Under the head of external evidence we must reckon not only the strength and unanimity of the tradition, which it would need the very strongest reasons to set aside, but also the narrative of Ex 244%, The deviation here from the traditional rites at sacrifices and covenants, which meet us elsewhere, testifies at least to the high antiquity of the record.
But, even if the attempt to prove its historicity should have to be abandoned, there remain weighty internal reasons for holding that it is impossible to set aside as pure fiction the assumption of a bérith at Sinai as a historical incident.
It was undoubtedly with very heterogeneous elements that Moses had to set to work in accom- plishing his mission. The familiar genealogy of the tribes of Israel makes an emphatic—no doubt, historically justified—distinction between tribes of full and of half blood, the latter being represented as descended from female slaves (Bilhah and Zilpah, Gn 30°"). Moreover, Ex 12% (cf. also Nu 114) speaks of a non-Israelite ‘mixed multitude’ which attached itself to Israel at the Exodus. Yet Moses must have succeeded in imparting a certain unity to all these diverse elements, in controlling them by his will, and in planting amongst them a variety of fruitful germs of religious and legal ordinances. And although even after the immigra- tion into Canaan it is still far from possible (see above, p. 630*) to speak of an Israelitish State, yet a historical document of the first rank, like the Song of Deborah, shows how in the beginning of the period of the Judges the majority of the tribes were permeated with a strong feeling of their unity under the leadership of the God of Israel. Particularly worthy of notice is the express manner in which war (which, as was pointed out above [p. 621°], even in the pre-Mosaic stage of religion had the closest connexion with the cultus) is now placed in relation to Jahwism. After the defeat of the Amalekites, Moses is commanded to write down a formula expressive of the Divine curse on Amalek (Ex 174* [E]). Thereupon he erects an altar and calls it Jahweh-nissi (‘Jahweh is my banner’), ‘for Jahweh hath war with the Amale- kites to all generations.’ Primarily, then, this war
*Tt cannot, indeed, be denied that it is hard to think of 74 people sitting down to a meal on the top of the mountain, and that all difficulty is removed if we accept the suggestion of Riedel (SK, 1903, p. 161ff.), that inv) (‘and they drank’) is corrupted from }MAv*) (‘and they cast themselves down’), and that 28") (‘and they ate’) was interpolated after 1n7") had found its way into the text.
RELIGION OF ISRAEL 631
is not the affair of the people but of their God. The battles which led to the conquest of Canaan (Nu 21"), like those which had still to be fought by David in the struggle which freed the land from the yoke of the Philistines (1S 18!7 25°), are included under the title ‘wars of Jahweh.’ See vol. iv. p. 896.
_ Would all this be conceivable if the proclama- tion of Jahweh as the God of Israel—the founding of the Jahweh religion—had taken place, so to speak, fortuitously, by the incidental passing of the name ‘Jahweh’ from mouth to mouth? In- stead of anything of this kind, we get the strongest impression that the further development of the religion of Israel during the period of the Judges and of the monarchy was the result of some occur- rence of a fundamental kind of whose solemnity and binding force and character the whole nation retained a lively recollection. And this occurrence can have been nothing but the solemn proclaiming of the God who had just manifested Himself in wondrous wise as the Helper and Deliverer of the people upon a definite occasion, and in the binding of the people to do His will and to worship Him alone. Every one of the numerous allusions (whether in the Pentateuchal sources, the Pro- phets, or the Psalms) to the mighty acts of Jahweh at the Exodus, how with a strong hand and a stretched-out arm He brought the hosts of Israel out of the house of bondage, held bavk the waves of the Red Sea from Israel but plunged the chariots and the horsemen of Pharaoh into the waters,—every one of these allusions is at the same time an allusion to the days of Sinai, when for the first time these mighty acts of Jahweh were brought to the consciousness of the people in their true greatness, and extolled accordingly, and made the occasion of a solemn confession of Jahweh as the God of Israel and a solemn binding of the people to do His will.*
The foregoing observations have at the same time furnished the answer to the question as to the essential character of Jahwism as a name for the special relation between Jahweh and Israel. If we had to do with nothing more than the mutual relations between a particular god and a particular people, we should be standing simply upon the soil of a national religion such as prevailed amongst heathen peoples as well. Moab is called ‘the people of Chemosh’ (Nu 21”) just as Israel is ‘the people of Jahweh’; Moab likewise felt itself bound to the worship of this its national god, and expected powerful aid from Chemosh in return, particularly in matters of war. And if such aid was not ren- dered, this was ascribed not to inadequate power on the part of the god, but to the fact that ‘( hemosh was angry with his land’ (Mesha’s inscription, ile 5f.). The presuppositions appear thus to be pre- cisely the same in Moab as in Israel. And yet is it possible to conceive of a Moabite reflecting on the origin of the worship of Chemosh or tracing it back to a bérith between that god and the Moabites? On the contrary, none of them dreamt of anything but that the special relation between god and people had subsisted from the first, nor did any one doubt that between the two there was a blood relationship in virtue of which the god would as a matter of course take the part of his people, without any necessary regard to ethi- cal considerations. He upon whom, according to