Nexion
Opinions are divided as to the reality of the connexion between the Code of Hammurabi and Mosaic legislation. The positive view has been well stated thus: ‘The Babylonian and Mosaic Codes are conceived in the same literary form ; they contain a considerable number of practically identical laws; they present not a few cases of actual verbal agreement, and both are designed for the regulation of a civilized community.
The parallels are too close to be explained upon a some- what vague theory of common tradition. . It has been shown that, in Palestine, Israel learned and appropriated the ancient Babylonian myths. Why should they not learn Babylonian law as well? . ‘he foundation of the Babylonian law was SSeS aR SAS eR é ae eee eee ae CODE OF HAMMURABI was the Code of Hammurabi, and thus the enact- ments of the old Babylonian king, formulated about B.C.
2250, passed more than a thousand years later into the Book of the Covenant, and so became the heritage of Israel and the world’ (Professor C. Johnston, Johns Hopkins University Circular, June 1903). Mr. Cook minimizes the extent to which Pales- tine was permeated by the other elements of Baby- Jonian culture. The discovery of cuneiform tablets at Taanach by Professor Sellin may now be added to the evidence of the Tel el-Amarna letters.
Documentary evidence may any day be found of the existence in Palestine of all sorts of Baby- lonian literature. That will not of itself prove that the Hebrew legislators read the Code in cunei- form. What is needed is proof from the Hebrew monuments of such similarities as can be explained only by a knowledge of the Code as we now know it. There is small likelihood of such a proof being found.
For no one can euppose that any one of the documents into which the Hebrew law is resolved on critical grounds was put forward at any period as a complete code. We have fragments of several codes at different dates, but not one that can really be trusted for a comparison. Such fragments as are left are very valuable as showing what was at one time considered to be law in Israel, but after the composition they have under- gone it is impossible to say whether they really are ancient or not.
The words ‘primitive’ and ‘ancient’ are not synonymous in the sey, of law. Nor is it quite clear that ‘savage’ penalties are always more primitive. The Hebrew law treats unfilial conduct more severely than Ham- murabi does. This is not a proof of age, nor of primitive ideas, for the normal Arabs show little trace of parental authority.
The intrusion of ay power into the law courts, while definitely ated as late, is a recrudescence under changed conditions of a state of things from which Hammu- rabi shows an emancipation nearly complete. If any signs of a Babylonian influence can be made out anywhere now, the presumption is that it was once enormously powerful. For the whole history of Israel appears to consist in reformation, a readjusting of old material in faith and practice to new conditions.
The old Babylonian stuff must have taken a most powerful root to survive at all. Professor D. H. Maller has done great service in pointing out the significance of any traces of similarity of order which can be found. Professor Kohler insists on the presence or absence of the theocratic idea as a test of primitive stages. The Indian law is purely theocratic, making no distinction between right and morality.
The Israelite laws vary ; some are theocratic, and the prohibitive commands ancient in type. Hammu- rabis Code is very modern, almost purely legal. This puts it on a level with the Gortyn Laws and the XII Tables, while it is even more advanced than they are. In Israel the religious idea received its highest development in pre-Christian times, and that dominated law, morals, and history alike. In Babylonia law reached its highest development, and largely in independence of re- ligion.
The common life was Semitic, the like- nesses are due to racial affinity. The social order was widely different, There can be no question of actual ie coming, at any rate until post-exilic times. This view leaves out of consideration the evident fact that the Code of Hammurabi does not reflect the result of any continuous evolution of law in a homogeneous and progressive people, but an adaptation of widely distinct systems.
An aristo- eracy which clung to primitive ideas, presumably a recent infusion of a wilder Semitic race, amalga- CODE OF HAMMURABI 611 mated with a long settled, even if mixed and already partly Semitic, people. Some of its laws may be a recrudescence of primitive views alread long modified among the Babylonians. The ad- vent of the First Dynasty of Babylon had a close parallel in the settlement of Israel in Palestine.
May not the settled population there have been in much the same stage of civilization as the native Babylonians, with local variations? May not the more primitive stamp of the Israelite laws as we have them be due to the greater predomi- nance of the newcomers?
Then the common features would be of two separate origins: one, the civilization that had once been common to Babylonia and Palestine, juristically the more advanced ; the other, a system common to the two Semitic peoples, who in Babylonia conquered the land, founded the First Dynasty, formed the new aristocracy, or in Palestine conquered the land and are known to us as Israel. This would furnish the politically dominant, characteristically Semitic, primitive features.
Which of the two systems should impose itself on the other, depended in either land on the relative power of the invaders and the invaded. This would be largely condi- tioned by the suitability of the competing races to the conditions of the country. In aby louts the larger settled population, the necessary conditions of life, made the invaders rather become absorbed in the people they politically ruled. In Palestine the conditions worked in the opposite direction.
Whether by greater preponderance of numbers, or less modifying power in their new environment, the invaders to a greater extent imposed them- selves on the previous inhabitants. e need not speak of borrowing as an act on the part of the Israelite legislators. What they preserved of existing law was already centuries before influ- enced by Babylonia. What they imposed as their national contribution was common property with the legislators who imposed part of it on Baby- lonian law.
That these did not make Babylonian law as primitive as the Book of the Covenant, was due to their more complete absorption by the settled civilization. Hammurabi’s tits cerystal- lized the law at a later stage of the process than did the Book of the Covenant. The process was more rapid there. Hence also the greater stability of his work. It lasted practically unchanged some fifteen hundred years. The subsequent develop- ments in Israel show perpetual progress.
The progress was on totally different lines, till Israel. came once more in contact with Babylonian cul- ture. Then it had made contributions of its own, some of which it modified, some it emphasized as a result of the contrast. We may say that the Israelite legislation shows strong traces of Babylonian influence, and yet not destroy the independence of its origin. We cannot suppose that the author of any code set to work to draw up a comprehensive scheme of law.
Each built upon the already prevailing custom. His attention would be directed chiefly to what was not matter of uniform treatment. The most characteristically Babylonian things in the current custom of the day in Israel may be just those which are not legislated for. The new le islation did not require to touch what was so firmly estab- lished.
