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Title: The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study
Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"
Author: Thomas Henry Huxley
Release Date: December 3, 2008 [EBook #2634]
Last Updated: January 22, 2013
Language: English
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY: ***
Produced by D.R. Thompson, and David Widger
THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY
ESSAY #8 FROM "SCIENCE AND HEBREW TRADITION"
By Thomas Henry Huxley
FOOTNOTES:
I conceive that the origin, the growth, the decline, and the fall of those
speculations respecting the existence, the powers, and the dispositions of
beings analogous to men, but more or less devoid of corporeal qualities,
which may be broadly included under the head of theology, are phenomena
the study of which legitimately falls within the province of the
anthropologist. And it is purely as a question of anthropology (a
department of biology to which, at various times, I have given a good deal
of attention) that I propose to treat of the evolution of theology in the
following pages.
With theology as a code of dogmas which are to be believed, or at any rate
repeated, under penalty of present or future punishment, or as a
storehouse of anaesthetics for those who find the pains of life too hard
to bear, I have nothing to do; and, so far as it may be possible, I shall
avoid the expression of any opinion as to the objective truth or falsehood
of the systems of theological speculation of which I may find occasion to
speak. From my present point of view, theology is regarded as a natural
product of the operations of the human mind, under the conditions of its
existence, just as any other branch of science, or the arts of
architecture, or music, or painting are such products. Like them, theology
has a history. Like them also, it is to be met with in certain simple and
rudimentary forms; and these can be connected by a multitude of
gradations, which exist or have existed, among people of various ages and
races, with the most highly developed theologies of past and present
times. It is not my object to interfere, even in the slightest degree,
with beliefs which anybody holds sacred; or to alter the conviction of any
one who is of opinion that, in dealing with theology, we ought to be
guided by considerations different from those which would be thought
appropriate if the problem lay in the province of chemistry or of
mineralogy. And if people of these ways of thinking choose to read beyond
the present paragraph, the responsibility for meeting with anything they
may dislike rests with them and not with me.
We are all likely to be more familiar with the theological history of the
Israelites than with that of any other nation. We may therefore fitly make
it the first object of our studies; and it will be convenient to commence
with that period which lies between the invasion of Canaan and the early
days of the monarchy, and answers to the eleventh and twelfth centuries
B.C. or thereabouts. The evidence on which any conclusion as to the nature
of Israelitic theology in those days must be based is wholly contained in
the Hebrew Scriptures—an agglomeration of documents which certainly
belong to very different ages, but of the exact dates and authorship of
any one of which (except perhaps a few of the prophetical writings) there
is no evidence, either internal or external, so far as I can discover, of
such a nature as to justify more than a confession of ignorance, or, at
most, an approximate conclusion. In this venerable record of ancient life,
miscalled a book, when it is really a library comparable to a selection of
works from English literature between the times of Beda and those of
Milton, we have the stratified deposits (often confused and even with
their natural order inverted) left by the stream of the intellectual and
moral life of Israel during many centuries. And, embedded in these strata,
there are numerous remains of forms of thought which once lived, and
which, though often unfortunately mere fragments, are of priceless value
to the anthropologist. Our task is to rescue these from their relatively
unimportant surroundings, and by careful comparison with existing forms of
theology to make the dead world which they record live again. In other
words, our problem is palaeontological, and the method pursued must be the
same as that employed in dealing with other fossil remains.
Among the richest of the fossiliferous strata to which I have alluded are
the books of Judges and Samuel. 1It has often been observed that
these writings stand out, in marked relief from those which precede and
follow them, in virtue of a certain archaic freshness and of a greater
freedom from traces of late interpolation and editorial trimming.
Jephthah, Gideon and Samson are men of old heroic stamp, who would look as
much in place in a Norse Saga as where they are; and if the varnish-brush
of later respectability has passed over these memoirs of the mighty men of
a wild age, here and there, it has not succeeded in effacing, or even in
seriously obscuring, the essential characteristics of the theology
traditionally ascribed to their epoch.
There is nothing that I have met with in the results of Biblical criticism
inconsistent with the conviction that these books give us a fairly
trustworthy account of Israelitic life and thought in the times which they
cover; and, as such, apart from the great literary merit of many of their
episodes, they possess the interest of being, perhaps, the oldest genuine
history, as apart from mere chronicles on the one hand and mere legends on
the other, at present accessible to us.
But it is often said with exultation by writers of one party, and often
admitted, more or less unwillingly, by their opponents, that these books
are untrustworthy, by reason of being full of obviously unhistoric tales.
And, as a notable example, the narrative of Saul's visit to the so-called
"witch of Endor" is often cited. As I have already intimated, I have
nothing to do with theological partisanship, either heterodox or orthodox,
nor, for my present purpose, does it matter very much whether the story is
historically true, or whether it merely shows what the writer believed;
but, looking at the matter solely from the point of view of an
anthropologist, I beg leave to express the opinion that the account of
Saul's necromantic expedition is quite consistent with probability. That
is to say, I see no reason whatever to doubt, firstly, that Saul made such
a visit; and, secondly, that he and all who were present, including the
wise woman of Endor herself, would have given, with entire sincerity, very
much the same account of the business as that which we now read in the
twenty-eighth chapter of the first book of Samuel; and I am further of
opinion that this story is one of the most important of those fossils, to
which I have referred, in the material which it offers for the
reconstruction of the theology of the time. Let us therefore study it
attentively—not merely as a narrative which, in the dramatic force
of its gruesome simplicity, is not surpassed, if it is equalled, by the
witch scenes in Macbeth—but as a piece of evidence bearing on an
important anthropological problem.
We are told (1 Sam. xxviii.) that Saul, encamped at Gilboa, became alarmed
by the strength of the Philistine army gathered at Shunem. He therefore
"inquired of Jahveh," but﹃Jahveh answered him not, neither by dreams, nor
by Urim, nor by prophets.﹄2 Thus deserted by Jahveh, Saul, in
his extremity, bethought him of﹃those that had familiar spirits, and the
wizards,﹄whom he is said, at some previous time, to have "put out of the
land"; but who seem, nevertheless, to have been very imperfectly banished,
since Saul's servants, in answer to his command to seek him a woman﹃that
hath a familiar spirit,﹄reply without a sign of hesitation or of fear,
"Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor"; just as,
in some parts of England, a countryman might tell any one who did not look
like a magistrate or a policeman, where a "wise woman" was to be met with.
Saul goes to this woman, who, after being assured of immunity, asks,﹃Whom
shall I bring up to thee?﹄whereupon Saul says, "Bring me up Samuel." The
woman immediately sees an apparition. But to Saul nothing is visible, for
he asks, "What seest thou?" And the woman replies,﹃I see Elohim coming up
out of the earth.﹄Still the spectre remains invisible to Saul, for he
asks, "What form is he of?" And she replies,﹃An old man cometh up, and he
is covered with a robe.﹄So far, therefore, the wise woman unquestionably
plays the part of a "medium," and Saul is dependent upon her version of
what happens.
The account continues:—
And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he bowed with
his face to the ground and did obeisance. And Samuel said to
Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up? And Saul
answered, I am sore distressed: for the Philistines make war
against me, and Elohim is departed from me and answereth me no
more, neither by prophets nor by dreams; therefore I have called
thee that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do.
And Samuel said, Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing that
Jahveh is departed from thee and is become thine adversary?
And Jahveh hath wrought for himself, as he spake by me, and
Jahveh hath rent the kingdom out of thine hand and given it to
thy neighbour, even to David. Because thou obeyedst not the
voice of Jahveh and didst not execute his fierce wrath upon
Amalek, therefore hath Jahveh done this thing unto thee this
day. Moreover, Jahveh will deliver Israel also with thee into
the hands of the Philistines; and to-morrow shalt thou and thy
sons be with me: Jahveh shall deliver the host of Israel also
into the hand of the Philistines. Then Saul fell straightway his
full length upon the earth and was sore afraid because of the
words of Samuel... (v. 14-20).
The statement that Saul "perceived" that it was Samuel is not to be taken
to imply that, even now, Saul actually saw the shade of the prophet, but
only that the woman's allusion to the prophetic mantle and to the aged
appearance of the spectre convinced him that it was Samuel. Reuss 3
in fact translates the passage "Alors Saul reconnut que c'etait Samuel."
Nor does the dialogue between Saul and Samuel necessarily, or probably,
signify that Samuel spoke otherwise than by the voice of the wise woman.
The Septuagint does not hesitate to call her [Greek], that is to say, a
ventriloquist, implying that it was she who spoke—and this view of
the matter is in harmony with the fact that the exact sense of the Hebrew
words which are translated as "a woman that hath a familiar spirit" is﹃a
woman mistress of Ob.﹄Ob means primitively a leather
bottle, such as a wine skin, and is applied alike to the necromancer and
to the spirit evoked. Its use, in these senses, appears to have been
suggested by the likeness of the hollow sound emitted by a half-empty skin
when struck, to the sepulchral tones in which the oracles of the evoked
spirits were uttered by the medium. It is most probable that, in
accordance with the general theory of spiritual influences which obtained
among the old Israelites, the spirit of Samuel was conceived to pass into
the body of the wise woman, and to use her vocal organs to speak in his
own name—for I cannot discover that they drew any clear distinction
between possession and inspiration. 4
If the story of Saul's consultation of the occult powers is to be regarded
as an authentic narrative, or, at any rate, as a statement which is
perfectly veracious so far as the intention of the narrator goes—and,
as I have said, I see no reason for refusing it this character—it
will be found, on further consideration, to throw a flood of light, both
directly and indirectly, on the theology of Saul's countrymen—that
is to say, upon their beliefs respecting the nature and ways of spiritual
beings.
Even without the confirmation of other abundant evidences to the same
effect, it leaves no doubt as to the existence, among them, of the
fundamental doctrine that man consists of a body and of a spirit, which
last, after the death of the body, continues to exist as a ghost. At the
time of Saul's visit to Endor, Samuel was dead and buried; but that his
spirit would be believed to continue to exist in Sheol may be concluded
from the well-known passage in the song attributed to Hannah, his mother:—
Jahveh killeth and maketh alive;
He bringeth down to Sheol and bringeth up.
(1 Sam. ii. 6.)
And it is obvious that this Sheol was thought to be a place underground in
which Samuel's spirit had been disturbed by the necromancer's summons, and
in which, after his return thither, he would be joined by the spirits of
Saul and his sons when they had met with their bodily death on the hill of
Gilboa. It is further to be observed that the spirit, or ghost, of the
dead man presents itself as the image of the man himself—it is the
man, not merely in his ordinary corporeal presentment (even down to the
prophet's mantle) but in his moral and intellectual characteristics.
Samuel, who had begun as Saul's friend and ended as his bitter enemy,
gives it to be understood that he is annoyed at Saul's presumption in
disturbing him; and that, in Sheol, he is as much the devoted servant of
Jahveh and as much empowered to speak in Jahveh's name as he was during
his sojourn in the upper air.
It appears now to be universally admitted that, before the exile, the
Israelites had no belief in rewards and punishments after death, nor in
anything similar to the Christian heaven and hell; but our story proves
that it would be an error to suppose that they did not believe in the
continuance of individual existence after death by a ghostly simulacrum of
life. Nay, I think it would be very hard to produce conclusive evidence
that they disbelieved in immortality; for I am not aware that there is
anything to show that they thought the existence of the souls of the dead
in Sheol ever came to an end. But they do not seem to have conceived that
the condition of the souls in Sheol was in any way affected by their
conduct in life. If there was immortality, there was no state of
retribution in their theology. Samuel expects Saul and his sons to come to
him in Sheol.
The next circumstance to be remarked is that the name of Elohim is
applied to the spirit which the woman sees "coming up out of the earth,"
that is to say, from Sheol. The Authorised Version translates this in its
literal sense "gods." The Revised Version gives "god" with "gods" in the
margin. Reuss renders the word by "spectre," remarking in a note that it
is not quite exact; but that the word Elohim expresses﹃something divine,
that is to say, superhuman, commanding respect and terror﹄("Histoire des
Israelites," p. 321). Tuch, in his commentary on Genesis, and Thenius, in
his commentary on Samuel, express substantially the same opinion. Dr.
Alexander (in Kitto's "Cyclopaedia" s. v. "God") has the following
instructive remarks:—
[Elohimis] sometimes used vaguely to describe unseen
powers or superhuman beings that are not properly thought of as
divine. Thus the witch of Endor saw『Elohim ascending out of the
earth』(1 Sam. xxviii. 13), meaning thereby some beings of an
unearthly, superhuman character. So also in Zechariah xii. 8, it
is said『the house of David shall be as Elohim, as the angel of
the Lord,』where, as the transition from Elohim to the angel of
the Lord is a minori ad majus, we must regard the former as a
vague designation of supernatural powers.
Dr. Alexander speaks here of "beings"; but there is no reason to suppose
that the wise woman of Endor referred to anything but a solitary spectre;
and it is quite clear that Saul understood her in this sense, for he asks
"What form is HE of?"
This fact, that the name of Elohim is applied to a ghost, or disembodied
soul, conceived as the image of the body in which it once dwelt, is of no
little importance. For it is well known that the same term was employed to
denote the gods of the heathen, who were thought to have definite
quasi-corporeal forms and to be as much real entities as any other Elohim.
5
The difference which was supposed to exist between the different Elohim
was one of degree, not one of kind. Elohim was, in logical terminology,
the genus of which ghosts, Chemosh, Dagon, Baal, and Jahveh were species.
