THE
RELIGION OF ANCIENT
PALESTINE

PREFACE

The following pages deal with the religion of Ancient Palestine, more particularly in the latter half of the Second Millennium, B.C. They touch upon the problem of the rise and development of Israelite religion; a problem, however, which does not lie within the scope of the present sketch (pp. 4, 114 sq.). The Amarna tablets, Egyptian records, and the results of recent excavation form the foundation, and the available material has been interpreted in the light of comparative religion. The aim has been to furnish a fairly self-contained description of the general religious conditions from external or non-biblical sources, and this method has been adopted partly on account of the conflicting opinions which prevail among those who have investigated the theology of the Old Testament in its relation to modern research. Every effort has been made to present the evidence accurately and fairly; although lack of space has prevented discussion of the more interesting features of the old Palestinian religion and of the various secondary problems which arose from time to time. Some difficulty has been caused by the absence of any more or less comprehensive treatment of the subject; although, from the list of authorities at the end it will be seen that the most important sources have only quite recently become generally accessible. These, and the few additional bibliographical references given in the footnotes are far from indicating the great indebtedness of the present writer to the works of Oriental scholars and of those who have dealt with comparative religion. Special acknowledgements are due to Mr. F. Ll. Griffith, M.A., Reader in Egyptology, University of Oxford; to the Rev. C. H. W. Johns, M.A., Lecturer in Assyriology, Queen's College, Cambridge, and King's College, London; and to Mr. R. A. S. Macalister, M.A., F.S.A., Director of the Palestine Exploration Fund's excavations at Gezer. These gentlemen enhanced their kindness by reading an early proof, and by contributing valuable suggestions and criticisms. But the responsibility for all errors of statement and opinion rests with the present writer.

STANLEY A. COOK.

July 1908.

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I.  INTRODUCTORY:

The Subject—Method—Survey of Period and Sources—The Land and People, . . . 1-12

II.  SACRED SITES:

The Sanctuary of Gezer—Other Sacred Places—Their Persistence—The Modern Places of Cult, . . . 13-23

III.  SACRED OBJECTS:

Trees—Stones—Images and Symbols, . . . 24-32

IV.  SACRED RITES AND PRACTICES:

General Inferences—Disposal of the Dead—Jar-burial—Human Sacrifice—Foundation Sacrifice—Importance of Sacrifice—Broken Offerings—'Holy' and 'Unclean'—Sacred Animals, . . . 33-49

V.  THE WORLD OF SPIRITS:

Awe—Charms—Oracles—Representatives of Supernatural Powers—The Dead—Animism—The Divinity of Kings—Recognised Gods, . . . 50-65

VI.  THE GODS:

Their Vicissitudes—Their Representative Character—In Political Treaties and Covenants—The Influence of Egypt—Treatment of Alien Gods, . . . 66-82

VII.  THE PANTHEON:

Asiatic Deities in Egypt—Sutekh—Baal—Resheph—Kadesh—Anath—Astarte—Ashirta—Sun-deity—(Shamash)—Moon-god (Sin)—Addu (Hadad)—Dagon—Nebo—Ninib—Shalem—Gad—'Righteousness'—Nergal —Melek—Yahweh (Jehovah), . . . 83-97

VIII.  CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT:

Miscellaneous Ideas—The Underlying Identity of Thought—Influence of Babylonia—Conclusion, . . . 98-115

PRINCIPAL SOURCES AND WORKS OF REFERENCE, . . . 116

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, . . . 118

INDEX, . . . 119

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

The Subject.—By the Religion of Ancient Palestine is meant that of the Semitic land upon which was planted the ethical monotheism of Judaism. The subject is neither the growth of Old Testament theology, nor the religious environment of the Israelite teachers: it anticipates by several centuries the first of the great prophets whose writings have survived, and it takes its stand in the second millennium B.C., and more especially in its latter half. It deals with the internal and external religious features which were capable of being shaped into the forms with which every one is familiar, and our Palestine is that of the Patriarchs, of Moses, Joshua, and the Judges, an old land which modern research has placed in a new light.

Successive discoveries of contemporary historical and archæological material have made it impossible to ignore either the geographical position of Palestine, which exposes it to the influence of the surrounding seats of culture, or its political history, which has constantly been controlled by external circumstances. Although Palestine reappears as only a small fraction of the area dominated by the ancient empires of Egypt and Western Asia, the uniqueness of its experiences can be more vividly realised. If it is found to share many forms of religious belief and custom with its neighbours, one is better able to sever the features which were by no means the exclusive possession of Israel from those which were due to specific influences shaping them to definite ends, and the importance of the little land in the history of humanity can thereby be more truly and permanently estimated.

Method.—Although Palestine was the land of Judaism and of Christianity, and has subsequently been controlled by Mohammedanism, it has preserved common related elements of belief, which have formed, as it were, part of the unconscious inheritance of successive generations. They have not been ousted by those positive religions which traced their origin to deliberate and epoch-making innovators, and they survive to-day as precious relics for the study of the past. Indeed, the comparative method, which investigates points of resemblance and difference among widely-severed peoples, can avail itself in our case of Oriental conservatism, and may range over a single but remarkably extensive field. From the archæology and inscriptions of Ancient Babylonia to Punic Carthage, from the Old Testament to the writings of Rabbinical Judaism, from classical, Syrian, and Arabian authors to the observations of medieval and modern travellers, one may accumulate a store of evidence which is mutually illustrative or supplementary. But it would be incorrect to assume that every modern belief or rite in Palestine, for example, necessarily represents the old religion: there have been reversion and retrogression; some old practices have disappeared, others have been modified or have received a new interpretation. This warning is necessary, because one must be able to trace the paths traversed by the several rites and beliefs which have been arrested, before the religion of any age can be placed in its proper historical perspective. Unfortunately the sources do not permit us to do this for our period. The Old Testament, it is true, covers this period, and its writers frequently condemn the worship which they regard as contrary to that of their national God. But the Old Testament brings with it many serious problems, and, for several reasons, it is preferable to approach the subject from external and contemporary evidence. Although its incompleteness has naturally restricted our treatment, the aim has been to describe, in as self-contained a form as possible, the general religious conditions to which this evidence points, and to indicate rather more incidentally its bearing upon the numerous questions which are outside the scope of the following pages.

