And usages

The essential character of every ancient religion reveals itself pre-eminently in the worship it offers to the Reps That such worship formed an element also in the pre-Mosaic stage of the religion of Israel is to be assumed, and various traces of it survived for long even in the cultus of Jahweh. These are recognizable by their great resemblance to, or even complete identity with, the ritual usages of the heathen Semites.

As in the case of mourning customs, the original mean- ing, it is true, is often ditlicult to recognize, or the features of the custom have been so toned down or completely transformed as to make identification impossible. : 1. By far the most important ritual transaction in the primitive stage of religion is sacrifice.

To the later Israelitish conceptions this appeared almost exclusively from the point of view of a gi/t, and, above all, as an offering of food to the Deity ; even fat and blood are expressly named in Ezk 447-5 as food of Jahweh.

It cannot be doubted that this aspect of the matter was not wholly wanting even in the pre-Mosaic period, and that offerings of fruit in particular were presented to the local nwmina, by being deposited within the sacred precincts (as was done afterwards with the shewbread), or being thrown into the sacred wells. * Of. E. Ferritre, Paganisme des Hébreux jusqu’ a la captivité de Babylone, Paris, 1884; OC. H. Toy, ‘ Evil Spirits in the Bible’ in JBL ix. pt. i. p. 17 ff. ; J.

van der Veen, ‘Daemonologie van het Judaisme’ in Theol. Studién, 1890, p. 801ff. There is the closest connexion between the belief in ‘demons’ (as also, in- deed, the worship of local nwmina) and the great majority of the manifold forms of magic and soothsaying. Much of the latter may have been first taken over by Israel on Canaanite soil, but not a little must have belonged to the pre-Mosaic stage. Cf. on this point the classical article of W. R.

Smith, ‘On the Forms of Divination and Magic enumerated in Deut. xviii. 10f.’ in Journal of Philology, xii. p. 273 ff., and xiv. p. 113 ff. ; also T. W. Davies, Magic, Divination, and Demonology among the Hebrews and their Neighbours, etc., London, 1898 (also as Dis- sertation, Leipsig, 1901). Also the ordinary burnt-offering, which was all assigned to the Deity (hence called also kalil, ‘whole-offering’), can scarcely be regarded other- wise than as an offering of food, ue.

as a at But, on the other hand, it is impossible to explain all sacrificial rites from this point of view. The extraordinary importance which is manifestly at- tributed to the blood of the sacrificial victim carries us forward to another idea, namely, that of the sacramental communion established be- tween the god and his worshippers through their common eating of the (eo ipso sacred) body of the sacrificial victim.

And, since from the earliest times the blood is regarded as pre-eminently the seat of the life, the no crane communion was undoubtedly reached in the most primitive stage by drinking the sacrificial blood, the same blood as was assigned in some way (it might be by smearing | the image or the altar, or by pouring out the | blood within the sacred precincts) to the Deity.

A | clear trace of this notion—although in a form that | has been very much toned down—has survived in | Ex 245%-, When we read here of Moses sprinkling | the altar with one portion of the blood and the q people with the other, and thus sealing the cove- — nant between Jahweh and the people, the main | feature of the rite is the common share in the — It could not have been long till the advance A of culture gave rise to repugnance to the drink- | ing of blood.

Hence arose naturally a partition | of the sacred food; the portion of the Deity being | the blood along with the fat (the latter in robability on account of the facility with whic it could be made over to the Deity by letting it go — up in smoke), the portion of the worshippers being the flesh.

The sacramental communion, however, | finds expression in late as Well as in early times in — the consumption of the sacrificial meal at a sacr spot, in eating and drinking “before Jahweh’ (in early tines, no doubt, in the actual presence of th image). That the flesh even in these so-called meal-offerings bore a sacred character, is evident from the circumstance that the mingling of sacred and common food in the body was sought to be avoided by fasting previous to the sacrificial meal.

The record of this undoubtedly very ancient prac- — tice has come down to us only in connexion with | war (Jg 20%, 1S 78) and mourning (18 31%, 28_ | 3” [the case is different in 12'6]), The strict com- | mand to avoid the use of blood for food, which was afterwards extended to the case of animals that could not be offered in sacrifice, may have been originally due not simply to the fact that the blood was reserved for the Deity, but also to the fear of absorbing a second soul along with the blood, the seat of life.

: 4 It cannot be determined whether, in addition to what were afterwards the usual victims, other | animals were used for sacrifice by the tribes Israel in pre-Mosaic times. On the other hand, may be asserted with confidence that in spe cases human sacrifice was practised in order propitiate the Deity or gain His favour.* | is witnessed to by the ‘persistency with which, down to the 7th cent. B.c.

, the shares of the first- born is regarded as the highest act of service, in spite of the clear protest uttered against this notion in Gn 22 (E). The teaching of the latter | narrative plainly is that Jahweh is satisfied with | the disposition which is prepared to offer to Him | one’s dearest, and that He has appointed the sub stitutionary offering of an animal in place of the | * Cf. on this point the exhaustive discussion of A. Kamy hausen, Das Verhdltniss des Menschenopjers zur teraelit.

Re ligion, Bonn, 1896. aa wept | pieces of the dismem bere RELIGION OF ISRAEL a actual sacrifice of a child. Nevertheless, Ahaz (2 K 168, very Poketly during the straits to which he was reduced by the attack of the allied Ara- means and Ephraimites) and Manasseh (21°) both caused a son to pass through the fire ; and in Mic 67» the question is evidently submitted to very serious consideration whether the sacrifice of the firstborn is not to be offered as the surest expiation of guilt.

