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 LIBRARY OF 
 
 THE SAGE SCHOOL 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BL1600 .S66 1889 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 165 582 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029165582 
 
BURNETT LECTURES 
 
 1888-89 
 
LECTU RES 
 
 RELIGION OF THE SEMITES 
 
 FIRST SERIES 
 THE FUNDAMENTAL INSTITUTIONS 
 
 W. ROBERTSON SMITH, M.A., LL.D. 
 
 FELLOW OF Christ's college, and professor of Arabic 
 
 IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 1889 
 
 47 -y" 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In April 1887 I was invited by the trustees of the Burnett 
 Fund to deliver three courses of lectures at Aberdeen, in 
 the three years from October 1888 to October 1891, on 
 " The primitive religions of the Semitic peoples, viewed in 
 relation to other ancient religions, and to the spiritual 
 religion of the Old Testament and of Christianity." I gladly 
 accepted this invitation ; for the subject proposed had 
 interested me for many years, and it seemed to me possible 
 to treat it in a way that would not be uninteresting to the 
 members of my old University, in whose hall the Burnett 
 Lectures are delivered, and to the wider public to whom 
 the gates of Marischal College are opened on the occasion. 
 In years gone by, when I was called upon to defend 
 before the courts of my Church the rights of historical 
 research, as applied to the Old Testament, I had reason to 
 acknowledge with gratitude the fairness and independence 
 of judgment which my fellow-townsmen of Aberdeen 
 brought to the discussion of questions which in most 
 countries are held to be reserved for the learned, and to 
 be merely disturbing to the piety of the ordinary layman ; 
 and I was glad to have the opportunity of commending to 
 the notice of a public so impartial and so intelligent the 
 study of a branch of comparative religion which, as I 
 venture to think, is indispensable to the future progress of 
 Biblical research. 
 
VI PKEFACB. 
 
 In Scotland, at least, no words need be wasted to 
 prove that a right understanding of the religion of the 
 Old Testament is the only way to a right understanding of 
 the Christian faith; but it is not so fully recognised, 
 except in the circle of professed scholars, that the doctrines 
 and ordinances of the Old Testament cannot be thoroughly 
 comprehended until they are put into comparison with the 
 religions of the nations akin to' the Israelites. The value 
 of comparative studies for the study of the religion of the 
 Bible was brought out very clearly, two hundred years ago, 
 by one of the greatest of English theologians. Dr. John 
 Spencer,. Master of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, 
 whose Latin work on the ritual laws of the Hebrews may 
 justly be said to have laid the foundations of the science 
 of Comparative Eeligion, and in its special subject, in spite 
 of certain defects that could hardly have been avoided at 
 the time when it was composed, still remains by far the 
 most important book on the religious antiquities of the 
 Hebrews. But Spencer was so much before his time that 
 his work was not followed up ; it is often ignored by 
 professed students of the Old Testament, and has hardly 
 exercised any influence on the current ideas which are 
 the common property of educated men interested in the 
 Bible. 
 
 In modern times Comparative Eeligion has become in 
 some degree a popular subject, and in our own country 
 has been treated from various points of view by men of 
 eminence who have the ear of the public ; but nothing 
 considerable has been done since Spencer's time, either in 
 England or on the Continent, whether in learned or in 
 popular form, towards a systematic comparison of the 
 religion of the Hebrews, as a whole, with the beliefs and 
 ritual practices of the other Semitic peoples. In matters 
 of detail valuable work has been done ; but this work has 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 been too special, and for the most part too technical, to 
 help the circle to whom the Burnett Lectures are addressed ; 
 which I take to be a circle of cultivated and thinking men 
 and women, who have no special acquaintance with Semitic 
 lore, but are interested in everything that throws light on 
 their own religion, and are prepared to follow a sustained 
 or even a severe argument, if the speaker on his part will 
 remember that historical research can always be made 
 intelligible to thinking people, when it is set forth with 
 orderly method and in plain language. 
 
 There is a particular reason why some attempt in this 
 direction should be made now. The first conditions of an 
 effective comparison of Hebrew religion, as a whole, with 
 the religion of the other Semites, were lacking so long as 
 the historical order of the Old Testament documents, and 
 especially of the documents of which the Pentateuch is 
 made up, was unascertained or wrongly apprehended; 
 but, thanks to the labours of a series of scholars (of 
 whom it is sufficient to name Kuenen and Wellhausen, 
 as the men whose acumen and research have carried 
 this enquiry to a point where nothing of vital importance 
 for the historical study of the Old Testament religion 
 still remains uncertain), the growth of the Old Testament 
 religion can now be followed from stage to stage, in a 
 way that is hardly possible with any other religion of 
 antiquity. And so it is now not only possible, but 
 most necessary for further progress, to make a fair com- 
 parison between Hebrew religion in its various stages 
 and the religions of the races with which the Hebrews 
 were cognate by natural descent, and with which also they 
 were historically in constant touch. 
 
 The plan which I have framed for my guidance in 
 carrying out the desires of the Burnett Trustees is ex- 
 plained in the first lecture. I begin with the institutions 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 of religion, and in the present series I discuss those 
 institutions which may be called fundamental, particularly 
 that of sacrifice, to which fully one half of the volume 
 is devoted. It will readily be understood that, in the 
 course of the argument, I have found it convenient to 
 take up a good many things that are not fundamental, at 
 the place where they could most naturally be explained ; 
 and on the other hand I daresay that students of the 
 subject may sometimes be disposed to regard as funda- 
 mental certain matters which I have been compelled to 
 defer. But on the whole I trust that the present volume 
 will be found to justify its title, and to contain a fairly 
 adequate analysis of the first principles of Semitic worship. 
 It would indeed have been in some respects more satis- 
 factory to myself to defer the publication of the first 
 series of lectures till I could complete the whole subject 
 of institutions, derivative as well as primary. But it 
 seemed due to the hearers who may desire to attend the 
 second series of lectures, to let them have before them in 
 print the arguments and conclusions from which that 
 series must start ; and also, in a matter of this sort, when 
 one has put forth a considerable number of new ideas, the 
 value of which must be tested by criticism, one is anxious 
 to have the judgment of scholars on the first part of one's 
 work before going on to further developments. 
 
 I may explain that the lectures, as now printed, are 
 considerably expanded from the form in which they were 
 delivered ; and that only nine lectures of the eleven were 
 read in Aberdeen, the last two having been added to 
 complete the discussion of sacrificial ritual. 
 
 In dealing with the multiplicity of scattered evidences 
 on which the argument rests, I have derived great assist- 
 ance from the researches of a number of scholars, to whom 
 acknowledgment is made in the proper places. For 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 Arabia I have been able to refer throughout to my friend 
 Wellhausen's excellent volume, Reste arabischen Heiden- 
 thumes (Berl. 1887), in which the extant material for this 
 branch of Semitic heathenism is fully brought together, 
 and criticised with the author's well-known acumen. For 
 the other parts of Semitic heathenism there is no standard 
 exposition of a systematic kind that can be referred to 
 in the same way. In this country Movers's book on 
 Phoenician religion is often regarded as a standard 
 authority for the heathenism of the Northern Semites ; 
 but, with all its learning, it is a very unsafe guide, and 
 does not supersede even so old a book as Selden, De diis 
 Syris. 
 
 In analysing the origin of ritual institutions I have 
 often had occasion to consult analogies in the usages of 
 early peoples beyond the Semitic field. In this part of 
 the work I have had invaluable assistance from my friend, 
 Mr. J. G. Frazer, who has given me free access to his 
 unpublished collections on the superstitions and religious 
 observances of primitive nations in all parts of the globe. 
 I have sometimes referred to him by name, in the course 
 of the book, but these references convey but an imperfect 
 idea of my obligations to his learning and intimate 
 familiarity with primitive habits of thought. In this 
 connection I would also desire to make special acknow- 
 ledgment of the value, to students of Semitic ritual and 
 usage, of the comparative studies of Dr. Wilken of Leyden ; 
 which I mention in this place, because Dutch work is too 
 apt to be overlooked in England. 
 
 In transcribing Oriental words I have distinguished the 
 emphatic consonants, so far as seemed necessary to preclude 
 ambiguities, by the usual device of putting dots under the 
 English letters that come nearest to them in sound. But 
 instead of k (P) I write c, following a precedent set by 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 eminent French Orientalists. In Eastern words both c and 
 g are always to be pronounced hard. But where there is 
 a conventional English form for a word I retain it ; thus 
 I write " Caaba," not " Ka ba ; " " Caliph," not " Khalifa ; " 
 " Jehovah," not " Yahveh " or " lahwe." As regards the 
 references in the notes, it may be useful to mention that 
 C. I. S. means the Paris Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, 
 and ZDMG. the Zeitschrift of the German Oriental Society ; 
 that when Wellhausen is cited, without reference to the 
 title of a book, his work on Arabian Heathenism is meant ; 
 and that Kinship means my book on Kinship and Marriage 
 in Early Arabia (Cambridge, University Press, 1885). 
 
 Finally, I have to express my thanks to my friend, Mr. 
 J. S. Black, who has kindly read the whole book in proof, 
 and made many valuable suggestions. 
 
 W. EoBEKTSON Smith. 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge, 
 \st October 1889. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Intkoduotion : The Subject and the Method of Enquiry . 1 
 
 LECTURE IL 
 
 The iK'ATUKE or the Religious Community and the Relation 
 
 OP the Gods to theik Wokshippeks . . 29 
 
 LECTURE IIL 
 
 The Relation of the Gods to Natural Things — Holy Places 
 
 —The Jinn . . . . . 82 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 Holy Places in theik Relation to Man . . . 132 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 Sanctuaeibs, Natural and Artificial — Holy Waters, Trees, 
 
 Caves, and Stones . . . . . .150 
 
 LECTURE VL 
 Saceifioe — Preliminary Survey . . . I&6 
 
 LECTURE VIL 
 Fiestfeuits, Tithes, and Sacrificial Meals . . 226 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 The Original Significance of Animal Sacrifice, . . 251 
 
XU CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Sacramental Efficacy of Animal Sackificb, and Cognate 
 Acts of Ritttal — The Blood Covenant — Blood and Hair 
 Offerings ....... 294 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 The Development of Sacrificial Ritual — Fire-sacrifices and 
 
 Piactjla ....... 334 
 
 LECTURE XL 
 
 Sacrificial Gifts and Piacular Sacrifices— The Special Ideas 
 
 involved in the latter ..... 369 
 
 Additional Notes ....... 421 
 
 Index of Passages of Scripture ..... 475 
 
 General Index . . ... 479 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION: THE SUBJECT AND THE METHOD OF 
 ENQUIRY. 
 
 The subject before us is the religion of the Semitic peoples, 
 that is, of the group of kindred nations, including the Arabs, 
 the Hebrews and Phoenicians, the Aramseans, the Baby- 
 lonians and Assyrians, which in ancient times occupied the 
 great Arabian Peninsula, with the more fertile lands of 
 Syria Mesopotamia and Irac, from the Mediterranean 
 coast to the base of the mountains of Iran and Armenia. 
 Among these peoples three of the great faiths of the 
 world had their origin, so that the Semites must always 
 have a peculiar interest for the student of the history of 
 religion. Our subject, however, is not the history of the 
 several religions that have a Semitic origin, but Semitic 
 religion as a whole in its common features and general 
 type. Judaism, Christianity and Islam Sire positive rehgions, 
 that is, they did not grow up like the systems of ancient 
 heathenism, under the action of unconscious forces operating 
 silently from age to age, but trace their origin to the 
 teaching of great religious innovators, who spoke as the 
 organs of a divine revelation, and deliberately departed 
 from the traditions of the past. Behind these positive 
 religions lies the old unconscious religious tradition, the 
 
2 POSITIVE AND TRADITIONAL lect. i. 
 
 body of religious usage and belief which cannot be traced 
 to the influence of individual minds, and was not propagated 
 on individual authority, but formed part of that inheritance 
 from the past into which successive generations of the 
 Semitic race grew up as it were instinctively, taking it as 
 a matter of course that they should believe and act as their 
 fathers had done before them. The positive Semitic 
 religions had to establish themselves on ground already 
 occupied by these older beliefs and usages ; they had to 
 displace what they could not assimilate, and whether they 
 rejected or absorbed the elements of the older religion, 
 they had at every point to reckon with them and take up 
 a definite attitude towards them. 'No positive religion that 
 has moved men has been able to start with a tabula rasa, 
 and express itself as if religion were beginning for the first 
 time ; in form, if not in substance, the new system must 
 be in contact all along the line with the older ideas and 
 practices which it finds in possession. A new scheme of 
 faith can find a hearing only by appealing to religious 
 instincts and susceptibilities that already exist in its 
 audience, and it cannot reach these without taking account 
 of the traditional forms in which all religious feeling is 
 embodied, and without speaking a language which men 
 accustomed to these old forms can understand. Thus to 
 comprehend a system of positive religion thoroughly, to 
 understand it in its historical origin and form as well as in 
 its abstract principles, we must know the traditional 
 religion that preceded it. It is from this point of view 
 that I invite you to take an interest in the ancient religion 
 of the Semitic peoples ; the matter is not one of mere 
 antiquarian curiosity, but has a direct and important 
 bearing on the great problem of the origins of the spiritual 
 religion of the Bible. Let me illustrate this by an example. 
 You know how large a part of the teaching of the New 
 
LECT. I. RELIGION AMONG THE SEMITES. 3 
 
 Testament and of all Christian theology turns on the ideas 
 of sacrifice and priesthood. In what they have to say on 
 these heads the Uew Testament writers presuppose, as the 
 basis of their argument, the notion of sacrifice and priest- 
 hood current among the Jews and embodied in the 
 ordinances of the Temple. But, again, the ritual of the 
 Temple was not in its origin an entirely novel thing ; the 
 precepts of the Pentateuch did not create a priesthood and 
 a sacrificial service on an altogether independent basis, but 
 only reshaped and remodelled, in accordance with a more 
 spiritual doctrine, institutions of an older type, which in 
 many particulars were common to the Hebrews with their 
 heathen neighbours. Every one who reads the Old Testa- 
 ment with attention is struck with the fact that the origin 
 and rationale of sacrifice are nowhere fully explained ; that 
 sacrifice is an essential part of religion is taken for granted, 
 as something which is not a doctrine peculiar to Israel 
 but is universally admitted and acted on without as well as 
 within the limits of the chosen people. Thus when we wish 
 thoroughly to study the New Testament doctrine of sacrifice, 
 we are carried back step by step till we reach a point 
 where we have to ask what sacrifice meant, not to the old 
 Hebrews alone, but to the whole circle of nations of which 
 they formed a part. By considerations of this sort we are 
 led to the conclusion that no one of the rehgions of Semitic 
 origin which still exercise so great an influence on the lives 
 of millions of mankind can be studied completely and 
 exhaustively without a subsidiary enquiry into the older 
 traditional religion of the Semitic race. 
 
 You observe that in this argument I take it for 
 granted that, when we go back to the most ancient 
 religious conceptions and usages of the Hebrews, we shall 
 find them to be the common property of a group of 
 kindred peoples, and not the exclusive possession of the 
 
4 MEANING OF THE lect. I. 
 
 tribes of Israel. The proof that this is so wUl appear 
 more clearly ia the sequel; but, indeed, the thing will 
 hardly be denied by any one who has read the Bible with 
 care. In the history of old Israel before the captivity, 
 nothing comes out more clearly than that the mass of the 
 people found the greatest difficulty in keeping their 
 national religion distinct from that of the surrounding 
 nations. Those who had no grasp of spiritual principles, 
 and knew the religion of Jehovah only as an affair of 
 inherited usage, were laot conscious of any great difference 
 between themselves and their heathen neighbours, and fell 
 into Canaanite and other foreign practices with the greatest 
 facility. The significance of this fact is manifest if we 
 consider how deeply the most untutored religious sensi- 
 bilities are shocked by any kind of innovation. Nothing 
 appeals so strongly as religion to the conservative instincts ; 
 and conservatism is the habitual attitude of Orientals. 
 The whole history of Israel is unintelligible if we suppose 
 that the heathenism against which the prophets contended 
 was a thing altogether alien to the religious traditions of 
 the Hebrews. In principle there was all the difference in 
 the world between the faith of Isaiah and that of an 
 idolater. But the difference in principle, which seems so 
 clear to us, was not clear to the average Judaean, and the 
 reason of this was that it was obscured by the great 
 similarity in many important points of religious tradition 
 and ritual practice. The conservatism which refuses to 
 look at principles, and has an eye only for tradition and 
 usage, was against the prophets, and had no sympathy 
 with their efforts to draw a sharp line between the religion 
 of Jehovah and that of the foreign gods. This is a proof 
 that what I may call the natural basis of Israel's worship 
 was very closely akin to that of the neighbouring cults. 
 The conclusion on this point which is suggested by the 
 
LECT. I. WOED SEMITIC 
 
 facts of Old Testament history, may be accepted the more 
 readily because it is confirmed by presumptive arguments 
 of another kind. Traditional religion is handed down from 
 father to child, and therefore is in great measure an affair 
 of race. Nations sprung from a common stock will have 
 a common inheritance of traditional belief and usage in 
 things sacred as well as profane, and thus the evidence 
 that the Hebrews and their neighbours had a large common 
 stock of religious tradition falls in with the evidence 
 which we have from other sources, that in point of race 
 the people of Israel were nearly akin to the heathen 
 nations of Syria and Arabia The populations of this 
 whole region constitute a well-marked ethnic unity, a fact 
 which is usually expressed by giving to them the common 
 name of Semites. The choice of this term was orginally 
 suggested by the tenth chapter of Genesis, in which most 
 of the nations of the group with which we are concerned 
 are represented as descended from Shem the son of Noah. 
 But though modern historians and ethnographers have 
 borrowed a name from the book of Genesis, it must be 
 understood that they do not define the Semitic group as 
 coextensive with the list of nations that are there reckoned 
 to the children of Shem. Most recent interpreters are 
 disposed to regard the classification of the families of 
 mankind given in Genesis x. as founded on principles 
 geographical or political rather than ethnographical ; the 
 Phoenicians and other Canaanites, for example, are made to 
 be children of Ham and near cousins of the Egyptians. 
 This arrangement corresponds to historical facts, for, at a 
 period anterior to the Hebrew conquest, Canaan was for 
 centuries an Egyptian dependency, and Phoenician religion 
 and civilisation are permeated by Egyptian influence. 
 But ethnographieally the Canaanites were akin to the Arabs 
 and Syrians, and they spoke a lang-uage which is hardly 
 
6 LANGUAGE AS A lect. I. 
 
 different from Hebrew. On the other hand, Elam and Lud, 
 that is, Susiana and Lydia, are called children of Shem, 
 and doubtless these lands were powerfully influenced by 
 Semitic civilisation, but there is no reason to think that 
 in either country the mass of the population belonged to 
 the same stock as the Syrians and Arabs. Accordiugly it 
 must be remembered that when modern scholars use the 
 term Semitic, they do not speak as interpreters of Scripture, 
 but as independent observers of ethnographical facts, and 
 include all peoples whose distinctive ethnical characters 
 assign them to the same group with the Hebrews, Syrians, 
 and Arabs. 
 
 The scientific definition of an ethnographical group 
 depends on a variety of considerations ; for direct historical 
 evidence of an unimpeachable kind as to the original seats 
 and kindred of ancient peoples is not generally to be 
 had. The defects of historical tradition must therefore be 
 supplied by observation, partly of inherited physical 
 characteristics, and partly of mental characteristics habits 
 and attainments such as are usually transmitted from 
 parent to child. Among the indirect criteria of kinship 
 between nations, the most obvious, and the one which has 
 hitherto been most carefully studied, is the criterion of 
 language ; for it is observed that the languages of man- 
 kind form a series of natural groups, and that within each 
 group it is possible to arrange the several languages which 
 it contains in what may be called a genealogical order, 
 according to degrees of kinship. Now it may not always 
 be true that people of the same or kindred speech are as 
 closely related by actual descent as they seem to be from 
 the language they speak ; a Gaelic tribe, for example, may 
 forget their ancient speech, and learn to speak a Teutonic 
 dialect, without ceasing to be true Gaels by blood. But, in 
 general, large groups of men do not readily change their 
 
LECT. r. CRITERION OP RACE. 7 
 
 language, but go on from generation to generation speaking 
 the ancestral dialect with such gradual modification as the 
 lapse of time brings about. As a rule, therefore, the classi- 
 fication of mankind by language, at least when applied to 
 large masses, will approach pretty closely to a natural classi- 
 fication ; and in a large proportion of cases, the language of 
 a mixed race will prove on examination to be that of the 
 stock whose blood is predominant. Where this is not the 
 case, where a minority has imposed its speech on a 
 majority, we may safely conclude that it has done so in 
 virtue of a natural pre-eminence, a power of shaping 
 lower races in its own mould, which is not confined to the 
 sphere of language, but extends to all parts of life. "Where 
 we find unity of language, we can at least say with 
 certainty that we are dealing with a group of men who are 
 subject to common influences of the most subtle and far- 
 reaching kind ; and where unity of speech has prevailed for 
 many generations, we may be sure that the continued 
 action of these influences has produced great uniformity 
 of physical and mental type. When we come to deal with 
 groups which have long had separate histories, and whose 
 languages are therefore not identical but only cognate, the 
 case is not so strong. A Scot, for example, whose blood is 
 a mixture of the Teutonic and Celtic, and a North German, 
 who is partly Teutonic and partly Wendish, speak languages 
 belonging to the same Teutonic stock, but in each case the 
 non-Teutonic element in the blood, though it has not ruled 
 the language, has had a perceptible effect on the national 
 character, so that the difference of type between the two 
 men is greater than the difference of their dialects indicates. 
 It is plain, therefore, that kinship in language is not an 
 exact measure of the degree of affinity as determined by 
 the sum of race characters ; but on the whole it remains 
 true, that the stock which is strong enough, whether by 
 
8 UNITY AND HOMOGENEITY lect. i. 
 
 numbers or by genius, to impress its language on a nation, 
 must exercise a predominant influence on the national 
 type in other respects also ; and to this extent the 
 classification of races by language must be called natural 
 and not artificial. Especially is this true for ancient times, 
 when the absence of literature, and especially of religious 
 books, made it much more difficult than it has been in 
 recent ages for a new language to establish itself in a race 
 to which it was originally foreign. All Egypt now speaks 
 Arabic — a Semitic tongue — and yet the population is 
 very far from having assimilated itself to the Arabic type. 
 But this could not have happened without the Goran and 
 the religion of the Goran, which have given what I may 
 call an artificial advantage to the Arabic language. In 
 very ancient times the language of a conquering people 
 had no such artificial help in preserving and propagating 
 itself. A tongue which is spoken and not written makes 
 way only in proportion as those who speak it are able 
 to hold their own without assistance from the literary 
 achievements of their ancestors. 
 
 As regards the Semitic nations, which, as I have already 
 said, are classed together on the ground of similarity of 
 language, we have every reason to recognise their linguistic 
 kinship as only one manifestation of a very marked general 
 unity of type. The unity is not perfect ; it would not, for 
 example, be safe to make generalisations about the Semitic 
 character from the Arabian nomads, and to apply them to 
 the ancient Babylonians. And for this there are probably 
 two reasons. On the one hand, the Semite of the Arabian 
 desert and the Semite of the Babylonian alluvium lived 
 under altogether different physical and moral conditions ; 
 the difference of environment is as complete as possible. 
 And on the other hand, it is pretty certain that the Arabs 
 of the desert have been from time immemorial a race 
 
LECT. I. OF THE SEMITIC HACE. 9 
 
 practically unmixed, while the Babylonians, and other 
 members of the same family settled on the fringes of the 
 Semitic land, were in all probability largely mingled with 
 the blood of other races, and underwent a corresponding 
 modification of type. 
 
 But when every allowance is made for demonstrable or 
 possible variations of type within the Semitic field, it still 
 remains true that the Semites form a singularly well 
 marked and relatively speaking a very homogeneous group. 
 So far as language goes the evidence to this effect is parti- 
 cularly strong. The Semitic tongues are so closely related 
 to one another, that their affinity is recognised even by the 
 untrained observer ; and modern science has little difficulty 
 in tracing them back to a common speech, and determining 
 in a general way what the features of that speech were. 
 On the other hand, the differences between these languages 
 and those spoken by other adjacent races are so funda- 
 mental and so wide, that no sober philologist has ventured 
 to lay down anything positive as to the relation of the 
 Semitic tongues to other linguistic stocks. Their nearest 
 kinship seems to be with the languages of North Africa, 
 but even here the common features are balanced by pro- 
 found differences. The evidence of language therefore tends 
 to show that the period during which the original and 
 common Semitic speech existed apart, and developed its 
 peculiar characters at a distance from languages of other 
 stocks, must have been very long in comparison with the 
 subsequent period during which the separate branches of 
 the Semitic stock, such as Hebrew Aramaic and Arabic, 
 were isolated from one another and developed into separate 
 dialects. Or, to draw the historical inference from this, it 
 would appear that before the Hebrews, the Aramseans, and 
 the Arabs spread themselves over widely distant seats, and 
 began their course of separate national development, there 
 
10 UNITY AND HOMOGENEITY lect. i. 
 
 must have been a long period in which the ancestors of all 
 these nations lived together and spoke with one tongue. 
 And as Hebrew Aramaic and Arabic are all much liker to 
 one another than the old common Semitic can possibly 
 have been to any of the languages of surrounding races, it 
 would seem that the separate existence of the several 
 Semitic nations up to the time when their linguistic dis- 
 tinctions were fully developed, can have been but short in 
 comparison with the period during which the undivided 
 Semitic stock, living in separation from other races, formed 
 its peculiar and distinctive type of speech. 
 
 The full force of this argument can hardly be made 
 plain without reference to philological details of a kind 
 unsuited to our present purpose ; but those of you who have 
 some acquaintance with the Semitic languages will readily 
 admit that the development of the common Semitic system 
 of triliteral roots, not to speak of other linguistic peculiari- 
 ties, must have been the affair of a number of generations 
 vastly greater than was necessary to develop the differences 
 between Hebrew and Arabic. If, now, the fathers of all the 
 Semitic nations lived together for a very long time, at the 
 very ancient date which preceded the separate history of 
 Hebrews Aramaeans and Arabs, — that is, in the infancy 
 of the races of mankind, the period of human history in 
 which individuality went for nothing, and all common 
 influences had a force which we moderns can with difficulty 
 conceive, — it is clear that the various swarms which ulti- 
 mately hived off from the common stock and formed the 
 Semitic nations known to history, must have carried with 
 them a strongly marked race character, and many common 
 possessions of custom and idea, besides their common 
 language. And further let us observe that the dispersion 
 of the Semitic nations was never carried so far as the 
 dispersion of the Aryans. If we leave out of account 
 
LECT. I. OF THE SEMITIC EACE. 11 
 
 settlements made over the seas, — the South Arabian 
 colonies in East Africa, and the Phcjenician colonies on the 
 coasts and isles of the Mediterranean, — we find that the 
 region of Semitic occupation is continuous and compact. 
 Its great immovable centre is the vast Arabian peninsula, 
 a region naturally isolated, and in virtue of its physical 
 characters almost exempt from immigration or change of 
 inhabitants. And from this central stronghold, which the 
 predominant opinion of modern scholars designates as the 
 probable starting-point of the whole Semitic dispersion, the 
 region of Semitic speech spreads out round the margin of 
 the Syrian desert till it strikes against great natural 
 boundaries, the Mediterranean, Mount Taurus, and the 
 mountains of Armenia and Iran. From the earliest dawn 
 of history aU. that lies within these limits was fully occu- 
 pied by Semitic tribes speaking Semitic dialects, and the 
 compactness of this settlement must necessarily have tended 
 to maintain uniformity of type. The several Semitic 
 nations, when they were not in direct contact with one 
 another, were divided not by alien populations but only by 
 the natural barriers of mountain and desert. These natural 
 barriers, indeed, were numerous, and served to break up the 
 race into a number of small tribes or nations ; but, like the 
 mountains of Greece, they were not so formidable as to 
 prevent the separate states from maintaining a great deal 
 of intercourse, which, whether peaceful or warlike, tended 
 to perpetuate the original community of type. Nor was 
 the operation of these causes disturbed in ancient times by 
 any great foreign immigration. The early Egyptian in- 
 vasions of Syria were not accompanied by any attempt at 
 colonisation ; and though the so-called Hittite monuments, 
 which have given rise to so much speculation, may afford 
 evidence that a non-Semitic people from Asia Minor at one 
 time pushed its way into Northern Syria, it is pretty clear 
 
12 UNITY AND HOMOGENEITY lect. i. 
 
 that the Hittites of the Bible, i.e. the non-Aramaic com- 
 munities of Coele-Syria, were a branch of the Canaanite 
 stock, and that the utmost concession that can be made to 
 modern theories on this subject is that they may for a time 
 have been dominated by a non-Semitic axistocracy. At 
 one time it was not uncommon to represent the Philistines 
 as a non-Semitic people, but it is now generally recognised 
 that the arguments for this view are inadequate, and that, 
 though they came into Palestine from across the sea, from 
 Caphtor, i.e. probably from Crete, they were either mainly 
 of Semitic blood or at least were already thoroughly Semi- 
 tised at the time of their immigration, alike in speech and 
 in religion. 
 
 Coming down to later times, we find that the Assyrian 
 Babylonian and Persian conquests made no considerable 
 change in the general type of the population of the Semitic 
 lands. National and tribal landmarks were removed, and 
 there were considerable shiftings of population witliin the 
 Semitic area, but no great incursion of new populations of 
 alien stock. In the Greek and Eoman periods, on the 
 contrary, a large foreign element was introduced into the 
 towns of Syria ; but as the immigration was practically con- 
 fined to the cities, hardly touching the rural districts, its 
 effects in modifying racial type were, it would seem, of a 
 very transitory character. For in Eastern cities the death- 
 rate habitually exceeds the birth - rate, and the urban 
 population is maintained only by constant recruital from 
 the country, so that it is the blood of the peasantry which 
 ultimately determines the type of the population. Thus it 
 is to be explained that after the Arab conquest of Syria, 
 the Greek element in the population rapidly disappeared. 
 Indeed, one of the most palpable proofs that the populations 
 of all the old Semitic lands possessed a remarkable homo- 
 geneity of character, is the fact that in them, and in them 
 
LECT. I. OF THE SEMITIC EACE. 13 
 
 alone, the Arabs and Arab influence took permanent root. 
 The Moslem conquests extended far beyond these limits, 
 but except in the old Semitic countries, Islam speedily took 
 new shapes, and the Arab domination soon gave way before 
 the reaction of the mass of its foreign subjects. 
 
 Thus the whole course of history, from the earliest date 
 to which authentic knowledge extends down to the time of 
 the decay of the Caliphate, records no great permanent 
 disturbance of population to affect the constancy of the 
 Semitic type within its original seats, apart from the 
 temporary Hellenisation of the great cities already spoken 
 of. Such disturbances as did take place consisted partly 
 of mere local displacements among the settled Semites, 
 partly, and in a much greater degree, of the arrival and 
 establishment in the cultivated lands of successive hordes 
 of Semitic nomads from the Arabian wilderness, which on 
 their settlement found themselves surrounded by popula- 
 tions so nearly of their own type that the complete 
 fusion of the old and new inhabitants was effected without 
 difficulty, and without modification of the general character 
 of the race. If at any point in its settlements, except 
 along the frontiers, the Semitic blood was largely modified 
 by foreign admixture, this must have taken place in 
 prehistoric times, or by fusion with other races which 
 may have occupied the country before the arrival of the 
 Semites. How far anything of this sort actually happened 
 can only be matter of conjecture, for the special hypotheses 
 which have sometimes been put forth — as, for example, that 
 there was a considerable strain of pre-Semitic blood in the 
 Phoenicians and Canaanites — rest on presumptions of no 
 conclusive sort. What is certain is that the Semitic 
 settlements in Asia were practically complete at the first 
 dawn of history, and that the Semitic blood was constantly 
 reinforced, from very early times, by fresh immigrations 
 
14 THE SEMITES OP lect. i. 
 
 from the desert. There is hardly another part of the 
 world where we have such good historical reasons for 
 presuming that linguistic affinity will prove a safe indica- 
 tion of affinity in race, and in general physical and mental 
 type. And this presumption is not belied by the results 
 of nearer enquiry. Those who have busied themselves 
 with the history and literature of the Semitic peoples, bear 
 uniform testimony to the close family likeness that runs 
 through them all. 
 
 It is only natural that this homogeneity of type appears 
 to be modified on the frontiers of the Semitic field. To 
 the West, if we leave the transmarine colonies out of view, 
 natural conditions drew a sharp line of local demarcation 
 between the Semites and their alien neighbours. The Eed 
 Sea and the desert north of it formed a geographical barrier, 
 which was often crossed by the expansive force of the 
 Semitic race, but which appears to have effectually checked 
 the advance into Asia of African populations. But on the 
 East, the fertile basin of the Euphrates and Tigris seems in 
 ancient as in modern times to have been a meeting-place 
 of races. The preponderating opinion of Assyriologists is 
 to the effect that the civilisation of Assyria and Babylonia 
 was not purely Semitic, and that the ancient population of 
 these parts contained a large pre-Semitic element, whose 
 influence is especially to be recognised in religion and in 
 the sacred literature of the cuneiform records. 
 
 If this be so, it is plain that the cuneiform material 
 must be used with caution in our enquiry into the type of 
 traditional religion characteristic of the ancient Semites. 
 That Babylonia is the best starting-point for a compara- 
 tive study of the sacred beliefs and practices of the Semitic 
 peoples, is an idea which has lately had some vogue, and 
 which at first sight appears plausible on account of the 
 great antiquity of the monumental evidence. But, in 
 
LECT. I. BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. 1 5 
 
 matters of this sort, ancient and primitive are not 
 synonymous terms ; and we must not look for the most 
 primitive form of Semitic faith in a region where society 
 was not primitive. In Babylonia, it would seem, society 
 and religion alike were based on a fusion of two races, and 
 so were not primitive but complex. Moreover, the official 
 system of Babylonian and Assyrian religion, as it is known 
 to us from priestly texts and public inscriptions, bears clear 
 marks of being something more than a popular traditional 
 faith; it has been artificially moulded by priestcraft and 
 statecraft in much the same way as the official religion of 
 Egypt ; that is to say, it is in great measure an artificial 
 combination, for imperial purposes, of elements drawn from 
 a number of local worships. In all probability the actual 
 religion of the masses was always much simpler than the 
 official system ; and in later times it would seem that, both 
 in religion and in race, Assyria was little different from the 
 adjacent Aramaic countries. These remarks are not meant 
 to throw doubt on the great importance of cuneiform studies 
 for the history of Semitic religion ; the monumental data 
 are valuable for comparison with what we know of the 
 faith and worship of other Semitic peoples, and peculiarly 
 valuable because, in religion as in other matters, the 
 civilisation of the Euphrates-Tigris valley exercised a great 
 historical influence on a large part of the Semitic field. 
 But the right point of departure for a general study of 
 Semitic religion must be sought in regions where, though 
 our knowledge begins at a later date, it refers to a simpler 
 state of society, and where accordingly the religious 
 phenomena revealed to us are of an origin less doubtful and 
 a character less complicated. In many respects the religion 
 of heathen Arabia, though we have few details concerning 
 it that are not of post-Christian date, exhibits an extremely 
 primitive character, corresponding to the primitive and un- 
 
16 SOURCES AND METHOD leCT. i. 
 
 changing character of nomadic life. And with what may 
 be gathered from this source we must compare, above all, 
 the invaluable notices, preserved in the Old Testament, of 
 the religion of the small Palestinian states before their 
 conquest by the great empires of the East. For this 
 period, apart from the Assyrian records, we have only a 
 few precious fragments of evidence from inscriptions, and 
 no other literary evidence of a contemporary kind. At a 
 later date the evidence from monuments is multiplied and 
 Greek literature begins to give important aid ; but by 
 this time also we have reached the period of religious 
 syncretism — the period, that ife, when different faiths and 
 Worships began to react on one another, and produce 
 new and complex forms of religion. Here, therefore, we 
 have to use the same precautions that are called for in 
 dealing with the older syncretistic religion of Babylonia 
 and Assyria ; it is only by careful sifting and comparison 
 that we can separate between ancient use and modern 
 innovation, between the old religious inheritance of the 
 Semites and things that came in from without. 
 
 Let it be understood from the outset that we have 
 not the materials for anything like a complete com- 
 parative history of Semitic religions, and that nothing of 
 the sort wiU be attempted in these Lectures. But a careful 
 study and comparison of the various sources is sufficient 
 to furnish a tolerably accurate view of a series of general 
 features, which recur with striking uniformity in all parts 
 of the Semitic field, and govern the evolution of faith and 
 worship down to a late date. These widespread and 
 permanent features form the real interest of Semitic 
 religion to the philosophical student ; it was in them, 
 and not in the things that vary from place to place and 
 from time to time, that the strength of Semitic religion 
 lay, and it is to them therefore that we must look for help 
 
LECT. I. OF THE ENQUIRY. 17 
 
 in the most important practical application of our studies, 
 for light on the great question of the relation of the 
 positive Semitic religions to the earlier faith of the race. 
 
 Before entering upon the particulars of our enquiry, I 
 must still detain you with a few words about the method 
 and order of investigation that seem to be prescribed by 
 the nature of the subject. To get a true and weU-defined 
 picture of the type of Semitic religion, we must not only 
 study the parts separately, but must have clear views of 
 the place and proportion of each part in its relation to the 
 whole. To this end it is very desirable that we should 
 follow a natural order of enquiry and exposition, beginning 
 with those features of religion which stood, so to speak, in 
 the foreground, and therefore bulked most largely in 
 religious life. And here we shall go very far wrong if 
 we take it for granted that what is the most important 
 and prominent side of religion to us was equally important 
 in the ancient society with which we are to deal. In 
 connection with every religion, whether ancient or modern, | 
 we find on the one hand certain beliefs, and on the other ! 
 certain institutions ritual practices and rules of conduct. 
 Our modern habit is to look at religion from the side of 
 belief rather than of practice ; a habit largely due to the 
 fact that, tUl comparatively recent times, almost the only 
 forms of religion which have attracted much serious study 
 in Europe have been those of the various^ Christian 
 Churches, and that the controversies between these Churches ! 
 have constantly turned on diversities of dogma, even where 
 the immediate point of difference has been one of ritual. 
 For in all parts of the Christian Church it is agreed that 
 ritual is important only in connection with its interpreta- 
 tion. Thus within Christendom the study of religion has 
 meant mainly the study of Christian beliefs, and instruc- 
 tion in religion has habitually begun with the creed, 
 
 B 
 
18 DOGMA A2fD MYTHOLOGY. lect. i. 
 
 religious duties being presented to the learner as flowing 
 from the dogmatic truths he is taught to accept. All this 
 seems to us so much a matter of course that, when we 
 approach some strange or antique religion, we naturally 
 assume that here also our first business is to search for 
 a creed, and find in it the key to ritual and practice. But 
 the antique religions had for the most part no creed ; they 
 consisted entirely of institutions and practices. No doubt 
 men will not habitually follow certain practices without 
 attaching a meaning to them ; but as a rule we find that 
 while the practice was rigorously fixed, the meaning 
 attached to it was extremely vague, and the same rite was 
 explained by different people in different ways, without 
 any question of orthodoxy or heterodoxy arising in conse- 
 quence. In ancient Greece, for example, certain things 
 were done at a temple, and people were agreed that it 
 would be impious not to do them. But if you had asked 
 why they were done, you would probably have had several 
 mutually contradictory explanations from different persons, 
 and no one would have thought it a matter of the least 
 religious importance which of these you chose to adopt. 
 Indeed the explanations offered would not have been of 
 a kind to stir any strong feeling ; for in most cases they 
 would have been merely different stories as to the circum- 
 stances under which the rite first came to be established, 
 by the command or by the direct example of the god. 
 The rite, in short, was connected not with a dogma but 
 with a myth. 
 
 In all the antique religions, mythology takes the place 
 of dogma, that is, the sacred lore of priests and people, 
 so far as it does not consist of mere rules for the perform- 
 ance of religious acts, assumes the form of stories about 
 the gods ; and these stories afford the only explanation that 
 is offered of the precepts of religion and the prescribed 
 
LECT. I. MYTH AND RITUAL. 19 
 
 rules of ritual. But, strictly speaking, this mythology was 
 no essential part of ancient religion, for it had no sacred 
 sanction and no binding force on the worshippers. The 
 myths connected with individual sanctuaries and cere- 
 monies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship ; 
 they served to excite the fancy and sustain the interest of 
 the worshipper ; but he was often offered a choice of 
 several accounts of the same thing, and provided that he 
 fulfilled the ritual with accuracy, no one cared what he 
 believed about its origin. Belief in a certain series of 
 myths was neither obligatory as a part of true religion, nor 
 was it supposed that, by believing, a man acquired religious 
 merit and conciliated the favour of the gods. What was 
 obligatory or meritorious was the exact performance of 
 certain sacred acts prescribed by religious tradition. This 
 being so, it follows that mythology ought not to take the 
 prominent place that is too often assigned to it in the 
 scientific study of ancient faiths. So far as myths consist 
 of explanations of ritual their value is altogether secondary, 
 and it may be affirmed with confidence that in almost 
 every case the myth was derived from the ritual, and not 
 the ritual from the myth ; for the ritual was fixed and the 
 myth was variable, the ritual was obligatory and faith in 
 the myth was at the discretion of the worshipper. Now 
 by far the largest part of the myths of antique religions 
 are connected with the ritual of particular shrines, or with 
 the religious observances of particular tribes and districts. 
 In all such cases it is probable, in most cases it is certain, 
 that the myth is merely the explanation of a religious 
 usage ; and ordinarily it is such an explanation as could 
 not have arisen till the original sense of the usage had 
 more or less fallen into oblivion. As a rule the myth is 
 no explanation of the origin of the ritual to any one who 
 does not believe it to be a narrative of real occurrences. 
 