Other things of Babylonian origin may have been abrogated by the new laws—it would not be necessary to say what they had been, but merely by stating the new law to say tbey should be no longer. That any Israelite code shows marked differences from the Code of Hammurabi is enough to show an independent origin. The absence of any difference would show complete dependence.
The coexisting likenesses and dif- ferences argue for an independent recension of 612 RELIGION OF ISRAEL ancient custom deeply influenced by Babylonian law. The actual Code of Hammurabi is a witness to what that influence might accomplish. It cannot be held to be a creative source. The Code may only be itself a proof of the same influences. These may be called Semitic in preference to Babylonian.
But that view calls for overwhelm- ing proof that there was any source of civiliza- tion powerful enough to have this influence on both Israel and Babylonia. The presumption that Babylonia had a prominent influence on Palestine long before Israelite codes were drawn up, is one that grows stronger as time goes on. C. H. W. JoHNSs. RELIGION OF ISRAEL.*—Jntroduction.
—The origin of the religion of Israel is treated in greater or less detail by all the four sources— or, more correctly, strata of sources—of which the present Pentateuch is made up: the Jahwistic stratum (which originated between 900 and 700 B.C.), the Elohistic (between 750 and 650), the Deuteronomistic (650-550), and the Priestly (550- 400). Their respective statements exhibit numer- ous differences, and even discrepancies.
But on one point they are in absolute agreement : namely, that the founding of the religion of Israel was the work of Moses, of the tribe of Levi; that it took place in connexion with the leading of the people out of Egypt ; and that it consisted pre-eminently in the proclamation of Jahweh as the national God of Israel. The strength and the uniformity of this tradition leave no doubt of its correctness, however much the details of the process may be the proper subject of criticism.
We are thus entitled to commence the history of the religion of Israel with Moses. It is another question whether we can also attain to any cer- tainty regarding the religion of Israel, or, per- haps more correctly, of the Israelitish tribes in pre-Mosaic times. This question could at once be answered in the affirmative, if it were possible to regard the whole contents of the Book of Genesis as history in the strict sense of the term.
Accord- ing to this account, the self-revelation of the one true God began at the very outset, t.e.
with the first human being created, and was then repro- duced from generation to generation—always, indeed, only through the instrumentality of the firstborn of each family — until, finally, in the families of the three patriarchs proper, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it developed into a religion which is hardly distinguished in any way from the future religion of the nation of Israel as this is presented to us in the earlier traditions.
Abel and Cain already bring offerings to Jahweh—the one, of the firstlings of the flock and of their fat ; the other, of the fruits of the field\(Gn 4°*-). Noah sacrifices to Jahweh upon an altar burnt-offerings of all clean beasts and all clean birds (8”). In like manner we hear not infrequently of the patri- archs building altars and offering sacrifices, as well as of their calling upon J.
ahweh, especially at those spots where He had appeared to them, or which were hallowed by previous appearances of God (127 1318 22° 265 35’). Further, the erection of monumental stones or pillars (mazzébéth, 28'8%- 337 {where for mizbéah ‘altar’ we should certainly read mazggébah ‘pillar’] 35'-*) corresponds to a custom which was practised even by Moses (Ex 244), and came only at the end of the pre-exilic period to be prohibited as heathenish.
When, again, Rebekah goes to consult Jahweh, and actually obtains an oracle from Him (Gn 25%), this manifestly implies not only the existence of a sanctuary of Jahweh, but also the presence of priests or other mediums of the oracle. In short, the cult of Jahweh as practised by the people of * Bee ‘ Table of Contents’ at end of article, p. 732 ff.
RELIGION OF ISRAEL Israel after their conquest of Canaan is presented to us as simply the continuation of the worship al- ready rendered by the patriarchs to the same God, and, indeed, almost in every instance at the same sanctuaries. Israel, in other words, simply entered by the conquest of the land into the heritage of which they had been assured long ago by the pro- mises of Jahweh to the patriarchs, and, above all, by the solemnly ratified ‘covenant’ of God with Abraham (Gn 15).
It must be confessed, however, that a proper critical examination of the religious history of Israel has shown incontrovertibly that the above view of the primeval and the patriarchal religion became possible only by carrying back unreservedly to the centuries prior to Moses, up to the very commencement of all, the conceptions and the conditions of the Jahweh religion as these present themselves somewhere about the 9th cent. B.C.
The picture thus drawn of the early history is therefore an extremely valuable authority for the aie from which it emanates; but for the pre- Mosaic period we can make use of it only with the utmost caution and with strict observance of complicated critical principles. We then discover that in various traditions found in Genesis as well as in those of many other books of the Bible a recollection hes been preserved of the pre-Mosaic religious stage of Israel.
It is true that this recollection is not infrequently so faint and so unintelligible to the narrators themselves that they take no offence at it, nay, believe it to be in perfect accord with the religion of Jahweh.
In such instances the correct interpretation of the tradition may be confirmed or even discovered in two ways: (1) from other traces of the same tra- dition in the OT, even outside Genesis; (2) from the analogies found in other, especially Semitic, religions,* which will be found not infrequently to supply a surprising amount of information about ritual customs which are strange, and which were no longer understood by Israel itself.
There is a repetition here of a phenomenon whose occurrence may be noted almost all over the world: namely, the tendency of religious usages to maintain them- selves with the greatest tenacity even after they have come, in consequence of altered religious conceptions, to lose all real meaning.
heir retention is generally justified by giving them some new interpretation which renders them tolerable to the new religion (so, for instance, with circumcision in Israel), or they may continue to be practised simply through force of habit, without any attempt at explanation at all. The latter principle may be found to hold good, for instance, of all or at least the majority of mourn- ing usages.
In all probability, the whole of these had their root in religious motives; but that this was understood we cannot assume except in those instances in which they were expressly prohibited by the Jahweh religion. For the most part the represent simply petrified custom, whose origin meaning it is often very difficult to determine.
