For example, that learned German cites the story of Micah as a proof that
the different tribes or clans had different religions. This _must_ be so,
because the Danites asked the young Levite whether it was not better to be
priest to a clan than to an individual? It is as if a patron offered a
rich living to somebody's private chaplain, saying that the new position
was more creditable and lucrative. This would hardly prove a difference of
religion between the individual and the parish.[14]
Mr. Oxford next avers that 'the earliest form of the Israelite religion
was Fetishism or Totemism.' This is another example of Stade's logic.
Finding, as he believes, names suggestive of Totemism in Simeon, Levi,
Rachel, and so on, Stade leaps to the conclusion that Totemism in Israel
was prior to anything resembling monotheism. For monotheism, he argues,
could not give the germs of the clan or tribal organisation, while Totemism
could do so. Certainly it could, but as, in many regions (America,
Australia), we find Totemism and the belief in a benevolent Supreme Being
co-existing among savages, when first observed by Europeans, we cannot
possibly say dogmatically whether a rough monotheism or whether Totemism
came first in order of evolution. This holds as good of Israel (if once
totemistic) as it does of Pawnees or Kurnai. Stade has overlooked these
well-known facts, and his opinion filters into a cheap hand-book, and is
set in examinations![15]
We also learn from Mr. Oxford's popular manual of German Biblical
conjecture that 'Jehovah was not represented as a loving Father, but as a
Being easily roused to wrath,' a thing most incident to loving fathers.
Again, Mr. Oxford avers that 'the old Israelites knew no distinction
between physical and moral evil.... The conception of Jehovah's holiness
had nothing moral in it' (p. 90). This rather contradicts Wellhausen: 'In
all ancient primitive peoples ... religion furnishes a motive for law and
morals; in the case of none did it become so with such purity and power as
in that of the Israelites.'[16]
We began by examining Mr. Huxley's endeavours to find traces of
ancestor-worship (in his opinion the origin of Jehovah-worship) among the
Israelites. We next criticised Mr. Spencer's efforts in the same quest,
and the more dogmatic assertions of Mr. Oxford and Stade. We now return to
Mr. Huxley's account of the evolution from ghost-cult to the cult of
Jehovah.
From the history of the Witch of Endor, which Mr. Huxley sees no reason to
regard as other than a sincere statement of what really occurred, he
gathers that the Witch cried out, 'I see Elohim.' These Elohim proved to
be the phantasm of the dead Samuel. Moved by this hallucination the Witch
uttered a veridical premonition, totally adverse to her own interests, and
uncommonly dangerous to her life. This is, psychically, interesting.
The point, however, is that _Elohim_ is a term equivalent to Red
Indian _Wakan_, Fijian _Kahu_, Maori or Melanesian _Mana_, meaning the
'supernatural,' the vaguely powerful--in fact X. This particular example
of _Elohim_ was a phantasm of the dead, but _Elohim_ is also used of the
highest Divine Being, therefore the highest Divine Being is of the same
genus as a ghost--so Mr. Huxley reasons. 'The difference which was
supposed to exist between the different Elohim was one of degree, not of
kind.'[17]
'If Jehovah 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 to have a human shape?' He
_was_ thought to have a human shape, at one time, by some theorists: no
doubt exists on that head. That, however, is not where we demur. We demur
when, because an hallucination of the Witch of Endor (probably still
incompletely developed) is called by her _Elohim_, therefore the highest
_Elohim_ is said by Mr. Huxley to differ from a ghost only in degree, not
in kind. _Elohim_, or _El_, the creative, differs from a ghost in kind,
because he, in Hebrew belief, never was a ghost, he is immortal and
without beginning.
Mr. Huxley now enforces his theory by a parallel between the religion of
Tonga and the religion of Israel under the Judges. He quotes Mariner,[18]
whose statement avers that there is a supreme Tongan being: 'of his
origin they had no idea, rather supposing him to be eternal. His name is
Tá-li-y-Tooboo = "Wait-there-Tooboo."' 'He is a great chief from the top
of the sky down to the bottom of the earth.' He, and other '_original_
gods' of his making, are carefully and absolutely discriminated from the
_atua_, which are 'the human soul after its separation from the body.' All
Tongan gods are _atua_ (_Elohim_), but all _atua_ are not 'original gods,'
unserved by priests, and unpropitiated by food or libation, like the
highest God, Tá-li-y-Tooboo, the Eternal of Tonga. 'He occasionally
inspires the How' (elective King), but often a How is not inspired at all
by Tá-li-y-Tooboo, any more than Saul, at last, was inspired by Jehovah.