Survey of Period and Sources.—Many different elements must have coalesced in the history of Palestinian culture from the days of the early palaeolithic and neolithic inhabitants. It is with no rudimentary people that we are concerned, but with one acquainted with bronze and exposed to the surrounding civilisations. The First Babylonian Dynasty, not to ascend further, brings with it evidence for relations between Babylonia and the Mediterranean coast-lands, and intercourse between Egypt and Palestine dates from before the invasion of the Hyksos.[1] With the expulsion of these invaders (about 1580 B.C.), the monarchs of Egypt enter upon their great campaigns in Western Asia, and Palestine comes before us in the clear light of history. The Egyptian records of the Eighteenth to Twentieth Dynasties furnish valuable information on the history of our period. Babylonia and Assyria lie in the background, and the rival parties are the kingdom of the Nile and the non-Semitic peoples of North Syria and Asia Minor ('Hittites') whose influence can probably be traced as far south as Jerusalem. Under Thutmose III. (fifteenth century) Egypt became the queen of the known world and the meeting-place of its trade and culture. But the northern peoples only awaited their opportunity, and fresh campaigns were necessary before Amenhotep III. (about 1400 B.C.) again secured the supremacy of Egypt. His successor, the idealist Amenhotep IV. (or Ikhnaton), is renowned for his temporary religious reform, and, at a time when Egypt's king was almost universally recognised, he established in Egypt what was practically a universal god. Meanwhile, amid internal confusion in Egypt, Hittites pressed downwards from Asia Minor, seriously weakening the earlier Hittite kingdom of Mitanni (North Syria and Mesopotamia). The cuneiform tablets discovered in 1887 at El-Amarna in Middle Egypt contain a portion of the diplomatic correspondence between Western Asia (from Babylonia to Cyprus) and the two Amenhoteps, and a few tablets in the same script and of about the same age have since been unearthed at Lachish and Taanach. It is at this age that we meet with the restless Khabiri, a name which suggests a connection with that of the 'Hebrews.' The progress of this later Hittite invasion cannot be clearly traced; at all events, Sety I. (Sethos, about 1320 B.C.) was obliged to recommence the work of his predecessors, but recovered little more than Palestine. Ramses II., after much fighting, was able to conclude a treaty with the Hittites (about 1290), the Egyptian version of which is now being supplemented by the Hittite records of the proceedings. Nevertheless, his successor, Merneptah, claims conquests extending from Gezer to the Hittites, and among those who 'salaamed' (lit. said 'peace') he includes the people (or tribe) Israel.

[1] For approximate dates, see the Chronological Table.

The active intercourse with the Aegean Isles during this age can be traced from Asia Minor to Egypt (notably at El-Amarna), and movements in the Levant had accompanied the pressure southwards from Asia Minor in the time of the Amenhoteps. A similar combination was defeated by Ramses III. (about 1200); among its constituents the Philistines may doubtless be recognised. But Egypt, now in the Twentieth Dynasty, was fast losing its old strength, and the internal history of Palestine is far from clear. Apart from the sudden extension of the Assyrian empire to the Mediterranean under Tiglath-pileser I. (about 1100 B.C.), no one great power, so far as is known, could claim supremacy over the west; and our period comes to an end at a time when Palestine, according to the Israelite historians, was laying the foundation of its independent monarchy.

Palestine has always been open to the roaming tribes from Arabia and the Syrian desert, tribes characteristically opposed to the inveterate practices of settled agricultural life. Arabia, however, possessed seats of culture, though their bearing upon our period cannot yet be safely estimated. But a temple with an old-established and contemporary cult, half Egyptian and half Semitic, has been recovered by Professor Petrie at Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinaitic Peninsula, and the archæological evidence frequently illustrates the results of the excavations in Palestine. Excavations have been undertaken at Tell el-Hesy (Lachish), at various sites in the lowlands of Judah (including Tell es-Sāfy, perhaps Gath), at Gezer, Taanach, and Tell el-Mutesellim (Megiddo), and, within the last few months, at Jericho. Much of the evidence can be roughly dated, and fortunately the age already illuminated by the Amarna tablets can be recognised. Its culture associates it with North Syria and Asia Minor, and reveals signs of intercourse with the Aegean Isles; but, as a whole, it is the result of a gradual development, which extends without abrupt gaps to the time of the Hebrew monarchy and beyond. Chronological dividing-lines cannot yet be drawn, and consequently the archæological evidence which illustrates the 'Amarna' age is not characteristic of that age alone.

The Land and People.—For practical purposes a distinction between Palestine and Syria is unnecessary, apart from the political results of their contiguity to Egypt and Asia Minor respectively. Egypt at the height of its power was a vast empire of unprecedented wealth and splendour, and the imported works of art or the descriptions of the spoils of war speak eloquently of the stage which material culture had reached throughout Western Asia. Even the small townships of Palestine and Syria—the average city was a small fortified site surrounded by dwellings, sometimes with an outer wall—could furnish rich booty of suits of armour, elegant furniture, and articles of gold and silver. The pottery shows some little taste, music was enjoyed, and a great tunnel hewn out of the rock at Gezer is proof of enterprise and skill. The agricultural wealth of the land was famous. Thutmose III. found grain 'more plentiful than the sand of the shore'; and an earlier and more peaceful visitor to N. Syria, Sinuhe (about 2000 B.C.), speaks of the wine more plentiful than water, copious honey, abundance of oil, all kinds of fruits, cereals, and numberless cattle. Sinuhe was welcomed by a sheikh who gave him his eldest daughter and allowed him to choose a landed possession. Life was simpler and less civilised than in Egypt, but not without excitement. He led the tribesmen to war, raiding pastures and wells, capturing the cattle, ravaging the hostile districts. Indeed, 'lions and Asiatics' were the familiar terror of Egyptian travellers, and the turbulence of the petty chieftains, whose intrigues and rivalries swell the Amarna letters, made any combined action among themselves exceptional and transitory. We gather from these letters that foreign envoys were provided with passports or credentials addressed to the 'Kings of Canaan,' to ensure their speedy and safe passage as they traversed the areas of the different local authorities. Such royal commissioners are already met with in the time of Sinuhe.