At all events, the symbolical interpretations (for in- stance, that of the rending of the garments as an expression of utter indifference to one’s outward appearance, or even as a symbol of the rending of the heart with grief), which we meet with fre- * On the subject of Semitic religion we possess such extremely valuable contributions as J. Wellhausen’s Reste arabischen Heidentums (Berlin, 1887; 2nd ed. 1897), and W.
Robertson Smith’s Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (London, 1889 ; 2nd ed. 1894; Germ. tr. by R. Sttibe, pest i. B. 1899). Much valuable material is contained also in B, Stade’s Gesch. des Volkes Israel, Berlin, 1887 (Buch 7; ‘Israels Glaube und Sitte in vorprophetischer Zeit’), Bd. i. p. 358 ff. Of. also Ch. Piepenbring, ‘La religion primitive des Hébreux’ (Rev. da UHist. des Religions, 1889, pp. 171-202); and O. G.
Montefiore, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as tllustrated by the Religron of the ancient Hebrews, London, 1892. RELIGION OF ISRAEL RELIGION OF ISRAEL 613 quently even in Christian exegesis and theology, are foredoomed to rejection. 1, TRACES OF A PRE-MOSAIC RELIGION OF ISRAEL.
Before we attempt now to collect the possible traces of a pre-Mosaic religion of Israel, there are two points that we must emphasize very strongly: (1) that in almost every instance we have here to deal with hypotheses and not with facts, so that our task Witt be ii Teality to deter- mine the greater or smaller degree of probability attaching to any hypothesis; (2) that everything which survived in Israel merely as a custom that was not understood, may claim an interest from the point of view of Archeology and the History of Religion in general, but has, strictly speaking, none so far as the Religion and Theology of the Bible are concerned.
Itappears to us that the effect is simply to lead one astray as to the correct understanding of the religion of Israel, when certain recent descriptions leave the reader in doubt whether all kinds of primeval customs were not practised in Israel with full consciousness of their original sign. fication, and, when introduced into the frame- work of the Jahweh religion, so continued down to the latest times.
The truth is that anything which was recognized by the Jahweh religion as of heathen origin, and whose meaning was under- | stood by it, was declared unclean and accordingly prohibited absolutely, as, for instance, necromancy. Any one who notwithstanding addicted himself to such practices, set himself deliberately in oppo- sition to the requirements of his religion.
‘The fact that this happened again and again gives us no more right to saddle the religion of Israel with these derelictions than we have to hold Christianity oS saatoed for all the heathen superstition which still continues to prevail even in Christian nations. i. CONCEPTION OF THE DEITY, ETC.—The most important question which has to be dealt with by any one who undertakes to give an account of a particular stage of religion is that relating to the nature of the god or gods recognized.
Amongst the lowest forms of religious venera- tion, the more recent authorities on Comparative Religion reckon not only the common Fetishism (which elevates an arbitrarily chosen object to the rank of its gods, and again, it may be, deposes it), but also the so-called Totemism.* The following may suffice by way of definition of this widely diffused phenomenon.
In the vocabulary of modern Comparative Religion the term totem} stands for some natural object—generally an_animal—with which a tribe considers itself to have blood re- lationship, and which accordingly in the person of all its representatives is treated by the tribe with the utmost consideration and indulgence, or may actually receive Divine worship.
Such Totemisin ; may be recognized most frequently in the name ay which the particular tribe is designated, although it may happen, indeed, that names long in existence come only subsequently to have a totemistic sense attached to them. * Out of the copious literature on this question the following ie noted as of importance for our present purpose: W Robertson Smith, ‘Animal Worship and Animal Tribes among the Arabs and in the Old Testament’ in Jowrnal of Philology, ix, (1880), cf.
the same writer’s Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia? (1903), p. 217 ff.); J. G. Frazer, Totemism, Edinburgh, 1887; Jos. Jacobs, ‘Are there Totem-clans in the Old Testa- ment?’ in Archaeol. Review, iii. (1889) 8, p. 145ff.; F. V. exer Der Totemismus und die Religion Israels, Freiburg i, B. 1901 [denies any existence of Totemism in Israel]; 8S. A. Cook, ‘Israel and Totemism’ in JQR. xiv. No. 55; L. Germain Lévy, ‘Du totémisme chez les Hébreux’ in REV xliv. (1902), No. 89, p. 13 ff.
[likewise with wholly negative results). t This term, borrowed from the Ojibway Indians of N. America and brought into vogue especially by Lubbock, denotes originally the family or tribe iteelf. In searching for indications that Totemism once prevailed in Israel, we must leave out of considera- tion one practice, namely the worship of Jahweh in the form of a molten bull, as practised in the Northern kingdom from the time of Jeroboam I. onwards (1 K 12%).
It is probable that, in this, Jeroboam simply revived a form of the Jahweh culé that had been long familiar; but it was beyond doubt of Canaanite origin, and had nothing to do with Totemism. The molten bull is nothing but a symbol of the strength and creative power of Jahweh, who in the earliest times—as far back aS we can trace the matter—was never thought of as appearing on earth except in human form.
~ On the other hand, among the names of Israel- itish tribes there are a few which, upon certain conditions, might testify that Totemism once pre- vailed ; for instance SIMEON (jynw Shim'én), if this name, like the Arabic sumu, stands for a hybrid of wolf and hyena; LEAH, if this=‘ wild cow’; and LEVI, #f this is really a gentilic name from Leah; and, finally, RACHEL (=rahél, ‘ewe’).
With reference to the two female names in this list, it is true also that it must first be proved that wives in the patriarchal narratives always stand for certain weaker tribes which became amalgamated with other stronger ones into a single whole. It is clear that here we have man ditiiculties in the way, and at most we can spea only of the possibility that Totemism once pre- vailed in particular tribes.
Nor are’ we carried much further by another argument, to which it has been sought to attach the strongest evidential value. We refer to the so-called ‘food taboos,’ by which the flesh of certain animals is to be scrupu- lously avoided as unclean. It sounds very plaus- ible, no doubt, to interpret this as meaning that each tribe regarded it as strictly forbidden to kill and eat the totem animal with which it believed itself to have blood affinity.
