Мифологические параллели

Both the importance and the mystery of the biblical teaching about cherubim are only enhanced by the fact that this teaching has striking parallels in mythology. In this respect, it shares the fate of the most ancient parts of the Old Testament doctrine (legends about creation, paradise, flood, etc.). “The biblical teaching about cherubim undoubtedly comes from the first revelation given by God to humanity at the time of its existence in relation to immediate communication with God. The emergence of various mythological teachings of antiquity about gods, demons and creatures resembling cherubs is explained from the interaction of tradition, as a repository of the primitive religious heritage of mankind, and the natural human factor, understood in all its breadth. Mythological ideas about cherubs probably originated from the first revelation, but mediated by a natural factor - imagination, and were deeply and significantly changed by it” (Fr. Ch. 503). This should be the Orthodox view of these parallels. The rationalist view is this: “the idea of ​​cherubim belongs to the mythological good that the Israelites shared with other peoples of antiquity, and not only Semitic” (Bert. on Ezek. 10:20). But for the orthodox, no less than for the rationalist, these parallels are interesting and instructive. They indicate which features in the biblical teaching about cherubim are common to the Bible and paganism. And it turns out that it is precisely the most ancient and most important features in this teaching that are common. Until recently, the closest mythological creature to a cherub was considered to be a vulture. Bearing a consonant name (γρύψ–keruv), it resembles a cherub in both appearance and function. Vultures are winged creatures with lion claws, eagle beaks and flaming eyes that guard gold in the far north among the Arimaspians (Herod. 3, 16; 4, 13, 27) in the land of the gods. Moreover, the German root greif (to grasp) resembles the Assyrian kurubu. We find more distant parallels to cherubs in Egyptian and Indian religion. So the Egyptian sphinxes represented the connection of a lion's head (sometimes a ram's) with a human body (but they were wingless). Indian artists represented the sun god on four vultures (Philost. Vita Apol. Tian. 3, 48). The bright shining wonderful bird in Indian mythology serves as the fast horse of Vishna (like four-legged birds, τετρασκελης οιωνος in Aeschylus carry the Ocean in the ether (Bert. on 10:20). Arab mythology gives its five deities the form of man, woman, lion, horse and eagle, and these deities are mentioned together in the Koran (Sur. 71, 22-23 according to Gitz.). We find closer parallels to cherubs in the Assyro-Babylonian religion. First of all, attention is drawn to the fact that this religion loved to provide the figures of its deities with various forms. “To provide some evidence, let us mention how many forms we encounter Ωννης Berose” (Lenormant. Essai de commentaire de fragments cosmogoniques de Berose 7, 79). “Often among the Babylonians there are animals with many wings, with more than one face, composed of different shapes” (135–138), e.g. with eagle heads, and they, excluding the heads, appear in human forms (Triebs 98). But the most striking parallel to the cherubs is the colossi of bulls (Stiercolossen) and lions found recently during excavations of Assyro-Chaldean cities. These bulls and lions are equipped with human bearded heads, in bandages, and some of them have 4 wings (cf. Ezek. 1:4), of which two are stretched upward, and two are lowered on the body (cf. Ezek. 1:9; 11:24). Most of them were found in Kuyunjik and Khorsabad, in the ruins of ancient Nineveh. Some copies were brought to the Louvre and British museums. The colossi of Korsabad are bulls, and Nimrod's are lions. Sometimes lions alternate with bulls (in Persepolis, where these monuments originate from monuments imitating Assyrian ones). The Assyro-Babylonians called these winged figures Sidu (“statues”). The lion colossi are also called Nirgalli. Nirgalli also have arms (for example, kept in British music). Bulls in Korsabad alternate with winged youths (Vigouroux Dictionnaire de la Bible, Paris 1896 “cherubin”). These figures were placed at the entrances of churches and palaces, serving as their caryatids: on them in such a way that the vaults of palaces and churches rested (compare Ezekiel 1:22, where on the heads of cherubim the firmament, rakiah, with the throne of God rests. (Winkler 347). The symbolic and spiritual purpose of these idol statues was to guard the entrances of palaces and churches. On the hexagonal prism of Assargadon (text published by Rawlison) about the colossi of bulls we read: “they, according to their position, turn back the chest of the enemy, guard the path, keep the path of the king, their builder, intact” (152) In the last lines of the prism found in the palace of Asargadon in Nineveh, we read: “so that in this palace the supreme ox and the supreme lion, the guards of my royal dignity, who cover my honor, shone with eternal brilliance to the point where their feet are separated from these porticoes" (Vig. 1. c. Compare Eze. 1:7 where it is said about the feet of the cherubim that they sparkled like a special kind of