From passages like Dt 1251, 2 K 1727 23), Ezk 16%! 20% 2357 (on Jer 19° see below) it would appear as if these burnt-offerings of human victims were presented not to Jahweh, but to Melekh (LXX Moloch), t.e. ‘ king [of heaven]’ as a heathen god. oY however, from Gn 22, this is expressly opposéd by Jg 11% %, according to which Jephthah, in terms of his vow, sacrificed his daughter to Jahweh.

In 2 K 37 we read of how Mesha, king of Moab, offered his firstborn, naturally to Che- mosh, the god of the land; but the now mutilated close of the narrative plainly shows that the writer was firmly convinced of the efficacy of such an offering, and would no doubt have expected that a similar sacrifice to Jahweh on Israelitish soil would be equally efficacious.

Jer 7% 19° [delete in the latter the gloss ‘as burnt-offerings to Baal,’ which is wanting in the LXX] 32* plainly show that the sacrifice of children was popularly sup- osed to be well-pleasing to Jahweh. And even zekiel, to whom such offerings, like every other form of cultus in pre-exilic times, appear as simple idolatry, reckons the sacrifice of all the firstborn among the statutes ‘that were not good’ (20%), which Jahweh Himself gave to the people as a punishment for their backsliding.

This strange assertion is in all probability to be understood as meaning that the command to offer the firstlings of Gattle gave rise to the erroneous notion that human sacrifice was well-pleasing to God. If human sacrifices were, in the nature of things, burnt-offerings or whole-offerings, thus constitut- ing pre-eminently valuable gifts, yet in the earliest times the use made of the blood must have held an important place in the same connexion.

And, seeing that in the case of the offering of children the blood in question was closely related to that of the offerer, this species of sacrifice also must un- questionably be regarded from the point of view of the establishing of a sacramental communion between the offerer and the Deity.

A somewhat different character belongs, on the other hand, to other two rites, which are certainly also pre-Mosaic, namely the ratifying of a cove- nant fee one or more animals in pieces, so that the contracting parties might pass between the pieces laid opposite one another; and the hérem or ban.

In Gn 15° 17 (J), in the case of the ‘covenant’ of _ Jahweh with Abraham, the first named of these rites is enjoined and performed by God alone; but here we have to do not with a covenant in the ordinary human sense, but with a religious ‘ bérith,’ whose essence lies in the Divine institution, de- mand, and promise. God accommodates Himself here to human custom by passing between the animal, just as in Jer 348 the contracting parties pass between the parts of the calf cut in twain.

The whole trans- action in so far resembles a sacrificial one, as the kinds of animals enumerated in Gn 15°, as well as the calf of Jer 3418, all belong to the class usually employed for sacrifice; nor is it impossible that the Mlood of these animals was in some way utilized as sacrificial blood. The kernel of the vite is manifestly the invoking of a curse upon oneself in case of a breach of the obligation under. taken. This is clearly alluded to in 1S 11’ (as _¥F. Schwally (Semit.

Kriegsaltertiimer, Heft 1, ‘Der heilige Krieg in alten Israel,’ Leipzig, 1901, p. 54) well describes the RELIGION OF ISRAEL 619 well as in the incident of Jg 19”, which must be interpreted in the same way), only that the curse invoked must have picts ha concerned not the cattle, but the person of the man who was false to his obligation. The ban (Heb.

0729) * was, without doubt, origin- ally a war custom, and consists in the devoting + (even before thé actual battle, Nu 212, Jos 67, 1S 15%-) of the enemy and all their belongings to destruction—in Israel, in the post-Mosaic period, naturally in honour of Jahweh as the God of war. Schwally rightly denies that the hérem has the character of an offering or present.

To ‘ban’ means to give over to destruction; the religious element is found in the complete renunciation of any profit from the victory, and this renunciation is an expression of gratitude for the fact that the war-God has delivered the enemy, who is His enemy also, and all his substance into the hands of the conqueror.

The earliest practice appears to have required the massacre of everything living, whether man or beast, and the burning or destroy- ing in some other way of houses and property ; cf. Jos 67). (after the capture of Jericho) 874% 3 108, 1S 158 (where the sparing of the best of the cattle for a future offering, and the failure to put to death the Amalekite king Agag, are held up by Samuel as a transgression on the part of Saul) 22!

9 (although in this instance the expression hérem is not employed); so in Mic 4 in an eschatological prophecy the ‘devoting’ of all the substance of the peoples that besiege Jerusalem is announced. The original rigour of the hérem appears in a somewhat milder form in Dt 2°4f 3% Jog 82 37 114, where human beings, indeed, are all to be put to death, but the cattle and other possessions of the enemy are to fall as spoil to the Israelites.

According to Dt 20'** the ban is to be enforced with unsparing severity in the case of Canaanite cities, whereas, according to v.4%-, in far distant non-Canaanite cities only the males are to be slaughtered ; the women and children, the cattle and other property, are to be regarded as spoil. This rule is followed in the case of the Midianites, according to Nu 31”, but Moses afterwards (v.!"-) demands the slaughter also of all the female prisoners except those that were still virgins.

A further mitigation of the practice is found, finally, in the possibility of making some of the prisoners slaves of the sanctuary; cf. Jos 9% and the Néthinim or ‘given ones’ amongst the per- sonnel of the post-exilic temple. The hérem, as a solemn devoting to destruction, might, however, include in its scope even Israel- ites, and not only individuals but_ communities.

