J and B

H. L. Haywood

THE AGE in which we now live began at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains some 7,500 years ago, and had its first origin in a community near a region from which there were passes and routes in all directions to regions round about, and for that reason was called Nineveh, or "the Nine Ways." >From there the schools of architecture, medicine, and language were gradually extended eastward across the vast and (then) fertile region that is now called Iran, Arabia, Iraq. Known history goes no farther back, though archeologists can make some reasonable guesses toward regions of the antique peoples that stood here and there among the Caucasus. The founders of the new age along the foot of the Range called themselves Aryans, and used a language called Sanskrit, from which our later languages derived through Greek and Latin.

After a number of nomad peoples had overflowed from the north southwards into the vast plains which lay eastward, they flourished for a thousand years or so among their tents, surrounded by their numerous flocks and herds of sheep and goats; they then began to move westward, while the Aryans, with their cattle, gradually moved southwards and westwards; and though at first the nomads, or Semites as they called themselves, moved in peace they came at last to resort to war, often of a frightfulness beyond belief. Ultimately they crowded out most of the Aryans from the Fertile Crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and there built a vast city of their own called Babylon. In and around it they perfected a wonderful language, since called Babylonian. This was the parent Semite language, just as the Sanskrit before it had been the parent Aryan language. From the Babylonian came after a while a number of languages such as Syriac and Hebrew. The words jachin and boaz occur in nine of those languages.

The Semitic towns and cities were walled. Through each principal gate passed a straight road into regions across the city's own immediate territory. At the point where a road crossed the line of that city-state two columns were erected, both hollow, in which were placed tablets of clay or paper on which were inscribed in brief form the laws and rules to be observed inside the city. The one in which were placed all such laws and regulations as we should call political because they had to do with courts, police, crimes, penalties, etc. was called a jachin. In the other were placed such laws and rules as were to govern deportment, behavior, etiquette, rites, ceremonies; it was called a boaz.

It is evident that since the two columns in front of Solomon's Temple were given those names it was because they were for the old and familiar (among Semites) purposes. If so, they were hollow, and in the pachira were placed the written laws and rules for the government of the building and its precinct, and in the boaz were placed the laws and rules for the regulations of conduct, rites and ceremonies.