20 THE DEPENDENCE OF lect. i. 
 
 and the boldest mythologist will not believe that. But, if 
 it be not true, the myth itself requires to be explained, 
 and every principle of philosophy and common sense 
 demands that the explanation be sought, not in arbitrary 
 allegorical theories, but in the actual facts of ritual or 
 religious custom to w^hich the myth attaches. The con- 
 clusion is, that in the study of ancient religions we must 
 begin, not with myth, but with ritual and traditional usage. 
 
 Nor can it be fairly set against this conclusion, that 
 there are certain myths which are not mere explanations 
 of traditional practices, but exhibit the beginnings of larger 
 religious speculation, or of an attempt to systematise and 
 reduce to order the motley variety of local worships and 
 beliefs. For in this case the secondary character of the 
 myths is still more clearly marked. They are either pro- 
 ducts of early philosophy, reflecting on the nature of the 
 universe ; or they are political in scope, being designed to 
 supply a thread of union between the various worships of 
 groups, originally distinct, which have been united into 
 one social or political organism ; or, finally, they are due 
 to the free play of epic imagination. But philosophy 
 politics and poetry are something more, or .something less, 
 than religion pure and simple. 
 
 There can be no doubt that, in the later stages of ancient 
 religions, mythology acquired an increased importance. In 
 the struggle of heathenism with scepticism on the one 
 hand and Christianity on the other, the supporters of the 
 old traditional religion were driven to search for ideas of 
 a modern cast, which they could represent as the true 
 inner meaning of the traditional rites. To this end 
 they laid hold of the old myths, and applied to them an 
 allegorical system of interpretation. Myth interpreted 
 by the aid of allegory became the favourite means of 
 infusing a new significance into ancient forms. But the 
 
LECT. I. MYTH ON EITUAL. 21 
 
 theories thus developed are the falsest of false guides as 
 to the original meaning of the old religions. 
 
 On the other hand, the ancient myths taken in their 
 natural sense, without allegorical gloss, are plainly of great 
 importance as testimonies to the views of the nature of 
 the gods that were prevalent when they were formed. 
 For though the mythical details had no dogmatic value 
 and no binding authority over faith, it is to be supposed 
 that nothing was put into a myth which people at that 
 time were not prepared to believe without offence. But 
 so far as the way of thinking expressed in the myth was 
 not already expressed in the ritual itself, it had no 
 properly religious sanction ; the myth apart from the 
 ritual affords only a doubtful and slippery kind of 
 evidence. Before we can handle myths with any con- 
 fidence, we must have some definite hold of the ideas 
 expressed in the ritual tradition, which iacorporated the 
 only fixed and statutory elements of the religion. 
 
 All this, I hope, will become clearer to us as we proceed 
 with our enc[uiry, and learn by practical example the use 
 to be made of the different lines of evidence open to us. 
 But it is of the first importance to realise clearly from 
 the outset that ritual and practical usage were, strictly 
 speaking, the sum total of ancient religions. Eeligion 
 in primitive times was not a system of belief with 
 practical applications ; it was a body of fixed traditional 
 practices, to which every member of society conformed as 
 a matter of course. Men would not be men if they agreed 
 to do certain things without having a reason for their 
 action; but in ancient religion the reason was not first 
 formulated as a doctrine and then expressed in practice, 
 but conversely, practice preceded doctrinal theory. Men 
 form geheral rules of conduct before they begin to 
 express general principles in words ; political institutions 
 
22 ANALOGY OF RELIGIOUS lect. i. 
 
 are older than political theories, and in like manner 
 religious institutions are older than religious theories. 
 This analogy is not arbitrarily chosen, for in fact the 
 parallelism in ancient society between religious and 
 political institutions is complete. In each sphere great 
 importance was attached to form and precedent, but the 
 explanation why the precedent was followed consisted 
 merely of a legend as to its first establishment. That 
 the precedent, once established, was authoritative did not 
 appear to require any proof. The rules of society were 
 based on precedent, and the continued existence of the 
 society was sufficient reason why a precedent once set 
 should continue to be followed. 
 
 Strictly speaking, indeed, I understate the case when I 
 say that the oldest religious and political institutions 
 present a close analogy. It would be more correct to 
 - say that they were parts of one whole of social custom. 
 Eeligion was a part of the organised social life into which 
 a man was born, and to which he conformed through life 
 in the same unconscious way in which men fall into any 
 ) habitual practice of the society in which they live. Men 
 took the gods and their worship for granted, just as they 
 took the other usages of the state for granted, and if they 
 reasoned or speculated about them, they did so on the 
 presupposition that the traditional usages were fixed 
 things, behind which their reasonings must not' go, and 
 which no reasoning could be allowed to overturn. To 
 us moderns religion is above all a matter of individual 
 conviction and reasoned belief, but to the ancients it was 
 a part of the citizen's public life, reduced to fixed forms, 
 which he was not bound to understand and was not at 
 liberty to criticise. Society demanded of each of its 
 members the observance of the forms, not for his sake 
 but for its own, for if its religion was tampered with 
 
LECT. r. AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 23 
 
 the bases of society were undermined, and the favour of 
 the gods was forfeited. But so long as the prescribed 
 religious forms were duly observed, a man was recognised 
 as a pious man, and no one asked how his religion was 
 rooted in his heart or affected his reason. Eeligious like 
 political duty, of which indeed it was a part, was entirely 
 comprehended in the observance of certain fixed rules of 
 outward conducb. 
 
 The conclusion from all this as to the method of our 
 investigation is obvious. When we study the political 
 structure of an early society, we do not begin by asking 
 what is recorded of the first legislators, or what theory 
 men advanced as to the reason of their institutions ; we 
 try to understand what the institutions were, and how 
 they shaped men's lives. In like manner, in the study 
 of Semitic religion, we must not begin by asking what was 
 told about the gods, but what the working religious 
 institutions were, and how they shaped the lives of the 
 worshippers. Our enquiry therefore, will be directed to 
 the religious institutions which governed the lives of men 
 of Semitic race. 
 
 In following out this plan, however, we shall do well 
 not to throw ourselves at once upon the multitudinous 
 details of rite and ceremony, but to devote our attention 
 to certain broad features of the sacred institutions which 
 are sufficiently well marked to be realised at once. If we 
 were caUed upon to examine the political institutions of 
 antiquity, we should find it convenient to carry with us 
 some general notion of the several types of government 
 under which the multifarious institutions of ancient states 
 arrange themselves. And in like manner it will be useful 
 for us, when we examine the religious institutions of the 
 Semites, to have first some general knowledge of the types 
 of divine governance, the various ruling conceptions of the 
 
24 THE NATURE lect. i. 
 
 relations of the gods to man, which underlie the rites and 
 ordinances of religion in different places and at diflPerent 
 times. Such knowledge we can obtain in a provisional 
 form, before entering on a mass of ritual details, mainly by 
 considering the titles of honour by which men addressed 
 their gods, and the language in which they expressed their 
 dependence on them. From these we can see at once, in a 
 broad, general way, what place the gods held in the social 
 system of antiquity, and under what general categories 
 their relations to their worshippers fell. The broad 
 results thus reached must then be developed, and at the 
 same time controlled and rendered more precise, by an 
 examination in detail of the working institutions of 
 religion. 
 
 The question of the metaphysical nature of the gods, as 
 distinct from their social office and function, must be left 
 in the background till this whole investigation is com- 
 pleted. It is vain to ask what the gods are in themselves 
 till we have studied them in what I may call their public 
 life, that is, in the stated intercourse between them and 
 their worshippers which was kept up by means of the 
 prescribed forms of cultus. From the antique point of 
 view, indeed, the question what the gods are in themselves 
 is not a religious but a speculative one ; what is requisite 
 to religion is a practical acquaintance with the rules on 
 which the deity acts and on which he expects his 
 worshippers to frame their conduct — what in 2 Kings 
 xvii. 26 is called the " manner" or rather the "customary 
 law" (mishpat) of the god of the land. This is true 
 even of the religion of Israel. When the prophets 
 speak of the knowledge of God, they always mean a 
 practical knowledge of the laws and principles of His 
 government in Israel,^ and a summary expression for 
 ' See especially Hosea, chap. iv. 
 
LECT. I. OF THE GODS. 
 
 religion as a whole is " the knowledge and fear of Jehovah," ^ ' 
 i.e. the knowledge of what Jehovah prescribes, combined 
 with a reverent obedience. An extreme scepticism towards 
 all religious speculation is recommended in the Book of 
 Ecclesiastes as the proper attitude of piety, for no amount 
 of discussion can carry a man beyond the plain rule to 
 " fear God and keep His commandments." ^ This counsel 
 the author puts into the mouth of Solomon, and so 
 represents it, not unjustly, as summing up the old view of 
 religion, which in more modern days had unfortunately 
 begun to be undermined. 
 
 The propriety of keeping back all metaphysical questions 
 as to the nature of the gods till we have studied the 
 practices of religion in detail, becomes very apparent if we 
 consider for a moment what befel the later philosophers 
 and theosophists of heathenism in their attempts to con- 
 struct a theory of the traditional religion. We find that 
 they were not able to give any account of the nature of 
 the gods from which all the received practices of worship 
 could be rationally deduced, and accordingly those of them 
 who had any pretension to be orthodox were compelled to 
 have recourse to the most violent allegorical interpreta- 
 tions in order to bring the established ritual into 
 accordance with their theories.^ The reason for this is 
 obvious. The traditional usages of religion had grown up 
 gradually in the course of many centuries, and reflected 
 habits of thought characteristic of very diverse stages of 
 man's intellectual and moral development. ISTo one con- 
 ception of the nature of the gods could possibly afford the 
 clue to all parts of that motley complex of rites and 
 ceremonies which the later paganism had received by 
 inheritance, from a series of ancestors in every stage of 
 
 1 Isaiah xi. 2. ^ Eccles. xii. 13. 
 
 ' See, for example, Plutarcli's Greek and Soman Questions. 
 
26 THE EELATIOKS BETWEEN lect. i. 
 
 culture from pure savagery upwards. The record of the 
 religious thought of mankind, as it is embodied in religious 
 institutions, resembles the geological record of the history 
 of the earth's crust ; the new and the old are preserved 
 side by side, or rather layer upon layer. The classification 
 of ritual formations in their proper sequence is the first 
 step towards their explanation, and that explanation itself 
 must take the form, not of a speculative theory, but of a 
 rational life-history. 
 
 I have already explained that, in attempting such a life- 
 history of religious institutions, we must begin by forming 
 some preliminary ideas of the practical relation in which 
 the gods of antiquity stood to their worshippers. I have 
 now to add, that we shall also find it necessary to have 
 before us from the outset some elementary notions of the 
 relations which early races of mankind conceived to 
 subsist between gods and men on the one hand, and the 
 material universe on the other. All acts of ancient 
 1 worship have a material embodiment, the form of which 
 is determined by the consideration that gods and men 
 alike stand in certain fixed relations to particular parts 
 or aspects of physical nature. Certain places, c&rtain 
 things, even certain animal kinds are conceived as holy, 
 i.e. as standing in a near relation to the gods, and claiming 
 special reverence from men, and this conception plays 
 a very large part in the development of all religious 
 institutions. Here again we have a problem that cannot 
 be solved by ic priori methods ; it is only as we move 
 onward from step to step in the analysis of the details of 
 ritual observances that we can hope to gain full insight 
 into the relations of the gods to physical nature. But 
 there are certain broad features in the ancient conception 
 of the universe, and of the relations of its parts to one 
 another, which can be grasped at once, upon a merely pre- 
 
LECT. I. GODS MEN AND NATURE. 27 
 
 liminary survey, and we shall find it profitable to give 
 attention to these at an early stage of our discussion. 
 
 I propose, therefore, to devote my second lecture to the 
 nature of the antique religious community and the relations 
 of the gods to their worshippers. After this we will pro- 
 ceed to consider the relations of the gods to physical nature, 
 not in a complete or exhaustive way, but in a manner 
 entirely preliminary and provisional, and only so far as is 
 necessary to enable us to understand the material basis of 
 ancient ritual. After these preliminary enquiries have 
 furnished us with certain necessary points of view, we shall 
 be in a position to take up the institutions of worship in 
 an orderly manner, and make an attempt to work out 
 their life-history. We shall find that the history of 
 religious institutions is the history of ancient religion itself, 
 as a practical force in the development of the human race, 
 and that the articulate efforts of the antique intellect to 
 comprehend the meaning of religion, the nature of the gods, 
 and the principles on which they deal with men, take their 
 point of departure from the unspoken ideas embodied in 
 the traditional forms of ritual praxis. "Whether the con- 
 scious efforts of ancient religious thinkers took the shape 
 of mythological invention or of speculative construction, 
 the raw material of thought upon which they operated was 
 derived from the common traditional stock of religious con- 
 ceptions that was handed on from generation to generation, 
 not in express words, but in the form of religious custom. 
 
 In accordance with the rules of the Burnett Trust, three 
 courses of lectures, to be delivered in successive winters, 
 are allowed me for the development of this great subject. 
 When the work was first entrusted to me, I formed the plan 
 of dividing my task into three distinct parts. In the first 
 course of lectures I hoped to cover the whole field of 
 practical religious institutions. In the second I proposed 
 
28 PLAN OP THESE LECTURES. lect. i. 
 
 to myself to discuss the nature and origin of the gods of 
 Semitic heathenism, their relations to one another, the 
 myths that surround them, and the whole subject of 
 religious belief, so far as it is not directly involved in the 
 observances of daily religious life. The third winter would 
 thus have been left free for an examination of the part 
 which Semitic religion has played in universal history, and 
 its influence on the general progress of humanity, whether 
 in virtue of the early contact of Semitic faiths with other 
 systems of antique religion, or — what is more important — 
 in virtue of the influence, both positive and negative, that 
 the common type of Semitic religion has exercised on the 
 formulas and structure of the great monotheistic faiths that 
 have gone forth from the Semitic lands. But the first 
 division of the subject has grown under my hands, and I 
 find that it wQl not be possible in a single winter to cover 
 the whole field of religious institutions in a way at all 
 adequate to the fundamental importance of this part of the 
 enquiry. 
 
 It will therefore be necessary to allow the first branch of 
 the subject to run over into the second course, for which I 
 reserve, among other matters of interest, the whole history 
 of religious feasts and also that of the Semitic priesthoods. 
 I hope, however, to give the present course a certain com- 
 pleteness in itself by carrying the investigation to the end 
 of the great subject of sacrifice. The origin and meaning 
 of sacrifice constitute the central problem of ancient religion, 
 and when this problem has been disposed of we may 
 naturally feel that we have reached a point of rest at which 
 both speaker and hearers will be glad to make a pause. 
 
LECTUEE II. 
 
 THE NATUKE OF THE RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY, AND THE 
 RELATION OF THE GODS TO THEIK WOESHIPPEKS. 
 
 We have seen that ancient faiths must be looked on as 
 matters of institution rather than of dogma or formulated 
 belief, and that the system of an antique religion was part 
 of the social order under which its adherents lived, so that 
 the word " system " must here be taken in a practical sense, 
 as when we speak of a political system, and not in the 
 sense of an organised body of ideas or theological opinions. 
 Broadly speaking, religion was made up of a series of acts 
 and observances, the correct performance of which was 
 necessary or desirable to secure the favour of the gods or 
 to avert their anger ; .and in these observances every 
 member of society had a share, marked out for him either 
 in virtue of his being born within a certain family and 
 community, or in virtue of the station, within the family 
 and community, that he had come to hold in the course of 
 his Kfe. A man did not choose his religion or frame it for 
 himself ; it came to him as part of the general scheme of 
 social obligations and ordinances laid upon him, as a matter 
 of course, by his position in the family and in the nation. 
 Individual men were more or less religious, as men now 
 are more or less patriotic; that is, they discharged their 
 religious duties with a greater or less degree of zeal accord- 
 ing to their character and temperament ; but there was no 
 such thing as an absolutely irreligious man. A certain 
 
30 RELIGION AND lect. ii. 
 
 amount of religion was required of everybody ; for the due 
 performance of religious acts was a social obligation in 
 which every one had to take his share, as a member of the 
 family or of the state. Of intolerance in the modern sense 
 of the word ancient society knew nothing ; it never per- 
 secuted a man into particular beliefs for the good of his own 
 soul. Eeligion did not exist for the saving of souls but for 
 the preservation and welfare of society, and in all that was 
 necessary to this end every man had to take his prescribed 
 part, or break with the domestic and political community to 
 which he belonged. 
 
 Perhaps the simplest way of putting the state of the 
 case is this. Every human being, without choice on his 
 own part, but simply in virtue of his birth and upbringing, 
 becomes a member of what we call a natural society. He 
 belongs, that is, to a certain family and a certain nation, 
 and this membership lays upon him certain social obliga- 
 tions and duties which he is called upon to fulfil as a matter 
 of course, and on pain of social penalties and disabilities, 
 while at the same time it confers upon him certain social 
 rights and advantages. In this respect the ancient and 
 modern worlds are alike ; but there is this important 
 difference, that the tribal or national societies of the ancient 
 world were not strictly natural in the modern sense of the 
 word, for the gods had their part and place in them equally 
 with men. The circle into which a man was born was not 
 simply a human society, a circle of kinsfolk and fellow- 
 citizens, but embraced also certain divine beings, the gods 
 of the family and of the state, which to the ancient mind 
 were as much a part of the particular community with 
 which they stood connected as the human members of the 
 social group. The relation between the gods of antiquity 
 and their worshippers was expressed in the language of 
 human relationship, and this language was not taken in a 
 
LECT. II. NATURAL SOCIETY. 31 
 
 figurative sense but with strict literality. If a god was 
 spoken of as father and his worshippers as his offspring, 
 the meaning was that the worshippers were literally of his 
 stock, that he and they made up one natural family with 
 reciprocal family duties to one another. Or again if the 
 god was addressed as king, and the worshippers called 
 themselves his servants, they meant that the supreme 
 guidance of the state was actually in his hands, and 
 accordingly the organisation of the state included provision 
 for consulting his will and obtaining his direction in all 
 weighty matters, and also provision for approaching him 
 as king with due homage and tribute. 
 
 Thus a man was horn into a fixed relation to certain 
 gods as surely as he was born into relation to his fellow- 
 men ; and his religion, that is, the part of conduct which 
 was determined by his relation to the gods, was simply 
 one side of the general scheme of conduct prescribed for 
 him by his position as a member of society. There was no 
 separation between the spheres of religion and of ordinary 
 life. Every social act had a reference to the gods as well 
 as to men, for the social body was not made up of men 
 only, but of gods and men. 
 
 This account of the position of religion in the social 
 system holds good, I believe, for all parts and races of the 
 ancient world in the earlier stages of their history. The 
 causes of so remarkable a uniformity lie hidden in the mists 
 of prehistoric time, but must plainly have been of a general 
 kind, operating on all parts of mankind without distinction 
 of race and local environment ; for in every region of the 
 world, as soon as we find a nation or tribe emerging from 
 prehistoric darkness into the light of authentic history, we 
 find also that its religion conforms to the general type 
 which has just been indicated. As time rolls on and the 
 development of society advances, modifications take place. 
 
32 RELIGION AND lect. ii. 
 
 In religion as in other matters the transition from the 
 antique to the modern type of life is not sudden and 
 unprepared, but is gradually led up to by a continuous 
 disintegration of the old structure of society, accompanied 
 by the growth of new ideas and institutions. In Greece, 
 for example, the intimate connection of religion with the 
 organisation of the family and the state was modified and 
 made less exclusive, at a relatively early date, by the Pan- 
 Hellenic conceptions which find their theological expressions 
 in Homer. If the Homeric poems were the Bible of the 
 Greeks, as has so often been said, the true meaning of 
 this phrase is that in these poems utterance was given to 
 ideas about the gods which broke through the limitations 
 of local and tribal worship, and held forth to all Greeks a 
 certain common stock of religious ideas and motives, not 
 hampered by the exclusiveness which in the earlier stages 
 of society allows of no fellowship in religion that is not 
 also a fellowship in the interests of a single kin or a single 
 political group. In Italy there never was anything corre- 
 sponding to the Pan-Hellenic ideas that operated in Greece, 
 and accordingly the strict union of religion and the state, 
 the solidarity of gods and men as parts of a single society 
 with common interests and common aims, was character- 
 istically exhibited in the institutions of Eome down to 
 quite a late date. But in Greece as well as in Eome the 
 ordinary traditional work-a-day religion of the masses 
 never greatly departed from the primitive type. The final 
 disintegration of antique religion in the countries of Grgeco- 
 Italian civilisation was the work first of the philosophers 
 and then of Christianity. But Christianity itself, in 
 Southern Europe, has not altogether obliterated the original 
 features of the paganism which it displaced. The Spanish 
 peasants who insult the Madonna of the neighbouring 
 village, and come to blows over the merits of rival local 
 
LECT. II. NATURAL SOCIETY. 
 
 saints, still do homage to the same antique conception of 
 religion which in Egypt (as readers of Juvenal remember) 
 animated the feuds of Ombos and Tentyra, and made 
 hatred for each other's gods the formula that summed up 
 the whole local jealousies of the two towns. 
 
 The principle that the fundamental conception of ancient 
 religion is the solidarity of the gods and their worshippers 
 as part of one organic society, carries with it important 
 consequences, which I propose to examine in some detail, 
 with special reference to the group of religions that forms 
 the proper subject of these lectures. But though my 
 facts and illustrations will be drawn from the Semitic 
 sphere, a great part of what I shall have to say in the 
 present lecture might be applied, with very trifling modifi- 
 cations, to the early religion of any other part of mankind. 
 The differences between Semitic and Aryan religion, for 
 example, are not so primitive or fundamental as is often 
 imagined. Not only in matters of worship, but in social 
 organisation generally — and we have seen that ancient 
 religion is but a part of the general social order which 
 embraces gods and men alike — the two races, Aryans and 
 Semites, began on lines which are so much alike as to be 
 almost indistinguishable, and the divergence between their 
 paths, which becomes more and more apparent in the 
 course of ages, was not altogether an affair of race and 
 innate tendency, but depended in a great measure on the 
 operation of special local and historical causes. 
 
 In both races the first steps of social and religious 
 development took place in small communities, which at 
 the davm of history exhibited a political system based 
 on the principle of kinship, and were mainly held together 
 by the tie of blood, the only social bond which then had 
 absolute and undisputed strength, being enforced by the 
 law of blood revenge. As a rule, however, men of several 
 
34 THE OLDEST lect. II. 
 
 clans lived side by side, forming communities which did 
 not possess the absolute homogeneity of blood brotherhood, 
 and yet were united by common interests and the habit 
 of friendly association. The origin of such associations, 
 which are found all over the world at a very early stage 
 of society, need not occupy us now. It is enough to note 
 the fact that they existed, and were not maintained by 
 the feeling of kindred, but by habit and community of 
 interests. These local communities of men of different 
 clans, who lived together on a footing of amity, and had 
 often to unite in common action, especially in war, but 
 also in affairs of polity and justice, were the origin of the 
 antique state. There is probably no case in ancient 
 history where a state was simply the development of a 
 single homogeneous clan or gens, although the several clans 
 which united to form a state often came in course of time 
 to suppose themselves to be only branches of one great 
 ancestral brotherhood, and were thus knit together in a 
 closer unity of sentiment and action. But in the begin- 
 ning, the union of several clans for common political 
 action was not sustained either by an effective sentiment 
 of kinship (the law of blood revenge uniting only members 
 of the same clan) or by any close political organisation, 
 but was produced by the pressure of practical necessity, 
 and always tended towards dissolution when this practical 
 pressure was withdrawn. The only organisation for 
 common action was that the leading men of the clans 
 consulted together in time of need, and their influence led 
 the masses with them. Out of these conferences arose the 
 senates of elders found in the ancient states of Semitic 
 and Aryan antiquity alike. The kingship, again, as we 
 find it in most antique states, appears to have ordinarily 
 arisen in the way which is so well illustrated by the 
 history of Israel. In time of war an individual leader is 
 
LECT. ir. SEMITIC COMMUNITIES. 35 
 
 indispensable ; in a time of prolonged danger the temporary 
 authority of an approved captain easily passes into the 
 lifelong leadership at home as well as in the field, which 
 was exercised by such a judge as Gideon ; and at length the 
 advantages of having a permanent head, both as a leader 
 of the army and as a restraint on the perennial feuds and 
 jealousies of clans that constantly threaten the solidity of 
 the state, are recognised in the institution of the kingship, 
 which again tends to become hereditary, as in the case of 
 the house of David, simply because the king's house 
 naturally becomes greater and richer than other houses, 
 and so better able to sustain the burden of power. 
 
 Up to this point the progress of society was much alike 
 in the East and in the West, and the progress of religion, 
 as we shall see in the sequel, followed that of society in 
 general. But while in Greece and Eome the early period 
 of the kings lies in the far background of tradition, and 
 only forms the starting-point of the long development with 
 which the historian of these countries is mainly occupied, 
 the independent evolution of Semitic society was arrested 
 at an early stage. In the case of the nomadic Arabs, shut 
 up in their wildernesses of rock and sand, nature herself 
 barred the way of progress. The life of the desert does 
 not furnish the material conditions for permanent advance 
 beyond the tribal system, and we find that the religious 
 development of the Arabs was proportionally retarded, so 
 that at the advent of Islam the ancient heathenism, like 
 the ancient tribal structure of society, had become effete 
 without having ever ceased to be barbarous. 
 
 The northern Semites, on the other hand, whose progress 
 up to the eighth century before Christ certainly did not 
 lag behind that of the Greeks, were deprived of political 
 independence, and so cut short in their natural develop- 
 ment, by the advance from the Tigris to the Mediterranean 
 
36 THE NATIONS AND lect. ll. 
 
 of the great Assyrian monarchs, who, drawing from the 
 rich and broad alluvium of the Two Eivers resources which 
 none of their neighbours could rival, went on from conquest 
 to conquest till all the small states of Syria and Palestine 
 had gone down before them. The Assyrians were con- 
 querors of the most brutal and destructive kind, and 
 wherever they came the whole structure of ancient society 
 was dissolved. From this time onwards the difference between 
 the Syrian or Palestinian and the Greek was not one of 
 race alone, it was the difference between a free citizen and 
 the slave of an Oriental despotism. Eeligion as well as 
 civil society was profoundly affected by the catastrophe of 
 the old free communities of the northern Semitic lands ; 
 the society of one and the same religion was no longer 
 identical with the state, and the old solidarity of civil and 
 religious life continued to exist only in a modified form. 
 It is not therefore surprising that from the eighth century 
 onwards the history of Semitic religion runs a very 
 different course from that which we observe on the other 
 side of the Mediterranean. 
 
 All this will become clearer as we proceed, and need 
 not detain us now. For the present we are concerned 
 with the first principles of Semitic religion, which must be 
 studied as they exhibit themselves in the early ages of the 
 Semitic states, before their free development was arrested 
 by the hand of foreign conquest, and before the history of 
 the East had been forced into the channels which make 
 its subsequent course so unlike the history of the West. 
 
 The ancient Semitic communities were small, and were 
 separated from each other by incessant feuds. Hence, 
 on the principle of solidarity between gods and their 
 worshippers, the particularism characteristic of political 
 society could not but reappear in the sphere of religion. 
 In the same measure as the god of a clan or town had 
 
THEIR GODS. 37 
 
 indisputable claim to the reverence and service of the 
 community to which he belonged, he was necessarily 
 an enemy to their enemies and a stranger to those to 
 whom they were strangers. Of this there are sufficient 
 evidences in the way in which the Old Testament speaks 
 about the relation of the nations to their gods. When 
 David in the bitterness of his heart complains of those 
 who "have driven him out from connection with the 
 heritage of Jehovah," he represents them as saying to 
 him, " Go, serve other gods." ^ In driving him to seek 
 refuge in another land and another nationality, they 
 compel him to change his religion, for a man's religion is 
 part of his political connection. " Thy sister," says Naomi 
 to Euth, "is gone back unto her people and unto her 
 gods ; " and Euth replies, " Thy people shall be my people, 
 and thy God my God : " ^ the change of nationality involves 
 a change of cult. Jeremiah, in the full consciousness of the 
 falsehood of all religions except that of Israel, remarks that 
 no nation changes its gods although they be no gods : * a 
 nation's worship remains as constant as its political 
 identity. The Book of Deuteronomy, speaking in like 
 manner from the standpoint of monotheism, reconciles the 
 sovereignty of Jehovah with the actual facts of heathenism, 
 by saying that He has " allotted " the various objects of 
 false worship " unto all nations under the whole heaven." * 
 The "allotment" of false gods among the nations, as 
 property is allotted, expresses with precision the idea that 
 each god had his own determinate circle of worshippers, 
 to whom he stood in a peculiar and exclusive relation. 
 
 The exclusiveness of which I have just spoken naturally 
 finds its most pronounced expression in the share taken 
 by the gods in the feuds and wars of their worshippers. 
 The enemies of the god and the enemies of his people are 
 
 1 1 Sam. xxvi. 19. => Euth i. 14 sqq. ' Jer. ii. 11. * Deut. iv. 19. 
 
38 THE NATIONS lect. ii. 
 
 identical; even in the Old Testament "the enemies of 
 Jehovah" are originally nothing else than the enemies 
 of Israel/ In battle each god fights for his own people, 
 and to his aid success is ascribed ; Chemosh gives victory 
 to Moab, and Asshur to Assyria;^ in Arabia the tribal 
 war-cry invokes the name of the god ; in Palestine his 
 image or symbol accompanies the host to battle. When 
 the ark was brought into the camp of Israel, the Phihstines 
 said, " Gods are come into the camp ; who can deliver us 
 from the hand of these mighty gods ? " ^ They judged from 
 their own practice, for when David defeated them at Baal- 
 Perazim, part of the booty consisted in their idols which 
 had been carried into the field.* Similarly an Arabic 
 poet says, " Yaghiith went forth with us against Morad ; " * 
 that is, the image of the god Yaghiith was carried into 
 the fray. You observe how literal and realistic was the 
 conception of the part taken by the deity in the wars of 
 his worshippers. 
 
 When the gods of the several Semitic communities 
 took part in this way in the ancestral feuds of their 
 worshippers, it was impossible for an individual to change 
 his religion without changing his nationality, and a whole 
 community could hardly change its religion at all without 
 being absorbed into another stock or nation. Eeligious 
 like political ties were transmitted from father to son ; 
 for a man could not choose a new god at will ; the gods of 
 his fathers were the only deities on whom he could count 
 as friendly and ready to accept his homage, unless he 
 forswore his own kindred and was received into a new 
 circle of civil as well as religious life. In the old times 
 
 ^ 1 Sam. XXX. 26, "the spoil of the enemies of Jehovah ;" Judg. v. 31. 
 " See the inscription of King Mesha on the so-called Moabite stone, and 
 the Assyrian inscriptions passim. 
 ^ 1 Sam. iv. 7 sgq. * 2 Sam. v. 21. ' Yajiit, iv. 1023. 
 
LECT. n. AND THEIR GODS. 39 
 
 hardly any but outlaws changed their religion ; ceremonies 
 of initiation, by which a man was received into a new 
 religious circle, became important, as we shall see by and 
 by, only after the breaking up of the old political life of 
 the small Semitic commonwealths. 
 
 On the other hand, all social fusion between two 
 communities tended to bring about a religious fusion also. 
 This might take place in two ways. Sometimes two gods 
 were themselves fused into one, as when the mass of the 
 Israelites in their local worship of Jehovah identified Him 
 with the Baalim of the Canaanite high places, and carried 
 over into His worship the ritual of the Canaanite shrines, 
 not deeming that in so doing they were less truly Jehovah 
 worshippers than before. This process was greatly facili- 
 tated by the extreme similarity in the attributes ascribed 
 to different local or tribal gods, and the frequent identity 
 of the divine titles.^ One Baal hardly differed from another, 
 except in being connected with a different kindred or a 
 different place, and when the kindreds were fused by 
 intermarriage, or lived together in one village on a footing 
 of social amity, there was nothing to keep their gods 
 permanently distinct. In other cases, where the several 
 deities brought together by the union of their worshippers 
 into one state were too distinct to lose their individuality, 
 they continued to be worshipped side by side as allied 
 divine powers, and it is to this kind of process that we 
 
 1 It will appear in the sequel that the worship of the greater Semitic 
 deities was closely associated with the reverence which all primitive pastoral 
 tribes pay to their flocks and herds. To a tribe whose herds consisted of 
 kine and oxen, the cow and the ox were sacred beings, which in the oldest 
 times were never killed or eaten except sacrificially. The tribal deities 
 themselves were conceived as closely akin to the sacred species of domestic 
 animals, and their images were often made in the likeness of steers or heifers 
 in cow-keeping tribes, or of rams and ewes in shepherd tribes. It is easy to 
 see how this facilitated the fusion of tribal worships, and how deities 
 originally distinct might come to be identified on account of the similarity 
 of their images and of the sacrifices offered to them. 
 
40 POLYTHEISM. lect. ir. 
 
 must apparently ascribe the development of a Semitic 
 pantheon or polytheistic system. A pantheon; or organised 
 commonwealth of gods, such as we find in the state 
 religion of Egypt or in the Homeric poems, is not the 
 primitive type of heathenism, and no trace of such a 
 thing appears in the oldest documents of the religion 
 of the smaller Semitic communities. The old Semites 
 believed in the existence of many gods, for they accepted 
 as real the gods of their enemies as well as their own, but 
 they did not worship the strange gods from whom they 
 had no favour to expect, and on whom their gifts and 
 offerings would have been thrown away. When every 
 small community was on terms of frequent hostility with 
 all its neighbours, the formation of a polytheistic system 
 was impossible. Each group had its own god, or perhaps 
 a god and a goddess, to whom the other gods bore no 
 relation whatever. It was only as the small groups 
 coalesced into larger unities, that a society and kinship 
 of many gods began to be formed, on the model of the 
 alliance or fusion of their respective worshippers ; and 
 indeed the chief part in the development of a systematic 
 hierarchy or commonwealth of Semitic deities is due to 
 the Babylonians and Assyrians, among whom the labours of 
 statesmen to build up a consolidated empire out of a multi- 
 tude of local communities, originally independent, were 
 seconded by the efforts of the priests to give a correspond- 
 ing unity of scheme to the multiplicity of local worships. 
 
 Thus far we have looked only at the general fact, that 
 in a Semitic community men and their gods formed a 
 social and political as well as a religious whole. But to 
 make our conceptions more concrete we must consider 
 what place in this whole was occupied by the divine 
 element of the social partnership. And here we find that 
 the two leading conceptions of the relation of the god to 
 
LECT. II. FATHERHOOD OF THE GODS. il 
 
 his people are those of fatherhood and of kingship. We 
 have learned to look on Semitic society as built up on two 
 bases — on kinship, which is the foundation of the system of 
 clans or gentes, and on the imion of kins, living inter- 
 mingled or side by side, and bound together by common 
 interests, which is the foundation of the state. We now see 
 that the clan and the state are both represented in religion : 
 as father the god belongs to the family or clan, as king 
 he belongs to the state ; and in each sphere of the social 
 order he holds the position of highest dignity. Both these 
 conceptions deserve to be looked at and illustrated in some 
 detail. 
 
 The relation of a father to his children has a moral as 
 well as a physical aspect, and each of these must be taken 
 into account in considering what the fatherhood of the 
 tribal deity meant in ancient religion. In the physical 
 aspect the father is the being to whom the child owes his 
 life, and through whom he traces kinship with the other 
 members of his family or clan. The antique conception 
 of kinship is participation in one blood, which passes from 
 parent to child and circulates in the veins of every member 
 of the family. The unity of the family or clan is viewed 
 as a physical unity, for the blood is the life, — an idea 
 familiar to us from the Old Testament, — and it is the same 
 blood and therefore the same life that is shared by every 
 descendant of the common ancestor. The idea that the 
 race has a life of its own, of which individual lives are only 
 parts, is expressed even more clearly by picturnig the race 
 as a tree, of which the ancestor is the root or stem and 
 the descendants the branches. This figure is used by all 
 the Semites, and is very common both in the Old Testament 
 and in the Arabian poets. 
 
 The moral aspect of fatherhood, again, lies in the social 
 relations and obligations which flow from the physical 
 
42 THE FATHEEHOOD LECT. ii. 
 
 relationship — in the sanctity of the tie of blood which 
 binds together the whole family, and in the particular 
 modification of this tie in the case of parent and child, the 
 parent protecting and nourishing the child, while the child 
 owes obedience and service to his parent. 
 
 In Christianity, and already in the spiritual religion of 
 the Hebrews, the idea of divine fatherhood is entirely 
 dissociated from the physical basis of natural fatherhood. 
 Man was created in the image of God, but he was not 
 begotten ; God-sonship is not a thing of nature but a thing 
 of grace. In the Old Testament Israel is Jehovah's son, 
 and Jehovah is his father who created him ; ^ but this 
 creation is not a physical act, it refers to the series of 
 gracious deeds by which Israel was shaped into a nation. 
 And so, though it may be said of the Israelites as a whole 
 " Ye are the children of Jehovah your God," ^ this sonship 
 is national, not personal, and the individual Israelite has 
 not the right to call himself Jehovah's son. 
 
 But in heathen religions the fatherhood of the gods is 
 physical fatherhood. Among the Greeks, for example, the 
 idea that the gods fashioned men out of clay, as potters 
 fashion images, is relatively modern. The older conception 
 is that the races of men have gods for their ancestors, or 
 are the children of the earth, the common mother of gods 
 and men, so that men are really of the stock or kin of the 
 gods.^ That the same conception was familiar to the older 
 Semites appears from the Bible. Jeremiah describes 
 idolaters as saying to a stock. Thou art my father ; and to a 
 stone. Thou hast brought me forth.* In the ancient poem, 
 Num. xxi. 29, the Moabites are called the sons and 
 daughters of Chemosh, and at a much more recent date the 
 
 ' Hosea xi. 1 ; Deut. xxxii. 6. ' Dent. xiv. 1. 
 
 ' See details and references in Preller-Eotert, Oriechische Mythol. (1887) 
 i. 78 sqq. * Jer. ii. 27. 
 
LECT. II. OF THE GODS. 43 
 
 prophet Malachi calls a heathen woman " the daughter of 
 a strange god." ^ These phrases are doubtless accommoda- 
 tions to the language which the heathen neighbours of 
 Israel used about themselves ; they belong to an age when 
 society in Syria and Palestine was still mainly organised 
 on the tribal system, so that each clan, or even each complex 
 of clans forming a small independent people, traced back its 
 origin to a great first father ; and they indicate that, just 
 as in Greece, this father or dpxrijeTTji; of the race was 
 commonly identified with the god of the race. With this 
 it accords that in the judgment of most modern enquirers 
 several names of deities appear in the old genealogies of 
 nations in the Book of Genesis. Edom, for example, the 
 progenitor of the Edomites, was identified by the Hebrews 
 with Esau the brother of Jacob, but to the heathen he was 
 a god, as appears from the theophorous proper name 
 Obededom, " worshipper of Edom." ^ The remains of such 
 
 1 Mai. ii. 11. 
 
 * Bathgen, Beitrdge zur Semitischen Religionsg. p. 10, objects that not 
 all names compounded with ^3V are theophorous. And it is true that on 
 the Nahatiean inscriptions we iind names of this form in which the second 
 element is the name of a king, hut this is in a state of society where the 
 king was revered as at least q^uasi-divine, and where the apotheosis of dead 
 kings was not unknown. Cf. Wellh. p. 2 sq.; Euting, Nabat. Inschr. p. 
 32 sq. ; and especially Clermont-Ganneau, Bee. d'ArcMol. Or. i. 39 sqq. What 
 mN means in C. I. S. pt. i. pp. 365, 367, I do not, in the present state 
 of the evidence, presume to guess ; hut I venture to say that DHS 170 
 cannot in the context mean " king of men." 
 
 As examples of names in the genealogies of Genesis which reappear in 
 other quarters as names of gods, I have elsewhere adduced Uz (Gen. xxu. 
 21, xxxvi. 28 ; LXX, n?, n|, O; ; and in Job i. 1, A,;«^«) = 'Aud (Kinship, 
 261) and Yeush (Gen. xxxvi. 14) = Yaghiith. To the second of these identi- 
 iications, objections of much force have been raised by Lagarde, Mitth. ii. 77, 
 Bildung der Nomina, p. 124. The other has been criticised by Noldeke, 
 ZDMG. xl. 184, hut his remarks do not seem to me to be conclusive. 
 That the Arabian god is a mere personification of Time is a hard saying, and 
 the view that 'audo or 'av4a in the line of al-A*sha is derived from the 
 name of the god, which Noldeke finds to be "doch etwas bizarr," has at 
 least the authority of Ibn al-Kalbi as cited by Jauhari, and more clearly in 
 the Lisdn. 
 
44 KINSHIP OF LECT. II. 
 
 mythology are naturally few in records which have come to 
 us not from the heathen tribes themselves, but through the 
 monotheistic Hebrews. On the other hand, the extant 
 fragments of PhcEnician and Babylonian cosmogonies date 
 from a time when tribal religion and the connection of 
 individual gods with particular kindreds was forgotten or 
 had fallen into the background. But in a generaKsed form 
 the notion that men are the offspring of the gods still held 
 its ground. In the Phoenician cosmogony of Philo Byblius 
 it does so in a confused shape, due to the author's euhemer- 
 ism, that is, to his theory that deities are nothing more 
 than deified men who had been great benefactors to their 
 species. But euhemerism itself can arise, as an explanation 
 of popular religion, only where the old gods are regarded 
 as akin to men, and where therefore the deification of 
 human benefactors does not involve any such patent 
 absurdity as on our way of thinking. Again in the 
 Chaldaean legend preserved by Berosus,^ the belief that 
 men are of the blood of the gods is expressed in a form too 
 crude not to be very ancient. Not only men but animals 
 are said to have been formed out of clay mingled with the 
 blood of a decapitated deity. Here we have a blood-kinship 
 not only of gods and men, but of gods men and animals, a 
 belief which has points of contact with the lowest forms of 
 savage religion, and will engage our attention again at a 
 later stage of the enquiry. 
 