‘Thus Dt 13'°*- requires the putting to death of all the inhabitants of any Israelitish city that fell into idolatry, and the burning of a// their property as ‘a whole-offering to Jahweh.

’t According to Jg 20% all the members of the tribe of Benjamin were slaughtered and their cities burned on account of the outrage at Gibeah ; according to 211° the ban was executed on all the inhabitants of Jabesh- gilead with the exception of 400 virgins who were action of Saul in 18 117 as a ‘Schwur- oder Bundesritus’ ; the dismembered bodies have in all the instances above cited the significance of an ‘ Eidopfer,’ to which numerous analogies are found in other religions as well. Cf.

Schwally, Z.c. p. 29 ff. + In Jer 128 the expression ‘ dedicate (lit. hallow) them for the day of slaughter’ answers exactly to the elsewhere em- ployed ‘ ban.’ t In view of what has been said above, this cannot be taken to mean that the destruction in consequence of the hérem actually represents a whole- or burnt-offering, but that it haa this force comparatively, being as well-pleasing as a burnt- offering: Schwally very appropriately refers to the statement of Mesha on the Moabite Stone, |.

11f.: ‘and I slew all the people of the city, a pleasing spectacle for Chemosh and for Moab.’ In the same way is explained why the touching & the ‘devoted’ thing roused the anger of the Deity (Jog 738). 620 RELIGION OF ISRAEL urgently required. That the man who stole any- thing of what had been ‘devoted’ came himself under the ban, because he had broken the ‘ taboo’ caused by the hérem, is shown by the case of Achan (Jos 7).

The ‘holy indignation of Jahwel,’ which burns at first against the whole people (v.44), is appeased only when Achan is stoned to death (v.7%). Nor is it easy to understand 1 S 14% except to mean that the curse resting upon Jonathan (ef. v.%), in which he had involved him- self by disregard of Saul’s prohibition, as of a kind of hérem, was removed by drawing lots for and putting to death a substitute.

In 2S 215 Israel is delivered from the consequences of the curse of the Gibeonites by the giving up and putting to death of seven members of the family of Saul, whose action was responsible for the curse. A unique character belongs to the case supposed in Ly 27*-, that an Israelite might ‘devote’ any possession of his, including human beings (slaves or captives taken in war?) and cattle. Every- thing so ‘devoted’ is most holy to Jahweh: if human beings, they must be put to death.

The circumstance that in the earliest times there is no trace of drink-offerings of wine, is explicable very simply on the ground that these were possible only after Israel had become used to vine-culture in Canaan. On the other hand, the libations of water mentioned as prayer-oflerings before battle (1S 78, cf. also 2S 2315"-) are in all probability a survival from a time when water (in the desert) was considered an article of value.

Extraordinary occasions such as war (see below) led to a revival of the primitive ritual practice. Regarding the usual sacrificial transaction we have information in the very word for altar, namely mizbéah, t.e. ‘place of slaughter.’ This shows that the victims, as is presupposed also in Gn 22%, were slain upon the altar itself. The horns of the altar, which afterwards tafe a role in connexion with the application of the blood (Lv 47 e¢ al.) and the function of the altar as an asylum (1 K 1°0f.

278), should in all probability be traced back to the custom of spreading the skin of the victim, horns and all, over the altar. This custom can be proved also in the case of heathen cults, and is thus presumably older than Jahwism.

Apart from other considerations, the latter supposition is favoured by the circumstance that in the earliest times altars were composed either of large flat stones (Jg 67° 13, 1S 614 1453f-) or of piles of turf or unhewn stones (Ex 20%), The introduction of artificial horns would follow after altars came to be constructed of different materials.

The ex- planation of the horns as symbols of strength in connexion with the worship of Jahweh as a bull- God could thus, in any case, have been introduced only at a later period. The circumstance that the number of horns required by the Priests’ Code (Ex 272, ef. Ezk 43) »°), which no doubt embodies here a long-established usage, is four (one on each corner of the altar), proves nothing against the view that the horns were originally only two in number. 2.

The essentials of a place of worship in the earliest times probably always included:a mazzébah (72¥D) and a sacred tree, or, in default of the latter, a sacred tree-stump orpole. Itis true that Ex 23% 343 and Dt 75 12° convey the impression that in Israel the mazzébaA was first introduced in imita- tion of Canaanite modes of worship; but such a notion is contradicted by the prvalicg belief (see above, p. 616%) that the mazgzébah was the abode of the numen loci.

This belief had its origin as far back as the Polydemor Jahwism retained it to this extent, that even in this religion the mazzgébdh was viewed as the symbol and pledge of the nearness of Jahweh. It eriod of Polydemonism, and- RELIGION OF ISRAEL is thus all the more readily comprehensible that down even to the late monarchical period offence was taken at the mazzebah. In if the mazzcébah serves as a witness of the agreement | between Jaceb and Laban.

Moses himself erects | at Sinai not only an altar to Jahweh but twelve | mazzebéth, ‘according to the number of the tribes | of Israel’ (Ex 244). These stones cannot posal have possessed for this narrator the same signifi- | cance as the sacred stone of Bethel had for the narrator of Gn 28, The two brazen pillars ab | the entrance to Solomon’s temple (1 K 7°") should | also, no doubt, be regarded as representing a form | of mazzebah.

