references to stones or circles that form convenient landmarks or
natural _rendezvous_ for national ceremonies. Adonijah strengthens
his rebellion by a great sacrifice at the stone of Zoheleth--"the
serpent's stone." The extremely important part which the serpent plays
in all Semitic religion and mythology, together with the sacrificial
act at this spot, points to its having been the ancient site of some
idolatrous cult. Many of these sacred stones may have been the shrines
of the Canaanites, and to some of these the invading religion attached
its own meaning. The circle at Gilgal, which is said to commemorate
the crossing of the Jordan, may be an example of this, for there
is some contradiction in the account which refers it to a memorial
erected by Joshua for this purpose (compare Josh. iv. 2-6, 20 ff, with
iv. 9), and it is more than likely that the circle of graven images
mentioned in Judges iii. 19 (R.V. margin) is to be identified with
it. Among this class of sacred objects must be mentioned the obscure
_Mazzebah_, translated in the margin of the Revised Version, "Obelisk."
The use of the Mazzebah is strictly forbidden in Exod. xxxiv. 13, as
one of the idolatrous customs of the former inhabitants of the land,
but in the Eighth Century the Mazzebah is reckoned by Hosea as one
of the essentials of Hebrew worship, as if he knew nothing of this
proscription in the Law (Hosea iii. iv.). These pillars were evidently
used to mark the place of worship, and they are said to have been found
at Shechem, Bethel, Gilgal, Mizpeh, and elsewhere. From their usage in
primitive Semitic religion as well as from their prohibition in Exodus
it can be seen that they had idolatrous significance, and it is thought
that they were rudely carved to resemble the likeness of the god. The
two pillars placed before the temple, called Jachin and Boaz, are
probably connected with the Mazzebah.
(b) _Sacred Trees._ The continual reference to these in the Old
Testament shows that they had some special and sacred significance.
Such are the terebinths of Mamre (Gen. xiii. 18; should be singular
according to the Septuagint), the tamarisk at Beersheba (Gen. xxi. 33),
the palm of Deborah (Judges iv. 5), and the terebinth in Ophrah (Judges
vi. 11). We can understand how to desert peoples trees naturally
stood for objects of thankful reverence, and in the popular mind were
regarded as the special seat and haunt of a deity. That they also
served for the purpose of obtaining oracles may be seen from 2 Sam.
v. 24; with which may be compared the practice of oracular decision
by the rustling of the famous oaks of Delphi. With this species of
tree-worship we must compare the use of the Asherah mentioned as a
sacred symbol in Judges vi. 25; this is expressly forbidden in Exod.
xxxiv. 13, Deut. xvi. 21. It used to be supposed that this was a wooden
symbol of a goddess Asherah, but from the description in the passage
quoted from Deuteronomy, and from Isa. xvii. 8, it would seem to be a
tree-like post, and is more likely to be a remnant of tree worship,
as our own Maypole may be. It came to pass that the tree or tree-like
pole could therefore stand beside any altar as the sign of the presence
of the god, and in the pre-Prophetic religion of Israel this was
transferred to a sign of the presence of Jehovah until the Asherah was
forbidden, in that great attempt to make return to idolatry impossible,
the reform under Josiah.
(c) _Sacred Springs._ A similar origin may be supposed for the
recognised sacredness of springs. From the names given to some of these
it is evident that they were regarded as the special seat of Divine
power, natural enough, as in the case of the trees, to a desert-bred
race and to dwellers in a land which never had too plentiful a supply
of water. The proximity of the spring to an altar or sacred stone
confirms this, as in the case of the stone Zoheleth near the spring
En-rogel, the "spring of the fuller." The name of "En-Mishpat" (Gen.
xiv. 7), "the spring of judgment," would seem to indicate that springs
were used for the purpose of obtaining oracles, but by what signs this
was effected is not known. The name of the spring in Gen. xvi. 14,
where the angel appeared to Hagar, is significant in this connection:
"the well of the living one who seeth me."
In the customs of worship, and in all customs to which there is
attached a definite religious significance, we find analogies in
the heathen religions which show that they must have had a common
origin. Chief among these must be classed the custom of sacrifice.
