This doctrine of the life to come, like the theistic doctrine the Egyptians at one time attained, might have seemed destined to lead to a pure spiritual faith, from which superstition should have disappeared. But in neither case is that result attained. The later history of Egyptian religion is that of the increase of magic, and of the rise of a priestly class absorbing to itself, as the older priests who were closely connected with the civil life of the nation had never done, all the functions of religion. Doctrine grows more pantheistic and more recondite, mysteries and symbols are multiplied, all to the increase of the influence of the priesthood, and to the infinite exercise of ingenuity in coming times. Popular religion, on the other hand, comes to be more taken up with such matters as charms and amulets and horoscopes; and while morals did not decline from the high level they had gained from the reign of the gods of light, the spirit of the nation lost vigour under the growth of religiosity at the expense of patriotism, and healthy reform grew more and more impossible. What of the religion of Egypt lived on in other lands which felt her influence, it is hard to say. The religious art of Egypt, and with it no doubt some tincture of the ideas it embodied, undoubtedly went northwards to Phenicia; and Greece owed to Phenicia, as we shall see, many a suggestion in religious matters. Long before Isis and Serapis were introduced in Rome in their own persons, the legend of Osiris had flourished in Greece under new names, and the Greek doctrine of the life to come, taught in the mysteries, has suggested to some scholars an Egyptian origin. To the Greeks and Romans this religion afforded an infinity of puzzles and mysteries; to the modern world it affords the greatest example of a religion the early promise of which was not fulfilled, the splendid moral aspirations of which were stifled amid the superstitions they were too weak to conquer.
For general information Wilkinson's Egyptians.
E. A. W. Budge, History of Egypt, vols. i.-viii., 1902-03.
E. A. W. Budge, The Mummy; chapters on Egyptian funeral archæology, Cambridge, 1893.
E. A. W. Budge, The Book of the Dead, English Translation of the Theban Recension, 3 vols., 1910.
Flinders Petrie, A History of Egypt.
Flinders Petrie, in Oxford Proceedings, vol. i. p. 184, sqq.
The Histories of Antiquity of Duncker, Maspero, and especially Ed. Meyer.
Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, 1894.
Maspero, Manual of Egyptian Archæology, Second Edition, 1895.
Renouf's Hibbert Lectures.
Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, translated by Ballingal.
Wiedemann, Ägyptische Geschichte, 1884-88; "Die Religion der alten Aegyptier," 1890; also "Egyptian Religion," in Hastings' Bible Dictionary, vol. v.
A. O. Lange, "Die Ägypter" in De la Saussaye. Records of the Past, First Series (1873-81), vols. ii., iv., vi., viii., x., xii. Second Series, 1888-92, vols. ii.-vi.
Benson and Gourlay, The Temple of Mut in Asher, 1899.
Naville, The Old Egyptian Faith, translated by Colin Campbell, 1909.
Colin Campbell, Two Theban Queens, 1909. A study of the inscriptions in two royal tombs.
As used by the modern scholar, the term Semites or Semitic races includes the Arabs, the Hebrews, the Canaanites and Phenicians, the Syrians or Arameans, the Babylonians and the Assyrians. This enumeration differs from that of the tenth chapter of Genesis, where the children of Shem include Elam, or the dwellers in Susiana, and Lud or the Lydians, while the tribes who dwelt in Canaan before the Hebrews are placed in another and a lower division of the human family. The principle of the enumeration in Genesis is probably that of geographical neighbourhood; the modern principle is that of linguistic affinity. The peoples mentioned above spoke, or still speak, languages which belong to the same family of human speech. The inference from affinity of language to affinity of blood is in this case a strong one, so that the peoples using the Semitic tongues are considered to be of the same race. To the question, where the cradle of the Semitic race is to be sought, most scholars now answer that we must seek it in Arabia. From this isolated land the Semitic dispersion spread in every direction, till Semitic language and customs filled the earth from the south of Arabia to the north of Syria, and from the mountains of Iran to the Mediterranean, and far along the northern shores of Africa; of Babylonia and Assyria, where Semitic culture and religion assumed at the dawn of human history a very special and peculiar form, we have already spoken. We have now to speak of Semitic religion as found in the lands bordering on the eastern Mediterranean in a more original form. The Semitic peoples outside of Babylonia founded no lasting empires, and showed no great aptitude for art or for literary style; but, in point of religion, they communicated to the world impulses of immeasurable force, which will act powerfully on the world as long as the Prophet is named or Christ preached.