According to 2 K 12 ® (read, with | the LXX, ‘by the mazzébah’ instead of ‘by the | altar’] a mazzébah stood in the forecourt of the | temple; in Hos 34 the mazzébah is taken for | granted as part of the materia sacra of the regular | worship of Jahweh; and in Is 19” the mazzebah | spoken of is not an obelisk, but a stone which | serves along with the altar to mark a spot conse- | crated to the worship of Jahweh.

Weare told in | 2K 18+ that the mazzébdth had already been | destroyed by Hezekiah, but this should probably | be set down as an antedating of the cultus reform | of Josiah (2 K 23"); for the first [unless Mic 503) | is as early as the time of Manasseh] prohibition of | the mazzcbah appears in Deuteronomy (16”; cf.

| also Jer 2” [if the mockery of the prophet has for its objects ’dshértm (see below) and magzebéth] — and Lv 261), As with the worship on high places, — the erecting of ’dshérim and magzébéth by the | kings prior to Josiah is imputed to them as a fault — by the Deuteronomistic redactors of the Book of | Kings (1 K 14%, 2 Kx 17?°), 7 Like the mazzgébah, the "dshérdh (77@x, plur. owy), i.e.

the sacred tree-stump or pole, must also be reckoned among the survivals of the pre- Jahwistic cultus, although it likewise held its | place for centuries unopposed beside the altars of | Jahweh (as in Jg 6% it appears beside an altar of | Baal).

It is, without doubt, a substitute for the | sacred tree (see above), which was not available everywhere (especially, for instance, in the case of hastily erected altars in the desert), But, as | the regular sanctuaries on the high places would | always have green trees in their neighbourhood, | there was less occasion for the mention of the | aisherim [in 1 K 14% and 2 K 17°they are a super- | fluity, due probably to the eagerness of the Deuteronomist to condemn alike the trees and | the ’dshérim].

That the ’dshérah said to have | been cut down by Hezekiah (2 K 18) and restored | by Manasseh (21%) stood in the temple down to the time of Josiah, is shown by its removal and burn- | ing in the Kidron Valley (2 K 23°). In like manner | an ’dshérah (according to 1 K 16%, first set up by | Ahab) stood in Samaria (2 K 13°; ef. also 1K 1445, 2K 1716), The command to cut down 34, Dt 7°) or to burn (Dt 12%) heathen dshértm implies at the same time, of course, a repudiatio: of their use in Israel.

They are expressly bidden in Dt 16”! (cf. also Mic 5 (2), where it is predicted that they are to be plucked up; Jer 17, Is 279, and the late addition to Is 178). With the exception perhaps of Mic 5%, none of these sages goes further back than the time of Jo There is, of course, a complete distinction betwe the ’dshérdh as the sacred pole, and the goa Asherah, whose existence a eve to be now pl beyond doubt by the Tel el-Amarna letters.

H worship (1 K 153, 2 K 217 234) wears the as pure idolatry, and hence does not come under t category of the religion of Israel. The use of other figures besides the magzé and the ’dshérah to represent the nearness of t Deity cannot be proved, to say the least of it, for t pre-Mosaic period.

In favour of such a view may ry HX | i A eS Se i ae ase ——s ‘ junctions to wash the tion has béen ea RELIGION OF ISRAEL be urged the tenacity with which the Jahweh cultus clung for a very long period to the use of images of Jahweh; and it is not impossible that in these the form of the ’é/im that were once worshipped had been handed down. On the other hand, the notion cannot be admitted that any but images of Jahweh were ever tolerated within the pale of the Jahweh worship.

This must hold good also of the Térdaphim, even if these were originally derived from the realm of heathendom; and the whole question must accordingly be left for discussion in connexion with the pre-Prophetic cultus of Israel. 3. But, again, the worship of Jahweh retained a number of ritual practices which may be held with all the more certainty to have been derived from the pre-Mosaic period, since they one and all have their analogues in the practices of the heathen Semites.

This category includes walking barefoot in sacred places (Ex 3°, Jos 5; éven the going barefoot in token of mourning, 2S 15%, Is 207, like other forms of uncovering, has to be looked at, as explained above, from the religious point of view) ; washing the person and the clothes (ix 19” and often) before approaching the presence of the Deity (ef. the changing of the clothes, Gn 35%).

When we find in the Sriests’ Code constant in- rson and the clothes in order to recover lost Levitical purity, no doubt the primary intention of these is that outward physical purity is to be the symbol and representation of inward. But, all the same, there is here a relic of those conceptions which led to the attempt, by means of external cleansing, to escape direct injury from demons or even from an angry god.

And if in Ex 28% and Ly 64 (° 16” the priests are enjoined 50 wear their official garments only when they are conducting Divine service, the older passage, Ezk 441°, shows that there was a further intention in this than simply to guard against a profanation of the holy garments. The danger was rather that by touching these garments the people would be ‘hallowed,’ i.e. become forfeit to the sanctuary, and thus require a ransom to be paid for them.

Here, again, we make acquaintance with the primi- tive notion that all close contact with the Deity or with anything consecrated to Him was, if not fatal, at least dangerous. But amongst forms of close contact was included the act of locking wpon ; hence the covering of the head in presence of the Deity, as is Aone By Moses in Ex 3° and Elijah in 1k 19%, The same idea, that the beholding of the Deity is fatal, meets us in Gn 16% 32°", Ex 19?!

33”, Tn all these instances it is true it is Jahweh that is _ in question, but it may be regarded as certain that the idea is an inheritance from the pre-Jahwistic era. 4, Of rae sts in pre-Jahwistic times no recollec- 8 preserved. In any case there was no need of their services for offering sacrifice, seeing that this office could be performed equally well, even in the worship of Jahweh, by any head _ of a household.