It is natural, therefore, to find that sacrifice, which has such an
undoubtedly natural explanation in heathen religions as either the food
of the god or a means of propitiation, is nowhere in the Old Testament
explicitly defined as to its intent and meaning. The root idea is,
however, clearly seen in such customs as that of the setting forth of
the Shewbread, however much the meaning may have become spiritualised
by a purer idea of the nature of Jehovah, while in Ezek. xliv. 7, 15,
this seems to be quite explicitly stated. As the conception of Deity
was spiritualised, the idea of material food would doubtless grow too
repugnant to be retained in the bare offering of flesh, and so we get
the burnt-offering, the smoke of which Jehovah can smell. The blood
especially, forms the correct offering, since being the seat of life,
it belongs altogether to God. On the idea of the sacrifice being used
as a propitiation to the Deity, it follows naturally that the more
costly the victim the more acceptable it will be, and of all sacrifices
the most efficacious will be that of a human being. The story of Abram
and Isaac in Gen. xxii. is made to serve as a condemnation of human
sacrifices, but the origin of the story may very well have pointed
the other way, as indeed the first part of the story does; and that
the practice was common may be seen from 2 Kings xvi. 3; xxi. 6; Jer.
vii. 31; xix. 5 (Delete the last words of Jer. xix. 5, as an evident
gloss from vii. 31). True, in these passages human sacrifice is said
to be in express contravention of the will of Jehovah, but no such
comment is added to the story of Jephthah (Judges xi. 30 ff.), while
in Micah vi. 7, the sacrifice of the firstborn is simply classed among
other sacrifices as part of the common idea. A remnant of this horrible
practice is probably to be found in the consecration of the firstborn
to Jehovah, while the legality of human sacrifice is determinative in
the common practice of the "ban," by which all captives were devoted
to Jehovah, and any violation visited by the direst vengeance; as in
the case of Saul and Agag. Another use of the sacrifice was that of
ratifying a covenant by cutting a victim in parts, between which the
contracting parties passed (Gen. xv. 9-17; Jer. xxxiv. 18).
Much the same result will be found from enquiry into the origin of
special feasts and customs that are said to have been instigated at
the express command of Jehovah; for there is evidence which shows that
they were often customs common amongst the heathen, and were only
invested with a new significance by the higher religion of the Hebrews.
Among these it is likely that we must reckon even the Passover, for
the daubing of the lintels is said to be a common heathen practice,
and it will be noticed in support of the pre-Mosaic origin of the
ceremony that at its first mention in Exod. xii. 21, it is called _the_
Passover. The meaning of the Hebrew word translated "Passover" is
also capable of another meaning than that given in the story of its
institution, a meaning which also points to its being the survival of
a Semitic and heathen custom. Similar enquiry into ancient religions
of the Semitic type shows that originally circumcision had no special
religious significance, but was probably a sign of puberty and the
right to marry. As manners softened it became a family rite and there
was no need to postpone it till years of manhood. The practice of
wearing special garments at religious rites is also found in heathen
religions, and still maintains itself in our habit of wearing "Sunday
clothes."
The results of these enquiries are sufficiently startling to those who
have been accustomed to regard the religion of Israel as starting from
some definite act of revelation which ordained these ordinances and
their religious meaning for the first time. But it is common enough
in history to find that customs persist long after their original
significance has been forgotten, and that they are gradually invested
with a meaning more appropriate to the spirit of the age. We are not,
however, shut up to the conclusion, that, because we can trace much of
the wonderful religion of Israel to common causes acting upon heathen
religion, there is no real work of revelation in this gradual progress
from lower to higher stages. It would be quite useless, from the
point of view of this book, to enter on the fruitless discussion as to
whether in the evolution of religion we have to deal with a natural
process or with a supernatural revelation. Is any such antithesis
necessary? Surely the one can come through the other. If revelation is
to reach us it must come through the ordinary processes of our minds;
the recognition that it is from God cannot be authenticated to us by
any miracle or outward authority, but simply by the possibility of the
mind, which God has made, being able to recognise its Maker. It may
be more of a difficulty to others that we should have such erroneous
conceptions of history in a Book that has been regarded as infallible
on these matters. We have to face the fact, from which there is no
escape, that the historian may not have known the origin of the things
of which he wrote, or may have intentionally obscured the fact of the
heathen origin of customs that had become to all pious Israelites
expressions of Jehovah's special revelation to Israel. If we are going
to call this fraud, then it means that we are going to force on that
early age a conception of historical accuracy which it certainly did
not possess, and which, as a matter of fact, is only a late demand of
the human mind. And after all, there was truth in this reference of all
their religion to the revelation of Jehovah. It witnesses to the fact
that behind even the crudest religion there is something which defies
explanation, and that we have in heathen religions the slow dawning
consciousness of God within man's soul. In Israel these things never
stood still. That central idea of the localisation of Jehovah grew
too small to contain the widening conception of Him as it was evolved
through reflection and national experience, until the Prophets burst
forth with the proclamation that He was the God of the whole earth, and
His relation to Israel not tribal or territorial, but moral, and only
to be maintained by righteousness and true holiness.