It is possible to define to a certain extent the typical religion of the Semites. The Burnett lectures of the late lamented Professor Robertson Smith1 profess to do this; a book in which great learning and bold speculation are remarkably combined, and which forms one of the most important contributions to the early history, not of Semitic religion only, but of early religion in general. The writer was keenly interested in the study of prehistoric man and of primitive institutions, and much of his book refers to an earlier period in the growth of religion than that of the formation of the Semitic type. On the question of the specific character of Semitic as distinguished from other religions, it is one of our principal authorities.
1 Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. First Series. The Fundamental Institutions, 1889.
The Semitic races differ from the Indo-European, with whom alone we need compare them, in their greater intensity of disposition and a corresponding poverty of imagination. The Semite has a smaller range of ideas, but he applies them more practically and more thoroughly. He has, indeed, an intensely practical turn, and does not touch philosophy except under an irresistible pressure of great practical ideas; while for plastic art he has no native inclination. From this it follows that the religious views he entertains appear to him less as ideas than as facts, which must be reckoned with to their full extent as other common facts of life must, and from which there is no escape. His religious convictions, therefore, are apt to be carried out to their utmost extent, even at the cost of great and painful sacrifices. Religion admits with the Semite of less compromise, and is less affected by fancy, than with the Aryan; it is, in fact, a more practical matter. The result proves to be that the Semitic mind brings religious ideas to bear on life and conduct with the greatest possible force; the substance is more, the form less, than is the case elsewhere.
When we ask for the common type of working Semitic religion, where are we to look for it? Not in Babylonia; the characteristic Babylonian religion is Semitic, but late Semitic; it has received the impress of high civilisation and of empire. Nor need we look for it in the town life of Phenicia. It is in the seclusion of the Arabian peninsula that we find it, in the district, as we saw, now regarded as the cradle of the Semitic race, where life continues to this day little changed from what it was before the days of Abraham. There the type of society still exists with which scholars like Wellhausen and Smith consider the earliest Semitic religion to be connected. It is a society of nomad clans, which own no allegiance to any central authority, which have no king and do not yet form a nation. This is a stage of social growth which in every ancient people precedes the rise of the nation and of monarchy. The Hebrews are rising out of this stage when we first see them. Their neighbours the Moabites and Canaanites have already passed beyond it. But all these peoples alike have their root in a state of society when there was no large and orderly community, but only a multitude of small and restless tribes, when there was no written law, but only custom, and when there was no central authority to execute justice, but it was left to a man's fellow-clansmen to avenge his murder.
Now the religion of the clan, the ideas of which determine the character of later Semitic systems, may be briefly described as follows. Each clan has its own god, perhaps he was originally an animal, at any rate he is the father or ancestor of the clan, he is of the same blood with them, he belongs to them and to no other clan. So far the assertion that the Semites are naturally monotheists is true; but the same is true of all totemistic or clannish communities. A man is born into a community with such a divine head, and the worship of that god is the only one possible to him. Should he be expelled from his clan he is driven away from his god, and he cannot obtain access into another clan except by a formal adoption as a stranger client. The link, on the other hand between the god and his clansmen is of the strongest. He joins in all their enterprises, after being consulted on the subject, and having a sacrifice offered to him, which renews the union of the clansmen to him and to each other. Their wars are his wars; when any of them is injured or slain he joins in their necessary acts of retaliation; it is a religious duty for each of them to be faithful to the others, and to keep up the tribal customs, of which the god approves.
Thus the Semites have as many gods as they have clans; and these gods do not greatly differ from each other. As long, moreover, as the clans are at constant feud, no single god can grow very great. It is only when one clan conquers others, that a king-god can arise to rule over all alike as a monarch rules over his nobles and their provinces. But in this type of deity the genius of Semitic religion is already expressed. The god of the Semite is not a nature-power who bears the same aspect to all men, but a member of a particular clan, a person to whom the clansman occupies the same position of natural subordination as he does to his father or his chief. The god takes his name not from a part of nature but from a human relationship. He is "Baal," master or owner, he is "Adon," lord; in later circumstances he is "Melech," king. "El," mighty one, hero, is a more generic term; like our "God," it is applied to any divine being. These deities, it will be noticed, are all masculine; but it is not to be supposed that the Semites had no goddesses. Not to speak of the goddesses of Babylonia, mere doubles of the gods whose names they bore (see above), the earliest Semites are believed by several great scholars to have had a goddess but no god. The matriarchal state of society, in which the mother alone ruled the family, came before the patriarchal, and so the reign of the goddess came before that of the god. Each community has its own Al-lat, "The Lady," as she is called in Arabia, a strict and exacting lady, not to be confounded with the licentious goddesses of later times; and in all Semitic lands traces of her early prevalence are found.2 As the male god came to the front, the female became a less definite figure, till she was generally a mere counterpart of the male god, with little character of her own. With gods of this type there is little scope for mythology. The history of the god is that of the tribe; the gods are too little independent of their human clients to form a society by themselves, or to give rise to stories about their doings.