The more menial services were discharged, as still continued to be the case under Moses (Ex 245), by the young men. On the other hand, designations like ‘ Oracle -terebinth’ (see above, p. 616*) point to the existence of Oracle naively assumes the existence of a Jahweh-oracle priests at particular sanctuaries, just as Gn 25” in the time of Rebekah. 5.

There are various passages from which (in combination with the hypothesis of Ancestor Worship) the inference has been drawn that at first only the family or the tribe was regarded as the sacral body. Thus in Ex 21° the slave who does not wish to go free is to be pinned by the _ ear to the doorpost ‘before God,’ and thus incor- ea with the sacral body belonging to this od. The Passover ceremony (see below) likewise RELIGION OF ISRAEL 621 assumes the family to be the sacral body.

In1S 208 we read of an annual offering by the family of David ; but this does not prevent David’s being at the same time missed at a sacrificial meal (for in ancient times this character belongs to all eating of the flesh of an animal that was lawful for sacrifice) at the New Moon; and there were many sother occasions when the sacral fellowship could not possibly be confined to a family or even to a tribe.

Thus in war, which from the ancient Semitic point of view always came under the category of religious transactions, it is evident that all comrades in arms formed one sacral fellow- ship, whose members collectively ‘hallow the war,’ i.e. consecrate themselves for battle by abstin- ence from sexual intercourse (cf. 1S 215, where David pretends to be on military duty; 2S 11%), as well as by inaugural offerings (1 S 7° 13!

, where the sacrifices are intended to propitiate Jahweh), just as in Ex 19 the people prepare themselves y continence for drawing near to God. Also the prescriptions of Dt 2057 231-14, so strange to our notions, are explicable as survivals from a time when certain bodily functions, and in particular sexual relations, were believed to involve danger from demons. 6.

Whether in pre-Mosaic times there was a sacrificial cultus practised at Jined, frequently ree curring periods, cannot be determined. An observ- ance of the Sabbath is extremely improbable, although its sacred character is carried back in Gn 2° (P) to the very beginning of the world. More conceivable—and here again combined with the fear of demonic influences—is it that there should have been a celebration of the New Moon, seeing that there are the clearest traces of this (see below, p.

662") till far down in the monarchical period, without any recognizable connexion with Jahwism. As to the later annual festivals, it is self-evident that those which depend upon _agri- culture and vine-growing cannot be taken into account for the nomad period of Israel’s history ; they are one and all of Canaanite origin.

On the other hand, the ancient tradition clearly assumes that the Passover festival (of course with its original significance, and quite independent of the Feast of Unleavened Bread) was already kept in pre-Mosaic times. When Moses and Aaron (Ex 5*) make the demand of Pharaoh, ‘ Let us go three days’ journey into the wilderness, to offer sacrifice to Jahweh, our God,’ and repeat this demand before each plague (7'° 8! etc.)

, it is assumed that they wish to celebrate in the wilderness a long, éstablished” sacrificial festival. For Moses (826) assigns as motive for going outside the land of Egypt that they are accustomed to offer sacri- fices that are an abomination to the Egyptians, and in 10° he says expressly, ‘We have to keep the feast of Jahweh.’ Again in 122 (J) the direc- tion runs, ‘ Kill the Passover.

’ Here, too, accord- ingly, it is assumed (as even in 12" [P] ‘It is a Passover for Jahweh’) as something that has been long familiar,—in opposition to the directions of vy.“ which make the ritual to have first taken its * Of. the very instructive remarks of Schwally in the above- cited ‘Der heilige Krieg im alten Israel,’ esp. p. 45 ff., on the hallowing of war (Jos 3°, Mic 35, Jer 64 et al.)

also by anointing the shield (28 121) and consecrating the weapons (Jer 227), as well as by burnt-offerings which in the earliest times repre- sented also the most solemn form of guilt-offering (1S 79139. 12), Again, the allowing of the hair to grow long (if Jg 5? is to be rendered ‘with long streaming locks,’ etc. [see Moore, ad loc.], and if this implies a general warlike custom) marked the warrior as nézir or ‘consecrated.’ Schwally appears to the present writer to go too far when (p.

74 ff.) he discovers the peril to the newly married man in the circumstance that by taking part in war he was guilty of turning aside to another cultus. The explanation rather commends itself that by such conduct he would expose himself to the curses of his wife, or that the con. secration of a new house appeared indispensable for the expu! sion of hostile demons, 622 rise upon the occasion of the Exodus, and to the derivation of the name pesah (nos) from pasah ‘to pass over.

” This explanation of the word from the sparing action of Jahweh in passing by the houses of the Israelites when He smote the firstborn of the Egyptians (so Ex 12”), cannot be reconciled with the cireumstance that in the oldest usage of RELIGION OF ISRAEL language pesah appears to stand for the so-called: Paschal lamb or (Dt 16?) other animals used for the sacrifice (cf. the expressions ‘kill or burn or eat the Passover’).

This fact shatters also the derivation of the name from pdsah, ‘to limp’ * (cf. the limping of the prophets of Baal around the altar, 1 K 18, and the limping—undoubtedly a custom derived from very early times—of the Mecca pilgrims around the sacred stone of the Kaaba), although in itself it is favoured by the analogy of hdgag, prop. ‘to dance or circle round,’ then ‘ to celebrate a festival.

