Thus we read in Stanley's Sabean Philosophy: "On the 24th of the tenth month," that is December, according to our reckoning, "the Arabians celebrated the BIRTHDAY OF THE LORD--that is the Moon." The Lord Moon was the great object of Arabian worship, and that Lord Moon, according to them, was born on the 24th of December, which clearly shows that the birth which they celebrated had no necessary connection with the course of the sun. It is worthy of special note, too, that if Christmas-day among the ancient Saxons of this island, was observed to celebrate the birth of any Lord of the host of heaven, the case must have been precisely the same here as it was in Arabia. The Saxons, as is well known, regarded the Sun as a female divinity, and the Moon as a male. *
* SHARON TURNER. Turner cites an Arabic poem which proves that a female sun and a masculine moon were recognised in Arabia as well as by the Anglo-Saxons. It must have been the birth-day of the Lord Moon, therefore, and not of the Sun, that was celebrated by them on the 25th of December, even as the birth-day of the same Lord Moon was observed by the Arabians on the 24th of December. The name of the Lord Moon in the East seems to have been Meni, for this appears the most natural interpretation of the Divine statement in Isaiah lxv. 11, "But ye are they that forsake my holy mountain, that prepare a temple for Gad, and that furnish the drink-offering unto Meni." There is reason to believe that Gad refers to the sun-god, and that Meni in like manner designates the moon-divinity. *
*See KITTO, vol. iv. p. 66, end of Note. The name Gad evidently refers, in the first instance, to the war-god, for it signifies to assault; but it also signifies "the assembler"; and under both ideas it is applicable to Nimrod, whose general character was that of the sun-god, for he was the first grand warrior; and, under the name Phoroneus, he was celebrated for having first gathered mankind into social communities. The name Meni, "the numberer," on the other hand, seems just a synonym for the name of Cush or Chus, which, while it signifies "to cover" or "hide," signifies also "to count or number." The true proper meaning of the name Cush is, I have no doubt, "The numberer" or "Arithmetician"; for while Nimrod his son, as the "mighty" one, was the grand propagator of the Babylonian system of idolatry, by force and power, he, as Hermes, was the real concocter of that system, for he is said to have "taught men the proper mode of approaching the Deity with prayers and sacrifice" (WILKINSON); and seeing idolatry and astronomy were intimately combined, to enable him to do so with effect, it was indispensable that he should be pre-eminently skilled in the science of numbers.