copper. The Louvre bull colossus, found in the palace of Sargon, shines like polished copper). But there is some reason to think that the creatures depicted as colossi were considered not only guardians, but also carriers of the deity, his chariot. This is the conclusion that is sensational for the exegesis of Chapter I. Ezek. Tomkins’s discovery of one cylinder with the following drawing, as described by Lenormand (Les orig d. hist. 1, 120): “on the waves, depicted as usual, with trembling lines, floats a wonderful living ship, which ends at the stern and bow with a human bust protruding up to half the body. On this vessel are visible two kiroubi or winged bulls, standing with their backs to each other, in profile, with their human faces turned towards the viewer. These two cherubs necessarily presuppose the existence of two others, which are not visible, but which are needed to carry the other side of the vault, which they support with their shoulders. On this vault is the throne or seat of a bearded god, dressed in a long dress, with a straight tiara or mitre on his head, in his hands with a short scepter and a wide ring - all around without decorations.” Delitzsch identifies the winged bulls of this cylinder with 7 spirits or demons, who are called bearers of the throne of the deity. These spirits have different names, but in one talisman from the collection of Louis Clerc (after Lenorm. les. or. 118), which contains a mythical formula that appears on many other similar objects, these demons are called kiroub (ki-ru-bu). If Lenormand correctly read and understood this formula, then the coincidence with the biblical cherubs is striking. But Lenormand's scientific authority as an Assyriologist is not great. And, while some (even Schrader, Keilinschfift u. A. T. 1883, 39 and Vigouroux o. c.: “the colossi of the bulls were called kirubi, and the lions nirgalli”) in this case believe him, others (Kr. on Ezek. 10) prove that “Lenormand’s kirubi has not been found to this day and is probably only a creation of the imagination of this fantasizing scientist.” But even if the colossi of bulls or any deities were not called kirubi by the Babylonians, the similarity of those colossi with the appearance of Ezekiel’s cherubs is not insignificant. Now almost all Catholic exegetes, following the rationalists in the Prophet Ezekiel, admit direct borrowing from Assyro-Babylonian symbolism. In the four animals of his vision they find an exact copy of those colossi. In order to completely liken the former to the latter, the faces of each Ezekiel cherub are understood not as a face in the proper sense, but as a body shape: the cherub in Ezekiel is said to have four faces: a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle - in the sense that it is a combination of the forms of all these animals: it has the head of a man, the body of a lion, the legs of an ox and the wings of an eagle (Knab. on Ezekiel 1:10; Vig. etc.). The Prophet Ezekiel combined the colossi of an ox and a lion in one cherub, and he was prompted to such a combination by the fact that in some buildings these colossi alternated. “The Prophet says that each 'animal' had the shape of a lion on its right side and the shape of an ox on its left side. Just as in monuments only one half of the animal protrudes from the wall, then Ezekiel assumes that the opposite part is different from the visible one, especially since he had the right to assume this, that the animal visions are alive and in motion, completely released from under the walls, from where the bas-reliefs protrude halfway” (Vig. 1. p.). It must be admitted that this assumption contains no small degree of probability. The problem of combining several animals in one image is nowhere so satisfactorily solved as in Babylonian art, in the indicated colossi. There is nothing monstrous or ugly in these statues, such as, for example, in Egyptian images of a man with a coccyx head, etc. These creations of Babylonian art were worthy of being chosen for divine vision as images of celestial beings, and some without reason consider such a appearance for cherubs to be indecent and as monstrous as the appearance of a four-headed or four-faced animal (Fr. Rozhd.). On one side, the one where the man’s face was, the cherubim Eze. very reminiscent of Assyro-Babylon. sidu. But about the other three sides of the cherubim Ezek. this cannot be asserted without going completely against the text. פֶּנִים “face” about body shapes such as wings, legs, torso is never used. The most that panim can mean is generally the front of the body and the object. If the lion's panim meant his body, and the ox's panim his legs, then how was the lion's face on the right side, the ox's on the left, etc.? the order of description would then be unclear. But if so, if Ezekiel’s cherubim have 4 faces in the proper sense, then the prophet Ezekiel was far from copying his cherubim from the Assyro-Babylonian colossi. Or rather, here is an involuntary coincidence of Babylonian mythology with the biblical idea of ​​cherubs, a striking coincidence, since it extends not only to the idea of ​​a cherub both as a divine guardian and as a bearer of deity, but also to its very representation in a visible image. You might be interested in: