The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study | Page 7

is of
no little importance. For it is well known that the same term was
employed to denote the gods of the heathen, who were thought to have
definite quasi-corporeal forms and to be as much real entities as any
other Elohim.<5> The difference which was supposed to exist between
the different Elohim was one of degree, not one of kind. Elohim was, in
logical terminology, the genus of which ghosts, Chemosh, Dagon, Baal,
and Jahveh were species. The Israelite believed Jahveh to be
immeasurably superior to all other kinds of Elohim. The inscription on
the Moabite stone shows that King Mesa held Chemosh to be, as
unquestionably, the superior of Jahveh. But if Jahveh was thus
supposed to differ only in degree from the undoubtedly zoomorphic or
anthropomorphic "gods of the nations," why is it to be assumed that he
also was not thought of as having a human shape? It is possible for
those who forget that the time of the great prophetic writers is at least
as remote from that of Saul as our day is from that of Queen Elizabeth,
to insist upon interpreting the gross notions current in the earlier age
and among the mass of the people by the refined conceptions
promulgated by a few select spirits centuries later. But if we take the
language constantly used concerning the Deity in the books of Genesis,
Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, or Kings, in its natural sense (and I
am aware of no valid reason which can be given for taking it in any
other sense), there cannot, to my mind, be a doubt that Jahveh was
conceived by those from whom the substance of these books is mainly
derived, to possess the appearance and the intellectual and moral
attributes of a man; and, indeed, of a man of just that type with which
the Israelites were familiar in their stronger and intellectually abler
rulers and leaders. In a well-known passage in Genesis (i. 27) Elohim is
said to have "created man in his own image, in the image of Elohim
created he him." It is "man" who is here said to be the image of
Elohim--not man's soul alone, still less his "reason," but the whole man.
It is obvious that for those who call a manlike ghost Elohim, there
could be no difficulty in conceiving any other Elohim under the same

aspect. And if there could be any doubt on this subject, surely it cannot
stand in the face of what we find in the fifth chapter, where,
immediately after a repetition of the statement that "Elohim created
man, in the likeness of Elohim made he him," it is said that Adam begat
Seth "in his own likeness, after his image." Does this mean that Seth
resembled Adam only in a spiritual and figurative sense? And if that
interpretation of the third verse of the fifth chapter of Genesis is absurd,
why does it become reasonable in the first verse of the same chapter?
But let us go further. Is not the Jahveh who "walks in the garden in the
cool of the day"; from whom one may hope to "hide oneself among the
trees"; of whom it is expressly said that "Moses and Aaron, Nadab and
Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel," saw the Elohim of Israel
(Exod. xxiv. 9-11); and that, although the seeing Jahveh was
understood to be a high crime and misdemeanour, worthy of death,
under ordinary circumstances, yet, for this once, he "laid not his hand
on the nobles of Israel"; "that they beheld Elohim and did eat and
drink"; and that afterwards Moses saw his back (Exod. xxxiii. 23)--is
not this Deity conceived as manlike in form? Again, is not the Jahveh
who eats with Abraham under the oaks at Mamre, who is pleased with
the "sweet savour" of Noah's sacrifice, to whom sacrifices are said to be
"food"<6>--is not this Deity depicted as possessed of human appetites?
If this were not the current Israelitish idea of Jahveh even in the eighth
century B.C., where is the point of Isaiah's scathing admonitions to his
countrymen: "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto
me? saith Jahveh: I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of
fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of
he-goats" (Isa. i. 11). Or of Micah's inquiry, "Will Jahveh be pleased
with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?" (vi. 7.)
And in the innumerable passages in which Jahveh is said to be jealous
of other gods, to be angry, to be appeased, and to repent; in which he is
represented as casting off Saul because the king does not quite literally
execute a command of