The Israelite believed Jahveh to be immeasurably superior to all other
kinds of Elohim. The inscription on the Moabite stone shows that King Mesa
held Chemosh to be, as unquestionably, the superior of Jahveh. But if
Jahveh was thus supposed to differ only in degree from the undoubtedly
zoomorphic or anthropomorphic "gods of the nations," why is it to be
assumed that he also was not thought of as having a human shape? It is
possible for those who forget that the time of the great prophetic writers
is at least as remote from that of Saul as our day is from that of Queen
Elizabeth, to insist upon interpreting the gross notions current in the
earlier age and among the mass of the people by the refined conceptions
promulgated by a few select spirits centuries later. But if we take the
language constantly used concerning the Deity in the books of Genesis,
Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, or Kings, in its natural sense (and I am
aware of no valid reason which can be given for taking it in any other
sense), there cannot, to my mind, be a doubt that Jahveh was conceived by
those from whom the substance of these books is mainly derived, to possess
the appearance and the intellectual and moral attributes of a man; and,
indeed, of a man of just that type with which the Israelites were familiar
in their stronger and intellectually abler rulers and leaders. In a
well-known passage in Genesis (i. 27) Elohim is said to have﹃created man
in his own image, in the image of Elohim created he him.﹄It is "man" who
is here said to be the image of Elohim—not man's soul alone, still
less his "reason," but the whole man. It is obvious that for those who
call a manlike ghost Elohim, there could be no difficulty in conceiving
any other Elohim under the same aspect. And if there could be any doubt on
this subject, surely it cannot stand in the face of what we find in the
fifth chapter, where, immediately after a repetition of the statement that
"Elohim created man, in the likeness of Elohim made he him," it is said
that Adam begat Seth "in his own likeness, after his image." Does this
mean that Seth resembled Adam only in a spiritual and figurative sense?
And if that interpretation of the third verse of the fifth chapter of
Genesis is absurd, why does it become reasonable in the first verse of the
same chapter?
But let us go further. Is not the Jahveh who "walks in the garden in the
cool of the day"; from whom one may hope to "hide oneself among the
trees"; of whom it is expressly said that﹃Moses and Aaron, Nadab and
Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel,﹄saw the Elohim of Israel
(Exod. xxiv. 9-11); and that, although the seeing Jahveh was understood to
be a high crime and misdemeanour, worthy of death, under ordinary
circumstances, yet, for this once, he "laid not his hand on the nobles of
Israel"; "that they beheld Elohim and did eat and drink"; and that
afterwards Moses saw his back (Exod. xxxiii. 23)—is not this Deity
conceived as manlike in form? Again, is not the Jahveh who eats with
Abraham under the oaks at Mamre, who is pleased with the "sweet savour" of
Noah's sacrifice, to whom sacrifices are said to be "food" 6—is
not this Deity depicted as possessed of human appetites? If this were not
the current Israelitish idea of Jahveh even in the eighth century B.C.,
where is the point of Isaiah's scathing admonitions to his countrymen:﹃To
what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith Jahveh: I
am full of the burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; and I
delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats﹄(Isa.
i. 11). Or of Micah's inquiry,﹃Will Jahveh be pleased with thousands of
rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?﹄(vi. 7.) And in the
innumerable passages in which Jahveh is said to be jealous of other gods,
to be angry, to be appeased, and to repent; in which he is represented as
casting off Saul because the king does not quite literally execute a
command of the most ruthless severity; or as smiting Uzzah to death
because the unfortunate man thoughtlessly, but naturally enough, put out
his hand to stay the ark from falling—can any one deny that the old
Israelites conceived Jahveh not only in the image of a man, but in that of
a changeable, irritable, and, occasionally, violent man? There appears to
me, then, to be no reason to doubt that the notion of likeness to man,
which was indubitably held of the ghost Elohim, was carried out
consistently throughout the whole series of Elohim, and that Jahveh-Elohim
was thought of as a being of the same substantially human nature as the
rest, only immeasurably more powerful for good and for evil.
The absence of any real distinction between the Elohim of different ranks
is further clearly illustrated by the corresponding absence of any sharp
delimitation between the various kinds of people who serve as the media of
communication between them and men. The agents through whom the lower
Elohim are consulted are called necromancers, wizards, and diviners, and
are looked down upon by the prophets and priests of the higher Elohim; but
the "seer" 7
connects the two, and they are all alike in their essential characters of
media. The wise woman of Endor was believed by others, and, I have little
doubt, believed herself, to be able to "bring up" whom she would from
Sheol, and to be inspired, whether in virtue of actual possession by the
evoked Elohim, or otherwise, with a knowledge of hidden things, I am
unable to see that Saul's servant took any really different view of
Samuel's powers, though he may have believed that he obtained them by the
grace of the higher Elohim. For when Saul fails to find his father's
asses, his servant says to him—
Behold, there is in this city a man of Elohim, and he is a man
that is held in honour; all that he saith cometh surely to pass;
now let us go thither; peradventure, he can tell us concerning
our journey whereon we go. Then said Saul to his servant, But
behold if we go, what shall we bring the man? for the bread is
spent in our vessels and there is not a present to bring to the
man of Elohim. What have we? And the servant answered Saul again
and said, Behold I have in my hand the fourth part of a shekel
of silver: that will I give to the man of Elohim to tell us our
way. (Beforetime in Israel when a man went to inquire of Elohim,
then he said, Come and let us go to the Seer: for he that is now
called a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer 8)
(1 Sam. ix. 6-10).
In fact, when, shortly afterwards, Saul accidentally meets Samuel, he
says, "Tell me, I pray thee, where the Seer's house is." Samuel answers,
"I am the Seer." Immediately afterwards Samuel informs Saul that the asses
are found, though how he obtained his knowledge of the fact is not stated.
It will be observed that Samuel is not spoken of here as, in any special
sense, a seer or prophet of Jahveh, but as a "man of Elohim"—that is
to say, a seer having access to the "spiritual powers," just as the wise
woman of Endor might have been said to be a "woman of Elohim"—and
the narrator's or editor's explanatory note seems to indicate that
"Prophet" is merely a name, introduced later than the time of Samuel, for
a superior kind of "Seer," or "man of Elohim." 9
Another very instructive passage shows that Samuel was not only considered
to be diviner, seer, and prophet in one, but that he was also, to all
intents and purposes, priest of Jahveh—though, according to his
biographer, he was not a member of the tribe of Levi. At the outset of
their acquaintance, Samuel says to Saul,﹃Go up before me into the high
place,﹄where, as the young maidens of the city had just before told Saul,
the Seer was going,﹃for the people will not eat till he come, because he
doth bless the sacrifice﹄(1 Sam. x. 12). The use of the word "bless" here—as
if Samuel were not going to sacrifice, but only to offer a blessing or
thanksgiving—is curious. But that Samuel really acted as priest
seems plain from what follows. For he not only asks Saul to share in the
customary sacrificial feast, but he disposes in Saul's favour of that
portion of the victim which the Levitical legislation, doubtless embodying
old customs, recognises as the priest's special property. 10
Although particular persons adopted the profession of media between men
and Elohim, there was no limitation of the power, in the view of ancient
Israel, to any special class of the population. Saul inquires of Jahveh
and builds him altars on his own account; and in the very remarkable story
told in the fourteenth chapter of the first book of Samuel (v. 37-46),
Saul appears to conduct the whole process of divination, although he has a
priest at his elbow. David seems to do the same.
Moreover, Elohim constantly appear in dreams—which in old Israel did
not mean that, as we should say, the subject of the appearance "dreamed he
saw the spirit"; but that he veritably saw the Elohim which, as a soul,
visited his soul while his body was asleep. And, in the course of the
history of Israel Jahveh himself thus appears to all sorts of persons,
non-Israelites as well as Israelites. Again, the Elohim possess, or
inspire, people against their will, as in the case of Saul and Saul's
messengers, and then these people prophesy—that is to say, "rave"—and
exhibit the ungoverned gestures attributed by a later age to possession by
malignant spirits. Apart from other evidence to be adduced by and by, the
history of ancient demonology and of modern revivalism does not permit me
to doubt that the accounts of these phenomena given in the history of Saul
may be perfectly historical.
In the ritual practices, of which evidence is to be found in the books of
Judges and Samuel, the chief part is played by sacrifices, usually burnt
offerings. Whenever the aid of the Elohim of Israel is sought, or thanks
are considered due to him, an altar is built, and oxen, sheep, and goats
are slaughtered and offered up. Sometimes the entire victim is burnt as a
holocaust; more frequently only certain parts, notably the fat about the
kidneys, are burnt on the altar. The rest is properly cooked; and, after
the reservation of a part for the priest, is made the foundation of a
joyous banquet, in which the sacrificer, his family, and such guests as he
thinks fit to invite, participate. 11Elohim was
supposed to share in the feast, and it has been already shown that that
which was set apart on the altar, or consumed by fire, was spoken of as
the food of Elohim, who was thought to be influenced by the costliness, or
by the pleasant smell, of the sacrifice in favour of the sacrificer.
All this bears out the view that, in the mind of the old Israelite, there
was no difference, save one of degree, between one Elohim and another. It
is true that there is but little direct evidence to show that the old
Israelites shared the widespread belief of their own, and indeed of all
times, that the spirits of the dead not only continue to exist, but are
capable of a ghostly kind of feeding and are grateful for such aliment as
can be assimilated by their attenuated substance, and even for clothes,
ornaments, and weapons. 12That they were familiar with
this doctrine in the time of the captivity is suggested by the well-known
reference of Ezekiel (xxxii. 27) to the﹃mighty that are fallen of the
uncircumcised, which are gone down to [Sheol] hell with their weapons of
war, and have laid their swords under their heads.﹄Perhaps there is a
still earlier allusion in the "giving of food for the dead" spoken of in
Deuteronomy (xxvi. 14). 13
It must be remembered that the literature of the old Israelites, as it
lies before us, has been subjected to the revisal of strictly monotheistic
editors, violently opposed to all kinds of idolatry, who are not likely to
have selected from the materials at their disposal any obvious evidence,
either of the practice under discussion, or of that ancestor-worship which
is so closely related to it, for preservation in the permanent records of
their people.
The mysterious objects known as Teraphim, which are occasionally
mentioned in Judges, Samuel, and elsewhere, however, can hardly be
interpreted otherwise than as indications of the existence both of
ancestor-worship and of image-worship in old Israel. The teraphim were
certainly images of family gods, and, as such, in all probability
represented deceased ancestors. Laban indignantly demands of his
son-in-law, "Wherefore hast thou stolen my Elohim?" which Rachel, who must
be assumed to have worshipped Jacob's God, Jahveh, had carried off,
obviously because she, like her father, believed in their divinity. It is
not suggested that Jacob was in any way scandalised by the idolatrous
practices of his favourite wife, whatever he may have thought of her
honesty when the truth came to light; for the teraphim seem to have
remained in his camp, at least until he "hid" his strange gods﹃under the
oak that was by Shechem﹄(Gen. xxxv. 4). And indeed it is open to question
if he got rid of them then, for the subsequent history of Israel renders
it more than doubtful whether the teraphim were regarded as "strange gods"
even as late as the eighth century B.C.
The writer of the books of Samuel takes it quite as a matter of course
that Michal, daughter of one royal Jahveh worshipper and wife of the
servant of Jahveh par excellence, the pious David, should have her
teraphim handy, in her and David's chamber, when she dresses them up in
their bed into a simulation of her husband, for the purpose of deceiving
her father's messengers. Even one of the early prophets, Hosea, when he
threatens that the children of Israel shall abide many days without﹃ephod
or teraphim﹄(iii. 4), appears to regard both as equally proper
appurtenances of the suspended worship of Jahveh, and equally certain to
be restored when that is resumed. When we further take into consideration
that only in the reign of Hezekiah was the brazen serpent, preserved in
the temple and believed to be the work of Moses, destroyed, and the
practice of offering incense to it, that is, worshipping it, abolished—that
Jeroboam could set up "calves of gold" for Israel to worship, with
apparently none but a political object, and certainly with no notion of
creating a schism among the worshippers of Jahveh, or of repelling the men
of Judah from his standard—it seems obvious, either that the
Israelites of the tenth and eleventh centuries B.C. knew not the second
commandment, or that they construed it merely as part of the prohibition
to worship any supreme god other than Jahveh, which precedes it.
In seeking for information about the teraphim, I lighted upon the
following passage in the valuable article on that subject by Archdeacon
Farrar, in Ritto's "Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature," which is so much
to the purpose of my argument, that I venture to quote it in full:—
The main and certain results of this review are that the
teraphim were rude human images; that the use of them was an
antique Aramaic custom; that there is reason to suppose them to
have been images of deceased ancestors; that they were consulted
oracularly; that they were not confined to Jews; that their use
continued down to the latest period of Jewish history;
and lastly, that although the enlightened prophets and strictest
later kings regarded them as idolatrous, the priests were much
less averse to such images, and their cult was not considered in
any way repugnant to the pious worship of Elohim, nay, even to
the worship of him "under the awful title of Jehovah." In fact,
they involved a monotheistic idolatry very different indeed
from polytheism; and the tolerance of them by priests, as
compared with the denunciation of them by the prophets, offers a
close analogy to the views of the Roman Catholics respecting
pictures and images as compared with the views of Protestants.