When smaller tribes became amalgamated with larger, and when these finally combined to form one nation, the totems of all the different clans would be recognized by the whole body, and the eating of them avoided, and the Jahweh religion would sanction and retain this practice, only altering the motive for it. At the totemistic stage these animals were forbidden because they were holy; the Jahweh religion, on the other hand, declared them, as relics of a foreign cultus, wnclean.
Now, in reply to this it may be remarked that certainly the long list_of unclean animals enumerated in Ly 11* and Dt 14%- cannot possibly be all explained on the ground of a previous Totemism. n the contrary, it is quite clear in these passages that the prohibition of certain animals which were expressly regarded as unclean was afterwards endl to the whole class which exhibited the same characteristics.
Thus originated that system of food taboos in virtue of which uncleanness attached to all four-footed animals which do not chew the cud and have not completely divided hoofs, and to all water-animals which have not fins and seales, as well as to all four-legged winged creatures. It is vain to seek to explain this supplementary schematizing by re- | ligious motives, as if, for instance, all creatures to which any imperfection attaches had been forbidden as food.
AJ] thatit is correct to hold is that in very ancient times the eating of particular animals was disallowed on religious grounds. But it is quite ‘another question whether these grounds were con- nected with Totemism. It is quite possible that when such customs arose the determining factors were wholly different forms of puperetiuan suck in particular as some form of belief in demons (see below). In this way the impulse would be given less by religious veneration than by simple fear.
Upon the whole we must conclude once more that, 614 RELIGION OF ISRAEL while it is certainly possible that Totemism once prevailed in Israel, its prevalence cannot be proved ; and, above all, we must hold that the religion of Israel as it presents itself in the OT has not re- tained the very slightest recollection of such a state of things. 2.
It is different with another of the preliminary steps towards real religion which is still more widely illustrated amongst primitive peoples, ames Animism. In its pure form this is the belief in“ the activity of the spirits of recently deceased relatives. rom the nature of the case, however, it is not always possible here to draw the lines sharply. Even those who have been long dead may appear to their surviving relatives in bodily form in dreams.
Hence the animistic belief produces the conviction that the spirit of the dead man either still lingers in the neighbour- hood, or may temporarily leave the place of sojourn of the dead (called by the Hebrews probably even in pre-Mosaic times Shé’dl; see below). On the other hand, the appearances that present them- selves in dreams are not confined to actual rela- strictly speaking, yet be called religion, but is at most only a preliminary step towards it.
For it wants the element of veneration of powers regarded as superhuman. This comes to associate itself with Animism only when the latter concentrates its interest especially upon the spirits of ancestors, and passes into a formal veneration for them, when, in short, it becomes Ancestor Worship.* With reference to the pre-Mosaic religion of Israel, the question is generally raised in the form whether in the later religion traces are de- monstrable of a former Animism and Ancestor Worship.
At present it is the fashion to pro- nounce unhesitatingly in favour of the presence of both these elements. But in the opinion of the present writer, while there are undoubted traces that Animism once prevailed, the alleged indications of Ancestor Worship are all exposed to more or less serious objections. As might have been expected, the traces of Animism are most marked in connexion with cer- tain mourning customs.
Not that a// mourning customs can be explained, as has been attempted, from one and the same point of view; on the contrary, they clearly belong to different grades of religious thought, and some of them have hitherto defied all efforts at interpretation. Most of them, however, may be most simply explained as due to the naive attempt, by means of a variety of bodily * Of the very extensive literature on Animism and Ancestor Worship (in addition to the works of Stade and W. R.
Smith cited in note on p. 612»), the following may be noted : F. Schwally, Das Leben nach dem Tode nach den Vorstellungen des alten Israel wu. des Judenthums, Giessen, 1892; J. Frey, Tod, Seelen- dlaube und Seelenkult im alten Israel, Leipzig, 1898 [denies spivit-worship, and explains mourning customs as due to fear of death or of its author]; K.
Griineisen, Der Ahnenkultus wnd die Urreligion Israels, Halle, 1899 [finds indubitable traces of Animism in the OT, but none that are positively convincing of Ancestor Worship ; explains (with Frazer) mourning customs in great measure as averruncatio; cf. also the instructive review of Griineisen’s book by Wellhausen in the Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 1900, No. 20]; J. GC. Matthes, ‘Rouw en floodenvereering in Israél’ in Theol. Tijdschr. 1900, pp. 97 £f., 193 ff.
[especially directed against Frey’s (see above) rejection of Ancestor Worship], also ‘De doodenvereering bij Israél,’ 1d. 1901, p. 320 ff. [against Griineisen). RELIGION OF ISRAEL alterations (¢.g. the cropping or shaving of the head and beard, the wounding of the body by bloody incisions, etc.
, the covering of the face, or at least of the hair on the upper lip), to render oneself unrecognizable by the spirit of the dead, and thus to eseape its ener nie ao rending of the garments, like the going barefoot and other partial uncoverings of the person, is in all probability simply a relic of an entire layi aside of one’s clothes; caly that absolute na eds ness already in very early times assum e mitigated form of putting on sackcloth, which was originally a coarse cloth thrown around the loins.
Such a complete alteration of the outward appear- ance seemed best fitted to deceive the spirit of the dead, and to divert its attention from the survivors, But the same purpose was already served by going about in a filthy condition, by neglecting all atten- tion to the hair, and by sprinkling oneself with ashes; or, on the other hand, by sitting on the ground, in dust and ashes if possible—in the place, in short, where one does not usually sit, and pee is not likely to be looked for.
Part of these mourning practices were retained without scruple even within the pale of the Jah- weh religion—a proof that their original intention was no longer understood. Others, like the cutting of a bald spot on the head, the disfiguring of the beard, and the wounding of the person, were strictly forbidden by the later legislation (Lv 19 21°). The circumstance that the Jahweh religion regarded all contact with a dead body, nay, even the proximity of one (Nu 194), as defiling, is sufficient!
y explained by the consciousness that at least part of the mourning and burial customs had their root in another religion. At the same time, however, it is noteworthy that the Law itself still retains a manifest trace of animistic beliefs when it enacts (Nu 19!) that any open vessel with- out a cover fastened with a string is defiled by the proximity of a dead body.