 It is obvious that the idea of a physical affinity between 
 the gods and men in general is more modern than that of 
 affinity between particular gods and their worshippers ; and 
 the survival of the idea in a generalised form, after men's 
 religion had ceased to be strictly dependent on tribal con- 
 nection, is in itself a proof that belief in their descent from 
 the blood of the gods was not confined to this or that clan, 
 ^ MUUer, Fr. Hist. Gr. ii. 497 sq. 
 
LECT. II. GODS AND MEN. 
 
 but was a widespread feature in the old tribal religions of 
 the Semites, too deeply interwoven with the whole system 
 of faith and practice to be altogether thrown aside when 
 the community of the same worship ceased to be purely 
 one of kinship. 
 
 That this was really the case will be seen more clearly 
 when we come to speak of the common features of Semitic 
 ritual, and especially of the ritual use of blood, which is 
 the primitive symbol of kinship. Meantime let us observe 
 that there is yet another form in which the idea of divine 
 descent survived the breaking up of the tribal system 
 among the northern Semites. When this took place, the 
 worshippers of one god, being now men of different 
 kindreds, united by political bonds instead of bonds of 
 blood, could not be all thought of as children of the god. 
 He was no longer their father but their king. But as 
 the deities of a mixed community were in their origin the 
 .old deities of the more influential families, the members of 
 these families might still trace their origin to the family 
 god, and find in this pedigree matter of aristocratic pride. 
 Thus royal and noble houses among the Greeks long con- 
 tinued to trace their stem back to a divine forefather, and 
 the same thing appears among the Semites. The testimony 
 of Virgil and Silius Italicus,^ that the royal house of Tyre 
 and the noblest families of Carthage claimed descent from 
 the Tyrian Baal, is confirmed by the name Abibaal, " my 
 father is Baal," borne by the father of Solomon's ally, 
 Hiram.^ Similarly among the Aramasan sovereigns of 
 
 1 ^n. i. 729 ; Punica i. 87. 
 
 2 The same name appears in O. I. S. Nos. 378, 405. In the former case 
 it is the name of a woman, ' ' a handmaid of the gods," whose mother is named 
 hut not her father. It is possible that the mother was a cedesha or temple- 
 prostitute, and that the god was regarded as the father of the children of 
 religious prostitution. Cf. ibid. Nos. 253, 256, and Herod, i. 181 sq., 
 compared (as regards the Theban case) with Strabo, xvii.. 1. 46, p. 817. As 
 regards n^^lB'JJI^X, C /■ S, No. 3, 1. 14, it 'is doubtful whether it is not 
 
46 KINSHIP OF LECT. II. 
 
 Damascus, mentioned in the Bible, we find more than one 
 Ben-hadad, " son of the god Hadad ; " while among the later 
 Aramaeans names like Barlaha, " son of God," Barba'shmin, 
 " son of the Lord of Heaven," Barate, " son of Ate," are not 
 uncommon.^ 
 
 The belief that all the members of a clan are sons and 
 daughters of its god, might naturally be expected to survive 
 longest in Arabia, where the tribe was never lost in the 
 state, and kinship continued down to the time of Mohammed 
 to be the one sacred bond of social unity. In point of 
 fact many Arabian tribes bear the names of gods, or of 
 celestial bodies worshipped as gods, and their members are 
 styled " sons of Hobal," " sons of the Full Moon," and the 
 like.^ There is no good reason for refusing to explain 
 these names, or at least the older ones among them, on 
 the analogy of the similar clan-names found among the 
 northern Semites ; for Arabian ritual, as well as that of 
 Palestine and Syria, involves in its origin a belief in the 
 kinship of the god and his worshippers. In the later ages 
 of Arabian heathenism, however, of which alone we have 
 any full accounts, religion had come to be very much dis- 
 sociated from tribal feeling, mainly, it would seem, in 
 
 equivalent to mnW flDX, "handmaid of Astarte," for we find also [OtJ'NDX. 
 The name ^]12T)2, "daughter of Baal," is not quite certain in any of the 
 three passages quoted by Levy, Phon. WSrtb. s.v. Compare, further, the 
 names napon, n^bDnn, "brother, sister of the Queen (Astarte)," n^nn, 
 G. I. S. 221, 430 ; also Din, Hiram, and in Hebrew, iss^n, fTTlK, etc. 
 
 ' For the god-sonship of Assyrian monarchs, see Tiele, Babylonisch-Assyr. 
 Gesch. p. 492. 
 
 2 See Kinship, p. 205 sqq., and Yfellhausen, Heidenthum, p. 4 aqq., who 
 explains all such names as due to omission of the prefix 'Abd or the like. 
 In some cases this probably is so, but it must not be assumed that because 
 the same tribe is called (for example) 'Auf or 'Abd 'Auf indifferently, Banu 
 'Auf is a contraction of Banu 'Abd 'Auf. It is quite logical that the sons 
 of 'Auf form the collective body of his worshippers ; cf. Mai. iii. 17 ; and 
 for the collective use ol'abd, Hamasa, p. 312, first verse. Personal names 
 indicating god-sonship are lacking in Arabia; see on supposed Sabsean 
 examples ZDMQ. xxxvii. 15. 
 
LECT. II. GODS AND MEN. 47 
 
 consequence of the extensive migrations which took place 
 in the first centuries of our era, and carried tribes far away 
 from the fixed sanctuaries of the gods of their fathers.' 
 Men forgot their old worship, and as the names of gods 
 were also used as individual proper names, the divine 
 ancestor, even before Islam, had generally sunk to the rank 
 of a mere man. But though the later Arabs worshipped 
 gods that were not the gods of their fathers, and tribes of 
 alien blood were often found gathered together on festival 
 occasions at the great pilgrim shrines, there are many 
 evidences that all Arabic deities were originally the gods 
 of particular kius, and that the bond of religion was 
 originally co-extensive with the bond of blood. 
 
 A main proof of this lies in the fact,' that the duties of 
 blood were the only duties of absolute and indefeasible 
 sanctity. The Arab warrior in the ages immediately pre- 
 ceding Islam was very deficient in religion in the ordinary 
 sense of the word ; he was little occupied with the things 
 of the gods and negligent in matters of ritual worship. 
 But he had a truly religious reverence for his clan, and a 
 kinsman's blood was to him a thing holy and inviolable. 
 This apparent paradox becomes at once intelligible when 
 we view it in the light of the antique conception, that the 
 god and his worshippers make up a society in which the 
 same character of sanctity is impressed on the relations of 
 the worshippers to one another as on their relations to their 
 god. The original religious society was the kindred group, 
 and all the duties of kinship were part of religion. And so 
 even when the clan-god had fallen into the background and 
 was little remembered, the type of a clan-religion was still 
 maintained in the enduring sanctity of the kindred bond.^ 
 
 ' See "Wellhausen ut supra, p. 182 sq., ami compare 1 Sam. xxvi. 19. 
 
 2 When the oracle at Tabala forbade the poet Imraulcais to make war on 
 the slayers of his father, he broke the lot and dashed the pieces in the face 
 of the god, exclaiming with a gross and insulting expletive, "If it had 
 
48 KINSHIP OF LECT. II. 
 
 Again, the primitive connection of religion with kindred 
 is attested by the existence of priesthoods confined to men 
 of one clan or family, which in many cases was of a 
 different blood from the mass of the worshippers. Cases 
 of this sort are common, not only among the Arabs,^ but 
 among the other Semites also, and generally throughout 
 the ancient world. In such cases the priestly clan may 
 often represent the original kindred group which was once 
 in exclusive possession of the sacra of the god, and con- 
 tinued to administer them after worshippers from without 
 were admitted to the religion. 
 
 And, further, it will appear when we come to the 
 subject of sacrifice, that when tribes of different blood 
 worshipped at the same sanctuary and adored the same 
 god, they yet held themselves apart from one another and 
 did not engage in any common act that united them in 
 religious fellowship. The circle of worship was stUl the 
 kin, though the deity worshipped was not of the kin, and 
 the only way in which two kindreds could form a religious 
 fusion was by a covenant ceremony, in which it was 
 symbolically set forth that they were no longer twain, but 
 of one blood. It is clear, therefore, that among the Arabs 
 the circle of religious solidarity was originally the group 
 of kinsmen, and it needs no proof that, this being so, the 
 god himself must have been conceived as united to his 
 worshippers by the bond of blood, as their great kinsman, 
 or more specifically as their great ancestor. 
 
 been tliy father that was killed, thou -vvouldst not have refused me 
 vengeance." The respect for the sanctity of blood overrides respect for a 
 god who, by taking no interest in the poet's blood-feud, has shown that he 
 has no feeling of kindred for the murdered man and his son. Imraulcais's 
 act does not show that he was impious, but only that kinship was the 
 principle of his religion. That with such principles he consulted the oracle 
 of a strange god at all, is perhaps to be explained by the fact that his army 
 was a miscellaneous band of hirelings and broken men of various tribes. 
 1 Wellhausen, p. 129. 
 
LECT. II. GODS AND MEN. 49 
 
 It cannot be too strongly insisted on that the idea of 
 kinship between gods and men was originally taken in a 
 purely physical sense. It is often said that the original 
 Semitic conception of the godhead was abstract and 
 transcendental ; that while Aryan religion with its poetic 
 mythology drew the gods down into the sphere of nature 
 and of human life, Semitic religion always showed an 
 opposite tendency, that it sought to remove the gods as far 
 ■as possible from man, and even contained within itself 
 from the first the seeds of an abstract deism. According 
 to this view the anthropomorphisms of Semitic religion, 
 that is, all expressions which in their literal sense imply 
 that the gods have a physical nature cognate to that of 
 man, are explained away as mere allegory, and it is urged, 
 in proof of the fundamental distinction between the Aryan 
 and Semitic conceptions of the divine nature, that myths 
 like those of the Aryans, in which gods act like men, 
 mingle with men, and in fact live a common life with 
 mankind, have little or no place in Semitic religion. But 
 all this is mere unfounded assumption. It is true that the 
 remains of ancient Semitic mythology are not very nume- 
 rous; but mythology cannot be preserved without literature, 
 and an early literature of Semitic heathenism does not 
 exist. The one exception is the cuneiform literature of 
 Babylonia, and in it we find fragments of a copious 
 mythology. It is true, also, that there is not much myth- 
 ology in the poetry of heathen Arabia, but Arabian poetry 
 has little to do with religion at all; it dates from the 
 extreme decadence of the old heathenism, and is preserved 
 to us only in the collections formed by Mohammedan 
 scholars, who were careful to avoid or obliterate as far as 
 possible the traces of their fathers' idolatry. That the 
 Semites never had a mythological epic poetry comparable 
 to that of the Greeks is admitted, but the character of the 
 
 D 
 
50 KINSHIP OF LECT. II. 
 
 literary genius of the Semites, which is deficient in plastic 
 power and in the faculty of sustained and orderly effort, is 
 enough to account for the fact. "We cannot draw inferences 
 for religion from the absence of an elaborate mythology ; 
 the question is whether there are not traces, in however 
 crude a form, of the mythological point of view. And 
 this question must be answered in the affirmative. I must 
 not turn aside now to speak at large of Semitic myths, but 
 it is to the point to observe that there do exist remains of 
 myths, and not only of myths but of sacred usages, involv- 
 ing a conception of the divine beings and their relation 
 with man which entirely justifies us in taking the kinship 
 of men with gods in its literal and physical sense, exactly 
 as in Greece. In Greece the loves of the gods with the 
 daughters of men were referred to remote antiquity, but in 
 Babylon the god Bel was still, in the time of Herodotus, 
 provided with a human wife, who spent the night in his 
 temple and with whom he was believed to share his couch.^ 
 In one of the few fragments of old mythology which have 
 been transplanted unaltered into the Hebrew Scriptures, we 
 read of the sons of gods who took wives of the daughters 
 of men; and became the fathers of the renowned heroes of 
 ancient days. Such a hero is the Izdubar of Babylonian 
 myth, to whom the great goddess Ishtar did not disdain to 
 offer her hand. Arabian tradition presents similar legends. 
 The clan of 'Amr b. Yarbil' was descended from a sU'at, or 
 she-demon, who became the wife of their human father, 
 but suddenly disappeared from him on seeing a flash of 
 lightning.^ In this connection the distinction between 
 gods and demi-gods is immaterial; the demi-gods are of 
 
 1 This is not more realistic than the custom of providing the Hercules 
 (Baal) of Sanbulos with a horse, on which he rode out to hunt by night (Tac. 
 Ann. xii. 13 ; cf. Gm. ArchM. 1879, pp. 178 sqq.). See also supra, p. 4S, 
 note 2. 
 
 2 Ibn Doreid, Kitdh al-ishticdc, p. 13'9. 
 
LECT. II. GODS ANB MEN. 51 
 
 divine kind, though they have not attained to the full 
 position of deities with a recognised circle of worshippers. 
 It is plain, therefore, that there is nothing in the Semitic 
 conception of the divine nature which forbids us to take in 
 its literal sense the kinship between men and their tribal 
 god ; on the contrary, any other interpretation involves a 
 manifest distortion of the facts. 
 
 There is then a great variety of evidence to show that 
 the type of rehgion which is founded on kinship, and in 
 which the deity and his worshippers make up a society 
 united by the bond of blood, was widely prevalent, and 
 that at an early date, among all the Semitic peoples. But 
 the force of the evidence goes further, and leaves no 
 reasonable doubt that among the Semites this was the 
 original type of religion, out of which all other types 
 grew. That it was so is particularly clear as regards 
 Arabia, where we have found that the conception of the 
 circle of worship and the circle of kindred as identical was 
 so deeply rooted that it dominated the practical side of 
 religion, even after men worshipped deities that were not 
 kindred gods. But, among the other branches of the 
 Semites also, the connection between religion and kinship 
 is often manifested in forms that cannot be explained 
 except by reference to a primitive stage of society, in 
 which the circle of blood relations was also the circle 
 of all religious and social unity. Nations, as dis- 
 tinguished from mere clans, are not constructed on the 
 principle of kinship, and yet the Semitic nations 
 habitually feigned themselves to be of one kin, and 
 their national religions are deeply imbued, both in 
 legend and in ritual, with the idea that the god and 
 his worshippers are of one stock. This, I apprehend, 
 is good evidence that the fundamental lines of all 
 Semitic religion were laid down, long before the begin- 
 
52 THE RELIGION MCT. ll. 
 
 nings of authentic history, in that earliest stage of 
 society when kinship was the only recognised type of 
 permanent friendly relation between man and man, and 
 therefore the only type on which it was possible to 
 frame the conception of a permanent friendly relation 
 between a group of men and a supernatural being. 
 That all human societies have been developed from 
 this stage is now generally recognised ; and the evidence 
 shows that among the Semites the historical forms of 
 religion can be traced back to such a stage. 
 
 Eecent researches into the history of the family render 
 it in the highest degree improbable that the physical 
 kinship between the god and his worshippers, of which 
 traces are found all over the Semitic area, was originally 
 conceived as fatherhood. It was the mother's, not the 
 father's, blood which formed the original bond of kinship 
 among the Semites as among other early peoples, and in 
 this stage of society, if the tribal deity was thought of 
 as the parent of the stock, a goddess, not a god, would 
 necessarily have been the object of worship. In point 
 of fact, goddesses play a great part in Semitic religion, 
 and that not merely in the subordinate rdle of wives of 
 the gods ; it is also noticeable that in various parts of 
 the Semitic field we find deities originally female changing 
 their sex and becoming gods, as if with the change in the 
 rule of human kinship.^ So long as kinship was traced 
 through the mother alone, a male deity of common stock 
 with his worshippers could only be their cousin, or, in the 
 language of that stage of society, their brother. This in 
 fact is the relationship between gods and men asserted by 
 Pindar, when he ascribes to both alike a common mother 
 Earth, and among the Semites a trace of the same point 
 
 1 See Kinship, p. 292 sqq., note 8. I hope to return to this subject on a 
 future opportunity. 
 
I.ECT. II. OF KINSHIP. 53 
 
 of view may be seen in the class of proper names which 
 designate their hearers as " brother '' or " sister " of a deity.^ 
 If this be so, we must distinguish the reL'gious significance 
 belonging to the wider and older conception of kinship 
 between the deity and the race that worshipped him, from 
 the special and more advanced ideas, conformed to a higher 
 stage of social development, that were added when the 
 kindred god came to be revered as a father. 
 
 Some of the most notable and constant features of 
 all ancient heathenism, and indeed of all nature-religions, 
 from the totemism of savages upward, find their sufficient 
 explanation in the physical kinship that unites the human 
 and superhuman members of the same religious and social 
 community, without reference to the special doctrine of 
 divine fatherhood. From this point of view the natural 
 solidarity of the god and his worshippers, which has been 
 already enlarged upon as characteristic of antique religion, 
 at once becomes intelligible ; the indissoluble bond that 
 imites men to their god is the same bond of blood-fellow- 
 ship which in early society is the one binding link 
 between man and man, and the one sacred principle of 
 moral obligation. And thus we see that even in its 
 rudest forms religion was a moral force ; the powers 
 that man reveres were on the side of social order and 
 tribal law; and the fear of the gods was a motive to 
 enforce the laws of society, which were also the laws of 
 morality. 
 
 But though the earliest nature - religion was fully 
 identified with the earliest morality, it was not fitted 
 to raise morality towards higher ideals ; and instead of 
 leading the way in social and ethical progress, it was often 
 content to follow or even to lag behind. Eeligious feeling 
 is naturally conservative, for it is bound up with old 
 ^ See above, p. 45, note 2. 
 
■54 THE EELIGION lect. h. 
 
 custom and usage ; and the gods, who are approached 
 only in traditional ritual, and invoked as giving sanction 
 to long-established principles of conduct, seem always to 
 be on the side of those who are averse to change. Among 
 the Semites, as among other races, religion often came to 
 work against a higher morality, not because it was in 
 its essence a power for evil, but because it clung to the 
 obsolete ethical standard of a bygone stage of society. 
 To our better judgment, for example, one of the most 
 offensive features in tribal religion is its particularism ; 
 a man is held answerable to his god for wrong done to 
 a member of his own kindred or political community, but 
 he may deceive, rob, or kill an alien without offence to 
 religion ; the deity cares only for his own kinsfolk. This 
 is a very narrow morality, and we are tempted to call it 
 sheer immorality. But such a judgment would be alto- 
 gether false from an historical point of view. The larger 
 morality which embraces all mankind has its basis in 
 habits of loyalty, love, and self-sacrifice, which were 
 originally formed and grew strong in the narrower circle 
 of the family or the clan ; and the part which the religion 
 of kinship played in the development and maintenance 
 of these habits, is one of the greatest services it has 
 done to human progress. This service it was able to 
 render because the gods were themselves members of 
 the kin, and the man who was untrue to kiadred duty 
 had to reckon with them as well as with his human 
 clansmen. 
 
 An eloquent French writer has recently quoted with 
 approval, and applied to the beginnings of Semitic religion", 
 the words of Statins, Primus in orbe deos fecit timor^ 
 " Man fancied himself surrounded by enemies whom he 
 sought to appease." But however true it is that savage 
 
 1 Eenan, Hist, d' Israel, i. 29. 
 
LECT. II. OF KINSHIP. 55 
 
 luan feels himself to be environed by innumerable dangers 
 which he does not understand, and so personifies as imdsible 
 or mysterious enemies of more than human power, it is not 
 true that the attempt to appease these powers is the founda- 
 tion of religion. From the earliest times religion, as distinct 
 from magic or sorcery, addresses itself to kindred and 
 friendly beings, who may indeed be angry with their people 
 for a time, but are always placable except to the enemies 
 of their worshippers or to renegade members of the com- 
 munity. It is not with a vague fear of unknown powers, 
 but with a loving reverence for known gods who are knit 
 to their worshippers by strong bonds of kinship, that 
 religion in the only true sense of the word begins. 
 Eeligion in this sense is not the child of terror, and 
 the difference - between it and the savage's dread of un- 
 seen foes is as absolute and fundamental in the earliest 
 as in the latest stages of development. It is only in 
 times of social dissolution, as in the last age of the 
 small Semitic states, when men and their gods were 
 alike powerless before the advance of the Assyrians, that 
 magical superstitions based on mere terror, or rites 
 designed to conciliate alien gods, invade the sphere of 
 tribal or national religion. In better times the religion 
 of the tribe or state has nothing in common with the 
 private and foreign superstitions or magical rites that 
 savage terror may dictate to the individual. Eeligion 
 is not an arbitrary relation of the individual man to a 
 supernatural power, it is a relation of all the members 
 of a community to a power that has the good of the 
 community at heart, and protects its law and moral 
 order. This distinction seems to have escaped some 
 modern theorists, but it was plain enough to the common 
 sense of antiquity, in which private and magical supersti- 
 tions were habitually regarded as offences against morals 
 
56 FKMALE DEITIES lect. ii. 
 
 and the state. It is not only in Israel that we find the 
 suppression of magical rites to be one of the first cares of 
 the founder of the kingdom, or see the introduction of 
 foreign worships treated as a heinous crime. In both 
 respects the law of Israel is the law of every well-ordered 
 ancient community. 
 
 In the historical stage of Semitic religion the kinship 
 of the deity with his or her people is specified as father- 
 hood or motherhood, the former conception predominating, 
 in accordance with the later rule that assigned the son to 
 his father's stock. Under the law of male kinship woman 
 takes a subordinate place ; the father is the natural head 
 of the family, and superior to the mother, and accordingly 
 the chief place in religion usually belongs, not to a mother- 
 goddess, but to a father-god. At the same time the concep- 
 tion of the goddess-mother was not unknown, and seems 
 to be attached to cults which go back to the ages of 
 polyandry and female kinship. The Babylonian Ishtar in 
 her oldest form is such a mother-goddess, unmarried, or 
 rather choosing her temporary partners at will, the queen 
 head and first-born of all gods.^ She is the mother of the 
 gods and also the mother of men, who, in the Chaldsean 
 fiood- legends, mourns over the death of her offspring. 
 In like manner the Carthaginians worshipped a "great 
 mother," who seems to be identical with Tanith-Artemis, 
 the " heavenly virgin," ^ and the Arabian Lat was 
 
 'Tiele, BahyloniscJi-Assyrische Gesch. p. 528. 
 
 ^na-l DS, G. I. S. Nos. 195, 380 ; cf. No. 177. The identification of 
 Tanith with Artemis appears from No. 116, where njmau = 'A-pn/ti^afss, and 
 is confirmed by the prominence of the virgo cmleslis or numen virginale in 
 the later cults of Punic Africa. The identification of the mother of the gods 
 with the heavenly virgin, i.e.. the unmarried goddess, is confirmed if not 
 absolutely demanded by Aug. Glv. Dei, ii. 4. At Carthage she seems also 
 to be identical with Dido, of whom as a goddess more in another connection. 
 See Hoffmann, l/eb. einige Phmn. Inschrr. p. 32 sq. The foul type of worship 
 corresponding to the conception of the goddess as polyandrous prevailed at 
 Sicca Veneria, and Augustin speaks with indignation of the incredible 
 
AS MOTHERS. 57 
 
 worshipped by the Nahatseans as mother of the gods, and 
 must be identified with the virgin-mother, whose worship 
 at Petra is described by Epiphanius.^ 
 
 Originally, since men are of one stock with their gods, 
 the mother of the gods must also have been, like Ishtar, 
 the mother of men ; but except in Babylonia and Assyria, 
 where the kings at least continued to speak of themselves 
 as the progeny of Ishtar, it is not clear that this idea was 
 present to the Semitic worshipper when he addressed his 
 
 obscenity of the songs that accompanied the worship of the Carthaginian 
 mother-goddess ; but perhaps this is not "wholly to be set down as of Punic 
 origin, for the general laxity on the point of female chastity in which such a 
 type of worship originates has always been characteristic of North Africa (see 
 Tissot, La Prov. d'Afrique., i. 477). 
 
 ■"De Vogii^, Syr. Centr. Inscr. Nab. No. 8 ; Epiph., Panarium 51 (ii. 483 
 Bind.), see Kinnhip, p. 292 sq. I am not able to follow the argument by which 
 Wellh., pp. 40, 46, seeks to invalidate the evidence as to the worship of a 
 mother-goddess by the Nabatseans. He supposes that the Xxxliov, which 
 Epiphanius represents as the virgin-mother of Dusares, is really nothing 
 more than the cippus, or betyl, out of which the god was supposed to have 
 been bom, i.e.. the image of the god himself, not a distinct deity. But from 
 the time of Herodotus downwards, al-Lat was worshipped in these regions 
 side by side with a god, and the evidence of De Vogii^'s inscription and 
 that of Epiphanius agree in making Lat the mother and the god her 
 son. Epiphanius implies that the virgin-mother was worshipped also at 
 Elusa, and here Jerome, in his life of S. Hilarion, knows a temple of a 
 goddess whom he calls Venus, and who was worshipped "ob Luciferum," 
 on account of her connection with the morning star. Wellhausen takes 
 this to mean that the goddess of Elusa was identitied with the morning star ; 
 but this is impossible, for, in his comm. on Amos v., Jerome plainly indi- 
 cates that the morning star was worshipped as a god, not as a goddess. 
 This is the old Semitic conception; see Isa. xiv. 12, "Lucifer, son of the 
 Dawn;" and in the Arabian poets, also, the planet Venus is masculine, as 
 Wellhausen himself observes. I see no reason to believe that the Arabs of 
 NUus worshipped the morning star as a goddess ; nor perhaps does the 
 worship of this planet as a goddess (Al-'Ozza) appear anywhere in Arabia, 
 except among the Eastern tribes who came under the influence of the 
 Assyrian Ishtar-worship, as it survived among the Aranifeans. This point 
 was not clear to me when I wrote my Kinship, and want of attention to 
 it has brought some confusion into the argument. That the goddess of 
 Elusa was Al-'Ozza, as "Wellh., p. 44, supposes, is thus very doubtful. 
 Whether, as Tuch thought, her local name was Khalasa is also doubtful, but 
 we must not reject the identification of Elusa with the place still called 
 Khalasa ; see Palmer, Desert of the Exodus, p. 423, compared with p. 550 sqq. 
 
FEMALE DEITIES lect. ii. 
 
 goddess as the great mother. But if we may judge from 
 analogy, and even from such modern analogies as are 
 supplied by the cult of the Virgin Mary, we can hardly 
 doubt that the use of a name appropriated to the tenderest 
 and truest of human relationships was associated in acts 
 of worship with feelings of peculiar warmth and trustful 
 devotion. " Can a woman forget her sucking child, that 
 she should not have compassion on the son of her womb ? 
 Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forgot thee."^ 
 That such thoughts were not wholly foreign to Semitic 
 heathenism appears, to give a single instance, from the 
 language in which Assurbanipal appeals to Ishtar in his 
 time of need, and in the oracle she sends to comfort him.^ 
 
 But in this, as in all its aspects, heathenism shows its 
 fundamental weakness, in its inability to separate the 
 ethical motives of religion from their source in a merely 
 naturalistic conception of the godhead and its relation to 
 man. Divine motherhood, like the kinship of men and 
 gods in general, was to the heathen Semites a physical 
 fact, and the development of the corresponding cults and 
 myths laid more stress on the physical than on the ethical 
 side of maternity, and gave a prominence to sexual ideas 
 which was never edifying, and often repulsive. Especially 
 was this the case when the change in the law of kinship 
 deprived the mother of her old pre-eminence in the family, 
 and transferred to the father the greater part of her 
 authority and dignity. This change, as we know, went 
 hand in hand with the abolition of the old polyandry ; and 
 as women lost the right to choose their own partners at 
 will, the wife became subject to her husband's lordship, 
 and her freedom of action was restrained by his jealousy, 
 at the same time that her children became, for all purposes 
 
 ^ Isaiah xlix. ] 5. 
 
 ^ George Smith, Assurbanipal, p. 117 sqq.; Records of the Past, ix. 51 sqq. 
 
LECT. II. AS MOTHERS. 59 
 
 of inheritance and all duties of blood, members of his and 
 not of her kin. So far as religion kept pace with the 
 new laws of social morality due to this development, 
 the independent divine mother necessarily became the 
 subordinate partner of a male deity ; and so the old 
 polyandrous Ishtar reappears in Canaan and elsewhere 
 as Astarte, the wife of the supreme Baal. Or -if the 
 supremacy of the goddess was too well established to be 
 thus undermined, she might change her sex, as in Southern 
 Arabia, where Ishtar is transformed into the masculine 
 'Athtar. But not seldom religious tradition refused to 
 move forward with the progress of society ; the goddess 
 retained her old character as a mother who was not a 
 wife bound to fidelity to her husband, and at her sanctuary 
 she protected, under the name of religion, the sexual 
 Kcence of savage society, or even demanded of the 
 daughters of her worshippers a shameful sacrifice of their 
 chastity, before they were permitted to bind themselves 
 for the rest of their lives to that conjugal fidelity which 
 their goddess despised. 
 
 The emotional side of Semitic heathenism was always 
 very much connected with the worship of female deities, 
 partly through the associations of maternity, which 
 appealed to the purest and tenderest feelings, and 
 partly through other associations connected with woman, 
 which too often appealed to the sensuality so strongly 
 developed in the Semitic race. The associations called 
 forth when the deity was conceived as a father were on 
 the whole of an austerer kind, for the distinctive note of 
 fatherhood, as distinguished from kinship in general, lay 
 mainly in the parental authority, in the father's claim to 
 be honoured and served by his son. The honour which 
 the fifth commandment requires children to pay to their 
 fathers is named in Mai, i. 6 along with that which a 
 
60 THE GOD AS FATHER i.ect. ii. 
 
 servant owes to his -master, and the same prophet (iii. 17) 
 
 speaks of the considerate regard which a father shows 
 
 for " the son that serveth him." To this day the grown-up 
 
 son in Arabia serves his father in much the same offices 
 
 as the domestic slave, and approaches him with much the 
 
 same degree of reverence and even of constraint. It is 
 
 only with his little children that the father is effusively 
 
 affectionate and on quite easy terms. On the other hand, 
 
 the father's authority had not a despotic character. He 
 
 had no such power of life and death over his sons as 
 
 Eoman law recognised,' and indeed, after they passed 
 
 beyond childhood, had no means of enforcing his authority 
 
 if they refused to respect it. Paradoxical as this may 
 
 seem, it is quite in harmony with the general spirit of 
 
 Semitic institutions that authority should exist and be 
 
 generally acknowledged without having any force behind 
 
 it except the pressure of public opinion. The authority 
 
 of an Arab sheikh is in the same position ; and when an 
 
 Arab judge pronounces sentence on a culprit, it is at the 
 
 option of the latter whether he will pay the fine, which is 
 
 the invariable form of penalty, or continue in feud with 
 
 his accuser. 
 
 Thus while the conception of the tribal god as father 
 
 introduces into religion the idea of divine authority, of 
 
 reverence and service due from the worshipper to the 
 
 deity, it does not carry with it any idea of the strict and 
 
 rigid enforcement of divine commands by supernatural 
 
 sanctions. The respect paid by the Semite to his father 
 
 1 See Deut. xxi. 18. where the word "chastened" should rather he 
 "admonished." The powerlessness of Jacob to restrain his grown-up sons is 
 not related as a proof that he was weak, but shows that a father had no means 
 of enforcing his authority. The law of Deuteronomy can hardly have been 
 carried into practice. In Prov. xxx. 17 disobedience to parents is cited as 
 a thing which brings a man to a bad end, not as a thing punished by law. 
 That an Arab father could do no more than argue with his son, and bring 
 tribal opinion to bear on him, appears from Ayh. xix. 102 sq. 
 
I,ECT. II; OF HIS WORSHIPPERS. 61 
 
 is but the respect which he pays to kindred, focussed 
 upon a single representative person, and the father's 
 authority is only a special manifestation of the authority 
 of the kin, which can go no further than the whole kin is 
 prepared to back it. Thus in the sphere of religion the 
 god, as father, stands by the majority of the tribe in 
 enforcing tribal law against refractory members ; outlawry, 
 which is the only punishment ordinarily applicable to 
 a clansman, carries with it excommunication from religious 
 communion, and the man who defies tribal law has to fear 
 the god as well as his fellow-men. But in all minor 
 matters, where outlawry is out of the question, the long- 
 suffering tolerance which tribesmen in early society 
 habitually extend to the offences of their fellow-tribesmen 
 is ascribed also to the god; he does not willingly break 
 with any of his' worshippers, and accordingly a bold and 
 wilful man does not hesitate to take considerable liberties 
 with the paternal deity. As regards his worshippers at 
 large it appears scarcely conceivable, from the point of 
 view of tribal religion, that the god can be so much 
 displeased with anything they do that his anger can go 
 beyond a temporary estrangement, which is readily 
 terminated by their repentance, or even by a mere change 
 of humour on the part of the god, when his permanent 
 affection for his own gets the better of his momentary 
 displeasure, as it is pretty sure to do if he sees them to 
 be in straits, e.g. to be hard pressed by their and his 
 enemies. On the whole, men live on very easy terms 
 with their tribal god, and his paternal authority is neither 
 strict nor exacting. 
 
 This is a very characteristic feature of heathen religion, 
 and one which does not disappear when the god of the 
 community comes to be thought of as king rather than as 
 father. The inscription of King Mesha, for example, tells 
 
62 THE GOD AS KING lect. it. 
 
 us that Chemosh was angry with his people, and suffered 
 Israel to oppress Moab ; and then again that Chemosh 
 fought for Moab, and delivered it from the foe. There is 
 no explanation offered of the god's change of mind ; it 
 appears to be simply taken for granted that he was tired 
 of seeing his people put to the worse. In like manner 
 the mass of the Hebrews before the exile received with 
 blank incredulity the prophetic teaching, that Jehovah was 
 ready to enforce His law of righteousness even by the 
 destruction of the sinful commonwealth of Israel. To the 
 prophets Jehovah's long-suffering meant the patience with 
 which He offers repeated calls to repentance, and defers 
 punishment while there is hope of arhendment ; but to 
 the heathen, and to the heathenly-minded in Israel, the 
 long-suffering of the gods meant a disposition to overlook 
 the offences of their worshippers. 
 
 To reconcile the forgiving goodness of God with His 
 absolute justice, is one of the highest problems of spiritual 
 religion, which in Christianity is solved by the doctrine of 
 the atonement. It is important to realise that in heathen- 
 ism this problem never arose in the form in which the 
 New Testament deals with it, not because the gods of the 
 heathen were not conceived as good and gracious, but 
 because they were not absolutely just. This lack of strict 
 justice, however, is not to be taken as meaning that the 
 gods were in their nature unjust, when measured by the 
 existing standards of social righteousness ; as a rule they 
 were conceived as sympathising with right conduct, but 
 not as rigidly enforcing it in every case. To us, who are 
 accustomed to take an abstract view of the divine attri- 
 butes, this is difficult to conceive, but it seemed perfectly 
 natural when the divine sovereignty was conceived as a 
 kingship precisely similar to human kingship. 
 
 In its beginnings, human kingship was as little absolute 
 
LECT. II. 
 
 OF HIS PEOPLE. 63 
 
 as the authority of the fathers and elders of the clan, 
 for it was not supported by an executive organisation 
 sufficient to carry out the king's sentence of justice or 
 constrain obedience to his decrees. The authority of the 
 prince was moral rather than physical ; his business was 
 to guide rather than to dictate the conduct of his free 
 subjects, to declare what was just rather than to enforce 
 it. Thus the limitations of royal power went on quite 
 an opposite principle from that which underlies a modern 
 limited monarchy. With us the king or his government 
 is armed with the fullest authority to enforce law and 
 justice, and the limitations of his power lie in the 
 independence of the legislature and the judicial courts. 
 The old Semitic king, on the contrary, was supreme judge, 
 and his decrees were laws, but neither his sentences nor 
 his decrees could take effect unless they were supported 
 by forces over which he had very imperfect control. He 
 simply threw his weight into the scale, a weight which 
 was partly due to the moral effect of his sentence, and 
 partly to the material resources which he commanded, not 
 so much as king as in the character of a great noble and 
 the head of a powerful circle of kinsfolk and clients. An 
 energetic sovereign, who had gained wealth and prestige 
 by successful wars, or inherited the resources accumu- 
 lated by a line of kingly ancestors, might wield almost 
 despotic power, and in a stable dynasty the tendency was 
 towards the gradual establishment of absolute monarchy, 
 especially if the royal house was able to maintain a 
 standing army devoted to its interests. But a pure 
 despotism of the modern Eastern type probably had not 
 been reached by any of the small kingdoms that were 
 crushed by the Assyrian empire, and certainly the ideas 
 which underlay the conception of divine sovereignty date 
 from an age when the human kingship was still in a 
 
64 THE GOD AS KING 
 
 LECT. It 
 
 rudimentary state, when its executive strength was very 
 limited, and the sovereign was in no way held responsible 
 for the constant maintenance of law and order in all parts of 
 his realm. In most matters of internal order he was not 
 expected to interfere unless directly appealed to by one 
 or other party in a dispute, and even then it was not 
 certain that the party in whose favour he decided would 
 not be left to make good his rights with the aid of his own 
 family connections. So loose a system of administration 
 did not offer a pattern on which to frame the conception 
 of a constant unremitting divine providence, overlooking 
 no injustice and suffering no right to be crushed ; the 
 national god might be good and just, but was not con- 
 tinually active or omnipresent in his activity. But we 
 are not to suppose that this remissness was felt to be a 
 defect in the divine character. The Semitic nature is 
 impatient of control, and has no desire to be strictly 
 governed either by human or by divine authority. A god 
 who could be reached when he was wanted, but usually 
 left men pretty much to themselves, was far more accept- 
 able than one whose ever watchful eye can neither be 
 avoided nor deceived. "What the Semitic communities 
 asked, and believed themselves to receive, from their divine 
 king lay mainly in three things : help against their enemies, 
 counsel by oracles or soothsayers in matters of national 
 difficulty, and a sentence of justice when a case was too 
 hard for human decision. The valour the wisdom and 
 the justice of the nation looked to him as their head, and 
 were strengthened by his support in time of need.' Tor 
 the rest it was not expected that he should always be busy 
 righting human affairs. In ordinary matters it was men's 
 business to help themselves and their own kinsfolk, though 
 the sense that the god was always near, and could be 
 called upon at need, was a moral force continually workin" 
 
LECT. 11. OF HIS PEOPLE. 65 
 
 in some degree for the maintenance of social righteousness 
 and order. The strength of this moral force was indeed 
 very uncertain, for it was always possible for the evil- 
 doer to flatter himself that his offence would he overlooked ; 
 hut even so uncertain an influence of religion over conduct 
 was of no little use in the slow and difficult process of the 
 consolidation of an orderly society out of barbarism. 
 
 As a social and political force, in the earlier stages of 
 Semitic society, antique religion cannot be said to have 
 failed in its mission ; but it was too closely modelled 
 on the traditional organisation of the family and the 
 nation to retain a healthful vitality when the social 
 system was violently shattered. Among the northern 
 Semites the age of Assyrian conquest proved as critical for 
 religious as for civil history, for from that time forward 
 the old religion was quite out of touch with the actualities 
 of social life, and became almost wholly mischievous. But 
 apart from the Assyrian catastrophe, there are good reasons 
 to think that in the eighth century B.C. the national 
 religion of the northern Semites had already passed its 
 prime, and was sinking into decadence. The moral springs 
 of conduct which it touched were mainly connected with 
 the first needs of a rude society, with the community's 
 instinct of self-preservation. The enthusiasm of religion 
 was seen only in times of peril, when the nation, under 
 its divine head, was struggling for national existence. In 
 times of peace and prosperity, religion had little force to 
 raise man above sensuality and kindle him to right and 
 noble deeds. Except when the nation was in danger it 
 called for no self-denial, and rather encouraged an easy 
 sluggish indulgence in the good things that were enjoyed 
 under the protection of the national god. The evils that 
 slowly sap society, the vices that at first sight seem too 
 private to be matters of national concern, the disorders 
 
66 THE GOD LECT. ir. 
 
 that accompany the increase and unequal distribution of 
 wealth, the relaxation of moral fibre produced by luxury 
 and sensuality, were things that religion hardly touched at 
 all, and that the easy, indulgent god could hardly be 
 thought to take note of. The God who could deal with 
 such evils was the God of the prophets, no mere Oriental 
 king raised to a throne in heaven, but the just and 
 jealous God, whose eyes are in every place, beholding the 
 evil and the good, who is of purer eyes than to behold 
 evil, and cannot look upon iniquity.^ 
 
 In what precedes I have thought it convenient to assume 
 for the moment, without breaking the argument by pausing 
 to offer proof, that among the Semitic peoples which got 
 beyond the mere tribal stage and developed a tolerably 
 organised state, the supreme deity was habitually thought 
 of as king. The definitive proof that this was really so 
 must be sought in the details of religious practice, to which 
 we shall come by and by, and in which we shall find 
 indicated a most realistic conception of the divine king- 
 ship. Meantime some proofs of a different character may 
 be brieily indicated. In the Old Testament the kingship 
 of Jehovah is often set forth as the glory of Israel, but 
 never in such terms as to suggest that the idea of divine 
 kingship was peculiar to the Hebrews. On the contrary, 
 other nations are " the kingdoms of the false gods." ^ In 
 two exceptional cases a pious judge or a prophet appears 
 to express the opinion that Jehovah's sovereignty is incon- 
 sistent with human kingship,^ such as existed in the 
 surrounding nations, but this difficulty was never felt by 
 the mass of the Israelites, nor even by the prophets in the 
 regal period, and it was certainly not felt by Israel's 
 neighbours. If a son could be crowned in the lifetime of 
 
 1 Prov. XV. 3 ; Hab. i. 13. ^ jga. x. 10. 
 
 3 Judges viii. 23 ; 1 Sam. xii. 12. 
 
LECT. II. AS KING. 67 
 
 his father, as was done in the case of Solomon, or could act 
 for his father as Jotham acted for Uzziah,^ there was no 
 difficulty iu looking on the human king as the viceroy of 
 the divine sovereign, who, as we have seen, was often 
 believed to be the father of the royal race, and so to lend 
 a certain sanctity to the dynasty. Accordingly we find 
 that the Tyrian Baal bears the title of Melcarth, " kiug of 
 the city," or more fully, " our lord Melcarth, the Baal of 
 Tyre," ^ and this sovereignty was acknowledged by the 
 Carthaginian colonists when they paid tithes at his temple 
 in the mother city ; for in the East tithes are the king's 
 due.^ Similarly the supreme god of the Ammonites was 
 Milkom or Malkam, which is only a variation of Melek, 
 " king." So too Adrammelech and Anammelech, that is, 
 " King Adar " and " King Anu," are the gods of Sepharvaim 
 or Sippar in Babylonia (2 Kings xvii. 31); but indeed in 
 Babylonia and Assyria the application of royal tithes to 
 deities is too common to call for special exemplification. 
 Again, we have Malakhbel, '' King Bel," as the great god 
 of the Aramceans of Palmyra, but in this and other 
 examples of later date it is perhaps open to suppose that 
 the kingship of the supreme deity means his sovereignty 
 over other gods rather than over his worshippers. On 
 the other hand, a large mass of evidence can be 
 drawn from proper names of religious significance, in 
 which the god of the worshipper is designated as king. 
 Such names were as common among the Phoenicians 
 and Assyrians as they were among the Israelites,* and 
 
 1 1 Kings i. 32 sqq.; 2 Kings xv. 5. ^ o_ /. 8_ jj-q. 122. 
 