Egyptian monuments depict the people with a strongly marked Semitic physiognomy, and that physical resemblance to the modern native which the discovery of skeletons has since endorsed. We can mark their dark olive complexion; the men with pointed beards and with thick bushy hair, which is sometimes anointed, and the women with tresses waving loosely over their shoulders. The slender maidens were admired and sought after by the Egyptians, and later (in the Nineteenth Dynasty) we find the men in request as gardeners and artisans, and some even hold high positions in the administration of Egypt. The script and language of Babylonia were still in use in the fifteenth century, although the supremacy of that land belonged to the past; they were used in correspondence between Western Asia and Egypt, also among the Hittites, and even between the chieftains of Palestine. Apart from the tablets found at Lachish and Taanach, several were unearthed at Jericho, uninscribed and ready for use. But the native language in Palestine and Syria was one which stands in the closest relation to the classical Hebrew of the Old Testament, and it differed only dialectically from the Moabite inscription of Mesha (about 850 B.C.), the somewhat later Hamathite record of Ben-hadad's defeat, and the Phoenician inscriptions.

The general stock of ideas, too, was wholly in accord with Semitic, or rather, Oriental thought, and the people naturally shared the paradoxical characteristics of the old Oriental world:—a simplicity and narrowness of thought, intensity, fanaticism, and even ferocity.[2] To these must be added a keen imagination, necessarily quickened by the wonderful variety of Palestinian scenery, which ranges from rugged and forbidding deserts to enchanting valleys and forests. The life of the people depended upon the soil and the agricultural wealth, and these depended upon a climate of marked contrasts, which is found in some parts (e.g. the lower Jordan valley) to be productive of physical and moral enervation. In a word, the land is one whose religion cannot be understood without an attentive regard to those factors which were unalterable, and to those specific external influences which were focussed upon it in the entire course of the Second Millennium B.C. We touch the land at a particular period in the course of its very lengthy history; it is not the beginnings of its religion, but the stage it had reached, which concerns us.

[2] See Th. Nöldeke, Sketches from Eastern History (London, 1892), chap. i., 'Some Characteristics of the Semitic Race.'

CHAPTER II

SACRED SITES

The Sanctuary of Gezer.—Of the excavations in Palestine none have been so prolific or so fully described as those undertaken by Mr. Macalister on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund at Gezer. This ancient site lies about eighteen miles W.N.W. of Jerusalem, and, between its two knolls, on a commanding position, one of the most striking which Palestine can offer, were found the remains of a sanctuary whose history must have extended over several centuries. Gezer itself has thrown the strongest light upon the religion of the land, and a brief description of its now famous 'high-place' will form a convenient introduction to the cult and ritual of the period.

Looking eastwards we face eight rough monoliths, which stretch in a slightly concave line, about 75 feet in length, from north to south. They are erected upon a platform of stones about 8 feet wide; they vary from 5-½ ft. to 10 ft. in height, and have uniformly a fairer surface on the western (front) than on the eastern side. Number 1, on the extreme right, is the largest (10 ft. 2 in. high, and 4 ft. 7 in. by 2 ft. 6 in.). Next (No. 2), stands the smallest (5 ft. 5 in. high, 1 ft. 2 in. by 1 ft. 9 in.), whose pointed top with polished spots on the surface speaks of the reverent anointing, stroking and kissing which holy stones still enjoy at the present day. No. 7, the last but one on our extreme left, is of a limestone found around Jerusalem and in other districts, but not in the neighbourhood of Gezer. Under what circumstances this stone was brought hither can only be conjectured (see p. 80). The pillar (7 ft. 3 in. high, 2 ft. 10 in. by 1 ft. 3 in.) bears upon its front surface a peculiar curved groove; No. 1, too, has a groove across the top, and four in all have hollows or cup-marks upon their surfaces. Nos. 4 and 8 are more carefully shaped than the rest, and the latter stands in a circular socket, and is flanked on either side by the stumps of two broken pillars. Yet another stone lay fallen to the south of No. 1, and there is some reason to suppose that this and the unique No. 2 belonged to the earliest stage in the history of the sanctuary. In front of Nos. 5 and 6 is a square stone block (6 ft. 1 in. by 5 ft. by 2 ft. 6 in.), with a cavity (2 ft. 10 in. by 1 ft. 11 in. by 1 ft. 4 in.); a curved groove runs along the front (the western side) of the rim. It is disputed whether this stone held some idol, stele, or pillar; or whether it was a trough for ritual ablutions similar to those which Professor Petrie recognised at Serabit el-Khadem, or whether, again, it was a sacrificial block upon which the victim was slain.

In the area behind (east of) these monoliths are entrances leading to two large underground caverns which appear to have been used originally for habitation; their maximum diameters are about 40 ft. and 28 ft., and they extend nearly the whole length of the alignment. The caverns were connected by a passage, so short that any sound in one could be distinctly heard in the other, so small and crooked, that it is easy to imagine to what use these mysterious chambers could be put. In the larger cave a jar containing the skeleton of an infant rested upon a stone, and close by were the remains of an adult. Further behind the pillars was found a bell-shaped pit containing numerous animal and human bones. In a circular structure in front of pillars Nos. 7 and 8, the bronze model of a cobra lay amid potsherds and other debris. A little distance to the south in a bank of earth were embedded several broken human skulls, cow-teeth, etc.; the heads had evidently been severed before burial, and there was no trace of the bodies. Below the whole area, before and more particularly behind the pillars, several infants were found buried head-downwards in large jars; they were mostly new-born, and two, as also two older children, bore marks of fire. Finally, throughout the debris that had accumulated upon the floor of the sanctuary were innumerable objects typical of nature-worship, representations in low relief of the nude mother-goddess of Western Asia, and male emblems roughly made of limestone, pottery, bone, and other material.

Other Sacred Places.—Scarcely fifty yards to the south of these pillars was a rock-surface about ninety feet by eighty, covered with over eighty of the singular cup-marks or hollows which we have already observed. One little group surrounded by small standing-stones was connected by a drain which led to a subterranean cave. Here, too, was another almost concealed chamber, and the discovery of a number of bones of the swine (an animal seldom found elsewhere in Gezer) gave weight to the suggestion that mysterious rites were practised.

Although the monoliths of Gezer do not appear to have lost their sacred character until perhaps the sixth century B.C., they were not the only place of cult in the city. Above, on the eastern hill, were the remains of an elaborate building measuring about 100 ft. by 80 ft.. Its purpose was shown by the numerous religious emblems found within its precincts. In two circular structures were the broken fragments of the bones of sheep and goats—devoid of any signs of cooking or burning. Jars containing infants had been placed at the corners of some of the chambers; and below an angle of a courtyard close by, a pit underneath the corner-stone disclosed bones and potsherds, the latter bearing upon them the skull of a young girl.