It was against this use of idolatrous symbols and emblems in a
monotheistic worship that the second commandment was
directed, whereas the first is aimed against the graver sin of
direct polytheism. But the whole history of Israel shows how
utterly and how early the law must have fallen into desuetude.
The worship of the golden calf and of the calves at Dan and
Bethel, against which, so far as we know, neither Elijah nor
Elisha said a single word; the tolerance of high places,
teraphim and betylia; the offering of incense for centuries to
the brazen serpent destroyed by Hezekiah; the occasional
glimpses of the most startling irregularities sanctioned
apparently even in the temple worship itself, prove most
decisively that a pure monotheism and an independence of symbols
was the result of a slow and painful course of God's disciplinal
dealings among the noblest thinkers of a single nation, and not,
as is so constantly and erroneously urged, the instinct of the
whole Semitic race; in other words, one single branch of the
Semites was under God's providence educated into pure
monotheism only by centuries of misfortune and series of
inspired men (vol. iii. p. 986).
It appears to me that the researches of the anthropologist lead him to
conclusions identical in substance, if not in terms, with those here
enunciated as the result of a careful study of the same subject from a
totally different point of view.
There is abundant evidence in the books of Samuel and elsewhere that an
article of dress termed an ephod was supposed to have a peculiar
efficacy in enabling the wearer to exercise divination by means of
Jahveh-Elohim. Great and long continued have been the disputes as to the
exact nature of the ephod—whether it always means something to wear,
or whether it sometimes means an image. But the probabilities are that it
usually signifies a kind of waistcoat or broad zone, with shoulder-straps,
which the person who "inquired of Jahveh" put on. In 1 Samuel xxiii. 2
David appears to have inquired without an ephod, for Abiathar the priest
is said to have "come down with an ephod in his hand" only subsequently.
And then David asks for it before inquiring of Jahveh whether the men of
Keilah would betray him or not. David's action is obviously divination
pure and simple; and it is curious that he seems to have worn the ephod
himself and not to have employed Abiathar as a medium. How the answer was
given is not clear though the probability is that it was obtained by
casting lots. The Urim and Thummim seem to have been two
such lots of a peculiarly sacred character, which were carried in the
pocket of the high priest's "breastplate." This last was worn along with
the ephod.
With the exception of one passage (1 Sam. xiv. 18) the ark is ignored in
the history of Saul. But in this place the Septuagint reads "ephod" for
ark, while in 1 Chronicles xiii. 3 David says that﹃we sought not unto it
[the ark] in the days of Saul.﹄Nor does Samuel seem to have paid any
regard to the ark after its return from Philistia; though, in his
childhood, he is said to have slept in﹃the temple of Jahveh, where the
ark of Elohim was﹄(1 Sam. iii. 3), at Shiloh and there to have been the
seer of the earliest apparitions vouchsafed to him by Jahveh. The space
between the cherubim or winged images on the canopy or cover (Kapporeth)
of this holy chest was held to be the special seat of Jahveh—the
place selected for a temporary residence of the Supreme Elohim who had,
after Aaron and Phineas, Eli and his sons for priests and seers. And, when
the ark was carried to the camp at Eben-ezer, there can be no doubt that
the Israelites, no less than the Philistines, held that﹃Elohim is come
into the camp﹄(iv. 7), and that the one, as much as the other, conceived
that the Israelites had summoned to their aid a powerful ally in "these
(or this) mighty Elohim"—elsewhere called Jahve-Sabaoth, the Jahveh
of Hosts. If the "temple" at Shiloh was the pentateuchal tabernacle, as is
suggested by the name of "tent of meeting" given to it in 1 Samuel ii. 22,
it was essentially a large tent, though constituted of very expensive and
ornate materials; if, on the other hand, it was a different edifice, there
can be little doubt that this "house of Jahveh" was built on the model of
an ordinary house of the time. But there is not the slightest evidence
that, during the reign of Saul, any greater importance attached to this
seat of the cult of Jahveh than to others. Sanctuaries, and "high places"
for sacrifice, were scattered all over the country from Dan to Beersheba.
And, as Samuel is said to have gone up to one of these high places to
bless the sacrifice, it may be taken for tolerably certain that he knew
nothing of the Levitical laws which severely condemn the high places and
those who sacrifice away from the sanctuary hallowed by the presence of
the ark.
There is no evidence that, during the time of the Judges and of Samuel,
any one occupied the position of the high priest of later days. And
persons who were neither priests nor Levites sacrificed and divined or
"inquired of Jahveh," when they pleased and where they pleased, without
the least indication that they, or any one else in Israel at that time,
knew they were doing wrong. There is no allusion to any special observance
of the Sabbath; and the references to circumcision are indirect.
Such are the chief articles of the theological creed of the old
Israelites, which are made known to us by the direct evidence of the
ancient record to which we have had recourse, and they are as remarkable
for that which they contain as for that which is absent from them. They
reveal a firm conviction that, when death takes place, a something termed
a soul or spirit leaves the body and continues to exist in Sheol for a
period of indefinite duration, even though there is no proof of any belief
in absolute immortality; that such spirits can return to earth to possess
and inspire the living; that they are, in appearance and in disposition,
likenesses of the men to whom they belonged, but that, as spirits, they
have larger powers and are freer from physical limitations; that they thus
form a group among a number of kinds of spiritual existences known as
Elohim, of whom Jahveh, the national God of Israel, is one; that,
consistently with this view, Jahveh was conceived as a sort of spirit,
human in aspect and in senses, and with many human passions, but with
immensely greater intelligence and power than any other Elohim, whether
human or divine. Further, the evidence proves that this belief was the
basis of the Jahveh-worship to which Samuel and his followers were
devoted; that there is strong reason for believing, and none for doubting,
that idolatry, in the shape of the worship of the family gods or teraphim,
was practised by sincere and devout Jahveh-worshippers; that the ark, with
its protective tent or tabernacle, was regarded as a specially, but by no
means exclusively, favoured sanctuary of Jahveh; that the ephod appears to
have had a particular value for those who desired to divine by the help of
Jahveh; and that divination by lots was practised before Jahveh. On the
other hand, there is not the slightest evidence of any belief in
retribution after death, but the contrary; ritual obligations have at
least as strong sanction as moral; there are clear indications that some
of the most stringent of the Levitical laws were unknown even to Samuel;
priests often appear to be superseded by laymen, even in the performance
of sacrifices and divination; and no line of demarcation can be drawn
between necromancer, wizard, seer, prophet, and priest, each of whom is
regarded, like all the rest, as a medium of communication between the
world of Elohim and that of living men.
The theological system thus defined offers to the anthropologist no
feature which is devoid of a parallel in the known theologies of other
races of mankind, even of those who inhabit parts of the world most remote
from Palestine. And the foundation of the whole, the ghost theory, is
exactly that theological speculation which is the most widely spread of
all, and the most deeply rooted among uncivilised men. I am able to base
this statement, to some extent, on facts within my own knowledge. In
December 1848, H.M.S. Rattlesnake, the ship to which I then
belonged, was anchored off Mount Ernest, an island in Torres Straits. The
people were few and well disposed; and, when a friend of mine (whom I will
call B.) and I went ashore, we made acquaintance with an old native,
Paouda by name. In course of time we became quite intimate with the old
gentleman, partly by the rendering of mutual good offices, but chiefly
because Paouda believed he had discovered that B. was his father-in-law.
And his grounds for this singular conviction were very remarkable. We had
made a long stay at Cape York hard by; and, in accordance with a theory
which is widely spread among the Australians, that white men are the
reincarnated spirits of black men, B. was held to be the ghost, or narki,
of a certain Mount Ernest native, one Antarki, who had lately died, on the
ground of some real or fancied resemblance to the latter. Now Paouda had
taken to wife a daughter of Antarki's, named Domani, and as soon as B.
informed him that he was the ghost of Antarki, Paouda at once admitted the
relationship and acted upon it. For, as all the women on the island had
hidden away in fear of the ship, and we were anxious to see what they were
like, B. pleaded pathetically with Paouda that it would be very unkind not
to let him see his daughter and grandchildren. After a good deal of
hesitation and the exaction of pledges of deep secrecy, Paouda consented
to take B., and myself as B.'s friend, to see Domani and the three
daughters, by whom B. was received quite as one of the family, while I was
courteously welcomed on his account.
This scene made an impression upon me which is not yet effaced. It left no
question on my mind of the sincerity of the strange ghost theory of these
savages, and of the influence which their belief has on their practical
life. I had it in my mind, as well as many a like result of subsequent
anthropological studies, when, in 1869, 14I wrote as
follows:—
There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word,
but none without ghosts. And the Fetishism, Ancestor-worship,
Hero-worship, and Demonology of primitive savages are all, I
believe, different manners of expression of their belief in
ghosts, and of the anthropomorphic interpretation of out-of-the-
way events which is its concomitant. Witchcraft and sorcery are
the practical expressions of these beliefs; and they stand in
the same relation to religious worship as the simple
anthropomorphism of children or savages does to theology.
I do not quote myself with any intention of making a claim to originality
in putting forth this view; for I have since discovered that the same
conception is virtually contained in the great﹃Discours sur l'Histoire
Universelle﹄of Bossuet, now more than two centuries old: 15—
Le culte des hommes morta faisoit presque tout le fond de
l'idolatrie; presque tous les hommes sacrificient aux manes,
c'est-a-dire aux ames des morts. De si anciennes erreurs nous
font voir a la verite combien etoit ancienne la croyance de
l'immortalite de l'ame, et nous montrent qu'elle doit etre
rangee parmi les premieres traditions du genre humain.
Mais l'homme, qui gatoit tout, en avoit etrangement abuse,
puisqu'elle le portoit a sacrificer aux morts. On alloit meme
jusqu'a cet exces, de leur sacrifier des hommes vivans; ou tuoit
leurs esclaves, et meme leurs femmes, pour les aller servir dans
l'autre monde.
Among more modern writers J. G. Muller, in his excellent﹃Geschichte der
amerikanischen Urreligionen﹄(1855), clearly recognises﹃gespensterhafter
Geisterglaube﹄as the foundation of all savage and semi-civilised
theology, and I need do no more than mention the important developments of
the same view which are to be found in Mr. Tylor's "Primitive Culture,"
and in the writings of Mr. Herbert Spencer, especially his
recently-published "Ecclesiastical Institutions." 16
It is a matter of fact that, whether we direct our attention to the older
conditions of civilised societies, in Japan, in China, in Hindostan, in
Greece, or in Rome, 17we find, underlying all other
theological notions, the belief in ghosts, with its inevitable concomitant
sorcery; and a primitive cult, in the shape of a worship of ancestors,
which is essentially an attempt to please, or appease their ghosts. The
same thing is true of old Mexico and Peru, and of all the semi-civilised
or savage peoples who have developed a definite cult; and in those who,
like the natives of Australia, have not even a cult, the belief in, and
fear of, ghosts is as strong as anywhere else. The most clearly
demonstrable article of the theology of the Israelites in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries B.C. is therefore simply the article which is to be
found in all primitive theologies, namely, the belief that a man has a
soul which continues to exist after death for a longer or shorter time,
and may return, as a ghost, with a divine, or at least demonic, character,
to influence for good or evil (and usually for evil) the affairs of the
living. But the correspondence between the old Israelitic and other
archaic forms of theology extends to details. If, in order to avoid all
chance of direct communication, we direct our attention to the theology of
semi-civilised people, such as the Polynesian Islanders, separated by the
greatest possible distance, and by every conceivable physical barrier,
from the inhabitants of Palestine, we shall find not merely that all the
features of old Israelitic theology, which are revealed in the records
cited, are found among them; but that extant information as to the inner
mind of these people tends to remove many of the difficulties which those
who have not studied anthropology find in the Hebrew narrative.
One of the best sources, if not the best source, of information on these
topics is Mariner's Tonga Islands, which tells us of the condition
of Cook's "Friendly Islanders" eighty years ago, before European influence
was sensibly felt among them. Mariner, a youth of fair education and of no
inconsiderable natural ability (as the work which was drawn up from the
materials he furnished shows), was about fifteen years of age when his
ship was attacked and plundered by the Tongans: he remained four years in
the islands, familiarised himself with the language, lived the life of the
people, became intimate with many of them, and had every opportunity of
acquainting himself with their opinions, as well as with their habits and
customs. He seems to have been devoid of prejudices, theological or other,
and the impression of strict accuracy which his statements convey has been
justified by all the knowledge of Polynesian life which has been
subsequently acquired.
It is desirable, therefore, to pay close attention to that which Mariner
tells us about the theological views of these people: 18—
The human soul, after its separation from the body, is
termed a hotooa (a god or spirit), and is believed to
exist in the shape of the body; to have the same propensities as
during life, but to be corrected by a more enlightened
understanding, by which it readily distinguishes good from evil,
truth from falsehood, right from wrong; having the same
attributes as the original gods, but in a minor degree, and
having its dwelling for ever in the happy regions of Bolotoo,
holding the same rank in regard to other souls as during this
life; it has, however, the power of returning to Tonga to
inspire priests, relations, or others, or to appear in dreams to
those it wishes to admonish; and sometimes to the external eye
in the form of a ghost or apparition; but this power of
reappearance at Tonga particularly belongs to the souls of
chiefs rather than of matabooles. (vol. ii. p. 130).
The word "hotooa" is the same as that which is usually spelt "atua" by
Polynesian philologues, and it will be convenient to adopt this spelling.