 ^ Diod. XX. 14 ; and for the payment of tithes to the king, 1 Sam. viii. 
 15, 17 ; Aristotle, (Econ. ii. p. 13526 of the Berlin ed., cf. p. 13456. 
 
 * ni'D^HN, G. I. 8. No. 50, cf. i)J?3^nX, No. 54 ; I^DIH', King of Byblus, 
 No. 1, cf. hvy\T\\ No. 69 ; jn'si'D, No. 10, 16, etc., cf. \T\'b]12, No. 78, tH'Stn, 
 No. 44 ; i?m^]). No. 46, cf. IDKnaj?, tDCKnajf. etc. ; I^DTj;, Nos. 189, 219, 
 386, cf. hV^tV, on a coin of Byhlus, Head, p. 668. The title of n3^D) 
 " (lueen," for Astarte is seen probably in nS^DH, n3^»nn [supra, p. 46, 
 
68 THE WOESHIPPER LECT. ir. 
 
 are found even among the Arabs of the Syrian and 
 Egyptian frontier.^ 
 
 Where the god is conceived as a king, he will naturally 
 be addressed as lord, and his worshippers will be spoken 
 of as his subjects, and so we find as divine titles Adon, 
 " lord " (whence Adonis = the- god Tammuz), and Eabbath, 
 " lady " (as a title of Tanith), among the Phoenicians, with 
 corresponding phrases among other nations,^ while in all 
 parts of the Semitic field the worshipper calls himself the 
 servant or slave (abd, 'ebed) of his god, just as a subject 
 does in addressing his king. The designation " servant " is 
 much affected by worshippers, and forms the basis of a 
 large number of theophorous proper names — r'Abd-Eshmun 
 " servant of Eshmun," 'Abd-Baal, 'Abd-Osir, etc. At first 
 sight this designation seems to point to a more rigid con- 
 ception of divine kingship than I have presented, for it is 
 only under a strict despotism that the subject is the slave 
 of the monarch ; nay, it has been taken as a fundamental 
 distinction between Semitic religion and that of the Greeks 
 that in the one case the relation of man to his god is 
 servile, while in the other it is not so. But this conclu- 
 sion rests on the neglect of a nicety of language, a refine- 
 ment of Semitic politeness. When a man addresses any 
 superior he calls him " my lord," and speaks of himself and 
 
 note), and more certainly in nsPDHD, "handmaid of the queen," cf. 
 mnwno, No. 83, and in mbaii:, "favour of the queen," No 41. For 
 Assyrian names of similar type see Schrader in ZDMG. xxvi. 140 sqq., 
 where also an Edomite king's name on a cylinder of Sennacherib is read 
 Malik-ramu, "the (divine) king, is exalted." 
 
 1 E.g. KdriixXxxts, ''E.XiJ.a.Xx.x'i, " Cos, El is king," iJew. Arch,. 1870, pp. 
 115, 117; Schrader, KAT. p. 257, reads Kausmalak as the name of an 
 Edomite king on an inscription of Tiglathpileser. For the god Cans, or 
 Cos, see Wellhausen, Heidenthum, p. 77 ; cf. ZDMG. 1887, p. 714. 
 
 ^ E.g. Nabateean Eab, "'Lord," in the proper name hv.2~\ (Euting 21.3, 
 27.14; Waddington 2152, 2189, 2298), and at Gaza the god Marna, that is, 
 "our Lord," both on coins (Head, p. 680), and in M. Diaoonus, Vita Porphyrii, 
 § 19 ; also at Kerak, Wadd. 2412j/. 
 
LECT. II. AS SERVANT. fiO 
 
 Others as " thy servants," ^ and this form of politeness is 
 naturally de rigueur in presence of the king ; but where the 
 king is not addressed, his " servants " mean his courtiers 
 that are in personal attendance on him, or such of his 
 subjects as are actually engaged in his service, for example, 
 his soldiers. In the Old Testament this usage is constant, 
 and the king's servants are often distinguished from the 
 people at large. And so the servants of Jehovah are 
 sometimes the prophets, who hold a special commission 
 from Him; at other times, as often in the Psalms, His 
 worshipping people assembled at the temple ; and at other 
 times, as in Deutero-Tsaiah, His true servants as dis- 
 tinguished from the natural Israel, who are His subjects 
 only in name. In short, both in the political and in the 
 religious sphere the designation 'ahd, 'ehed, " servant," is 
 strictly correlated with the verb 'abad, " to do service, 
 homage, or religious worship," a word which, as we have 
 already seen, is sufficiently elastic to cover the service 
 which a son does for his father, as well as that which a 
 master requires from his slave.^ Thus, when a man is 
 named the servant of a god, the implication appears to be, 
 not merely that he belongs to the community of which the 
 god is king, but that he is specially devoted to his service 
 and worship. Like other theophorous names, compounds 
 with 'ahd seem to have been originally most common in 
 royal and priestly families, whose members naturally 
 claimed a special interest in religion and a constant near- 
 ness to the god ; and in later times, when a man's particular 
 
 1 This holds good for Hebrew aud Aramaic ; also for Phoenician (Schroder, 
 Phcm. Spr. p. 18, n. 5) ; and even in Arabia an old poet says, " I am the 
 slave of my guest as long as he is with me, hut save in this there is no 
 trace of the slave in my nature " {Samdsa, p. 729). 
 
 2 Supra, p. 60. Primarily 12]! is "to work," and in Aramaic " to 
 make, to do." Ancient worship is viewed as work or service, because it 
 consists in material operations (sacrifice). The same connection of ideas 
 appears in the root npS and in the Greek ^s?£i» iiiji. 
 
TO THE GOD AS A CHIEF lect. ir. 
 
 worship was not rigidly defined by his national connection, 
 they served to specify the cult to which he was particularly 
 attached, or the patron to whom his parents dedicated him. 
 That the use of such names was not connected with the 
 idea of slavery to a divine despot is pretty clear from their 
 frequency among the Arabs, who had very loose ideas of 
 all authority, whether human or divine. Among the 
 Arabs, indeed, as among the old Hebrews, the relation of 
 the subject to his divine chief is often expressed by names 
 of another class. Of King Saul's sons two were named 
 Ishbaal and Meribaal, both meaning " man of Baal," i.e. of 
 Jehovah, who in these early days was called Baal without 
 offence ; among the Arabs of the Syrian frontier we have 
 Amriel, " man of El," Amrishams, " man of the Sun-god," 
 and others like them ; ^ and in Arabia proper Imraulcais, 
 " the man of Cais," Shai ' al-Lat, " follower, comrade of Lat," 
 all expressive of the relation of the free warrior to his chief. 
 That the Arabs, like their northern congeners, thought 
 of deity as lordship or chieftainship, is proved not only by 
 such proper names, and by the titles rabl, rahha, " lord," 
 " lady," given to their gods and goddesses, but especially 
 by the history of the foundation of Islam. In his quality 
 of prophet, Mohammed became a judge, lawgiver, and 
 captain, not of his own initiative, but because the Arabs of 
 different clans were willing to refer to a divine authority 
 questions of right and precedence in which they would not 
 yield to one another. They brought their difficulties to 
 the prophet as the Israelites did to Moses, and his decisions 
 became the law of Islam, as those of Moses were the 
 foundation of the Hebrew Torah. But up to the time of 
 the prophet the practical development of the idea of divine 
 kingship among the nomadic Arabs was very elementary 
 and inadeqiiate, as was to be expected in a society which 
 1 Nbldeke, Sitzungsb. Berl Ac. 1880, p. 768 ; Wellhausen, Heidentlmm, p. 3. 
 
LECT. ir. IN ARABIA. 71 
 
 had never taken kindly to the institution of human king- 
 ship. In the prosperous days of Arabian commerce, when 
 the precious wares of the far East reached the Mediter- 
 ranean chiefly by caravan from Southern Arabia, there were 
 settled kingdoms in several parts of the peninsula. But 
 after the sea-route to India was opened, these kingdoms 
 were broken up, and almost the whole country fell back 
 into anarchy. The nomads proper often felt the want 
 of a controlling authority that would put an end to the 
 incessant tribal and clan feuds, but their pride and im- 
 patience of control never permitted them to be long faithful 
 to the authority of a stranger ; while, on the other hand, 
 the exaggerated feeling for kindred made it quite certain 
 that a chief chosen at home would not deal with an even 
 hand between his own kinsman and a person of different 
 blood. Thus after the fall of the Yemenite and ISTabatsean 
 kingdoms, which drew their strength from commerce, there 
 was no permanently successful attempt to consolidate 
 a body of several tribes into a homogeneous state, except 
 under Eoman or Persian suzerainty. The decay of 
 the fower of religion in the peninsula in the last days 
 of Arab heathenism presents a natural parallel to this 
 condition of poKtical disintegration. The wild tribesmen 
 had lost the feeling of kinship with their tribal gods, and 
 had not learned to yield steady submission and obedience 
 to any power dissociated from kinship. Their religion sat 
 as loose on them as their allegiance to this or that human 
 king whom for a season they might find it convenient 
 to obey, and they were as ready to renounce their deities 
 in a moment of petulance and disgust as to transfer their 
 service from one petty sovereign to another.' 
 
 Up to this point we have considered the conception, or 
 
 1 Eeligion had more strength in towns like Mecca and Taif, where there 
 was a sanctuary, and the deity lived in the midst of his people, and was 
 
72 KINGSHIP IN THE EAST LECT. ti. 
 
 rather the institution, of divine sovereignty as based on 
 
 the fundamental type of Semitic kingship, when the nation 
 
 was still made up of free tribesmen, retaining their tribal 
 
 organisation and possessing the sense of personal dignity 
 
 and independence engendered by the tribal system, where 
 
 all clansmen are brothers, and where each man feels that 
 
 his brethren need him and that he can count on the help 
 
 of his brethren. There is no principle so levelling as the 
 
 law of blood - revenge, which is the basis of the tribal 
 
 system, for here the law is man for man, whether in 
 
 defence or in olfence, without respect of persons. In such 
 
 a society the king is a guiding and moderating force rather 
 
 than an imperial power ; he is the leader under whom men 
 
 of several tribes unite for common action, and the arbiter 
 
 in cases of difficulty or of irreconcilable dispute between 
 
 two kindreds, when neither will humble itself before the 
 
 other. The kingship, and therefore the godhead, is not a 
 
 principle of absolute order and justice, but it is a principle 
 
 of higher order and more impartial justice than can be 
 
 realised where there is no other law than the obligation 
 
 of blood. As the king waxes stronger, and is better able 
 
 to enforce his will by active interference in his subjects' 
 
 quarrels, the standard of right is gradually raised above the 
 
 consideration which disputant has the strongest kin to back 
 
 him, for it is the glory of the sovereign to vindicate the 
 
 cause of the weak, if only because by so doing he shows 
 
 himself to be stronger than the strong. And as the god, 
 
 though not conceived as omnipotent, is at least conceived 
 
 as much stronger than man, he becomes in a special 
 
 honoured by stated and frequent acts of worship. So under Islam, the 
 Bedouins have never taken kindly to the laws of the Goran, and live in 
 entire neglect of the most simple ordinances of religion, while the townsmen 
 are in their way very devout. Much of this religion is hypocrisy ; but so it 
 was, to judge by the accounts of the conversion of the Thacif at Taif, even in 
 the time of Mohammed. Eeligion was a matter of custom, of keeping up 
 appearances. 
 
LECT. II. AND IN THE WEST. 73 
 
 measure the champion of right against might, the protector 
 of the poor, the widow, and the fatherless, of the man who 
 has no helper on earth. 
 
 Now it is matter of constant observation in early history 
 that the primitive equality of the tribal system tends in 
 progress of time to transform itself into an aristocracy of 
 the more powerful kins, or of the more powerful families 
 within one kin. That is, the smaller and weaker kins are 
 content to place themselves in a position of dependence 
 on their more powerful neighbours in order to secure their 
 protection ; or even within one and the same kin men begin 
 to distinguish between their nearer and more distant cousins, 
 and, as wealth begins to be unequally distributed, the great 
 man's distant and poor relation has to be content with a 
 distant and supercilious patronage, and sinks into a position 
 of inferiority. The kingship is the one social force that 
 works against this tendency, for it is the king's interest to 
 maintain a balance of power, and prevent the excessive 
 aggrandisement of noble families that might compete with 
 his own authority. Thus even for selfish reasons the 
 sovereign is more and more brought into the position of 
 the champion of the weak against the strong, of the masses 
 against the aristocracy. Generally speaking, the struggle 
 between king and nobles to which these conditions give 
 rise ended differently in the East and in the "West. In 
 Greece and Eome the kingship fell before the aristocracy ; 
 in Asia the kingship held its own, till in the larger states 
 it developed into despotism, or in the smaller ones it was 
 crushed by a foreign despotism. This diversity of political 
 fortune is reflected in the diversity of religious develop- 
 ment. For as the national god did not at first supersede 
 tribal and family deities any more than the king super- 
 seded tribal and family institutions, the tendency of the 
 West, where the kingship succumbed, was towards a 
 
V4 MONARCHY AND lect. ir. 
 
 divine aristocracy of many gods, only modified by a weak 
 reminiscence of the old kingship in the not very effective 
 sovereignty of Zeus, while in the East the national god 
 tended to acquire a really monarchic sway. "What is 
 often described as the natural tendency of Semitic religion 
 towards ethical monotheism, is in the main nothing more 
 than a consequence of the alliance of religion with 
 monarchy. For however corrupt the actual kingships of 
 the East became, the ideal of the kingship as a source of 
 even-handed justice throughout the whole nation, without 
 respect of persons, was higher than the ideal of aristocracy, 
 in which each noble is expected to favour his own family 
 even at the expense of the state or of justice ; and it is on 
 the ideal, rather than on the actual, that religious concep- 
 tions are based, if not in ordinary minds, at least in the 
 minds of more thoughtful and pious men. At the same 
 time the idea of absolute and ever-watchful divine justice, 
 as we find it in the prophets, is no more natural to the 
 East than to the West, for even the ideal Semitic king is, 
 as we have seen, a very imperfect earthly providence, and 
 moreover he has a different standard of right for his own 
 people and for strangers. The prophetic idea that Jehovah 
 will vindicate the right even in the destruction of his own 
 people of Israel, involves an ethical standard as foreign to 
 Semitic as to Aryan tradition. Thus, as regards their 
 ethical tendency, the difference between Eastern and Western 
 religion is one of degree rather than of principle ; all that 
 we can say is that the East was better prepared to receive 
 the idea of a god of absolute righteousness, because its 
 political institutions and history, and not least the enor- 
 mous gulf between the ideal and the reality of human 
 sovereignty, directed men's minds to appreciate the need of 
 righteousness more strongly, and accustomed them to look 
 to a power of monarchic character as its necessary source. 
 
i^ECT. ir. MONOTHEISM. 75 
 
 A similar judgment must be passed on the supposed mono- 
 theistic tendency of the Semitic as opposed to the Hellenic 
 or Aryan system of religion. Neither system, in its natural 
 development, can fairly be said to have come near to 
 monotheism ; the difference touched only the equahty or 
 subordination of divine powers. But while in Greece the 
 idea of the unity of God was a philosophical speculation, 
 without any definite point of attachment to actual religion, 
 the monotheism of the Hebrew prophets kept touch with 
 the ideas and institutions of the Semitic race by conceiving 
 the one true God as the king of absolute justice, the 
 national God of Israel, who at the same time was, or 
 rather was destined to become, the God of all the earth, 
 not merely because His power was world-wide, but because 
 as the perfect ruler He could not fail to draw all nations 
 to do Him homage (Isa. ii. 2 sqq^). 
 
 When I speak of the way in which the prophets con- 
 ceived of Jehovah's sovereignty, as destined to extend itself 
 beyond Israel and over all the earth, I touch on a feature 
 common to all Semitic religions, which must be explained 
 and defined before we can properly understand wherein 
 the prophets transcended the common sphere of Semitic 
 thought, and which indeed is necessary to complete our 
 view of the ultimate development of the Semitic religions 
 as tribal and national institutions. 
 
 Trbm a very early date the Semitic communities em- 
 braced, in addition to the free tribesmen of pure blood 
 (Heb. ezrdh, Arab, sarlh) with their families and slaves, a 
 class of men who were personally free but had no political 
 rights, viz. the protected strangers (Heb. gerim, sing, ger ; 
 Arab, jirdn, sing, jar), of whom mention is so often made 
 both in the Old Testament and in early Arabic literature. 
 The ger was a man of another tribe or district who, coming 
 to sojourn in a place where he was not strengthened by 
 
■76 THE WORSHIPPER AS lect. ir. 
 
 the presence of his own kin, put himself under the protec- 
 tion of a clan or of a powerful chief. From the earliest 
 times of Semitic life the lawlessness of the desert, in which 
 every stranger is an enemy, has been tempered by the 
 principle that the guest is inviolable. A man is safe in 
 the midst of enemies as soon as he enters a tent or even 
 touches the tent rope.^ To harm a guest, or to refuse him 
 hospitality, is an offence against honour, which covers the 
 perpetrator with indelible shame. The bond of hospitality 
 among the Arabs is temporary ; the guest is entertained for 
 a night or at most for three days,^ and the protection 
 which the host owes to him expires after three days more.^ 
 But more permanent protection is seldom refused to a 
 stranger who asks for it,* and when granted by any tribes- 
 man it binds the whole tribe. The obligation thus con- 
 stituted is one of honour, and not enforced by any human 
 sanction except public opinion, for if the stranger is wronged 
 he has no kinsmen to fight for him. And for this very 
 reason it is a sacred obligation, which among the old 
 Arabs was often confirmed by oath at a sanctuary, and 
 could not be renounced except by a formal act at the same 
 holy place,^ so that the god himself became the protector 
 of the stranger's cause. The protected stranger did not 
 necessarily give up his old religion any more than he gave 
 up his old kindred, and in the earliest times it is not to be 
 supposed that he was admitted to full communion in the 
 religion of his protectors, for religion went with political 
 rights. But it was natural that he should acknowledge in 
 some degree the god of the land in which he lived, and, 
 
 ' See further Kinship, p. 41 sqq. 
 
 ^ This is the space prescribed by the traditions of the prophet, Hariri (De 
 Sacy's 2nd ed. p. 177 ; cf. Sharishi, i. 242). A viaticum sufficient for a day's 
 journey should be added, all beyond this is not duty but alms. 
 
 ' Burckhardt, Bedouins and Wahabys, i. 336. 
 
 * Burckhardt, op. Hi. i. 174. 
 
 '' Ibn Hisham, p. 243 sqq. ; Kinship, p. 43. 
 
LECT..II. CLIENT OF HIS GOD. 77 
 
 indeed, since the stated exercises of religion were confined 
 to certain fixed sanctuaries, the man who was far from his 
 old home was also far from his own god, and sooner or 
 later could hardly fail to lose his old religion, and become 
 a dependent adherent of the cult of his patrons, though 
 not with rights equal to theirs. Sometimes, indeed, the 
 god was the direct patron of the ger, a thing easily under- 
 stood when we consider that a common motive for seeking 
 foreign protection was the fear of the avenger of blood, and 
 that there was a right of asylum at sanctuaries. From a 
 Phoenician inscription found near Larnaca, which gives the 
 monthly accounts of a temple, we learn that the gerlm 
 formed a distinct class in the personnel of the sanctuary 
 and received certain allowances,^ just as we know from 
 Ezek. xhv. that much of the service of the first temple 
 was done by uncircumcised foreigners. This notion of the 
 temple-client, the man who lives in the precincts of the 
 sanctuary under the special protection of the god, is used in 
 a figurative sense in Psalm xv., " "Who shall sojourn {yagur, 
 i.e. live as a ger) in Thy tabernacles ? " and similarly the 
 Arabs give the title of jar allah to one who resides in 
 Mecca beside the Caaba. 
 
 The importance of this occasional reception of strangers 
 was not great so long as the old national divisions remained 
 untouched, and the proportion of foreigners in any com- 
 munity was small. But the case became very different 
 when the boundaries of nations were changed by the 
 migration of tribes, or by the wholesale deportations that 
 were part of the policy of the Assyrians towards conquered 
 countries where their arms had met with strenuous resist- 
 ance. In such circumstances it was natural for the new- 
 comers to seek admission to the sanctuaries of the " god of 
 the land,"^ which they were able to do by presenting 
 
 1 CI.S. No. 86, ' 2 Kings xvii. 26. 
 
78 THE WORSHIPPER AS LECT. ir. 
 
 themselves as his clients. In such a case the clients of 
 the god were not necessarily in a position of political 
 dependence on his old worshippers, and the religious sense 
 of the term ger became detached from the idea of social 
 inferiority. But the relation of the new worshippers to 
 the god was no longer the same as on the old purely 
 national system. It was more dependent and less per- 
 manent ; it was constituted, not by nature and inherited 
 privilege, but by submission on the worshipper's side and 
 free bounty on the side of the god ; and in every way it 
 tended to make the relation between man and god more 
 distant, to make men fear the god more and throw more 
 servility into their homage, while at the same time the 
 higher feelings of devotion were quickened by the thought 
 that the protection and favour of the god was a thing of 
 free grace and not of national right. How important this 
 change was may be judged from the Old Testament, where 
 the idea that the Israelites are Jehovah's clients, sojourning 
 in a land where they have no rights of their own, but are 
 absolutely dependent on His bounty, is one of the most 
 characteristic notes of the new and more timid type of 
 piety that distinguishes post -exilic Judaism from the 
 religion of Old Israel.^ In the old national religions a 
 man felt sure of his standing with the national god, unless 
 he forfeited it by a distinct breach of social law ; but the 
 client is accepted, so to speak, on his good behaviour, an 
 idea which precisely accords with the anxious legality of 
 Judaism after the captivity. 
 
 In Judaism the spirit of legality was allied with genuine 
 moral earnestness, as we see in the noble description of the 
 character that befits Jehovah's ger drawn in Psalm xv.; 
 but among the heathen Semites we find the same spirit of 
 legalism, the same timid uncertainty as to a man's standing 
 ' Lev. XXV. 23 ; Ps. xxxix. 12 [Heb. 13]; Ps. oxix. 19; 1 Chroii. xxix. 15. 
 
LECT. n. CLIENT OF HIS GOD. 79 
 
 ■with the god whose protection he seeks, while the con- 
 ception of what is pleasing to the deity has not attained 
 the same ethical elevation. The extent to which, in the 
 disintegration of the old nationalities of the East and 
 the constant movements of population due to political 
 disturbance, men's religion detached itself from their local 
 and national connections, is seen by the prevalence of names 
 in which a man is designated the client of the god. In 
 PhcEnician inscriptions we find a whole series of men's 
 names, compounded with Ger, — Germelkarth, Gerastart, and 
 so forth, — and the same type recurs among the Arabs of 
 Syria in the name Gairelos or Gerelos, " client of EI." * In 
 Arabia proper, where the relation of protector and protected 
 had a great development, and whole clans were wont to 
 attach themselves as dependants to a more powerful tribe, 
 the conception of god and worshipper as patron and client 
 appears to have been specially predominant, not merely 
 because dependent clans took up the religion of the patrons 
 with whom they took refuge, but because of the frequent 
 shiftings of the tribes. Wellhausen has noted that the 
 hereditary priesthoods of Arabian sanctuaries were often in 
 the hands of families ^ that did not belong to the tribe of 
 the worshippers, but apparently were descended from older 
 inhabitants ; ^ and in such cases the modern Worshippers 
 were really only clients of a foreign god. So, in fact, at 
 the great Sabaean pilgrimage shrine of Eiyam, the god 
 Ta'lab is adored as " patron," and his worshippers are called 
 his clients.''' To the same conception may be assigned the 
 proper name Salm, " submission," shortened from such 
 theophorous forms as the Palmyrene Salm al-Lat, "submission 
 
 1 See Nbldeke, Silzungsb. Berl. Ah. 1880, p. 765. 
 
 2 Wellhausen, Heidenthum, p. 129 ; cf. p. 183. 
 
 3 Mordtmann u. Miiller, Sab. Benkm. p. 22, No. 5, 1. 2 sq. (1DnD''SJ'), 1. 8 
 ■iq. (inDlS) etc. Cf. No. 13, 1. 12, HDIK, the clients of the goddess Shams. 
 
80 THE WORSHIPPER AS LECT. II. 
 
 to Lat," ' and corresponding to the religious use of the verb 
 istalama, "he made his peace," to designate the ceremony 
 of kissing, stroking, or embracing the sacred stone at the 
 Caaba ; "■' and, further, the numerous names compounded with 
 Taim, which also, if we may judge by the profane use of the 
 word, as applied to a deeply attached lover, denotes one 
 who voluntarily submits himself to the god. But above 
 all, the prevalence of religion based on clientship and 
 voluntary homage is seen in the growth of the practice of 
 pilgrimage to distant shrines, which is so prominent a 
 feature in later Semitic heathenism. Almost all Arabia 
 met at Mecca, and the shrine at Hierapolis drew visitors 
 from the whole Semitic world. These pilgrims were the 
 guests of the god, and were received as such by the 
 inhabitants of the holy places. They approached the god 
 as strangers, not with the old joyous confidence of national 
 worship, but with atoning ceremonies and rites of self- 
 mortification, and their acts ' of worship were carefully 
 prescribed for them by qualified instructors,^ the proto- 
 types of the modern Meccan Motawwif. The progress of 
 heathenism towards universalism, as it is displayed in these 
 usages, seemed only to widen the gulf between the deity 
 and man, to destroy the naive trustfulness of the old 
 religion without substituting a better Way for man to be at 
 one with his god, to weaken the moral ideas of nationality 
 without bringing in a higher morality of universal obliga- 
 tion, to transform the divine kingship into a mere court 
 pageant of priestly ceremonies without permanent influence 
 on the order of society and daily life. The Hebrew ideal 
 
 1 De Vogii^, No. 54. 
 
 2 Ibn Doraid, Kit. al-ishiicdo, p. 22. The same idea of a religion accepted 
 by voluntary submission is expressed in the name Islam. We shall see later 
 that much the same idea underlies the designation of the Christian religion 
 as a "mystery." 
 
 3 Lucian, De Dea Syria, Ivi. 
 
LECT. II. CLIENT OF HIS GOD. 81 
 
 of a divine kingship that must one day draw all men to do 
 it homage offered better things than these, not in virtue of 
 any feature that it possessed in common with the Semitic 
 religions as a whole, but solely in virtue of its unique con- 
 ception of Jehovah as a God whose love for His people was 
 conditioned by a law of absolute righteousness. In other 
 nations individual thinkers rose to lofty conceptions of a 
 supreme deity, but in Israel, and in Israel alone, these 
 conceptions were incorporated in the accepted worship of 
 the national god. And so of all the gods of the nations 
 Jehovah alone was fitted to become the God of the whole 
 earth. 
 
LECTUEE III. 
 
 THE RELATIONS OF THE GODS TO NATURAL THINGS 
 
 HOLY PLACES THE JINN. 
 
 In the last lecture I endeavoured to sketch in broad out- 
 line the general features of the religious institutions of the 
 Semites in so far as they rest on the idea that gods and 
 men, or rather the god and his own proper worshippers, 
 make up a single community, and that the place of the 
 god in the community is interpreted on the analogy of 
 human relationships. Our business in this enquiry was 
 not to ask what the gods were in themselves, but only to 
 see what part they held in the social organism, as kinsmen, 
 fathers, sovereigns or patrons of their worshippers. We 
 are now to follow out this point of view through the 
 details of sacred rite and observance, and to consider how 
 the various acts and offices of religion stand related to the 
 place assigned to the deity in the community of his wor- 
 shippers. But as soon as we begin to enter on these 
 details we find it necessary to take account of a new series 
 of relations connecting man on the one hand, and his god 
 on the other, with physical nature and material objects. 
 All acts of ancient worship have a material embodiment, 
 which is not left to the choice of the worshipper but is 
 limited by fixed rules. They must be performed at certain 
 places and at certain times, with the aid of certain material 
 appliances and according to certain mechanical forms. 
 These rules import that the intercourse between the deity 
 
LECT. III. THE GODS AND NATDEB. 83 
 
 and his worshippers is subject to physical conditions of a 
 definite kind, and this again implies that the relations 
 between gods and men are not independent of the material 
 environment. The relations of a man to his fellow-men 
 are limited by physical conditions, because man, on the side 
 of his bodily organism, is himself a part of the material 
 universe, and, when we find that the relations of a man to 
 his god are limited in the same way, we are led to conclude 
 that the gods too are in some sense conceived to be a part 
 of the natural universe, and that this is the reason why 
 men can hold converse with them only by the aid of 
 certain material things. It is true that in some of the 
 higher forms of antique religion the material restrictions 
 imposed on the legitimate intercourse between gods and 
 men were conceived to be not natural but positive, that 
 is they were not held to be dependent on the nature of 
 the gods, but were looked upon as arbitrary rules laid 
 down by the free will of the deity. But in the ordinary 
 forms of heathenism it appears quite plainly that the gods 
 themselves are not exempt from the general limitations of 
 physical existence ; indeed we have already seen that 
 where the relation of the deity to his worshippers is con- 
 ceived as a relation of kinship, the kinship is taken to 
 have a physical as well as a moral sense, so that the wor- 
 shipped and the worshippers are parts not only of one 
 social community but of one physical unity of life. 
 
 It is important that we should realise to ourselves with 
 some definiteness the primitive view of the universe in 
 which this conception arose, and in which it has its natural 
 place. It is to be noted that the oldest institutions of 
 religion — and by this I do not mean such institutions only 
 as became obsolete at an early date, but such as survived 
 and played a considerable part in religious life down of 
 the later ages of heathenism — carry with them evidence to 
 
84 THE GODS AND lect. hi. 
 
 a conclusive kind, referring their origin to a time when 
 men had not learned to draw sharp distinctions between 
 the nature of one thing and another. Savages, we know, 
 are not only incapable of separating in thought between 
 phenomenal and noumenal existence, but habitually ignore 
 the distinctions, which to us seem obvious, between organic 
 and inorganic nature, or within the former region between 
 animals and plants. Arguing altogether by analogy, and 
 concluding from the known to the unknown with the 
 freedom of men who do not know the difference between 
 the imagination and the reason, they ascribe to all material 
 objects a life analogous to that which their own self-con- 
 sciousness reveals to them. They see that men are liker 
 to one another than beasts are to men, that men are liker 
 to beasts than they are to plants, and to plants than they 
 are to stones ; but all things appear to them to live, and 
 the more incomprehensible any form of life seems to them 
 the more wonderful and worthy of reverence do they take 
 it to be. Now this attitude of man to the natural things 
 by which he is surrounded — an attitude which in modern 
 times is known to us only by observation among savage 
 races — is the very attitude attested to us for ancient times 
 by some of the most salient features of antique religion. 
 Among races which have attained to a certain degree of 
 culture the predominant conception of the gods is anthro- 
 pomorphic, that is they are supposed on the whole to 
 resemble men and act like men, and the artistic imagina- 
 tion, whether ia poetry or in sculpture and painting, draws 
 them after the similitude of man. But at the same time 
 the list of gods includes a variety of natural objects of all 
 kinds, the sun moon and stars, the heavens and the earth, 
 animals and trees, or even sacred stones. And all these 
 gods, without distinction of their several natures, are 
 conceived as entering into the same kind of relation to 
 
LECT. HI. NATURAL THINGS. 85 
 
 man, are approached in ritual of the same type, and excite 
 the same kind of hopes and fears in the breasts of their 
 worshippers. It is of course easy to say that the gods 
 ■were not identified with these natural objects, that they 
 were only supposed to inhabit them ; but for our present 
 purpose this distinction is not valid. A certain crude 
 distinction between soul and body, combined with the idea 
 that the soul may act where the body is not, is suggested 
 to the most savage races by familiar psychical phenomena, 
 particularly by those of dreams ; and the unbounded use of 
 analogy characteristic of pre-scientific thought extends this 
 conception to all parts of nature, which becomes to the 
 savage mind full of spiritual forces, more or less detached 
 in their movements and action from the material objects 
 to which they are supposed properly to belong. But the 
 detachment of the invisible life from its visible embodiment 
 is never complete. A man after all is not a ghost or 
 phantom, a life or soul without a body, but a body with 
 its life, and in like manner the unseen Kfe that inhabits 
 the planet, tree, or sacred stone makes the sacred object 
 itself be conceived as a living being. And in ritual the 
 sacred object was spoken of and treated as the god himself ; 
 it was not merely his symbol but his embodiment, the 
 permanent centre of his activity in the same sense in 
 which the human body is the permanent centre of man's 
 activity. The god inhabits the tree or sacred stone not in 
 the sense in which a man inhabits a house but in the 
 sense in which his soul inhabits his body. In short the 
 whole conception belongs in its origin to a stage of thought 
 in which there was no more difficulty in ascribing living 
 powers and personality to a stone tree or animal, than to 
 a being of human or superhuman build. 
 
 The same lack of any sharp distinction between the 
 nature of different kinds of visible beings appears in the 
 
86 GODS MEN AND LECT. m. 
 
 oldest myths, in which all kinds of objects, animate and 
 inanimate, organic and inorganic, appear as cognate with 
 one another, with men, and with the gods. The kinship 
 between gods and men which we have already discussed is 
 only one part of a larger kinship which embraces the 
 lower creation. In the Babylonian legend beasts as well 
 as man are formed of earth mingled with the life-blood of 
 a god ; in Greece the stories of the descent of men from 
 gods stand side by side with ancient legends of men sprung 
 from trees or rocks, or of races whose mother was a tree 
 and their father a god.^ Similar myths, connecting both 
 men and gods with animals plants and rocks, are found all 
 over the world and were not lacking among the Semites. 
 To this day the legend of the country explains the name 
 of the Beni Sokhr tribe by making them the offspring of 
 the sandstone rocks about Madam Salih.^ To the same 
 stage of thought belong the stories of transformations of 
 men into animals which are not infrequent in Arabian 
 legend. Mohammed would not eat lizards because he 
 fancied them to be the offspring of a metamorphosed 
 clan of Israelites.^ Macrlzi relates of the Sei'ar in 
 Hadramaut that in time of drought part of the tribe 
 change themselves into ravening were-wolves. They have 
 a magical means of assuming and again casting off the 
 wolf shape.* Other Hadramites changed themselves into 
 vultures or kites.* In the Sinai Peninsula the hyrax and 
 the panther are believed to have been originally men.* 
 
 y, xviii. 163 ; Preller-Robert, i. 79 aq. 
 
 2 Doughty, Travels in Arabia, i. 17 ; see Ibn Doraid, p. 329, 1. 20. 
 Conversely many stones and rocks in Arabia were believed to be transformed 
 men, but especially women. Dozy, Israeliten te Mekka, p. 201, gives 
 examples. See also Yaoiit, i. 123. 
 
 5 Damiri, ii. 88 ; cf. Doughty, i. 326. 
 
 • De valle Hadhramaut (Bonn 1866), p. 19 sq. 
 
 '•" Ibid. p. 20. See also Ibu Mojawir in Sprenger, Fost-roitten, p. 142. 
 
 " See Kinship, p. 203 sq. , where I give other evidences on the point. 
 
LECT. III. NATURAL THINGS. 87 
 
 Among the northern Semites transformation myths are 
 not uncommon, though they have generally been preserved 
 to us only in Greek forms. The pregnant mother of 
 Adonis was changed into a myrrh tree, and in the tenth 
 month the tree burst open and the infant god came forth/ 
 The metamorphosis of Derceto into a fish was related both 
 at Asealon and at Bambyce, and so forth. In the same 
 spirit is conceived the Assyrian myth which includes 
 among the lovers of Ishtar the lion the eagle and the 
 war-horse, while in the region of plastic art the absence of 
 any sharp line of distinction between gods and men on the 
 one hand and the lower creation on the other is displayed 
 in the predilection for fantastic monsters, half human half 
 bestial, which began with the oldest Chaldsean engraved 
 cylinders, gave Phoenicia its cherubim grifhns and sphinxes,^ 
 and continued to characterise the sacred art of the Baby- 
 lonians down to the time of Berosus.^ Of course most of 
 these things can be explained away as allegories, and are 
 so explained to this day by persons who shut their eyes to 
 the obvious difference between primitive thought, which 
 treats all nature as a kindred unity because it has not yet 
 differentiated things into their kinds, and modern monistic 
 philosophy, in which the universe of things, after having 
 been realised in its multiplicity of kinds, is again brought 
 into unity by a metaphysical synthesis. But by what 
 process of allegory can we explain away the belief in were- 
 wolves ? When the same person is believed to be now a 
 man and now a wolf, the difference which we recognise 
 between a man and a wild beast is certainly not yet 
 
 1 Apollodorus, iii. 14. 3 ; Servius on Mn. v. 72. 
 
 2 See Menant, Olyptiqut Orientale, vol. i. 
 
 ' Berosus {Fr. Hist. Gr. ii. 497) refers to the images at the temple of Bel 
 which preserved the forms of the strange monsters that lived in the time of 
 chaos. But the peculiar prevalence of such figures on the oldest gems shows 
 that the chaos in question is only the chaotic imagination of early man. 
 
88 PHYSICAL AFFINITIES lect. hi. 
 
 perceived. And such a belief as this cannot be a mere 
 isolated extravagance of the fancy ; it points to a view of 
 nature as a whole which is, in fact, the ordinary view of 
 savages in all parts of the world, and everywhere produces 
 just such a confusion between the several orders of natural 
 and supernatural beings as we find to have existed among 
 the early Semites. 
 
 The immediate inference from all this is that the origins 
 of Semitic, and indeed of all antique religion, go back to 
 a stage of human thought in which the question of the 
 nature of the gods, as distinguished from other beings, did 
 not even arise in any precise form, because no one series 
 of existences was strictly differentiated from another. And 
 this observation brings us back again to the point on 
 which I laid so much stress in my first lecture. In early 
 religion we have not to consider the nature of things, but 
 only the relations of things to one another, and the stated 
 forms of intercourse between the gods and men to which 
 these relations gave rise. Whatever ideas as to the 
 specific divine nature grew up in connection with the 
 development of heathen systems of religion were second- 
 ary formations ; whereas sacred institutions, in some shape 
 or other, are primary and as old as religion itself. The 
 gods, that is, were originally known and regarded not in 
 themselves, and in their distinct entity, but in the series 
 of orderly relations and stated activities that connected 
 them with their worshippers and formed the basis of 
 fixed institutions. The element of order and statedness, 
 which makes fixed institutions possible, was in fact that 
 which made religion, as distinct from mere superstition, 
 possible. Where the superhuman forces of nature are 
 purely arbitrary in their dealings with men we have not 
 religion, but only sorcery and magic. But these remarks are 
 a digression ; let us return to the course of the argument. 
 
LECT. in. OF THE GODS. 89 
 
 So far as religious institutions depend on direct and 
 immediate relations between the gods and men we have 
 already considered the main types on which they were 
 formed. But these immediate relations do not exhaust 
 the subject. Men's lives are conditioned not only by 
 their personal relations to other men but also by the 
 whole natural environment in which they move ; and 
 other Kves affect mine not only directly, in virtue of my 
 direct relations with certain persons, but in an indirect 
 way, in so far as I and others influence, and are influenced 
 by, the same material surroundings. Consider, for example, 
 the enormous effects which property, and the relations of 
 man to man which depend on property, have exercised on 
 the whole structure of society. 
 