’ Even if the attempt to fix the etymology of the word must be given up, there are still sufficient starting-points to enable us to get at the original character of the Passover. t Ex 34% shows that in the month Abib, in which the Exodus fell, the firstlings of cattle, or, more strictly, the first male offspring of sheep and cows, were offered. According to 5° these sacrifices are to be offered in the wilderness, lest Jahweh visit the people with pestilence or the sword.

That is to say, they are guilt- or pro- pitiatory-offerings. But quite the same is the character of the Paschal meal, however later theo- logical motives may have transformed its original meaning, or the Priests’ Code have entirely given up its sacrificial character.

t The eating of the Paschal lamb (whether originally one of the first- lings used for this purpose, while the rest were sacrificed as burnt- or whole-offerings, or no) is, beyond question, a sacrificial meal celebrated by the family as the sacral bedy; for the flesh is holy, and none of it is to be left till the morning, while the blood is to be smeared on the lintel and the doorposts to guard those within from pesti- lence.

From the later point of view this part of the ritual amounts to nothing more than a memorial of a former deliverance from a _par- ticular danger.

But originally, as is shown by numerous primitive heathen analogies, it was sought by an annual smearing with blood to rotect house and herd from demonic influences, in particular from the plague or other diseases, he Mazzgéth festival, which immediately fol- lowed the Passover, might be brought into close connexion with the latter, only if, with Beer (Theol. Ltztg. 1901, col.

588), following Holzinger, we could see in the mazzéth simply a memorial of the nomad period, during which Israel in Bedawin fashion ate unleavened bread. When the nomad life was given up (Gn 4"), the mazzéth, on Beer’s theory, became ‘ bread of afiliction’ (Dt 16%). The view that the mazzgéth represented the bread * Toy (‘The Meaning of Pesach,’ in JBL, 1898, p. 178 ff.)

thinks otherwise, holding that the pesah was originally a ritual dance, accompanied by the sacrifice of a lamb, and that it was only afterwards that the name was transferred to the sacrifice. t Of. on the most recent explanations of the term (including its comparison with the Assyr. pasdhu, ‘calm oneself,’ so that pesah would=‘ calming or appeasing [the anger of the Deity])’ Riedel in ZATW, 1900, p. 319ff. He holds pesah to be the Egyp. poseh, ‘harvest.

’ Schafer, again (Das Passah-Mazzoth- Fest nach seinem Ursprunge, seiner Bedeutung, und seiner innerpentateuchischen Entwickelung, Giitersloh, 1900), holds the Passover to have been a purificatory offering of very early origin, common to all the Semites, and designed to appease the Deity.

At the same time he denies the pre- Mosaic origin of the OT Passover, declaring it to have been, along with its pendant the Mazzéth feast (which was meant to recall the haste of the Exodus), from first to last a historic-theocratic festival. His argument is manifestly under the spell of tradition. The view that the Passover and the offering of firstlings were not originally connected (eo Volz in Theol, Ltztg. 1901, col. 635 f.)

appears to the present writer to be at least incapable of deuionsifation: RELIGION OF ISRAEL | baked from the new corn (and thus implied an agrarian festival) is held to be contradicted, espe- cially by their use in connexion with sacrifices all the year through, and no less by their being used as common food.

The only objection to Beer’s explanation is the difficulty of are that the memory of an obsolete manner of life was solemnly celebrated by a return to it, and that for a period of six days. Moreover, the agrarian character of the spring festival appears to be assured by Dt 16? and by the presentation of the so-called wave- sheaf (Lv 231°), The festal character of the Sheep-shearing is still witnessed to by 1S 25"* and BS To>2-a(et also Gn 31? 38").

It is, however, quite intelli- gible that this festival, so important for nomads, afterwards fell more into the background as com- pared with the agrarian festivals that were cele- brated in common. 7.

As to the course of procedure at a festival we | have information in Ex 32° which no doubt applies | also to the pre-Mosaic period: sacrifice, sacrificial meals, amusements (chiefly, in all probability, pepe 1 Many a practice, which afterwards aroused the righteous indignation of the prophets, — may have had its roots in the ritual customs of | pre-Mosaic times instead of being derived from the — evil example of the Canaanites. 8.

A religious character belongs, finally, to other two customs whose origin in like manner goes, — without doubt, back to the pre-Mosaic era: cireum- cision and blood-revenge. E Circumcision.* — All attempts to explain this — practice as due to purely sanitary considerations — are now rightly regarded as exploded.

As little — weight can be attached to such explanations as that it is a milder symbolic form of the once ~ prevalent sacrifice of children, or of self-emascula- tion in honour of a deity. On the contrary, j circumcision has, amongst numerous (including — Semitic) tribes, an evident connexion with a boy’s — reachin pope it is the sign of maturity, and — thus of full admittance to the number of capable yl warriors of the tribe.

But, since it has at the — same time a religious meaning (for ‘a@rél ‘uncir- — cumcised’ is equivalent to ‘[religiously] unclean,’ — and hence a strongly disparaging ward it can be viewed only as an act of consecration for the benefit of _a tribal god or some particulardemon. Itthus | serves at once as a tribal markt and asadefence | against the harmful influence of other demons.

| Even for Jahwism circumcision is primarily a sign that a man belongs to the people and the worshi of Jahweh, although the specifically theological interpretation of it as a sign of the covenant (Gn 17/°"-) belongs only to the latest stage (P). ; The oldest tradition as to the origin of child circumcision meets us in Ex 4“ (J).

