lawgivers show very vividly the persistence of what was current religion but was hostile to their teaching.[1] There is an astonishing boisterousness (cf. Lam. ii. 7), joviality and sensualism, all in striking contrast to the austerity of nomad asceticism. There is a ferocity and fanaticism which manifests itself in the belief that war was a sacred campaign of deity against deity. Even if the account of the “ban” (utter destruction) at the Israelite conquest be unhistorical, it represents current ideas (cf. Josh. vi. 17 seq.; 1 Sam. xv. 3; 2 Kings xv. 16; 2 Chron. xxv. 12 seq.), and implies imperfect views of the Godhead at a more advanced stage of religion and morality.
There are conflicting ideas of death and the dead, and among them the belief in the very human feelings and needs of the dead and in their influence for good or evil.[2] Moreover, the proximity of burial-place and sanctuary and the belief in the kindly care of the famous dead for their descendants reflect Holy Places. “primitive” and persisting ideas which find their parallel in the holy tombs of religious or secular heroes in modern Palestine, and exemplify the firmness of the link uniting local groups with local numens. “The permanence of religion at holy places in the East”[3] is one of the most important features in the relation between popular and national religion. The local centres will survive political and historical vicissitudes and the changes of national cults and sects, and may outlive the national deities. The supernatural beings may change their name and may vary externally under Greek, Roman, Mahommedan or Christian influence; but their relation to the local groups remains essentially the same, although there is no regression to earlier organic connexions. The inveterate local, one may perhaps say immediate, powers are felt to be nearer at hand than the national deity, who is more closely bound up with the changing national fortunes and with current philosophy. These smaller deities are, as it were, telluric, and the territory of each is virtually henotheistic—as also its traditions—and even as to-day the saints or patrons enjoy a more real veneration among the peasants than does the Allah of the orthodox, the long-established worship of the ancient local beings always hampered the reformers of Yahwism (cf. Jer. ii. 28, xi. 13).[4] Whether they could be regarded as so many manifestations of a single deity or as really distinct entities, there were at all events similar and well understood relations between each and its group; and although the cult was nature-worship and was attended with a licentiousness which drew forth the denunciations of the prophets, this is only one aspect of the local deity’s place in the religious conceptions of his circle. The excavations (at Gezer, Megiddo, Jericho, &c.) indicate a persisting gross and cruel idolatry, utterly opposed to the demands of the law and the prophets.[5] Jerusalem and the surrounding district have ominous heathen associations.[6] Jerusalem itself lay off the main line of intercourse and one may look for a certain conservatism in its famous Temple. Temples, shrines and holy Jerusalem and the Temple. places were no novelty in Palestine, and the inauguration of the great centre of Judaism is ascribed to Solomon the son of the great conqueror David. Phoenician aid was enlisted to build it, and the Egyptian analogies to the construction accord with the known influence of Egypt upon Phoenician art. It is the dwelling-place of the deity, the centre of the nation and of the national hopes; the fall of the Temple follows after Yahweh left it, it is rebuilt and he returns (Zech. viii. 3). The Temple is merely part of the royal palace and the government buildings (cf. Ezek. xliii. 7 seq.), and this is as significant as the king’s position in its management. It is in keeping with the old conceptions of the divine kingship, which, though they survive only in isolated biblical references, live on in the ideals of the Messianic king and his kingdom and in the post-exilic high priest.[7] The Temple is built, ornamented and furnished on lines which are quite incompatible with a spiritual religion. Mythical features abound in the cherubim and seraphim, the pillars of Jachin and Boaz, the mysterious Nehushtan, the bronze-sea and the lavers. These agree with the more or less clear allusions in the Old Testament to myths of creation, Eden, deluge, mountain of gods, Titanic folk, world-dragons, heavenly hosts, &c., and also with the unearthed seals, tablets, altars, &c. representing mythical ideas. The ideas occur in varying forms from Egypt to Babylonia and point to a considerable body of thought, which is not less impressive when one takes into account the instances in the Old Testament where myths have been rationalized, elevated, or otherwise removed from their older forms (e.g. the story of the birth of Moses, accounts of creation and deluge, &c.), or when one observes the subsequent uncompromising objection to a display of artistic meaning, implying that it aroused definite conceptions. To reinterpret all these features as mere symbols, the lumber of ancient days, is to avoid the problem of their introduction into the Temple, and to assume an advance of popular thought which is not confirmed by the retention and fresh developments of the old ideas both in the pseudepigraphical literature and in the literature of Rabbinical Judaism.[8] The horses of the sun-god (2 Kings xxiii. 11), too, belong to a group of ideas which may perhaps be associated with the plan of the Temple and with the old hymn of dedication (1 Kings viii. 12 seq.). At all events, when one considers the Babylonian-Assyrian conceptions of Shamash as the supreme and righteous judge, god of truth and justice, or the monotheism of Amenophis IV. and his fine hymn to the sun-god, it is certain that a corresponding Palestinian deity would not necessarily be without ethical and elevated associations.[9] In short, the place which the Temple held in
- ↑ See generally E. Meyer, Gesch. d. Altertums (Berlin, 1909), i. §§ 342 sqq. Ceremonial licentiousness was perhaps of northern origin (Meyer § 345), and as a preliminary to marriage seems to have been known not only in Assyria (Herod, i. 199), but also in Palestine (“a law of the Amorites”; Test. of Judah, ed. R. H. Charles, xxii. 2); cf. E. S. Hartland, Anthropol. Essays . . . E. B. Tylor (Oxford, 1907), pp. 189–202. (For miscellaneous material see J. G. Frazer, ibid. pp. 101–174: “Folk-lore in the Old Testament.”)