MOSAISM
The reader is recommended to make a careful study of the following
passages, which are among the most important adduced by the critics
as evidence for the non-Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.
(1) Mosaic authorship is never claimed for the Pentateuch as a
whole. Only in certain places is it noted that Moses wrote down
special things (Exod. xvii. 14; xxiv. 4; xxxiv. 27; Num. xxxiii.
2; Deut. xxxi. 9, 22, 24). Moses is consistently spoken of in the
third person, and it is hardly likely that this is a style purposely
adopted, or the statement of Num. xii. 3 would be extraordinary in
the circumstances. Obviously the last chapter of Deuteronomy was not
written by him, nor is the common opinion that it was added by Joshua
at all probable, for there is no difference in style from the rest
of the book discernible, and, moreover, Dan is referred to (Deut.
xxxiv. 1; cp. also Gen. xiv. 14), which was not so named until after
the conquest. (Josh. xix. 47; Judges xviii. 29.) Would Moses need to
authenticate his history of contemporaneous events by quoting from
what are regarded as ancient books: from the Book of the Wars of
Jehovah (Num. xxi. 14), wars which could have only just commenced, or
from the poem which refers to the victory over Sihon (Num. xxi. 27
ff.), which took place at the very end of the forty years' wandering?
(2) The standpoint as a whole is that of an age later than Moses.
The remark in Gen. xxxvi. 31 can only have had any meaning in the
age of David when Edom was in submission to Israel. A late date is
also needed for the following passages: Gen. xii. 6; xiii. 7; xxxiv.
7 ("in Israel"! cp. Judges xx. 10; 2 Sam. xiii. 12); Lev. xviii.
27; Deut. ii. 12; iv. 38. In fact, the whole geographical outlook
is that of an inhabitant of Western Palestine, as may be seen from
the use of the term "Seaward" to indicate the west, and of "Negeb,"
or the desert land, for the south. These terms are used even in the
description of the Tabernacle, which, if taken from the site of Mount
Sinai, would be altogether wrong and meaningless. Compare Num. xxii.
1; xxxiv. 15; Deut. i. 1, 5; iii. 8; iv. 41, 46, 49: "beyond the
Jordan," showing clearly that the writer's position is in Palestine,
west of the Jordan.
(3) There is no trace in the history of any observance of the
Levitical ritual until after the exile; the day of atonement, the
sin-offering, the high-priest, all are unheard of until this date.
Nor can it be claimed that it was the ignorance of the common people,
or their apostasy, that was responsible for this condition of things.
The great leaders of the various reformations are apparently also
quite ignorant that none but a priest could sacrifice, and none but a
Levite take charge of the ark. Samuel, who was not a Levite, sleeps
beside the ark and offers sacrifice. Elijah does nothing to recall
the people to the ritual of Leviticus.
(4) The conclusion is that, while later ages were right in
attributing to Moses the founding of their religion and some of
their ritual, all the accumulation of law, which had only been the
growth of many centuries, has been placed to his credit. What the
actual contribution of Moses was it is now impossible to say, but the
original of the Ten Words and of the Book of the Covenant (Exod. xx.
2-xxiii. 33) may well go back to that age, as may be seen from the
relative simplicity of the laws and rules. For example, compare the
simple regulations for the altar in Exod. xx. 24 with the elaborate
altar described in Exod. xxvii. 1-8.
Lecture III
MOSAISM
The national consciousness of Israel goes back to a series of
remarkable events in which the nation was born, and which are too
deeply graven on the mind of the people to be mere legends without
historical foundation. These events are the deliverance from the
bondage in Egypt and the great covenant made with Jehovah at Sinai. The
indispensable personal centre, round which these events revolve, is
that of the great national leader, Moses. The fact that, outside the
Pentateuch and the closely connected Book of Joshua, little is known
of the work of Moses until after the exile, has given rise to doubts
concerning his historical reality. If we take the writings of the Old
Testament that are contemporary with the period they describe, there
stand out in indisputable primacy the writings of the great literary
Prophets. To these modern criticism has rightly turned to discover the
opinions, customs, and religion, prevailing in the Eighth Century; and
it is claimed that by these writings we can test the historical value
of the Pentateuch, and of the other historical books. Now it must be
admitted that in the pre-exilic Prophets the mention of Moses is less
frequent than we should expect from the position which is claimed for
him in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The
Prophets do appeal with one consent to the original covenant of Jehovah
with Israel, to the fulfilment of which they would recall the nation;
but only rarely is the name of Moses associated with that covenant.