 Now in ancient religion, as we have seen, the gods have 
 what may be called physical relations and aflinities, not 
 only to man but to all kinds of natural objects, to 
 beasts and trees and inanimate things. The idea of the 
 metaphysical transcendency of the godhead is altogether 
 inconsistent with the view of the universe which we have 
 just been considering, in which neither gods nor men are 
 sharply difl'erentiated from the lower orders of beings. 
 And as that view was never entirely superseded in ancient 
 faith and practice, we must expect to find, in addition to 
 the direct relations hetween gods and men, indirect 
 relations due to the fact that certain gods and certain 
 men are brought into contact with one another through 
 their respective relations with the same class of material 
 things. Gods as well as men have a physical environ- 
 ment, on and through which they act, and by which their 
 activity is conditioned. 
 
 The influence of this idea on ancient religion is very 
 far-reaching and often difiicult to analyse. But there is 
 one aspect of it that is both easily grasped and of funda- 
 
90 THE LOCAL RELATIONS lect. hi. 
 
 mental importance ; I mean the connection of particular 
 gods with particular places. The most general term to 
 express the relation of natural things to the gods which 
 our language affords is the word " holy ; " thus when 
 we speak of holy places, holy things, holy persons, holy 
 times, we imply that the places things persons and times 
 stand in some special relation to the godhead or to its 
 manifestation. But the word "holy" has had a long and 
 complicated history, and has various shades of meaning 
 according to the connection in which it is used. It is not 
 possible, by mere analysis of the modern use of the word, to 
 arrive at a single definite conception of the meaning of 
 holiness ; nor is it possible to fix on any one of the modern 
 aspects of the conception, and say that it represents the 
 fundamental idea from which all other modifications of the 
 idea can be deduced. The primitive conception of holiness, 
 to which the modern variations of the idea must be traced 
 back, belonged to a primitive habit of thought with which 
 we have lost touch, and we cannot hope to understand it 
 by the aid of logical discussion, but only by studying it on 
 its own ground as it is exhibited in the actual working of 
 early religion. It would be idle therefore at this stage to 
 attempt any general definition, or to seek for a compre- 
 hensive formula covering all the relations of the gods to 
 natural things. The problem must be attacked in detail 
 before we can seek its general solution, and for many reasons 
 the most suitable point of attack will be found in the con- 
 nection that ancient religion conceived to exist between 
 particular deities and particular " holy " places. This topic 
 is of fundamental importance, because all complete acts of 
 ancient worship were necessarily performed at a holy place, 
 and thus the local connections of the gods are involved, 
 explicitly or implicitly, in every function of religion. 
 
 The local relations of the gods may be considered 
 
LECT. m. OF THE GODS. 91 
 
 under two heads. In the first place the activity power 
 and dominion of the gods were conceived as bounded 
 by certain local limits, and in the second place they were 
 conceived as having their residences and homes at certain 
 fixed sanctuaries. These two conceptions are not of course 
 independent, for generally speaking the region of divine 
 authority and influence surrounds the sanctuary which is 
 the god's principal seat, but for convenience of exposition 
 we shall look first at the god's land and then at his 
 sanctuary or dwelling-place. 
 
 Broadly speaking the land of a god corresponds with 
 the land of his worshippers ; Canaan is Jehovah's land as 
 Israel is Jehovah's people.^ In like manner the land of 
 Assyria (Asshur) has its name from the god Asshur,^ and 
 in general the deities of the heathen are called indifferently 
 the gods of the nations and the gods of the lands.^ Our 
 natural impulse is to connect these expressions with the 
 divine kingship, which in modern kingdoms of feudal 
 origin is a sovereignty over land as well as men. But 
 the older Semitic kingdoms were not feudal, and before 
 the captivity we shall hardly find an example of a 
 Semitic sovereign being called king of a land.* In fact 
 
 1 Hos. ix. 3 ; cf. Reland, Palcestina, vol. i. p. 16 aqq. 
 
 2 Schrader, KAT. 2nd ed. p. 35 sqq. ; cf. Micah v. 6 (Heb. 5) where the 
 "land of Asshur" stands in parallelism with "land of Nimrod." Nimrod 
 is a god, see his article in Enc. Brit, 9th ed., and Wellhausen, Hexateuch 
 (2nd ed., 1889), p. 308 sqq. On the possibility that the Land of I7z has 
 its name from the god 'Aud, see above p. 43, note. 
 
 ' 2 Kings xviii. 33 sqq. 
 
 * The Hebrews say "king of Asshur" (Assyria) Edom Aram (Syria) etc., 
 but these are names of nations, the countries being properly the "land of 
 Asshur " etc. The local designation of a king is taken from his capital, or 
 royal seat. Thus the king of Israel is king of Samaria (1 Kings xxi. 1), 
 Sihon, king of the Amorites, is king of Heshbon (Dent. iii. 6). Hiram, whom 
 the Bible calls king of Tyre, appears on the oldest of Phoenician inscriptions 
 (C. /. 8. No. 5) as king of the Sidonians, i.e. the Phoenicians (cf. 1 Kings 
 xvi. 31), Nebuchadnezzar is king of Babylon, and so forth. The only excep- 
 tion to this rule in old Hebrew is, I think, Og king of Bashan (Deut. i. 4 ; 1 
 Kings iv. 19), who is a mythical figure, presumably an old god of the region. 
 
92 THE GOD AS 
 
 LECT. III. 
 
 the relations of a god to his land were not merely 
 
 political, or dependent on his relation to the inhabitants. 
 
 The Aramaeans and Babylonians whom the king of 
 
 Assyiia planted in northern Israel brought their own gods 
 
 with them, but when they were attacked by lions they 
 
 felt that they must call in the aid of " the god of the 
 
 land," who, we must infer, had in his own region power 
 
 over beasts as well as men.^ Similarly the Aramaeans 
 
 of Damascus, after their defeat in the hill-country of 
 
 Samaria, argue that the gods of Israel are gods of the hills 
 
 and will have no power in the plains ; the power of the 
 
 gods has physical and local limitations. So too the 
 
 conception that a god cannot be worshipped outside of his 
 
 own land, which we find applied even to the worship of 
 
 Jehovah,^ does not simply mean that there can be no 
 
 worship of a god where he has no sanctuary, but that the 
 
 land of a strange god is not a fit place to erect a sanctuary. 
 
 In the language of the Old Testament foreign countries 
 
 are unclean,^ so that Naaman, when he desires to worship 
 
 the God of Israel at Damascus, has to beg for two mules' 
 
 burden of the soil of Canaan, to make a sort of enclave 
 
 of Jehovah's land in his Aramaean dwelling-place. 
 
 In Semitic religion the relation of the gods to particular 
 
 places which are special seats of their power is usually 
 
 expressed by the title Baal (pi. Baalim, fern. Baalath). 
 
 As applied to men laal means the master of a house, the 
 
 owner of a field cattle or the like ; or in the plural the 
 
 baalim of a city are its freeholders and full citizens.^ In a 
 
 secondary sense, in which alone the word is ordinarily used 
 
 in Arabic, baal means husband ; but it is not used of the 
 
 relation of a master to his slave, or of a superior to his 
 
 1 2 Kings xvii. 24 aqq. " 1 Sam. xxvi. 19 ; Hos. ix. 4. 
 
 ' Amos vii. 17 ; Josh. xxii. 19. 
 
 * So often in the Old Testament, and also in Phoenician. Baalath is used 
 of a female citizen {0. I. S. No. 120). 
 
LECT. III. BAAL OF HIS LAKD. 93 
 
 inferior, and it is incorrect to regard it, when employed as 
 a divine title, as a mere synonym of the titles implying 
 lordship over men which came before us in the last lecture. 
 AVhen a god is simply called " the Baal," the meaning is 
 not " the lord of the worshipper " but the possessor of some 
 place or district, and each of the multitude of local Baalim 
 is distinguished by adding the name of his own place. 
 Melcarth is the Baal of Tyre, Astarte the Baalath of Byblus;^ 
 there was a Baal of Lebanon,^ of Mount Hermon,^ of Mount 
 Peor, and so forth. In Southern Arabia Baal constantly 
 occurs in similar local connections, e.g. Dhu Samawi is the 
 Baal of the district Bacir, 'Athtar the Baal of Gumdan, and 
 the sun-goddess the Baalath of several places or regions.^ 
 
 1 C. I. S. Nos. 1, 122. " O. I. ,9. No. 5. 
 
 3 See Judg. iii. 3, where this mountain is called the mountain of the Baal 
 of Hermon. Hermon properly means a sacred place. In the Old Testament 
 place-names like Baal-Peor, Baal-Meon are shortened from Beth Baal Peor, 
 " house or sanctuary of the Baal of Mount Peor," etc. 
 
 * Special forms of Baal occur which are defined not by the name of a place 
 or region but in some other way, e.g. by the name of a sacred object, as Baal- 
 Tamar, "lord of the palm-tree," preserved to us only in the name of a town, 
 Judg. XX. 33. So too Baal-Hamman, on the Carthaginian Tanith inscrip- 
 tions, maybe primarily "Lord of the sun-pillar ;" yet compare |12n ?N, "the 
 divinity of (the place) Hammon " (C /. S. No. 8, and the inscr. of Ma'siib) ; 
 see G. Hoffmann in the Abhandlungen of the Gbttingen Academy, vol. xxxvi. 
 (4May 1889). Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, is "owner of flies," ratherthan 
 Bdax MuTx, the fly-god. In one or two cases the title of Baal seems to be 
 prefixed to the name of a god ; thus we have Baal-Zephon as a place-name 
 on the frontiers of Egypt, and also a god JSV (C. /. S. Nos. 108, 265). 
 Similarly the second element in Baal-Gad, a town at the foot of Mount 
 Hermon, is the name of an ancient Semitic god. The grammatical explana- 
 tion of these forms is not clear to me. Another peculiar form is Baal-Berith 
 at Shechem, which in ordinary Hebrew simply means "possessor of covenant," 
 i.e. "covenant ally," but may here signify the Baal who presides over cove- 
 nants, or rather over the special covenant by which the neighbouring Israelites 
 were bound to the Canaanite inhabitants of the city. Peculiar also i-s the 
 more modern Baal-Marcod, xsipxvas x^fcSv (near Bairiit), known from inscrip- 
 tions (Wadd. Nos. 1855, 1856 ; Ganneau, Bee. d'Areh. Or. i. 95, 103). The 
 Semitic form is supposed to be IpID ?3J3, "lord of dancing, "i.e. he to whom 
 dancing is due as an act of homage ; cf. for the construction, Prov. iii. 27. 
 In later times Baal or Bel became a proper name, especially in connection 
 with the cult of the Babylonian Bel, and entered into compounds of a new kind 
 
94 THE BAAL 
 
 LECT. III. 
 
 As the heathen gods are never conceived as ubiquitous, 
 and can act only where they or their ministers are present, 
 the sphere of their permanent authority and influence is 
 naturally regarded as their residence. It will be observed 
 that the local titles which I have cited are generally derived 
 either from towns where the god had a temple, or as the 
 Semites say a house, or else from mountains, which are 
 constantly conceived as the dwelling-places of deities. The 
 notion of personal property in land is a thing that grows 
 up gradually in human society and is first applied to a 
 man's homestead. Pasture land is common property,^ but 
 a man acquires rights in the soil by building a house, or by 
 " quickening " a waste place, i.e. bringing it under cultiva- 
 tion. Originally, that is, private rights over land are a 
 mere consequence of rights over what is produced by 
 private labour upon the land.'' The ideas of building and 
 cultivation are closely connected — the Arabic 'amara, like 
 the German lauen covers both — and the word for house or 
 homestead is extended to include the dependent fields or 
 territory. Thus in Syriac " the house of Antioch " is the 
 territory dependent on the town, and in the Old Testament 
 the land of Canaan is called not only Jehovah's land but 
 his house.^ If the relation of the Baal to his district is to 
 
 like the Aglibol and Malakhbel of Palmyra. Baal Shamaim, "the lord of 
 heaven," belongs to the class of titles taken from the region of nature in 
 which the god dwells or has sway. KfilD ;'J?3 {C I. S. No. 41) and nbv3 
 rrnnn {ibid. No 177) are of doubtful interpretation. On the whole there is 
 nothing in these peculiar forms to shake the general conclusion that Baal is 
 primarily the title of a god as inhabitant or owner of a place. 
 
 1 Common, that is, to a tribe, for the tribes are very jealous of encroach- 
 ments on their pastures. But, as we have here to do with the personal rights 
 of the Baal within his own community, the question of intertribal rights does 
 not come in. 
 
 3 The law of Islam is that land which has never been cultivated or 
 occupied by houses becomes private property by being "quickened" {bU- 
 ihya). See Nawawi, Minhaj, ed. "Van den Berg, ii. 171. This is in accord- 
 ance with pre-lslamic custom. Cf. Wellhausen, Heidenthum, p. 105. 
 
 3 Hos. viii. 1, ix. 15, compared with ix. 3. 
 
LECT. III. 
 
 AND HIS LAND. 95 
 
 be judged on these analogies, the land is his, first because 
 he inhabits it, and then because he " quickens " it, and 
 makes it productive. 
 
 That this is the true account of the relations of the name 
 Baal appears from what Hosea tells us of the religious con- 
 ceptions of his idolatrous contemporaries, whose nominal 
 Jehovah worship was merged in the numerous local cults of 
 the Canaanite Baalim. To the Baalim they ascribed all the 
 natural gifts of the land, the corn the wine and the oil, the 
 wool and the flax, the vines and fig-trees,^ and we shall 
 see by and by that the whole ritual of feasts and sacrifices 
 was imbued with this conception. "We can however go a 
 step further, and trace the idea to an earlier form, by the 
 aid of a fragment of old heathen phraseology which has 
 survived in the language of Hebrew and Arabic agriculture. 
 Both in the Jewish traditional law and in the system of 
 Mohammedan taxation a distinction is drawn between land 
 which is artificially irrigated and land that does not require 
 irrigation. The latter is called laal (Ar. la' I), an abbre- 
 viated expression, for which the Talmud offers the fuller 
 form " house of Baal " or " field of the house of Baal," and 
 Arabic documents the phrase " what the Ba'l waters." In 
 Arabic law ground of the second class pays double tithes. 
 It must be remembered that in the East the success of 
 agriculture depends more on the supply of water than on 
 anything else, and the "quickening of dead ground" {ihya, 
 al-mawat), which, as we have seen, creates ownership, has 
 reference mainly to irrigation.^ Accordingly what the 
 husbandman irrigates is his own property, but what is 
 naturally watered he regards as irrigated by a god and as 
 the field house or property of this god, who is thus looked 
 upon as the Baal or owner of the spot. 
 
 ' Hos. ii. 8 sqq. 
 
 2 See, for example, Abu Yusuf Ya'cub, Kitab al-Kharaj, Cairo, A.H. 
 
 1302, p. 37. 
 
96 ORIGINAL SENSE lect. hi. 
 
 It has been generally assumed that Baal's land, in the 
 sense in which it is opposed to irrigated fields, means land 
 watered by the rains of heaven, " the waters of the sky " as 
 the Arabs call them ; and when the Arabs speak at one time 
 of " what the Ba'l waters" and at another of " what the sky 
 waters " it is natural to assume that the two phrases mean 
 the same thing,^ and to infer that the Baal is the sky or 
 the god of the sky (Baal-shamaim) who plays so great 
 a part in later Semitic religion and is identified by Philo 
 Byblius with the sun. But, strictly regarded, this view, 
 which is natural in our climate, appears to be inconsistent 
 with the conditions of vegetable growth in the Semitic 
 lands, where the rainfall is precarious or confined to certain 
 seasons. The surface moisture from the " water of heaven " 
 is at most sufficient to raise one quick-growing crop, and 
 the face of the earth is bare and lifeless for the greater 
 part of the year, save where there is irrigation or a flow of 
 water underground. The contrast between lands fertilised 
 by rain and lands that need irrigation is a contrast of 
 climate, whereas the pecuharity of Baal-land is one of soil 
 or bottom, in a climate where most ground needs irrigation. 
 And in fact the best Arab authorities expressly say that 
 the ia'l is not fertilised by rain but by subterranean 
 waters.^ 
 
 ' See Wellhausen, Moh. in Med. p. 420 (where however irrigated land is 
 contrasted not simply with land fed by rains but with land fed by rains or 
 flowing water) ; Heidenthum, p. 170. In my Prophets of [.trad, p. 172, I 
 have fallen into the same trap, which indeed was set by the less accurate of 
 the later Arabic authorities : see the next note. 
 
 2 See the passages collected in De Goeje's Glossary to Baladhori and in the 
 Lisan al-'Arah. When the Arabian empire extended to very various 
 climates confusion naturally arose, and the true meaning of ha'l was disputed 
 out of mere ignorance (see al-Azhari's criticism of al-Cotabi in the Lisan), or 
 changed to suit changed conditions, as in Spain (De Sacy's Ohrest. Ar. i. 
 225). The true Arabic name for land watered by rain alone, because it lies 
 too high or too far for irrigation, is 'idhy ; such soil was little worth, as 
 appears from the synonym balchs. As regards the Jewish usage (Mishnic 
 iiya. Sue. ill. 3, Terum. x. 11, Shebi. ii. 9, or ^jy^n mtJ', B.B. iii. 1; 
 
LECT. III. OP baal's land. 97 
 
 Now, if the Baal's land is fertilised by ground-water, all 
 connection between the deity and the sky falls to the 
 ground ; for Semitic antiquity does not connect springs 
 rivers and subterranean flow with rain, but regards the 
 primeval store of water as divided into two distinct Ijodies, 
 one above the sky, whence rain comes, the other in the 
 great deep, which feeds springs and lakes as well as seas/ 
 And so, when we find that in later times all Semitic deities 
 were usually conceived as heavenly or astral, we must con- 
 clude that the connection of the Baalim with underground 
 waters dates from an earlier stage of religion, and that the 
 seat of the gods was sought by springs and river banks, in 
 the groves and tangled thickets and green tree-shaded 
 glades of mountain hollows and deep watercourses, before 
 all deities were raised to heavenly seats. To one who has 
 wandered in the Arabian wilderness, traversing day after 
 day stony plateaus, black volcanic fields, or arid sands 
 walled in by hot mountains of bare rock, and relieved by 
 
 Talmudio ^J?3n JVl) tlie best discussion is that of Gnisius in Snrenh. i. 163. 
 That here also the moisture is subterranean appears from Sue. iii. 3 (for 
 the Populits Euphraiica requires a wet bottom), as well as from the gloss in 
 Buxtorf S.V., which says that the ha'l lies in a valley. 
 
 The Arabs have another term, 'atharl, which apparently means the land of 
 'Athtar, the S. Arabian god who corresponds in name, but not in sex, to the 
 Babylonian Ishtar and the Phoenician Astarte. There is still more dispute 
 about this word than about the other, and, though it is often identified with 
 ha'l, there is somewhat better evidence for connecting it with rainfall. In a 
 word that seems to be of Yemenite origin this is not unnatural, for the 
 monsoon rains are of great importance in S. Arabia, and in Hadramaut 
 not only cereal crops but trees are dependent on them (Macrizi, Hadramaut, 
 pp. 19, 25). But even in Yemen 'Athtar was worshipped as a god of wells 
 (C. /. 8. pt. iv. No. 47, cf. Miiller in ZDMO. xxxvii. 371), and in North 
 Arabia 'atliarl seems to be exactly synonymous with ha'l, for the oasis near 
 Kaf in "W. Sirhan, which Guarmani (p. 209) calls Etera, and Lady Anne 
 Blunt [Nejd, i. 89 sqq. ) writes Itheri, must be 'Atharl -n-ith a thinning of the 
 first vowel in modern pronunciation. Ba'l and 'athari designate the pro- 
 duce as well as the land, and in this sense the reference is mainly to trees, 
 particularly to the date palm (for which in most parts of Arabia irrigation or 
 underground water is a necessity), not to such quick-growing crops as are 
 raised on thirsty land after the copious rains that sometimes fall. 
 
 ^ See Gen. i. 2, vii. 11, xlix. 25 ; Deut. xxxiii. 13, etc, 
 
 G 
 
98 THE BAALIM AS LECT. III. 
 
 no other vegetation than a few grey and thorny acacias or 
 scanty tufts of parched herbage ; till suddenly, at a turn of 
 the road, he emerges on a Wady where the ground-water 
 rises to the surface, and passes as if by magic into a new 
 world, where the ground is carpeted with verdure and a 
 grove of stately palm-trees spreads forth its canopy of 
 shade against the hot and angry heaven, it is not difficult 
 to realise that to early man such a spot was verily a garden 
 and habitation of the gods. In Syria the contrasts are 
 less glaring than in the desert ; but only in the spring 
 time, and in many parts of the country not even then, is 
 the general fertility such that a fountain or a marshy 
 bottom with its greensward and thicket of natural wood 
 can fail strongly to impress the imagination. Nor are the 
 religious associations of such a scene felt only by heathen 
 barbarians. " The trees of the Lord drink their fill, the 
 cedars of Lebanon which He hath planted : "Where the birds 
 make their nests ; as for the stork, the fir-trees are her 
 house" (Ps. civ. 16). This might pass for the description of 
 the natural sanctuary of the Baal of Lebanon, but who does 
 not feel its solemn grandeur ? Or who will condemn the 
 touch of primitive naturalism that colours the comparison 
 in the first Psalm : " He shall be like a tree planted by 
 watercourses, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season ; 
 his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth 
 shall prosper " (Ps. i. 3) ? 
 
 When the conception of Baal's land is thus narrowed to 
 its oldest form, and limited to certain favoured spots that 
 seem to be planted and watered by the hand of the gods,^ 
 we are on the point of passing from the idea of the land of 
 the god to that of his homestead and sanctuary. But 
 before we take this step it will be convenient for us to 
 
 1 To the same circle of ideas belongs the conception of the Garden of Eden, 
 planted by God, and watered not by rain but by rivers. 
 
LECT. III. LORDS OF WATER. 99 
 
 glance rapidly at the way in which the primitive idea was 
 widened and extended. In Arabia and in Palestine also, 
 as we see from the accoimt of Isaac's dealings with 
 Abimelech in Genesis xxvi., property in water is more 
 important and more primitive than property in land. 
 Without access to water the land is useless, and so in 
 Arabia the right of a tribe or a family to certain pasturages 
 is defined by the ownership of certain springs wells or 
 watercourses. So too in the agricultural stage of society 
 a man who has land without water is dependent on his 
 neighbour for the first requisite of husbandry, and has 
 to procure it of him at a price. If therefore the local 
 Baalim hold the springs and watery bottoms, the whole 
 agricultural population is dependent on them, and must pay 
 them tribute for the right of irrigation. The gifts of first- 
 fruits and the like that form the main part of Canaanite 
 ritual are to be explained on this principle, for they are 
 paid not only by Baal's own land but by the lands of all 
 his neighbours. In this way all natural growth and in- 
 crease comes to be looked upon as the gift of the god, who 
 is the universal author of productivity, or in Semitic phrase 
 " giver of life to the dead soil." And when this idea is 
 once established it tends, in virtue of that uncontrolled use 
 of analogy which is characteristic of early thought, to gain 
 wider and wider applications. 
 
 On the one hand the fertilising rains of heaven are in 
 like manner conceived as the gifts of a power seated in the 
 sky, and various imaginative devices are called in, to effect 
 an identification between the god above who sends rain 
 and the old local Baal of the waters of the land. The 
 scientific explanation, that the lower waters come ultimately 
 from the rain, is not that which recommends itself to early 
 thought. On the contrary, in mountainous regions, where 
 the godhead dwells in the highest glens and woody crown 
 
100 THE BAALIM AS 
 
 LECT. iir. 
 
 of the summits, he gathers the clouds around him in his 
 earthly sanctuary, and then moves forth in storm and 
 tempest to pour their waters on the thirsty land. Or in 
 later times, when the deities are conceived as mainly 
 astral, a star-goddess is identified with the local goddess 
 of a fountain by aid of a legend, such as that which was 
 related at Aphaca in the Lebanon, where on the occasion 
 of the annual feast a ball of fire was believed to fall into, 
 the sacred stream/ 
 
 On the other hand the life-giving power of the god 
 was not limited to vegetative nature, but to him also was 
 ascribed the increase of animal life, the multiplication of 
 flocks and herds, and, not least, of the human inhabitants 
 of the land. For the increase of animate nature is 
 obviously conditioned, in the last resort, by the fertility 
 of the soil, and primitive races, which have not learned 
 to differentiate the various kinds of life with precision, 
 think of animate as well as vegetable life as rooted in the 
 earth and sprung from it. The earth is the great mother 
 of all things in most mythological philosophies, and the 
 comparison of the life of mankind, or of a stock of men, 
 with the life of a tree, which is so common in Semitic as 
 in other primitive poetry, is not in its origin a mere figure. 
 Thus where, the growth of vegetation is ascribed to a 
 particular divine power, the same power receives , the 
 thanks and homage of his worshippers for the increase 
 of cattle and of men. Firstlings as weU as first-fruits 
 were offered at the shrines of the Baalim, and one of the 
 commonest classes of personal names given by parents to their 
 sons or daughters designates the child as the gift of the god.^ 
 
 ' Sozomen, ii. 5 ; cf. the fallen star which Astarte is said to have conse- 
 crated at the holy isle of Tyre (Philo Byblius in Fr. Hist. Or. iii. 569). 
 
 2 To this class Tjelong primarily the iLumerous Hebrew aud Phceiiician 
 names compounded with forms of the root [113 .or jn', "to give" (Heb. 
 Jonathan, .Phoen. Baaljathon i Heb. Mattaniah, Phoeu. Mutumbal [masc. 
 
LECT. III. GIVERS OF FERTILITY. 101 
 
 In this rapid sketch of the development of the idea of 
 the local Baalim I have left many things to be confirmed 
 or filled out in detail by subsequent reference to the 
 particulars of their ritual, and I abstain altogether from 
 entering at this stage into the influence which the con- 
 ception of the Baalim as productive and reproductive 
 powers exercised on the development of a highly sensual 
 mythology, especially when the gods were divided into 
 sexes, and the Baal was conceived as the male principle 
 of reproduction, the husband of the land which he 
 fertilised,^ for this belongs rather to the discussion of the 
 nature of the gods. 
 
 You will observe also that the sequence of ideas which 
 I have proposed is applicable in its entirety only to 
 agricultural populations, such as those of Canaan and 
 Syria on the one hand and of Yemen on the other. It is 
 
 and fern.] etc. ; Kabatsean, Cosnathan [Euting, No. 12]) ; and Arabic names 
 formed by adding the god's name to Wabb, Zaid (perhaps also Aus), "gift 
 of." Cognate to these are the names in which the birth of a son is recog- 
 nised as a proof of the divine favour (Heb. Hananiah, Johanan ; Phoen. 
 Hannibal, No'ammilkat [C /. S. No. 41], etc. ; Edomite, Baal-Hanan [Geu. 
 xxxvi. 38]; Ar. Sxp„x>i [Wadd. 2143], "favour of El," Auf-el "[good] 
 augury from El," Oi/aSS»j.o5 [Wadd. 2372] "love of El"), or which express 
 the idea that he bas helped the parents or heard their prayers (Heb. Azariah, 
 Shemaiah ; Phcen. Asdrubal, Eshmunazar, etc.); cf. Gen. xxix., xxx., 
 1 Sara. i. Finally there is a long seiies of names such as Yebavbaal 
 (C. /. <S'. No. 69), Kemoshyehi (De Vogiie, Milanges, p. 89), " Baal, Chemosh 
 gives life." The great variety of gods referred to in Phcenioian names of 
 these forms shows that the gift of childi'en was not ascx-ibed to any one god, 
 but to all Baalim, each in his own sphere ; cf. Hosea, chap. i. 
 
 1 This conception appears in Hosea and underlies the figure in Isa. Ixii. 4, 
 where married land (be'ulah) is contrasted with wilderness ; Wellhausen, 
 Heidenthum, p. 170. It is a conception which might arise naturally enough 
 from the ideas above developed, but was no doubt favoured by the use of 
 haal to mean "husband." How haal comes to meau husband is not 
 perfectly clear ; the name is certainly associated with monamlry and the 
 appropriation of the wife to her husband, but it does not imply a servile 
 relation, for the slave-girl does not call her master ba'l. Probably the key 
 is to be found in the notion that the wife is her hu.sband's tillage (Goran 
 ii. 223), in which case private rights over land were older than exclusive 
 marital rights. 
 
102 BAAL WORSHIP 
 
 LECT. III. 
 
 in these parts of the Semitic field that the conception of the 
 local gods as Baalim is predominant, though traces of Ba'l as 
 a divine title are found in Central Arahia in various forms.^ 
 In the central parts of Arabia agriculture was confined 
 to oases, and the vocabulary connected with it is mainly 
 borrowed from the northern Semites.^ Many centuries 
 before the date of the oldest Arabic literature, when 
 the desert was the great highway of Eastern commerce, 
 colonies of the settled Semites, Yemenites and Aramieans, 
 occupied the oases and watering-places in the desert that 
 were suitable for commercial stations, and to these immi- 
 grants must be ascribed the introduction of agriculture 
 and even of the date-palm itself. The most developed 
 cults of Arabia belong not to the pure nomads, but to 
 these agricultural and trading settlements, which the 
 Bedouins visited only as pilgrims, not to pay stated 
 homage to the lord of the land from which they drew 
 their life, but in fulfilment of vows. As most of our 
 knowledge about Arabian cults refers to pilgrimages and 
 the visits of the Bedouins, the impression is produced 
 that all offerings were vows, and that fixed tribute of the 
 fruits of the earth, such as was paid in the settled lands 
 to local Baalim, was unknown ; but this impression is not 
 accurate. From the Goran (vi. 137) and other sources we 
 have sufficient evidence that the settled Arabs paid to the 
 god a regular tribute from their fields, apparently by 
 marking off as his a certain portion of the irrigated and 
 cultivated ground.' Thus as regards the settled Arabs 
 
 ' For the evidence see Nbldeke in ZDMG. vol. xl. (1886) p. 174; and 
 "Wellhausen, Heidenthum, p. 170. ■ 
 
 ^ Frankel, Aram. Fremdww. p. 125. 
 
 " All the evidence on this point has been confused by an early misunder- 
 standing of the passage in the Goran : " They set apart for Allah a portion 
 of the tilth or the cattle he has created, and say, This is Allah's— as they 
 fancy— and this belongs to our partners (idols) ; but what is assigned to 
 idols does not reach Allah and what is assigned to Allah really goes to 
 
LECT. III. IN ARABIA. 103 
 
 the parallelism with the other Semites is complete, and 
 the only question is whether cults of the Baal type and 
 the name of Baal itself were not borrowed, along with 
 agriculture, from the northern Semitic peoples. 
 
 This question I am disposed to answer in the affirmative ; 
 for I find nothing in the Arabic use of the word la'l and 
 its derivatives which is inconsistent with the view that 
 they had their origin in the cultivated oases, and much 
 that strongly favours such a view. The phrase "land 
 which the Baal waters " has no sense till it is opposed to 
 " land which the hand of man waters," and irrigation is 
 certainly not older than agriculture. It is very question- 
 able whether the idea of the godhead as the permanent 
 or immanent source of life and fertility — a very difierent 
 thing from the belief that the god is the ancestor of his 
 worshippers — had any place in the old tribal religion of 
 the nomadic Arabs. To the nomad, who does not practise 
 irrigation, the source of life and fertility is the rain that 
 quickens the desert pastures, and there is no evidence that 
 rain was ascribed to tribal deities. The Arabs regard rain 
 as depending on the constellations, i.e. on the seasons, 
 which affect all tribes alike within a wide range ; and so 
 when the showers of heaven are ascribed to a god, that 
 
 the idols." It is plain that the heathen said indifferently "this belongs to 
 Allah," meaning the local god (cf. Wellh., Seid. p. 185), or this belongs to 
 snch and such a deity (naming him), and Mohammed argues, exactly as 
 Hosea does in speaking of the homage paid by his contemporaries to local 
 Baalim, whom they identified with Jehovah, that whether they say 
 "Allah" or "Hobal," the real object of their homage is a false god. But 
 the traditional interpretation of the text is that one part was set aside for 
 the supreme Allah and another for the idols, and this distortion has 
 coloured all accounts of what the Arabs actually did, for of course historical 
 tradition must be corrected by the Goran. Allowance being made for this 
 error, which made the second half of the verse say that Allah was habitually 
 cheated out of his share in favour of the idols, the notices in Ibn Hisham, 
 p. 53, Sprenger, Leb. Moh. iii. 458, Pocock, Specimen, p. 112, may be 
 accepted as based upon fact. In Pocock's citation from the Na^m al-dorr 
 it appears that irrigated land is referred to. 
 
104 BAAL WOESHIP Lect. hi. 
 
 god is Allah, the supreme and non-tribal deity.-' It is to 
 be noted also that among the Arabs the theophorous 
 proper names that express religious ideas most akin to 
 those of the settled Semites are derived from deities 
 whose worship was widespread and not confined to the 
 nomads. Further it will appear in a later lecture that 
 the fundamental type of Arabian sacrifice does not take 
 the form of a tribute to the god but is simply an act of 
 communion with himi The gift of firstlings indeed, which 
 has so prominent a place in Canaanite religion, is not 
 unknown in Arabia. But this aspect of sacrifice has very 
 little prominence ; we find no approach to the payment 
 of stated tribute to the gods, and the festal sacrifices at 
 fixed seasons, which are characteristic of religions that 
 regard the gods as the source of the annual renovation 
 of fertility in nature, seem to have been confined to the 
 great sanctuaries at which the nomads appeared only as 
 pilgrims before a foreign god.^ In these pilgrimages the 
 nomadic Arabs might learn the name of Baal, but they 
 could not assimilate the conception of the god as a land- 
 owner and apply it to their own tribal deities, for the 
 simple reason that in the desert private property in land 
 was unknown and the right of water and of pasturage was 
 common to every member of the tribe.', But in estimating 
 
 1 Wellhauseu, Heid. p. 175. ^Ct Wellhausen, p. 116. 
 
 'We shall see in the next lecture that the institution of the l)ima or 
 sacred pasture-land is based not on the idea of property but on a principle of 
 taboo, and affords no argument against the views that have just been 
 developed. A main argument for the antiquitj'' of Baal religion in Arabia 
 is drawn from the denominative verb ha'Ua = aliha, which moans " to be in 
 a state of helpless panic and perplexity,'' literally "to be Baal-struck." 
 But such results are more naturally to be ascribed to the influence of an 
 alien god than of a tribal divinity, and the word may well be supposed to 
 have primal ily expressed the con fusion and mazed perplexity of the nomad 
 when he finds himself at some great feast at a pilgrim shrine, amidst the 
 strange habits and worship of a settled population ; of. jEthiopic htCc'd, 
 "feast." 
 
LECT. III. IN ARABIA. 105 
 
 the influence on Arabian religion of agriculture and the 
 ideas connected with settled life, we must remember how 
 completely, in the centuries before Mohammed, the gods 
 of the madar ("glebe," i.e. villagers and townsfolk) had 
 superseded the gods of the wahar ("hair," i.e. dwellers 
 in haircloth tents). Much the most important part of 
 the religious practices of the nomads consisted in pilgrim- 
 ages to the great shrines of the town Arabs, and even 
 the minor sanctuaries, which were frequented only by 
 particular tribes, seem to have been often fixed at spots 
 where there was some commencement of settled life. 
 Where the god had a house or temple we recognise the 
 work of men who were no longer pure nomads, but had 
 begun to form fixed homes ; and indeed modern observation 
 shows that, when an Arab tribe begins to settle down, it 
 acquires the elements of husbandry before it gives up its 
 tents and learns to erect immoveable houses. Again there 
 were sanctuaries without temples, but even at these the 
 god had his treasure in a cave, and a priest who took care 
 of his possessions, and there is no reason to think that the 
 priest was an isolated hermit. The presumption is that 
 almost every holy place at the time of Mohammed was a 
 Little centre of settled agricultural life, and so also a centre 
 of ideas foreign to the purely nomadic worshippers that 
 frequented it.^ 
 
 ^In Arabia one section of a tribe is often nomadic while another is 
 agricultural, but in spite of their kinship the two sections feel theuLselves 
 very far apart in life and ways of thought, and a nomad girl often refuses 
 to stay with a village husband. In this connection the traditions of the 
 foreign origin of the cult at Mecca deserve more attention than is generally 
 paid to them, though not in the line of Dozy's speculations. To the tribes 
 of the desert the religion of the towns was foreign in spirit and contrasted 
 in many ways with their old nomadic habits ; moreover, as we have seen, 
 it was probably coloured from the first by Syrian and Nabataean influences. 
 Yet it exercised a great attraction, mainly by appealing to the sensual part 
 of the Bedouin's nature ; the feasts were connected with the markets, and 
 at them there was much jollity and good cheer. They began to be looked 
 
106 THE HOMES OR HAUNTS LECT. hi. 
 
 The final result of this long discussion is that the 
 
 conception of the local god as Baal or lord of the land, 
 
 the source of its fertility and the giver of all the good 
 
 things of life enjoyed by its inhabitants, is intimately 
 
 bound up with the growth of agricultural society, and 
 
 involves a series of ideas unknown to the primitive life 
 
 of the savage huntsman or the pure pastoral nomad. But 
 
 we have also seen that the original idea of Baal's land was 
 
 limited to certain favoured spots that seem to be planted 
 
 and watered by the hand of the god and to form, as it 
 
 were, his homestead. Thus in its beginnings the idea of 
 
 the land of the god appears to be only a development, in 
 
 accordance with the type of agricultural life, of the more 
 
 primitive idea that the god has a special home or haunt 
 
 on earth. Agricultural habits teach men to look on this 
 
 home as a garden of God, cultivated and fertilised by the 
 
 hand of deity, but it was not agriculture that created the 
 
 conception that certain places were the special haunts of 
 
 superhuman powers. That the gods are not ubiquitous 
 
 but subject to limitations of' time and space, and that they 
 
 can act only where they or their messengers are present, 
 
 is the universal idea of antiquity and needs no explanation. 
 
 In no region of thought do men begin with transcendental 
 
 ideas and conceive of existences raised above space and 
 
 time. Thus whatever the nature of the gods, they were 
 
 doubtless conceived from the first as having their proper 
 
 homes or haunts, which they went forth from and returned 
 
 to, and where they were to be found by the worshippers 
 
 with whom they had fixed relations. We are not entitled 
 
 to say k ■priori that this home would necessarily be a spot 
 
 on the surface of the earth, for, just as there are fowls of 
 
 on as making up the sum of religion, and the cult of the gods came to be 
 almost entirely dissociated from daily life, and from the customs associated 
 with the sanctity of kinship, which at one time made up the chief part of 
 nomad religion. Cf. Wellh., Heid., p. 182. 
 
LECT. III. OF THE GODS. 107 
 
 the heaven and fish of the sea as well as beasts of the 
 field, there might be, and in fact were, celestial gods and 
 gods of the waters under the earth as well as gods 
 terrestrial. In later times celestial gods predominate, as 
 we see from the prevalence of sacrifice by fire, in which 
 the homage of the worshipper is directed upwards in the 
 pillar of savoury smoke that rises from the altar towards 
 the seat of the godhead in the sky. But all sacrifices are 
 not made by fire. The Greeks, especially in older times, 
 buried the sacrifices devoted to gods of the underworld 
 and threw into the water gifts destined for the gods of 
 seas and rivers. Both these forms of fireless ritual are 
 found also among the Semites ; and indeed among the 
 Arabs sacrifices by fire were almost unknown, and the gift 
 of the worshipper was conveyed to the deity simply by 
 being laid on sacred ground, hung on a sacred tree, or in 
 the case of liquid offerings and sacrificial blood, poured over 
 a sacred stone. In such cases we have the idea of locality 
 connected with the godhead in the simplest form. There 
 is a fixed place on the earth's surface, marked by a sacred 
 tree or a sacred stone, where the god is wont to be found, 
 and offerings deposited there have reached their address. 
 
 In later times the home or sanctuary of a god was a 
 temple, or as the Semites call it a " house " or " palace." 
 But as a rule the sanctuary is older than the house, and 
 the god did not take up his residence in a place because a 
 house had been provided for him, but on the contrary, 
 when men had learned to build houses for themselves, they 
 also set up a house for their god in the place which was 
 already known as his home. Of course, as population in- 
 creased and temples were multiplied, means were found to 
 evade this rule, and new sanctuaries were constituted in 
 the places most convenient for the worshippers ; but even 
 in such cases forms were observed which implied that a 
 
108 THE HOMES OR HAUNTS LECT. in. 
 
 temple could not fitly be erected except in a place which 
 was affected by the deity. No mere act of man, no choice 
 on his part, could constitute a sanctuary ; it was necessary 
 that the god should choose the place, and the greatest and 
 holiest sanctuaries were those which, according to un- 
 disputed tradition, he had been known to frequent from 
 time immemorial. 
 
 That the gods haunted certain spots, which in conse- 
 quence of this were holy places and fit places of worship, 
 was to the ancients not a theory but a matter of fact, 
 handed down by tradition from one generation to another, 
 and accepted with unquestioning faith. The reason for 
 frequenting a sanctuary was that it had been frequented 
 in the past, the proof that the god was to be found at a 
 certain spot was that by long custom he had been sought 
 there, and had shewn himself to his worshippers. Accord- 
 ingly we find that new sanctuaries can be formed and new 
 altars or temples erected, wherever the godhead has given 
 unmistakeable evidence of his presence. All that is 
 necessary to constitute a Semitic sanctuary is a precedent ; 
 it is assumed that where the god has once manifested him- 
 self and shewn favour to his worshippers he will do so 
 again, and when the precedent has been strengthened by 
 frequent repetition, the holiness of the place is fully 
 secured. Thus in the earlier parts of the Old Testament 
 a theophany is always taken to be a good reason for 
 sacrificing on the spot. The deity has manifested himself 
 either visibly or by some mighty deed, and therefore an act 
 of Worship cannot be out of place. Saul builds an altar 
 on the site of his victory over the Philistines,^ the patri- 
 archs found sanctuaries on the spot where the deity has 
 appeared to them,^ Gideon and Manoah present an offering 
 
 1 1 Sam. .xiv. 35. 
 