At the north-east edge of the plateau of Tell es-Sāfy the excavations brought to light a building with monoliths; in the debris at their feet were the bones of camels, sheep and cows. At the east end of the hill of Megiddo, Dr. Schumacher found pillars with cup-marks enclosed in a small building about 30 ft. by 15 ft.; a block of stone apparently served as the sacrificial altar. Besides several amulets and small idols, at one of the corners were jars containing the skeletons of new-born infants. The structure belonged to a great series of buildings about 230 ft. long and 147 ft. broad. At the same site also was discovered a bare rock with hollows; it was approached by a step, and an entrance led to a subterranean abode containing human and other bones. At Taanach, Dr. Sellin found a similar place of sacrifice with cavities and channel; the rock-altar had a step on the eastern side, and close by were a number of flint-knives, jars with infants (ranging up to two years of age), and the remains of an adult.

Continued excavation will no doubt throw fuller light upon the old sacred places, their varying types, and their development; even the recent discovery of a small pottery model of the façade of a shrine is suggestive. It represents an open fore-court and a door-way on either side of which is a figure seated with its hands upon its knees. The figure wears what seems to be a high-peaked cap; it is presumably human, but the nose is curiously rounded, and one recalls the quaint guardians of the temple-front found in other parts of Western Asia.

Their Persistence.—Whether the choice of a sacred place was influenced by chance, by some peculiar natural characteristic, or by the impressiveness of the locality, nothing is more striking than its persistence. Religious practice is always conservative, and once a place has acquired a reputation for sanctity, it will retain its fame throughout political and even religious vicissitudes. The history of Gezer, for example, goes back to the neolithic age, but the religious development, to judge from the archæological evidence, is unbroken, and although there came a time when the city passed out of history, Palestine still has its sacred stones and rock-altars, buildings and tombs, caves and grottoes, whose religious history must extend over untold ages. At both Gezer and Tell es-Sāfy a sacred tomb actually stands upon the surface of the ground quite close to the site of the old holy places.

At Serabit the caves with their porticoes had evolved by the addition of chambers, etc., into a complicated series sacred to the representative goddess of the district and to the god of the Egyptian miners. It is estimated that the cult continued for at least a thousand years. In the neighbourhood of Petra several apparent 'high-places' have been found. They are perched conspicuously to catch the rays of the morning sun or in view of a holy shrine; and the finest of them is approached by two great pillars, 21 to 22 feet high. Although as a whole they may be ascribed to 300 B.C.-100 A.D., their altars, basins, courts, etc., probably permit us to understand the more imperfect remains of sanctuaries elsewhere.[1] But independently of these, from Sinai to North Syria an imposing amount of evidence survives in varying forms for the history of the sacred sites of antiquity. In the rock-altars of the modern land with cup-marks and occasionally with steps, with the shrine of some holy saint and an equally holy tree, sometimes also with a mysterious cave, we may see living examples of the more undeveloped sanctuaries. For a result of continued evolution, on the other hand, perhaps nothing could be more impressive than the Sakhra of the Holy Temple at Jerusalem, where, amid the associations of three thousand years of history, the bare rock, with hollows, cavities, channels, and subterranean cave, preserves the primitive features without any essential change.[2]

[1] G. Dalman, Petra und seine Felsheiligtümer (Leipzig, 1908).

[2] R. Kittel, Studien zur Hebräischen Archäologie und Religionsgeschichte (Leipzig, 1908), chap. i. Chap. ii. illustrates primitive rock-altars of Palestine and their development.

The Modern Places of Cult.—Notwithstanding the religious and political vicissitudes of Palestine, the old centres of cult have never lost the veneration of the people, and their position in modern popular belief and ritual affords many a suggestive hint for their history in the past. Although Mohammedanism allows few sacred localities, the actual current practice, in Palestine as in Asia Minor, attaches conceptions of great sanctity to a vast number of places. The shrines and sacred buildings dotted here and there upon elevated sites form a characteristic feature of the modern land, and there is abundant testimony that they are the recipients of respect and awe far more real than that enjoyed by the more official or orthodox religion. Although they are often placed under the protection of Islam by being known as the tombs of saints, prophets, and holy sheikhs, this is merely a disguise; and although it is insisted that the holy occupants are only mediators, they are the centre of antique rites and ideas which orthodox Mohammedanism rejects. Their power is often rated above that of Allah himself. Oaths by Allah are freely taken and as freely broken, those at the local shrines rarely (if ever) fail; the coarse and painful freedom of language, even in connection with Allah, becomes restrained when the natives visit their holy place.

The religious life of the peasants is bound up with the shrines and saints. There they appeal for offspring, healing, and good harvests; there they dedicate the first-fruits, firstlings, and their children, and in their neighbourhood they prefer to be buried. No stranger may intrude heedlessly within the sacred precincts, and one may see the worshipper enter barefooted praying for permission as he carefully steps over the threshold. The saint by supernatural means is able to protect everything deposited in the vicinity of the tomb, which can thus serve as a store or treasure-house. He is supreme over a local area; he is ready even to fight for his followers against the foe; for all practical purposes he is virtually the god of the district. Some of the shrines are sacred to a woman who passes for the sister or the daughter of a saint at the same or a neighbouring locality. Even the dog has been known to have a shrine in his honour, and the animal enters into Palestinian folk-lore in a manner which this unclean beast of Mohammedanism hardly seems to deserve. As a rule the people will avoid calling the occupant of the shrine by name, and some circumlocutionary epithet is preferred: the famous sheikh, father of the lion, rain-giver, dwarf, full-moon, or (in case of females) the lady of child-birth, the fortunate, and the like.

The shrines are the centres of story and legend which relate their origin, legitimise their persistence, or illustrate their power. In the course of ages the name of the saint who once chose to reveal himself there has varied, and the legends of earlier figures have been transferred and adjusted to names more acceptable to orthodoxy. Some of the figures have grown in importance and have thus extended their sphere of influence, and as difference of sect is found to be no hindrance to a common recognition of the power of the saint, the more famous shrines have been accepted by worshippers outside the original circle. In course of time, too, isolated figures have gained supremacy, and have superseded earlier distinct authorities, with the result that the same name will be found under a number of locally diverging types. Most conspicuous of all are St. George and the ever-youthful prophet Elijah, who have inherited numerous sacred places and their cults, in the same manner as St. George has become the successor of Apollo in the Greek isles. Similarly the Virgin Mary, in her turn, has frequently taken the place formerly held by the female deities of antiquity.