Now under this head of "Atuas or supernatural intelligent beings"
the Tongans include:—
"1. The original gods. 2. The souls of nobles that have all attributes in
common with the first but inferior in degree. 3. The souls of matabooles
19
that are still inferior, and have not the power as the two first have of
coming back to Tonga to inspire the priest, though they are supposed to
have the power of appearing to their relatives. 4. The original attendants
or servants, as it were, of the gods, who, although they had their origin
and have ever since existed in Bolotoo, are still inferior to the third
class. 5. The Atua pow or mischievous gods. 6. Mooi, or the
god that supports the earth and does not belong to Bolotoo (vol. ii. pp.
103, 104)."
From this it appears that the "Atuas" of the Polynesian are exactly
equivalent to the "Elohim" of the old Israelite. 20They
comprise everything spiritual, from a ghost to a god, and from﹃the merely
tutelar gods to particular private families﹄(vol, ii. p. 104), to
Ta-li-y-Tooboo, who was the national god of Tonga. The Tongans had no
doubt that these Atuas daily and hourly influenced their destinies and
could, conversely, be influenced by them. Hence their "piety," the
incessant acts of sacrificial worship which occupied their lives, and
their belief in omens and charms. Moreover, the Atuas were believed to
visit particular persons,—their own priests in the case of the
higher gods, but apparently anybody in that of the lower,—and to
inspire them by a process which was conceived to involve the actual
residence of the god, for the time being, in the person inspired, who was
thus rendered capable of prophesying (vol. ii. p. 100). For the Tongan,
therefore, inspiration indubitably was possession.
When one of the higher gods was invoked, through his priest, by a chief
who wished to consult the oracle, or, in old Israelitic phraseology, to
"inquire of," the god, a hog was killed and cooked over night, and,
together with plantains, yams, and the materials for making the peculiar
drink kava (of which the Tongans were very fond), was carried next
day to the priest. A circle, as for an ordinary kava-drinking
entertainment, was then formed; but the priest, as the representative of
the god, took the highest place, while the chiefs sat outside the circle,
as an expression of humility calculated to please the god.
As soon as they are all seated the priest is considered as
inspired, the god being supposed to exist within him from that
moment. He remains for a considerable time in silence with his
hands clasped before him, his eyes are cast down and he rests
perfectly still. During the time the victuals are being shared
out and the kava preparing, the matabooles sometimes begin to
consult him; sometimes he answers, and at other times not;
in either case he remains with his eyes cast down. Frequently he
will not utter a word till the repast is finished and the kava
too. When he speaks he generally begins in a low and very
altered tone of voice, which gradually rises to nearly its
natural pitch, though sometimes a little above it. All that he
says is supposed to be the declaration of the god, and he
accordingly speaks in the first person, as if he were the god.
All this is done generally without any apparent inward emotion
or outward agitation; but, on some occasions, his countenance
becomes fierce, and as it were inflamed, and his whole frame
agitated with inward feeling; he is seized with an universal
trembling, the perspiration breaks out on his forehead, and his
lips turning black are convulsed; at length tears start in
floods from his eyes, his breast heaves with great emotion, and
his utterance is choked. These symptoms gradually subside.
Before this paroxysm comes on, and after it is over, he often
eats as much as four hungry men under other circumstances could
devour. The fit being now gone off, he remains for some time
calm and then takes up a club that is placed by him for the
purpose, turns it over and regards it attentively; he then looks
up earnestly, now to the right, now to the left, and now again
at the club; afterwards he looks up again and about him in like
manner, and then again fixes his eyes on the club, and so on for
several times. At length he suddenly raises the club, and, after
a moment's pause, strikes the ground or the adjacent part of the
house with considerable force, immediately the god leaves him,
and he rises up and retires to the back of the ring among the
people (vol. i. pp. 100, 101).
The phenomena thus described, in language which, to any one who is
familiar with the manifestations of abnormal mental states among
ourselves, bears the stamp of fidelity, furnish a most instructive
commentary upon the story of the wise woman of Endor. As in the latter, we
have the possession by the spirit or soul (Atua, Elohim), the strange
voice, the speaking in the first person. Unfortunately nothing (beyond the
loud cry) is mentioned as to the state of the wise woman of Endor. But
what we learn from other sources (e.g. 1 Sam. x. 20-24) respecting
the physical concomitants of inspiration among the old Israelites has its
exact equivalent in this and other accounts of Polynesian prophetism. An
excellent authority, Moerenhout, who lived among the people of the Society
Islands many years and knew them well, says that, in Tahiti, the role
of the prophet had very generally passed out of the hands of the priests
into that of private persons who professed to represent the god, often
assumed his name, and in this capacity prophesied. I will not run the risk
of weakening the force of Moerenhout's description of the prophetic state
by translating it:—
﹃Un individu, dans cet etat, avait le bras gauche enveloppe d'un morceau
d'etoffe, signe de la presence de la Divinite. Il ne parlait que d'un ton
imperieux et vehement. Ses attaques, quand il allait prophetiser, etaient
aussi effroyables qu'imposantes. Il tremblait d'abord de tous ses membres,
la figure enflee, les yeux hagards, rouges et etincelants d'une expression
sauvage. Il gesticulait, articulait des mots vides de sens, poussait des
cris horribles qui faisaient tressaillir tous les assistants, et
s'exaltait parfois au point qu'on n'osait par l'approcher. Autour de lui,
le silence de la terreur et du respect.... C'est alors qu'il repondait aux
questions, annoncait l'avenir, le destin des batailles, la volonte des
dieux; et, chose etonnante! au sein de ce delire, de cet enthousiasme
religieux, son langage etait grave, imposant, son eloquence noble et
persuasive.﹄21
Just so Saul strips off his clothes, "prophesies" before Samuel, and lies
down "naked all that day and night."
Both Mariner and Moerenhout refuse to have recourse to the hypothesis of
imposture in order to account for the inspired state of the Polynesian
prophets. On the contrary, they fully believe in their sincerity. Mariner
tells the story of a young chief, an acquaintance of his, who thought
himself possessed by the Atua of a dead woman who had fallen in love with
him, and who wished him to die that he might be near her in Bolotoo. And
he died accordingly. But the most valuable evidence on this head is
contained in what the same authority says about King Finow's son. The
previous king, Toogoo Ahoo, had been assassinated by Finow, and his soul,
become an Atua of divine rank in Bolotoo, had been pleased to visit and
inspire Finow's son—with what particular object does not appear.
When this young chief returned to Hapai, Mr. Mariner, who was
upon a footing of great friendship with him, one day asked him
how he felt himself when the spirit of Toogoo Ahoo visited him;
he replied that he could not well describe his feelings, but the
best he could say of it was, that he felt himself all over in a
glow of heat and quite restless and uncomfortable, and did not
feel his own personal identity, as it were, but seemed to have a
mind different from his own natural mind, his thoughts wandering
upon strange and unusual subjects, though perfectly sensible of
surrounding objects. He next asked him how he knew it was the
spirit of Toogoo Ahoo? His answer was, 'There's a fool! How can
I tell you how I knew it! I felt and knew it was so by a
kind of consciousness; my mind told me that it was Toogoo
Ahoo (vol. i. pp. 104, 105).
Finow's son was evidently made for a theological disputant, and fell back
at once on the inexpugnable stronghold of faith when other evidence was
lacking. "There's a fool! I know it is true, because I know it," is the
exemplar and epitome of the sceptic-crushing process in other places than
the Tonga Islands.
The island of Bolotoo, to which all the souls (of the upper classes at any
rate) repair after the death of the body, and from which they return at
will to interfere, for good or evil, with the lives of those whom they
have left behind, obviously answers to Sheol. In Tongan tradition, this
place of souls is a sort of elysium above ground and pleasant enough to
live in. But, in other parts of Polynesia, the corresponding locality,
which is called Po, has to be reached by descending into the earth, and is
represented dark and gloomy like Sheol. But it was not looked upon as a
place of rewards and punishments in any sense. Whether in Bolotoo or in
Po, the soul took the rank it had in the flesh; and, a shadow, lived among
the shadows of the friends and houses and food of its previous life.
The Tongan theologians recognised several hundred gods; but there was one,
already mentioned as their national god, whom they regarded as far greater
than any of the others,﹃as a great chief from the top of the sky down to
the bottom of the earth﹄(Mariner, vol. ii. p. 106). He was also god of
war, and the tutelar deity of the royal family, whoever happened to be the
incumbent of the royal office for the time being. He had no priest except
the king himself, and his visits, even to royalty, were few and far
between. The name of this supreme deity was Ta-li-y-Tooboo, the literal
meaning of which is said to be "Wait there, Tooboo," from which it would
appear that the peculiar characteristic of Ta-li-y-Tooboo, in the eyes of
his worshippers, was persistence of duration. And it is curious to notice,
in relation to this circumstance, that many Hebrew philologers have
thought the meaning of Jahveh to be best expressed by the word "Eternal."
It would probably be difficult to express the notion of an eternal being,
in a dialect so little fitted to convey abstract conceptions as Tongan,
better than by that of one who always "waits there."
The characteristics of the gods in Tongan theology are exactly those of
men whose shape they are supposed to possess, only they have more
intelligence and greater power. The Tongan belief that, after death, the
human Atua more readily distinguishes good from evil, runs parallel with
the old Israelitic conception of Elohim expressed in Genesis,﹃Ye shall be
as Elohim, knowing good from evil.﹄They further agreed with the old
Israelites, that﹃all rewards for virtue and punishments for vice happen
to men in this world only, and come immediately from the gods﹄(vol. ii.
p. 100). Moreover, they were of opinion that though the gods approve of
some kinds of virtue, are displeased with some kinds of vice, and, to a
certain extent, protect or forsake their worshippers according to their
moral conduct, yet neglect to pay due respect to the deities, and
forgetfulness to keep them in good humour, might be visited with even
worse consequences than moral delinquency. And those who will carefully
study the so-called "Mosaic code" contained in the books of Exodus,
Leviticus, and Numbers, will see that, though Jahveh's prohibitions of
certain forms of immorality are strict and sweeping, his wrath is quite as
strongly kindled against infractions of ritual ordinances. Accidental
homicide may go unpunished, and reparation may be made for wilful theft.
On the other hand, Nadab and Abihu, who﹃offered strange fire before
Jahveh, which he had not commanded them,﹄were swiftly devoured by
Jahveh's fire; he who sacrificed anywhere except at the allotted place was
to be "cut off from his people"; so was he who ate blood; and the details
of the upholstery of the Tabernacle, of the millinery of the priests'
vestments, and of the cabinet work of the ark, can plead direct authority
from Jahveh, no less than moral commands.
Amongst the Tongans, the sacrifices were regarded as gifts of food and
drink offered to the divine Atuas, just as the articles deposited by the
graves of the recently dead were meant as food for Atuas of lower rank. A
kava root was a constant form of offering all over Polynesia. In the
excellent work of the Rev. George Turner, entitled Nineteen Years in
Polynesia (p. 241), I find it said of the Samoans (near neighbours of
the Tongans):—
The offerings were principally cooked food. As in ancient
Greece so in Samoa, the first cup was in honour of the god.
It was either poured out on the ground or waved towards
the heavens, reminding us again of the Mosaic ceremonies.
The chiefs all drank a portion out of the same cup, according to
rank; and after that, the food brought as an offering was
divided and eaten 'there before the Lord.'
In Tonga, when they consulted a god who had a priest, the latter, as
representative of the god, had the first cup; but if the god, like
Ta-li-y-Tooboo, had no priest, then the chief place was left vacant, and
was supposed to be occupied by the god himself. When the first cup of kava
was filled, the mataboole who acted as master of the ceremonies said,
"Give it to your god," and it was offered, though only as a matter of
form. In Tonga and Samoa there were many sacred places or morais,
with houses of the ordinary construction, but which served as temples in
consequence of being dedicated to various gods; and there were altars on
which the sacrifices were offered; nevertheless there were few or no
images. Mariner mentions none in Tonga, and the Samoans seem to have been
regarded as no better than atheists by other Polynesians because they had
none. It does not appear that either of these peoples had images even of
their family or ancestral gods.
In Tahiti and the adjacent islands, Moerenhout (t. i. p. 471) makes the
very interesting observation, not only that idols were often absent, but
that, where they existed, the images of the gods served merely as
depositories for the proper representatives of the divinity. Each of these
was called a maro aurou, and was a kind of girdle artistically
adorned with red, yellow, blue, and black feathers—the red feathers
being especially important—which were consecrated and kept as sacred
objects within the idols. They were worn by great personages on solemn
occasions, and conferred upon their wearers a sacred and almost divine
character. There is no distinct evidence that the maro aurou was
supposed to have any special efficacy in divination, but one cannot fail
to see a certain parallelism between this holy girdle, which endowed its
wearer with a particular sanctity, and the ephod.
According to the Rev. R. Taylor, the New Zealanders formerly used the word
karakia (now employed for "prayer") to signify a﹃spell, charm, or
incantation,﹄and the utterance of these karakias constituted the chief
part of their cult. In the south, the officiating priest had a small
image, "about eighteen inches long, resembling a peg with a carved head,"
which reminds one of the form commonly attributed to the teraphim.