 ^ Gen. xii. 7, xxii. 14, x.TOii. 18 eqq. ; cf. Exod. xvii. 15. 
 
tECT. Ill; OP THE GODS, 109 
 
 where they have received a divine message.^ Even in the 
 Hehrew religion God is not equally near at all places and 
 all times, and when a man is brought face to face with 
 Him he seizes the opportunity for an act of ritual homage. 
 But the ordinary practices of religion are not dependent on 
 extraordinary manifestations of the divine presence ; they 
 proceed on the assumption that there are iixed places 
 where man can meet with god, and that where the deity 
 has appeared once he may be expected to appear again. 
 When Jacob has his dream of a divine apparition at 
 Bethel, he concludes not merely that Jehovah is present 
 there at the moment, but that the place is " the house of 
 God, the gate of heaven." And accordingly Bethel con- 
 tinued to be regarded as a sanctuary of the first class down 
 to the captivity. In like manner all the places where the 
 patriarchs were recorded to have worshipped or where God 
 appeared to them, figure as traditional holy places in the 
 later history, and at least one of them, that of Mamre, was 
 a notable sanctuary down to Christian times. We are 
 entitled to use these facts as illustrative of Semitic religion 
 in general, and not of the distinctive features of the 
 spiritual religion of the Old Testament ; for the worship of 
 Bethel, Shechem, Beersheba, and the other patriarchal holy 
 places, was mingled with Canaanite elements and is re- 
 garded as idolatrous by the prophets ; and the later ritual 
 at Mamre, which was put down by the Christian emperors,, 
 was purely heathenish.^ The conception, therefore, that 
 where the deity has once appeared in ancient times he is 
 still to be found by his worshippers, is not specific to the 
 Old Testament religion but is a common feature of Semitic 
 faith; It belongs in fact to the general principle that all 
 ancient religion is ruled by precedent. 
 
 1 Judges vi. 20, xiii. 19. 
 
 2 The evidence is collected by Eeland, Paloestina, p. 711.8517. 
 
110 HOLY PLACES IN LECT. in. 
 
 This law of precedent as forming a safe rule for ritual 
 institutions is, I say, common to the Old Testament 
 religion and to the surrounding heathenism ; the difference 
 lies in the interpretation put on it. And even in this 
 respect all parts of the Old Testament are not on the same 
 level. By a prophet like Isaiah the residence of Jehovah 
 in Zion is almost wholly dematerialised. Isaiah has not 
 risen to the full height of the New Testament conception 
 that God, who is spirit and is to be worshipped spiritually, 
 makes no distinction of spot with regard to His worship, 
 and is equally near to receive men's prayers in every place ; 
 but he falls short of this view, not out of regard for ritual 
 tradition, but because, conceiving Jehovah as the king of 
 Israel, the supreme director of its national polity, he 
 necessarily conceives His kingly activity as going forth 
 from the capital of the nation. But the ordinary concep- 
 tion of the Old Testament, in the historical books and in 
 the Law, is not so subtle as this. Jehovah is not tied to 
 one place more than another, but He is not to be found 
 except in the places where " He has set a memorial of His 
 name," and in these He " comes to His worshippers and 
 blesses them'' (Exod. xx. 24). Even this view rises above 
 the current ideas of the older Hebrews in so far as it 
 represents the establishment of fixed sanctuaries as an 
 accommodation to the necessities of man. It is obvious 
 that in the history of Jacob's vision the idea is not that 
 Jehovah came to Jacob, but that Jacob was unconsciously 
 guided to the place where there already was a ladder set 
 between earth and heaven, and where therefore the god- 
 head was peculiarly accessible. Precisely similar to this 
 is the old Hebrew conception of Sinai or Horeb, "the 
 Mount of God." It is clear that in Exod. iii. the ground 
 about the burning bush does not become holy because God 
 has appeared to Moses. On the contrary the theophany 
 
LECT. III. THE OLD TESTAMENT. Ill 
 
 takes place there because it is holy ground, Jehovah's 
 habitual dwelling-place. In Exod. xix. 4, when Jehovah 
 at Sinai says that He has brought the Israelites unto Him- 
 self, the meaning is that He has brought them to the Mount 
 of God ; and long after the establishment of the Hebrews 
 in Canaan, poets and prophets describe Jehovah, when He 
 comes to help His people, as marching from Sinai in 
 thundercloud and storm.^ 
 
 This point of view, which in the Old Testament appears 
 only as an occasional survival of primitive thought, corre- 
 sponds to the ordinary ideas of Semitic heathenism. The 
 local relations of the gods are natural relations ; holy 
 ground is not consecrated by or for man's worship, but men 
 worship at a particular spot because it is the natural home 
 or haunt of the god. Holy places in this sense are older 
 than temples, and even older than the beginnings of settled 
 life. The nomad shepherd or the savage hunter has no 
 fixed home, and cannot think of his god as having one, but 
 he has a district or beat to which his wanderings are 
 usually confined, and within it again he has his favourite 
 lairs or camping-places. And on this analogy he can 
 imagine for himself tracts of sacred ground, habitually 
 frequented by the gods, and special points within these 
 tracts which the deity particularly affects. By and by, 
 under the influence of agriculture and settled life, the 
 sacred tract becomes the estate of the god, and the special 
 sacred points within it become his temples ; but originally 
 the former is only a mountain or glade in the unenclosed 
 wilderness, and the latter are merely spots in the desert 
 
 1 Deut. xxxiii. 2 ; Judges v. 4 sqq. ; Hahak. iii. 3. That the sanctity of 
 Sinai is derived from the law-giving there is not the primitive idea. This 
 appears most clearly from the critical analysis of the Pentateuch, but is 
 sufficiently evident from the facts cited above ; indeed the whole narrative of 
 the law-giving implies a- prior sanctity of Mount Sinai, else why should the 
 Israelites have been led out of their way to receive the law there rather than 
 at any other place ? 
 
112 THE GODS AND LECT. III. 
 
 defined by some natural landmark, a cave, a rock, a 
 fountain or a tree. 
 
 We have seen that, when a sanctuary was once con- 
 stituted, the mere force of tradition and precedent, the 
 continuous custom of worshipping at it, were sufficient 
 to maintain its character. At the more developed 
 sanctuaries the temple, the image of the god, the 
 whole apparatus of ritual, the miraculous legends re- 
 counted by the priests, and the marvels that were 
 actually displayed before the eyes of the worshippers, 
 were to an uncritical age sufficient confirmation of the 
 belief that the place was indeed a house of God. But 
 in the most primitive sanctuaries there were no such 
 artificial aids to faith, and it is not so easy to realise 
 the process by which the traditional belief that a spot 
 in the wilderness was the sacred ground of a particular 
 deity became firmly established, Ultimately, as we have 
 seen, the proof that the deity frequents a particular place 
 lies in the fact that he manifests himself there, and the 
 proof is cumulative in proportion to the frequency of the 
 manifestations. The difficulty about this line of proof 
 is not that which naturally suggests itself to our minds. 
 "We find it hard to think of a visible manifestation of the 
 godhead as an actual occurrence, but all primitive peoples 
 believe in frequent theophanies, or at least in frequent 
 occasions of personal contact between men and super- 
 human powers. When all nature is mysterious and full 
 of unknown activities, any natural object or occurrence 
 which appeals strongly to the imagination, or excites 
 sentiments of awe and reverence, is readily taken for a 
 manifestation of divine or demoniac life. But a super- 
 natural being as such is not a god, he becomes a god only 
 when he enters into stated relations with man, or rather 
 with a community of men. In the belief of the heathen 
 
LECT. III. THE JINN. 113 
 
 Arabs, for example, nature is full of living beings of 
 superhuman kind, the Jinn or daemons.^ These jinn 
 are not pure spirits but corporeal beings, more like beasts 
 than men, for they are ordinarily represented as hairy, 
 but differing from ordinary beasts by their power of 
 assuming various shapes, like the were-wolves to whom 
 allusion has already been made. Like the wild beasts 
 they have, for the most part, no friendly or stated 
 relations with men, but are outside the pale of man's 
 society, and frequent savage and deserted places far from 
 the wonted tread of men.^ It appears from several 
 poetical passages of the Old Testament that the -northern 
 Semites beheved in demons of a precisely similar kind, 
 hairy beings (se'lnm), nocturnal monsters (liUth), which 
 haunted waste and desolate places, in fellowship with 
 jackals and ostriches and other animals that shun the 
 abodes of man.^ 
 
 In Islam the gods of heathenism are degraded into 
 jinn, just as the gods of north Semitic heathenism are 
 called siirim* in Lev. xvii. 7, or as the gods of Greece 
 and Eome became devils to the early Christians. In all 
 these cases the adherents of a higher faith were not 
 prepared to deny that the heathen gods really existed, and 
 did the things recorded of them ; the difference between 
 
 ^ For details as to the jinn in ancient times see Wellhaiisen, Heidentlmm, 
 p. 135 sqq. The later form of the belief in such beings, much modified by 
 Islam, is illustrated by Lane in Note 21 of the Introduction to his version 
 of the .4 rahian Nights. In the old translation of the Arabian Nights they 
 are called Genii. 
 
 2 Certain kinds of them however freqirent trees and even human 
 habitations, and these were identified with the serpents which appear 
 and disappear so mysteriously about walls and the roots of trees. See 
 Noldeke, Ztsclir. f. Volkerpsych. 1860, p. 412 sqq. ; Wellh. ut sup. p. 137. 
 For the snake as the form of the^inra of trees, see Rasmussen, Addit. p. 71, 
 
 compared with Jauhari and the Lisdn, s. rad. ]aA,s— 
 -" Isa. xiii. 21, xxxiv. 14 ; cf. Luke xi. 24. 
 
 * "Hairy demons," E.Y. "devils," but in Isa. xiii. 21 "satyrs." 
 
 H 
 
114 THE GODS AND LECT. hi. 
 
 gods and demons lies not in their nature and power — 
 for the heathen themselves did not rate the power of 
 their gods at omnipotence — but in their relations to 
 man. The jinn are gods without worshippers, and a 
 god who loses his worshippers goes back to the class 
 from which he came, as a being of vague and inde- 
 terminate powers who, having no personal relations to men, 
 is on the whole to be regarded as an enemy. The demons, 
 like the gods, have their particular haunts which are 
 regarded as awful and dangerous places. But the haunt 
 of the jinn differs from a sanctuary as the jinn themselves 
 diifer from gods. The one is feared and avoided, the 
 other is approached, not indeed without awe, but yet with 
 hopeful confidence; for though there is no essential physical 
 distinction between demons and gods, there is the funda- 
 mental moral difference that the jinn are strangers and 
 so, by the law of the desert, enemies, while the god, to 
 the worshippers who frequent his sanctuary, is a known 
 and friendly power. In fact the earth may be said to be 
 parcelled out between demons and wild beasts on the one 
 hand, and gods and men on the other. To the former 
 belong the untrodden wilderness with all its unknown 
 perils, the wastes and jungles that lie outside the familiar 
 tracks and pasture grounds of the tribe, and which only 
 the boldest men venture upon without terror ; to the 
 latter belong the regions that man knows and habitually 
 frequents, and within which he has established relations, 
 not only with his human neighbours, but with the super- 
 natural beings that have their haunts side by side with 
 him. And as man gradually encroaches on the wilderness 
 and drives back the wild beasts before him, so the gods in 
 like manner drive out the demons, and spots that were 
 once feared, as the habitation of mysterious and pre- 
 sumably malignant powers, lose their terrors and either 
 
LECT. III. THE JINN. 115 
 
 become common ground or are transformed into the seats 
 of friendly deities. From this point of view the recogni- 
 tion of certain spots as haunts of the gods is the religious 
 expression of the gradual subjugation of nature by man. 
 In conquering the earth for himself primitive man has 
 to contend not only with material difficulties but with 
 superstitious terror of the unknown, paralysing his energies 
 and forbidding him freely to put forth his strength to 
 subdue nature to his use. AVhere the unknown demons 
 reign he is afraid to set his foot and make the good things 
 of nature his own. But where the god has his haunt he 
 is on friendly soil, and has a protector near at hand ; the 
 mysterious powers of nature are his allies instead of his 
 enemies, " he is in league with the stones of the field and 
 the wild beasts of the field are at peace with him." ^ 
 
 The triumph of the gods over the demons, like the 
 triumph of man over wild beasts, must have been effected 
 very gradually, and may be regarded as finally sealed and 
 secured only in the agricultural stage, when the god of the 
 community became also the supreme lord of the land and 
 the author of all the good things therein. When this 
 stage was reached the demons — or supernatural beings 
 that have no stated relations to their human neighbours — 
 were either driven out into waste and untrodden places, 
 or were reduced to insignificance as merely subordinate 
 beings, of which private superstition might take account, 
 but with which public religion had nothing to do. 
 Within the region frequented by a community of men 
 the god of the community was supreme; every pheno- 
 menon that seemed supernatural was ordinarily referred to 
 his initiative and regarded as a token of his personal 
 presence, or of the presence of his messengers and agents ; 
 
 1 Job V. 23. The allusion to the wild beasts is characteristic ; cf. Hos. ii. 
 20 (18) ; 2 Kings xvii. 26. 
 
116 THE GODS AND lect. hi. 
 
 and iu consequence every place that had special super- 
 natural associations was regarded, not as a haunt of 
 unknown demons, but as a holy place of the known god. 
 This is the point of view which prevailed among the 
 ancient Hebrews, and undoubtedly prevailed also among 
 their Canaanite neighbours. Up to a certain point the 
 process involved in all this is not difficult to follow. That 
 the powers that haunt a district in which men live and 
 prosper must be friendly powers is an obvious conclusion. 
 But it is not so easy to see how the vague idea of super- 
 natural but friendly neighbours passes into the precise 
 conception of a definite local god, or how the local power 
 comes to be confidently identified with the tribal god of 
 the community. The tribal god, as we have seen, has very 
 definite and permanent relations to his worshippers, of a 
 kind quite different from the local relations which we 
 have just been speaking of; he is not merely their 
 friendly neighbour, but (at least in most cases) their 
 kinsman and the parent of their race. How does it come 
 about that the parent of a race of men is identified with 
 the superhuman being that haunts a certain spot, and 
 manifests himself there by visible apparitions, or other 
 evidence of his presence satisfactory to the untutored 
 mind ? The importance of such an identification is 
 enormous, for it makes a durable alliance between man 
 and certain parts of nature which are not subject to his 
 will and control, and so permanently raises his position in 
 the scale of the universe, setting him free, within a certain 
 range, from the crushing sense of constant insecurity and 
 vague dread of the unknown powers that close him in on 
 every side. So great a step in the emancipation of man 
 from bondage to his natural surroundings cannot have 
 been easily made, and is not to be explained by any slight 
 d priori method. The problem is not one to be solved off- 
 
LECT. III. THE JINN. 117 
 
 hand, but to be carefully kept in mind as we continue our 
 studies, and broaden our views of ancient religion and of 
 the primitive processes of thought on which its develop- 
 ment rests. 
 
 There is one thing however in connection with this 
 problem which it may be well to note at once. We have 
 seen that through the local god, who on the one hand has 
 fixed relations to a race of men, and on the other hand 
 has fixed relations to a definite sphere of nature, the 
 worshipper is brought into stated and permanent alliance 
 with certain parts of his material environment which are 
 not siibject to his will and control. But within somewhat 
 narrow limits exactly the same thing is effected, in the 
 very earliest stage of savage society, and in a way that 
 does not involve any belief in an individual stock-god, 
 through the institution of totemism. In the totem stage 
 of society each kinship or stock of savages believes itself 
 to be physically akin to some natural kind of animate or 
 inanimate things, most generally to some kind of animal. 
 Every animal of this kind is looked upon as a brother, is 
 treated with the same respect as a human clansman, and 
 is believed to aid his human relations by a variety of 
 friendly services.-^ The importance of such a permanent 
 alliance, based on the indissoluble bond of kinship, with 
 a whole group of natural beings lying outside the sphere 
 of humanity, is not to be measured by our knowledge of 
 what animals can and cannot do. For as their nature is 
 imperfectly known, savage imagination clothes them with 
 all sort of marvellous attributes ; it is seen that their 
 powers differ from those of man and it is supposed that 
 they can do many things that are beyond his scope. In 
 
 1 See J. G. Frazer, Totemism (Edinburgh : A. & C. Black, 1887), p. 20 
 sqq. This little volume is the most ccnvenieut summary of the main facts 
 about totemism. 
 
118 TOTEMS AND lect. hi. 
 
 fact they are invested with gifts such as we should call 
 supernatural, and of the very same kind which heathenism 
 ascribes to the gods — for example with the power of 
 giving omens and oracles, of healing diseases and the 
 like. 
 
 The origin of totemism is as much a problem as the 
 origin of local gods. But it is highly improbable that the 
 two problems are independent ; for in both cases the 
 thing to be explained is the emancipation of a society of 
 men from the dread of certain natural agencies, by the 
 establishment of the conception of a physical alliance and 
 affinity between the two parts. It is a strong thing to 
 suppose that a conception so remarkable as this, which is 
 found all over the world, and which among savage races 
 is invariably put in the totem form, had an altogether dis- 
 tinct and independent origin among those races which we 
 know only in a state of society higher than that of which 
 totemism is characteristic. The belief in local nature-gods 
 that are also clan-gods may not be directly evolved out of 
 an earlier totemism, but there can be no reasonable doubt 
 that it is evolved out of ideas or usages which also find 
 their expression in totemism, and therefore must go back 
 to the most primitive stage of savage society. It is 
 important to bear this in mind, if only that we may be 
 constantly warned against explaining primitive religious 
 institutions by conceptions that belong to a relatively 
 advanced stage of human thought. But the comparison 
 of totemism can do more than this negative service to our 
 enquiry, for it calls our attention to certain habits of very 
 early thought which throw light on several points in the 
 conception of local sanctuaries. 
 
 In the system of totemism men have relations not with 
 individual powers of nature, i.e. with gods, but with certain 
 classes of natural agents. The idea is that nature, like 
 
LECT. III. THE JINN. 119 
 
 mankind, is divided into groups or societies of things, 
 analogous to the groups or kindreds of human society. As 
 life analogous to human life is imagined to permeate all 
 parts of the universe, the application of this idea may 
 readily be extended to inanimate as well as to animate 
 things. In Jotham's fable the trees are represented as a 
 commonwealth and make themselves a king (Judg. ix. 8 
 sqq.), and fables, it will be admitted, are only modern 
 reproductions of primitive conceptions about the life of 
 nature. But the statistics of totemism shew that the 
 natural kinds with which the savage mind was most 
 occupied were the various species of animals. It is with 
 them especially that he has permanent relations of kinship 
 or hostility, and round them are gathered in a peculiar 
 degree his superstitious hopes and fears and observances. 
 Keeping these facts before us let us look back for a 
 moment at the Arabian jinn. One difference between 
 gods and jinn we have already noted ; the gods have 
 worshippers and the jinn have not. But there is another 
 difference that now forces itself on our attention ; the gods 
 have individuality, and the jinn have not. In the Arabian 
 Nights we findymw with individual names and distinctive 
 personalities, but in the old legends the individual jinni 
 who may happen to appear to a man has no more a 
 distinct personality than a beast.^ He is only one of a 
 
 ' This may be illustrated by reference to " point of grammar which is of 
 some interest and is not made clear in the ordinary books. The Arab says 
 " the ghul appeared," not " a ghul appeared," just as David says, "the 
 lion came and the bear " (1 Sam. xvii. 34 ; Amos iii. 12, v. 19). The 
 definite article is used because in such cases definition cannot he carried 
 beyond the indication of the species. The individuals are numerically 
 different, but qualitatively indistinguishable. This use of the article is 
 sharply to be distinguished from such a case as £J'''Nn in 1 Sam. ix. 9, 
 where the article is generic, and a general practice of men is spoken of, 
 and also from cases like Qibsn (Gen. xiv. 13), n'Xn, Uir\ ^SJ, etc., where 
 the noun is really a verbal adjective implying an action, and the person is 
 defined by the action ascribed to him. 
 
120 THE JINN AND lect. hi. 
 
 group of beings which to man are indistinguishable from 
 one another, and which are regarded as making up a 
 nation or clan of superhuman beings, inhabiting a par- 
 ticular locality, and united together by bonds of kinship 
 and by the practice of the blood-feud, so that the whole 
 clan acts together in defending its haunts from intrusion 
 or in avenging on men any injury done to one of its 
 members. This conception of the communities of the jinn 
 is precisely identical with the savage conception of the' 
 animal creation. Each kind of animal is regarded as an 
 organised kindred, held together by ties of blood and the 
 practice of blood revenge, and so presenting a united front 
 when it is assailed by men in the person of any of its 
 members. Alike in the Arabian superstitions about the 
 jinn and in savage superstitions about animals it is this 
 solidarity between all the members of one species, rather 
 than the strength of the individual jinm or animal, that 
 makes it an object of superstitious terror. 
 
 These points of similarity between the families of the 
 jinn in Arabia and the families of animals among savages 
 are sufficiently striking, but they do not nearly exhaust the 
 case. "We have already seen that the jinn usually appear 
 to men in animal form, though they can also take the shape 
 of men. This last feature however cannot be regarded as 
 constituting a fundamental distinction between them and 
 ordinary animals in the mind of the Arabs, who believed 
 that there were whole tribes of men who had the power of 
 assuming animal form.^ On the whole it appears that the 
 supernatural powers of the jinn do not differ from those 
 which savages, in the totem stage, ascribe to wild beasts. 
 They appear and disappear mysteriously, and are connected 
 with supernatural voices and warnings, with unexplained 
 sickness or death, just as totem animals are ; they occasion- 
 1 See Additional Note A, The trannformationa of the Jinn. 
 
LECT. III. ANIMAL KINDS. 121 
 
 ally enter into friendly relations or even into marriages 
 with men, but animals do the same in the legends of 
 savages ; -finally, a madman is possessed by the jinn 
 (majnun), but there are a hundred examples of the soul of 
 a beast being held to pass into a man. The accounts of 
 the jinn which we possess have come to us from an age 
 when the Arabs were no longer pure savages, and had 
 ceased to ascribe demoniac attributes to most animals ; and 
 our narrators, when they repeat tales about animals endowed 
 with speech or supernatural gifts, assume aS a matter of 
 course that they are not ordinary animals but a special 
 class of beings. But the stories themselves are just such 
 as savages tell about real animals ; the blood-feud between 
 the Banir Sahm and the jinn of Dhii Tawa is simply a 
 war between men and all creeping things, which, as in the 
 Old Testament, have a common name -^ and are regarded as 
 a single species or kindred ; and the " wild beast of tbe 
 wild beasts of the jinn," which Taabbata Sharran slew in 
 a night encounter and carried home under his arm, was as 
 concrete an animal as one can well imagine.^ The proper 
 form of the jinn seems to be always that of some kind of 
 lower animal, or a monstrous composition of animal forms, 
 as appears even in later times in the description of the 
 four hundred and twenty species that were marshalled 
 before Solomon.^ But the tendency to give human shape 
 to creatures that can reason and speak is irresistible as soon 
 as men pass beyond pure savagery, and just as animal gods 
 
 1 Hanash='B.eh. pC, K'B"!. Tortlie story see Azraci, p. 261 sgg.yWellh., 
 p. 138. 
 
 2 Agh. xviii. 210 sqq. Taabbata Sharrau is an historical person, and the 
 incident also is probably a fact. From the verses in which he describes his 
 foe it would seem that the supposed ghfd was one of the feline carnivora. 
 In Damiri, ii. 212, last line, a g/iul appears in the form of a thieving cat. 
 
 2 Cazwini, i. 372 sq. Even when they appear in the guise of men they 
 have some animal attribute, e.g. a dog's hairy paw in place of a hand, 
 Damiri, ii. 213, 1. 22. 
 
122 THE JINN AND lect. hi. 
 
 pass over into anthropomorphic gods, figured as riding on 
 animals or otherwise associated with them, the jinn begin 
 to be conceived as manlike in form, and the supernatural 
 animals of the original conception appear as the beasts on 
 which they ride/ Ultimately the only animals directly 
 and constantly identified with the jinn were snakes 
 and other noxious creeping things. The authority of 
 certain utterances of the prophet had a share in this 
 limitation, but it is natural enough that these creatures, 
 of which men everywhere have a peculiar horror and 
 which continue to haunt and molest men's habitations 
 after wild beasts have been driven out into the desert, 
 should be the last to be stripped of their supernatural 
 character.^ 
 
 It appears then that even in modern accounts jinn 
 and various kinds of animals are closely associated, while 
 
 ^ The stories in which the aijparition takes this shape are obviously laje. 
 When a demon appears riding on a wolf or an ostrich to give his opinion on 
 the merits of the Arabian poets (^^A. viii. 78, ix. 163, cited by Wellh. , p. 137), 
 we have to do with literary fiction rather than genuine belief ; and similarly 
 the story of a ghul who rides on an ostrich in Cazwini, i. 373 sq., is only an 
 edifying Moslem tale. These stories stand in marked contrast with the 
 genuine old story inMaidani, i. 181, where the demon actually is an ostrich. 
 The transition to the anthropomorphic view is seen in the story of Taabbata 
 Sharran, where the monster ghal is called one of the wild beasts of the jinn, 
 as if he were only their animal emissary. The riding beasts of the jinn are 
 of many species ; they include the jackal, the gazelle, the porcupine, and it 
 is mentioned as an exceptional thing that the hare is not one of them {Sihdh 
 s.v. ; Rasmussen, Addit. p. 71, 1. 14), for which reason amulets are made 
 from parts of its body (cf ZDMO. xxxix. 329). Prof. De Goeje supplies me 
 with an interesting quotation from Zamakhshari, Fdic, i. 71 : " Ignorant 
 people think that wild beasts are the cattle of the jinn, and that a man who 
 meets a wild beast is affected by them with mental disorder. " The paralys- 
 ing effect of terror is assigned to supernatural agency. Cf. Arist. Mir. Ausc. 
 145 : "In Arabia there is said to be a kind of hyaena, which when it sees 
 a beast first {i.e. before being seen, Plato, Mep. i. p. 336 D ; Theocr. xiv. 22 ; 
 Virgil, Ed. 9. 54) or treads on a man's shadow, renders it or him incapable 
 of voice and movement." 
 
 ^ The snake is an object of superstition in all countries. For superstitions 
 connected with ' ' creeping things " in general among the northern Semites, 
 see Ezek. viii. 10. 
 
LECT. III. ANIMAL KINDS. 123 
 
 in the older legends they are practically identified, and 
 also that nothing is told of the jinn which savages do not 
 tell of animals. Under these circumstances it requires a 
 very exaggerated scepticism to doubt that the jinn, with all 
 their mysterious powers, are mainly nothing else than more 
 or less modernised representatives of animal kinds, clothed 
 with the supernatural attributes inseparable from the 
 savage conception of animate nature. A species of jinn 
 alKed by Idnship with a tribe of men would be indistin- 
 guishable from a totem kind, and instead of calling the 
 jinn gods without worshippers we may, with greater pre- 
 cision, speak of them as potential totems without human 
 kinsfolk. This view of the nature of the jinn helps us to 
 understand the principle on which particular spots were 
 viewed as their haunts. In the vast solitudes of the 
 Arabian desert every strange sound is readily taken to be 
 the murmuring of the jinn, and every strange sight to be a 
 demoniac apparition. But, when certain spots were fixed 
 on as being pre-eminently haunted places, we must neces- 
 sarily suppose that the sights and sounds that were deemed 
 supernatural really were more frequent there than else- 
 where. Mere fancy might keep the supernatural reputation 
 of a place alive, but in its origin even the uncontrolled 
 imagination of the savage must have some point of contact 
 with reality. Now the nocturnal sights and sounds that 
 affray the wayfarer in haunted regions, and the stories of 
 huntsmen who go up into a mountain of evil name and 
 are carried off by the ghul, point distinctly to haunted spots 
 being the places where evil beasts walk by night. More- 
 over, while the jinn frequent waste and desert places in 
 general, their special haunts are just those where wild 
 beasts gather most thickly — not the arid and lifeless 
 desert, but the mountain glades and passes, the neigh- 
 bourhood of trees and groves, especially the dense 
 
124 THE FAVOURITE HAUNTS lect. hi. 
 
 untrodden thickets that occupy moist places in the 
 bottoms of the valleys.^ 
 
 These, it is true, are the places where the spontaneous 
 life of nature is most actively exhibited in all its phases, 
 and where therefore it may seem self-evident that man will 
 be most apt to recognise the presence of divine or at least 
 of superhuman powers. But so general an explanation as 
 this is no explanation at all. Primitive religion was 
 not a philosophical pantheism, and the primitive deities 
 were not vague expressions for the principle of life in 
 nature. What we have to explain is that the places where 
 the life of nature is most intense — or rather some of these 
 places — appeared to the primitive Semite to be the 
 habitations, not of abstract divine powers, but of very 
 concrete and tangible beings, with the singular attributes 
 which we have found the jinn to possess, and that this 
 belief did not rest on mere general impressions, but was 
 supported by reference to actual demoniac apparitions. 
 The usual vague talk about an instinctive sense of the 
 presence of the deity in, the manifestations of natural life 
 does not carry us a whit nearer the comprehension of these 
 beliefs, but it is helpful to note that spots of natural fertility, 
 untouched by man's hand and seldom trodden by his foot, 
 fire the favoured haunts of wild beasts, that all savages 
 clothe wild beasts and other animals with the very same 
 
 ' All this, and especially the association of t^iejinn with natural thickets, 
 is well brought out by Wellhausen, Heidenthum, p. 136, though he offers no 
 explanation of the reason why "the direct impression of divine life present 
 in nature" is associated with so bizarre a conception. In Southern Arabia 
 natural jungles are still avoided as the haunts of wild beasts ; no Arab, 
 according to "Wredfe, willingly spends a night in the Wady Ma'isha, 
 because its jungles are the haunts of many species of dangerous carni- 
 vora (Wrede's i?e«se in Hadhramaut, ed. Maltzan, p. 131). The lions of 
 Al-Shara and of the jungles of the Jordan valley (Zech. xi. 3) may be com- 
 pared, and it is to be remembered that in savage life, when man's struggle 
 with wild beasts is one of life and death, the awe associated with such places 
 is magnified tenfold. 
 
LECT. III. OF THE JINN. 
 
 supernatural qualities which the Arabs ascribe to the jinn, 
 and that the Arabs speak of Baccar as a place famous for 
 its demons in exactly the same matter-of-fact way in 
 which they speak of Al-Shara and its famous lions. 
 
 While the most marked attributes of the jinn are 
 plainly derived from anunalg, it is to be remembered that 
 the savage imagination, which ascribes supernatural powers 
 to all parts of animate nature, extends the sphere of 
 animate life in a very liberal fashion. Totems are not 
 seldom taken from trees, which appear to do everything 
 for their adherents that a totem animal could do. And 
 indeed that trees are animate, and have perceptions passions 
 and a reasonable soul, was argued even by the early Greek 
 philosophers on such evidence as their movements in the 
 wind and the elasticity of their branches.^ Thus while 
 the supernatural associations of groves and thickets may 
 appear to be sufficiently explained by the fact that these 
 are the favourite lairs of wild beasts, it appears probable 
 that the association of certain kinds of jinn with trees 
 must in many cases be regarded as primary, the trees 
 themselves being conceived as animated demoniac beings. 
 In Hadramaut it is stiU dangerous to touch the sensitive 
 Mimosa, because the spirit that resides in the plant will 
 avenge the injury.^ The same idea appears in the story of 
 Harb b. Omayya and Mirdas b. Abl 'Amir, historical 
 persons who lived a generation before Mohammed. When 
 these two men set fire to an untrodden and tangled thicket, 
 with the design to bring it under cultivation, the demons 
 of the place flew away with doleful cries in the shape of 
 white serpents, and the intruders died soon afterwards. 
 The jinn it was believed slew them "because they had 
 set fire to their dwelling-place." ^ Here the spirits of the 
 
 1 Aristotle, Deplantis, i. p. 815 ; Plutarcli, Plac. Philos. v. 26. 
 
 " Wrede's Reise, ed. Maltzan, p. 131. ^ Agh. vi. 92, xx. 135 aq. 
 
126 SAVAGE VIEWS OF lect. iii. 
 
 trees take serpent form when they leave their natural 
 seats, and similarly in Moslem superstition the jinn of the 
 'oshr and the hamdfa are serpents which frequent trees of 
 these species. But primarily supernatural life and power 
 reside in the trees themselves, which are conceived as 
 animate and even as rational. Moslim b. 'Ocba heard in a 
 dream the voice of the gharcad tree designating him to the 
 command of the army of Yazid against Medina.^ Or 
 again the value of the gum of the acacia {samora) as an 
 amulet is connected with the idea that it is a clot of 
 menstruous blood (haicl), i.e. that the tree is a woman.^ 
 And it has already been remarked that the fables of trees 
 that speak and act like human beings ^ have their origin in 
 the savage personification of vegetable species. 
 
 In brief it is not unjust to say that, wherever the 
 spontaneous life of nature was manifested in an emphatic 
 way, the ancient Semite saw something supernatural. But 
 this is only half the truth ; the other half is that the 
 supernatural was conceived in genuinely savage fashion, 
 and identified with the quasi-human life ascribed to the 
 various species of animals or plants or even of inorganic 
 things. 
 
 For indeed certain phenomena of inorganic nature 
 directly suggest to the primitive mind the idea of living 
 force, and the presence of a living agent. That the stars 
 move because they are alive is a widespread belief, which 
 
 1 Agh. i. 14. 
 
 2 Easmussen, Add. p. 71 ; Zamakhshari, Asas s.v. ^Jj,^^. New-born 
 children's heads were rubbed with the gum to keep away the jinn, just as 
 they used to be daubed with the blood of the sacrifice called 'acica (see my 
 Kimhip, p. 152). The blood of menstruation has supernatural qualities 
 among all races, and the value of the hare's foot as an amulet was connected 
 with the belief that this animal menstruates (Rasm. ut sup,). The same 
 thing was affirmed of the hysena, which has many magical qualities and 
 peculiar affinities to man {Kinship, p. 199). 
 
 ^ Judg. ix. 8 sqq. ; 2 Kings xiv. 9. 
 
LECT. III. THE SUPERNATURAL. 127 
 
 underlies the planet and constellation worship of the 
 Semites as of other ancient nations. Volcanic phenomena, 
 in like manner, are taken for manifestations of supernatural 
 life, as we see in the Greek myths of Typhoeus and in the 
 Moslem legend of the crater of Barahut in Hadramaut, 
 whose rumblings are held to be the groans of lost souls ; ^ 
 and again, mephitic vapours rising from fissures in the 
 earth are taken to be potent spiritual influences.^ But 
 remote phenomena like the movements of the stars, and 
 exceptional phenomena like volcanoes, influence the savage 
 imagination less than mundane and everyday things, which 
 are not less mysterious to him and touch his common life 
 more closely. It seems to be a mistake to suppose that 
 distant and exceptional things are those from which primi- 
 tive man forms his general views of the supernatural ; on 
 the contrary he interprets the remote by the near, and 
 thinks of heavenly bodies, for example, as men or animals, 
 like the animate denizens of earth.' Of all inanimate 
 things that which has the best marked supernatural associa- 
 tions among the Semites is flowing or as the Hebrews 
 say "living" water. In one of the oldest fragments of 
 Hebrew poetry * the fountain is addressed as a living being ; 
 and sacred wells are among the oldest and most ineradicable 
 
 1 See Yacut, i. 598; De Goeje, Hadramaut, -p. 20 (Rev. Col. Intern. 1886). 
 Does this belief rest on an early myth connected with the name of Hadramaut 
 itself? See Olshausen in Rhein. Mus. Ser. 3, vol. viii. p. 322 ; Sitzungsb. 
 d. Berliner Ac. 1879, p. 571 sqq. 
 
 ^ It may be conjectured that the indignation of the jinn at the violation 
 of their haunts, as it appears in the story of Harb and Mirdas, would not 
 have been so firmly believed in but for the fact that places such as the jinn 
 were thought to frequent are also the haunts of ague, which is particularly 
 active when land is cultivated for the first time. 
 
 3 See Lang, Myth, Sitital and Religion, chap. v. Among the Semites the 
 worship of sun, moon and stars does not appear to have had any great 
 vogue in the earliest times. Among the Hebrews there is little trace of it 
 before Assyrian influence became potent, and in Arabia it is by no means 
 so prominent as is sometimes supposed ; cf. 'Wellhausen, p. 173 sqq. 
 
 * Num. xxi. 17, 18 : " Spring up, well ! sing ye to it ! " 
 
128 ORIGIN OF 
 
 LECT. III. 
 
 objects of reverence among all the Semites, and are 
 credited with oracular powers and a sort of volition by 
 which they receive or reject offerings.^ Of course these 
 superstitions often take the form of a belief that the sacred 
 spring is the dwelling-place of beings which from time to 
 time emerge from it in human or animal form, but the 
 fundamental idea is that the water itself is the living 
 organism of a demoniac life, not a mere dead organ.^ 
 
 If now we turn from the haunts of the demons to 
 sanctuaries proper, the seats of known and friendly powers 
 with whom men maintain stated relations, we find that in 
 their physical character the homes of the gods are precisely 
 similar to those of the jinn — mountains and thickets, fertile 
 spots beside a spring or stream, or sometimes points 
 defined by the presence of a single notable tree. As man 
 encroaches on the wilderness, and brings these spots within 
 the range of his daily life and walk, they lose their terror 
 but not their supernatural associations, and the friendly deity 
 takes the place of the dreaded demons. The conclusion to 
 be drawn from this is obvious. The physical characters 
 that were held to mark out a holy place are not to be 
 explained by conjectures based on the more developed type 
 of heathenism, but must be regarded as taken over from 
 the x^rimitive beliefs of savage man. The nature of the 
 
 1 On sacred fountains among the Semites see in general Baudissin, Studien, 
 ii. 154 sqq,, and infra, p. 153 sqq. Waters that receive or reject offerings — 
 the rejected gifts refusing to sink or being oast up again — are those of Aphaea 
 (Zosimus, i. 58) and the Stygian cataract at Dia in the Nabatsean desert 
 (Damascius, Vit. Isid. § 199). At Daphne oracles were obtained by dipping 
 a laurel leaf in the sacred stream (Sozomen, v. 19). Cf. the ordeal by casting 
 a tablet into the water at Pajici in Sicily : the tablet sank if what was 
 written on it was false (Arist., Mir. Ausc. 67). I cite these particulars here 
 because they are most naturally understood as implying a belief that the 
 water itself was instinct with divine life and not merely a mechanical organ 
 of a deity outside. 
 
 " In Arabian belief healing springs derive their power from 
 examples, ZDMG. xxxviii. 586 sq. 
 
LECT. HI. HOLY PLACES. 129 
 
 god did not determine the place of his sanctuary, but 
 conversely the features of the sanctuary had an important 
 share in determining the development of ideas as to the 
 functions of the god. How this was possible we have seen 
 in the conception of the local Baalim. The spontaneous 
 luxuriance of marshy lands already possessed supernatural 
 associations when there was no thought of bringing it 
 under the service of man by cultivation, and when the rich 
 valley bottoms were avoided with superstitious terror as 
 the haunts of formidable natural enemies. How this 
 terror was first broken through, and the transformation of 
 certain groups of hostile demons into friendly and kindred 
 powers was first effected, we cannot tell ; we can only say 
 that the same transformation is already effected, by means 
 of totemism, in the most primitive societies of savages, and 
 that there is no record of a stage in human society in which 
 each community of men did not claim kindred and alliance 
 with some group or species of the living powers of nature. 
 But if we take this decisive step for granted, the subsequent 
 development of the relation of the gods to the land follows by 
 a kind of moral necessity, and the transformation of the vague 
 friendly powers that haunt the seats of spontaneous natural 
 life into the beneficent agricultural Baalim, the lords of the 
 land and its waters, the givers of life and fertility to all that 
 dwell on it, goes naturally hand in hand with the develop- 
 ment of agriculture and the laws of agricultural society. 
 
 I have tried to put this argument in such a way as may 
 not commit us prematurely to the hypothesis that the 
 friendly powers of the Semites were originally totems, i.e. 
 that the relations of certain kindred communities of men 
 with certain groups of natural powers were established 
 before these natural powers had ceased to be directly 
 identified with species of plants and animals. But if my 
 analysis of the nature of the jinn is correct, the conclusion 
 
130 SEMITIC 
 
 LECT. III. 
 
 that the Semites did pass through the totem stage can be 
 avoided only by supposing them to be an exception to the 
 universal rule, that even the most primitive savages have 
 not only enemies but permanent allies (which at so early a 
 stage in society necessarily means kinsfolk) among the 
 non-human or super-human animate kinds by which the 
 universe is peopled. And this supposition is so extrava- 
 gant that no one is likely to adopt it. On the other hand 
 it may be argued with more plausibility that totemism, if 
 it ever did exist, disappeared when the Semites emerged 
 from savagery, and that it is open to us to suppose that 
 the religion of the race, in its higher stages, rested on 
 altogether independent bases. Whether this hypothesis is 
 or is not admissible must be determined by an actual 
 examuiation of the higher heathenism. If its rites usages 
 and beliefs really are independent of savage ideas, and of 
 the purely savage conception of nature of which totemism 
 is only one aspect, the hypothesis is legitimate ; but it is 
 not legitimate if the higher heathenism itself is permeated 
 in all its parts by savage ideas, and if its ritual and insti- 
 tutions are throughout in the closest contact with savage 
 ritual and institutions of totem type. That the latter is 
 the true state of the case will I believe become over- 
 whelmingly clear as we proceed with pur survey of the 
 phenomena of Semitic religion ; and a very substantial 
 step towards the proof that it is so has already been taken, 
 when we have found that the sanctuaries of the Semitic 
 world are identical in physical character with the haunts 
 of the jinn, so that as regards their local associations the 
 gods must be viewed as simply replacing the plant and 
 animal demons.^ If this is so we can hardly avoid the 
 
 ' The complete development of this argument as it hears on the nature of 
 the gods must be reserved for a later course of lectures ; but a provisional 
 discussion of some points on which a difficulty may arise will be found 
 below : see Additionai Note B, Gods, Demons, and Plants or Animals. 
 
