* This story is taken from an old fable related in the Fasti of Ovid, how Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury, having supped with an old man named Hyriens, and finding that impotence was the cause of his having no children, each of the three urined upon the skin of the calf 'that had been killed for supper, and this celestial water impregnated the skin, which, after nine months' inhumation, produced a beautiful child, which became the constellation Orion. The learned say that the true translation of the words which the angels addressed to Abraham, is thus:--A child shall be born of your calf.
A word more respecting Abraham. The planet Saturn was the Israel of the Chaldees; and it was personified both by them and the Phoenicians under the name of Abraham, which signifies the _Father of a people_ figuratively, the stars of heaven, which are called "his seed for ever." Saturn was the son of _Terra_ (the earth); Abraham was the son of Terah; Saturn married his own sister Rhea, a star; Abraham married his own sister Sarai or Sarah, which signifies a star (Sirius, the ever beautiful and young); Saturn had many sons, but only one whom he loved and protected as an _only_ son; Abraham had many sons, though he is said to have had an only son named Isaac, whom he loved. According to the famous Sanchoniatho, Saturn offered up his beloved son Jeoud, as a holocaust, or burnt offering wholly consumed; Abraham was about to offer up his beloved son Isaac,* but a ram (zodiacal) was found as substitute. The planet Saturn was called _Israel_ by the Phoenicians and Chaldees; the patriarch Abraham is synonymous with the name Israel throughout the Bible. Saturn, from his exceedingly remote situation in the solar system, and the long period taken to circle his immense orbit, was the emblem of time; hence the many Bible phrases about Abraham, as connected with time, such as "before Abraham was,"--i.e., before time was. Priests! are these merely chance coincidences?
* In this horrible story, as understood literally, Abraham receives quite coolly, and without either surprise or remonstrance, the order to sacrifice Isaac; which shows, even in allegory, that among the Jews the sacrifice of the first-born son by the father was nothing uncommon.