﹃The priest first bandaged a fillet of red parrot feathers under the god's
chin, which was called his pahau or beard; this bandage was made of a
certain kind of sennet, which was tied on in a peculiar way. When this was
done it was taken possession of by the Atua, whose spirit entered it. The
priest then either held it in the hand and vibrated it in the air whilst
the powerful karakia was repeated, or he tied a piece of string (formed of
the centre of a flax leaf) round the neck of the image and stuck it in the
ground. He sat at a little distance from it, leaning against a tuahu, a
short stone pillar stuck in the ground in a slanting position and, holding
the string in his hand, he gave the god a jerk to arrest his attention,
lest he should be otherwise engaged, like Baal of old, either hunting,
fishing, or sleeping, and therefore must be awaked.... The god is supposed
to make use of the priest's tongue in giving a reply. Image-worship
appears to have been confined to one part of the island. The Atua was
supposed only to enter the image for the occasion. The natives declare
they did not worship the image itself, but only the Atua it represented,
and that the image was merely used as a way of approaching him.﹄22
This is the excuse for image-worship which the more intelligent idolaters
make all the world over; but it is more interesting to observe that, in
the present case, we seem to have the equivalents of divination by
teraphim, with the aid of something like an ephod (which, however, is used
to sanctify the image and not the priest) mixed up together. Many Hebrew
archaeologists have supposed that the term "ephod" is sometimes used for
an image (particularly in the case of Gideon's ephod), and the story of
Micah, in the book of Judges, shows that images were, at any rate,
employed in close association with the ephod. If the pulling of the string
to call the attention of the god seems as absurd to us as it appears to
have done to the worthy missionary, who tells us of the practice, it
should be recollected that the high priest of Jahveh was ordered to wear a
garment fringed with golden bells.
And it shall be upon Aaron to minister; and the sound thereof
shall be heard when he goeth in unto the holy place before
Jahveh, and when he cometh out, that he die not (Exod.
xxviii. 35).
An escape from the obvious conclusion suggested by this passage has been
sought in the supposition that these bells rang for the sake of the
worshippers, as at the elevation of the host in the Roman Catholic ritual;
but then why should the priest be threatened with the well-known penalty
for inadvisedly beholding the divinity?
In truth, the intermediate step between the Maori practice and that of the
old Israelites is furnished by the Kami temples in Japan. These are
provided with bells which the worshippers who present themselves ring, in
order to call the attention of the ancestor-god to their presence. Grant
the fundamental assumption of the essentially human character of the
spirit, whether Atua, Kami, or Elohim, and all these practices are equally
rational.
The sacrifices to the gods in Tonga, and elsewhere in Polynesia, were
ordinarily social gatherings, in which the god, either in his own person
or in that of his priestly representative, was supposed to take part.
These sacrifices were offered on every occasion of importance, and even
the daily meals were prefaced by oblations and libations of food and
drink, exactly answering to those offered by the old Romans to their
manes, penates, and lares. The sacrifices had no moral significance, but
were the necessary result of the theory that the god was either a deified
ghost of an ancestor or chief, or, at any rate, a being of like nature to
these. If one wanted to get anything out of him, therefore, the first step
was to put him in good humour by gifts; and if one desired to escape his
wrath, which might be excited by the most trifling neglect or
unintentional disrespect, the great thing was to pacify him by costly
presents. King Finow appears to have been somewhat of a freethinker (to
the great horror of his subjects), and it was only his untimely death
which prevented him from dealing with the priest of a god, who had not
returned a favourable answer to his supplications, as Saul dealt with the
priests of the sanctuary of Jahveh at Nob. Nevertheless, Finow showed his
practical belief in the gods during the sickness of a daughter, to whom he
was fondly attached, in a fashion which has a close parallel in the
history of Israel.
If the gods have any resentment against us, let the whole
weight of vengeance fall on my head. I fear not their vengeance
—but spare my child; and I earnestly entreat you, Toobo Totai
[the god whom he had evoked], to exert all your influence with
the other gods that I alone may suffer all the punishment they
desire to inflict (vol. i. p. 354).
So when the king of Israel has sinned by "numbering the people," and they
are punished for his fault by a pestilence which slays seventy thousand
innocent men, David cries to Jahveh:—
Lo, I have sinned, and I have done perversely; but these sheep,
what have they done? let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me,
and against my father's house. (2 Sam. xxiv. 17).
Human sacrifices were extremely common in Polynesia; and, in Tonga, the
"devotion" of a child by strangling was a favourite method of averting the
wrath of the gods. The well-known instances of Jephthah's sacrifice of his
daughter and of David's giving up the seven sons of Saul to be sacrificed
by the Gibeonites "before Jahveh," appear to me to leave no doubt that the
old Israelites, even when devout worshippers of Jahveh, considered human
sacrifices, under certain circumstances, to be not only permissible but
laudable. Samuel's hewing to pieces of the miserable captive, sole
survivor of his nation, Agag, "before Jahveh," can hardly be viewed in any
other light. The life of Moses is redeemed from Jahveh, who﹃sought to
slay him,﹄by Zipporah's symbolical sacrifice of her child, by the bloody
operation of circumcision. Jahveh expressly affirms that the first-born
males of men and beasts are devoted to him; in accordance with that claim,
the first-born males of the beasts are duly sacrificed; and it is only by
special permission that the claim to the first-born of men is waived, and
it is enacted that they may be redeemed (Exod. xiii. 12-15). Is it
possible to avoid the conclusion that immolation of their first-born sons
would have been incumbent on the worshippers of Jahveh, had they not been
thus specially excused? Can any other conclusion be drawn from the history
of Abraham and Isaac? Does Abraham exhibit any indication of surprise when
he receives the astounding order to sacrifice his son? Is there the
slightest evidence that there was anything in his intimate and personal
acquaintance with the character of the Deity, who had eaten the meat and
drunk the milk which Abraham set before him under the oaks of Mamre, to
lead him to hesitate—even to wait twelve or fourteen hours for a
repetition of the command? Not a whit. We are told that﹃Abraham rose
early in the morning﹄and led his only child to the slaughter, as if it
were the most ordinary business imaginable. Whether the story has any
historical foundation or not, it is valuable as showing that the writer of
it conceived Jahveh as a deity whose requirement of such a sacrifice need
excite neither astonishment nor suspicion of mistake on the part of his
devotee. Hence, when the incessant human sacrifices in Israel, during the
age of the kings, are put down to the influence of foreign idolatries, we
may fairly inquire whether editorial Bowdlerising has not prevailed over
historical truth.
An attempt to compare the ethical standards of two nations, one of which
has a written code, while the other has not, is beset with difficulties.
With all that is strange and, in many cases, repulsive to us in the social
arrangements and opinions respecting moral obligation among the Tongans,
as they are placed before us, with perfect candour, in Mariner's account,
there is much that indicates a strong ethical sense. They showed great
kindliness to one another, and faithfulness in standing by their comrades
in war. No people could have better observed either the third or the fifth
commandment; for they had a particular horror of blasphemy, and their
respectful tenderness towards their parents and, indeed, towards old
people in general, was remarkable.
It cannot be said that the eighth commandment was generally observed,
especially where Europeans were concerned; nevertheless a well-bred Tongan
looked upon theft as a meanness to which he would not condescend. As to
the seventh commandment, any breach of it was considered scandalous in
women and as something to be avoided in self-respecting men; but, among
unmarried and widowed people, chastity was held very cheap. Nevertheless
the women were extremely well treated, and often showed themselves capable
of great devotion and entire faithfulness. In the matter of cruelty,
treachery, and bloodthirstiness, these islanders were neither better nor
worse than most peoples of antiquity. It is to the credit of the Tongans
that they particularly objected to slander; nor can covetousness be
regarded as their characteristic; for Mariner says:—
When any one is about to eat, he always shares out what he has
to those about him, without any hesitation, and a contrary
conduct would be considered exceedingly vile and selfish (vol.
ii p. 145).
In fact, they thought very badly of the English when Mariner told them
that his countrymen did not act exactly on that principle. It further
appears that they decidedly belonged to the school of intuitive moral
philosophers, and believed that virtue is its own reward; for
Many of the chiefs, on being asked by Mr. Mariner what motives
they had for conducting themselves with propriety, besides the
fear of misfortunes in this life, replied, the agreeable and
happy feeling which a man experiences within himself when he
does any good action or conducts himself nobly and generously as
a man ought to do; and this question they answered as if they
wondered such a question should be asked. (vol. ii. p. 161).
One may read from the beginning of the book of Judges to the end of the
books of Samuel without discovering that the old Israelites had a moral
standard which differs, in any essential respect (except perhaps in regard
to the chastity of unmarried women), from that of the Tongans. Gideon,
Jephthah, Samson, and David are strong-handed men, some of whom are not
outdone by any Polynesian chieftain in the matter of murder and treachery;
while Deborah's jubilation over Jael's violation of the primary duty of
hospitality, proffered and accepted under circumstances which give a
peculiarly atrocious character to the murder of the guest; and her
witch-like gloating over the picture of the disappointment of the mother
of the victim—
The mother of Sisera cried through the lattice,
Why is his chariot so long in coming? (Jud. v. 28.)
—would not have been out of place in the choral service of the most
sanguinary god in the Polynesian pantheon.
With respect to the cannibalism which the Tongans occasionally practised,
Mariner says:—
Although a few young ferocious warriors chose to imitate what
they considered a mark of courageous fierceness in a
neighbouring nation, it was held in disgust by everybody else
(vol. ii. p. 171).
That the moral standard of Tongan life was less elevated than that
indicated in the "Book of the Covenant" (Exod. xxi.-xxiii.) may be freely
admitted. But then the evidence that this Book of the Covenant, and even
the ten commandments as given in Exodus, were known to the Israelites of
the time of Samuel and Saul, is (to say the least) by no means conclusive.
The Deuteronomic version of the fourth commandment is hopelessly
discrepant from that which stands in Exodus. Would any later writer have
ventured to alter the commandments as given from Sinai, if he had had
before him that which professed to be an accurate statement of the﹃ten
words﹄in Exodus? And if the writer of Deuteronomy had not Exodus before
him, what is the value of the claim of the version of the ten commandments
therein contained to authenticity? From one end to the other of the books
of Judges and Samuel, the only "commandments of Jahveh" which are
specially adduced refer to the prohibition of the worship of other gods,
or are orders given ad hoc, and have nothing to do with questions
of morality.
In Polynesia, the belief in witchcraft, in the appearance of spiritual
beings in dreams, in possession as the cause of diseases, and in omens,
prevailed universally. Mariner tells a story of a woman of rank who was
greatly attached to King Finow, and who, for the space of six months after
his death, scarcely ever slept elsewhere than on his grave, which she kept
carefully decorated with flowers:—
"One day she went, with the deepest affliction, to the house of Mo-oonga
Toobo, the widow of the deceased chief, to communicate what had happened
to her at the fytoca [grave] during several nights, and which
caused her the greatest anxiety. She related that she had dreamed that the
late How [King] appeared to her and, with a countenance full of
disappointment, asked why there yet remained at Vavaoo so many
evil-designing persons; for he declared that, since he had been at
Bolotoo, his spirit had been disturbed by the evil machinations of wicked
men conspiring against his son; but he declared that 'the youth' should
not be molested nor his power shaken by the spirit of rebellion; that he
therefore came to her with a warning voice to prevent such disastrous
consequences (vol. i. p. 424)."
On inquiry it turned out that the charm of tattao had been
performed on Finow's grave, with the view of injuring his son, the
reigning king, and it is to be presumed that it was this sorcerer's work
which had "disturbed" Finow's spirit. The Rev. Richard Taylor says in the
work already cited:﹃The account given of the witch of Endor agrees most
remarkably with the witches of New Zealand﹄(p. 45).
The Tongans also believed in a mode of divination (essentially similar to
the casting of lots) the twirling of a cocoanut.
The object of inquiry... is chiefly whether a sick person will
recover; for this purpose the nut being placed on the ground, a
relation of the sick person determines that, if the nut, when
again at rest, points to such a quarter, the east for example,
that the sick man will recover; he then prays aloud to the
patron god of the family that he will be pleased to direct the
nut so that it may indicate the truth; the nut being next spun,
the result is attended to with confidence, at least with a full
conviction that it will truly declare the intentions of the gods
at the time (vol. ii. p. 227).
Does not the action of Saul, on a famous occasion, involve exactly the
same theological presuppositions?
Therefore Saul said unto Jahveh, the Elohim of Israel, Shew the
right. And Jonathan and Saul were taken by lot: but the people
escaped. And Saul said, Cast lots between me and Jonathan
my son. And Jonathan was taken. And Saul said to Jonathan, Tell
me what thou hast done.... And the people rescued Jonathan so
that he died not (1 Sam. xiv. 41-45).
As the Israelites had great yearly feasts, so had the Polynesians; as the
Israelites practised circumcision, so did many Polynesian people; as the
Israelites had a complex and often arbitrary-seeming multitude of
distinctions between clean and unclean things, and clean and unclean
states of men, to which they attached great importance, so had the
Polynesians their notions of ceremonial purity and their tabu, an
equally extensive and strange system of prohibitions, violation of which
was visited by death. These doctrines of cleanness and uncleanness no
doubt may have taken their rise in the real or fancied utility of the
prescriptions, but it is probable that the origin of many is indicated in
the curious habit of the Samoans to make fetishes of living animals. It
will be recollected that these people had no "gods made with hands," but
they substituted animals for them.
At his birth
"every Samoan was supposed to be taken under the care of some tutelary god
or aitu [= Atua] as it was called. The help of perhaps half a dozen
different gods was invoked in succession on the occasion, but the one who
happened to be addressed just as the child was born was marked and
declared to be the child's god for life.
