Herod. ii. 104, and Barton, Semitic Origins, pp. 98-100. Probably the custom was of African origin, and came from eastern Africa along with the Semitic race. Respecting Arabia, see Doughty, Arabia deserta, i. 340 foll.
It is necessary here to advert to a subject much debated during recent years, viz. the effects of Babylonian culture in western Asia on Israel and Israel’s religion in early times even preceding the advent of Moses. The great influence exercised by Babylonian culture over Palestine between 2000 and 1400 B.C. (circa), which has been clearly revealed to us since 1887 by the discovery of the Tell el Amarna tablets, is now universally acknowledged. The subsequent discovery of a document written in Babylonian cuneiform at Lachish (Tell el Hesy), and more recently still of another in the excavations at Taʽannek, have established the fact beyond all dispute. The last discovery had tended to confirm the views of Fried. Delitzsch, Jeremias (Monotheistische Strömungen) and Baentsch, that monotheistic tendencies are to be found in the midst of Babylonian polytheism. Page Renouf, in his Hibbert lectures, Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by that of Ancient Egypt (1879), p. 89 foll., pointed out this monotheistic tendency in Egyptian religion, as did de Rougé before him. Baentsch draws attention to this feature in his monograph Altorientalischer u. israelitischer Monotheismus (1906). This tendency, however, he, unlike the earlier conservative writers, rightly considers to have emerged out of polytheism. He ventures into a more disputable region when he penetrates into the obscure realm of the Abrahamic migration and finds in the Abrahamic traditions of Genesis the higher Canaanite monotheistic tendencies evolved out of Babylonian astral religion, and reflected in the name El ʽElyon (Gen. xiv. 18, 22). Further discoveries like Sellin’s find at Taʽannek may elucidate the problem. See Baudissin in Theolog. lit. Zeitung (27th October 1906).
3. The Era of Moses.—We are now on safer ground though still obscure. Moses was the first historic individuality who can be said to have welded the Israelite clans into a whole. This could never have been accomplished without unity of worship. The object of this worship was Yahweh. As we have already indicated, the document J assumes that Yahweh was worshipped by the Hebrew race from the first. On the other hand, according to P (Ex. vi. 2), God spake to Moses and said to him: “I am Yahweh. But I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai and by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them.” According to this later tradition Yahweh was unknown till the days of Moses, and under the aegis of His power the Hebrew tribes were delivered from Egyptian thraldom. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two sharply contrasted traditions. So much is clear. Yahweh now becomes the supreme deity of the Hebrew people, and an ark analogous to the Egyptian and Babylonian arks portrayed on the monuments[1] was constructed as embodiment of the numen of Yahweh and was borne in front of the Hebrew army when it marched to war. It was the signal victory won by Moses at the exodus against the Egyptians and in the subsequent battle at Rephīdīm against ʽAmālēk (Ex. xvii.) that consolidated the prestige of Yahweh, Israel’s war-god. Indications in the Old Testament itself clearly point to the celestial or atmospheric character of the Yahweh of the Hebrews. The supposition that the name originally contained the notion of permanent or eternal being, and was derived from the verbal root signifying “to be,” involves too abstract a conception to be probable, though it is based on Ex. iii. 15 (E) representing a tradition which may have prevailed in the 8th century B.C. Kautzsch, however, supports it (Hastings’s D.B., extra vol. “Rel. of Isr.” p. 625 foll.) against the other derivations proposed by recent scholars (see Jehovah). That the name also prevailed as that of a god among other Semitic races (or even non-Semitic) is rendered certain by the proper names Jau-biʽ-di (= Ilu-biʽdi) of Hamath in Sargon’s inscriptions, Aḥi-jawi (mi) in Sellin’s discovered tablet at Taʽannek, to say nothing of those which have been found in the documents of Khammurabi’s reign. It has generally been held that Stade’s supposition has much to recommend it, that it was derived by Moses from the Kenites, and should be connected with the Sinai-Horeb region. The name Sinai suggests moon-worship and the moon-god Sin; and it also suggests Babylonian influence (cf. also Mount Nebo, which was a place-name both in Moab and in Judah, and naturally connects itself with the name of the Babylonian deity). Several indications favour the view of the connexion in the age of Moses between the Yahweh-cult at Sinai and the moon-worship of Babylonian origin to which the name Sinai points (Sin being the Babylonian moon-god). We note (a) that in the worship of Yahweh the sacred seasons of new moon and Sabbath are obviously lunar. Recent investigations have even been held to disclose the fact that the Sabbath coincided originally, i.e. in early pre-exilian days, with the full moon.[2] (b) It also accords with the name bestowed on Yahweh as “Lord of Hosts” (ṣebāōth) or stars, which were regarded as personified beings (Job xxxviii. 7) and attendants on the celestial Yahweh, constituting His retinue (1 Kings xxii. 19) which fought on high while the earthly armies of Israel, His people, contended below (Judges v. 20).
