A Comparative View of Religions | Page 9

desires no human sacrifices, nevertheless praises the willingness of the father to offer up his first-born, and sees in that the highest proof of devotedness and obedience.[20] Thirdly, circumcision, already before Moses[21] the bloody symbol of consecration to God,[22] and also the right of Jahveh to the first-born, and the necessity of ransoming them from him,[23] imply an earlier conception of the deity as a being, who, although on a higher development of the religion he is not indeed any longer thought to desire human sacrifice, nevertheless has a right to such a sacrifice, and thus demands indemnity for remitting it. Fourthly, the later conception, of Jahveh as a destroying fire, and the way in which the God of Israel is conceived in connection with fire, and as manifesting himself in fire,[24] betray, even in the midst of a more advanced religious development, an original relationship with the like conceptions of the other Semites. Fifthly, even in the orthodox Jahveh-worship, some symbols, as the twelve oxen in the porch of the temple,[25] the horns of the altar for burnt-offerings,[26] perhaps also the in part oxlike form of the cherubim,[27] point to an earlier worship of the deity under the form of an ox, the symbol of the highest might, especially among the Semitic races.[28]
In confirmation of the supposition thus suggested of a community of origin in the religion of the Israelites and in that of the nations related to them, there is also to be remarked, firstly, the sympathy always felt among the people of Israel for the worship of Baal and Molech, in face of the strongest opposition on the part of the prophets;[29] secondly, the statement of Amos,[30] that even in the wilderness the Israelites worshiped Molech; thirdly, the fact that in the time of the Judges, Jephthah offered his daughter to Jahveh,[31] and still later the feeling, not driven out even by Mosaism, that the wrath of Jahveh must be appeased by human blood,[32] a necessity which David recognizes;[33] fourthly, the ancient custom in Israel, as in the nations related to them, of worshiping the deity on mountains and heights,[34] against which the priestly legislation strove in the interest of the pure worship of Jahveh;[35] fifthly, the heterodox worship of Jahveh in the kingdom of the ten tribes under the form of a calf.[36]
From all this it seems fair to conclude that the religion of the oldest forefathers of Israel had its root originally in one and the same soil with the religion of the other Semites. Out of an earlier nature-religion there developed among the Semites the conception of Baal, the lord of nature, and of Molech with his inhuman worship. While, however, the other Semites remained in this lower stage, or rather sank back more and more into the immorality of the nature-religion,--an hypothesis suggested by a comparison of the religious state of the nations of Canaan in Abraham's time with their state at the time of the conquest of the land by Joshua and afterwards,--in the family of Abraham, religious consciousness rose to the recognition of a deity, who, although he had a right to human sacrifices, yet did not claim such sacrifices, but was satisfied with men's willingness to bring them to him. With this higher development of religion, the names of the Supreme Being, Baal and Molech, originally common to the whole race, came more and more into contempt, and were regarded as the expression of abominable idolatry,[37] while even the worship of Jahveh under the form of a calf, originally permitted, was later branded by the prophets as heresy.
Though it was in the family of Abraham that even in Mesopotamia[38] the beginning of this higher development of the Semitic religion showed itself, which, after his migration to Canaan became the heritage of his family, yet the patriarch of Israel did not stand alone in this respect among the Semites. The old Canaanitish chieftains also of the patriarchal period, Melchizedek and Abimelech, worship the same God as he,[39] while on the other hand in his own family not all traces of polytheistic superstition have disappeared,[40] and these traces are also visible still later in Israel.[41]
The patriarchal religion, which afterwards with the great majority fell into oblivion, was recalled afresh to men's minds by Moses, and the God of the fathers was preached by him under the name before unknown of Jahveh,[42] to whom, with the exclusion of all other gods, religious worship is due.[43] The Jahveh of Moses, like the El Eljon of the patriarchs, is the one only object of worship (Deus Unus), yet without excluding the possibility of other gods existing.[44] Not until later did the more developed conception of Jahveh arise as the one only God (Deus unicus),[45] who is throned in heaven, and like the Elohim of the