From the prophetic period the Iiarlot was not only involved in, but was the symbol of, idolatry. The experience of Hosea seems to have suggested her faithlessness and fickleness as a fit emblem of the dealings of Israel with her true Lord and with other gods (see IDOLATRY).
LrrERATtTRB.— On Prostitution as a religious institution in the ancifnt world, see Luci.in, ' De Dea Syria'; Pausaniiw, ' De- ecriplio GrsBcijB' ; Movers, Du Phonizicr. On the special sub- ject Selden, * De uxore Hehraica'; Hamburger's Lexicon; Benzinger, UebraUche ArchiEologie.
W. P. Paterson.
HAR-MAGEDON Rev 16" ' And he (AV ; who t
the sixth angel or the Almighty ? KV ' they,' the three unclean spirits of v.") gathered them (the kings of the whole world, not ' the spirits of the Demons,' as Hommel explains in the passage to be quoted below) together into the place, which is called in Hebrew Armageddon (AV, ' Har- Magedon ' RV). The reading, as well as the meaning and even the context, of this hapax- legomenon is very uncertain.
(1) The TR spells 'A/);aa7e55tiv ; Lachmann, Tre- gelles, Tischendorf, Alford, 'Ap/iaycSwy ; WH 'Ap Jilayediiu (the second word spaced out and in quotation type, referring to Zee 12" [Heb.]). Several Greek MSS have but ilayediiv or Jilaycdown (thus Q). The shorter reading is supported by Tyconius and, now, by the (older) Syriac trans- lation discovered and edited by G^vynn (Dublin, 1897) : ^Or-ifr-^. The later Syriac translation (com- monly printed with the Peshitta) has ^Oj-uulD$|
(not quoted in the Thesaurus Sj/riacus, col. 390). The shorter form must have arisen at a time when the whole word was considered to be a compound.
(2) The oldest explanation put forward in the Church seems to be that of Hippolytus, unhappily preserved only in Arabic (P. Lagardii, ad Analecta sua Syriaca Appendix, Lipsiaj, 1858, p. 27 n. 18) : ' the meaning of this expression is Die smooth (soft,
HAEMAGLDUX
IIAKUD
SU3
trodden) place letJ' r-jS^' Is this = rcSlor {KKowTofUvov, the Septuagint rendering of pi}9 nypj in Zee 12"? (For the Arabic expression comp.
Ajii iVjJ?« = |3?M« iro56s, Ac 7'). It is added that
Hippolytus understood it of the valley of Jehosha- phat, Jl 4» [Eng. 3"]'» (Hippolytus ed. [Bon- wetscli-] Achelis, I. ii. 236).
Origen-Eusebius excluded the Apocalypse from their Bible Dictionary, but in tlie Ononuistka Vaticana ' Ap/uiyeSduiv is explained : els t4 luirpoaOev i^iye/xni (Onomastica sacra, ed. de Lagarde, )>. 187, 1. 45), i.e. DiBP I'i, and Jerome, who saw in it Mt. Tabor, explained likewise (ib. 80, 11): 'Arma- geddon (cod. II -gedon) : consurreclio tecti (? Jjp n^) give consurreclio in priora, sed melius mon-a a latrunculis (cod. H om. mons ; inj9 "vj) vel mons globosits' (13? 'n ; n3 = coriandrum).
(3) For a long time the explanation (O'lijo vi ' the mount (of) Megiddo,' was considered pretty certain ; see Westcott-Hort, ii. p. 313, wlio compare 'Ap Tapis'tfj', *Ap -a0dp, to which may be added, from the Hexapla, 'Ap Siiic, Ps47 (48)^ Older scliolars had also compared 'Apaaiidaara of the Classics, while Westcott-Hort prefer to see in the latter name another example of Ap = "iv ("i"') ' town,' as in nx'iD fj (Nu 21^, Is 15' ; transliterated in the latter place 'Ap JIud/3 by Theodotion). The latter expla- nation was nut forward Ion" ago by Hiller and adopted by Hitzig, Hilgenfeld, Vblter, and others.
A third explanation started from the root mn (comp. .^v^^l Nu 21-" ; p^j) ; thus Luther in his marginal gloss 'verdammte Krieger, verfluchte Rustung . . . ab Herem et gad.' Older explana- tions need not be quoted here ; see Poole, Synopsis Criticorum, ed. Franc. (1712) vol. v. 1829. Al:ik- kedah (nip5, LXX MciKijSd), where 'the live kings' ■were slain (Jos 10"- '"), lies too far away to be thought of.
(4) Upon the whole, to find an allusion here to Megiddo (see article) is still the most probable explanation. Megiddo was famous for the defeat and death of Joslah (2 K 23^, 2 Ch 35-- ; allude<l to Zee 12") ; but it is not on account of this unhappy event that the place seems to be men- tioned, but because of the victory over ' tlie kings of Canaan ' (Jg 5"). It has been objected that RIcgiddo lies in the plain (iv rip veSlip M., 2 Ch 35^ ; Hrl i/SoTi M., Jg 5" ; Sv^ V ''i), and tliat a mountain was not a fit battleplace (Bousset, ad loc. ). But in the very context of Jg 5 ' Mt. Tabor ' and ' the high places of the field ' are mentioned (.Ig 4'- *• " 5'*).
(5) Hommel (' Inschriftliche Glossen u. Exkurse rur Genesis u. zu den Propheten,' Neue Kirchlirlie Zeitschrift, 1890, vi. pp. 407, 408) seems to have been the first who saw in Har-Magedon the tjSo -n of Is 14" (the mount in the north where the gods meet), supposing that a redactor correctea an original fiaveS or ;uuf5 into /layeduf. He might have recalled the fact that in certain cases y is transliterated by y. This view was carried out by Gunkel {Sc/uipfung und Chnos, 1894), who finifs here the remnant of an ancient tradition about the battle of the gods on a mountain, and reminds us of the gathering of the fallen angels on Mt. Hermon, Enoch (?. (To the literature quoted by Bousset add : The Bonk of the Secrets of Enoch, edited by K. H. Charles, Oxf. 1896, ch. xviii. p. 22). Siegfried {Theol. Lil.-zeitung, 1895, col. 304) also thinks that in Harmagedon the ivto vi of la 14" and MfyiSSii seem to have coalesced. EwaUl {Die Johanneuichen Schriftcn, ii. 1802, 294) found liy calculation that pn:D-ix and ^'^■\iin 7\o\-\ ' the great IJome,' have the same numerical value — 304. The question whether there is in the pa.s.sage an allusion to Nero and tlie Parthians must be left to the commentators on the Apocalypse. The