Surely there is a difference _in kind_ between an eternal, immortal God,
and a ghost, though both are _atua_, or both are _Elohim_--the unknown X.
Many people call a ghost 'supernatural;' they also call God
'supernatural,' but the difference between a phantasm of a dead man and
the Deity they would admit, I conceive, to be a difference of kind. We
have shown, or tried to show, that the conceptions of 'ghost' and 'Supreme
Being' are different, not only in kind, but in origin. The ghost comes
from, and depends on, the animistic theory; the Supreme Being, as
originally thought of, does not. All Gods are _Elohim, kalou, wakan_; all
_Elohim, kalou, wakan_ are not Gods.
A ghost-god should receive food or libation. Mr. Huxley says that
Tá-li-y-Tooboo did so. 'If the god, like Tá-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.'[19]
This is incorrect. In the case of Tá-li-y-Tooboo _'there is no cup filled
for the god.'_[20] _'Before any cup is filled_ the man by the side of the
bowl says: "The Kava is in the cup"' (which it is not), 'and the mataboole
answers, "Give it to your god;"' but the Kava is _not_ in the cup, and the
Tongan Eternal receives no oblation.
The sacrifice, says Mr. Huxley, meant 'that the god was either a deified
ghost, or, at any rate, a being of like nature to these.'[21] But as
Tá-li-y-Tooboo had no sacrifice, contrary to Mr. Huxley's averment, he was
_not_ 'a deified ghost, or a being of like nature to these.' To the lower,
non-ghostly Tongan gods the animistic habit of sacrifice had been
extended, but not yet to the Supreme Being.
Ah, if Mr. Gladstone, or the Duke of Argyll, or some bishop had made a
misstatement of this kind, how Mr. Huxley would have crushed him! But it
is a mere error of careless reading, such as we all make daily.
It is manifest that we cannot prove Jehovah to be a ghost by the parallel
of a Tongan god, who, by ritual and by definition, was _not_ a ghost. The
proof therefore rests on the anthropomorphised pre-prophetic accounts, and
on the ritual, of Jehovah. But man naturally 'anthropises' his deities: he
does not thereby demonstrate that they were once ghosts.
As regards the sacrifices to Jehovah, the sweet savour which he was
supposed to enjoy (contrary to the opinion of the Prophets), these
sacrifices afford the best presumption that Jehovah was a ghost-god, or a
god constructed on ghostly lines.
But we have shown that among the lowest races neither are ghosts
worshipped by sacrifice, nor does the Supreme Being, Darumulun or Puluga,
receive food offerings. We have also instanced many Supreme Beings
of more advanced races, Ahone, and Dendid, and Nyankupon, who do not sniff
the savour of any offerings. If then (as in the case of Taa-roa), a
Supreme Being _does_ receive sacrifice, we may argue that a piece of
animistic ritual, not connected with the Supreme Being in Australia or
Andaman, not connected with his creed in Virginia or Africa (where
ghost-gods do receive sacrifice), may in other regions be transferred from
ghost-gods to the Supreme Being, who never was a ghost. There seems to
be nothing incredible or illogical in the theory of such transference.
On a God who never was a ghost men may come to confer sacrifices (which
are not made to Baiame and the rest) because, being in the habit of thus
propitiating one set of bodiless powers, men may not think it civil or
safe to leave another set of powers out. By his very nature, man must
clothe all gods with some human passions and attributes, unless, like a
large number of savages, he leaves his high God severely alone, and is the
slave of fetishes and spectres. But that practice makes against the
ghost-theory.
In the attempt to account thus, namely by transference, for the sacrifices
to Jehovah, we are met by a difficulty of our own making. If the
Israelites did not sacrifice to ancestors (as we have shown that there is
very scant reason for supposing that they did), how could they transfer to
Jehovah the rite which, by our hypothesis, they are not proved to have
offered to ancestors?
This is certainly a hard problem, harder (or perhaps easier) because we
know so very little of the early history of the Hebrews. According to
their own traditions, Israel had been in touch with all manner of races
much more advanced than themselves in material culture, and steeped in
highly developed polytheistic Animism. According to their history, the
Israelites 'went a-whoring' incorrigibly after strange gods. It is
impossible, perhaps, to disentangle the foreign and the native elements.