Here we have evidently the reminiscence of a very ancient practice whereby it was sought to prevent the spirit of the dead from taking up its quarters in the house—the practice, namely, before or at the moment of a death, of carefully closing all open vessels that happened to be in the neighbourhood.
~~ aes The question whether Animism underwent in pre-Mosaic Israel, as in some other instances, the further development into Ancestor Worship, can- not be decided by such peremptory declarations as that Animism, in virtue of an inward necessity and hence always, is coupled with Ancestor Worship.
Not theories but only facts must decide here; and it is simply not true that, thanks to invariable laws of evolution, the process of development has always, and in the case of all peoples, been from Animism to Ancestor Worship, and from the latter to Polytheism, and finally to Monotheism. Let us proceed now to examine the facts which have been held to prove that Ancestor Worship once prevailed among the Israelites. » Here, again, the principal réle is played by mourning customs.
Almost everything in this lepartment is held to have the intention of_de- claring the mourner to be the slave of the dei ancestor. So, for instance, with the uncovering of the person, the putting on of sackcloth as what was once the servile garb, and every other act by which expression is given to a humiliation of the person; and, finally, even the wounding of oneself by bodily incisions as a rite of dedication to the spirit of the dead. But these explanations According to Buchler (art.
‘ Das Entbléssen der Schulter und des Armes als Zeichen der Trauer’ in ZA7'W, 1901, p. 81ff.), by the practice in question the mourner submits himself to the dead, and declares himself his subject, by showing himself pre- pared to perform the hardest tasks on his behalf. The forced * 4 character of this explanation strikes pne at once.
ie re RELIGION OF ISRAEL ‘of the mourning customs appear to us far less natural than the above proposal to trace them back to an effort to render oneself unrecognizable by the spirit. A stronger ar, ent would be found in the custom of funeral repasts, if it were really beyond doubt that we have to do here with a sacrificial meal in honour of the dead. But the few passages to which appeal is made in this connexion prove no such thing.
That ‘mourning bread’ (Hos 9%) is unclean is sufficiently explained by the circum- stance that it is eaten by one who is defiled by a dead body. This is all that appears to be spoken of in Dt 26", and not the use of bread for a sacri- ficial offering to the dead. The latter might, indeed, seem to be alluded to in the addition ‘nor have I given thereof for the dead.’ But a funeral repast may very readily bear a different sense from one in honour of a now deified ancestor.
It may be an expression of a determination to maintain with the deceased the same fellowship in worship that subsisted when he was alive, this purpose being indicated by holding a repast once more in pres- ence of the corpse. Still more probable appears to us to be the other explanation, according to which the special object is to provide the spirit of the dead with what it requires during its journey to the realm of death.
The same purpose (and not that of @ sacrificial gift proper) might be served also by the placing of food on or in the grave, if it is this and not the use of bread at the funeral repast that is alluded to in Dt 26%. In the case of Jer 16’, again, it is only by perfectly arbitrary alteration of the text that the passage can be converted into a testimony to sacrificial meals in honour of the dead.
All that the prophet really says is that, after the coming of the Divine judgment, no one will seek to force men to take food to strengthen themselves, or to drink of the ‘cup of consolation,’ and thus bring the mourning fast to an end.
As we see from 28 3% 121’, it was the custom to employ pressure of this kind; but in this whole matter we have nothing to do with Ancestor Worship, especially as there is no ques- tion of ancestors in connexion with the mourning fasts in either of these two passages any more than in 1S 31% or28 13, A further evidence that Ancestor Worship once prevailed in Israel has been discovered in the great importance attached to the mention of tombs.
This, we are told, is explicable only on the ground that these graves were places of worship. Now it is a fact that the patriarchs’ place of burial in a cave at Hebron is repeatedly mentioned. Abra- ham purchased it as a hereditary tomb from the Hittites (Gn 23°*-); and he himself (25%) as well as Tsaac (359) and Jacob (cf. 49, according to which it was the resting-place also of Rebekah and Leah, and 50%) were buried there.
But all these pas- sages (as well as in all probability the mention of the burial-place of Aaron in Dt 10°) belong to the so-called Priests’ Code, which cannot surely be sup- posed in mentioning them to have had any thought of Ancestor Worship, but only to have intended to establish the title of the Israelites, when they returned from Egypt, to a portion of the soil of Canaan.
According to the Jahwistic narrative, also, Jacob desires to be buried with his fathers (47) ; but here it is not Hebron but Goren-ha’atad, on the east side of Jordan (50!*-), that is the burial- place. Besides, among the earlier sources E mentions the tomb of Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse (358), and J or E that of Rachel (35) and of Miriam, the sister of Moses (Nu 20!) But there is not a word anywhere of any of these tombs being a place of worship.
For to attempt to discover such an allusion in the mazzébah set up on Rachel’s tomb (Gn 35%) is to forget the fact that Ancestor RELIGION OF ISRAEL Worship was paid only to male ancestors, rarely, if ever, to the mother of the tribe, not to speak of the impossibility of supposing the practice of An- cestor Worship at the tomb of the nurse of Re- bekah. The object of the mazzébdh on Rachel’s grave must accordingly have been originally some- thing other than to mark it as a place of worship.
Finally, on the theory we are discussing, it must strike us as very surprising that of all the sons of Jacob who, as ancestors of the various tribes, had the strongest claim to veneration, it is Joseph alone whose place of burial is mentioned (Jos 24° ; cf. also Gn 50", Ex 13” [all EJ).
