maintained in his commentary on Genesis (edition of 1892), has now been abandoned by nearly all scholars of repute. In the following pages we shall not attempt to do more than to sketch in very succinct outline the general results of investigation into the origins and growth of Hebrew religion.
2. Pre-Mosaic Religion.—Can any clear indications be found to guide us as to the religion of the Hebrew clans before the time of Moses? That Moses united the scattered tribes, probably consisting at first mainly of the Josephite, under the common worship of Yahweh, and that upon the religion of Yahweh a distinctly ethical character was impressed, is generally recognized. The tradition of the earliest document J ascribes the worship of Yahweh to much earlier times, in fact to the dawn of human life. A close survey of the facts, however, would lead us to regard it as probable that some at least of the Hebrew clans had patron-deities of their own.
(a) Both Moab and Ammon as well as Edom had their separate tribal deities, viz. Chemosh (Moab) and Milk (Milcōm), the god of Ammon, and in the case of Edom a deity known from the inscriptions as Kōs (in Assyrian Kauš).[1] From the patriarchal narratives and genealogies in Genesis we infer that these races were closely allied to Israel. That in early pre-Mosaic times parallel cults existed among the various Hebrew tribes is by no means improbable. It would be reasonable to assume that Moab, Ammon, Edom and kindred tribes of Israel in the 15th and preceding centuries were included in the generic term Ḥabirī (or Hebrews) mentioned in the Tell el-Amarna inscriptions as forming predatory bands that disturbed the security of the Canaanite dwellers west of the Jordan. Lastly pre-Mosaic polytheism seems to be implied in the Mosaic prohibition Ex. xx. 3, xxii. 20.
(b) The tribal names Gad and Asher are suggestive of the worship of a deity of fortune (Gad) and of the male counterpart of the goddess, Ashērah. Under the name Shaddai (which Nöldeke suggests[2] was originally Shēdī “my demon”) it is possible to discern the name of a deity who in later times came to be identified with Yahweh. On the other hand, the connexion of the name Samson with sun-worship throws light on the period of the Hebrew settlement in Canaan and not on pre-Mosaic times. Nor is it possible to agree with Baudissin (Studien zur semit. Religionsgesch. i. 55) that Elōhīm as a plural form for the name of the Hebrew deity “can hardly be understood otherwise than as a comprehensive expression for the multitude of gods embraced in the One God of Old Testament religion,” in other words that it presupposes an original polytheism. For (1) Elōhīm is also applied in Judges xi. 24 to the Moabite Chemosh (Kemōsh); in 1 Sam. v. 7 to Dagon; in 1 Kings xi. 5 to Ashtoreth; in 2 Kings i. 2, iii. 6, 16 to Baʽal Zebūl of Ekron. (2) It is merely a plural of dignity (pluralis majestatis) parallel to adōnīm (applied to a king in 1 Kings xviii. 8, whereas in the previous verse the singular form adōni is applied to the prophet Elijah). (3) The Tell el-Amarna inscriptions indicate that the term Elōhīm might even be applied in abject homage to an Egyptian monarch as the use of the term ilāni in this connexion obviously implies.[3]
The religion of the Arabian tribes in the days of Mahomet, of which a picture is presented to us by Wellhausen in his Remains of Arabic Heathendom, furnishes some suggestive indications of the religion that prevailed in nomadic Israel before as well as during the lifetime of Moses. It is true that Arabian polytheism in the time of Mahomet was in a state of decay. Nevertheless the life of the desert changes but slowly. We may therefore infer that ancient Israel during the period when they inhabited the negebh (S. of Canaan) stood in awe of the demons (Jinn) of the desert, just as the Arabs at the present day described in Doughty’s Arabia deserta. We know that diseases were attributed by the Israelites to malignant demons which they, like the Arabs, identified with serpents. The counterspell took the form of a bronze image of the serpent-demon; see Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 426; and 1 Sam. v. 6, vi. 4, 5 (LXX. and Heb.) as well as Buchanan Gray’s instructive note in Numbers, p. 276. The slaughter of a lamb at the Passover or Easter season, whose blood was smeared on the door-post, as described in Ex. xii. 21-23, probably points back to an immemorial custom. In this case the counterspell assumed a different form. Westermarck has shown from his observations in Morocco that the blood of the victim was considered to visit a curse upon the object to whom the sacrifice is offered and thereby the latter is made amenable to the sacrificer.[4] It is hardly possible to doubt that in the original form of the rite described in Exodus the blood offering was made to the plague demon (“the destroyer”) and possessed over him a magic power of arrest.