It may therefore be tentatively suggested that early Israel had its Ahone
in a Being perhaps not yet named Jehovah. Israel entertained, however,
perhaps by reason of 'nomadic habits,' only the scantiest concern about
ancestral ghosts. We then find an historical tradition of secular contact
between Israel and Egypt, from which Israel emerges with Jehovah for God,
and a system of sacrifices. Regarding Jehovah as a revived memory of
the moral Supreme Being whom Israel must have known in extremely remote
ages (unless Israel was less favoured than Australians, Bushmen, or
Andamanese), we might look on the sacrifices to him as an adaptation from
the practices of religion among races more settled than Israel, and more
civilised.[22]
Speculation on subjects so remote must be conjectural, but our suggestion
would, perhaps, account for sacrifices to Jehovah, paid by a race
which, by reason of 'nomadic habits,' was never much given to
ancestor-worship, but had been in contact with great sacrificing,
polytheistic civilisations. Mr. Huxley, however, while he seems to slur
the essential distinction between ghost-gods and the Eternal, grants,
later, that 'there are very few people(s?) without additional gods,
which cannot, with certainty, be accounted for as deified ancestors.'
Tá-li-y-Tooboo, of course, is one of these gods, as is Jehovah. Mr. Huxley
gives no theory of _how_ these gods came into belief, except the
suggestion that 'the polytheistic theology has become modified by the
selection of the cosmic or tribal god, as the only god to whom worship is
due on the part of that nation,' without prejudice to the right of other
nations to worship other gods.[23] This is 'monolatry,' and 'the ethical
code, often of a very high order, comes into closer relation with the
theological creed,' _why_, we are not informed. Nor do we learn out of
what polytheistic deities Jehovah was selected, nor for what reason. The
hypothesis, as usual, breaks down on the close relation between the
ethical code and the theological creed, among low savages, with a
relatively Supreme Being, but without ancestor-worship, and without
polytheistic gods from whom to select a heavenly chief.
Whence came the moral element in the idea of Jehovah? Mr. Huxley supposes
that, during their residence in the land of Goshen (and _a fortiori_
before it), the Israelites 'knew nothing of Jehovah.'[24] They were
polytheistic idolaters. This follows, apparently, from Ezekiel xx. 5:
'In the day when I chose Israel, and lifted up mine hand unto the seed of
the house of Jacob, _and made myself known unto them_ in the land of
Egypt.' The Biblical account is that the God of Moses's fathers, the God
of Abraham, enlightened Moses in Sinai, giving his name as 'I am that I
am' (Exodus iii. 6, 14; translation uncertain). We are to understand that
Moses, a religious reformer, revived an old, and, in the Egyptian bondage,
a half-obliterated creed of the ancient nomadic Beni-Israel. They were no
longer to 'defile themselves with the idols of Egypt,' as they had
obviously done. We really know no more about the matter. Wellhausen says
that Jehovah was 'originally a family or tribal god, either of the family
of Moses or of the tribe of Joseph.' How a family could develop a Supreme
Being all to itself, we are not informed, and we know of no such analogous
case in the ethnographic field. Again, Jehovah was 'only a special name of
El, current within a powerful circle.' And who was El?[25] 'Moses was not
the first discoverer of the faith.' Probably not, but Mr. Huxley seems to
think that he was.
Wellhausen's and other German ideas filter into popular traditions, as we
saw, through 'A Short Introduction to the History of Ancient Israel'
(pp. 19, 20), by the Rev. A.W. Oxford, M.A., Vicar of St. Luke's, Soho.
Here follows Mr. Oxford's undeniably 'short way with Jehovah.' 'Moses was
the founder of the Israelite religion. Jehovah, his family or tribal god,
perhaps originally the God of the Kenites, was taken as a tribal god by
all the Israelite tribes.... That Jehovah was not the original god of
Israel' (as the Bible impudently alleges) 'but was the god of the Kenites,
we see mainly from Deut. xxxiii. 2, Judges v. 4, 5, and from the history
of Jethro, who, according to Judges i. 16, was a Kenite.'
The first text says that, according to Moses, 'the Lord came from Sinai,'
rose up from Seir, and shone from Mount Paran. The second text mentions
Jehovah's going up out of Seir and Sinai. The third text says that Jethro,
Moses's Kenite (or Midianite) father-in-law, dwelt among the people of
Judah; Jethro being a priest of Midian. How all this proves that 'Moses
was a great impostor,' as the poet says, and that Jehovah was not 'the
original God of Israel,' but (1) Moses's family or tribal god, or (2) 'the
god of the Kenites,' I profess my inability to comprehend.