﹃These gods were supposed to appear in some visible incarnation,
and the particular thing in which his god was in the habit of appearing
was, to the Samoan, an object of veneration. It was in fact his idol, and
he was careful never to injure it or treat it with contempt. One, for
instance, saw his god in the eel, another in the shark, another in the
turtle, another in the dog, another in the owl, another in the lizard; and
so on, throughout all the fish of the sea and birds and four-footed beasts
and creeping things. In some of the shell-fish even, gods were supposed to
be present. A man would eat freely of what was regarded as the incarnation
of the god of another man, but the incarnation of his own particular god
he would consider it death to injure or eat.﹄23
We have here that which appears to be the origin, or one of the origins,
of food prohibitions, on the one hand, and of totemism on the other. When
it is remembered that the old Israelites sprang from ancestors who are
said to have resided near, or in, one of the great seats of ancient
Babylonian civilisation, the city of Ur; that they had been, it is said
for centuries, in close contact with the Egyptians; and that, in the
theology of both the Babylonians and the Egyptians, there is abundant
evidence, notwithstanding their advanced social organisation, of the
belief in spirits, with sorcery, ancestor-worship, the deification of
animals, and the converse animalisation of gods—it obviously needs
very strong evidence to justify the belief that the rude tribes of Israel
did not share the notions from which their far more civilised neighbours
had not emancipated themselves.
But it is surely needless to carry the comparison further. Out of the
abundant evidence at command, I think that sufficient has been produced to
furnish ample grounds for the belief, that the old Israelites of the time
of Samuel entertained theological conceptions which were on a level with
those current among the more civilised of the Polynesian islanders, though
their ethical code may possibly, in some respects, have been more
advanced. 24
A theological system of essentially similar character, exhibiting the same
fundamental conceptions respecting the continued existence and incessant
interference in human affairs of disembodied spirits, prevails, or
formerly prevailed, among the whole of the inhabitants of the Polynesian
and Melanesian islands, and among the people of Australia, notwithstanding
the wide differences in physical character and in grade of civilisation
which obtain among them. And the same proposition is true of the people
who inhabit the riverain shores of the Pacific Ocean whether Dyaks,
Malays, Indo-Chinese, Chinese, Japanese, the wild tribes of America, or
the highly civilised old Mexicans and Peruvians. It is no less true of the
Mongolic nomads of Northern Asia, of the Asiatic Aryans and of the Ancient
Greeks and Romans, and it holds good among the Dravidians of the Dekhan
and the negro tribes of Africa. No tribe of savages which has yet been
discovered, has been conclusively proved to have so poor a theological
equipment as to be devoid of a belief in ghosts, and in the utility of
some form of witchcraft, in influencing those ghosts. And there is no
nation, modern or ancient, which, even at this moment, has wholly given up
the belief; and in which it has not, at one time or other, played a great
part in practical life.
This sciotheism, 25as it might be called, is found,
in several degrees of complexity, in rough correspondence with the stages
of social organisation, and, like these, separated by no sudden breaks.
In its simplest condition, such as may be met with among the Australian
savages, theology is a mere belief in the existence, powers, and
disposition (usually malignant) of ghostlike entities who may be
propitiated or scared away; but no cult can properly be said to exist.
And, in this stage, theology is wholly independent of ethics. The moral
code, such as is implied by public opinion, derives no sanction from the
theological dogmas, and the influence of the spirits is supposed to be
exerted out of mere caprice or malice.
As a next stage, the fundamental fear of ghosts and the consequent desire
to propitiate them acquire an organised ritual in simple forms of
ancestor-worship, such as the Rev. Mr. Turner describes among the people
of Tanna (l.c. p. 88); and this line of development may be followed
out until it attains its acme in the State-theology of China and the
Kami-theology 26of Japan. Each of these is
essentially ancestor-worship, the ancestors being reckoned back through
family groups, of higher and higher order, sometimes with strict reference
to the principle of agnation, as in old Rome; and, as in the latter, it is
intimately bound up with the whole organisation of the State. There are no
idols; inscribed tablets in China, and strips of paper lodged in a
peculiar portable shrine in Japan, represent the souls of the deceased, or
the special seats which they occupy when sacrifices are offered by their
descendants. In Japan it is interesting to observe that a national Kami—Ten-zio-dai-zin—is
worshipped as a sort of Jahveh by the nation in general, and (as Lippert
has observed) it is singular that his special seat is a portable
litter-like shrine, termed the Mikosi, in some sort analogous to the
Israelitic ark. In China, the emperor is the representative of the
primitive ancestors, and stands, as it were, between them and the supreme
cosmic deities—Heaven and Earth—who are superadded to them,
and who answer to the Tangaloa and the Maui of the Polynesians.
Sciotheism, under the form of the deification of ancestral ghosts, in its
most pronounced form, is therefore the chief element in the theology of a
great moiety, possibly of more than half, of the human race. I think this
must be taken to be a matter of fact—though various opinions may be
held as to how this ancestor-worship came about. But on the other hand, it
is no less a matter of fact that there are very few people without
additional gods, who cannot, with certainty, be accounted for as deified
ancestors.
With all respect for the distinguished authorities on the other side, I
cannot find good reasons for accepting the theory that the cosmic deities—who
are superadded to deified ancestors even in China; who are found all over
Polynesia, in Tangaloa and Maui, and in old Peru, in the Sun—are the
product either of the "search after the infinite," or of mistakes arising
out of the confusion of a great chief's name with the thing signified by
the name. But, however this may be, I think it is again merely matter of
fact that, among a large portion of mankind, ancestor-worship is more or
less thrown into the background either by such cosmic deities, or by
tribal gods of uncertain origin, who have been raised to eminence by the
superiority in warfare, or otherwise, of their worshippers.
Among certain nations, the polytheistic theology, thus constituted, has
become modified by the selection of some one cosmic or tribal god, as the
only god to whom worship is due on the part of that nation (though it is
by no means denied that other nations have a right to worship other gods),
and thus results a worship of one God—monolatry, as
Wellhausen calls it—which is very different from genuine monotheism.
27
In ancestral sciotheism, and in this monolatry, the ethical code,
often of a very high order, comes into closer relation with the
theological creed. Morality is taken under the patronage of the god or
gods, who reward all morally good conduct and punish all morally evil
conduct in this world or the next. At the same time, however, they are
conceived to be thoroughly human, and they visit any shadow of disrespect
to themselves, shown by disobedience to their commands, or by delay, or
carelessness, in carrying them out, as severely as any breach of the moral
laws. Piety means minute attention to the due performance of all sacred
rites, and covers any number of lapses in morality, just as cruelty,
treachery, murder, and adultery did not bar David's claim to the title of
the man after God's own heart among the Israelites; crimes against men may
be expiated, but blasphemy against the gods is an unpardonable sin. Men
forgive all injuries but those which touch their self-esteem; and they
make their gods after their own likeness, in their own image make they
them.
It is in the category of monolatry that I conceive the theology of the old
Israelites must be ranged. They were polytheists, in so far as they
admitted the existence of other Elohim of divine rank beside Jahveh; they
differed from ordinary polytheists, in so far as they believed that Jahveh
was the supreme god and the one proper object of their own national
worship. But it will doubtless be objected that I have been building up a
fictitious Israelitic theology on the foundation of the recorded habits
and customs of the people, when they had lapsed from the ordinances of
their great lawgiver and prophet Moses, and that my conclusions may be
good for the perverts to Canaanitish theology, but not for the true
observers of the Sinaitic legislation. The answer to the objection is that—so
far as I can form a judgment of that which is well ascertained in the
history of Israel—there is very little ground for believing that we
know much, either about the theological and social value of the influence
of Moses, or about what happened during the wanderings in the Desert.
The account of the Exodus and of the occurrences in the Sinaitic
peninsula; in fact, all the history of Israel before the invasion of
Canaan, is full of wonderful stories, which may be true, in so far as they
are conceivable occurrences, but which are certainly not probable, and
which I, for one, decline to accept until evidence, which deserves that
name, is offered of their historical truth. Up to this time I know of
none. 28
Furthermore, I see no answer to the argument that one has no right to pick
out of an obviously unhistorical statement the assertions which happen to
be probable and to discard the rest. But it is also certain that a
primitively veracious tradition may be smothered under subsequent mythical
additions, and that one has no right to cast away the former along with
the latter. Thus, perhaps the fairest way of stating the case may be as
follows.
There can be no a priori objection to the supposition that the
Israelites were delivered from their Egyptian bondage by a leader called
Moses, and that he exerted a great influence over their subsequent
organisation in the Desert. There is no reason to doubt that, during their
residence in the land of Goshen, the Israelites knew nothing of Jahveh;
but, as their own prophets declare (see Ezek. xx.), were polytheistic
idolaters, sharing in the worst practices of their neighbours. As to their
conduct in other respects, nothing is known. But it may fairly be
suspected that their ethics were not of a higher order than those of
Jacob, their progenitor, in which case they might derive great profit from
contact with Egyptian society, which held honesty and truthfulness in the
highest esteem. Thanks to the Egyptologers, we now know, with all
requisite certainty, the moral standard of that society in the time, and
long before the time, of Moses. It can be determined from the scrolls
buried with the mummified dead and from the inscriptions on the tombs and
memorial statues of that age. For, though the lying of epitaphs is
proverbial, so far as their subject is concerned, they gave an
unmistakable insight into that which the writers and the readers of them
think praiseworthy.
In the famous tombs at Beni Hassan there is a record of the life of Prince
Nakht, who served Osertasen II., a Pharaoh of the twelfth dynasty as
governor of a province. The inscription speaks in his name:﹃I was a
benevolent and kindly governor who loved his country.... Never was a
little child distressed nor a widow ill-treated by me. I have never
repelled a workman nor hindered a shepherd. I gave alike to the widow and
to the married woman, and have not preferred the great to the small in my
gifts.﹄And we have the high authority of the late Dr. Samuel Birch for
the statement that the inscriptions of the twelfth dynasty abound in
injunctions of a high ethical character.﹃To feed the hungry, give drink
to the thirsty, clothe the naked, bury the dead, loyally serve the king,
formed the first duty of a pious man and faithful subject.﹄29
The people for whom these inscriptions embodied their ideal of
praiseworthiness assuredly had no imperfect conception of either justice
or mercy. But there is a document which gives still better evidence of the
moral standard of the Egyptians. It is the "Book of the Dead," a sort of
"Guide to Spiritland," the whole, or a part, of which was buried with the
mummy of every well-to-do Egyptian, while extracts from it are found in
innumerable inscriptions. Portions of this work are of extreme antiquity,
evidence of their existence occurring as far back as the fifth and sixth
dynasties; while the 120th chapter, which constitutes a sort of book by
itself, and is known as the﹃Book of Redemption in the Hall of the two
Truths,﹄is frequently inscribed upon coffins and other monuments of the
nineteenth dynasty (that under which, there is some reason to believe, the
Israelites were oppressed and the Exodus took place), and it occurs, more
than once, in the famous tombs of the kings of this and the preceding
dynasty at Thebes. 30This "Book of Redemption" is
chiefly occupied by the so-called "negative confession" made to the
forty-two Divine Judges, in which the soul of the dead denies that he has
committed faults of various kinds. It is, therefore, obvious that the
Egyptians conceived that their gods commanded them not to do the deeds
which are here denied. The "Book of Redemption," in fact, implies the
existence in the mind of the Egyptians, if not in a formal writing, of a
series of ordinances, couched, like the majority of the ten commandments,
in negative terms. And it is easy to prove the implied existence of a
series which nearly answers to the "ten words." Of course a polytheistic
and image-worshipping people, who observed a great many holy days, but no
Sabbaths, could have nothing analogous to the first or the second and the
fourth commandments of the Decalogue; but answering to the third, is﹃I
have not blasphemed;﹄to the fifth,﹃I have not reviled the face of the
king or my father;﹄to the sixth, "I have not murdered;" to the seventh,
"I have not committed adultery;" to the eighth, "I have not stolen,"﹃I
have not done fraud to man;﹄to the ninth,﹃I have not told falsehoods in
the tribunal of truth,﹄and, further,﹃I have not calumniated the slave to
his master.﹄I find nothing exactly similar to the tenth commandment; but
that the inward disposition of mind was held to be of no less importance
than the outward act is to be gathered from the praises of kindliness
already cited and the cry of "I am pure," which is repeated by the soul on
trial. Moreover, there is a minuteness of detail in the confession which
shows no little delicacy of moral appreciation—"I have not privily
done evil against mankind," "I have not afflicted men,"﹃I have not
withheld milk from the mouths of sucklings,﹄"I have not been idle,"﹃I
have not played the hypocrite,﹄"I have not told falsehoods,"﹃I have not
corrupted woman or man,﹄"I have not caused fear," "I have not multiplied
words in speaking."
Would that the moral sense of the nineteenth century A.D. were as far
advanced as that of the Egyptians in the nineteenth century B.C. in this
last particular! What incalculable benefit to mankind would flow from
strict observance of the commandment,﹃Thou shalt not multiply words in
speaking!﹄Nothing is more remarkable than the stress which the old
Egyptians, here and elsewhere, lay upon this and other kinds of
truthfulness, as compared with the absence of any such requirement in the
Israelitic Decalogue, in which only a specific kind of untruthfulnes is
forbidden.