In this now mutilated passage it is implied that Moses aroused the indignation of the Deity (here of course alread: Jahweh) because at the time of his marriage wit Zipporah he was not circumcised as religious | custom required (cf. also Gn 34”% [J]). Zipporah | fe t * Cf., on this subject, H. Ploss, ‘Geschichtliches und Ethnolo- gisches tiber Knabenbeschneidung’ in Deutsches Archiv Geschichte der Medizin und medicinischen Geographie, vi p. 312 ff. ; P.

Lafargue, ‘ La circoncision, sa signification sociale et religieuse’ in Budletins de la soc. d’Anthropologie de Paris, ser. iii. tome x. 8, p. 420ff.; P. O. Remondino, History of Cir- | cumeision from the Earliest Times to the Present, Philadelphia, 1891; A. Glassberg, Die Beschneidung, etc., Berlin, 1896; S | Kohn, Die Geschichte der Beschneidung bei den Juden von den — diltesten cee bis auf die Gegenwart, Frankfurt a. M., 1902 (Hebrew).

Se t As such, it appears to go back to a time when the men still — went naked ; cf. Gunkel, ‘Ueber die Beschneidung im AT’ in Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, ii. 1, p. 13 ff. (against Reitzen — stein, Zwei religionsgeschichtliche Fragen, Strassburg, 1901, — according to whom Israel borrowed circumcision from the | priestly aristocracy of Egypt, whereas Gunkel holds correctly — that adi Egyptians were circumcised).

j RELIGION OF ISRAEL rescues him from the attack of Jahweh by cir- cumcising her son with a (sharp) stone (cf. also the stone knives of Jos 5*, a proof of the high antiquity of the practice), and touching the pudenda of Moses with the severed (and still bleeding) fore- skin, while she exclaims, ‘Thou art to me a bride- groom of blood.

’ This can mean only that she transfers the efficacy of the child’s circumcision symbolically to the husband, and declares him to be what he ought to have been at marriage, namely a bridegroom consecrated by the blood of circumcision, and thus safe from the anger of the tribal god. Whether, perhaps in very early times, the blood shed in circumcision was employed in any other sacral transaction, is a question that must be left unsettled.

Another account of the origin of circumcision is found in the original text of Jos 57", namely v.? without the harmonistic additions ‘again’ and ‘the second time,’ and vv.?}8®, We are told that Joshua circumcised the Israelites with stone knives at the Hill of Foreskins, and that the place was hence called Gilgal, i.e. ‘rolling away’ of the reproach which arose from the impurity of the uncireumcised condition, and which called forth the contempt of the Egyptians. AsStade(ZATW, 1886, p. 132 ff.)

has shown, we have here an ety- mological legend intended to explain the name Gilgal ; in reality the ‘ Hill of Foreskins’ derived its name from the circumstance that there, beside the ancient sanctuary of Gilgal, was the common place of circumcision for the neighbouring (Benjamite) youths, and that their foreskins were buried in that hill.

When, finally, the Priests’ Code (Gn 17) makes the introduction of circumcision as a sign of the covenant rest upon a command of God to Abraham, an explanation is thus offered of the circumstance that all Abraham’s descendants—the Arabs, Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites—were | circumcised (a condition of things that applied | also, it is true, to the Egyptians and the Phe- nicians, although not to the Philistines). Blood-revenge.

—That this custom, which is assumed in Gn 4'- as already existing amongst the earliest generations of men, actually took its rise in the pre- Mosaic period, is proved by its wide diffusion also among the heathen Semites and elsewhere. The originally religious character of the practice is supported, apart from other con- siderations, by the extraordinary tenacity with which it maintained itself—a tenacity which would be scarcely conceivable without religious motives.

It is true that the precise bond of connexion is not now discoverable. In view of the above- discussed narrative, 28 21**- (cf. esp. v.® ‘before Jahweh’), it would appear as if the putting of the murderer to death was originally regarded as a sacrifice by which the anger of the tribal god was appeased. According to the earliest notions, this anger is due less to moral causes (as came after- wards to be the established view, cf. e.g.

Gn 9°) than to the damage sustained by the god through the loss of a life belonging to him; and, as the members of the tribe, in the first instance the family, are responsible for preserving the lives that are the property of the god, blood-guiltiness attaches to them until the guilt is atoned for by the death of the murderer. The original absence of an ethical viewpoint is evident from the simple fact that no distinction is made between murder and unintentional manslaughter; even in Dt 4*!

- (a probable addition by P) and Nu 35- the right of blood-revenge in the latter case is still ideally re- cognized, although care is taken to make this right ineffective by providing an asylum for the man- slayer in ¢ne of the Cities of Refuge. Jahwism was thus able to give a milder form to this RELIGION OF ISRAEL 623 deeply-rooted custom, but not to abolish it entirely.

From the narrative of 2S 14°*: (which is fictitious, indeed, but no doubt reflects the conditions of real life), where ‘the whole family’ demands that the fratricide be given up, we learn that occasionally the execution of blood-revenge might be prevented by the intervention of the king. At the same time, the language of the woman of Tekoa (v.°) contains the suggestion that by such intervention the king might bring guilt upon himself.

Here, again, we see the mechanical way in which the matter was viewed by primitive rigid custom. Summary.—Looking back now on the results which we have reached by examination of the pre-Mosaic period of the religion of Israel, we have been able in not a few instances to point te phenomena which contain the germ of similar appearances on the soil of Jahwism, and which are of the utmost importance for the understand- ing of the latter.