LECT. III. TOTEMISM. 131 
 
 conclusion that some of the Semitic gods are of totem 
 origin, and we may expect to find the most distinct traces 
 of this origin at the oldest sanctuaries. But we are not to 
 suppose that every local deity will have totem associations, 
 for new gods as well as new sanctuaries might doubtless 
 spring up at a later stage of human progress than that of 
 which totemism is characteristic. Even holy places that 
 had an old connection with the demons may, in many 
 instances, not have come to be looked upon as the abode of 
 friendly powers and become sanctuaries proper, i.e. seats of 
 worship, till the demons had ceased to be directly identified 
 with species of plants and animals, and had acquired quasi- 
 human forms like the nymphs and satyrs of the Greeks. 
 It is one thing to say that the phenomena of Semitic 
 religion carry us back to totemism, and another thing to 
 say that they are all to be explained from totemism. 
 
LECTUEE IV. 
 
 HOLY PLACES IN THEIR RELATION TO MAN. 
 
 I HAVE spoken hitherto of the physical characters of the 
 sanctuary, as the haunt of divine beings that prove, in the 
 last resort, to be themselves parts of the mundane universe, 
 and so have natural connections with sacred localities ; let 
 us now proceed to look at the places of the gods in another 
 aspect, to wit in their relation to men, and the conduct 
 which men are called upon to observe at and towards them. 
 The fundamental principle by which this is regulated is 
 that the sanctuary is holy, and must not be treated as a 
 common place. The distinction between what is holy and 
 what is common is one of the most important things in 
 ancient religion, but also one which it is very difficult to 
 grasp precisely, because its interpretation varied from age 
 to age with the general progress of religious thought. To 
 us holiness is an ethical idea. God, the perfect being, is 
 the type of holiness ; men are holy in proportion as their 
 lives and character are godlike ; places and things can be 
 called holy only by a figure, on account of their associa- 
 tions with spiritual things. This conception of holiness 
 goes back to the Hebrew prophets, especially to Isaiah; 
 but it is not the ordinary conception of antique religion, 
 nor does it correspond to the original sense of the Semitic 
 words that we translate by " holy." While it is not easy 
 to fiix the exact idea of holiness in ancient Semitic religion, 
 it is quite certain that it has nothing to do with morality 
 
LECT. IV. HOLINESS. 133 
 
 and purity of life. Holy persons were such, not in virtue 
 of their character but in virtue of their race, function, or 
 mere material consecration ; and at the Canaanite shrines 
 the name of " holy " (masc. egdeshim, fem. cSdeshotli) was 
 specially appropriated to a class of degraded wretches, 
 devoted to the most shameful practices of a corrupt 
 religion, whose life, apart from its connection with the 
 sanctuary, would have been disgraceful even from the 
 standpoint of heathenism. But holiness in antique 
 religion is not mainly an attribute of persons. The gods 
 are holy,^ and their ministers of whatever kind or grade 
 are holy also, but holy seasons holy places and holy 
 things, that is seasons places and things that stand in a 
 special relation to the godhead and are withdrawn by 
 divine sanction from some or all ordinary uses, are 
 equally to be considered in determining what holiness 
 means. Indeed the holiness of the gods is an expression 
 to which it is hardly possible to attach a definite sense 
 apart from the hohness of their physical surroundings ; 
 it shows itself in and by the sanctity attached to the 
 persons places things and times through which the gods 
 and men come in contact with one another. The holiness 
 of the sanctuary, which is the matter immediately before 
 us, seems also to be on the whole the particular form of 
 sanctity which lends itself most readily to independent 
 investigation. Holy persons holy things and holy times, 
 as they are conceived in antiquity, all presuppose the 
 existence of holy places at which the persons minister, 
 the things are preserved, and the times are celebrated. 
 Nay the holiness of the godhead itself is manifest to men, 
 not equally at all places, but specially at those places 
 where the gods are immediately present and from which 
 
 ' The Phoenicians speak of "the holy gods" (DB'^p^ Dab^n, C. 1. 8. 
 No. 3, 1. 9, 22), as the Hebrew.s predicate holiness of Jehovah. 
 
134 SACRED TRACTS lect. iv. 
 
 their activity proceeds. In fact the idea of holiness comes 
 into prominence wherever the gods come into touch with 
 men ; holiness is not so much a thing that characterises the 
 gods and divine things in themselves, as the most general 
 notion that governs their relations with humanity ; and, as 
 these relations are concentrated at particular points of the 
 earth's surface, it is at these points that we must expect to 
 find the clearest indications of what holiness means. 
 
 At first sight the holiness of the sanctuary may seem 
 to be only the expression of the idea that the sanctuary 
 belongs to the god, that the temple and its precincts are 
 his homestead and domain, reserved for his use and that 
 of his ministers, as a man's house and estate are reserved 
 for himself and his household. In one respect, at least, the 
 sanctuary exactly resembles private property ; it cannot be 
 appropriated to the private use of any other person than 
 the god. Not only is no one permitted to appropriate the 
 soil but no one is permitted to make private invasions on 
 the pertinents of the sanctuary. In Arabia for example, 
 where there were great tracts of sacred land, it was for- 
 bidden to cut fodder, fell trees, or hunt game ; ^ all the 
 natural products of the holy soil were exempt from human 
 appropriation. But it would be rash to conclude that 
 
 1 Wellh., Heidenthum, p. 102, and refs. there given to the ordinances laid 
 down by Mohammed for the Haram of Mecca and the Hima of Wajj at 
 Taif. In both cases the ordinance was a confirmation of old usage. At 
 Mecca the law against killing or chasing animals did not apply to certain 
 noxious creatures. The usually received tradition (Bokhari, ii. 195, of the 
 Biilac vocalised ed.) names the raven and the kite, the rat, the scorpion and 
 the "biting dog," which is taken to cover the lion, panther, and wolf, and 
 other carnivora that attack man (Mowatta, ii. 198). The serpent also was 
 killed without scruple at Mina, which is within the Haram (Bokh. ii. 196, 
 1. 1 .sgg'.). That the protection of the god is not extended to manslaying 
 animals and to the birds of prey that molest the sacred doves is intelligible. 
 The permission to kill vermin is to be compared svith the story of the war 
 between the Jinn and the B. Sahm (supra, p. 121). From the law against 
 cutting plants the idlchir (Andropogon schcenanthua, or lemon-grass) was 
 excepted by Mohammed with some hesitation, on the demand of Al-'Abbas, 
 
LECT. IV. IN ARABIA. 135 
 
 what cannot be the private property of men is therefore 
 the private property of the gods, reserved for the exclusive 
 use of them or their ministers. The positive exercise 
 of legal rights of property on the part of the gods is only 
 possible where they have human representatives to act 
 for them, and no doubt in later times the priests at the 
 greater heathen sanctuaries, and the Caliphs as Allah's 
 vicegerents in Islam, did treat the holy reservations as 
 their own domain. But in early times there was no 
 privileged class of sacred persons which had an interest 
 in asserting on their own behalf the doctrine of divine 
 proprietorship, and in these times accordingly the prohibi- 
 tion of private encroachment was consistent with the 
 existence of public or communal rights in holy places and 
 things. In nomadic Arabia sanctuaries are certainly older 
 than the first beginnings of private property in land. To 
 constitute private property, according to the ancient 
 doctrine still preserved in Moslem law, a man must build 
 on the soil or cultivate it ; there is no property in natural 
 pastures. Every tribe indeed has its own range of plains 
 and valleys, and its own watering-places, by which it 
 habitually encamps at certain seasons and from which it 
 repels aliens by the strong hand. But this does not con- 
 stitute property, for the boundaries of the tribal land are 
 
 who pointed out that it was the custom to allow it to be cut for certain 
 purposes. Here unfortunately our texts are obscure and vary greatly, but 
 the variations all depend on the reading of two words of which one is either 
 "smiths" or "graves" and the other "purification" or "roofs" of houses. 
 In the Arabic the variations turn on small graphical points often left 
 out by scribes. I take it that originally the two uses were either both 
 practical, "for the smiths and the (thatching of) house-roofs," or both 
 ceremonial, "for entombment and the purification of houses." As the 
 lemon-grass was valued in antiquity for its perfume, and the fragrant 
 harmal was also used in old Arabia to lay the dead in, and is still used to 
 fumigate houses, the second reading is the better. The lemon-grass might 
 be cut for purposes of a religious or quasi-religious character. Mohammed 
 probably hesitated because these uses were connected with heathen 
 superstition. Cf. Muh. in Medina, p. 338. 
 
136 SACRED TRACTS lect. iv. 
 
 merely maintained by force against enemies, and not only 
 
 every tribesman but every covenanted ally has equal and 
 
 unrestricted right to pitch his tent and drive his cattle 
 
 where he will. On this analogy we can understand that 
 
 the haunts of unfriendly demons will be shunned for fear 
 
 of their enmity, but the friendly god can have no exclusive 
 
 right of property as against his own worshippers. And so 
 
 we find that in upland Arabia there were tracts of sacred 
 
 land called Mma which were to all intents and purposes 
 
 common pasture grounds, and whose sanctity was marked, 
 
 not by the exclusion of man, but by the fact that no single 
 
 tribe dared to appropriate them, and that respect for the 
 
 holy place, where every sojourner was under the immediate 
 
 protection of the god, enabled hostile clans to meet and 
 
 drive their flocks together in peace, whereas on any other 
 
 ground they would have flown at each other's throats.^ 
 
 In Arabia chiefs as well as gods had their Mma. In 
 
 the times of heathenism when a chieftain camped at a 
 
 place with his followers, no one else was allowed to pasture 
 
 his cattle where the barking of his dog could be heard, but 
 
 ^ See Wellhausen, op. cit. p. 103 sq., who thinks that these himds were 
 more or less completely secularised, and that in early times the sacred 
 pastures were reserved for the herds of the god. But the characteristic 
 thing is that on the sacred pastures rival tribes met in peace, as tliey did 
 in the Tiaram of Mecca, which implies a very lively sense of the divine 
 presence and authority. It does indeed appear probable that at one time 
 certain tracts of holy ground were absolutely forbidden to human approach 
 (infra, p. 146), but in a state of society where property in land was unknown, 
 the meaning of this cannot have been that they were the private pasture 
 ground of the deity. The prohibition, as we shall see, was of the nature of 
 a taboo, an idea older than the institution of property. Sacred animals 
 themselves, whether wild or of domestic species, were not so much the 
 property of the god as taboo to him. He protected them, but did not use 
 them. The oldest example of an Arabian sacred region is Mount Horeb. 
 At the theophany Exodus xix. the whole mountain is fenced off, and neither 
 man nor beast is allowed to approach it, but this seems to be a temporary 
 prohibition, and inExod. iii. 1 sqq., it seems probable that Moses drove his 
 flocks to pasture on the holy ground. In any case the prohibition of access 
 does not turn on the idea of property, but on the awfulness of the presence 
 of God. 
 
LECT. IV. IN ARABIA. 137 
 
 beyond this range the pasture was common.^ This is not 
 a right of property, but it is exactly on all fours with 
 the right of taboo exercised by a Polynesian chief. The 
 chief in Polynesia has a sacred character; so apparently 
 had Arabian chiefs, for kings' blood cures hydrophobia, as 
 in the Middle Ages the touch of the king cured scrofula. 
 
 Here we have a type of sanctuary to all appearance older 
 than the institution of property in land. But even where 
 the doctrine of property is fully developed, holy places and 
 holy things, except where they have been appropriated to 
 the use of kings and priests, fall under the head of public 
 rather than of private estate. According to ancient con- 
 ceptions the interests of the god and his community are 
 too closely identified to admit of a sharp distinction 
 between sacred purposes and public purposes, and as a rule 
 nothing is claimed for the god in which his worshippers 
 have not a right to share. Even the holy dues presented 
 at the sanctuary are not reserved for the private use of the 
 deity, but are used to furnish forth sacrificial feasts in 
 which all who are present partake. So too the sanctuaries 
 of ancient cities served the purpose of public parks and 
 public halls, and the treasures of the gods, accumulated 
 within them, were a kind of state treasure, preserved by 
 religious sanctions against peculation and individual en- 
 croachment, but available for public objects in time of 
 need. The Canaanites of Sheehem took money from their 
 temple to provide means for Abimelech's enterprise, when 
 they resolved to make him their king, and the sacred 
 treasure of Jerusalem, originally derived from the fruits of 
 David's campaigns, was used by his successors as a reserve 
 fund available in great emergencies. On the whole then 
 it is evident that the difference between holy things and 
 
 1 Yaout, ii. 3U, from Al-Shafi'i ; but Hamasa, p. 420, Maidani, i. 427, 
 Agh. iv. 340 relate this as a peculiarity of the arrogant Kolaib. 
 
138 HOLINESS AND lect. iv. 
 
 common things does not originally turn on ownership, as if 
 common things belonged to men and holy things to the 
 gods. Indeed there are many holy things which are also 
 private property, images, for example, and the other 
 appurtenances of domestic sanctuaries. 
 
 Thus far it would appear that the rights of the gods ia 
 holy places and things fall short of ownership, because 
 they do not exclude a right of user or even of property 
 by man in the same things. But in other directions the 
 prerogatives of the gods, in respect of that which is holy, go 
 beyond what is involved in ownership. The approach to 
 ancient sanctuaries was surrounded by restrictions which 
 cannot be regarded as designed to protect the property of 
 the gods, but rather fall under the notion that the gods 
 will not tolerate the vicinity of certain persons — e.g. such 
 as are physically unclean — and certain actions — e.g. the 
 shedding of blood. ISTay in many cases the assertion of a 
 man's undoubted rights as against a fugitive at the sanctuary 
 is regarded as an encroachment on its holiness ; justice 
 cannot strike the criminal, and a master cannot recover his 
 runaway slave, who has found asylum on holy soil. In 
 the Old Testament the legal right of asylum is limited to 
 the case of involuntary homicide ; ^ but the wording of the 
 law shows that this was a narrowing of ancient custom, 
 and many heathen sanctuaries of the Phoenicians and 
 Syrians retained even in Eoman times what seems to have 
 been an unlimited right of asylum.^ At certain Arabian 
 
 1 Exod. xxi. 13, 14. Here the riglit of asylum belongs to all altars, but 
 it was afterwards limited, on the abolition of the local altars, to certain old 
 sanctuaries — the cities of refuge. 
 
 ^ This follows especially from the account in Tacitus, Ann. iii. 60 sqq., of 
 the enquiry made by Tiberius into abuses of the right of asylum. Among 
 the holy places to which the right was confirmed after due investigation 
 were Paphos and Amathus, both of them Phoenician sanctuaries. There 
 was also a right of asylum at Daphne near Antioch (Strabo, xvi. 2, 6 ; 2 Mac. 
 iv. 3-3), and many Phoenician and Syrian towns are designated as asylums on 
 
LT^CT. IV. PEOPERTY. 139 
 
 sanctuaries the god gave shelter to all fugitives without 
 distinction, and even stray camels that reached the holy- 
 ground became free from their owners.^ What was done 
 with these camels is not stated, but it is to be presumed 
 that they enjoyed the same liberty as the consecrated 
 animals which the Arabs, for various reasons, were accus- 
 tomed to release from service and suffer to roam half wild 
 over the sacred pastures. These herds seem to be sometimes 
 spoken of as the property of the deity ,^ but they were not 
 iised for his service. Their consecration was simply a 
 limitation of man's right to use them.'' 
 
 We have here another indication that the relations of 
 holiness to the institution of property are mainly negative. 
 Holy places and things are not so much reserved for the 
 use of the god as surrounded by a network of restrictions 
 and disabilities which forbid them to be used by men 
 except in particular ways, and in certain cases forbid them 
 to be used at all. As a rule the restrictions are such as 
 to prevent the appropriation of holy things by men, and 
 sometimes they cancel existing rights of property. But 
 they do so only by limiting the right of user, and in the 
 case of objects like idols, which no one would propose to 
 
 their coins ; see Head, Greek Num., Index iv. , under .tsTAOS and lEPAS 
 ASTAOr. The Heracleum at the fishcuring station near the Canobio mouth 
 of the Nile (Herod., ii. 113) may also be cited, for its name and place leave 
 little doubt that it was a PhcEuician temple. Here the fugitive slave was 
 dedicated by being tattooed with sacred marks — a Semitic custom ; cf. Lucian, 
 Dea Syria, lix., and Aghdnl, vii. 110, 1. 26, where an Arab patron stamps 
 his clients with his camel mark. I owe the last reference to Prof. De Goeje. 
 
 1 Yacut s.vv. JaUad and Fals; Wellhausen, pp. 48, 50. It is plain from 
 the texts that these camels were not confiscated as a punisliment for their 
 trespass, but were set free by an extension of the law of asylum. lu the 
 same way wild beasts could not be molested within the Mma. 
 
 2 Seethe verse from Ibn Hisham, p. 58, explained by Wellh., p. 103. 
 
 ' E.g. their milk might be drunk only by guests (Ibn Hisham, p. 58). 
 Similarly, consecration sometimes meant no more than that men might eat 
 the flesh but not women, or that only particular persons might eat of it 
 (Sura, vi. 139 s?.). 
 
140 RULES OF LECT. IV. 
 
 use except for sacred purposes, a thing may be holy and 
 still be private property. From this point of view it 
 would appear that common things are such as men have 
 licence to use freely at their own good pleasure without 
 fear of supernatural penalties, while holy things may be 
 used only in prescribed ways and under definite restrictions, 
 on pain of the anger of the gods. That holiness is essen- 
 tially a restriction on the licence of man in the free use of 
 natural things seems to be confirmed by the Semitic roots 
 used to express the idea, No stress can be laid on the 
 root lyip, which is that commonly used by the northern 
 Semites, for of this the original meaning is very uncertain, 
 though there is some probability that it implies "separation" 
 or " withdrawal." But the root Din, which is mainly em- 
 ployed in Arabic but runs through the whole Semitic field, 
 undoubtedly conveys the notion of prohibition, so that a 
 sacred thing is one which, whether absolutely or in certain 
 relations, is prohibited to human- use.^ The same idea of 
 prohibition or interdiction associated with that of protection 
 from encroachment is found in the root ''Dn, from which 
 is derived the word hima, denoting a sacred enclosure or 
 temenos^ 
 
 We have already found reason to think that in Arabia 
 the holiness of places is older than the institution of 
 property in land, and the view of holiness that has just 
 been set forth enables us to understand why it should be 
 so. We have found that from the earliest times of savagery 
 certain spots were dreaded and shunned as the haunts of 
 supernatural beings. These however are not holy places 
 any more than an enemy's ground is holy ; they are not 
 
 ^ In Hebrew this root is mainly applied to such consecration as implies 
 absolute separation from human use and association, i.e. the total destruction 
 of an accursed thing, or in more modern times excommunication. 
 
 ^ Hence perhaps the name of Hamath on the Orontes; Lagarde, Bildung der 
 Nomina, p. 156. 
 
LECT. IV. HOLINESS. 141 
 
 hedged round by definite restrictions, but altogether avoided 
 as full of indefinite dangers. But when men establish 
 relations with the powers that haunt a spot it is at once 
 necessary that there should be rules of conduct towards 
 them and their surroundings. These rules moreover have 
 two aspects. On the one hand the god and his worshippers 
 form a single community — primarily, let us suppose, a 
 community of kinship — and so all the social laws that 
 regulate men's conduct towards a clansman are applicable 
 to their relations to the god. But on the other hand the 
 god has natural relations to certain physical things, and 
 these must be respected also ; he has himself a natural life 
 and natural habits in which he must not be molested. 
 Moreover the mysterious superhuman powers of the god — 
 the powers which we call supernatural — are manifested, 
 according to primitive ideas, in and through his physical 
 life, so that every place and thing which has natural 
 associations with the god is regarded, if I may borrow a 
 metaphor from electricity, as charged with divine energy 
 and ready at any moment to discharge itself to the destruc- 
 tion of the man who presumes to approach it unduly. 
 Hence in all their deahngs with natural things men must 
 be on their guard to respect the divine prerogative, and 
 this they are able to do by knowing and observing the rules 
 of holiness, which prescribe definite restrictions and limita- 
 tions in their dealings with the god and all natural things 
 that in any way pertain to the god. Thus we see that 
 holiness is not necessarily limited to things that are the 
 property of the deity to the exclusion of men ; it applies 
 equally to things in which both gods and men have an 
 interest, and in the latter case the rules of holiness are 
 directed to regulate man's use of the holy thing in 
 such a way that the godhead may not be offended or 
 wrohged. 
 
142 HOLINESS AND 
 
 LECT. IV. 
 
 Eules of holiness in the sense just explained, i.e. a 
 system of restrictions on man's arbitrary use of natural 
 things, enforced by the dread of supernatural penalties ^ are 
 found among all primitive peoples. It is convenient to 
 have a distinct name for this primitive institution, to mark 
 it off from the later developments of the idea of holiness 
 in advanced religions, and for this purpose the Polynesian 
 term taboo has been selected.^ The field covered by taboos 
 among savage and half-savage races is very wide, for there 
 is no part of life in which the savage does not feel himself 
 to be surrounded by mysterious agencies and recognise the 
 need of walking warily. Moreover all taboos do not 
 belong to religion proper, that is, they are not always rules 
 of conduct for the regulation of man's contact with deities 
 that, when taken in the right way, may be counted on as 
 friendly, but rather appear in many cases to be precautions 
 against the approach of malignant enemies — against contact 
 with evil spirits, and the like. Thus alongside of taboos 
 that exactly correspond to rules of holiness, protecting the 
 inviolability of idols and sanctuaries, priests and chiefs, and 
 generally of all persons and things pertaining to the gods 
 and their worship, we find another kind of taboo which in 
 the Semitic field has its parallel in rules of uncleanness. 
 Women after child-birth, men who have touched a dead 
 body and so forth, are temporarily taboo and separated from 
 human society, just as the same persons are unclean in 
 Semitic religion. In these cases the person under taboo is 
 not regarded as holy, for he is separated from approach to 
 the sanctuary as well as from contact with men ; but his 
 
 ^ Sometimes by civil penalties also. For in virtue of its solidarity the 
 whole community is compromised by the impiety of any one of its members, 
 and is concerned to purge away the ofifence. 
 
 ^ A good account of taboo, with references to the best sources of informa- 
 tion on the subject, is given by Mr. J. G. Frazer in the 9th ed. of the 
 Encyc. Britan. vol. xxiii. p. 15 sqq. 
 
LECT. IV. TABOO. 143 
 
 act or condition is somehow associated with supernatural 
 dangers, arising, according to the common savage explanation, 
 from the presence of formidable spirits, which are shunned 
 like an infectious disease. In most savage societies no 
 sharp line seems to be drawn between the two kinds of 
 taboo just indicated, and even in more advanced nations the 
 notions of holiness and uncleanness often touch. Among 
 the Syrians for example swine's flesh was taboo, but it was 
 an open question whether this was because the animal was 
 holy or because it was unclean.^ But though not precise, 
 the distinction between what is holy and what is unclean 
 is real ; in rules of holiness the motive is respect for the 
 gods, in rules of uncleanness it is primarily fear of an 
 unknown or hostile power, though ultimately, as we see in 
 the Levitical legislation, the law of clean and unclean may 
 be brought within the sphere of divine ordinances, on the 
 view that uncleanness is hateful to God and must be 
 avoided by all that have to do with Him. 
 
 The fact that all the Semites have rules of uncleanness 
 as well as rules of holiness, that the boundary between the 
 two is often vague, and that the former as well as the 
 latter present the most startling agreement in point of 
 detail with savage taboos^ leaves no reasonable doubt as 
 to the origin and ultimate relations of the idea of holiness. 
 On the other hand the fact that the Semites — or at least 
 the northern Semites — distinguish between the holy and the 
 unclean, marks a real advance above savagery. All taboos 
 are inspired by awe of the supernatural, but there is a 
 great moral difference between precautions against the 
 invasion of mysterious hostile powers and precautions 
 founded on respect for the prerogative of a friendly god. 
 
 1 Lucian, Dea Syr. \iv. ; ef. Autiphanes op. Atlien. iii. p. 95 [Meineke, 
 Fr. Com. Gr. iii. 68]. 
 
 2 See Additional Note C, Holiness, Uncleanness, and Taboo. 
 
144 THE LIMITS OF 
 
 LECT. IV. 
 
 The former belong to magical superstition — the barrenest 
 of all aberrations of the savage imagination — which, being 
 founded only on fear, acts merely as a bar to progress and 
 an impediment to the free use of nature by human energy 
 and industry. But the restrictions on individual licence 
 which are due to respect for a known and friendly power 
 allied to man, however trivial and absurd they may appear 
 to us in their details, contain within them germinant 
 principles of social progress and moral order. To know 
 that one has the mysterious powers of nature on one's side 
 so long as one acts in conformity with certain rules, gives 
 a man strength and courage to pursue the task of the 
 subjugation of nature to his service. To restrain one's 
 individual licence, not out of slavish fear, but from respect 
 for a higher and beneficent power, is a moral discipline of 
 which the value does not altogether depend on the reason- 
 ableness of the sacred restrictions : a modern schoolboy is 
 subject to many unreasonable taboos, which are not without 
 value in the formation of character. But finally, and 
 above all, the very association of the idea of holiness with 
 a beneficent deity, whose own interests are bound up with 
 the interests of the community, makes it inevitable that the 
 laws of social and moral order, as well as mere external 
 precepts of physical observance, shall be placed under the 
 sanction of the god of the community. Breaches of social 
 order are recognised as offences against the holiness of the 
 deity, and the development of law and morals is made 
 possible, at a stage when human sanctions are still wanting, 
 or too imperfectly administered to have much power, by 
 the belief that the restrictions on human licence which 
 are necessary to social well-being are conditions imposed 
 by the god for the maintenance of a good understanding 
 between himself and his worshippers. 
 
 As every sanctuary was protected by rigid taboos it 
 
LECT. IV. THE SANCTUARY. 145 
 
 was important that its site and limits should he clearly 
 marked. From the account already given of the origin of 
 holy places, it follows that in very many cases the natural 
 features of the spot were sufficient to distinguish it. A 
 fountain with its margin of rich vegetation, a covert of 
 jungle haunted by lions, a shaggy glade on the mountain- 
 side, a solitary eminence rising from the desert, where 
 toppling blocks of weather-beaten granite concealed the 
 dens of the hyaena and the bear, needed only the support 
 of tradition to bear witness for themselves to their own 
 sanctity. In such cases it was natural to draw the border 
 of the holy ground somewhat widely, and to allow an 
 ample verge on all sides of the sacred centre. In Arabia, 
 as we have seen, the hima, sometimes enclosed a great tract 
 of pasture land roughly marked off by pillars or cairns, 
 and the haram or sacred territory of Mecca extends for 
 some hours' journey on almost every side of the city. 
 The whole mountain of Horeb was sacred ground, and so 
 probably was Mount Hermon, for its name means " holy," 
 and the summit and slopes still bear the ruins of many 
 temples.^ In like manner Eenan concludes from the 
 multitude of sacred remains along the course of the 
 Adonis, in the Lebanon, that the whole valley was a 
 kind of sacred territory of the god from whom the river 
 had its name.^ In a cultivated and thickly peopled 
 land it was difficult to maintain a rigid rule of sanctity 
 over a wide area, and strict taboos were necessarily 
 limited to the temples and their immediate enclosures, 
 while in a looser sense the whole city or land of the 
 god's worshippers was held to be the god's land and to 
 participate in his holiness. Yet some remains of the 
 old sanctity of whole regions survived even in Syria to 
 
 ^ For the sanctity of Hermon see further Eeland, Palcestina, p. 323. 
 2 Kenan, Mimon de PMnicie. (1864), p. 295. 
 
 K 
 
146 THE JEALOUSY lect. iv. 
 
 a late date. lamblichus, in the last days of heathenism, 
 still speaks of Mount Carmel as " sacred above all 
 mountains and forbidden of access to the vulgar," and 
 here Vespasian worshipped at the solitary altar, embowered 
 in inviolable thickets, to which ancient tradition forbade 
 the adjuncts of temple and image.^ 
 
 The taboos or restrictions applicable within the wide 
 limits of these greater sacred tracts have already been 
 touched upon. The most universal of them was that men 
 were not allowed to interfere with the natural life of the 
 spot. No blood might be shed and no tree cut down ; 
 an obvious rule whether these living things are regarded 
 as the protected associates of the god, or — as was 
 perhaps the earlier conception^ — as participating in the 
 divine life. In some cases all access to the Arabian 
 hima was forbidden, as at the sacred tract marked off 
 round the grave of Ibn Tofail.^ For with the Arabs 
 grave and sanctuary were kindred ideas, the grave of 
 Kolaib-Wail was shewn in a corner of the hima, of 
 Darlya, and famous chiefs and heroes were honoured 
 by the consecration of their resting - place.^ But an 
 
 ' lamblichus, Vlt. Pyth. iii. (15) ; Tacitus, Hist. ii. 78. From 1 Kings 
 xviii. it would be clear, apart from the classical testimonies, that Carmel 
 was a sacred mountain of the Phoenicians. It had also an altar of Jehovah, 
 and this made it the fit place for the contest between Jehovah-worship and 
 Baal-worship. Carmel is still clothed with thickets (Conder, Tent-worh, 
 i. 172) as it was in old Testament times (Amos i. 2 ; Mic. vii. 14 ; 
 Cant. vii. 5), and Amos ix. 3, Mic. vii. 14, where its woods appear as a 
 place of refuge, do not receive their full force till we combine them with 
 lamblichus's notice that the mountain was an Si/ixToti, where the flocks, 
 driven up into the forest in autumn to feed on the leaves (as is still done, 
 Thomson, Land and Boob [1860], pp. 204 sq., 485), were inviolable, and where 
 the fugitive found a sure asylum. The sanctity of Carmel is even now 
 not extinct, and the scene at the Festival of Elijah, described by Seetzen, 
 ii. 96 sg. , is exactly like an old Canaanite feast. 
 
 2 Agh. XV. 139 ; "WeUh., p. 163. 
 
 ' Yaciit, ii. 343, 1. 15. This is not the place to go into the general question 
 of the worship of ancestors. See "Wellhausen, ^lt supra ; Goldziher, Oulte des 
 Ancitres chez Us Arabes (Paris, 1885), and Muh. Studien, p. 229 sqq. ; and 
 
LECT. IV. OF THE GOD. 147 
 
 absolute exclusion of human visitors, while not unin- 
 telUgible at a tomb, could hardly be maintained at a 
 sanctuary which contained a place of worship, and 
 we have seen that some himds were open pastures, 
 while the haram at Mecca even contained a large 
 permanent population.^ The tendency was evidently 
 to a gradual relaxation of burdensome restrictions, not 
 necessarily because religious reverence declined, but from 
 an increasing confidence that the god was his servants' 
 well-wisher and did not press his prerogative unduly. 
 Yet the "jealousy" of the deity — an idea familiar to 
 us from the Old Testament — was never lost sight of in 
 Semitic worship. In the higher forms of religion this 
 quality, which nearly corresponds to self-respect and the 
 sense of personal dignity in a man, readily lent itself 
 to an ethical interpretation, so that the jealousy of the 
 deity was mainly conceived to be indignation against wrong- 
 doing, as an ofifence against the honour of the divine 
 sovereign ; ^ but in savage times the personal dignity of 
 the god, like that of a great chief, asserts itself mainly 
 in punctilious insistence on a complicated etiquette that 
 
 some remarks, perhaps too sceptical, in my Kinship, p. 18 S(jq. The matter 
 Trill come up again at a later point of these lectures. 
 
 ' Yacut, iii. 790 (cf. "Wellh., p. 102), says that marks, called " scarecrows " 
 (akhtla), were set up to show that a place was a,Wma, and must not be 
 approached. But to " approach " a forbidden thing {cariba) is the general 
 word for violating a taboo, so the expression ought not perhaps to be pressed 
 too closely. The Greek o!/3a«» is also used simply in the sense of inviolable 
 (along with atruXsv). It is notable, however, that in the same passage 
 Yacut tells us that two of the marks that defined the i,ima of Faid were 
 called "the twin sacrificial stones " (ghariyan). He did not know the 
 ritual meaning of gJiariy, and may therefore include them among the alchila 
 by mere inadvertence. But if the place of sacrifice really stood on the 
 border of the sacred ground, the inevitable inference is that the worshippers 
 were not allowed to enter the enclosure. This would be parallel to the 
 sacrifice in Exodus xxiv. 4, where he altar is built outside the limits of 
 Sinai, and the people are not allowed to approach the mountain. 
 
 ^ This, it will be remembered, is the idea on which Anselm's theory of the 
 atonement is based. 
 
148 THE JEALOUSY LECT. iv. 
 
 surrounds his place and person. Naturally the strictness 
 of the etiquette admits of gradations. When the god and 
 his worshippers live side by side, as in the case of Mecca, 
 or still more in cases where the idea of holiness has been 
 extended to coyer the whole land of a particular religion, 
 the general laws of sacred observance, applicable in all 
 parts of the holy land, are modified by practical con- 
 siderations. Strict taboos are limited to the sanctuary 
 (in the narrower sense) or to special seasons and occasions, 
 such as religious festivals or the time of war ; in ordinary 
 life necessary actions that constitute a breach of ceremonial 
 holiness merely involve temporary uncleanness and some 
 ceremonial act of purification, or else are condoned alto- 
 gether provided they are done in a particular way. Thus 
 in Canaan, where the whole land was holy, the hunter was 
 allowed to kill game if he returned the life to the god by 
 pouring it on the ground ; or again the intercourse of the 
 sexes, which was strictly forbidden at temples and to 
 warriors on an expedition, entailed in ordinary life only 
 a temporary impurity, purged by ablution or fumigation.^ 
 But in all this care was taken not to presume on the 
 prerogative of the gods, or trench without permission on 
 the sanctity of their domain ; and in particular, fresh en- 
 croachments on untouched parts of nature — the breaking 
 up of waste lands, the foundation of new cities, or even 
 the annual cutting down of corn or gathering in of the 
 vintage — were not undertaken without special precautions 
 to propitiate the divine powers. It was felt that such 
 encroachments were not without grave danger, and it 
 was often thought necessary to accompany them with 
 expiatory ceremonies of the most solemn kiud.^ Within 
 
 1 See Additional Note D, Taboos on the Intercourse of the SexeR, 
 " The. details, so far as they are concerned with the yearly recurring ritual 
 of harvest and vintage, belong to the subject of Agricultural Feasts, and must 
 
LECT. IV. OP THE GOD. 149 
 
 the god's holy land all parts of life are regulated with 
 constant regard to his sanctity, and so among the settled 
 Semites, who lived on Baal's groand, religion entered far 
 more deeply into common life than was the case among 
 the Arabs, where only special tracts were consecrated land 
 and the wide desert was as yet unclaimed either by gods 
 or by men. 
 
 te reserved for a future course of lectures. The danger connected with the 
 breaking up of waste lands is illustrated for Arabia by the story of Harb and 
 Mil-das [supra, p. 125). Here the danger still comes from the jinn of the 
 place, but even where the whole laud already belongs to a friendly deity, 
 precautions are necessary when man lays his hand for the first time on any 
 of the good things of nature. Thus the Hebrews ate the fruit of new trees 
 only iu the fifth year ; in the fourth year the fruit was consecrated to 
 Jehovah, but the produce of the first three years was "uncircumcised," 
 i.e. taboo, and might not be eaten at all (Lev. xix. 23 sqq.). A similar 
 idea underlies the Syrian traditions of human sacrifice at the foundation of 
 cities (Malalas, Bonn ed., pp. 37, 200, 203), which are not the less instructive 
 that they are not historically true. 
 
LECTUEE V. 
 
 SANCTUARIES, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL. HOLY WATERS, 
 TREES, CAVES, AND STONES. 
 
 .We have seen that holiness admits of degrees, and that 
 within a sacred land or, tract it is natural to mark off an 
 inner circle of intenser holiness, where all ritual restrictions 
 are stringently enforced, and where man feels himself to be 
 nearer to his god than on other parts even of holy ground. 
 Such a spot of intenser holiness becomes the sanctuary or 
 place of sacrifice, where the worshipper approaches the god 
 with prayers and gifts, and seeks guidance for life from 
 the divine oracle. As holy tracts in general are the 
 regions haunted by divine powers, so the site of the 
 sanctuary -par excellence, or place of worship, is a spot where 
 the god is constantly present in some visible embodiment, 
 or which has received a special consecration by some 
 extraordinary manifestation of deity. For the more de- 
 veloped forms of cultus a mere vague Mmd does not 
 suffice ; men require a special point at which they may 
 come together and do sacrifice with the assurance that 
 the god is present at the act. In Arabia, indeed, it seems 
 to be not improbable that certain sacrifices were laid on 
 sacred ground to be devoured by wild beasts. For such 
 worship perhaps it was not necessary to come face to face 
 with a definite symbol of the divine presence, inasmuch as 
 the beasts received the offering on his behalf. But a 
 sacrifice directed to the sacred beasts and not first pre- 
 
LECT. v. 
 
 HOLY SYMBOLS. 151 
 
 sented to the individual god can hardly be understood 
 unless the beasts themselves are divine, in other words it 
 belongs to a religion not yet diiferentiated from totemism. 
 Even in Arabia the liima usually, probably always, con- 
 tained a fixed point where the blood of the offering was 
 directly presented to the deity by being applied to sacred 
 stones, or where a sacred tree was hung with gifts. In 
 the ordinary forms of heathenism, at any rate, it was 
 essential that the worshipper should bring his offering 
 into the actual presence of the god, or into contact with 
 the symbol of that presence.^ 
 
 The symbol or permanent visible object, at and through 
 which the worshipper came into direct contact with the 
 god, was not lacking in any Semitic place of worship, but 
 had not always the same form, and was sometimes a 
 natural object, sometimes an artificial erection. The usual 
 natural symbols are a fountain or a tree, while the 
 ordinary artificial symbol is a pillar or pile of stones ; 
 but very often all three are found together, and this was 
 the rule in the more developed sanctuaries, particular 
 sacred observances being connected with each. 
 
 The choice of the natural symbols, the fountain and 
 the tree, is no doubt due in part to the fact that the 
 favourite haunts of animate life, to which a superstitious 
 reverence was attached, are mairdy found beside wood and 
 running water. But besides this we have found evidence 
 of the direct ascription to trees and living waters of a life 
 analogous to man's, but mysterious and therefore awful. 
 
 1 The thing is not on this account incredible or without parallel in the 
 religions of the higher races, e.g. the Egyptians. 
 
 2 This rule is observed even when the god is a heavenly body. The 
 sacrifices of the Saracens to the morning star, described by Nilus, were cele- 
 brated when that star rose, and could not be made after it was lost to sight 
 on the rising of the sun {Nili op. qucedam, [Paris, 1639], pp. 28, 117). 
 
 ' Supra, p. 126 sqq. 
 
152 SACRED FOUNTAINS LECT. v. 
 
 To US this may seem to be quite another point of view ; 
 in the one case the fountain or the tree merely mark the 
 spot which the deity frequents, in the other they are 
 the visible embodiments of the divine presence. But the 
 primitive imagination has no difficulty in combining differ- 
 ent ideas about the same holy place or thing. The gods 
 are not tied to one form of embodiment or manifestation ; 
 for, as has already been observed,^ some sort of distinction 
 between life and the material embodiment of life is sug- 
 gested to the rudest peoples by phenomena like those of 
 dreams. Even men, it is supposed, can change their 
 embodiment, and assume for a time the shape of wolves or 
 birds ; ^ and of course the gods with their superior powers 
 have a still greater range, and the same deity may quite 
 well manifest himself in the life of a tree or a spring, and 
 yet emerge from time to time in human or animal form. 
 All manifestations of life at or about a holy place readily 
 assume a divine character and form a religious unity, 
 contributing as they do to create and nourish the same 
 religious emotion ; and in all of them the godhead is felt 
 to be present in the same direct way. The permanent 
 manifestations of his presence, however, the sacred fountain 
 and the sacred tree, are likely to hold the first place in 
 acts of worship, simply because they are permanent and so 
 attach to themselves a fixed sacred tradition. These con- 
 siderations apply equally to the sanctuaries of nomadic 
 and of settled peoples, but among the latter the religious 
 importance of water and wood could not fail to be greatly 
 reinforced by the growth of the ideas of Baal-worship, in 
 which the deity as the giver of life is specially connected 
 with quickening waters and vegetative growth. 
 
 With this it agrees that sacred wells, in connection with 
 sanctuaries, are found in all parts of the Semitic area, but 
 1 Supra, p. 85. ^ Supra, p. 86. 
 
