Nis'roch (Heb. Nisrok', T|"ip?, nsually referred to the root Tij.3, eayle, with Persian ending och or ac^, in- tensive, i. q. great eagle ; but, according to Bohlen, per- haps a Sanscrit word, from 7tis, '-night," and ro'gis,
NISROCH
136
NISSIM
'•light," i. q. Ilie lirjht ofmrjlit, i.e. the moon [see Gesen. Thesaur. p. 892]; Sept. N«(T|0«x, 2 Kings xix, 57; tianapaxi Isa. xxsvii, 38; v. r. Mtatpax, 'Ea^pax, 'Aaapax), an idol worshipped bj' the Assyrians, in whose temple Sennacherib was worshipping when as- sassinated by his sons, Adrammelech and Sharezer (2 Kings xix, 37; Isa. xxxvii, 38). Adopting the above Shemitic derivation of the name, Mr. Layard has dis- covered an eagle-headed figure in the ruins of Nineveh (at Nimrud), which he supposes to have been the As- syrian Nisroch; and one quite similar has since been dug out at Khorsabad (Xiiieveh and its Remains, ii, 348; Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 219 sq.). A Zoroas-
Nisroch (from the uorlh-west palace, Ximrt'id).
trian oracle speaks of God " as he that has the head of the hawk." But there are many great if not insuper- able difficulties in the way. The name Nisroch is not found on any of the inscriptions; and nisr has not in Assyrian the meaning which it has in Hebrew. No name of anj' god on the sculptures at all resembles Nis- roch, and the hawk-headed figure is more, as professor Rawlinson says, " an attendant genius than a god" {Four Great Empires, ii, 263). Sir Henry Kawlinson even afhrms that "Asshur had no temple at Nineveh in which Sennacherib could have been worshipping" (FTe)-odot. i, 485); while Layard thinks that the king may have been slain in a temple of this god, and that the Hebrews, seeing the hawk-headed figure so fre- quently sculptured in connection with him, believed it to be the presiding divinity {Xineveh and Bahijlon, p. C37). The Jewish rabbins pretend that Nisroch was an idol formed from one of the boards of Noah's ark (Rashi on Isa. xxxvii ; Kimchi on 2 Kings xix) ; while others suppose it was an image of the dove which Noah sent out from the ark (Gen. viii, 8), and have sought confirmation in Lucian's statement {De Jove Tra(j. c. 42) that the Assyrians sacrificed to the dove. Many other theories arc noticed in Iken's Dis- sert, de Nisroch, Idolo Assyr. (Brem. 1747). See also Ideler, Ursprung d. Sternnamen, p. 41G ; Creuzer, Symbol. i, 723 sq. Selden confesses his ignorance of the deity denoted by this name {De Dis Syris, synt. ii, c. 10); but Beyer, in his Additamenta (p. 323-325), has col- lected several conjectures (sec Kulenkamp, De Nm-och Idolo Assyriorum, Rom. 1747). One is mentioned as more probable by Winer {liealic. s. v.), that it was the
constellation Aquila, the eagle being in the Persian re- ligion a symbol of Ormuzd. Parkhurst, deriving the word from the Chaldee root "T'Pi serak (which occurs in Dan. vi in the form X^S'IO, sdrekayyd, and is ren- dered in the A.V. "presidents"), conjectures that Nis- rocli may be the impersonation of tlie solar tire, and substantially identical with Molech and Milcora, which are both derived from a root similar in meaning to sei-ak. Josephus has a curious variation. He says (.4?;^ X, 1, 5) that Sennacherib was buried in his owu temple, called A rasce {tv roi iSiqj va<ii 'Apdaicrj Xtyofit- vi{j). It may be inferred from these various renderings that the Hebrew name has been in some way corrupted, and that the initial consonant N or M is a corruption. In that case the real name is something like Asarach or Assar (Niebuhr, Gesch. Assiir, p. 131 ; Brandis, His- torisch. Gewinn, p. 105). This would at once connect the name with Asshur, the deified patriarch and head of the Assyrian pantheon, to whom belong as emblems the winged circle and the sacred tree, and who is usual- ly called by his worshippers " Asshur, my lord." It has been thought that the reading Nisroch has arisen from taking as a phonetic sign the determinative w
which is usually prefixed to the name of a >^^ ' god.
Nissel, JoiiANX Georg, a noted Biblical scholar, flourislied near the middle of the 17th century. He was a native of the Palatinate, but settled in Holland, and devoted himself to the prosecution of Oriental learning. He prepared and printed at his own expense and with his own types an edition of the Hebrew Bible, which appeared in 1659, and again in 1662, with the title. Sacra Biblia Hebraica ex optimis editionibus dili- f/enter expressa, et forma. Uteris, versuumque distinctione commendata (Lugd. Bat. 8vo). The second edition has a preface signed by Heidan, Cocceius, and Hoornbeck, in which the -work is commended in ver}' high terms. Few more beautifully printed editions of the Hebrew Scriptures have appeared; and it presents with great accuracy the text of the best editions. Nissel's Biblia has also the peculiarity of having the Megilloth be- tween the Torah and the Nebiim Rlshonim, as in the Romberg Bibles. The text is divided into verses, with Latin headings to the chapters. Nissel edited also some portions of the Scriptures in Ethiopic, but not, it is said, very accurately.
ITissim ben'-Jacob bex-Nissim {Kalal Chamad), a rabbi of note for his Talmudical knowledge, was bom about 960. He was a pupil of Haja Gaon at Sora, and afterwards became himself the teacher of the noted Alfasi. Nissim succeeded his father in the rabbin- ate of Kairwan, where he died in 1040. He wrote "I^Tabnri '^^Ji:.':-? ^d r)'??^'!' '°> a key to difficult points in the Talmud. It was probably originally written in Arabic, since in its Hebrew translation a good many Arabic words are retained. It was lately published from a very ancient MS. by J. Goldenthal, with short scholia, entitled 2p"J^ "1X2 (Vienna, 1847) : — bl"I5il "1^11 D, a long penitential prayer, which is yet to be found in the ritual of Spanish Jews ; it was trans- lated into Italian by D. Ascarelli (Venice, 1610), and into Spanish by D. L. de Barrios, under the title Dias Senitenciales (1686):— ni'd"^ 'o, a collection of stories (Ferrara, 1557, and often since). Some other works of his are still in MS. See Furst, Bibl. Jiid. iii, 35 sq. ; De Rossi, Dizionario storico der/li aittori Ebrei ((ierman transl. by Ilamberger), s. v. ; Wolf, Bibl. Ihbr. iii, 801, No. 1613 b; Schorr, in Geiger's Wissenschaftl. Zeit- schrifi, v, 431-45 (Grtinberg, 1844) ; Frankel's Zeit- schrtft, 1867, p. 309 ; Rapaport, Biography of Nissim ben- Jacob, and history of liis works in Bikkui-e ha-lttim, 1831 ; Landau, Zeit des B. Jakob ben-Nissim v. s. Sohnes des Rabbenu Nissim in the L. B, d. Or, 1846, c. 3, 4. (B.P.)