It is therefore certain that belief in demons and magic spells prevailed in pre-Mosaic times[5] among the Israelite clans. And it is also probable that certain persons combined in their own individuality the functions of magician and sacrificer as well as soothsayer. For we know that in Arabic the Kāhin, or soothsayer, is the same participial form that we meet with in the Hebrew Kōhēn, or priest, and in the early period of Hebrew history (e.g. in the days of Saul and David) it was the priest with the ephod or image of Yahweh who gave answers to those who consulted him. How far totemism, or belief in deified animal ancestors, existed in prehistoric Israel, as evidenced by the tribal names Simeon (hyena, wolf), Caleb (dog), Ḥamor (ass), Raḥel (ewe) and Leah (wild cow), &c.,[6] as well as by the laws respecting clean and unclean animals, is too intricate and speculative a problem to be discussed here. That the food-taboo against eating the flesh of a particular animal would prevail in the clan of which that animal was the deified totem-ancestor is obvious, and it would be a plausible theory to hold that the laws in question arose when the Israelite tribes were to be consolidated into a national unity (i.e. in the time of David and Solomon), but the application of this theory to the list of unclean foods in Deut. xiv. (Lev. xi.) seems to present insuperable difficulties. In fact, while Robertson Smith (in Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, as well as his Religion of the Semites, followed by Stade and Benzinger) strongly advocated the view that clear traces of totemism can be found in early Israel, later writers, such as Marti, Gesch. der israelit. Religion, 4th ed., p. 24, Kautzsch in his Religion of Israel already cited, p. 613, and recently Addis in his Hebrew Religion, p. 33 foll., have abandoned the theory as applied to Israel.[7] On the other hand, the evidence for the existence of ancestor-worship in primitive Israel cannot be so easily disposed of as Kautzsch (ibid. p. 615) appears to think. We have examples (1 Sam. xxviii. 13) in which Elōhīm is the term which is applied to departed spirits. Oracles were received from them (Isa. viii. 19, xxviii. 15, 18; Deut. xviii. 10 foll.). At the graves of national heroes or ancestors worship was paid. In Gen. xxxv. 20 we read that a maṣṣēbah or sacred pillar was erected at Raḥel’s tomb. That the Terāphīm, which we know to have resembled the human form (1 Sam. xix. 13, 16), were ancestral images is a reasonable theory. That they were employed in divination is consonant with the facts already noted. Lastly, the rite of circumcision (q.v.), which the Hebrews practised in common with their Semitic neighbours as well as the Egyptians, belonged to ages long anterior to the time of Moses. This is a fact which has long been recognized: cf. Gen. xvii. 10 foll.,
- ↑ See Bäthgen, Beiträge zur semit. Religionsgesch. p. 11 (Edom); and cf. Schrader, C.O.T. i. 137; K.A.T. (3rd ed.), p. 472 foll. See also Beiträge, pp. 13-15; K.A.T. (3rd ed.), pp. 469-472.
- ↑ Z.D.M.G. (1886). It is impossible to discuss the other theories of the origin of this name. See Driver, Commentary on Genesis, excursus i. pp. 404-406.
- ↑ The Tell el-Amarna despatches are crowded with evidences of Canaanite forms and idioms impressed on the Babylonian language of these cuneiform documents. Ilāni here simply corresponds to the Canaanite Elōhīm. See opening of the letters of Abimelech of Tyre, Bezold’s Oriental Diplomacy, Nos. 28, 29, 30.
- ↑ “Magic and Social Relations” in Sociological Papers, ii. 160.
- ↑ See Kautzsch, “Religion of Israel,” in Hastings’s Dict. of the Bible, extra vol., p. 614.
- ↑ See Benzinger, Hebräische Archäologie, pp. 152, 297 foll. (1st ed.).
- ↑ The theory was opposed by Nöldeke, 1886 (Z.D.M.G. p. 157 foll.), as well as Wellhausen, and since then by Jacobs and Zapletal. (Der Totemismus u. die Religion Israels). See Stanley A. Cook, “Israel and Totemism,” in J.Q.R. (April, 1902).
