Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/831

Rh Z E P Z E R 781 the event ; the deliverance and reformation were incomplete ; and the inbringing of the reign of righteousness was again deferred. Zephaniah sees this, but fails to draw the true inference. He postulates a new crisis in history similar to the Assyrian crisis of which Isaiah wrote, and assumes that it will run such a course as to fulfil Isaiah s unfulfilled predictions. But the movements of history do not repeat themselves ; and the workings of God s right eous providence take fresh shape in each new scene of the world s life, so that a prediction not fulfilled under the conditions for which it was given can never again be fulfilled in detail. As it is an essential feature of prophecy that all ideas are not only presented but thought out in concrete form, and with reference to present historical conditions, the distinction between the temporary form and the permanent religious truth embodied in that form is also essential. The tendency to confound the two, to ascribe absolute truth to what is mere embodiment, and therefore to regard unful filled predictions as simply deferred, even where the form of the prediction is obviously dependent on mere temporary conditions of the prophet s own time, gained ground from the time of Zephaniah onwards, and culminated in the Apocalyptic literature. As it grew, the eternal ideas of the great prophets fell into the background, and were at length entirely lost in the crass Jewish conception of a Messianic age, which is little more than an apotheosis of national particularism and self righteousness. Zephaniah s eschatology is not open to this charge : with him, as with Isaiah, the doctrine of the salvation of the remnant of Israel is inspired by spiritual con victions and instinct with ethical force. The emphasis still lies on the moral idea of the remnant, not on the physical conception Israel. He does not yield to Amos or Isaiah in the courage with which he denounces sin in high places, and he is akin to Hosea in his firm hold of the principle that the divine governance is rooted not only in righteousness but in love, and that the triumph of love is the end of Jehovah s working. Yet even here we see the differ ence between the first and second generations of prophecy. The persuasion to which Hosea attains only through an intense inward struggle, which lends a peculiar pathos to his book, appears in Zephaniah, as it were, ready made. There is no mental conflict before he can pass through the anticipation of devastating judgment to the assurance of the victory of divine love, and the sharp transi tions that characterize the book are not, as with Hosea, due to sudden revulsion of feeling, but only mark the passage to some new topic in the circle of received prophetic truth. The finest tiling in the book in spite of certain obscurities, which may be partly due to corruptions of the text is the closing passage ; but the description of the day of Jehovah, the dies irse dies ilia of chap. i. 15, which furnishes the text of the most striking of mediaeval hymns, has perhaps taken firmer hold of the religious imagination. Least satisfactory is the treatment of the judgment on heathen nations, and of their subsequent conversion to Jehovah. In the scheme of Isaiah it is made clear that the fall of the power that shatters the nations cannot fail to be recognized as Jehovah s work, for Assyria falls before Jerusalem as soon as it seeks to go beyond the limits of the divine commission, and thus the doctrine &quot; With its is God&quot; is openly vindicated before the nations. But Zephaniah assumes that the convulsions of history are Jehovah s work, and specially designed for the instruction and amendment of Israel (iii. 6 sq. ), and neglects to show how this conviction, which lie himself derives from Isaiah, is to be brought home by the com ing judgment to the heart of heathen nations. Their own gods indeed will prove helpless (ii. 11), but this is not enough to turn their eyes towards Jehovah. Here, therefore, there is in his eschatology a sensible lacuna, from which Isaiah s construction is free, and a commencement of the tendency to look at things from a merely Israelite standpoint, which is so notable a feature of the later Apocalyptic. There is no important separate commentary on Zephaniah ; the student must refer to the commentaries on the minor prophets (see HOSRA). The relative section in Dulun, Thcnlogie der Prnpheten, deserves attention. An apocryphal prophecy ascribed to Zephaniah is quoted by Clement of Alexandria, Stromata. v. 11,7S. (W. R. S.) ZKPHYRINUS, ST, bishop of Rome from about 202 to 2Gth August 217, succeeded Victor I. He is described as a man of little intelligence or strength of character, and the somewhat important controversies on doctrine and discipline that marked his pontificate are more appropri ately associated with the name of HIPPOLYTUS (q.v.) and of Calixtus, his principal adviser and afterwards his suc cessor (see