CHAPTER III

SACRED OBJECTS

The modern holy places, under the care of some minister, dervish, or priestly family, are the scenes of periodic visits, liturgical unctions, processions, the festal display of lights, etc., and although in the course of their lengthy history there have been certain modifications, it is to them that one must look for the persisting religion which underlay the older official cults. The rocks with cup-marks and channels, the gloomy caves and grottoes, the mountain summits, the springs or fountains which still receive the offerings of worshippers, the holy trees, the sacred sacrificial stones—these form the fundamental substructure of the land's religion, and whatever be the true origin of their sanctity, they continue to be visited when superhuman aid is required.

Trees.—It is not the shrines alone which are sacred on the ground that some saint had once revealed his presence there; there are trees (the terebinth, and more especially the oak) which are inviolable because spirits have made them their abode, or which owe their supernatural qualities to some holy being who is currently supposed to have reclined beneath them. Such trees are virtually centres of worship. Incense is burned to them, and they receive sacrifices and offerings; they are loaded with food, gifts, and (on special occasions) with lamps. They give oracles, and the sick sleep beneath their shade, confident that a supernatural messenger will prescribe for their ailments. They are decked with rags, which thus acquire wonderful properties; and the worshipper who leaves a shred as a pledge of attachment or, it may be, to transfer a malady, will take away a rag which may serve as a charm. Sacred trees were well known to early writers, and according to the Talmud there were some beneath which priests sat but did not eat of their fruit, remains of heathen sacrifice might be found there, and the Jew who sat or passed in its shade became ceremonially impure. It is unnecessary, however, to multiply examples of a feature to which the Old Testament also attests; popular belief has universally associated religious and superstitious ideas with those beneficent objects which appear to be as much imbued with motion, animation, and feeling as man himself.

The sacred tree tends to become conventionalised and is replaced by the trunk or post. As the home of a powerful influence there is an inclination to symbolise it, and to identify it with the supernatural being, with the deity itself. The development of the image (not necessarily female) from an aniconic wooden post can be illustrated by the pillars representative of Osiris, by the head of Hathor of Byblos (p. 75 sq.) upon a pillar in Egypt (Nineteenth Dynasty), and by the votive tablets at Serabit bearing the head of Hathor mounted upon a pole, which stands upon a base, or is flanked by a tree on either side. Some tree-like post is evidently intended by the ashērah of the Old Testament, a common object at the 'high-places' during the monarchy. In this case, the relation between the tree and deity is absolute, and we shall meet with a goddess of this name (see below, p. 87).

Stones.—The inanimate stone is partly commemorative, partly representative. In Palestine we see it marked with the curious hollows which, when found upon the bare rock, served, amid a variety of purposes, for libations and for the blood of the sacrifices. The erect pillar appears to be secondary, but dates, at least in Serabit, from before our period. The hollows upon such stones are equally adapted for offerings, although, when they are lateral, it is probable that they were smeared or anointed like the door-posts of a modern shrine. These holes are also transferred to slabs or are replaced by vessels, while the stone itself is not merely 'the place of sacrificial slaughter' (the literal meaning of 'altar' in the Old Testament), but embodies the power whose influence is invoked. It is practically a fetish, the tangible abode of the recipient of veneration. At Serabit Professor Petrie discovered before a stele a flat altar-stone which bore cavities (Twelfth Dynasty), and even in Abyssinia at Aksum have been observed great monoliths, at whose base stood stone blocks with vessels and channels. Similar combinations have been found at Carthage. Throughout, neither the stone nor the significance attached to it remains the same. The sacred stone may lose its value and be superseded, and it by no means follows that the number of pillars implies an equal number of in-dwelling beings. While the stone develops along one line as an object of cult and becomes an altar, it takes other forms when, by an easy confusion of sentiment, it comes to represent a deity (of either sex). It is then shaped or ornamented to depict the conceptions attached to the holy occupant, and when this deity is anthropomorphic, the pillar becomes a rude image, and finally the god in human form. It is now clothed and decked with ornaments. Thus, one finds the groove along the top or the bifurcation suggestive of early steps towards the representation of the horns of an animal; or, as among the pillars at Gezer, one perceives two (Nos. 4 and 8) which assume some resemblance to a simulacrum Priapi.

The growing wealth of cult, the influence of novel ideas, and the transformation of the attributes of a deity make the history of the evolution of the objects of cult extremely intricate. At the same place and time they may be found in varying stages of development, and if the interpretation of the several features as they appealed to worshippers is often obscure to us, the speculations of the contemporary writers cannot always be accepted without careful inquiry.

Images and Symbols.—Thutmose III. relates that he carried off from Megiddo and the Lebanon a silver statue in beaten work; also some object [words are lost] with a head of gold, the staff having human faces, and a royal image of ebony wrought with gold, the head of which was adorned with lapis lazuli. Although no sacred statues of Ancient Palestine have as yet come to light—if they escaped the zeal of later iconoclasts—it would seem that they were of no mean workmanship, and it may be inferred that they did not differ radically from the gods and goddesses whose outward appearance can be observed on the monuments of Western Asia. This inference is supported by the repeated discovery, in course of excavation, of representations of a goddess who was evidently the embodiment of life and fertility. A few figurines and numerous small 'Astarte-plaques,' with moulds for their manufacture, prove the prevalence of a mother-goddess and patroness of nature, essentially identical with that familiar in the old Oriental religions. The plaques, which are about 6 to 7 inches in length, offer a large variety of types from the coarsest exaggeration of sexuality to highly conventionalised forms. The goddess is generally nude, but a bronze figurine from Taanach gives her a conical head-dress and a thin robe reaching down to her ankles. The characteristic type at this city, however, depicts a striated crown, rings on neck and feet, and is generally suggestive of Babylonian influence. Otherwise, when depicted with bracelets, necklace and lotus-flowers, she resembles the Egyptian Hathor; indeed she is often marked with the Egyptian uraeus. A specimen from Tell es-Sāfy curiously combines an Egyptianised form of the goddess with typical Babylonian five- and six-rayed stars. Yet a fourth variety with huge and disfiguring earrings finds its parallels in North Syria and Cyprus. The occurrence and combination of elements of different origin are instructive for the culture and religion of Palestine. This fourth type has sometimes a bird-like head, which recalls a curious example from Lachish with large ears and hooked nose or beak. A small bronze image of the goddess, which was found at Gezer, among broken lamps and pottery within the area of the pillars, gives her horns which coil downwards like those of a ram. It is through such development and modification that the horns of the great goddess could come to be regarded as the representation of a crescent moon when philosophical speculation busied itself with the heavenly bodies. The traces of animal attributes take another form in various rude and almost shapeless objects of bronze which have been interpreted, thanks to a more realistic specimen from the Judæan Tell Zakariya, as models of an amphibious creature with human head and the tail of a fish. Here it is natural to see the famous Derceto or Atargatis, well known later as a deity of the Astarte type, and, as an illustration of the evolution of symbols, it may be added that a splendid Carthaginian sarcophagus of a priestess represents a woman of strange beauty with the lower part of the body so draped as to give it a close resemblance to a fish's tail.[1]

