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LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION.
Adonai, which in Hebrew means my lord, and in the Old Testament is used exclusively of Jehovah, appears in Phoenicia as the name of the Supreme Deity, and after undergoing manifold mythological transformations, the same name has become familiar to us through the Greek tales about the beautiful young Adonis, loved by Aphrodite, and killed by the wild boar of Ares.
Elyôn, which in Hebrew means the Highest, is used in the Old Testament as a predicate of God. It occurs also by itself as a name of Jehovah. Melchizedek is called emphatically the priest of El Elyốn, the priest of the most high God.
But this name again is not restricted to Hebrew. It occurs in the Phoenician cosmogony as Eliun, the highest God, the Father of Heaven, who was the father of El. Dr. Oppert has identified this Eliun with the Ilinus mentioned by Damascius.
Another word used in the Bible, sometimes in combination with El, and more frequently alone, as a name of the supreme deity, is Shaddai1, the violent or powerful. It has been derived from a kindred root to that which has yielded the substantive Shéd, meaning demon in Syriac and in the language of the Talmud, and the plural Shedîm, a name for false gods or idols in the Old Testament. M. de Vogüé? supposed that it was the same naine as Set or Sed of the hieroglyphic inscriptions. It occurs there as the name of a god introduced by the Shepherds, and having Baal as one of his epithets. Lepsius, however, is op
10 or
2 Journal Asiatique,' 1867, p. 160. Lepsius, Der erste Aeg. Götterkreis,' p. 48. See also Nöldeke,