If, as the story runs, Moses was adopted by a princess of the royal house,
and was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, it is surely
incredible that he should not have been familiar from his youth up, with
the high moral code implied in the "Book of Redemption." It is surely
impossible that he should have been less familiar with the complete legal
system, and with the method of administration of justice, which, even in
his time, had enabled the Egyptian people to hold together, as a complex
social organisation, for a period far longer than the duration of old
Roman society, from the building of the city to the death of the last
Caesar. Nor need we look to Moses alone for the influence of Egypt upon
Israel. It is true that the Hebrew nomads who came into contact with the
Egyptians of Osertasen, or of Ramses, stood in much the same relation to
them, in point of culture, as a Germanic tribe did to the Romans of
Tiberius, or of Marcus Antoninus; or as Captain Cook's Omai did to the
English of George the Third. But, at the same time, any difficulty of
communication which might have arisen out of this circumstance was removed
by the long pre-existing intercourse of other Semites, of every grade of
civilisation, with the Egyptians. In Mesopotamia and elsewhere, as in
Phenicia, Semitic people had attained to a social organisation as advanced
as that of the Egyptians; Semites had conquered and occupied Lower Egypt
for centuries. So extensively had Semitic influences penetrated Egypt that
the Egyptian language, during the period of the nineteenth dynasty, is
said by Brugsch to be as full of Semitisms as German is of Gallicisms;
while Semitic deities had supplanted the Egyptian gods at Heliopolis and
elsewhere. On the other hand, the Semites, as far as Phenicia, were
extensively influenced by Egypt.
It is generally admitted 31that Moses, Phinehas (and
perhaps Aaron), are names of Egyptian origin, and there is excellent
authority for the statement that the name Abir, which the
Israelites gave to their golden calf, and which is also used to signify
the strong, the heavenly, and even God, 32is simply
the Egyptian Apis. Brugsch points out that the god, Tum or Tom, who was
the special object of worship in the city of Pi-Tom, with which the
Israelites were only too familiar, was called Ankh and the "great god,"
and had no image. Ankh means "He who lives," "the living one," a name the
resemblance of which to the "I am that I am" of Exodus is unmistakable,
whatever may be the value of the fact. Every discussion of Israelitic
ritual seeks and finds the explanation of its details in the portable
sacred chests, the altars, the priestly dress, the breastplate, the
incense, and the sacrifices depicted on the monuments of Egypt. But it
must be remembered that these signs of the influence of Egypt upon Israel
are not necessarily evidence that such influence was exerted before the
Exodus. It may have come much later, through the close connection of the
Israel of David and Solomon, first with Phenicia and then with Egypt.
If we suppose Moses to have been a man of the stamp of Calvin, there is no
difficulty in conceiving that he may have constructed the substance of the
ten words, and even of the Book of the Covenant, which curiously resembles
parts of the Book of the Dead, from the foundation of Egyptian ethics and
theology which had filtered through to the Israelites in general, or had
been furnished specially to himself by his early education; just as the
great Genevese reformer built up a puritanic social organisation on so
much as remained of the ethics and theology of the Roman Church, after he
had trimmed them to his liking.
Thus, I repeat, I see no a priori objection to the assumption that
Moses may have endeavoured to give his people a theologico-political
organisation based on the ten commandments (though certainly not quite in
their present form) and the Book of the Covenant, contained in our present
book of Exodus. But whether there is such evidence as amounts to proof,
or, I had better say, to probability, that even this much of the
Pentateuch owes its origin to Moses is another matter. The mythical
character of the accessories of the Sinaitic history is patent, and it
would take a good deal more evidence than is afforded by the bare
assertion of an unknown writer to justify the belief that the people who
﹃saw the thunderings and the lightnings and the voice of the trumpet and
the mountain smoking﹄(Exod. xx. 18); to whom Jahveh orders Moses to say,
﹃Ye yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. Ye shall
not make other gods with me; gods of silver and gods of gold ye shall not
make unto you﹄(ibid. 22, 23), should, less than six weeks
afterwards, have done the exact thing they were thus awfully forbidden to
do. Nor is the credibility of the story increased by the statement that
Aaron, the brother of Moses, the witness and fellow-worker of the miracles
before Pharaoh, was their leader and the artificer of the idol. And yet,
at the same time, Aaron was apparently so ignorant of wrongdoing that he
made proclamation, "Tomorrow shall be a feast to Jahveh," and the people
proceeded to offer their burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, as if
everything in their proceedings must be satisfactory to the Deity with
whom they had just made a solemn covenant to abolish image-worship. It
seems to me that, on a survey of all the facts of the case, only a very
cautious and hypothetical judgment is justifiable. It may be that Moses
profited by the opportunities afforded him of access to what was best in
Egyptian society to become acquainted, not only with its advanced ethical
and legal code, but with the more or less pantheistic unification of the
Divine to which the speculations of the Egyptian thinkers, like those of
all polytheistic philosophers, from Polynesia to Greece, tend; if indeed
the theology of the period of the nineteenth dynasty was not, as some
Egyptologists think, a modification of an earlier, more distinctly
monotheistic doctrine of a long antecedent age. It took only half a dozen
centuries for the theology of Paul to become the theology of Gregory the
Great; and it is possible that twenty centuries lay between the theology
of the first worshippers in the sanctuary of the Sphinx and that of the
priests of Ramses Maimun.
It may be that the ten commandments and the Book of the Covenant are based
upon faithful traditions of the efforts of a great leader to raise his
followers to his own level. For myself, as a matter of pious opinion, I
like to think so; as I like to imagine that, between Moses and Samuel,
there may have been many a seer, many a herdsman such as him of Tekoah,
lonely amidst the hills of Ephraim and Judah, who cherished and kept alive
these traditions. In the present results of Biblical criticism, however, I
can discover no justification for the common assumption that, between the
time of Joshua and that of Rehoboam, the Israelites were familiar with
either the Deuteronomic or the Levitical legislation; or that the theology
of the Israelites, from the king who sat on the throne to the lowest of
his subjects, was in any important respect different from that which might
naturally be expected from their previous history and the conditions of
their existence. But there is excellent evidence to the contrary effect.
And, for my part, I see no reason to doubt that, like the rest of the
world, the Israelites had passed through a period of mere ghost-worship,
and had advanced through Ancestor-worship and Fetishism and Totemism to
the theological level at which we find them in the books of Judges and
Samuel.
All the more remarkable, therefore, is the extraordinary change which is
to be noted in the eighth century B.C. The student who is familiar with
the theology implied, or expressed, in the books of Judges, Samuel, and
the first book of Kings, finds himself in a new world of thought, in the
full tide of a great reformation, when he reads Joel, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah,
Micah, and Jeremiah.
The essence of this change is the reversal of the position which, in
primitive society, ethics holds in relation to theology. Originally, that
which men worship is a theological hypothesis, not a moral ideal. The
prophets, in substance, if not always in form preach the opposite
doctrine. They are constantly striving to free the moral ideal from the
stifling embrace of the current theology and its concomitant ritual.
Theirs was not an intellectual criticism, argued on strictly scientific
grounds; the image-worshippers and the believers in the efficacy of
sacrifices and ceremonies might logically have held their own against
anything the prophets have to say; it was an ethical criticism. From the
height of his moral intuition—that the whole duty of man is to do
justice and to love mercy and to bear himself as humbly as befits his
insignificance in face of the Infinite—the prophet simply laughs at
the idolaters of stocks and stones and the idolaters of ritual. Idols of
the first kind, in his experience, were inseparably united with the
practice of immorality, and they were to be ruthlessly destroyed. As for
sacrifices and ceremonies, whatever their intrinsic value might be, they
might be tolerated on condition of ceasing to be idols; they might even be
praiseworthy on condition of being made to subserve the worship of the
true Jahveh—the moral ideal.
If the realm of David had remained undivided, if the Assyrian and the
Chaldean and the Egyptian had left Israel to the ordinary course of
development of an Oriental kingdom, it is possible that the effects of the
reforming zeal of the prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries might
have been effaced by the growth, according to its inevitable tendencies,
of the theology which they combated. But the captivity made the fortune of
the ideas which it was the privilege of these men to launch upon an
endless career. With the abolition of the Temple-services for more than
half a century, the priest must have lost and the scribe gained influence.
The puritanism of a vigorous minority among the Babylonian Jews rooted out
polytheism from all its hiding-places in the theology which they had
inherited; they created the first consistent, remorseless, naked
monotheism, which, so far as history records, appeared in the world (for
Zoroastrism is practically ditheism, and Buddhism any-theism or
no-theism); and they inseparably united therewith an ethical code, which,
for its purity and for its efficiency as a bond of social life, was and
is, unsurpassed. So I think we must not judge Ezra and Nehemiah and their
followers too hardly, if they exemplified the usual doom of poor humanity
to escape from one error only to fall into another; if they failed to free
themselves as completely from the idolatry of ritual as they had from that
of images and dogmas; if they cherished the new fetters of the Levitical
legislation which they had fitted upon themselves and their nation, as
though such bonds had the sanctity of the obligations of morality; and if
they led succeeding generations to spend their best energies in building
that "hedge round the Torah" which was meant to preserve both ethics and
theology, but which too often had the effect of pampering the latter and
starving the former. The world being what it was, it is to be doubted
whether Israel would have preserved intact the pure ore of religion, which
the prophets had extracted for the use of mankind as well as for their
nation, had not the leaders of the nation been zealous, even to death, for
the dross of the law in which it was embedded. The struggle of the Jews,
under the Maccabean house, against the Seleucidae was as important for
mankind as that of the Greeks against the Persians. And, of all the
strange ironies of history, perhaps the strangest is that "Pharisee" is
current, as a term of reproach, among the theological descendants of that
sect of Nazarenes who, without the martyr spirit of those primitive
Puritans, would never have come into existence. They, like their
historical successors, our own Puritans, have shared the general fate of
the poor wise men who save cities.
A criticism of theology from the side of science is not thought of by the
prophets, and is at most indicated in the books of Job and Ecclesiastes,
in both of which the problem of vindicating the ways of God to man is
given up, though on different grounds, as a hopeless one. But with the
extensive introduction of Greek thought among the Jews, which took place,
not only during the domination of the Seleucidae in Palestine, but in the
great Judaic colony which flourished in Egypt under the Ptolemies,
criticism, on both ethical and scientific grounds, took a new departure.
In the hands of the Alexandrian Jews, as represented by Philo, the
fundamental axiom of later Jewish, as of Christian monotheism, that the
Deity is infinitely perfect and infinitely good, worked itself out into
its logical consequence—agnostic theism. Philo will allow of no
point of contact between God and a world in which evil exists. For him God
has no relation to space or to time, and, as infinite, suffers no
predicate beyond that of existence. It is therefore absurd to ascribe to
Him mental faculties and affections comparable in the remotest degree to
those of men; He is in no way an object of cognition; He is [Greek] and
[Greek] 33—without
quality and incomprehensible. That is to say the Alexandrian Jew of the
first century had anticipated the reasonings of Hamilton and Mansell in
the nineteenth, and, for him, God is the Unknowable in the sense in which
that term is used by Mr. Herbert Spencer. Moreover, Philo's definition of
the Supreme Being would not be inconsistent with that﹃substantia constans
infinitis attributis, quorum unumquodque aeternam et infinitam essentiam
exprimit,﹄given by another great Israelite, were it not that Spinoza's
doctrine of the immanence of the Deity in the world puts him, at any rate
formally, at the antipodes of theological speculation. But the conception
of the essential incognoscibility of the Deity is the same in each case.
However, Philo was too thorough an Israelite and too much the child of his
time to be content with this agnostic position. With the help of the
Platonic and Stoic philosophy, he constructed an apprehensible, if not
comprehensible, quasi-deity out of the Logos; while other more or less
personified divine powers, or attributes, bridged over the interval
between God and man; between the sacred existence, too pure to be called
by any name which implied a conceivable quality, and the gross and evil
world of matter. In order to get over the ethical difficulties presented
by the naive naturalism of many parts of those Scriptures, in the divine
authority of which he firmly believed, Philo borrowed from the Stoics (who
had been in like straits in respect of Greek mythology), that great
Excalibur which they had forged with infinite pains and skill—the
method of allegorical interpretation. This mighty﹃two-handed engine at
the door﹄of the theologian is warranted to make a speedy end of any and
every moral or intellectual difficulty, by showing that, taken
allegorically or, as it is otherwise said, "poetically" or,﹃in a
spiritual sense,﹄the plainest words mean whatever a pious interpreter
desires they should mean. In Biblical phrase, Zeno (who probably had a
strain of Semitic blood in him) was the "father of all such as reconcile."
No doubt Philo and his followers were eminently religious men; but they
did endless injury to the cause of religion by laying the foundations of a
new theology, while equipping the defenders of it with the subtlest of all
weapons of offence and defence, and with an inexhaustible store of
sophistical arguments of the most plausible aspect.