Now we do not mean to suggest any doubt that the tomb of Joseph at Shechem, that of Joshua at Timnath-serah (Jos 24%), and no less those of Gideon (Jg 8%), Jephthah (12"), Samson (16*), and the so-called ‘minor judges’ (10% 5 1210. 12.15), may have had the reputation of ‘heroes’ graves,’ although we hear nothing of any cult being practised at them. But, even if Hero Worship could be proved, this would not necessarily be equivalent to Ancestor Worship. Even 1 § 20”, where the practice of am (?
ental family sacrifice is iY at does not justify the conclusion that it was offered to ancestors. Of all the arguments in favour of the former prevalence of Ancestor Worship, the most plausible is that based upon the injunction of the so-called levirate marriage (Dt 255%-), The original aim of this practice is held to have been to provide the childless deceased with a successor and thus with a cult, since the want of the latter was counted a serious misfortune.
The custom in question is already presupposed in Gn 388, where indeed it appears as unconditionally binding, whereas in Dt 25"* it has more the character of a_simply moral obligation on the partof the surviving brother. But, even if levirate marriage had aan a connexion with Ancestor Worship, the Deuteronomist is cer- tainly unconscious of this, and hence there is also little probability in the supposition that Lv 18!
6 2071, in prohibiting marriage with a brother’s wife, meant to raise a protest against Ancestor Worship. A certain evidence of Ancestor Worship has been supposed to lie in 2S 18% This, however, is a mistake. For the meaning of the words there is not ‘I have no son to invoke my name with veneration in the eult of the dead,’ but simply ‘I have no son to keep my name in remembrance,’ as would be the case if there were any one who was called ‘So and So, the son of Absalom.
’ In default of ason, the mazzébah must keep his name from being forgotten. Hence we are unable in this instance to discover the slightest trace of Ancestor Worship. From 1 S 2838, again, where the spirit of Samuel called up by the witch is called an ’élohim, i.e.
a superhuman being, the most that can be inferred is that the spirits of the dead were one and all included in the category of ’élohim or béné’élohim ; there is no proof here of a worship of the dead, not to speak of a worship of ancestors. To sum up the results of this whole discussion.
If Ancestor Worship ever prevailed in the pre- Mosaic period—and it is psychologically quite conceivable that respect for the dead bodies and the tombs of parents ‘inspired at least tendencies to a kind of Ancestor Worship,—no consciousness of this survived to historical times, and the whole question, as was remarked before, has at best an interest from the point of view of Archeology but not of Biblical Theology. 3.
Real worship, however, was rendered by Israel in the pre- Mosaic period _to the many numina (’éim (sing. ’él, ‘deity,’ ‘god’}), which were believed to be the inhabitants and _possessors_ of certain places, and which were venerated as such. These make their appearance most frequently in 616. RELIGION OF ISRAEL connexion with trees, stones, and springs, which thereby assume a sacred character.
hether there ever was a time when a local numen of this kind (answering to the dryads, oreads, hyads of the Greeks) was believed to be connected with every tree, is a question that cannot be decided.* We should probably, however, find a trace of numina loct in every instance where, in spite of what was for Jahwism a matter of course, namely, the identification of the numen with Jahweh, the original sacredness of the particular tree, etc., has survived.
This comes out most distinctly in Gn 28% (EK, except vv.}8-16), where Jacob sets up the stone, by which he had lain and had a remark- able dream, as a mazzébah and anoints it with oil, vowing at the same time that upon his return he will make this mazzgébah a béth-él or ‘ god’s house.’ As a matter of fact, after his return and the erection of an altar, he calls the place ’£/-béeth-’él, ‘God of Bethel’ (357 [also E]).
It is plain that the anointing with oil (28'%) was intended originally for the deity connected with the stone, and that the object of the whole narrative is to give a sanctity in the sense of Jahwism to the time- hallowed mazzébah of Bethel.
A similar instance of Jahwism supersedizg an ancient view-point that had been taken over from the pre-Mosaic period, is present perhaps also in Jos 24% (E), where the setting up of the sacred Stone under the oak in the sanctuary of Jahweh is attributed to Joshua, whereas, according to Gn 12°, the sacred tree was in existence as early as the arrival of Abraham, appearing as ‘the soothsayer’s (J/dreh) terebinth’; that is to say, in all probability it was a spot where the nwmen connected with the tree gave oracles through a priest or prophet.
But the sacred stone SUN stood from the first in connexion with the tree, to which circumstance, no doubt, the designation of the latter as ‘tere- binth of the mazzébah’ [read in Jg 9° mazzebah for muzzab] is due. Pre-Jahwistic in all probability is also the sacred stone-circle near the Jordan at Jericho, from which a frequently named sanctuary (hag-Gilgal, ‘the [stone] circle’) derives its name. According to Jos 47° and v.
™® these stones, twelve in number after the number of the tribes, were set up by Joshua at Giigal in memory of the miraculous passage through the dry bed of the Jordan ; according to v.® (J), on the other hand, they were erected in the midst of the river itself. Both statements are manifestly attempts to give to the originally heathen character of this stone- circle a stamp that would be unobjectionable to Jahwism.
—An ancient sanctuary is, doubtless, to be discovered also in ‘the serpent’s stone’ (’eben haz-zoheleth) beside ‘ the fuller’s spring’ (2n-régél) to the south of Jerusalem, for in 1 K 1° it serves as a place of sacrifice.—Of other sacred stones we hear nothing, there being no mention even of meteoric stones, although these played their part elsewhere on Semitic soil. The notion that the sacred Ark (see below, p. 628°) contained meteoric stones, rests upon pure conjecture.
On the em- ployment of mazzébéth in the cult of Jahweh, see below, p. 620.
Amongst sacred trees we have already made men- tion of ‘the soothsayer’s terebinth’ at Shechem, which is in all probability identical with the tere- binth under which, according to Gn 354 (E), Jacob buried the foreign idols, as well as with ‘the augurs’ or prognosticators’ (Mé'énénim) terebinth’ of Jg 9", ‘To thesame category belongs the ‘ tere- binth of Mamre’ at Hebron, which is constantly brought into connexion with Abraham (Gn 1318 * That this was the case with ’élah and ’éldn, ‘terebinth,’ might be certainly assumed if these Hebrew names were really connected with ’&, ‘deity,’ and did not rather mean ‘the strong tree.
