1. Amongst the lowest forms of religious venera- tion, the more recent authorities on Comparative Religion reckon not only the common Fetishism (which elevates an arbitrarily chosen object to the rank of its gods, and again, it may be, deposes it), but also the so-called Totemism.* The following may suffice by way of definition of this widely diffused phenomenon. In the vocabulary of modern Comparative Religion the term totem + stands for some natural object—generally an animal—with which a tribe considers itself to have blood re- lationship, and which accordingly in the person of all its representatives is treated by the tribe with the utmost consideration and indulgence, or may actually receive Divine worship. Such Totemism may be recognized most frequently in the name by which the particular tribe is designated, aliherets it may happen, indeed, that names long in existence come only subsequently to have a totemistic sense attached to them.
* Out of the copious literature on this question the following may be noted as of importance for our present purpose : W. Robertson Smith, ‘Animal Worship and Animal Tribes among the Arabs and in the Old Testament’ in Journal of Philology, ix. (1880), cf. the same writer’s Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia? (1908), p. 217 ff.) ; J. G. Frazer, Totemism, Edinburgh, 1887; Jos. Jacobs, ‘Are there Totem-clans in the Old Testa- ment?’ in Archeol. Review, iii. (1889) 3, P- 145ff.; F. V. Zapletal, Der Totemismus und die Religion Israels, Freiburg i. B. 1901 [denies any existence of Totemism in Israel]; 8. A. Cook, ‘Israel and Totemism’ in JQR. xiv. No. 55; L. Germain Lévy, ‘Du totémisme chez les Hébreux’ in REJ xiiv. (1902), No. 89, p. 13 ff. [likewise with wholly negative results].
+ This term, borrowed from the Ojibway Indians of N. America and brought into vogue especially by Lubbock, denotes originally the family or tribe itself.
quently even in Christian exegesis and theology,
RELIGION OF ISRAEL 613
In searching for indications that Totemism once prevailed in Israel, we must leave out of considera- tion one practice, namely the worship of Jahweh in the form of a molten bull, as practised in the Northern kingdom from the time of Jeroboam 1. onwards (1 K 12%). It is probable that, in this, Jeroboam simply revived a form of the Jahweh cult that had been long familiar; but it was beyond doubt of Canaanite origin, and had nothing to do with Totemism. The molten bull is nothing but a symbol of the strength and creative power of Jahweh, who in the earliest times—as far back as we can trace the matter—was never thought of as appearing on earth except in human form.
On the other hand, among the names of Israel- itish tribes there are a few which, upon certain conditions, might testify that Totemism once pre- vailed : for instance SIMEON (jaw Shim'dn), if this name, like the Arabic sim‘w, stands for a hybrid of wolf and hyena; LEAH, if this=‘ wild cow’; and LEVI, if this is really a gentilic name from Leah; and, finally, RACHEL (=rahél, ‘ewe’). With reference to the two female names in this list, it is true also that it must first be proved that wives in the patriarchal narratives always stand for certain weaker tribes which became amalgamated with other stronger ones into a single whole. It is clear that here we have many difficulties in the way, and at most we can speak only of the possibility that Totemism once pre- vailed in particular tribes. Nor are we carried much further by another argument, to which it has been sought to attach the strongest evidential value. We refer to the so-called ‘food taboos,’ by which the flesh of certain animals is to be serupu- lously avoided as unclean. It sounds ver plaus- ible, no doubt, to interpret this as meaning that each tribe regarded it as strictly forbidden to kill and eat the totem animal with which it believed itself to have blood affinity. When smaller tribes became amalgamated with larger, and when these finally combined to form one nation, the totems of all the different clans would be recognized by the whole body, and the eating of them avoided, and the Jahweh religion would sanction and_ retain this practice, only altering the motive for it. At the totemistic stage these animals were forbidden because they were holy; the Jahweh religion, on the other hand, declared them, as_ relics of a foreign cultus, wnclean. Now, in routs to this it may be remarked that certainly the long list of unclean animals enumerated in Ly 11** and Dt 14##- cannot possibly be all explained on the ground of a previous Totemism. On the contrary, it is quite clear in these passages that the prohibition of certain animals which were expressly regarded as unclean was afterwards extended to the whole class which exhibited the same characteristics. Thus originated that system of food taboos in virtue of which uncleanness attached to all four-footed animals which do not chew the cud and have not completely divided hoofs, and to all water-animals which. have not fins and scales, as well as to all - four-legged winged creatures. It is vain to seek to explain this supplementary schematizing by re- ligious motives, as if, for instance, all creatures to which any imperfection attaches had been forbidden as food. All that it is correct to hold is that in very ancient times the eating of particular animals was disallowed on religious grounds. But it is quite another question whether these grounds were con- nected with Totemism, It is quite possible that when such customs arose the determining factors were wholly different forms of superstition, such in particular as some form of belief in demons (see below). In this way the impulse would be given less by religious veneration than by simple fear.