Wellhausen himself had explained Jehovah as 'a family or tribal god,
either of the family of Moses' (tribe of Levi) 'or of the tribe of
Joseph.' It seems to be all one to Mr. Oxford whether Jehovah was a god
of Moses's tribe or quite the reverse, 'a Kenite god.' Yet it really
makes a good deal of difference! For in a complex of tribes, speaking one
language, it is to the last degree unexampled (within my knowledge) that
one tribe, or family, possesses, all to itself, a family god who is also
the Creator and is later accepted as such by all the other tribes. One may
ask for instances of such a thing in any known race, in any stage of
culture. Peru will not help us--not the Creator, Pachacamac, but the Sun,
is the god of the Inca family. If, on the other hand, Jehovah was a Kenite
god, the Kenites were a half-Arab Semitic people connected with Israel,
and may very well have retained traditions of a Supreme Being which, in
Egypt, were likely to be dimmed, as Exodus asserts, by foreign religions.
The learned Stade, to be sure, may disbelieve in Israel's sojourn in
Egypt, but that revolutionary opinion is not necessarily binding on us and
involves a few difficulties.
Have critics and manual-makers no knowledge of the science of comparative
religion? Are they unaware that peoples infinitely more backward than
Israel was at the date supposed have already moral Supreme Beings
acknowledged over vast tracts of territory? Have they a tittle of positive
evidence that early Israel was benighted beyond the darkness of Bushmen,
Andamanese, Pawnees, Blackfeet, Hurons, Indians of British Guiana, Dinkas,
Negroes, and so forth? Unless Israel had this rare ill-luck (which Israel
denies) of course Israel must have had a secular tradition, however dim,
of a Supreme Being. We must ask for a single instance of a family or
tribe, in a complex of semi-barbaric but not savage tribes of one
speech, owning a private deity who happened to be the Maker and Ruler of
the world, and, as such, was accepted by all the tribes. Jehovah came out
from Sinai, because, there having been a Theophany at Sinai, that mountain
was regarded as one of his seats.[26]
We have seen that it seemed to make no difference to Mr. Oxford whether
Jehovah was a god of Moses's family or tribe or a Kenite god. The former
(with the alternative of _Joseph's_ family or tribal god) is Wellhausen's
theory. The latter is Stade's.[27] Each is inconsistent with the other;
Wellhausen's fancy is inconsistent with all that we know of religious
development: Stade's is hopelessly inconsistent with Exodus iv. 24-26,
where Moses's Kenite wife reproaches him for a ceremony of his, not of
her, religion. Therefore the Kenite differed from the Hebrew _sacra_.
The passage is very extraordinary, and is said by critics to be very
archaic. After the revelation of the Burning Bush, Jehovah met Moses and
his Kenite wife, Zipporah, and their child, at a khan. Jehovah was
anxious to slay Moses, nobody ever knew why, so Zipporah appeased
Jehovah's wrath by circumcising her boy _with a flint_. 'A bloody husband
art thou to me,' she said, 'because of the circumcision'--an Egyptian,
but clearly not a Kenite practice. Whatever all this may mean, it does not
look as if Zipporah expected such rites as circumcision in the faith of a
Kenite husband, nor does it favour the idea that the _sacra_ of Moses were
of Kenite origin.
Without being a scholar, or an expert in Biblical criticism, one may
protest against the presentation to the manual-reading intellectual middle
classes of a theory so vague, contradictory, and (by all analogy) so
impossible as Mr. Oxford collects from German writers. Of course, the
whole subject, so dogmatically handled, is mere matter of dissentient
opinion among scholars. Thus M. Renan derives the name of Jehovah from
Assyria, from 'Aramaised Chaldaeanism.'[28] In that case the name was long
anterior to the residence in Egypt. But again, perhaps Jehovah was a local
god of Sinai, or a provincial deity in Palestine.[29] He was known to very
ancient sages, who preferred such names as El Shaddai and Elohim. In
short, we have no certainty on the subject.[30]
I need hardly say, perhaps, that I have no antiquated prejudice against
Biblical criticism. Assuredly the Bible must be studied like any other
collection of documents, linguistically, historically, and in the light of
the comparative method. The leading ideas of Wellhausen, for example, are
conspicuous for acumen: the humblest layman can see that. But one may
protest against criticising the Bible, or Homer, by methods like those
which prove Shakspeare to have been Bacon. One must protest, too, against
the presentation of inconsistent and probably baseless critical hypotheses
in the dogmatic brevity of cheap handbooks.
