Part of these mourning practices were retained without scruple even within the pale of the Jah- weh religion—a proof that their original intention was no longer understood. Others, like the cutting of a bald spot on the head, the disfiguring - of the beard, and the wounding of the person, were strictly forbidden by the later legislation (Lv 197 215). The circumstance that the Jahweh religion regarded all contact with a dead body,
nay, even the proximity of one (Nu 19"), as defiling,
is sufficiently explained by the consciousness that at least part of the mourning and burial customs had their root in another religion. At the same time, however, it is noteworthy that the Law itself still retains a manifest trace of animistic beliefs when it enacts (Nu 19) that any open vessel with- out a cover fastened with a string is defiled by the proximity of a dead body. Here we have evidently the reminiscence of a very ancient practice whereb it was sought to prevent the spirit of the dead from taking up its quarters in the house—the practice, namely, before or at the moment of a death, of carefully closing all open vessels that happened to be in the neighbourhood.
The question whether Animism underwent in pre-Mosaic Israel, as in some other instances, the further development into Ancestor Worship, can- not be decided by such peremptory declarations as that Animism, in virtue of an inward necessity and hence always, is coupled with Ancestor Worship. Not theories but only facts must decide here; and it is simply not true that, thanks to invariable laws of evolution, the process of development has always, and in the case of all peoples, been from Animism to Ancestor Worship, and from the latter to Polytheism, and finally to Monotheism. Let us proceed now to examine the facts which have been held to prove that Ancestor Worship once prevailed among the Israelites.
Here, again, the principal réle is played by mourning customs. Almost everything in this department is held to have the intention of de- claring the mourner to be the slave of the deified ancestor. So, for instance, with the uncovering of the person,* the putting on of sackcloth as what was once the servile garb, and every other act by which expression is given to a humiliation of the person; and, finally, even the wounding of oneself by bodily incisions as a rite of dedication to the spirit of the dead. But these explanations
* According to Biichler (art. ‘ Das Entbléssen der Schulter und des Armes als Zeichen der Trauer’ in ZAT'W, 1901, p. 81ff.), by the practice in question the mourner submits himself to the dead, and declares himself his subject, by showing himself pre-
pared to perform the hardest tasks on his behalf. The forced character of this explanation strikes one at once.
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
of the mourning customs appear to us far less natural than the above proposal to trace them back to an effort to render oneself unrecognizable by the spirit.
A stronger argument would be found in the custom of funeral repasts, if it were really beyond doubt that we have to do here with a sacrificial meal in honour of the dead. But the few passages to which appeal is made in this connexion prove no such thing. That ‘ mourning bread’ (Hos 9%) is unclean is sufficiently explained by the circum- stance that it is eaten by one who is defiled by a dead body. This is all that appears to be spoken of in Dt 264, and not the use of bread for a sacri- ficial offering to the dead. The latter might, indeed, seem to be alluded to in the addition ‘nor have I given thereof for the dead.’ Buta funeral repast may very readily bear a different sense from one in honour of a now deified ancestor. It may be an expression of a determination to maintain with the deceased the same fellowship in worship that subsisted when he was alive, this purpose being indicated by holding a repast once more in pres- ence of the corpse. Still more probable appears to us to be the other explanation, according to which the special object is to provide the spirit of the dead with what it requires during its journey to the realm of death. The same purpose (and not that of a sacrificial gift proper) might be served also by the placing of food on or in the grave, if it is this and not the use of bread at the funeral repast that is alluded to in Dt 264, In the case of Jer 167, again, it is only by perfectly arbitrary alteration of the text that the passage can be converted into a testimony to sacrificial meals in honour of the dead. All that the prophet really says is that, after the coming 0 ihe Divine judgment,' no one will seek to force men to take food to strengthen themselves, or to drink of the ‘cup of consolation,’ and thus bring the mourning fast toan end. As we see from 2S 3* 12", it was the custom to employ pressure of this kind ; but in this whole matter we have nothing to do with Ancestor Worship, especially as there is no ques- tion of ancestors in connexion with the mourning fasts in either of these two passages any more than in 18318 or2S8S 1”.