[1] Mabel Moore, Carthage of the Phoenicians in the Light of Modern Excavation (London, 1905), p. 146 sq. and frontispiece.

The manifold representations of the Palestinian 'good goddess' extend over a lengthy period, and vary in taste and nuance from the crudest of specimens to veritable artistic products of the Seleucid age. They indicate that the fundamental religious conceptions agreed with those of Western Asia as a whole, and it may be assumed that the conclusions which can be drawn from the figurines and plaques of this deity would apply, mutatis mutandis, to others.

Among other objects which hardly belong to public cult, but were probably for household or private use, may be noticed the small idols; e.g. one from Megiddo in the clumsy 'snow-man' technique, another from Jericho with the head of a bull. Numerous small phalli have also been unearthed. Some are roughly carved in human shape, others approximate the form of a fish. They do not necessarily belong to the cult of any male deity, but the true significance of these and other small emblems is often uncertain. As with the many small models of the heads of bull, cow, or serpent, or the two small conical stones from the temple at Serabit, each with a groove along the base, it is often difficult to distinguish the fetishes and symbols, which involve ideas of some relationship with a supernatural being, from the charms, amulets, and talismans, wherein other religious ideas are involved. The possibility that some of the objects are really toys cannot be excluded.

CHAPTER IV

SACRED RITES AND PRACTICES

General Inferences.—That the old places of cult had their duly ordained officials may be taken for granted; even the smallest of them, like those of to-day, must have had appointed attendants. The Amarna letters mention the wealthy temple of Byblos with the handmaidens of the goddess of the city, and in Merneptah's reign we hear of a man of Gaza who is described as a servant of Baal. We may be sure, also, that the rites and festivals were similar to those usually prevalent among agricultural peoples. The nature-worship of the age can be realised from a survey of the old cults of Western Asia, and from the denunciations of the Old Testament, which prove the persistence of older licentious rites. Popular religion often continues to tolerate practices which social life condemns, and the fertility of crops, cattle, and of man himself, was co-ordinated by an uncontrollable use of analogy in which the example was set by the 'sacred' men and women of the sanctuaries (kādesh; Deut. xxiii. 17, R.V. marg.). Sympathetic magic—the imitation of the cause to produce a desired effect—underlay a variety of rites among a people whose life depended upon the gifts of the soil, whose religion was a way of life. Here, however, we are restricted chiefly to some miscellaneous evidence which the excavations suggest.

The Disposal of the Dead.—Incineration or cremation had been originally practised by a people physically distinct from that among whom inhumation prevailed. The latter innovation has been ascribed to the invading Semites. Subsequently, in Carthage, cremation is found to re-enter, presumably through foreign influence; but the two practices co-exist, even in the same family, and it is probable that there, at all events, cremation was only followed in special circumstances. A large burial-cave at Gezer with a thick layer of burnt ash proves the lengthy duration of the earlier custom. The same cave was afterwards utilised by those who inhumed their dead, and thenceforth there is little evolution in the history of early Palestinian burial. No particular orientation predominates; the dead are placed upon a layer of stones, or within cists, or in pits in the floor of the caverns. Both the contracted or squatting and the outstretched attitude occur. From the story of Sinuhe (p. 9), it would seem that burial in a sheep-skin was also customary. The needs of the dead are supplied by vessels of food, which occasionally show traces of burning; drink was more important, and the large jars sometimes contain small cups for the convenience of the thirsty soul. In the case of a jug with two mammillary projections one is reminded of a type usually associated at Carthage with the burial of infants. A variety of miscellaneous objects provided for other needs: weapons, jewels, ostrich eggs, seals, scarabs, amulets, small figures in human or animal form, etc. Especially characteristic of the later tombs are the abundant deposits of lamps.

The abode of the dead being one of the centres of the religion of the living, the tomb always possesses sanctity. The internal arrangements, with platforms or hewn benches, will often suggest some burial-ritual. The cup-marks, which frequently appear near or even in the tomb itself, like those still to be seen upon Palestinian dolmens, could serve for sacrifices or libations, or to collect the refreshing rain for the soul of the deceased. Or, again, later usage will suggest that they were planted with flowers which, like the 'Gardens of Adonis,' symbolised the mysteries of death and revival. Often, the dead are buried beneath the streets (if the narrow windings deserve that name), or within the houses, under circumstances which preclude the foundation-sacrifices to be noticed presently. This feature is scarcely accidental; it is well known elsewhere, and was probably intended to keep the spirit of the dead near its former abode, over which it could continue to exercise a benevolent influence.

Jar Burial.—It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between an ordinary burial and some sacrificial ceremony. The burial of new-born or very young infants in jars, in or near some sacred locality (p. 16 sq.), points very strongly to the sacrifice of the first-born to which the Old Testament bears witness (Micah vi. 7). But where the circumstances make this view less probable, the special treatment of those who died in early infancy needs consideration. In inhumation and the return of the dead to the ground we are in the midst of ideas associated with 'mother-earth,' the begetter of all things. The burial in a contracted or squatting position might naturally represent the usual crouched posture of the individual as he sat in life-time among his fellows; it might also point to a belief in the re-birth of the soul of the dead. The jar-burials, where the infant is inserted head downwards, are more suggestive of the latter, and evidence from Africa and Asia shows that provision is sometimes made for the re-birth of still-born or very young babes on the conviction that at some future occasion they will enter again into a mother's womb. The numerous emblems of nature-worship and the mother-goddess, especially at Gezer, raise the presumption that the deities of the place were powers of fertility and generation; and, just as the shrines of saints to-day are visited by would-be mothers who hope for offspring, it is not improbable that in olden times those who had been prematurely cut off from the living were interred in sacred sites venerated by the women. This view, which has been proposed by Dr. J. G. Frazer, will not apply of course to those jar-burials where human-sacrifice is clearly recognisable.[1]

[1] Adonis, Attis, Osiris, pp. 77 sq., 82 sq..