2 See Robertson Smith's Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia.
This is one side of the natural history of the Semitic gods; but that history has another side. The lands in which the Semites dwelt were full from the first of sacred spots; and we have to notice that the god of a clan is also the god of a certain piece of earth where he is supposed to dwell, which is regarded as his property, and the fertility of which is ascribed to his beneficence. In the Bible we read of sacred trees, of sacred wells, of sacred stones or mounds, and of stones or pillars which were connected with sacrifice. In various Semitic lands there are also sacred streams and sacred caves. The Semites in fact had their share of the inheritance the whole world has derived from the earliest times, of prehistoric religious sites and objects. A spirit spoke in the rustling of the branches of the tree, counsel could be procured at the spring; wherever there appeared to be something mysterious in nature, a spirit was believed to dwell; and especially in woods and fertile spots, where wild beasts originally had their lair, a spirit was thought to reside, which was approached with fear. Many of these superstitions the various branches of the Semites long continued to hold;3 but the race superseded in the main this world of spirits by a set of gods, and the magic addressed to spirits by religious observances addressed to gods. The genius or jinn haunting the thicket, who had no regular worshippers, but was an object of fear to all, and had to be propitiated or controlled by mysterious arts, gave way to the god of a clan, who took up his residence there, and received the regular worship of his clansmen; the stone became the symbol of a deity who had been asked and had consented to become identified with it for the purpose of the stated rites of the clan. In this way the clan gods became localised as the clans tended to acquire fixed settlements, and each sacred spot was occupied by the deity of the clan who dwelt around it. The view was held that each god was to be found at the spot where, on some marked occasion, he had given evidence of his power, and he who wished to enquire of that god had to go there. It might happen that the god manifested his power at another spot to one of his dependents on a journey, as Jehovah did to Jacob at Bethel (Genesis xxviii.). Then that spot also was recognised as a holy one where communication could be had with the deity, and the apparatus of worship was erected there so that the intercourse might be suitably carried on, as Jacob is reported to have done. In time also it came to be thought that each god had his land which belonged to him, on which alone his worship was possible, and so the earth was parcelled out among a number of deities; and Naaman, who wishes to worship Jehovah in his Syrian home, carries off two mules' burden of Jehovah's soil, to make in the midst of Syria a little piece of the land of the God of Israel (2 Kings v.).
3 The late Professor Ives Curtius in a paper read to the Basel Congress (1905, Verhandlungen, p. 154), on "Traces of Early Semitic Religion in Syria," gives details of local sanctuaries still resorted to in that country.
One circumstance remains to be mentioned which constitutes a marked difference between the Semitic and the Aryan religions. Aryan religion has its centre in the household; the hearth is its altar, and the gods of the domestic cult are the departed ancestors of the family. Semitic religion is without this cult; the hearth is not an altar; the religious community is not the family but the clan. The worship of ancestors, if, as there is reason to believe, it had once been practised by the Semites (the Arabs tied a camel to the grave of the dead chief), lost at a very early period all practical importance. While the early Semites believed in the continued existence of the departed, they thought of them as beings quite destitute of energy, as "shades laid in the ground," and did not worship them. The other world occupied, therefore, a very small space in Semitic thought. Religion confined itself to this life; after death, it was held, even religion came to an end. A man must enjoy the society of his god in this life; after death he could take part in no sacrifice, and could render to his god no thanks nor service.
From what has been said the character of sacrifice among the Semites is readily understood. Sacrifice is not domestic but takes place at the spot where the god is thought to reside, or where the symbol stands which represents him. Usually this was an upright monolith, such as is found in every part of the world, and the central act of the sacrifice consisted in applying the blood of the new-slain victim to this stone. The blood was thus brought near to the god, the clansmen also may have touched the blood at the same time; and the act meant that the god and the tribesmen, all coming into contact with the blood, which originally perhaps was that of the animal totem of the clan, declared that they were of the same blood, and renewed the bond which connected them with each other. A further feature of early Semitic sacrifice is also that the slaughter and the blood ceremony are succeeded by a banquet, at which the god is thought to sit at table with his clients, his share being exposed for him on the stone or altar. When he came to be believed to dwell aloft, his share was burned with fire so that the smell or finer essence of it might ascend to him. Many examples may be collected in the early historical books of the Old Testament of sacrifices which are at the same time social and festive occasions; in fact, in early Israel every act of slaughter was a sacrifice, and every sacrifice a banquet. The people dance and make merry before their god, of whose favour they have just become assured once more by the act of communion they have observed. The undertaking they have on hand is hallowed by his approval, so that they can boldly advance to it; the corporate spirit of the tribe is quickened by renewed contact with its head; all thoughts of care are far away; the religious act makes the worshippers simply and unaffectedly happy, if it does not even fill them with an orgiastic ecstasy.