’ RELIGION OF ISRAEL 143 18'. The circumstance that in all these pas- sages we find the plural, ‘ terebinths of Mamre,’ is due to a correction made in dogmatic interests, namely, to get rid of the single sacred tree: this is clear from 184 as well as from the LXX, which ~ has uniformly the singular).
We may compare, further, the tamarisk of Abraham at Beersheba (Gn 21%) ; ‘the oak of weeping” (allon-Bachuth) named after Deborah at Bethel (35%) ; the palm of the female judge Deborah, between Ramab and Bethel (Jg 4°); the terebinth at Ophrah, beside which the angel of Jahweh appeared to Gideon (64); the pomegranate (1 § 14), and the tamarisk on the height of Gibeah (22°), under which Saul executed judgment ; and, finally, the tamarisk [in 1 Ch 10” ‘terebinth’] at Jabesh, beneath which the bones of Saul and his sons were interred.
In all the above instances we have to do pre- © sumably with trees which, as the abode of local numina, were already sacred to the Canaanites, and which for the same reason were so regarded by the Israelites as well, only that the process early began of bringing them into relation to the patri- archs, and thus to the cult of Jahweh, thereb removing all ground of offence connected wit them.
Nearly all of them now make their appear- ance as hallowed by the building of altars te Jahweh and by His worship in proximity to them. It is quite true that in the beliefs of the people the old conception of a special ’é/ of the particular tree may have maintained itself tenaciously, even if without a clear consciousness, till far into the monarchical period.
—Of the trees and tree-stumps or poles (‘déshérim), which till towards the end of the pre-exilic period were reckoned amongst the necessary apparatus of a place for the worship of Jahweh, we shall have to speak later on (see . 620). : Finally, in regard to sacred springs, we must first of all infer from the analogy of Semitism elsewhere, that in primitive times the most im- portant, if not all, springs were regarded as the abode of a local nwmen.
Express testimony to the sacredness of particular springs—whether on their own account or owing to a sanctuary erected near them—is forthcoming, indeed, in only a few instances. Thus, according to Gn 14’, Kadesh (i.e. ‘sanctuary’) in the desert was known also as ‘En-mishpat, ‘spring of judgment.
’ This name micht indeed have~been bestowed upon it in allusion to the judicial decisions given by Moses at Kadesh during the wilderness wanderings, but it may also point, above all, to the presence of an oracle in the sanctuary by the sacred spring.
In Gn 1614 the (assuredly ong established) sacredness of the spring Lahai-roi in the desert is traced | back to an appéarance of Jahweh to Hagar; and in 218 that of the spring at Beersheba to a com- pact by oath between Abraham and Abimelech, — Adonijah, according to 1 K 1°, holds a sacrificial meal at ‘the serpent’s stone’ (see above) beside ‘the fuller’s spring’ (the modern Job’s Well) ; and v.33 tells how Solomon was anointed king at Gihon (the modern Virgin’s Spring).
The latter circum- stance would be inexplicable unless a high degree of sanctity attached to Gihon. The above described prelimina a religion, which consisted in the belief in numerous ’élém, and probably also in the presenting of offer- ings to them, has been designated Polydemonism, as distinguished from Polytheism.
” No exception | need be taken to the name, provided it be under- stood that in this instance ‘demon’ stands for a Divine being of an inferior order and not simply for an evil spit, 4, Tt is another question when we ask whether traces are to be discovered ir Israel cf a once prevailing Polytheism alongside of the traces of —t step towards — 5 dae 4 Bt) a { | a | my | xy { ai a RELIGION OF ISRAEL Polydemonism.
This question is generally answered in the negative by the adherents of the Ancestor Worship hypothesis. They tell us that Jahwism, with its toleration of the worship of one God only, had the effect of suddenly interrupting the natural transition from the Ancestor Worship of the family to Hero Worship as the cult of the pro- genitors of the tribe, and finally to Polytheism as the cult of tribal heroes exalted to Divine rank or of what were once merely local numina.
Others, however, discover traces of actual gods, and thus of a once prevailing Polytheism in Israel.
* In dealing with this question we leave entirel out of account the numerous attempts to trace all the Scripture characters in primeval and patri- archal times to astral myths, or at all events t explain the majority of them (notably Abraham and Sarah, but also Isaac and Jacob, and, from the primeval period, at least the wives and the sons of Lamech [Gn 4], as well as Samson in the period of the Judges) as depotentiated forms of what once were gods.
We fail to see in any of these attempts anything more than unprovable fancies. As little can we consent, to regard the use of the plural form “Elohim for ‘God’ as a relic of former Polytheism ; it is much more likely that it is a so-called pluralis majestatis. At the very most it might be asked whether, perhaps, in certain tribal and personal names we have not a shortened form of originally theophorous names.
Thus it has been proposed to find in Gad (Gn 30", Is 65") a god of Werane: and in Asher (Gn 30") the male counterpart to the goddess Asherah. But, even supposing that Gad were shortened for Obéd Gad, ‘worshipper of Gad,’ or some similar form, the name of this mixed tribe (sprung from a concubine of Jacob) would prove nothing as to a specifically Israelitish god of Fortune.
Moreover, if such an idea had been conveyed by the name, it is hardly likely that it would have been borne by & prophet of Jahwel living in the time of David (15 22° e¢ al.) And as to Asher there is no trace elsewhere of a god of this name, while the explana- tion of the name as ‘the happy one’ is perfectly satisfactory. On the other hand, ‘Andath in Jg 3% 5° should decidedly be regarded as abbreviated from ‘Obed “Andth, ‘worshipper of (the Canaanite oddess) ‘Anath.
’ But no one can prove that hamgar the son of ‘Anath is Mghtly spoken of in the redactory gloss of Jg 3% as an Israelite. The name is there evidently borrowed from 5°, where, according to Moore (Journal of American Oriental Society, XIX. ii. p. 159f.)
, he is meant to be taken as the father of Sisera, In the opinion of the present writer, no weight at all can be attached to the somewhat numerous names from the periods of the Judges and the monarchy, compounded with Ba‘al, ‘lord,’ or Melekh, ‘king.’ For in the most of these it is simply Jahweh Himself that is meant by Ba'‘al or Melekh. So it is, for instance, with Jerubba‘al (t.e.