Human Sacrifice.—A gruesome discovery was made in a cistern at Gezer where, together with a number of adult skeletons, lay the upper half of a young girl about sixteen years of age. Near the mouth were the decapitated heads of two girls. In another case at Gezer (described as a 'foundation deposit') the upper half of the skeleton of a youth had been placed with two adults. Perhaps we should here include the cases where only a few bones of the deceased were preserved, e.g. in one tomb the skull and certain other bones were missing. Vessels, also, were found containing only one or two human bones: the patella of an adult, the calvaria of a skull; but in the majority of instances they belonged to infants. Partial burial of this character has been explained on the theory of cannibalism; this practice, often based on the idea of absorbing the attributes of the deceased, has left scattered traces among the Semites. But the dismemberment of the dead (known at Susa, Egypt, and common to many savage races) admits of other explanations, whether, for example, we observe the use of bones as amulets (p. 51 sq.), or recall the story of the severed Osiris. In the latter, however, it may be suspected that a sacrifice for magical purposes underlies an aetiological legend.[2] The bank of skulls south of the monoliths of Gezer (p. 16) may perhaps recall the mound (or pillar?) of heads which certain Assyrian kings erected in front of the cities they conquered (e.g. Ashur-nasir-pal I.). Such a deed, like their holocaust of children after a victory, was no unmeaning ferocity; religion entered profoundly into ancient life, and every war was a 'holy war.' The horrid rites in honour of the gods who fought for their followers are to be traced in Egypt, Assyria, and the Old Testament, and even as late as 307 B.C. the Carthaginians after their defeat of Agathocles slew the choicest prisoners 'before the altar in front of the holy tent.'

[2] J. G. Frazer, Adonis, etc., pp. 273 sq., 321, and especially 331 sqq. Here one may perhaps refer to the tradition that the prophet Isaiah was sawn in half, hidden as he was in a tree (comp. also Ep. Hebrews, xi. 37).

The widespread custom of Foundation Sacrifice survives in Palestine when popular opinion requires that blood shall be shed at the inauguration of every important building, at the breaking-up of unoccupied land, or at the opening of a new well. Thus, a sheep was sacrificed at the building of a jetty for the landing of the German Emperor at Haifa in 1898. The rite is a propitiation to the numen of the place.

Mohammed in his day tried to prohibit such sacrifices to the jinn, but the inveterate sentiment is summed up in the words of a modern native: 'every house must have its death, either man, woman, child, or animal.' The animal-victim is recognised as a substitute, and vulgar superstition still associates with the foundation of buildings some vague danger to human life—if not its loss. Traditions of human sacrifice are recorded by mediæval and older writers, and excavation has disclosed authentic examples. At Gezer the skeleton of an adult female had been placed under the corner of a house, and the bones of infants were often found in or under the walls of houses down to the later Israelite period. At Megiddo, a young girl of about fifteen was laid across a foundation-stone, and a victim at the foot of a tower in Taanach was a child scarcely in its teens. A jar with the remains of a new-born infant rested upon a platform in the Gezer crematorium, and the evidence allowed the inference that it was a dedicatory sacrifice when the cave was taken over and used for inhumation. Infants buried in jars were found, together with bowls and lamps, under the foundations in Gezer as late as the latter part of the Israelite monarchy, although a modification had already been introduced in the simple deposits of lamps and bowls, usually at the corners of houses or chambers or under the jambs of doors. If the bowls represent the sacrificial offerings, the significance of the lamps is uncertain. The victim in the rite had not been burned, but probably buried alive, and it may be conjectured that the identification of life and light (familiar from the Old Testament) underlies the symbolical lamp. The modern Palestinian custom of hanging lights in shrines, etc., in cases of sickness possibly involves the same association of ideas. On the other hand, the lamps found in tombs naturally recall the widespread custom of lighting the soul on its dark journey, or of kindling a lamp in the home to enable it to retrace its steps on the anniversary. These purely burial lamps are very well known (e.g. in Carthage), and they survive in Palestine to the Christian age, when they are inscribed with such distinctive mottoes as 'Christ is my light,' or 'the light of Christ shines for all.'

The Importance of Sacrifice makes itself felt at every sacred site from the enormous quantities of burnt ash before the caves of Serabit to the similar accumulations upon the summit of Mount Hermon. The worshipper believes that the rite brings him into contact with the powers who are to be nourished, invoked, or recompensed. Its prevalence vividly indicates man's dependence upon them throughout the seasons of the year and on the great occasions of life: birth, circumcision (already practised in our period), marriage and death. Underlying the sacrifice is the profound significance of blood. It is the seat of existence; it has potent virtues whether for protection, expiation, or purification; and the utmost care is taken to dispose of it according to established usage. The fat, too, has no less its living qualities, and since the oldest unguents were animal fats—modern usage is often content with butter—it is probable that anointing originally had a deeper meaning than would at first appear. Wanton bloodshed called for vengeance, and when a Babylonian king demanded that Ikhnaton should slay the Canaanites who had killed his merchants, and thus 'bring back their blood' and prevent retaliation, the inveterate blood-revenge of primitive social life finds an early illustration. But as a sacrifice, the slaughter of human victims, though perhaps not regular, was at least not exceptional, and the frightful bloodshed which the Old Testament attests emphasises the difficulties which confronted those teachers of Israel who would disassociate their national God from an inveterate practice (Ezek. xvi. 20 sq., xx. 31).