This careless happiness, in connection with religious acts, is found also in Babylonian sacrifice. It is not, however, peculiar to the Semites, but is characteristic of the religion of the early world in general. Nor is it peculiar to this race that religion does not address the individual as such, but only as a member of his tribe, and that it provides small comfort for private sorrows or longings. The sad face is out of place in the presence of the god. Religion is essentially a happy thing; sin is not yet thought of, and if things go wrong, the tribe never entertains any doubt but that with proper sacrifices and promises the god will show them his favour again and renew their prosperity. All this is not specially Semitic, but simply early religion. What is specially Semitic is, to repeat that with which we set out, that gods are worshipped whose relations to their worshippers are borrowed from existing forms of society. The god is the father or the master or the champion, of the circle of worshippers; he is of their kindred, he is their greatest and strongest clansman, he belongs to them and to none but them. This, whether it is derived—as Professor Robertson Smith thinks—from the ideas of totemism or not, leads to a religion which is exclusive and intense, and cannot be trifled with. The god who is a man's master, and the head of his clan, stands in a more imperative position towards him than the god of the sky, or than a departed ancestor. He does not change with the seasons or the weather, nor is there any doubt as to his intentions and demands. Semitic religion, even at this stage, is a very real thing, and may easily, in favouring circumstances, become a force of overmastering energy.
Hommel, Die Semitischen Völker und Sprachen.
"Semites," by McCurdy, in Hastings' Bible Dictionary, vol. v.
Cumont, Les Religions orientales dans la Paganisme Romain, 1907.
When the Children of Israel crossed the Jordan and settled in Palestine, they found that country inhabited by a race of men who spoke the same language as themselves, and who were much further advanced than they in civilisation. The letters of El-Amarna which belong to this period show Syria to have been full of small theocratic states, all pervaded, though now under the power of Egypt, by Babylonian culture, each with a god and a settled worship of its own. The Israelites of a later time regarded the Canaanites with such disdain that they reckoned them (Genesis x. 6, 15) as belonging to an inferior race; but the two peoples belonged to the same race, and had many common ideas and practices. In religion they resembled each other, or Israel could never have been tempted so strongly, and for so long a period, to adopt the rites of the people they conquered.
The Israelites were not the only people who invaded the land of the Canaanites and stayed in it. Three such invasions took place: those of the Phenicians, of the Philistines, and of the Hebrews—the first and third being Semitic peoples, and perhaps the second also. The Philistines, settling on the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean, had a Semitic religion, of which the fish-god Dagon, the Fly-Baal of Ekron, and the Ashtoreth, probably of Ascalon, are known figures. The Philistines, however, lost ultimately their separate character, and ceased to exist as an independent people. It will not be necessary for us to mention them again. The Phenicians, settling on the northern sea-board of Syria, where great trade routes to East and West converged, and where good harbours could be made, became a nation of merchants, and kept up active communication with the great kingdoms of the East, with Egypt, and with the islands and the distant shores of Western Europe. The carriers of the ancient world, they transmitted to Europe not only the spices and the fabrics but also the ideas and the practices of Asia, and rendered to the world the inestimable service of awaking the slumbering energies of the Aryan peoples to new life.
A short chapter may be devoted to the religion of the Canaanites and to that of the Phenicians, not because these were important in themselves, for in neither was there anything original or anything destined to survive, but because of the light they throw on other religions which were to have a great career. It was in conflict with the Canaanite religion that the faith of Israel first realised its true nature and was led to organise itself in a manner befitting its character. And from Phenicia both Israel and Greece accepted many a suggestion, both in external matters connected with worship and in matters of a deeper nature.
