- Of. the thorough discussion of all the coutro verted ques- tions dealt with in what follows, in Baethgen’s Bettrage zur semit. Reliqionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1888), p. 131 fi.
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the heathen Baal or Melekh that is meant, this would be simply an evidence of Israelitish idolatry due to foreign influences. That Israel had at all times tendencies to such idolatry has not as yet been disputed; but this cannot, of course, be counted amongst the relics of a once prevalent Israelitish Polytheism.
Further, if it should be objected that the OT tradition itself quite unambiguously attributes to the people in primitive times the worship of heathen gods, we reply that this is so, but that the passages in question are much in need of closer examination. Gn 31% drops out of considera- tion. If Rachel stole the god (in v.** called téraphim) of her father Laban, this would at the most be an indication that the Teraphim cult was introduced from the Aramzan sphere, for Laban is regarded by the narrator as an Aramean. We shall see afterwards, however, that upon Hebrew soil the Teraphim cannot have had the significance of a foreign god.—On the other hand, in Jos 24% (E) it is really assumed that the forefathers of the Israelites on the other side of the Euphrates (i.e. before the time of Abraham) as well as in Egypt (v.14) served ‘other gods.’ That does not mean that from the first they had their own specifically Israelitish gods, but that they aban- doned themselves to the worship of the foreign gods in whose country and sphere they sojourned. In this matter the narrator simply follows the theory to which even David gives drastic expres- sion (1S 26!) when he speaks of expulsion from Jahweh’s own land as amounting to a compulsion to serve foreign gods.—But Am 5% cannot, in view of the whole context, be understood as allud- ing to idolatry on the part of Israel during the period of the wilderness wanderings, but only as containing a threat of something to come. —In Ezk 207-4 Israel is charged with having defiled itself with the idols of Egypt, and with refusing to abandon these even in the wilderness. Thus we have here again to do with foreign gods, and not with a native Israelitish Polytheism.
Finally, the possibility might remain that in certain beings of ‘demon’ order, occasionally men- tioned, a reminiscence has survived of actual gods that were once worshipped. In favour of this view might be urged the analogy of other monotheistic religions, in which the gods of past heathen times are not straightway declared to be mere figments of the imagination, but (at least in the beliefs of the people) are degraded to ‘demons’ or spook forms. Thus lived on the once mighty gods of Greece among the early Christians ; and so did the Arab tribal gods even after the conquest of Islam, just as the ancient German gods still survive in various superstitions that prevail amongst Christianized Germanic peoples. As a matter of fact, we find in some late passages of Scripture what may be pronounced certain, or at least ver probable, ex- amples of this depotentiating of former popular gods: e.g. Dt 32, where they are spoken of as shedim, ‘demons,’ to which at one time sacrifices were offered (cf. also Ps 106°, where the once existing practice of offering children is thought of as having these ‘demons’ for its object); 2 Ch 1125, where by the term oyy (sé‘irim, ‘ goats’ or ‘goatlike forms’), the Chronicler evidently under- stands, above all, the heathen popular gods, for whom Jeroboam I. is said to have appointed priests. But in all these instances we have to do expressly with idolatrous worship of foreign gods, and not with relics of an Israelitish Polytheism. And when in Ly 17’ it is forbidden to offer the usual sacrifices any more to the séérim, what comes here once more to the front is the belief in local numina, field spirits, with which there was an unwillingness, in spite of the uncontested
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sole legitimacy of the Jahweh cult, to break com- pletely, seeing that these beings could so readily Injureman. But these field spirits are not, properly speaking, ‘gods’ any more than the spirits that make their abode in sacred trees and stones. Elsewhere, too, the sé‘trim are nothing more than ‘demon’ forms, akin to the fauns and satyrs of classic mythology. In Is 137! they perform their dances in the destroyed palaces of Babylon, in 341 they hold their gatherings amongst the ruins of Edom.
Like the sé‘trim, Lilith (i.e. ‘the nightly one’), who, according to Is 344, dwells in the ruined palaces of Edom, belongs in all probability to the category of monstrosities to which the popular belief gave birth. The same is the case with the Alikah of Pr 30%, the mention of whose two daughters is sufficient to show that it is not the common leech that is meant, but that the name, like the Arabic ‘Alik or‘ Aulak, stands for a blood- sucking ‘demon.’ In another connexion we shall come upon still further remnants of a belief in and fear of ‘demons.’* ‘Azdzél, again, to whom on the Great Day of Atonement the goat laden with the sins of the people was sent forth (Lv 168-10. 218), is evidently an unclean ‘demon’ who inhabits the desert. At the same time it is very questionable whether this figure can be regarded as a survival from the pre-Mosaic belief in ‘ demons,’ and was not rather first borrowed from a foreign source during the Exile. —Of the Cherubim and Seraphim we shall not speak till later on, be- cause these, although certainly a product of non- Israelite soil, attained to something of an inde- pendent significance in Jahwism. The Satan, on the contrary, viewed as an individual, is not met with till the post-exilic period.