For a striking illustration of the diffusion and persistence of human sacrifice we may refer to Carthage where the distress caused by Agathocles in 310 B.C. was attributed to the wrath of the god to whom the rich had been offering purchased children instead of their own. But there is a general tendency in religion to soften crude rites, save when a particularly efficacious offering is felt necessary in the midst of some grave crisis, and of the changes in that background of cult which has survived throughout the history of Palestine, the substitution of the animal for the human victim is the most significant. Yet, as we have seen, the idea of human sacrifice has not entirely disappeared (p. 40). The animal is still recognised as a 'ransom,' and in the present rite of that name loss of human life is averted by the sacrifice of some animal, and it is explained that the sacrifice will combat and overcome the cause of the impending danger. It would be only logical, therefore, to proceed on the assumption that the greater the danger the more powerful and efficacious must be the sacrifice. Current beliefs thus afford suggestive hints for earlier usage, and when we learn that to-day a natural death finds consolation in the thought that it may have been the ransom for another, we meet with an idea that could be put into practice: it is no great step to the ceremonies (observed in Africa) which give effect to the conviction that a man's life may be prolonged or his old age recuperated by the actual sacrifice of another human being. It is essentially the same idea when Egyptian kings, like Amenhotep II. and Ramses II. slew the prisoners of war that they themselves or their name 'might live for ever.' (On the name, see below, p. 60.)

Sacrificial rites were never irrational, however difficult it may be to perceive their object, and from a survey of comparative custom one can sometimes picture the scenes by which they were accompanied. It is only by such means that one can conjecturally explain the discovery near the temple-area at Gezer of animal bones, sliced, hacked, and broken into fragments, with no signs of having been cooked. One is tempted to refer to a rite practised by the Arabs of the Sinaitic desert towards the close of the fourth century A.D. The old ascete, Nilus, describes a solemn procession of chanting worshippers who move around an altar of rude stones upon which is bound a camel. The beast is stabbed, and the leader drinks of the gushing blood. At once the assembly hack the victim to pieces, devouring it raw until the whole is consumed—the entire ceremony begins with the rise of the morning star (in whose honour it was performed) and ends with the rising sun. Was some rite of this kind practised in Palestine? It must be a matter for conjecture; the least that can be said is that the scene is not too barbaric for our land and period.

Broken Offerings, e.g. figurines, models, and other articles, when found deposited in tombs, have been explained in the light of comparative custom as destroyed or 'killed' to the end that their 'soul' may accompany that of the deceased. But other ideas are evidently involved when the area of the sanctuary at Serabit proved to be covered with a mass of pottery, plaques, bracelets, wands, sistra, etc., so fragmentary that no single specimen could be pieced together. At Gezer, also, although the plaques of the goddess were fairly tough, all had been broken, and apparently with intention. We may compare the modern custom of breaking pottery in fulfilment of a vow, an interesting illustration of which was furnished by the late Professor Curtiss from Bludan on the road from Zebedany to Damascus. At a spot, familiarly known as the 'mother of pieces,' is a rock-platform with cave, shrine, sacred grove and hereditary ministers. Hither come the women to break a jar when they have gained their one wish, and it is singular to observe that the traditions which are attached to the custom include the belief that a girl, the patroness of the shrine, lies buried there. The likeness to the suggested rites at Gezer will be noticed (p. 37). But the stories do not elucidate the peculiar treatment of the offerings, and the usage finds its most probable explanation in the persuasion that things once dedicated or put to a sacred use are 'holy,' and cannot be used for ordinary purposes. We touch upon a fundamental institution embodying a series of apparently paradoxical ideas—the universal 'tabu.'

'Holy' and 'Unclean.'—The terms Holy or Sacred (comp. the Latin sacer) are not to be understood in the ethical or moral sense. A holy thing is one which has been set aside, dedicated, or restricted; it is charged with supernatural influence which is contagious; everything that comes in contact with it also becomes holy. In some cases it is provided that this inconvenient sanctity may be purged; in others, the thing has to be destroyed. When the Talmud says that a Canonical Book of the Old Testament 'defiles' the hand, it means that the very sanctity of the book demands that the hand should be ceremonially purified or cleansed before touching anything else. 'Holy and unclean things,' to quote Robertson Smith, 'have this in common, that in both cases certain restrictions lie on men's use of and contact with them, and that the breach of these restrictions involves supernatural dangers. The difference between the two appears, not in their relation to man's ordinary life, but in their relation to the gods. Holy things are not free to man, because they pertain to the gods; uncleanness is shunned, according to the view taken in the higher Semitic religions, because it is hateful to the god, and therefore not to be tolerated.'

Sacred Animals, in the light of the above, are those associated with cults which might be regarded as illegitimate. An example is afforded by the pig which enters into the rites and myths of Adonis, Attis, Ninib, and Osiris. In a cavern south of the monoliths of Gezer a number of pig-bones lay underneath a shaft which led to the cup-marked surface above (p. 16); the circumstances recall the Thesmophoria, the caves and vaults in the Greek area connected with Demeter and Proserpine, and the use of the pig in mystic rites of chthonic and agricultural deities. In Palestine and Syria the animal was used in certain exceptional sacrifices which were recognised as idolatrous (Isaiah lxv. 4; lxvi. 17), and it was an open question whether it was really polluted or holy. If, as the excavations suggest, the sacrifice of the swine dates from the earliest inhabitants of Gezer, with whom it was also a domestic animal, it is interesting to observe the persistence of its character as a proper sacrificial animal from pre-Semitic times by the side of the apparently contradictory belief that it was also unclean.

The camel bones at Tell es-Sāfy, also, are of interest since Robertson Smith has shown that the animal (which became 'unclean' to the Israelites), though used by the Arabs for food and sacrifice, was associated with ideas of sanctity, and its flesh was forbidden to converts to Christianity. The model of a bronze cobra found in a temple-enclosure (p. 15) might be conjecturally explained, but it will suffice to remember that serpents were and still are connected with spirits both benevolent and malevolent. The recurrence of models of the animal-world, the numerous representations upon seals of deer, gazelles, etc. (animals connected with Astarte), or the predilection for the lion upon objects discovered at Megiddo need not have any specific meaning for the religious ideas. On the other hand, the animal-like attributes which appear upon some plaques of the mother-goddess are scarcely meaningless. There is no ground for the assumption that Palestine was without the animal-deities and the deities with special sacred animals, which have left their traces in the surrounding lands, and it would be misleading to suppose that the myths and legends which have grown up around these features account for their origin. The conviction that man was made in the likeness of the gods (who are therefore anthropomorphic) implies certain conceptions of their nature, the development of which belongs to the history of religion, and in turning next to the spirit-world of Ancient Palestine it is necessary that we should be prepared to appreciate a mental outlook profoundly different from our own.