The religion of the Canaanites is well known to us from the Old Testament. It is such a system as we found that of the Semites to be, with certain peculiar developments, of which we have already seen something in our chapter on Babylonia. A local community recognises an invisible head, with whom it meets at the sacred spot, whom it regards as overlord or master, of whose favour it is in no doubt, and whom it serves with sacrifices and with lively manifestations of joy at certain fixed periods. The god is called Baal. This, however, is not a proper name but a title; it means lord, master, and the Baal may have a name of his own in addition: we hear of Baal Peor, the lord of Peor, and of many another. Baals are spoken of in the plural; we read in Judges ii. 11 and in other passages that the Israelites followed the Baals, that is the gods of the Canaanites. Each place has its own Baal, who is worshipped at the local sanctuary. The sanctuary is at an elevated spot outside the town or village, either on a natural eminence or on a mound artificially made for the purpose; these are the "high places" of the Old Testament; originally Canaanite places of worship, they drew to themselves also the worship of Israel. The apparatus of worship at these shrines is of a very simple nature. An upright stone represents the god; it is not a statue of him, being unhewn and having no resemblance to the human figure. He was supposed to come to the stone when meeting with his worshippers; and in the earliest times of Semitic religion this stone served the purpose of an altar: the gifts, which were not originally burned, were laid upon it, or the blood of the victim was applied to it. But besides the altar and the upright stone or massebah the Canaanite shrine had another piece of furniture. A massive tree-trunk, fixed in the ground and with some of its branches perhaps still remaining, represented the female deity who is the invariable companion of the Baal. This is the Ashera of Canaan, a word which in the Authorised Version is translated "grove," after an error of the Vulgate, but which in the Revised Version is rightly left untranslated. (Judges iii. 7, vi. 25; 2 Kings xxiii. 6, there is one in the Temple at Jerusalem; etc.) The word Ashera is in such passages the designation of the tree which stood to represent the goddess; whether it is ever the proper name of the goddess herself is doubtful. At any rate Ashera, like Baal, is not the name of one historic deity, but a name applied to the goddess of each place all over the country.
The character of Canaanite religion is clearly revealed in its apparatus of worship. We saw that the Babylonians added to many of the gods of their country a female counterpart, turning the name of the god into a feminine form (see above, and also). In Canaan we find that Semitic worship is addressed to pairs of deities; there is a god and a goddess at each shrine. While it would be wrong to regard this as the general type of Semitic religion,—our chapter on that subject points to a different conclusion, and the great gods of Phenicia, of Moab, and of Israel are solitary beings,—we must recognise that the worship of god and goddess was widespread in Semitic peoples. In Canaan it is not difficult to understand it. We have here the worship of an agricultural community; and as the Baal is the lord of the soil and the author of its fertility, who is entitled to receive the first-fruits, so the Ashera is the fertile matron who represents the principle of increase. The Old Testament leaves us in no doubt as to the kind of worship which was carried on at these shrines. The festivals were those of the farmer's calendar; the Baal is presented with the first-fruits of corn and wine and oil, in the midst of general feasting and boisterous merry-making. His consort, on the other hand, is served with rites applying in the most direct manner the principle she represents. The shrine has a staff of female attendants for this part of the service of religion. The rustic worship of Palestine thus shows us a side of the religion of Western Asia which we know from other sources to have been widely diffused. A female deity like the Babylonian Ishtar (see above), is served with impure rites in great cities as well as in country districts, and her worship spread westwards with other Eastern products. She is found as Baalit, as Mylitta,1 as Astarte; the Greeks call her Aphrodite, and her horrid worship found entrance in various Greek cities.
1 Herod. i. 199.
To the Israelites the worship of Canaan proved a great temptation (Numbers xxv.), but they gradually rose above it. The Phenicians also came to have gods of a much higher character, and of these also we must speak. The Phenicians were not original in their religion any more than in their art; their religion began with the ordinary Semitic notions as these had been applied by the older population in Syria, and they improved it by borrowing from various parts of the world with which they trafficked. So various were their borrowings that it is impossible to draw up a consistent system of their gods. One town has one set of gods, another town another, and the same deity wears different and even opposite characters in different places. All that can be done is to single out a few features which we can see to have been on the whole characteristic of Phenician religion, and to have enabled it to influence the worship of other peoples.
