tution confirmed by Divine sanction; it was represented as such only in connection with the entire network of levitical arrangements, with the sacrifices and priests, the holy places and seasons; and it combines, with a truly admirable depth and refinement of ideas, elements of coarseness neither free from barbarism nor superstition. Should at present, after the lapse of millenniums, any nation find it impossible to appreciate those beautiful ideas without the questionable assistance of a pagan rite? Did not Israel's ancient teachers interdict every mutilation of the human body as an offence against a Divine creation ?a and did not their ancient prophets proclaim with a never wearying zeal: 'He hath shown thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? When, in the reign of the emperor Claudius, Izates king of Adiabene, like his mother Helena, embraced Judaism-so relates Josephus-and evaded circumcision from fear of provoking his subjects to rebellion by 'the strange and foreign rite,' he was. told by his Jewish instructor Ananias that he might worship God without being circumcised, even if he had resolved to follow the Jewish law entirely; for the service of God was more important than circumcision.' Ananias did not prevail and was overruled by the Galilean zealot Eleazer who, scorning the pleas of political expediency or necessity, taunted Izates that he was 'breaking the most important of the Divine laws and thus wronging God Himself;' while the priestly historian attributed to that act all the later successes of the king, as 'the fruit of piety.' But even the solitary voice of Ananias, raised as it was at the time of the highest power of Pharisaism, ought not to have been raised in vain.a Returning to our main subject, we must advert to a third point which prevented the Hebrews from fully sympathising with the Canaanites—their religious notions, and here we have arrived at a question, which is among the obscurest and most difficult problems of Hebrew archaeology, if not of religious history in general. How is the monotheism of the Hebrews to be explained? How did it arise and take root among them alone of all the ancient nations of the east and west? To trace it simply to Abraham, with or without the aid of Divine revelation, would be to transfer the matter from the sphere of history to that of vague tradition or of categorical dogma, and thus to elude investigation. It might almost appear an anachronism to refute this view in the present time, yet we are not permitted to dispense with the task. If a pure monotheism was proclaimed by Abraham and preserved in his family from generation to generation, it ought certainly to have manifested itself in the conduct of men like Moses and Aaron. But is this the case? After having been told that 'the Lord (77) spoke to Moses from face to face, as a man speaks to his friend', we read of that request on the part of Moses which many, in spite of their most earnest efforts, have painfully felt as an insuperable difficulty: the prophet desires to see God's 'glory' (7); in order to be gracious to His faithful servant, God consents, but urges, 'Thou canst not see My face, for no man can see Me and live'; He then bids him stand on a rock where His glory shall appear, and declares, 'I will a Josephus himself, under similar circumstances, impressed upon the populace, that 'every one ought to worship God according to his own inclinations, and should not be constrained by force' (Vita c. 23, δεῖν ἕκαστον ἄνθρωπον κατὰ τὴν ἑαυ τοῦ προαίρεσιν τὸν Θεὸν εὐσεβεῖν, ἀλλὰ μὴ μετὰ βίας; comp. c. 31, μὴ δεῖν διώκεσθαι τοὺς καταφυγόντας πρὸς αὐτούς). Comp. Philo, De Nobilit. c. 5, etc. b c Ex. xxxiii. 11; comp. Num. xii. 6-8. cover thee with My hand while I pass by; and then I will take away My hand, and thou shalt see My back, but My face cannot be seen.' However readily we might be disposed to understand this passage in a metaphysical sense, though this is repudiated by the plain meaning of the words, it still involves a residue of a grossly material conception of the deity hardly different from that of paganism. Again, when the golden calf had been made. in imitation of Apis or Mnevis, and the people shouted, 'These are thy gods, O Israel, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt,' Aaron 'built an altar before it and proclaimed and said, To-morrow is a feast to the Lord' (); and thus Aaron consecrated the figure of an Egyptian idol as an image of the God of Israel, just as king Jeroboam did several centuries later, and under that figure ten out of the twelve tribes of Israel served God during the whole time of their political existence. b Equally insufficient is the explanation, most current at present, which attributes to the Hebrews