- ↑ See P. Torge, Seelenglaube u. Unsterblichkeitshofnung im Alten Test. (Leipzig, 1909).
- ↑ The title of an instructive essay by Sir W. M. Ramsay in the Expositor, Nov. 1906, pp. 454 sqq. The whole subject involves also the various forms and developments of hero- and saint-cults, on which cf. E. Lucius, Anfänge d. Heiligenkultus, &c. (Tübingen, 1904); P. Saintyves, Saints successeurs des dieux (Paris, 1907).
- ↑ On the old Baals of Palestine, see H. P. Smith, in O. T. and Semitic Studies in Memory of W. R. Harper (Chicago, 1908), i. 35–64. For the persistence of the “high places,” see G. F. Moore, Ency. Bib. arts. “High Place,” “Idolatry and Primitive Religion.”
- ↑ Vincent, Canaan, p. 204.; cf. S. R. Driver, Modern Research as illustrating the Bible (London, 1909), pp. 60 sqq., 90.
- ↑ Viz. the shrines of Chemosh, Moloch, Baal of Tyre and Astarte of Sidon (1 Kings xi. 1–8; 2 Kings xi. 18, xxiii.); the valley of Hinnom (see J. A. Montgomery, Journ. Bibl. Lit. xxvii. i. 24–47); and the place-names Anathoth (“Anaths”), Nob (Nebo?), Beth-ninib, Beth-shemesh. The name Jerusalem may be compounded with that of a deity (Winckler, Keil. u. A.T. 224 seq.; G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, ii. 25 seq.), and the deity Sedek is curiously associated with the names of the Jerusalem priests Zadok, Jehozadak (cf. Melchizedek of Salem, Gen. xiv.), and the kings Adonizedek and Zedekiah. The strange character of the names of the first kings in Israel and Judah (Saul, David and Solomon), noticed already by A. H. Sayce (Modern Review, 1884, pp. 158–169), cannot easily be explained.
- ↑ See A. B. Davidson, Theol. of O. T. (Edinburgh, 1904), p. 9; J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis and Osiris (London, 1907), pp. 12 sqq., 401. Cf. the title “The Anointed of Yahweh,” the simile “as a messenger (angel) of Yahweh” (2 Sam. xiv. 17, xix. 27), and the idea of the king as the embodiment of his people’s safety (2 Sam. xxi. 17; Lam. iv. 20). This absence of the deification of the king is characteristic of biblical religion which recognizes Yahweh as the only king; see H. Gressmann, Ursprung d. israel.-jud. Eschatologie (Göttingen, 1905), pp. 250 sqq.
- ↑ For examples of the persistence of the interrelated ideas—whether of astral significance or not is another question—see A. Jeremias, Babylon im Neuen Test. (Leipzig, 1905), Das Alte Test, im Lichte d. Alten Orients (1906); E. Bischoff, Bab. Astrales im Weltbilde d. Thalmud u. Midrasch (1907).
- ↑ Cf. for an excellent example of Oriental religious thought, the fine Babylonian hymn to Ishtar (i.e. Astarte), L. W. King, Seven Tablets of Creation (London, 1907), pp. 222–217, and the specimens in R. W. Rogers, Rel of Bab. and Ass. in its Relations to Israel (London 1908), pp. 142 184. On ethical conceptions of heathen deities, see I. King, Development of Religion (New York, 1910), pp. 268–286.