The atmospheric and celestial character which belonged from the first to the Hebrew conception of Yahweh explains to us the ease with which the idea of His universal sovereignty arose, which the Yahwistic creation account (belonging to the earlier stratum of J, Gen. ii. 4b foll.) presupposes. How this came to be overlaid by narrow local limitations of His power and province will be shown later. It is probable that Moses held the larger rather than the narrower conception of Yahweh’s sphere of influence. While the ark carried with Israel’s host symbolized His presence in their midst, He was also known to be present in the cloud which hovered before the host and in the lightning (’ēsh Yahweh or “fire of Yahweh”) and the thunder (kōl Yahweh or “voice of Yahweh”) which played around Mount Sinai. Moreover, it is hardly probable that a great leader like Moses remained unaffected by the higher conceptions tending towards monotheism which prevailed in the great empires on the Nile and on the Euphrates. In Egypt we know that Amenophis IV. came under this monotheistic movement, and attempted to suppress all other cults except that of the sun-deity, of which he
- ↑ These sacred arks were carried in procession accompanied by symbolic figures. We note in this connexion the form of a sacred bark represented in Meyer’s Hist. of Egypt (Oncken series), p. 257, viz. the procession carrying the sacred ark and the bark of the god Amōn belonging to the reign of Rameses II. (Lepsius, Denkmäler, iii. 189b). See also Birch, Egypt (S.P.C.K.), p. 151 (ark of Khonsu); cf. Jeremias, Das A.T. im Lichte des alten Orients (2nd ed.), pp. 436-441.
- ↑ Cf. Zimmern in Z.D.M.G. (1904), pp. 199 foll., 458 foll. This view is based on Dr Pinches’s discovered list in which Sapatti is called the 15th day (Proc. of the Soc. of Biblical Arch., p. 51 foll.). See A. Jeremias, Das A. T. im Lichte des alten Orients (2nd ed.), pp. 182-187. Marti, in his stimulating work Religion des A.T., pp. 5, 72, advocates the exclusive reference of the word Sabbath to the full moon until the time of Ezekiel on the basis of Meinhold’s arguments in Sabbat u. Woche im A.T. The latter regards Ezekiel as the organizer of the Jewish community and the originator of the sanctity of the Sabbath as a seventh day (Ezek. xlvi. 1; cf. Ezek. xx. 12, 13, 16, 20, 24, xxii. 8, 26, xxiii. 38, in which the reproaches for the profanation or neglect of the Sabbath in no way sustain Meinhold’s view). In opposition to Meinhold, see Lotz in P.R.E. (3rd ed., art. “Sabbath,” vol. xvii. pp. 286-289). To this Meinhold replies in Z.A.T.W. (1909), p. 81 f. Cf. also Hehn, Siebenzahl und Sabbat. While admitting that a special significance may have been attached in pre-exilian times to the full-moon Sabbath, and that the latter may have been specially intended in the combination “new moon and Sabbath” in the 8th-century prophets (Hos. ii. 13; Amos viii. 5; Isa. i. 13), we are not prepared to deny that the institution of a seventh-day Sabbath was an ancient pre-exilian tradition. The sacredness of the number seven is based on the seven planetary deities to whom each day of the week was respectively dedicated, i.e. was astral in origin. Cf. C.O.T. i. 18 foll., and Winckler, Religionsgeschichtlicher u. geschichtlicher Orient, p. 39. See also K.A.T. (3rd ed.), pp. 620-626. In the Old Testament the sanctity of the number seven is clearly fundamental (e.g. in the Nif’al form nišba’, “to swear,” in the derivative subst. for “oath,” in Beēr-sheba’, &c.). The seventh day of rest was parallel to the seventh year of release and of the fallow field. It is, therefore, impossible to detach Ex. xxiii. 12 from Ex. xxi. 2. xxiii. 10 foll.; cf. Ex. xxxiv. 21. We therefore hold that the law of the seventh-day Sabbath goes back to the Mosaic age. The general coincidence of the Sabbath or seventh day with the easily recognized first quarter and full moon established its sacred character as lunar as well as planetary.