a special aptitude for purity of creed, and connects this aptitude with a peculiarity of their race. For neither of these assumptions is borne out by the facts of history. Other nations belonging to the same race and speaking almost the same language-Arabians and Phoenicians, Moabites and Ammonites, Syrians and Assyrians-neither themselves worked out strictly monotheistic views, nor were they inclined to adopt them from others. And the Hebrew people-how little fitness did they evince for a pure monotheism! Is it necessary here to repeat what we have elsewhere fully proved, that God was, even by gifted and pious men, during long periods represented in corporal form; that He was, in all ages, honoured not only with incense and sacrifices, but with human victims; that all a Ex. xxxiii. 17-23; comp. iii. 6, 'and Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.' b Exod. xxxii. 1—6. с 1 Ki. xii. 28; comp. 2 Ki. x. 29; xvii. 16. the idols of every neighbouring tribe were constantly worshipped in Israel and Judah; and that when, in the Persian period, the attributes of God began to be better understood, almost pari passu a doctrine of angels, spirits, and daemons was developed so elaborate and complicated, that those attributes were necessarily obscured and confused, and that it became fully evident that a strictly spiritual conception of the deity, without a material embodiment of its powers, was utterly unattainable to the Hebrew people ?a But we may be allowed to recall the one memorable instance of Jeremiah's contemporaries who, after the destruction of Jerusalem, replied to the prophet's impressive exhortations: 'As for the word that thou hast spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken to thee. But we will certainly ... burn incense to the queen of heaven, and pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings and our princes... for then we had abundance of provisions and were prosperous, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings to her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by famine. Is it possible, in the face of such authoritative evidence, to claim for the ancient Hebrews an inborn faculty or an instinctive yearning for a pure monotheism? There was, with respect to religious capacities and inclinations, no essential difference between the Hebrews and the heathen nations of the same race. Thus the problem which engages us, is indeed confined to narrower limits, but it is not solved, and the wonder it excites seems even heightened. How could, amidst the strongest obstacles from without and from within, a monotheistic creed originate and be diffused, so as to become a cause of separation between Israelites and Gentiles? a See Comm. on Levit. i. 351380; ii. 283-319. b Jerem. xliv. 15-18; comp. also Graf in loc. a From all indications of history, Hebrew monotheism appears to have risen from very modest beginnings and to have been developed under severe struggles and many fluctuations. Like every other people, the ancient Hebrews had their national deity-who was at first simply the god of the patriarchs, the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and who became later the god of the whole people, the god of Israel.' But he was to them-for to this point also the analogy with other nations extends --merely one god among many; whenever therefore they desired to express the sum and totality of divine energies and forces, they employed the term Elohim or gods, of which early usage, in a plural sense, even the Hebrew Scriptures, though subsequently revised with the most scrupulous care, have preserved some traces. They allowed to the divinities of other nations not only existence but influence and power, and it was this conviction chiefly which rendered them so willing not only to tolerate but to adopt foreign forms of worship. Jephthah, who may be taken as an excellent type of an educated Hebrew in the period of the Judges-patriotic, well versed in the history of his people, and heroically religious-ingenuously sends word to the king of Ammon: 'Jahveh, the god of Israel, has expelled the Amorites from before His people Israel, and wilt thou occupy their land? Dost not thou a Gen. xvii. 1; xxviii. 3; xxxv. (comp. Prov. ix. 10; xxx. 3); 11; xlviii. 15; etc. עוֹשִׂי God are אֱלֹהִים the plural | הָלְכוּ־ ,23 .Sam. vii 2 ; אֱלֹהִים b So Gen. xxxv. 7, 1 tapas (P. vii. 10); analogous tö זז: □ (see 1 Chr. xvii. 21); Ps. T:18 ny, etc. (Job" xxxv. 10; Ps. exlix. 2; Isai. xxii. 11; liv. 5), and 77 (Eccl. xii. 1); but different is the pluralis majestaticus in Dye, ' lord, master (Gen. xxiv. 9; Ex. xxi. 4, 29, etc.); and sometimes □ is used for one heathen god (Judg. xvi. 23; 1Ki. xi. 33; 2 Ki. i. 2, 3; comp. Gramm. § 77. 11, 12). ::: |