Oriental customs: or an illustration of the sacred Scriptures, by an explanatory application of the customs and manners of the Eastern nations, and especially the Jews. Therein alluded to, together with observations on many difficult and obscure texts, collected from the most celebrated travellers, and the most eminent critics / by Samuel Burder.

  • Samuel Burder
Date:
1802
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Oriental customs: or an illustration of the sacred Scriptures, by an explanatory application of the customs and manners of the Eastern nations, and especially the Jews. Therein alluded to, together with observations on many difficult and obscure texts, collected from the most celebrated travellers, and the most eminent critics / by Samuel Burder. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sacrifices to the infernal deities among the Gentiles, and loaded with curses, affronts, and injuries, in the way to the altars at which they are to bleed, or like the refuse of all things to this day, the very sweepings of the streets and stalls, a nuisance to all around us, and fit for nothing but to be trampled upon by the meanest and vilest of mankind.” The word xciQupiJbCilu. has a force and meaning here, which no one word in our language can express ; it refers to the custom of purifying a city by the expiatory death of some person : for this purpose they clothed a man in foul and filthy garments, and then put him to death. When the city was visited with any great calamity, they chose one of the lowest persons in it, and brought him to a certain place, with cheese, dry figs, and a cake in his hand. After beating him with rods, they burnt him and the rods together in a ditch, and cast the ashes into the sea, with these words, Be thou a lustration for us. The people of Marseilles, originally a Grecian colony, had a similar custom, for we learn from Servius on the third book of the iEneid, that as often as they were afflicted with the pestilence, they took a poor person, who offered himself willingly, and kept him a whole year on the choicest food, at the public expence. This man was afterwards dressed up with vervain, and in the sacred vestments, and led through the city, where he was loaded with execrations, that all the misfortunes of the state might rest on him, and was then thrown into the sea. The Mexicans had a similar custom of keeping a man a year, and even worshipping him during that time, and then sacrificing him. No. 520.—ix. 25. They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we are incorruptible.] It is well known, that the crown in the olympic games, sacred to Jupiter, was