POPEDOM, vol. xix. p. 489). ZEPHYRUS, the west wind, brother of Boreas, the north wind, was the son of the Titan Astraeus and Eos, the dawn (Hes., Theor/., 579), and had his palace in Thrace (//., ix. 5 ; Od., v. 295). He was married to Chloris, the goddess of flowers (Ov., Fast., v. 195), by whom he had a son, Carpus ; by the harpy Podarge he was also the father of Xanthus and Balius, the horses of Achilles (11, xvi. 150). ZERAFSHAN, an independent &quot; circle &quot; or province of Russian Turkestan, includes the valley of the river Zeraf- shan from its sources to Katty-Kurgan, as well as the mountains Avhich bound the valley to the north and south. It is the SOGDIAXA (q.v.) of the ancients, famed for its fertility, which is due to the waters of the Polytimetus. The present Russian province of Zerafshan, which is densely peopled along the course of the river, has a length of nearly 250 miles from west to east, a width of from 50 to 100 miles, and an area of 19,665 square miles. It is bounded on the W. by Bokhara, on the N. by the Kizil- kum Desert of Syr-Daria and the Russian province of Ferghana, on the E. by the Alai plateau, and on the S. by the vassal khanates of Bokhara, Karategin, Hissar, Shahr- i-Syabs, and Karshi. High chains of mountains enclose the province on three sides. To the north are the Turke stan Mountains, which separate the tributaries of the Syr from those of the Amu, rising to 22,000 feet in their highest snow-clad peaks, and crossed by but few passes, which themselves range from 10,000 to 13,000 feet. In the west the Turkestan Mountains are joined by the Nura- tau Mountains, which have a north-westerly direction (see TURKESTAN). In the south-east the valley of the Zerafshan is separated from that of the Surkhab by the grand snow-clad Hissar Range, which runs from north-east to south-west, and by several chains parallel to it, while farther west a series of mountains, partly running also towards the south-west and partly towards the north-west, separate it from the Bokhara plains of the Amu. The lowest passes across these chains have altitudes of not less than 7000 feet. But the valley of the Zerafshan lies broadly open towards the steppes in the west, and has supplied an easy route for the railway from the Caspian by Merv to Samarkand. Granites and all kinds of crystalline slates are widely developed in the mountains which enclose Zerafshan. Carboniferous lime stones are met with in the west; but the great bulk of the deposits which overlie the crystalline slates, and are raised to the greatest heights in the highlands, belong to a more recent geological time, namely, to the Secondary chiefly Chalk and Tertiary periods. The Zerafshan valley owes its fertility to the thick terraces of loess which surround the base of the mountains and sometimes reach a thickness of 100 feet. The Zerafshan river, which owes its name(&quot;gold-spreading&quot;)prob- ably more to the fertility it brings than to the gold which is found in very small quantities in its sands, rises under the name of Matchi from a large glacier, fed by the high peaks which rise at the junction (improperly called Kok-su) of the Turkestan Mountains with the Alai Range. The altitude of the glacier is about 9000 feet, and thence the Zerafshan flows due west in a narrow valley, with a fall of not less than 40 feet per mile. Several villages are scattered over the slopes of the mountains ; and some thirty bridges, made of poplar trees felled across the river and swaying under the weight of the foot passenger, furnish means of communication. After a course of nearly 100 miles in the mountains the Zerafshan receives from the left the Fan, with the Yagnob, which Hows in a high longitudinal valley, separated from the main river by the lofty Zerafshan Range. About Pendjakent it enters on its middle course along a broad valley from 20 to 50 miles wide. Large arykft, or irrigation canals, one of which is 50 miles in length and has all the appearance of a river, distribute the waters of the Zerafshan over the valley, while the river itself divides into two great branches, 10 to 12 miles apart, forming a large island, the Miankal, which is the most fertile part of the province. A darn keeps up the water in the southern branch, Kara-Daria, close by which is situated SAMAKKAN-D (q.v.), and five large aryks distribute its water over the fields. Numberless canals drain off its waters farther west in the neighbourhood of the city of Bokhara, so that, after carrying an insignificant volume of water to the small Lake Eara-kul, it stops its course there, some 30 miles from the Amu-Daria, of which it formerly was an affluent. The population of Zerafshan was reckoned at 351,900 in 1883. The bulk of the inhabitants are Uzbegs and Tajiks, the remainder consisting of a few thousand Persians, Hindus, and Jews respect ively ; the Russians are mainly military, civil functionaries, merchants, and a few peasant settlers. Wheat, barley, rice, and other cereals, as also lucerne, are widely cultivated, and the gardens