The question of the real bearing upon theology of the influence exerted by
the teaching of Philo's contemporary, Jesus of Nazareth, is one upon which
it is not germane to my present purpose to enter. I take it simply as an
unquestionable fact that his immediate disciples, known to their
countrymen as "Nazarenes," were regarded as, and considered themselves to
be, perfectly orthodox Jews, belonging to the puritanic or pharisaic
section of their people, and differing from the rest only in their belief
that the Messiah had already come. Christianity, it is said, first became
clearly differentiated at Antioch, and it separated itself from orthodox
Judaism by denying the obligation of the rite of circumcision and of the
food prohibitions, prescribed by the law. Henceforward theology became
relatively stationary among the Jews, 34and the
history of its rapid progress in a new course of evolution is the history
of the Christian Churches, orthodox and heterodox. The steps in this
evolution are obvious. The first is the birth of a new theological scheme
arising out of the union of elements derived from Greek philosophy with
elements derived from Israelitic theology. In the fourth Gospel, the
Logos, raised to a somewhat higher degree of personification than in the
Alexandrian theosophy, is identified with Jesus of Nazareth. In the
Epistles, especially the later of those attributed to Paul, the Israelitic
ideas of the Messiah and of sacrificial atonement coalesce with one
another and with the embodiment of the Logos in Jesus, until the
apotheosis of the Son of man is almost, or quite, effected. The history of
Christian dogma, from Justin to Athanasius, is a record of continual
progress in the same direction, until the fair body of religion, revealed
in almost naked purity by the prophets, is once more hidden under a new
accumulation of dogmas and of ritual practices of which the primitive
Nazarene knew nothing; and which he would probably have regarded as
blasphemous if he could have been made to understand them.
As, century after century, the ages roll on, polytheism comes back under
the disguise of Mariolatry and the adoration of saints; image-worship
becomes as rampant as in old Egypt; adoration of relics takes the place of
the old fetish-worship; the virtues of the ephod pale before those of holy
coats and handkerchiefs; shrines and calvaries make up for the loss of the
ark and of the high places; and even the lustral fluid of paganism is
replaced by holy water at the porches of the temples. A touching ceremony—the
common meal originally eaten in pious memory of a loved teacher—becomes
metamorphosed into a flesh-and-blood sacrifice, supposed to possess
exactly that redeeming virtue which the prophets denied to the
flesh-and-blood sacrifices of their day; while the minute observance of
ritual is raised to a degree of punctilious refinement which Levitical
legislators might envy. And with the growth of this theology, grew its
inevitable concomitant, the belief in evil spirits, in possession, in
sorcery, in charms and omens, until the Christians of the twelfth century
after our era were sunk in more debased and brutal superstitions than are
recorded of the Israelites in the twelfth century before it.
The greatest men of the Middle Ages are unable to escape the infection.
Dante's "Inferno" would be revolting if it were not so often sublime, so
often exquisitely tender. The hideous pictures which cover a vast space on
the south wall of the Campo Santo of Pisa convey information, as terrible
as it is indisputable, of the theological conceptions of Dante's
countrymen in the fourteenth century, whose eyes were addressed by the
painters of those disgusting scenes, and whose approbation they knew how
to win. A candid Mexican of the time of Cortez, could he have seen this
Christian burial-place, would have taken it for an appropriately adorned
Teocalli. The professed disciple of the God of justice and of mercy might
there gloat over the sufferings of his fellowmen depicted as undergoing
every extremity of atrocious and sanguinary torture to all eternity, for
theological errors no less than for moral delinquencies; while, in the
central figure of Satan, 35occupied in champing up souls in
his capacious and well-toothed jaws, to void them again for the purpose of
undergoing fresh suffering, we have the counterpart of the strange
Polynesian and Egyptian dogma that there were certain gods who employed
themselves in devouring the ghostly flesh of the Spirits of the dead. But
in justice to the Polynesians, it must be recollected that, after three
such operations, they thought the soul was purified and happy. In the view
of the Christian theologian the operation was only a preparation for new
tortures continued for ever and aye.
With the growth of civilisation in Europe, and with the revival of letters
and of science in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the ethical and
intellectual criticism of theology once more recommenced, and arrived at a
temporary resting-place in the confessions of the various reformed
Protestant sects in the sixteenth century; almost all of which, as soon as
they were strong enough, began to persecute those who carried criticism
beyond their own limit. But the movement was not arrested by these
ecclesiastical barriers, as their constructors fondly imagined it would
be; it was continued, tacitly or openly, by Galileo, by Hobbes, by
Descartes, and especially by Spinoza, in the seventeenth century; by the
English Freethinkers, by Rousseau, by the French Encyclopaedists, and by
the German Rationalists, among whom Lessing stands out a head and
shoulders taller than the rest, throughout the eighteenth century; by the
historians, the philologers, the Biblical critics, the geologists, and the
biologists in the nineteenth century, until it is obvious to all who can
see that the moral sense and the really scientific method of seeking for
truth are once more predominating over false science. Once more ethics and
theology are parting company.
It is my conviction that, with the spread of true scientific culture,
whatever may be the medium, historical, philological, philosophical, or
physical, through which that culture is conveyed, and with its necessary
concomitant, a constant elevation of the standard of veracity, the end of
the evolution of theology will be like its beginning—it will cease
to have any relation to ethics. I suppose that, so long as the human mind
exists, it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its
intellectual conceptions. The science of the present day is as full of
this particular form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of
ignorant ages. The difference is that the philosopher who is worthy of the
name knows that his personified hypotheses, such as law, and force, and
ether, and the like, are merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and the
careless take them for adequate expressions of reality. So, it may be,
that the majority of mankind may find the practice of morality made easier
by the use of theological symbols. And unless these are converted from
symbols into idols, I do not see that science has anything to say to the
practice, except to give an occasional warning of its dangers. But, when
such symbols are dealt with as real existences, I think the highest duty
which is laid upon men of science is to show that these dogmatic idols
have no greater value than the fabrications of men's hands, the stocks and
the stones, which they have replaced.
FOOTNOTES:
1 (return)
[ Even the most sturdy
believers in the popular theory that the proper or titular names attached
to the books of the Bible are those of their authors will hardly be
prepared to maintain that Jephthah, Gideon, and their colleagues wrote the
book of Judges. Nor is it easily admissible that Samuel wrote the two
books which pass under his name, one of which deals entirely with events
which took place after his death. In fact, no one knows who wrote either
Judges or Samuel, nor when, within the range of 100 years, their present
form was given to these books.]
2 (return)
[ My citations are taken from
the Revised Version, but for Lord and God I have substituted Jahveh and
Elohim.]
3 (return)
[ I need hardly say that I
depend upon authoritative Biblical critics, whenever a question of
interpretation of the text arises. As Reuss appears to me to be one of the
most learned, acute, and fair-minded of those whose works I have studied,
I have made most use of the commentary and dissertations in his splendid
French edition of the Bible. But I have also had recourse to the works of
Dillman, Kalisch, Kuenen, Thenius, Tuch, and others, in cases in which
another opinion seemed desirable.]
4 (return)
[ See "Divination," by
Hazoral, Journal of Anthropology, Bombay, vol. i. No. 1.]
5 (return)
[ See, for example, the
message of Jephthah to the King of the Ammonites:﹃So now Jahveh, the
Elohim of Israel, hath dispossessed the Amorites from before his people
Israel, and shouldest thou possess them? Wilt not thou possess that which
Chemosh, thy Elohim, giveth thee to possess?﹄(Jud. xi. 23, 24). For
Jephthah, Chemosh is obviously as real a personage as Jahveh.]
6 (return)
[ For example:﹃My oblation,
my food for my offerings made by fire, of a sweet savour to me, shall ye
observe to offer unto me in their due season﹄(Num. xxviii. 2).]
7 (return)
[ In 2 Samuel xv. 27 David
says to Zadok the priest, "Art thou not a seer?" and Gad is called David's
seer.]
8 (return)
[ This would at first appear
to be inconsistent with the use of the word "prophetess" for Deborah. But
it does not follow because the writer of Judges applies the name to
Deborah that it was used in her day.]
9 (return)
[ Samuel tells the cook,
﹃Bring the potion which I gave thee, of which I said to thee, Set it by
thee.﹄It was therefore Samuel's to give.﹃And the cook took up the thigh
(or shoulder) and that which was upon it and set it before Saul.﹄But, in
the Levitical regulations, it is the thigh (or shoulder) which becomes the
priest's own property.﹃And the right thigh (or shoulder) shall ye give
unto the priest for an heave-offering,﹄which is given along with the wave
breast﹃unto Aaron the priest and unto his sons as a due for ever from the
children of Israel﹄(Lev. vii. 31-34). Reuss writes on this passage: "La
cuisse n'est point agitee, mais simplement prelevee sur ce que les
convives mangeront."]
10 (return)
[ See, for example,
Elkanah's sacrifice, 1 Sam. i. 3-9.]
11 (return)
[ The ghost was not
supposed to be capable of devouring the gross material substance of the
offering; but his vaporous body appropriated the smoke of the burnt
sacrifice, the visible and odorous exhalations of other offerings. The
blood of the victim was particularly useful because it was thought to be
the special seat of its soul or life. A West African negro replied to an
European sceptic:﹃Of course, the spirit cannot eat corporeal food, but he
extracts its spiritual part, and, as we see, leaves the material part
behind﹄(Lippert, Seelencult, p. 16).]
12 (return)
[ It is further well worth
consideration whether indications of former ancestor-worship are not to be
found in the singular weight attached to the veneration of parents in the
fourth commandment. It is the only positive commandment, in addition to
those respecting the Deity and that concerning the Sabbath, and the
penalties for infringing it were of the same character. In China, a
corresponding reverence for parents is part and parcel of
ancestor-worship; so in ancient Rome and in Greece (where parents were
even called [secondary and earthly]). The fifth commandment, as it stands,
would be an excellent compromise between ancestor-worship and monotheism.
The larger hereditary share allotted by Israelitic law to the eldest son
reminds one of the privileges attached to primogeniture in ancient Rome,
which were closely connected with ancestor-worship. There is a good deal
to be said in favour of the speculation that the ark of the covenant may
have been a relic of ancestor-worship; but that topic is too large to be
dealt with incidentally in this place]
13 (return)
[﹃The Scientific Aspects
of Positivism,﹄Fortnightly Review, 1869, republished in Lay
Sermons.]
14 (return)
[ OEuvres de Bossuet, ed.
1808, t. xxxv. p. 282.]
15 (return)
[ I should like further to
add the expression of my indebtedness to two works by Herr Julius Lippert,
Der Seelencult in seinen Beziehungen zur alt-hebraischen Religion
and Die Religionen der europaischen Culturvolker, both pubished in
1881. I have found them full of valuable suggestions.]
16 (return)
[ See among others the
remarkable work of Fustel de Coulanges, La Cite antique, in which
the social importance of the old Roman ancestor-worship is brought out
with great clearness.]
17 (return)
[ Supposed to be﹃the finer
or more aeriform part of the body,﹄standing in﹃the same relation to the
body as the perfume and the more essential qualities of a flower do to the
more solid substances﹄(Mariner, vol. ii. p. 127).]
18 (return)
[ A kind of "clients" in
the Roman sense.]
19 (return)
[ It is worthy of remark
that [Greek] among the Greeks, and Deus among the Romans, had the
same wide signification. The dii manes were ghosts of
ancestors=Atuas of the family.]
20 (return)
[ Voyages aux iles du
Grand Ocean, t. i. p. 482.]
21 (return)
[ Te Ika a Maui: New
Zealand and its Inhabitants, p. 72.]
22 (return)
[ Compare:﹃And Samuel said
unto Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me?﹄(I Sam. xxviii. l5)]
23 (return)
[ Turner, Nineteen Years
in Polynesia, p. 238.]
24 (return)
[ See Lippert's excellent
remarks on this subject, Der Seelencult, p. 89.]
25 (return)
[ Sciography has the
authority of Cudworth, Intellectual System, vol. ii. p. 836.
Sciomancy [Greek], which, in the sense of divination by ghosts, may be
found in Bailey's Dictionary (1751: also furnishes a precedent for
my coinage.]
26 (return)
[ "Kami" is used in the
sense of Elohim; and is also, like our word "Lord," employed as a title of
respect among men, as indeed Elohim was.]
27 (return)
[ [The Assyrians thus
raised Assur to a position of pre-eminence.]]
28 (return)
[ I refer those who wish to
know the reasons which lead me to take up this position to the works of
Reuss and Wellhausen, [and especially to Stade's Geschichte des Volkes
Israel.]]
29 (return)
[ Bunsen. Egypt's Place,
vol. v. p.129, note.]
30 (return)
[ See Birch, in Egypt's
Place, vol. v; and Brugsch, History of Egypt.]
31 (return)
[ Even by Graetz, who,
though a fair enough historian, cannot be accused of any desire to
over-estimate the importance of Egyptian influence upon his people.]
32 (return)
[ Graetz, Geschichte der
Juden, Bd. i. p. 370.]
33 (return)
[ See the careful analsyis
of the work of the Alexandrian philosopher and theologian (who, it should
be remembered, was a most devout Jew, held in the highest esteem by his
countrymen) in Siegfried's Philo von Alexandrien, 1875. (Also Dr.
J. Drummond's Philo Judaeus, 1888.)]
34 (return)
[ I am not unaware of the
existence of many and widely divergent sects and schools among the Jews at
all periods of their history, since the dispersion. But I imagine that
orthodox Judaism is now pretty much what it was in Philo's time; while
Peter and Paul, if they could return to life, would certainly have to
learn the catechism of either the Roman, Greek, or Anglican Churches, if
they desired to be considered orthodox Christians.]
35 (return)
[ Dante's description of
Lucifer engaged in the eternal mastication of Brutus, Cassius, and Judas
Iscariot—
"Da ogni bocca dirompea co' denti
Un peccatore, a guisa di maciulla,
Si che tre ne facea così dolenti.
A quel dinanzi il mordere era nulla,
Verso 'l graffiar, che tal volta la schiena
Rimanea della pelle tutta brulla"—
is quite in harmony with the Pisan picture and perfectly Polynesian in
conception.]
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