ST. PATRICK AND SERPENT WORKSHIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11690, 27 June 1901, Page 3

ST. PATRICK AND SERPENT WORKSHIP.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—The interesting extract from Lippineott's Magazine in your issue of 21st in.st. re St. Patrick destroying the serpents in Ireland, which the reviewer thinks should be read as abolishing serpent worship, recalls the often put forward view that the legendary St. Patrick was more likely the prophet Jeremiah; the life and doings of historical St. Patrick are tolerably well known. Up to the time of Fine; Hezekiah in Jerusalem, the people used to worship the brazen serpent which Moses had set up in the desert, and which till then was preserved as a relic. In consequence of this idolatry the king had the object destroyed. This would be somewhere about 724 B.C.

The tribe of Dan. whose emblem was a serpent, had left Palestine several centuries before this period, and v.c may be sure that whatever they forgot of their ancestral religion they would remember their serpent emblem: therefore when the prophet Jeremiah arrived in Ireland about 580 8.C., to complete his great commission "to build and to plant" after the destruction and uprooting of the Jewish monarchy in Jerusalem, it is natural to expect that Dan's sorpent worship was prevalent in the country, and that it was literal serpent images which he de.troycd, following the good example of King Hezekiah. — l am, etc., IT. Stewart. •"Athenree," June .24, 1901.