The Phenicians were very much in earnest about the maintenance of state and of religion. In their successive city-states of Sidon, Tyre, and Carthage, we see them exhibiting an intense devotion to the commonwealth, and very much under the influence of their priesthood. Semitic religion tends to grow more sombre and intense as it develops; and the Phenicians, while still holding the principle of a god and goddess, concentrate their worship more and more on a single divine figure, and come to regard that figure from a greater distance and with greater awe. The liberal and easy-going Baals and Asheras of agricultural life are not suited to the temple of a great commercial city; a figure of more dignity is wanted. And thus above the crowd of Baals there appears the Moloch or king, a much greater being and requiring a much statelier service. Moloch also is not originally a proper name; there are various Molochs or king-gods who rise above the Baals, and the individuals have special designations, as Melcarth, "king of the city." This type of deity occurs not with the Phenicians only, but with several other Syrian peoples about the same time. The Moloch of Sidon and Tyre is a being of the same character as the chief gods of Moab, Ammon, and Israel. He has to do not only with the blessings of agricultural life, but with state and government. He is the founder of a state; he is the inventor of navigation and of purple; he is the first king; when a colony is sent out, it goes with his approval, and he himself leads the expedition; he is the dread ruler whom none must disobey; the majesty, the power, and the enterprise of the state are all embodied in him. And as the king-god is far above the landlord-god in power, he is infinitely removed from him in character also. The chief gods of Sidon and Tyre have nothing luxurious or effeminate about them. They are strict and awful beings, and must not be incautiously approached. They retain their primitive character as sources of life, but they are destroyers of life as well. Pure and holy themselves, they require purity and holiness in all who draw near to them. Their priests are celibates, their priestesses virgins. They require sacrifices of a very different nature from those of the Baals, more costly and more dreadful. Human sacrifices appear to have been a regular feature of their worship: when the Israelites turn to the worship of Phenician gods, or when they copy Phenician practices, we hear of their "making their children pass through the fire"—that is, offering them up as burnt-sacrifices. The Moloch requires what is most costly as a sacrifice, or what will cause the strongest thrill of terror in his worship. Even the first-born child is not to be kept back from him (2 Kings xxiii. 10, Jerem. vii. 31, cf. Micah vi. 7).
So far the origin of the Phenician gods is simple. They are purely Semitic deities, formed on the pattern of human rulers and deriving their attributes from that character. When a state becomes highly organised before it is quite civilised in other respects, its religion is apt to be stern and cruel; of this various instances may be found in the history of religion, and the present is one of them. The Phenician gods were of such a character as to favour the survival of savage practices; the Semite, as we saw, is extremely matter-of-fact and practical in his religion, and a god who was a king would receive the same kind of offerings as the king of Sidon or of Tyre was accustomed to. A strict and dreadful religion thus survives beyond the savage state; pleasure is taken in trampling on natural feelings and in setting forth shocking spectacles at the bidding of the deity.
Astral Deities of Phenicia.—It is not possible to arrange in a system the remaining phenomena of Phenician religion. In the historical period the gods have another character besides that of being heads and rulers of communities. They are connected with the heavenly bodies. The chief god, whatever name he bears, El, Baal, Moloch, Rimmon, or Adonis, is always the sun. A sun-god may have come from Egypt or Babylon, but there is no reason why the Phenicians may not have had a sun-god from the first, whose character spread to their other deities. And in accordance with the tendency above spoken of, the sun-god has a consort. Sometimes his consort is the earth; and then we have a sensuous and immoral worship such as that of the Canaanites. Sometimes it is the moon; her name is Astarte or Ashtoreth, and she is a very different being from the Ashera of Canaan; the names are not the same, and the characters are opposite. Ashtoreth, like the primitive Semitic goddess (see above), is a chaste matron; she is represented robed and in stately attitude, and is a fit companion for the strict Moloch of the cities. Her worship is described to us by Jeremiah, in whose time the matrons of Jerusalem made cakes for her and poured out drink-offerings and burned incense to her as the "queen of heaven"; all this was done with the knowledge and co-operation of their husbands, so that the worship had nothing immoral about it. This strict goddess is not to be identified with Istar of Babylonia, although the names are alike. Istar is not a moon-goddess like Ashtoreth; in Babylonia, in fact, the moon is masculine, and the characters of the two goddesses are opposite. The Sidonian Astarte and the Canaanite Ashera represent two opposing types of female deity, both of which may possibly have their reflections in Greece—the latter in the lower forms of the worship of Aphrodite, and the former in the figures of such strict maiden goddesses as Artemis and Athene.
Another worship which prevailed in Phenicia should not be left unnoticed—that of the Cabiri. There were temples of the Cabiri in several of the towns; their worship, however, was secret, and little was known of it even in antiquity. We know at all events that the Cabiri were seven in number, and the number is thought to be connected, not with the seven planets, but with the seven heavenly spheres of early astronomy. They have a head called Eshmun, who is the god of the eighth or highest sphere. The Cabiri are beings of a moral character; they are not only mighty ones and creators, but they are the children of Sydyk—that is, of Righteousness; and they give counsel. It is here that the tendency to speculative exaltation of the deity appears in Phenicia; but there is little of it, and neither in this direction nor in that of morals was the religion destined to have any remarkable growth. The service of the gods was so closely identified with the service of the state,—for either the priest and the king were one, as in Israel after the exile, or nothing could be done without the priesthood,—that no independent religious development was possible. In a theocracy religion cannot grow, at least it cannot be openly acknowledged to do so; and the prophet and reformer finds every influence arrayed against him.