‘he who contends for Ba‘al,’ notwithstanding the opposite interpretation of the name in Jg 6%); ’Hshba‘al, ‘man of Baal,’ the son of Saul (1 Ch 8% 999); Meribaal, ‘man of Baal,’ the son of Jonathan (8% 9%); Béeliada, ‘Baal knoweth,’ the son of David (147). The pre- servation of the original form of the last three names only in Chronicles, -ba'al having its place taken in Samuel by -ddsheth, ‘shame’ (2 S 2° }° e¢ al., 44 et al.
; except that 2S 5'® substitutes Eliada’, ‘El knoweth,’ for Be'eliada'), proves simply the eagerness of later generations to elimi- nate as far as possible the hated name of Baal, as is already enjoined in Hos2. But, granting that in certain names from that period it is actually Of. the thorough discussion of all the controverted ques- tions dealt with in what follows, in Baethgen’s Beitrdge zur semit. lieligionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1888), p. 131 ff.
RELIGION OF ISRAEL 617 the heathen Baal or Melekh that is meant, this would be simply an evidence of Israelitish idolatry due to foreign influences. That Israel had at all times tendencies to such idolatry has not as yet been disputed; but this cannot, of course, be counted amongst the relics of a once prevalent Israelitish Polytheism.
Further, if it should be objected that the OT tradition itself quite unambiguously attributes to the people in primitive times the worship of heathen gods, we reply that this is so, but that the passages in question are much in need of closer examination. Gn 31%% drops out of considera- tion. If Rachel stole the god (in v.
** called téraphim) of her father Laban, this would at the most be an indication that the Teraphim cult was introduced from the Arameean sphere, for Laban is regarded by the narrator as an Aramzan. We shall see afterwards, however, that upon Hebrew soil the Teraphim cannot have had the significance of a foreign god.—On the other hand, in Jos 24% 5 | (E) it is really assumed that the forefathers of the Israelites on the other side of the Euphrates (i.e.
before the time of Abraham) as well as in Egypt (v.!4) served ‘other gods.’ That does not mean that from the first they had their own specifically Israelitish gods, but that they aban- doned themselves to the worship of the foreign gods in whose country and sphere they sojourned. In this matter the narrator simply follows the theory to which even David gives drastic expres- sion (1S 26!) when he speaks of expulsion from Jahweh’s own land as amounting to a compulsion to serve foreign gods.
—But Am 5” cannot, in view of the whole context, be understood as allud- ing to idolatry on the part of Israel during the period of the wilderness wanderings, but only as containing a threat of something to come. — In Ezk 20% Israel is charged with having defiled itself with the idols of Egypt, and with refusing to abandon these even in the wilderness. Thus we have here again to do with foreign gods, and not with a native Israelitish Polytheism.
Finally, the possibility might remain that in certain beings of ‘demon’ order, occasionally men- tioned, a reminiscence has survived of actual gods that were once worshipped. In favour of this view might be urged the analogy of other monotheistic religions, in which the gods of past heathen times are not straightway declared to be mere figments of the imagination, but (at least in the beliefs of the people) are degraded to ‘demons’ or spook forms.
Thus lived on the once mighty gods of Greece among the early Christians ; and so did the Arab tribal gods even after the conquest of Islam, just as the ancient German gods still survive in various superstitions that prevail amongst Christianized ‘ Germanic peoples. As a matter of fact, we find in some late passages of Scripture what may be pronounced certain, or at least very probable, ex- amples of this depotentiating of former popular gods: é.g.
Dt 32”, where they are spoken of as shédim, ‘demons,’ to which at one time sacrifices were offered (cf. also Ps 106%’, where the once existing practice of offering children is thought of as having these ‘demons’ for its object); 2 Ch 115, where by the term oyy (sé‘trim, ‘ goats’ or ‘goatlike forms’), the Chronicler evidently under- stands, above all, the heathen popular gods, for whom Jeroboam I. is said to have appointed priests.
But in all these instances we have to do expressly with idolatrous ies? of foreign gods, and not with relics of an Israelitish Polytheism.
And when in Lv 17’ it is forbidden to offer the usual sacrifices any more to the séérim, what comes here once more to the front is the belief in local numina, field spirits, with which there was an unwillingness, in spite of the uncontested, 618 RELIGION OF ISRAEL RELIGION OF ISRAEL sole legitimacy of the Jahweh cult, to break com- letely, seeing that these beings could so readily injure man.
But these field spirits are not, properly speaking, ‘gods’ any more than the spirits that make their abode in sacred trees and stones. ‘Elsewhere, too, the sé‘érém are nothing more than ‘demon’ forms, akin to the fauns and satyrs of classic mythology. In Is 137! they perform their dances in the destroyed palaces of Babylon, in 34% they hold their gatherings amongst the ruins of Edom, Like the sé‘trim, Lilith (i.e.
‘the nightly one’), who, according to Is 344, dwells in the ruined palaces of Edom, belongs in all probability to the category of monstrosities to which the popular belief gave birth. The same is the case with the Altkadh of Pr 30%, the mention of whose two daughters is sufficient to show that it is not the common leech that is meant, but that the name, like the Arabic ‘Alék or ‘Aulak, stands for a blood- sucking ‘demon.
’ In another connexion we shall come upon still further remnants of a belief in and fear of ‘demons.’* ‘Azdzél, again, to whom on the Great Day of Atonement the goat laden with the sins of the people was sent forth (Lv 16 10. 21#-), is evidently an unclean ‘demon’ who inhabits the desert. At the same time it is very questionable whether this figure can be regarded as a survival from the pre-Mosaic belief in ‘demons,’ and was not rather first borrowed from a foreign source during the Exile.
—Of the Cherubim and Seraphim we shall not speak till later on, be- cause these, although certainly a product of non- Israelite soil, attained to something of an inde- pendent significance in Jahwism. The Satan, on the contrary, viewed as an individual, is not met with till the post-exilic period. ii. FoRMS OF WORSHIP, AND OTHER RITES