Upon the whole we must conclude once more that,
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
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RELIGION OF ISRAEL
while it is certainly possible that Totemism once prevailed in Israel, its prevalence cannot be proved ; and, above all, we must hold that the religion of Israel as it presents itself in the OT has not re- tained the very slightest recollection of such a state of things.
2. It is different with another of the preliminary steps towards real religion which is still more widely illustrated amongst primitive peoples, namely Animism. In its pure form this is the belief in the activity of the spirits of recently deceased relatives. From the nature of the case, however, it is not always possible here to draw the lines sharply. Even those who have been long dead may appear to their surviving relatives in bodily form in dreams. Hence the animistic belief produces the conviction that the spirit of the dead man either still lingers in the neighbour- hood, or may temporarily leave the place of sojourn of the dead (called by the Hebrews probably even in pre-Mosaic times Shé’6l; see below). On the other hand, the appearances that present them- selves in dreams are not confined to actual rela- tives; hence Animism readily includes all the members of the tribe, or creates a still wider realm, But it is always of the essence of original Animism that the activity of the spirits of the dead is thought of as ill-disposed, and even harmful, so that the survivors’ interest is to keep them at as far a distance as possible, and to omit nothing that will conduce to the satisfying of their legiti- mate wishes, which have respect, above all, to the proper treatment and burial of the corpse.
It is evident that Animism of this kind cannot, strictly speaking, yet be called religion, but is at most only a preliminary step towards it. For it wants the element of veneration of powers regarded as superhuman. This comes to associate itself with Animism only when the latter concentrates its interest especially upon the spirits of ancestors, and passes into a formal veneration for them, when, in short, it becomes Ancestor Worship.*
With reference to the pre-Mosaic religion of Israel, the question is generally raised in the form whether in the later religion traces are de- monstrable of a former Animism and Ancestor Worship. At present it is the fashion to pro- nounce unhesitatingly in favour of the presence of both these elements. But in the opinion of the present writer, while there are undoubted traces that Animism once prevailed, the alleged indications of Ancestor Worship are all exposed to more or less serious objections.
As might have been expected, the traces of Animism are most marked in connexion with cer- tain mourning customs. Not that all mourning customs can be explained, as has been attempted, from one and the same point of view; on the contrary, they clearly belong to different grades of religious thought, and some of them have hitherto defied all efforts at interpretation. Most of them, however, may be most simply explained as due to the naive attempt, by means of a variety of bodily
has Of the very extensive literature on Animism and Ancestor Worship (in addition to the works of Stade and W. R. Smith cited in note on p. 612»), the following ma: be noted : F. Schwally, Das Leben nach dem Tode nach den orstellungen des alten Israel u. des Judenthums, Giessen, 1892; J. Frey, Tod, Seelen- glaube und Seelenkult im alten Israel, Leipzig, 1898 [denies spirit-worship, and explains mourning customs as due to fear of death or of its author]; K. Griineisen, Der Ahnenkultus und die Urreligion Israels, Halle, 1899 [finds indubitable traces of Animism in the OT, but none that are positively convincing of Ancestor Worship ; explains (with Frazer) mourning customs in great measure as averruncatio; cf. also the .instructive review of Griineisen’s book by Wellhausen in the Deutsche Iiteraturzeitung, 1900, No. 20]; J. O. Matthes, ‘Rouw en doodenvereering in Israél’ in Theol. Tijdschr. 1900, pp. 97 ff., 198 ff. [especially directed against Frey's (see above) rejection of Ancestor Worship], also ‘De doodenvereering bij Israél,’ tb.
1901, p. 320 ff. [against Griineisen].
alterations (e.g. the cropping or shaving of the head and beard, the wounding of the body by bloody incisions, etc., the covering of the face, or at least of the hair on the upper lip), to render oneself wnrecognizable by the spirit of the dead, and thus to escape its malign influence. Also the rending of the garments, like the going barefoot and other partial uncoverings of the person, is in all probability simply a relic of an entire laying aside of one’s clothes; only that absolute naked- ness already in very early times assumed the mitigated form of putting on sackcloth, which was originally a coarse cloth thrown around the loins. Such a complete alteration of the outward ge a ance seemed best fitted to deceive the spirit of the dead, and to divert its attention from the SUIVIVOTS. But the same purpose was already served by going about in a filthy condition, by neglecting all atten- tion to the hair, and by sprinkling oneself with ashes; or, on the other hand, by sitting on the ground, in dust and ashes if possible—in the place, in short, where onejdoes not usually sit, and hence is not likely to be looked for.