How greatly Israel was indebted to Phenician art is known to all. It was by artificers from Tyre that Solomon's royal buildings were planned and executed, when he had married a daughter of Egypt and was compelled to aim at some magnificence. A royal temple formed part of these buildings, and was necessarily erected according to the ideas which prevailed in the more advanced neighbouring kingdoms. It was from the same source that the Greeks a century or two later drew suggestions for their sacred architecture; and thus we find that the ground-plan of Solomon's temple and that of the Greek temple are closely similar. Both are to be traced ultimately to the model derived by the Phenicians from Egypt. And those who borrowed from Phenicia the form of their temple, borrowed many other things too. In the porch of Solomon's temple stood two great pillars of bronze, which were called Jachin and Boaz; they were simply the symbols which stood at the entrance to every Phenician temple of the sun-god worshipped there. The priests of Israel were dressed like those of Tyre and Sidon; they offered the same animals as sacrifices, they received the same dues for their maintenance. When so much apparatus was borrowed, it is no wonder that the gods of Phenicia were at times worshipped at Jerusalem. We see from this whole chapter that the religion of Israel was not so much apart from that of the other Syrian peoples as we have been wont to imagine. Even in his religion Israel owed something to his neighbours; his religion came to be better than theirs, but it was the result of a movement in which they also had taken part.
The Histories of Antiquity. E. Meyer, Duncker (see p. 101).
Tiele's Egyptische en Mesopotamische Godsdiensten. Book II.: Phenicia and Israel.
The Histories of Israel, especially Kuenen, The Religion of Israel.
F. Jeremias, in De la Saussaye, vol. i. pp. 348-383.
E. Meyer, "Phenicia," in Encyclopædia Biblica.
It is a circumstance of the greatest value for the science of religion that the Old Testament is so well known. That book is the most valuable literary storehouse we possess of the facts and ideas connected with the early religion of mankind; it is the best text-book of the earlier portion of our subject. In our chapters on primitive worship, as well as in that on the Semites, we have drawn largely from this source, and for the earlier stages of the religion of Israel we may refer to these chapters. We have now, however, to deal specially with the religion of the Old Testament, and to endeavour to show, as has been done in other cases, what was its specific character, and how its character determined its history. The story to be told in this chapter is, even apart from our special interest in it, as fascinating as any in this volume; it was through a mental movement of unparalleled grandeur, as well as through an outward history of tragic and entrancing interest, that the Jews came to possess the religion which was the desire of all nations, and the chief preparation for Christianity.
We have to begin, however, with repeating in this case what has been and will be the burden of our opening paragraphs in many chapters of this book, namely that the traditional ideas about the nature of this religion require to be corrected, and that its sacred books as they now stand do not accurately represent its history. The Old Testament literature has suffered in a high degree what seems to be the predestined fate of every set of sacred books. Old materials and new are mixed up together in it; many works have been revised by later editors, and so much changed, that laborious critical processes are necessary before they can be used by the historian. In forming his first impressions as to the relations the books bear to each other, and as to the purport of the whole, the reader is naturally guided by the order in which he finds them; but the order in which the sacred books of the Jews stand in the Old Testament was fixed from a peculiar point of view at a late age in Jewish history, and is in many respects quite unnatural and misleading. To come to particulars; the Old Testament as it stands suggests that the Law was the earliest product of Jewish literature, and that all the details of ritual, as well as of moral and social duty, were fixed for the Jews at the very outset of their history; and it suggests that the books of the prophets were written last. This, till quite recently, was generally believed to be the case, but by the labours of a series of illustrious scholars of the Old Testament the conclusion has been reached, which is now less and less disputed, that the earlier prophetic books come first in chronological order, and that the law, which is not all of one piece, but contains a number of codes of different periods, together with a collection of legends and traditions drawn from various quarters and subjected to editorial treatment, did not assume the form in which we have it till after the exile. The historical books, in which no doubt various ancient pieces are embodied, were written under the inspiration of prophetic ideas; and the latest books of all are those which stand in the centre of the Old Testament in the English Bible; the Psalter, which had been growing during a long period before it came to contain its present number of pieces, the books of morals and philosophy, and the book of Job. Daniel belongs to the period of the Maccabees. The historian, therefore, starts from the age of the prophets of the eighth century B.C. The writings of these great men afford a graphic picture of their time, and an entirely trustworthy account of the mental furniture Israel then possessed. From this fixed point the student is able to infer what happened to Israel in earlier times, and to judge of the spirit in which the early history of the people was afterwards written and edited. The history of Israel which the student arrives at after these critical processes differs, it is true, in very important respects from that which appears at first sight on the face of the Bible. But the same thing has occurred in the case of other nations. The sacred books of Persia also have to be turned outside in before they furnish the historian with an account he can accept. Even of the speeches of Mohammed the same is true. Those who undertake the task of codifying sacred literatures have to consider the purpose to which the books are to be put in the community, and to arrange them so as best to serve that purpose; they do not ask, How must they be arranged so as to exhibit the true sequence of the history?—that interest only arises much later—but, How will they best serve the needs of the community? The order of books in sacred collections is, therefore, fixed by practical considerations, now of one kind and now of another, and not according to the requirements of the student of history. We now proceed to give the outline of the history of the religion of Israel as it appears in the light of recent critical investigation.
