deity, a Beth-el ('jx'n'j, cf. Gu 28"; for the signilicance of this passage, see Pill.\r), a name which passed, through the Plui'nicians as intermediaries, to the Greeks (^airiiXioi-) and Romans [batulus). Such a stone was termed by the Arabs, in the days before Islam, nu.«6 (pi. ansab), a word identical in ori^n and signification with the Heb. njiD (AV 'pillar'). Beside it the victim was slaughtered ; the blood was either poured over the stone, or with part of it the stone was smeared, while the rest wsis poured out at its base, the essential idea in this primitive rite being that in this way the blood was brought into im- mediate contact with the deity who, for the time being, had taken up his abode in the stone.
Now there can be no doubt that the same primi- tive ideas were shared by the ancestors of the Heb- rews. Among them, too, the nusb or mazzeba must have been the prototype of the sacrificial a. ' The rude Arabian usage is the primitive type out of which all the elaborate a. ceremonies of the more cultivated Semites grew ' (Rel. o/iSem. 1st ed. p. 184. See also Sacrifice). Even in hist, times we find among the Hebrews a survival of the primitive ritual above described. In the narrative of the battle of Michmash, Saul is shocked at the unseemly haste of bis warriors in eating flesh ' with the blood,' and orders a great stone to be brought at which the beasts might be duly slain and their blood poured out at the extemporised altar.
The next important step, the advance from the a. as a sacred stone to receive the blood of the victim to the a. as a hearth on which the flesh of the victim was burned in whole or in part, belongs to the history of Sackifice (which see, and cf. Smith, liel. Sem. p. 35811".).
If the above is a correct account of the evolution of the a. among the western Semites, the ditVer-
entiation of pillar and a. must, as regards the
iken place historic period. This seems the obvious conclusion
inhabitants
t pillar of Pal.,
have taken place in the pre-
from the existence, even at the present daj', of immense numbers of megalithic monuments, the .so-called menhirs and dolmens. These charac- teristic remains of antiquity, so numerous in Moab and in the W. Hauran, must undoubtedly have played an important part in the religious rites of those who reared them, and whom, for the present, we may assume to liave been of a Sem. stock. The ' cup-hullows" on the table-stone of the dolmens, connected in many ca-ses by a network of channels, must have been destined to receive the blood of the victim.*