A further evidence that Ancestor Worship once prevailed in Israel has been discovered in the great importance attached to the mention of tombs. This, we are told, is explicable only on the ground that these graves were places of worship. Now it is a fact that the patriarchs’ place of burial in a cave at Hebron is repeatedly mentioned. Abra- ham purchased it as a hereditary tomb from the Hittites (Gn 23°*) ; and he himself (25%) as well as Tsaac (35%) and Jacob (cf. 49%, according to which it was the resting-place also of Rebekah and Leah, and 502) were buried there. But all these pas- sages (as well as in all probability the mention of the burial-place of Aaron in Dt 10%) belong to the so-called Priests’ Code, which cannot surely be sup- posed in mentioning them to have had any thought of Ancestor Worship, but only to have intended to establish the title of the Israelites, when they returned from Egypt, to a portion of the soil of Canaan. According to the Jahwistic narrative, also, Jacob desires to be buried with his fathers (47>) ; but here it is not Hebron but Goren-ha’atad, on the east side of Jordan (50°), that,is the burial- place. Besides, among the earlier sources E mentions the tomb of Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse (358), and J or E that of Rachel (35!) and of Miriam, the sister of Moses (Nu 201). But there is not a word anywhere of any of these tombs being a place of worship. For to attempt to discover such an allusion in’ the mazzébah set up on Rachel’s tomb (Gn 35”) is to forget the fact that Ancestor
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Worship was paid only to male ancestors, rarely, if ever, to the mother of the tribe, not to ppeale of the impossibility of supposing the practice of An- cestor Worship at the tomb of the nurse of Re- bekah. The object of the mazgébah on Rachel’s grave must accordingly have been originally some- thing other than to mark it as a place of worship.
Finally, on the theory we are iscussing, it must strike us as very surprising that of all ‘the sons of Jacob who, as ancestors of the various tribes, had the strongest claim to veneration, it is Joseph alone whose place of burial is mentioned (Jos 24% ; cf. also Gn 502, Ex 13” [all E]). Now we do not mean to suggest any doubt that the tomb of Joseph at Shechem, that of Joshua at Timnath-serah (Jos 24%), and no less those of Gideon (Jg 8*), Jephthah (127), Samson (16%), and the so-called ‘minor judges’ (10% 1210-115), may have had the reputation of ‘heroes’ graves,’ although we hear nothing of any cult being practised at them. But, even if Hero Worship could be proved, this would not necessarily be equivalent to Annesten Worship. Even 1 S 20, where the practice of an (? annual) family sacrifice is presupposed, does not justify the conclusion that it was offered to ancestors.
Of all the arguments in favour of the former prevalence of Ancestor Worship, the most plausible is that based upon the injunction of the so-called levirate marriage (Dt 25°), The original aim of this practice is held to have been to provide the childless deceased with a successor and thus with a cult, since the want of the latter was counted a serious misfortune. The custom in question is already presupposed in Gn 38%, where indeed it appears as unconditionally binding, whereas in Dt 957 it has more the character of a simply moral obligation on the partof the surviving brother. But, even if levirate marriage had actually a connexion with Ancestor Worship, the Deuteronomist is cer- tainly unconscious of this, and hence there is also little probability in the supposition that Lv 187° 201, in prohibiting marriage with a brother’s wife, meant to raise a protest against Ancestor Worship.
A certain evidence of Ancestor Worship has been supposed to lie in 2S 18". This, however, is a mistake. For the meaning of the words there is not ‘I have no son to invoke ay name with veneration in the cult of the dead,’ but simply ‘ I have no son to keep my name in remembrance,’ as would be the case if there were any one who was called ‘So and So, the son of Absalom.’ In default of a son, the mazzébah must keep his name from being forgotten. Hence we are unable in this instance to discover the slightest trace of Ancestor Worship.
From 1 § 28", again, where the spirit of Samuel called up by the witch is called an *élohim, t.€. & superhuman being, the most that can be inferred is that the spirits of the dead were one and all included in the category of ’el6him or béné *élohim ; there is no proof here of a worship of the dead, not to speak of a worship of ancestors.
To sum up the results of this whole discussion. If Ancestor Worship ever prevailed in the pre- Mosaic period—and it is pevenolee ay quite conceivable that respect for the dead bodies and. the tombs of parents inspired at least tendencies to a kind of Ancestor Worship,—no consciousness of this survived to historical times, and the whole question, as was remarked before, has at best an interest from the point of view of Archeology but not of Biblical Theology.