Chapter 26

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.]

[Footnote 16: Wellhausen, _History of Israel_, p. 437. Mr. Oxford's book is only noticed here because it is meant for a popular manual. As Mr. Henry Foker says, 'it seems a pity that the clergy should interfere in these matters.']

[Footnote 17: _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 299.]

[Footnote 18: II. 127.]

[Footnote 19: _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 331.]

[Footnote 20: Mariner, ii. 205.]

[Footnote 21: Op. cit. p. 335.]

[Footnote 22: Of course, it in understood that Israel (in the dark backward and abysm of time) may also have been totemistic, like the Australians, as texts pointed out by Mr. Robertson Smith seem to hint. There was also worship of teraphim, respect paid to stones and trees, and so forth.]

[Footnote 23: _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 349.]

[Footnote 24: P. 351.]

[Footnote 25: _History of Israel_, p. 443 note.]

[Footnote 26: _Religion of Semites_.]

[Footnote 27: _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_, i. 180.]

[Footnote 28: _Histoire du Peuple d'Israel_, citing Schrader, p. 23.]

[Footnote 29: Op. cit. p. 85]

[Footnote 30: See Professor Robertson's _Early Religion of Israel_ for a list of these conjectures, and, generally, for criticisms of the occasional vagaries of critics.]

XVII

CONCLUSION

We may now glance backward at the path which we have tried to cut through the jungles of early religions. It is not a highway, but the track of a solitary explorer; and this essay pretends to be no more than a sketch--not an exhaustive survey of creeds. Its limitations are obvious, but may here be stated. The higher and even the lower polytheisms are only alluded to in passing, our object being to keep well in view the conception of a Supreme, or practically Supreme, Being, from the lowest stages of human culture up to Christianity. In polytheism that conception is necessarily obscured, showing itself dimly either in the _Prytanis_, or President of the Immortals, such as Zeus; or in Fate, behind and above the Immortals; or in Mr. Max Müller's _Henotheism_, where the god addressed--Indra, or Soma, or Agni--is, for the moment, envisaged as supreme, and is adored in something like a monotheistic spirit; or, finally, in the etherealised deity of advanced philosophic speculation.

It has not been necessary, for our purpose, to dwell on these civilised religions. Granting our hypothesis of an early Supreme Being among savages, obscured later by ancestor-worship and ghost-gods, but not often absolutely lost to religious tradition, the barbaric and the civilised polytheisms easily take their position in line, and are easily intelligible. Space forbids a discussion of all known religions; only typical specimens have been selected. Thus, nothing has been said of the religion of the great Chinese empire. It appears to consist, on its higher plane, of the worship of Heaven as a great fetish-god--a worship which may well have begun in days, as Dr. Brinton says, 'long ere man had asked himself, "Are the heavens material and God spiritual?"'--perhaps, for all we know, before the idea of 'spirit' had been evolved. Thus, if it contains nothing more august, the Chinese religion is, so far, beneath that of the Zuñis, or the creed in Taa-roa, in Beings who are eternal, who were before earth was or sky was. The Chinese religion of Heaven is also coloured by Chinese political conditions; Heaven (Tien) corresponds to the Emperor, and tends to be confounded with Shang-ti, the Emperor above. 'Dr. Legge charges Confucius,' says Mr. Tylor, 'with an inclination to substitute, in his religious teaching, the name of Tien, Heaven, for that known to more ancient religion, and used in more ancient books--Shang-ti, the personal ruling deity.' If so, China too has its ancient Supreme Being, who is not a divinised aspect of nature.

But Mr. Tylor's reading, in harmony with his general theory, is different:

'It seems, rather, that the sage was, in fact, upholding the tradition of the ancient faith, thus acting according to the character on which he prided himself--that of a transmitter, not a maker, a preserver of old knowledge, not a new revealer.'[1]

This, of course, is purely a question of evidence, to be settled by Sinologists. If the personal Supreme Being, Shang-ti, occupies in older documents the situation held by Tien (Heaven) in Confucius's later system, why are we to say that Confucius, by putting forward Heaven in place of Shang-ti, was restoring an older conception? Mr. Tylor's affection for his theory leads him, perhaps, to that opinion; while my affection for my theory leads me to prefer documentary evidence in its favour.

The question can only be settled by specialists. As matters stand, it seems to me probable that ancient China possessed a Supreme Personal Being, more remote and original than Heaven, just as the Zuñis do. On the lower plane, Chinese religion is overrun, as everyone knows, by Animism and ancestor-worship. This is so powerful that it has given rise to a native theory of Euhemerism. The departmental deities of Chinese polytheism are explained by the Chinese on Euhemeristic principles:

'According to legend, the War God, or Military Sage, was once, in human life, a distinguished soldier; the Swine God was a hog-breeder who lost his pigs and died of sorrow; the God of Gamblers was _un décavé_.'[2]

These are not statements of fact, but of Chinese Euhemeristic theory. On that hypothesis, Confucius should now be a god; but of course he is not; his spirit is merely localised in his temple, where the Emperor worships him twice a year as ancestral spirits are worshipped.