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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evolution of Theology: An
+Anthropological Study, by Thomas Henry Huxley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study
+       Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"
+
+Author: Thomas Henry Huxley
+
+Posting Date: December 3, 2008 [EBook #2634]
+Release Date: May, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY: ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D.R. Thompson
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY
+
+ESSAY #8 FROM "SCIENCE AND HEBREW TRADITION"
+
+
+By Thomas Henry Huxley
+
+
+
+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. [1] It 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:--
+
+   [_Elohim_ is] 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. [11] Elohim 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. [12] That 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, [14] I 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, [17] we 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. [20] They 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 [22] 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,_ [25] as 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 [26] of 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. [30] This
+"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 [31] that 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, [32] is 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, [34]
+and 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, [35]
+occupied 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:
+
+[Footnote 1: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 2: My citations are taken from the Revised Version, but for Lord and
+God I have substituted Jahveh and Elohim.]
+
+[Footnote 3: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 4: See "Divination," by Hazoral, _Journal of Anthropology,_ Bombay,
+vol. i. No. 1.]
+
+[Footnote 5: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 6: 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).]
+
+[Footnote 7: In 2 Samuel xv. 27 David says to Zadok the priest, "Art thou not a
+seer?" and Gad is called David's seer.]
+
+[Footnote 8: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 9: 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."]
+
+[Footnote 10: See, for example, Elkanah's sacrifice, 1 Sam. i. 3-9.]
+
+[Footnote 11: 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).]
+
+[Footnote 12: 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]
+
+[Footnote 13: "The Scientific Aspects of Positivism," _Fortnightly Review,_ 1869,
+republished in _Lay Sermons._]
+
+[Footnote 14: OEuvres de Bossuet, ed. 1808, t. xxxv. p. 282.]
+
+[Footnote 15: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 16: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 17: 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).]
+
+[Footnote 18: A kind of "clients" in the Roman sense.]
+
+[Footnote 19: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 20: _Voyages aux iles du Grand Ocean,_ t. i. p. 482.]
+
+[Footnote 21: _Te Ika a Maui: New Zealand and its Inhabitants,_ p. 72.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Compare: "And Samuel said unto Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me?"
+(I Sam. xxviii. l5)]
+
+[Footnote 23: Turner, _Nineteen Years in Polynesia,_ p. 238.]
+
+[Footnote 24: See Lippert's excellent remarks on this subject, _Der Seelencult,_
+p. 89.]
+
+[Footnote 25: _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.]
+
+[Footnote 26: "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.]
+
+[Footnote 27: [The Assyrians thus raised Assur to a position of pre-eminence.]]
+
+[Footnote 28: 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._]]
+
+[Footnote 29: Bunsen. _Egypt's Place,_ vol. v. p.129, note.]
+
+[Footnote 30: See Birch, in _Egypt's Place,_ vol. v; and Brugsch, _History of
+Egypt._]
+
+[Footnote 31: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 32: Graetz, _Geschichte der Juden,_ Bd. i. p. 370.]
+
+[Footnote 33: 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.)]
+
+[Footnote 34: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 35: 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 cosi 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.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evolution of Theology: An
+Anthropological Study, by Thomas Henry Huxley
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