Israel consisted originally of a group of tribes, bound together by the memory of a great deliverance they had experienced in common, and of battles in which they had fought side by side. Accustomed to the free life of shepherds, they had been enslaved in Egypt and held to intolerable tasks; but they had made their escape in a wonderful manner under a leader who had known how to kindle them to heroic efforts by reminding them of their religious traditions. Under his leadership they had visited the Sinaitic peninsula after leaving Egypt, and had wandered in the regions to the north of Sinai, till at last they conquered territory to the east of Jordan, on which some of them settled, while others crossed the Jordan, and took up their abodes among the Canaanite tribes whom they found there.
The nation and the religion came into the world at the same time. Although the tribes retained their separate gods and religious observances, and families among them also had their own family cults, the bond by which they had been formed into a people and made capable of common action was stronger than these earlier ties; the God whom Moses proclaimed as their head inspired in them an enthusiasm and vigour unknown before. His name was Yahweh, and is said to have a metaphysical meaning, and to designate the god as more really existing than any other. This is doubted; what is certain is that Moses declared that Yahweh promised to be with the tribes, and that they took him for their God. Jehovah, to use the more familiar form of the name, was perhaps the God of the most powerful of the tribes; he was probably a nature-god, and connected with storms and thunder, and he had his seat at Mount Sinai. Thither the tribes repaired to hold a solemn meeting with him; from there he was afterwards represented as coming forth when about to do any mighty act for his people. He is thought of as a being who cannot be seen, since he dwells in clouds and darkness. He utters his voice in thunder and storm; he is possessed of irresistible energy which he unfolds in battle, and in which he causes his people to share when he goes before them to war. But he is also a god of counsel, and takes the greatest interest in the moral and social life of his people. His human representatives, aided by his spirit, settle disputes which are laid before them, and pronounce authoritative counsels on difficult matters. This kind of guidance is constantly going on, so that Jehovah is felt to be watching over the conduct of his people, and to be an effective helper and guide in their domestic concerns, which not every god attends to, as well as in their meetings with their enemies.
The Early Ritual was Simple.—In all this we have a very apt example of the advance which, as we saw in a former chapter, religion makes when it becomes national instead of merely tribal; when the great god of the nation takes his place above the gods of the tribes. In Israel, however, it is not the case that the national religion, when it appears, at once develops a higher style of worship, and draws attention to itself by greater pomp and deeper solemnity of form. The priestly legislation of Exodus and Leviticus, indeed, represents this as having been the case. Here the tribes have scarcely adopted the service of Jehovah, when an army of thousands of priests is called into being, for whose maintenance elaborate provision is made, and a splendid and highly-organised worship is arranged. This directory of worship, however, most scholars are agreed, never was in operation till after the exile: we see in it the worship which Ezra and his fellow-scribes aimed at introducing in the second temple at Jerusalem. The worship of the wilderness and of the early period of Israel in Canaan was of a very different nature. The leading features and principles of it differed little from what we have described in former parts of this book (see above sqq., and also). It was conducted according to custom rather than statute, and its leading characteristic was that it was a common meal at which the god was present along with his worshippers, and assurances were given that the good understanding still continued which bound the tribesmen to their god and each other. It was by the person of his god rather than by a more elaborate worship, or a more numerous priesthood, that Israel was distinguished from Moab and Ammon.