Yet again, whence comes the moral element in Jehovah? Mr. Huxley thinks
that it possibly came from the ethical practice and theory of Egypt. In
the Egyptian Book of the Dead, 'a sort of Guide to Spirit Land,' there
are moral chapters; the ghost tells his judges in Amenti what sins he has
_not_ committed. Many of these sins are forbidden in the Ten Commandments.
They are just as much forbidden in the nascent morality of savage peoples.
Moses did not need the Book of the Dead to teach him elementary morals.
From the mysteries of Mtanga he might have learned, also, had he been
present, the virtue of unselfish generosity. If the creed of Jehovah, or
of El, retained only as much of ethics as is under divine sanction among
the Kurnai, adaptation from the Book of the Dead was superfluous.
The care for the departed, the ritual of the Ka, the intense
pre-occupation with the future life, which, far more than its morality,
are the essential characteristics of the Book of the Dead--Israel cared
for none of these animistic things, brought none of these, or very little
of these, out of the land of Egypt. Moses was certainly very eclectic; he
took only the morality of Egypt. But as Mr. Huxley advances this opinion
tentatively, as having no secure historical authority about Moses, it
hardly answers our question, Whence came the moral element in Jehovah? One
may surmise that it was the survival of the primitive divinely sanctioned
ethics of the ancient savage ancestors of the Israelite, known to them,
as to the Kurnai, before they had a pot, or a bronze knife, or seed to
sow, or sheep to herd, or even a tent over their heads. In the counsels of
eternity Israel was chosen to keep burning, however obscured with smoke
of sacrifice, that flame which illumines the darkest places of the earth,
'a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel'--a
flame how litten a light whence shining, history cannot inform us, and
anthropology can but conjecture. Here scientific nescience is wiser than
the cocksureness of popular science, with her ghosts and fetish-stones,
and gods that sprang from ghosts, which ghosts, however, could not be
developed, owing to nomadic habits.
It appears, then, if our general suggestion meets with any acceptance,
that what occurred in the development of Hebrew religion was precisely
what the Bible tells us did occur. This must necessarily seem highly
paradoxical to our generation; but the whole trend of our provisional
system makes in favour of the paradox. If savage nomadic Israel had the
higher religious conceptions proved to exist among several of the lowest
known races, these conceptions might be revived by a leader of genius.
They might, in a crisis of tribal fortunes, become the rallying point of a
new national sentiment. Obscured, in some degree, by acquaintance with
'the idols of Egypt,' and restricted and localised by the very national
sentiment which they fostered, these conceptions were purified and widened
far beyond any local, tribal, or national restrictions--widened far as the
_flammantia moenia mundi_--by the historically unique genius of the
Prophets. Blended with the doctrine of our Lord, and recommended by the
addition of Animism in its pure and priceless form--the reward of faith,
hope, and charity in eternal life--the faith of Israel enlightened the
world.
All this is precisely what occurred, according to the Old and New
Testaments. All this is just what, on our hypothesis, might be expected to
occur if, out of the many races which, in their most backward culture, had
a rude conception of a Moral Creative Being, relatively supreme, one race
endured the education of Israel, showed the comparative indifference of
Israel to Animism and ghost-gods, listened to the Prophets of Israel, and
gave birth to a greater than Moses and the Prophets.
To this result the Logos, as Socrates says, has led us, by the path of
anthropology.
[Footnote 1: _Science and Hebrew Tradition_.]
[Footnote 2: Op. cit. p. 361.]
[Footnote 3:_ Science and Hebrew Tradition_. p. 308.]
[Footnote 4: _Prin. Soc_. p. 306.]
[Footnote 5: _The Tshi-speaking Races_, p. 183.]
[Footnote 6: Some Australian tribes have cemeteries, and I have found one
native witness, King Billy, to the celebration of the mysteries near one of
these burying-places. I have not discovered other evidence to this effect,
though I have looked for it. The spot selected is usually 'near the camp,'
and the place for so large a camp in chosen, naturally, where the supply
of food is adequate.]
[Footnote 7: Cf. the Aryans, _Principles of Sociology_, p. 314.]
[Footnote 8: _Principles_, p. 316.]
[Footnote 9: Ibid. p. 317.]
[Footnote 10: Jeremiah xvi. 6, 7.]
[Footnote 11: Leviticus xix. 28.]
[Footnote 12: Deuteronomy xxxiv. 6.]
[Footnote 13: _Short Introduction to History of Ancient Israel_, pp.
83, 84.]
[Footnote 14: Stade i 403.]
[Footnote 15: Stade, i. 406.]