ii. FORMS OF WORSHIP, AND OTHER RITES AND USAGES.—The essential character of every ancient religion reveals itself pre-eminently in the worship it offers to the Deity. That such worship formed an element also in the pre-Mosaic stage of the religion of Israel is to be assumed, and various traces of it survived for long even in the cultus of Jahweh. These are recognizable by their great resemblance to, or even complete identity with, the ritual usages of the heathen Semites. As in the case of mourning customs, the original mean- ing, it is true, is often difficult to recognize, or the features of the custom have been so toned down or completely transformed as to make identification impossible.
_ 1. By far the most important ritual transaction in the primitive stage of religion is sacrifice. To the later Israelitish conceptions this appeared almost exclusively from the point of view of a gift, and, above all, as an offering of food to the Deity ; even fat and blood are expressly named in Ezk 447-1 as food of Jahweh. It cannot be doubted that this aspect of the matter was not wholly wanting even in the pre-Mosaic period, and that offerings of fruit in particular were presented to the local nwmina, by being deposited within the sacred precincts (as was done afterwards with the shewbread), or being thrown into the sacred wells.
* Cf. E, Ferritre, Paganisme des Hébreux jusqu’ a la captivité de Babylone, Paris, 1884; OC. H. Toy, ‘Evil Spirits in the Bible’ in JBL ix. pt. i. p. 17ff.; J. van der Veen, ‘Daemonologie van het Judaisme’ in Theol. Studién, 1890, p. 301ff. There is the closest connexion between the belief in ‘demons’ (as also, in- deed, the worship of local nwmina) and the great majority of the manifold forms of magic and soothsaying. Much of the latter may have been first taken over by Israel on Canaanite soil, but not a little must have belonged to the pre-Mosaic stage. Cf. on this point the classical article of W. R. Smith, ‘On the Forms of Divination and Magic enumerated in Deut. xviii. 10 f.’ in Journal of Philology, xiii. p. 273 ff., and xiv. p. 113 ff. ; also T. W. Davies, Magic, Divination, and Demonology among the Hebrews and their Neighbours, etc., London, 1898 (also as Dis- sertation, Leipzig, 1901).
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
Also the ordinary burnt-offering, which was all assigned to the Deity (hence called also /alil, ‘whole-offering’), can scarcely be regarded other- wise than as an offering of food, 7.¢. as a gift. But, on the other hand, it is impossible to explain all sacrificial rites from this point of view. The extraordinary importance which is manifestly at- tributed to the blood of the sacrificial victim carries us forward to another idea, namely, that of the sacramental communion established be- tween the god and his worshippers through their common eating of the (eo qpso sacred) body of the sacrificial victim. And, since from the earliest times the blood is regarded as i rage) the seat of the life, the sacramental communion was undoubtedly reached in the most primitive stage by drinking the sacrificial blood, the same blood as was assigned in some way (it might be by smearing the image or the altar, or by pouring out the blood within the sacred precincts) to the Deity. A clear trace of this notion—although in a form that has been very much toned down—has survived in Ex 24°#, When we read here of Moses sprinkling the altar with one portion of the blood and the people with the other, and thus sealing the cove- nant between Jahweh and the people, the main feature of the rite is the common share in the blood which establishes a communion, and which is hence called by Moses ‘the blood of the cove- nant.’ :
It could not have been long till the advance of culture gave rise to repugnance to the drink- ing of blood. Hence arose naturally a partition of the sacred food ; the portion of the Deity being the blood along with the fat (the latter in all probability on account of the facility with which it could be made over to the Deity by letting it go up in smoke), the portion of the worshippers being the flesh. The sacramental communion, however, finds expression in late as well as in early times in the consumption of the sacrificial meal at a sacred spot, in eating and drinking ‘before Jahweh’ (in early times, no doubt, in the actual presence of the image). That the flesh even in these so-called meal-offerings bore a sacred character, is evident from the circumstance that the mingling of sacred and common food in the body was sought to be avoided by fasting previous to the sacrificial meal. The record of this undoubtedly very ancient prac- tice has come down to us only in connexion with war (Jg 20°65, 18 75) and mourning (1S 313,28 3* [the case is different in 1216]). The strict com- mand to avoid the use of blood for food, which was afterwards extended to the case of animals that could not be offered in sacrifice, may have been originally due not simply to the fact that the blood was reserved for the Deity, but also to the fear of absorbing a second soul along with the blood, the seat of life.