There are only four references to Moses in the Prophets before the
exile (Hosea xii. 13--Moses not actually named; Micah vi. 4; Jer.
xv. 1; Isa. lxiii. 12--reckoned post-exilic by critics), and in none
of these is Moses referred to as a law-giver, but as a prophet and
national deliverer. We have to come to Prophets writing after the exile
to find any reference to the legislative work of Moses (Mal. iv. 4;
Dan. ix. 11-13). The purpose of the prophetic writings is moral rather
than historical, and this forbids putting more evidential weight upon
this argument from silence than it will bear; but in face of their
continual appeal to the covenant of Sinai, this silence is at least
significant. Evidently Moses was not a name to conjure with in their
age. (Compare Jer. xxxi. 31, 32, where the mention of the name of Moses
would have been most natural.)
We have, on these and other grounds, to disregard the later idea
that Moses was the only law-giver of Israel and the author of the
Pentateuch, although the fact that the later legislation could only
find sanction as it was included under his name, points to him as
in some way the initiator of Israel's great Code of Laws. While in
addition to this, it must be admitted that a great deal of the story
of his life is due to the growth of legend, there is no need to regard
the figure of Moses as entirely mythical. The events by which a motley
crowd of serfs became a nation and covenanted themselves to an almost
new religion not only need for their explanation a great interpreter,
but also a great leader; and this demand and need Moses fills. We may
therefore safely regard Moses as one of the great Founders of Religion.
We have now to enquire how much of the marvellous story of his life can
be safely reckoned as history. The document which gives the earliest,
and therefore the most trustworthy, story of his life is dated by the
critics in the Ninth Century, although it is not denied that it may,
and probably does, go back for its material to a much earlier period.
This document, known to the critics as "J," owes its origin to early
prophetic influence. In this document, as might be expected from the
analogy in similar cases (compare the absence of the birth stories in
Mark), the story of the birth and finding of Moses is omitted; it is
probably nothing more than an effort to find a popular explanation
of his name, as derived from _Mashah_, "to draw out." A much more
likely origin of the name is found by modern scholars in the Egyptian
word for "son" (_Mesu_). The important thing to be noticed is that in
this early document he appears first of all in Midian, although there
are indications which show that it is known that he had previously
been in Egypt. Here, alone in the wilderness, or in intercourse with
the strange Bedawin who still inhabit that region, there came to him
a revelation of Jehovah and the call to deliver Israel from their
bondage. He returned to Egypt with a message at once religious and
national. He calls upon the Israelites to leave Egypt and to seek
a covenant with Jehovah at His shrine at Sinai. During a plague,
the passage of the Red Sea was effected under conditions that were
interpreted to be due to the direct intervention of Jehovah; and, the
returning tide cutting off the pursuing Egyptians who challenged their
flight, the Israelites stood delivered from their enemies and their
first trust in Jehovah was vindicated. It is not for us to enquire
into the exact causes which proved so favourable to the Israelites and
so disastrous to the Egyptians; we only need to know that they were
interpreted religiously. Then around Mount Sinai, with its impressive
solitude and its awful storms, Moses gathered the people, imparted
the secret of the new worship, made a solemn covenant by which the
people of Israel became for ever the people of Jehovah, and probably
laid down some rudiments of legislation fitted for their primitive and
nomadic condition. This much at least the after history demands as the
irreducible minimum.
If this is at all an accurate view of the founding of the religion of
Jehovah, then we are faced with the phenomenon of a nation practically
adopting a new religion. We do not ignore "revelation" when we feel
compelled to seek for natural causes which might prepare the way for
this event; and this we may attempt by an enquiry into the meaning of
the name "Jehovah."
It should be noted at the outset that "Jehovah" is a personal name,
like that of Zeus or Poseidon, conveying the idea of some aspect of
deity. The meaning of the name is exceedingly obscure. The general
name for deity common to all Semites, and therefore belonging to the
undivided primitive stock, is "El," meaning either "the Mighty One" or,
and more in accord with Semitic conceptions of God, "the Leader." The
meaning of the name "Jehovah" is difficult to discover, because in the
first place the exact pronunciation of the word has been lost, probably
beyond recovery.