In the first place, as to the notion of God which prevailed in that period, it is only in a very restricted sense that we can speak of such a notion at all. The principal constituent of the yet rudi- mentary religious sense was fear of the constantly threatening but always incalculable influence of demonic powers.

These powers are of very varied kinds, and it would be vain to try to reduce them to any system, or to assume that any reflexions re- garding their nature and treatment passed through the minds of men in the state of nature that then prevailed. Men believed in them upon the ground of custom inherited from birth, and acted towards them according to the ancient sacred usage fol- lowed by all members of the family and the tribe.

These ‘demons’ are partly spirits of the dead, and, above all, the spirits of the nearest kin of the family. Besides measures adopted to keep them off or to avert injury at their hands, there were acts prompted by dutiful affection towards them, but we have no perfectly clear traces that Animism in the narrower sense had already developed into Ancestor Worship.

—A very important réle is played, again, by all the local numina (élim), whose presence appears as attached to sacred trees, stones, and springs. They are not identical with the latter in such a sense that we could speak here of a deification of nature, but they are locally so inseparable from these objects that they can be found and worshipped only at the particu- lar spots in question.

—This ‘Polydemonism’ ad- vances a stage when such a numen loci comes to be regarded as the tutelary god of a family or clan, or even of a whole tribe. In place of simple gifts of homage or for propitiation, rites are now introduced whose object is to witness or to estab- lish a close connexion, nay a blood relationship, with the Deity.

Even if Totemism cannot be pres to have once prevailed among the tribes of srael, yet we certainly meet with a conception of sacrifice which regards sacramental communion between the Deity and the offerer as the princi- | pal feature—a communion which is established by their jointly partaking of the sacrificial blood (after- wards by the god receiving the blood and the fat, while the offerer has the flesh for his portion).

As to the manifold other rites and usages (mourning customs, the hérem and other warlike practices, human sacrifice, circumcision, celebra- tion of festivals), the original motive has not always been discoverable with certainty; but in most instances the connexion with Animism or some other form of belief in demons is clear enough. iii. MORAL CONDITIONS.

—Not withont interest, finally, is the question, What were the moral con- 624 RELIGION OF ISRAEL RELIGION OF ISRAEL ditions which Moses found amongst the Israelitish tribes of his time? It was long the fashion (especially as the result of Schiller’s essay on ‘ Die Sendung Mose’s’) to represent the contemporaries of Moses as utterly uncivilized and at the same time—upon the ground of an Egyptian narrative handed down by Josephus (c. Apion. i. 26)—as a people quite permeated with leprosy.

All the brighter was the halo of glory about the name of Moses, who was believed to have so quickly trans- formed this half-brutalized horde into a religious community that stood so high, both intellectually and morally. As a matter of fact, however, the moral conditions in Israel must have been quite the same as we still find existing among the genuine Bedawin at the present day.

There is no such thing as acting upon conscious moral principles; and hence there is no thought of morality properly so called, but custom exercises a powerful influence, which no one can disregard with impunity. ‘No such thing is wout to be done in Israel’ (28 13”, cf. also Gn 209 296 347), — this is the strongest condemnation of an act of wrong-doing.

Custom allows even a married man the freest intercourse with concubines and female slaves, but it guards most strictly the honour of the virgin and the married woman; custom de- mands, unconditionally, the execution of blood- revenge, but (at least for a time) subordinates even this duty to the sacredness of a guest’s rights ; custom requires honesty and uprightness towards one’s fellow-tribesmen, but has no scruple about allowing deceit and cheating to be practised on a stranger.

—As in social life, so also in matters of cultus it is custom that is the ruling factor. Fear to violate custom, fear of the consequences of such violation—in particular, dread of ceremonial un- Hionanesst ath this is deeply ingrained; but of ‘sin,’ in the moral sense attached by us to the term, it is impossible to speak. The condition of things above described was not all at once changed by the proclamation of Jahwism.

The force of custom asserted itself even in retaining practices which could never be recon- ciled with any true morality, just as Islam has succeeded only to a very limited extent in trans- forming the character of the genuine Bedawin. Nevertheless, it will be found that, at the very commencement of the religion of Israel, the fruitful germs must have been sown from which— although only very gradually, and at first only among a few—conscious morality sprang up.

Without such a germinating power Israel’s tri- umph over the undoubtedly superior culture of the Canaanites would be inconceivable. II. FOUNDING OF THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL (J AHWISM) BY MOSES AT SINAI. Regarding the work of Moses, and especially regarding the extent and content of the laws pro- mulgated by him, we have very varied accounts in the different sources of the Pentateuch.

But there are certain points which they all take for granted as firmly established by tradition: namely, that Moses, of the tribe of Levi, was the _first_to proclaim Jahweh as the God of the whole people of Israel, and as their Deliverer from the bondage of Egypt; that at Sinai he brought about the conclusion of a ‘covenant’ (see below) between Jahweh and Israel; that he at least laid the foundation of the judicial and ceremonial ordi- nances in Israel, and that he left behind him more or less copious notes on all this.

The supposition that the Pentateuch still con- tains passages from Moses’ own hand is not to be unconditionally set aside. But its scientific proof is now absolutely impossible. Hence the only ques- tion can be, Is the correctness of the above pro- positions, which we noted as fixed elements of tradition, demonstrable by backward inferences from later historical facts? Our answer is that to a large extent—all hypercriticism notwithstand.

ing—this proof is possible, and that especially in regard to the main points. Amongst the latter we include— i, THE PERSON OF MOSES AS THE FOUNDER OF