LECT. V. IN ARABIA. 153 
 
 • 
 
 are much less prominent among the nomadic Arabs than 
 among the agricultural peoples of Syria and Palestine. 
 There is mention of fountains or streams at a good many 
 Arabian sanctuaries, but little direct evidence that these 
 waters were holy, or played any definite part in the ritual. 
 The clearest case is that of Mecca, where the holiness of 
 the well Zamzam is certainly pre-Islamic. It would even 
 seem that in old time gifts were cast into it, as they were 
 cast into the sacred wells of the northern Semites.^ Some 
 kind of ritual holiness seems also to have attached to the 
 pool beneath a waterfall at the Dausite sanctuary of 
 Dusares.^ Again, as healing springs and sacred springs are 
 everywhere identified, it is noteworthy that the Arabs still 
 regard medicinal waters as inhabited by jinn, usually of 
 serpent lorm,^ and that the water of the sanctuary at 
 the Palmetum was thought to be health-giving, and was 
 carried home by pilgrims * as Zamzam water now is. In 
 like manner the custom of pilgrims carrying away water 
 from the well of 'Orwa^ is probably a relic of ancient 
 
 ^ So Wellhausen, p. lOl, concludes with probability from the story that 
 when the well was rediscovered and cleaned out hy the grandfather of 
 Mohammed, two golden gazelles and a number of swords were found in it. 
 Everything told of the prophet's ancestors must be received with caution, 
 but this does not look like invention. The two golden gazelles are parallel 
 to the golden camels of Sabsean and Nabatsan inscriptions {ZDMG. xxxviii. 
 143 sq. ). 
 
 ^ Ibn Hisham, p. 253 ; Wellhausen, p. 45. A woman who adopts Islam 
 breaks with the heathen god by "purifying herself" in this pool. This 
 implies that her act was a breach of the ritual of the spot ; persumably 
 <i woman who required purification (viz. from her courses) was not ad- 
 mitted to the sacred water ; cf. Yaciit, i. 657, 1. 2 sqq. , and especially 
 iv. 651, 1. 4 sqq. (Manaf). This explanation is favoured by the fact that in the 
 same tradition a man who accepts Islam is also ordered to perform a 
 ceremonial ablution, but is not sent to the sacred water. Under ordinary 
 circumstances to bathe in the sacred spring wonld be an act of homage to 
 the heathen god : so at least it was in Syria. The waters called Thorayya 
 (Pleiades) in the Tiima of Dariya (Yaciit, i. 924, iii. 588 ; Bakri, pp. 214, 627) 
 probably were a group of seven sacred wells : see below. 
 
 3 Mordtmann in ZDMG. xxxviii. 587. 
 
 ■• Agatharchides ap. Diod. Sic. iii. 43. ' Yaciit, i. 434 ; Cazwini, i. 200. 
 
154 SACRED WATERS OF lect. v. 
 
 sanctity. Further, on the borders of the Arabian field, we 
 have the sacred fountain of Ephca at Palmyra, with which 
 a legend of a demon in serpent form is still connected. 
 This is a sulphurous spring, which had a guardian 
 appointed by the god Yarhibol, and on an inscription 
 is called the "blessed fountain."^ Again, in the desert 
 beyond Bostra, we find the Stygian waters, where a great 
 cleft received a lofty cataract. The waters had the power 
 to swallow up or cast forth the gifts flung into them, as a 
 sign that the god was or was not propitious, and the oath 
 by the spot and its . stream was the most terrible known 
 to the inhabitants of the region.^ The last two cases 
 belong to a region in which religion was not purely 
 Arabian in character, but the Stygian waters recall the 
 waterfall in the Dausite sanctuary of Dusares, and 
 Ptolemy twice mentions a Stygian fountain in Arabia 
 proper. 
 
 Among the northern Semites, the agricultural Canaanites 
 and Syrians, sacred waters hold a much more prominent 
 place. "Where all ground watered by fountains and streams, 
 without the aid of man's hand, was regarded as the Baal's 
 land, a certain sanctity could hardly fail to be ascribed to 
 every source of living water ; and where the divine 
 activity was looked upon as mainly displaying itself in 
 the quickening of the soil, the waters which gave fertility 
 to the land, and so life to its inhabitants, would appear 
 to be the direct embodiment of divine energies. Accord- 
 ingly we find that Hannibal, in his covenant with Philip 
 of Macedon, when he swears before all the deities of 
 Carthage and of Hellas, includes among the divine powers 
 to which his oath appeals "the sun the moon and the 
 earth, rivers meadows and waters." ^ Thus when we find 
 
 1 "Wadd., No. 25nc ; De Vog., No. 95. 
 
 ' Damascius, Vita Isidori, § 199. ' Polybius, vii. 9. 
 
LECT. V. THE PHCENICIANS. 155 
 
 that temples were so often erected near springs and rivers, 
 we must consider not only that such a position was 
 convenient, inasmuch as pure water was indispensable 
 for ablutions and other ritual purposes, but that the 
 presence of living water in itself gave consecration to 
 the place.^ The fountain or stream was not a mere 
 adjunct to the temple, but was itself one of the principal 
 sacra of the spot, to which special legends and a special 
 ritual were often attached, and to which the temple in 
 many instances owed its celebrity and even its name. 
 This is particularly the case with perennial streams and 
 their sources, which in a country like Palestine, where 
 rain is confined to the winter months, are not very 
 numerous, and form striking features in the topography 
 of the region. From Hannibal's oath we may conclude 
 that among the Phoenicians and Carthaginians all such 
 waters were held to be divine, and what we know in 
 detail of the waters of the Phoenician coast goes far to 
 confirm the conclusion.^ Of the eminent sanctity of 
 certain rivers, such as the Belus and the Adonis, we have 
 direct evidence, and the grove and pool of Aphaca at the 
 source of the latter stream was the most famous of all 
 Phoenician holy places.^ These rivers are named from 
 gods, and so also, on the same coast, are the Asclepius, 
 near Sidon, the Ares (perhaps identical with the Lycus) 
 and presumably the Kishon.* In like manner the 
 Leontes, or Lion Eiver, probably derives its name from 
 the " ancestral god," who was worshipped under the form 
 
 ^ For the choice of a place beside a pool as the site of a chapel, see 
 Waddington, I^o. 2015, iltn^ins to^os outos ov ixntnv lyyiih xif^wi^. 
 
 ^ The authorities for the details, so far as they are not cited below, will be 
 found in Baudissin, Studien, ii. 161. 
 
 ' Euseb. , Vit. Const, iii. 65 ; Sozomen, ii. 5. 
 
 * River of B'lp, Ar. Cais. Prof. De Goeje, referring to Hamdani, p. 3, 1. 9, 
 and perhaps p. 221, 1. 14, suggests to me by letter that Cais is a, title, 
 " dominus." 
 
156 SACRED WATERS LECT. v. 
 
 of a lion at the great temple of Heliopolis or Baalbek, 
 which stands at the true source of the river.^ The river 
 of Tripolis, which descends from the famous cedars, is 
 still called the Cadlsha or holy stream, and the grove at 
 its source is sacred to Christians and Moslems alike.'' 
 
 In Hellenic and Eoman times the source of the Jordan 
 at Paneas with its grotto was sacred to Pan, and in 
 ancient days the great Israelite sanctuary of Dan occupied 
 the same site. It is evident that Naaman's indignation 
 when he was told to bathe in the Jordan, and his con- 
 fidence that the rivers of Damascus were better than all 
 the waters of Israel, sprang from the idea that the Jordan 
 was the sacred healing stream of the Hebrews, as Abana 
 and Pharphar were the sacred rivers of the Syrians, and 
 in this he probably did no injustice to the belief of the 
 mass of the Israelites. The sanctity of the Barada, the 
 chief river of Damascus, was concentrated at its nominal 
 source, the fountain of El-Fiji, that is, ■nr\'^ai. The river- 
 gods Chrysorrhoa and Pegai often appear on Damascene 
 coins, and evidently had a great part in the religion of 
 the city. 
 
 The river of Coele-Syria, the Orontes, was carved out, 
 according to local tradition, by a great dragon, which 
 disappeared in the earth at its source.^ The connection 
 
 1 Damascius, Vit. laid. § 203. That the fountains of Heliopolis, though 
 now spent in irrigation, are the true source of the Leontes appears from 
 Robinson, Bib. Res. iii. 506. It is noteworthy in this connection that the 
 old name of Dan, at the source of the Jordan, is Laish, " Lion," and that 
 a chief source of the Orontes is at a village called Lebwa. With the Lion- 
 god of Heliopolis compare Jisculapius, "the Lion-holder," at Ascalon 
 (Marinus, Vita Prodi, 19). In Strabo's account of the Phoenician coast 
 the grave of .fflsculapius and the city of lions are mentioned together 
 (xvi. 2. 22). Note also ^ya-lJ z=: Xiovroiri'iio', (Hoft'm., Ph. Jnschr. p. 27). 
 
 ^Robinson, iii. 590. On Carthaginian soil it is not impossible that the • 
 Bagi'adas or Majerda, Macaros or Macros in MSS. of Polybius, bears the 
 name of the Tyiian Baal-Melcartli. 
 
 * Strabo, xvi. 2. 7. Other sacred traditions about the Orontes are given 
 by Malalas, p. 38, from Pausanias of Damascus. 
 
LECT. V. OF SYRIA. 157 
 
 of jinn in the form of dragons or serpents with sacred or 
 healing springs has abeady come before us in Arabian 
 superstition, and the lake of Cadas near Emesa, which is 
 regarded as the source of the river (Yacut, iii. 588) bears 
 a name which implies its ancient sanctity. Among Syrian 
 waters those of the Euphrates played an important part in 
 the ritual of Hierapolis, and from them the great goddess 
 was thought to have been born ; while the source of its 
 chief Mesopotamian tributary, the Aborrhas or Chaboras, 
 was reverenced as the place where Hera (Atargatis) bathed 
 after her marriage with Zeus (Bel). It gave out a sweet 
 odour, and was full of tame, that is sacred, fishes.^ 
 
 The sacredness of living waters was by no means 
 confined to such great streams and sources as have just 
 been spoken of. But in cultivated districts fountains 
 could not ordinarily be reserved for purposes exclusively 
 sacred. Each town or village had as a rule its own well, 
 and its own high place or little temple, but in Canaan the 
 well was not generally within the precincts of the high 
 place. Towns were built on rising ground, and the well 
 lay outside the gate, usually below the town, while the 
 high place stood on the higher ground overlooking the 
 human habitations.^ Thus any idea of sanctity that might 
 be connected with the fountain was dissociated from the 
 temple ritual, and would necessarily become vague and 
 attenuated.^ Sacred springs in the full sense of the word 
 
 1 iElian, Nat. An. xii. 30 ; Pliny, H. N. xxxi. 37, xxxii. 16. 
 
 2 Gen. xxiv. 11 ; 1 Sam. ix. 11 ; 2 Sam. ii. 13, xxiii. 16 ; 2 Kings ii. 21 ; 
 1 Kings xxi. 13, 19, compared -with chap. xxii. 38. 
 
 3 There are, however, indications that in some cases the original sanctuary 
 was at a well beneath the town. In 1 Kings i. 9, 38, the fountains of En- 
 rogel, where Adonijah held his sacrificial feast, and of Gihon, where Solomon 
 was crowned, are plainly the original sanctuaries of Jerusalem. The former 
 was by the "serpent's stone," and may perhaps be identified with the 
 "dragon well" of Neh. ii. 13. Here again, as in Arabia and at the Orontes, 
 the dragon or serpent has a sacred significance. 
 
158 LEGENDS ABOUT LECT. v. 
 
 are generally found, not at the ordinary local sanctuaries, 
 but at remote pilgrimage shrines like Aphaca, Beersheba, 
 Mamre, or within the enclosure of great and spacious 
 temples like that at Ascalon, where the pool of Atargatis 
 was shewn and her sacred fishes were fed. Sometimes, as 
 at Daphne near Antioch, the water and its surrounding 
 groves formed a sort of public park near a city, where 
 religion and pleasure were combined in the characteristic 
 Syriac fashion.^ 
 
 The myths attached to holy sources and streams, and 
 put forth to worshippers as accounting for their sanctity, 
 were of various types ; but the practical beliefs and ritual 
 usages connected with sacred waters were much the same 
 everywhere, and so are plainly based on general conceptions 
 independent of the variations of local story. The one 
 general principle which runs through all the varieties of 
 the legends, and which also lies at the basis of the ritual, 
 is that the sacred waters are instinct with divine life and 
 energy. The legends explain this in diverse ways, and 
 bring the divine quality of the waters into connection with 
 various deities or supernatural powers, but they all agree 
 in this, that their main object is to explain how the foun- 
 tain or stream comes to be impregnated, so to speak, with 
 the vital energy of the deity to which it is sacred. 
 
 Among the ancients blood is generally conceived as the 
 
 principle or vehicle of life, and so the account often given 
 
 of sacred waters is that the blood of the deity flows in 
 
 them. Thus as Milton writes, — 
 
 Smooth Adonis from his native rock 
 Kan purple to the sea, supposed with blood 
 Of Thammuz yearly wounded.^ 
 
 ^A similar example, Wadd., No. 2370. A sacred fountain ofEshmun 
 " in the mountain " seems to appear in O. I. S. No. 3, 1. 17 ; of. G. Hoff- 
 mann, Ueber einige Phosn. Insc.hrr. p. 52 sq. 
 
 2 Paradise Lost, i. 450, following Lucian, Dea Syria, viii. 
 
riCT. V. SACRED WATERS. 159 
 
 The ruddy colour which the swollen river derived from 
 the soil at a certain season was ascribed to the blood of 
 the god who received his death-wound in Lebanon at that 
 time of the year, and lay buried beside the sacred source.^ 
 Similarly a tawny fountain near Joppa was thought to 
 derive its colour from the blood of the sea-monster slain 
 by Perseus,^ and Philo Byblius says that the fountains and 
 rivers sacred to the heaven-god (Baalshamaim) were those 
 which received his blood when he was mutilated by his 
 son.^ In another class of legends, specially connected 
 with the worship of Atargatis, the divine life of the waters 
 resides in the sacred fish that inhabit them. Atargatis 
 and her son, according to a legend common to Hierapolis 
 and Ascalon, plunged into the waters — in the first case 
 the Euphrates, in the second the sacred pool at the temple 
 near the town — and were changed into fishes.* This is 
 only another form of the idea expressed in the first class 
 of legend, where a god dies, that is ceases to exist in 
 human form, but his life passes into the waters where he 
 is buried ; and this again is merely a theory to bring the 
 divine water or the divine fish into harmony with anthro- 
 pomorphic ideas.* The same thing was sometimes effected 
 
 1 Melito in Cureton, Spic. Syr. p. 25, 1. 7. That the grave of Adonis 
 was also shewn at the mouth of the river has been inferred from Dea 
 Syr. vi. vii. The river Bclus also had its Memnonion or Adonis tomb. 
 (Josephus, B. J. ii. 10. 2). The reddening of the Adonis was observed by 
 Maundrell on March if, 169f. 
 
 2 Pausanias, iv. 35. 9. 
 
 s Euseb. , Prmp. Ev. i. 10, 22 [Fr. Hist. Gr. iii. 568). The fountain of the Cha- 
 boras, where Hera fUTa mvs yiii.ov; . . a,iri\oiir!i.Tii, belongs to the same class. 
 
 ' Hyginus, Astr. ii. 30; Manilius, iv. 580 sqq.; Xanthus in Athenaeus, 
 viii. 37. I have discussed these legends at length in the English Hist. 
 Review, April 1887, to which the reader is referred for details. 
 
 * The idea that the godhead consecrates waters by descending into them 
 appears at Aphaca in a peculiar form associated with the astral character 
 which, at least in later times, was ascribed to the goddess Astarte. It was 
 believed that the goddess on a certain day of the year descended into the 
 river in the form of a fioiy star from the top of Lebanon. So Sozomen, 
 
160 LEGENDS ABOUT LECT. v. 
 
 in another way by saying that the anthropomorphic deity 
 was born from the water, as Aphrodite sprang from the 
 sea-foam, or as Atargatis, in another form of the Euphrates 
 legend, given by Germanicus in his scholia on Aratus, was 
 born of an egg which the sacred fishes found in the 
 Euphrates and pushed ashore. Here, we see, it was left 
 to the choice of the worshippers whether they iwould think 
 of the deity as arising from or disappearing in the water, 
 and in the ritual of the Syrian goddess at Hierapolis both 
 ideas were combined at the solemn feasts, when her image 
 was carried down to the river and back again to the 
 temple. "Where the legend is so elastic we can hardly 
 doubt that the sacred waters and sacred fish were wor- 
 shipped for their own sake before the anthropomorphic 
 goddess came into the religion, and in fact the sacred fish 
 at the source of the Chaboras are connected with an 
 altogether different myth. Fish, as we have seen, were 
 taboo, and sacred fish were found in rivers or in pools 
 at sanctuaries, all over Syria.^ This superstition has 
 proved one of the most durable parts of ancient heathen- 
 ism ; sacred fish are still kept in pools at the mosques of 
 
 H. E. ii. 4, 5. Zosimus, i. 58, says only that fireballs appeared at the 
 temple and the places about it, on the occasion of solemn feasts, and does not 
 connect the apparition with the sacred waters. There is nothing improbable 
 in the frequent occurrence of striking electrical phenomena in a mountain 
 sanctuary. We shall presently find fiery apparitions connected also with 
 sacred trees {infra, p. 176). " Thunders, lightnings and light flashing 
 in the heavens," appear as objects of veneration among the Syrians (Jacob 
 of Ed., Qu. 43) ; cf. also the fiery globe of the Heliopolitan Lion-god, whose 
 fall from heaven is described by Damascius, Vit. Is. § 203, and what 
 Pausanias of Damascus relates of the fireball that checked the flood of the 
 Orontes (Malalas, p. 38). 
 
 1 Xenophon, Anah. i. 4, 9, who found such fish in the Chalus near 
 Aleppo, expressly says that they were regarded as gods. Lucian, Dea Syr. 
 xlv., relates that at the lake of Atargatis at Hierapolis the sacred fish 
 wore gold ornaments, as did also the eels at the sanctuary of the war-god 
 Zeus, amidst the sacred plane-trees (Herod., v. 119), at Labraunda in Caria 
 (Pliny, H. N. xxxii. 16, 17 ; ^lian, N. A. xii. 30). Caria was thoroughly 
 permeated by Phcenician influence. 
 
LECT. V. SACRED WATERS. 161 
 
 Tripolis and Edessa. At the latter place it is believed 
 that death or other evil consequences would befall the 
 man who dared to eat them.-^ 
 
 The living power that inhabits sacred waters and gives 
 them their miraculous or healing quality is very often held 
 to be a serpent, as in the Arabian and Hebrew cases which 
 have been already cited,^ or a huge dragon or water 
 monster, such as that which in the Antiochene legend 
 hollowed out the winding bed of the Orontes and dis- 
 appeared beneath its source.^ In such cases the serpents 
 are of course supernatural serpents or jinn, and the 
 dragon of Orontes was identified in the Greek period with 
 Typhon, the enemy of the gods.* 
 
 In all their various forms the point of the legends is 
 that the sacred source is either inhabited by a demoniac 
 being or imbued with demoniac life. The same notion 
 appears with great distinctness in the ritual of sacred 
 waters. Though such waters are often associated with 
 temples, altars, and the usual apparatus of a cultus addressed 
 to heavenly deities, the service paid to the holy well re- 
 tained a form which implies that the divine power addressed 
 was in the water. We have seen that at Mecca, and at the 
 Stygian waters in the Syrian desert, gifts were cast into the 
 holy source. But even at Aphaca, where, in the times to 
 which our accounts refer, the goddess of the spot was held 
 to be the Urania or celestial Astarte, the pOgrims cast 
 
 ^ Sachau, Beise, p. 197. " Supra, p. 153 sqq. 
 
 ^ The Leviathan (p-in) of Scripture, like the Arahian tinnin, is probably 
 a pei'sonification of the waterspout (Mas'iidi, i. 263, 266 ; Psalm cxlviii. 7). 
 Thus we see how readily the Eastern imagination clothes aquatic pheno- 
 mena with an animal form. 
 
 * Hence perhaps the modern name of the river Nahr al-'Asi, " the rebel's 
 stream ; " the explanation in Yacut, iii. 588, does not commend itself. The 
 burial of the Typhonic dragon at the source of the Orontes may be compared 
 with the Moslem legend of the well at Babylon, where the rebel angels 
 Harut and Mariit were entombed (Cazwini, i. 197). 
 
 L 
 
162 ORACLES PROM I.ect. v. 
 
 into the pool jewels of gold and silver, webs of linen and 
 byssus, and other precious stuffs, and the obvious contra- 
 diction between the celestial character of the goddess and 
 the earthward destination of the gifts was' explained by 
 the fiction that at the season of the feast she descended 
 into the pool in the form of a fiery star. Similarly, at the 
 annual fair and feast of the Terebinth, or tree and well of 
 Abraham at Mamre, the heathen visitors, who reverenced the 
 spot as a haunt of " angels,"^ not only offered sacrifices beside 
 the tree, but illuminated the well with lamps, and cast 
 into it libations of wine, cakes, coins, myrrh and incense.^ 
 
 In ancient religion offerings are the proper vehicle of 
 prayer and supplication, and the worshipper when he pre- 
 sents his gift looks for a visible indication whether his 
 prayer is accepted.^ At Aphaea and at the Stygian 
 fountain the accepted gift sank into the depths, the 
 unacceptable offering was cast forth by the eddies. It 
 was taken as an omen of the impending fall of Palmyra 
 that the gifts sent from that city at an annual festival 
 were cast up again in the following year.* In this 
 example we see that the holy well, by declaring the 
 favourable or unfavourable disposition of the divine power, 
 becomes a place of oracle and divination. In Greece, 
 also, holy wells are connected with oracles, but mainly 
 in the form of a belief that the water gives prophetic 
 inspiration to those who drink of it. At the Semitic 
 oracle of Aphaea the method is more primitive, for the 
 answer is given directly by the water itself, but its range 
 is limited to what can be inferred from the acceptance or 
 rejection of the worshipper and his petition. 
 
 ^ I.e. dsemons. Sozomen says "angels," and not "devils," because the 
 sanctity of the place was acknowledged by Christians also. 
 
 2 Sozomen, if. JSJ. ii. 4. s Cf. Gen. ir. i, 5. 
 
 * Zosimus, i. 58. At Aphaea, as at the Stygian fountain, the waters fall 
 down a cataract into a deep gorge. 
 
LECT. V. SACRED WATERS. 163 
 
 The oracle at Daphne near Antioch, which was obtained 
 by dipping a laurel leaf into the water, was presumably of 
 the same class, for we cannot take seriously the statement 
 that the response appeared written on the leaf.^ The 
 choice of the laurel leaf as the offering cast into the 
 water miist be due to Greek influence, but Daphne was a 
 sanctuary of Heracles, i.e. of the Semitic Baal, before the 
 temple of Apollo was built.^ 
 
 An oracle that speaks by receiving or rejecting the wor- 
 shipper and his homage may very readily pass into an 
 ordeal, where the person who is accused of a crime, or is 
 suspected of having perjured himself in a suit, is presented 
 at the sanctuary, to be accepted or rejected by the deity, 
 in accordance with the principle that no impious person 
 can come before God with impunity.^ A rude form of 
 this ordeal seems to survive even in modern times in 
 the widespread form of trial of witches by water. In 
 Hadramaut, according to Macrizi,* when a man was in- 
 jured by enchantment, he brought all the witches suspect 
 to the sea or to a deep pool, tied stones to their backs and 
 threw them into the water. She who did not sink was 
 the guilty person, the meaning evidently being that the 
 sacred element rejects the criminal,^ That an impure 
 person dare not approach sacred waters is a general 
 principle — whether the impurity is moral or physical is 
 not a distinction made by ancient religion. Thus in 
 Arabia we have found that a woman in her uncleanness 
 
 ^ Sozomen, v. 19. 11. 
 
 2 Malalas, p. 204. A variant of this form of oracle occurs at Myra in Lycia, 
 where the omen is from the sacred fish accepting or rejecting the food offered 
 to them (Pliny, B. N. xxxii. 17 ; ^lian, N. A. viii. 5 ; Athenaeus, viii. 8, 
 p. 333). How far Lycian worship was influenced by the Semites is not 
 clear. 
 
 ' Cf. Job xiii. 16 ; Isa xxxiii. 14. * De Valle Hadhramaut, p. 26 sq. 
 
 ^ The story about Mojammi' and Al-Ahwaj {Agh. iv. 48), cited by Well- 
 hausen, Heid. p. 152, refers to this kind of ordeal, not to a form of magic. 
 
164 THE WATER 
 
 LECT. V. 
 
 was afraid, for her children's sake, to bathe in the water of 
 Dusares ; and to this day among the Yezldis no one may 
 enter the valley of Sheik Adi, with its sacred fountain, 
 unless he has first purified his body and clothes.^ The 
 sacred oil-spring of the Carthaginian sanctuary described 
 by Aristotle ^ would not flow except for persons ceremoni- 
 ally pure. An ordeal at a sacred spring based on this 
 principle might be worked in several ways,^ but the usual 
 Semitic method seems to have been by drinking the water. 
 Evidently, if it is dangerous for the impious person to come 
 into contact with the holy element, the danger must be 
 intensified if he ventures to take it into his system, and it 
 was believed that in such a case the draught produced 
 disease and death. At the Asbamsean lake and springs 
 near Tyana the water was sweet and kindly to those that 
 swore truly, but the perjured man was at once smitten in 
 his eyes, feet and hands, seized with dropsy and wasting.* 
 In like manner he who swore falsely by the Stygian waters 
 in the Syrian desert died of dropsy within a year. In the 
 latter case it would seem that the oath by the waters 
 sufficed; but primarily, as we see in the other case, the 
 essential thing is the draught of water at the holy place, 
 the oath simply taking the place of the petition which 
 ordinarily accompanies a ritual act. Among the Hebrews 
 this ordeal by drinking holy water is preserved even in the 
 Pentateuchal legislation in the case of a woman suspected 
 of infidelity to her husband.* Here also the belief was 
 that the holy water, which was mingled with the dust of 
 
 ' Layard, Nineveh, i. 280. - Mir. Amc. § 113. 
 
 ' See, for example, the Sicilian oracle of the Palic lake, where the oath of 
 the accused was written on a tablet and cast into the water to sink or swim. 
 Aristotle, Mir. Ausc. § 57. 
 
 * Arist, Mir. Ausc. § 152 ; Philostr., Vit. ApoUonii, i. 6. That the sanc- 
 tuary was Semitic I infer from its name ; see below, p. 166. 
 
 ' Numb. V. 1 1 sqq. 
 
LECT. V. OF JEALOUSY. 165 
 
 the sanctuary, and administered with an oath, produced 
 dropsy and wasting ; and the antiquity of the ceremony is 
 evident not only from its whole character, but because the 
 expression "holy water" (ver. 17) is unique in the language 
 of Hebrew ritual, and must be taken as an isolated survival 
 of an obsolete expression. Unique though the expression 
 be, it is not difficult to assign its original meaning; the 
 analogies already before us indicate that we must think of 
 water from a holy spring, and this conclusion is certainly 
 correct. Wellhausen has shewn that the oldest Hebrew 
 tradition refers the origin of the Torah to the divine 
 sentences taught by Moses at the sanctuary of Kadesh or 
 Meribah,^ beside the holy fountain which in Gen. xiv. 7 is 
 also called " the fountain of judgment." The principle 
 underlying the administration of justice at the sanctuary is 
 that cases too hard for man are referred to the decision of 
 God. Among the Hebrews in Canaan this was ordinarily 
 done by an appeal to the sacred lot, but the survival of 
 even one case of ordeal by holy water leaves no doubt as 
 to the sense of the " fountain of judgment " (En-mishpat) 
 or " waters of controversy '' (Meribah). 
 
 With this evidence before us as to the early importance 
 of holy waters among the Hebrews, we cannot but attach 
 significance to the fact that the two chief places of pilgrim- 
 age of the northern Israelites in the time of Amos were 
 Dan and Beersheba.^ We have already seen that there 
 was a sacred fountain at Dan, and the sanctuary of Beer- 
 sheba properly consisted of the " Seven Wells," which gave 
 the place its name. It is notable that among the Semites 
 a special sanctity was attached to groups of seven wells.^ 
 In the canons of Jacob of Edessa (Qu. 43) we read of 
 
 1 Prolegomena, viii. 3 (E. Tr. p. 343). 
 
 2 Amos viii. 14 ; cf. 1 Kings xii. 30. 
 
 3 See Noldeke in Litt. CentralUatt, 22 Mar. 1879, p. 364. 
 
166 SEVEN WELLS. lect. v. 
 
 nominally Christian Syrians who bewail their diseases to 
 the stars, or turn for help to a solitary tree or a fountain 
 or seven springs or water of the sea, etc. Among' the 
 Mandseans, also, we read of mysteries performed at seven 
 wells, and among the Arabs a place called "the seven wells" 
 is mentioned by Strabo, xvi. 4, 24} The name of the 
 Asbamaean waters seems also to mean " seven waters " (Syr. 
 shah' a mayo) ; the spot is a lake where a number of 
 sources bubble up above the surface of the water. Seven 
 is a sacred number among the Semites, particularly affected 
 in matters of ritual, and the Hebrew verb " to swear " 
 means literally " to come under the influence of seven 
 things." Thus seven ewe lambs figure in the oath between 
 Abraham and Abimelech at Beersheba, and in the Arabian 
 oath of covenant described by Herod., iii. 8, seven stones 
 are smeared with blood. The oath of purgation at seven 
 wells would therefore have peculiar force.^ 
 
 It is the part of a divine power to grant to his 
 worshippers not only oracles and judgment, but help in 
 trouble and blessing in daily life. The kind of blessing 
 which it is most obvious to expect from a sacred spring is 
 the quickening and fertilisation of the soil and all that 
 depends on it. That fruitful seasons were the chief object 
 of petition at the sacred springs requires no special proof, 
 for this object holds the first place in all the great religious 
 occasions of the settled Semites, and everywhere we find 
 that the festal cycle is regulated by the seasons of the 
 agricultural year.^ Beyond doubt the first and best gift 
 
 ^ Cf. also the seven marvellous wells at Tiberias (Cazwini, i. 193), and the 
 "Pleiad" waters at Dariya [supra, p. 153). 
 
 ^ In Amos viii. 14 there is mention of an oath by the way (ritual ?) of 
 Beersheba. The pilgrims at Mamre would not drink of the water of the 
 well. Sozomen supposes that the gifts cast in made it undrinkable ; but at 
 an Oriental market, where every bargain is accompanied by false oaths and pro- 
 testations, the precaution is rather to be explained by fear of the divine ordeal. 
 
 ^ A myth of the cdnnection of sacred waters with the origin of agriculture 
 
LECT. V. HEALING WATERS. 167 
 
 of the sacred spring to the worshipper was its own life- 
 giving water, and the first object of the religion addressed 
 to it was to encourage its benignant flow.^ But the life- 
 giving power of the holy stream was by no means confined 
 to the quickening of vegetation. Sacred waters are also 
 healing waters, as we have already seen in various examples, 
 particularly in that of the Syrians, who sought to them for 
 help in disease. I may here add one instance which, though 
 it lies a little outside of the proper Semitic region, is con- 
 nected with a holy river of the Syrians. In the Middle 
 Ages it was still believed that he who bathed in the spring- 
 time in the source of the Euphrates would be free from 
 sickness for the whole year.^ This healing power was not 
 confined to the water itself, but extended to the vegetation 
 that surrounded it. By the sacred river Belus grew the 
 Colocasium plants by which Heracles was healed after his 
 conflict with the Hydra, and the roots continued to be used 
 as a cure for bad sores.^ At Paneas an herb that healed 
 all diseases grew at the base of a statue which was 
 supposed to represent Christ, evidently a relic of the old 
 heathenism of the place.* Thus when Ezekiel describes 
 the sacred waters that issue from the New Jerusalem as 
 giving life wherever they come, and the leaves of the trees 
 
 seems to survive in modernised form in the mediseval legend of 'Ain al- 
 bacar, " the oxen's well, " at Acre. It was visited by Christian, Jewish and 
 Moslem pilgrims, because the oxen with which Adam ploughed issued from 
 it (Cazwini, Yaout). There was a mashhed, or sacred tomb, beside it, 
 perhaps the modern representative of the ancient Memnonium. 
 
 1 In ISTumb. xxi. 17 we find a song addressed to the well exhorting it to 
 rise, which in its origin is hardly a mere poetic figure. We may compare 
 what Cazwini, i. 189, records of the well of Ilabistan. When the water failed, 
 a feast was held at the source, with music and dancing, to induce it to flow 
 again. 
 
 ^ Cazwini, i. 194. I may also cite the numerous fables of amulets, to be 
 found in the Tigris and other rivers,-which protected their wearers against 
 wild beasts, demons and other dangers (Arist., Mir. Ausc. 159 sq,). 
 
 3 Claudius lolaus, ap. Steph. Byz., s.v. "Axn. 
 
 * Theophanes, quoted by Reland, ii. 922. 
 
168 HEALING WATERS. lect. v. 
 
 on their banks as supplying medicine, his imagery is in full 
 touch with common Semitic ideas (Ezek. xlvii. 9, 12). 
 
 The healing power of sacred water is closely connected 
 with its purifying and consecrating power, for the primary 
 conception of uncleanness is that of a dangerous infection. 
 "Washings and purifications play a great part in Semitic 
 ritual, and were performed with living water, which was as 
 such sacred in some degree. Whether specially sacred 
 springs were used for purification, and if so under what 
 restrictions, I cannot make out ; in most cases, I apprehend, 
 they were deemed too holy to be approached by a person 
 technically impure. It appears, however, from Ephreem 
 Syrus that the practice of bathing in fountains was one of the 
 heathen customs to which the Syrians of his time were much 
 addicted, and he seems to regard this as a sort of heathen con- 
 secration.^ Unfortunately the rhetoric of the Syrian fathers 
 seldom condescends to precise details on such matters. 
 
 From this account of the ritual of sacred wells it 
 will, I think, be clear that the usages and ceremonies are 
 all intelligible on general principles, without reference to 
 particular legends or the worship of the particular deities 
 associated with special waters. The fountain is treated as 
 a living thing, those properties of its waters which we call 
 natural are regarded as manifestations of a divine life, and 
 the source itself is honoured as a divine being, I had 
 almost said a divine animal. When religion takes a form 
 decidedly anthropomorphic or astral, myths are devised to 
 reconcile the new point of view with the old usage, but the 
 substance of the ritual remains unchanged. 
 
 Let us now pass on from the worship of sacred waters 
 to the cults connected with sacred trees." 
 
 1 0pp. iii. 670 sq.; H. et S., ed. Lamy, ii. 395, 411. 
 
 ^ On sacred trees among the Semites, see Baudissin, Studien, ii. 184 sqq.; 
 for Arabia, "Wellhausen, Held. p. 101. Compare Botticher, Baumcvltus der 
 Bellmen {BeA. 1856), and Mannhardt, Wald- und Feld-Culte {Betl 1875, 77). 
 
LKCT. V. SACKED TREES. 169 
 
 That the conception of trees as demoniac beings was 
 familiar to the Semites has been already shewn by many 
 examples,'- and there is also abundant evidence that in all 
 parts of the Semitic area trees were adored as divine. 
 
 Tree worship pure and simple, where the tree is in all 
 respects treated as a god, is attested for Arabia in the case 
 of the sacred date-palm at Nejran.^ It was adored at an 
 annual feast, when it was all hung with fine clothes and 
 women's ornaments. A similar tree, to which the people 
 of Mecca resorted annually, and hung upon it weapons, 
 garments, ostrich eggs and other gifts, is spoken of in the 
 traditions of the prophet under the vague name of a dhdt 
 amvat, or " tree to hang things on." It seems to be 
 identical with the sacred acacia at Nakhla in which the 
 goddess Al-'Ozza was believed to reside.^ By the modern 
 Arabs sacred trees are called manahil, places where angels 
 or jinn descend and are heard dancing and singing. It is 
 deadly danger to pluck so much as a bough from such a 
 tree ; they are honoured with sacrifices, and parts of the 
 flesh are hung on them, as well as shreds of calico, beads, 
 etc. The sick man who sleeps under them receives counsel 
 in a dream for the restoration of his health.* 
 
 Among the heathen Syrians tree worship must have had 
 
 a large place, for this is one of the superstitions which 
 
 Christianity itself was powerless to eradicate. We have 
 
 already met with nominal Christians of Syria who in their 
 
 sicknesses turned for help to a solitary tree, while zealous 
 
 Christians were at pains to hew down the " trees of the 
 
 demons."^ As regards the Phoenicians and Canaanites we 
 
 have the testimony of Philo Byblius that the plants of 
 
 the earth were in ancient times esteemed as gods and 
 
 1 fSupra, p. 126. ^ Tabari, i. 922 (Noldeke's trans, p. 181). 
 
 3 Wellhausen, p. 30 sqq., p. 35. 
 
 ■* Doughty, Arabia Deserta, i. 448 sqq. 
 
 ' See the citations in Kayser, Jacob v. Edesita, p. 141. 
 
170 SACKED TREES. lect. v. 
 
 honoured with libations and sacrifices, because from theia 
 the successive generations of men drew the support of their 
 life. To this day the traveller in Palestine frequently 
 meets with holy trees hung like an Arabian dhat anwat 
 with rags as tokens of homage. 
 
 What place the cult of trees held in the more developed 
 forms of Semitic religion it is not easy to determine. In 
 later times the groves at the greater sanctuaries do not 
 seem to have been direct objects of worship, though 
 they shared in the inviolability that belonged to all the 
 surroundings of the deity, and were sometimes — like 
 the ancient cypresses of Heracles at Daphne — believed 
 to have been planted by the god himself.^ It was not at 
 the great sanctuaries of cities but in the open field, where 
 the rural population had continued from age to age to 
 practise primitive rites without modification, that the 
 worship of " solitary trees " survived the fall of the 
 great gods of Semitic heathenism. 
 
 There is no reason to think that any of the greater 
 Semitic cults was developed out of tree worship. In all 
 of them the main place is given to altar service, and we 
 shall see by and by that the beginnings of this form of 
 worship, so far as they can be traced back to a time when 
 the gods were not yet anthropomorphic, point to the cult of 
 animals rather than of trees. That trees are habitually 
 found at sanctuaries is by no means inconsistent with this 
 view, for where the tree is merely conceived as planted by 
 the god or as marking his favourite haunt, it receives no 
 direct homage. 
 
 When, however, we find that no Canaanite high place 
 was complete without its sacred tree standing beside the 
 altar, and when we take along with this the undoubted 
 
 1 Similarly the tamarisk at Beersheba was believed to have been planted 
 by Abraham (Gen. xxi. 33). 
 
LF.CT. V. 
 
 THE ASHERA. iTl 
 
 fact that the direct cult of trees was familiar to all the 
 Semites, it is hardly possible to avoid the conclusion that 
 some elements of tree worship entered into the ritual 
 even of such deities as in their origin were not tree-gods. 
 The local sanctuaries of the Hebrews, which the prophets 
 regard as purely heathenish, and which certainly were 
 modelled in all points on Canaanite usage, were altar- 
 sanctuaries. But the altars were habitually set up 
 " under green trees," and, what is more, the altar was 
 incomplete unless an ashera stood beside it. The meaning 
 of this word, which the Authorised Version wrongly renders 
 "grove," has given rise to a good deal of controversy. 
 What kind of object the ashera was appears from Deut. 
 xvi. 21:" Thou shalt not plant an ashera of any kind of 
 wood (or, an ashera, any kind of tree) beside the altar 
 of Jehovah ; " it must therefore have been either a living 
 tree or a tree-like post, and in all probability either form 
 was originally admissible. The oldest altars, as we gather 
 from the accounts of patriarchal sanctuaries, stood under 
 actual trees ; but this rule could not always be followed, 
 and in the period of the kings it would seem that the 
 place of the living tree was taken by a dead post or pole, 
 planted in the ground like an English Maypole.^ The 
 ashera undoubtedly was an object of worship ; for the 
 
 1 It is a thing made by man's hands ; Isa. xvii. 8, cf. 1 Kings xvi. 33, etc. 
 In 2 Kings xxi. 7 (cf. xxiii. 6) we read of the Ashera-image. Similarly in 
 1 Kings XV. 13 there is mention of a "grisly object" which Queen Maacah 
 made for an Ashera. These expressions may imply that the sacred pole 
 was sometimes carved into a kind of image. That the sacred tree should 
 degenerate first into a mere Maypole, and then into a rude wooden idol, 
 is in accordance with analogies found elsewhere, e.g. in Greece ; but it seems 
 quite as likely that the ashera is described as a kind of idol simply because 
 it was used in idolatrous cultus. An Assyrian monument from Khorsabad, 
 figured by Botta and Layard, and reproduced in Rawlinson, Monarchies, 
 ii. 37, Stade, Oesch. Isr. i. 461, shows an ornamental pole planted beside a 
 portable altar. Priests stand before it engaged in an act of worship, and touch 
 the pole with their hands, or perhaps anoint it with some liquid substance. 
 
1'72 THE CANAANITE lkct. v. 
 
 prophets put it on the same line with other sacred 
 symbols, images cippi and Baal-pillars (Isa. xvii. 8 ; Micah 
 V. 12 sqq.), and the Phosnician inscription of Mas'ub 
 speaks of " the Astarte in the Ashera of the divinity of 
 Hammon." The ashera therefore is a sacred symbol, the 
 seat of the deity, and perhaps the name itself, as G. 
 Hoffmann has suggested, means nothing more than the 
 " mark " of the divine presence. But the opinion that 
 there was a Canaanite goddess called Ashera, and that 
 the trees or poles of the same name were her particular 
 symbols, is not tenable ; every altar had its ashera, even 
 such altars as in the popular, pre-prophetic forms of 
 Hebrew religion were dedicated to Jehovah/ This is 
 not consistent with the idea that the sacred pole was the 
 symbol of a distinct divinity ; it seems rather to show 
 that in early times tree worship had such a vogue in 
 Canaan that the sacred tree, or the pole its surrogate, 
 had come to be viewed as a general symbol of deity which 
 might fittingly stand beside the altar of any god.^ 
 
 ^ The prohibition in Deut. xvi. 21 is good evidence of the previous practice 
 of the thing prohibited. See also 2 Kings xiii. 6. 
 
 - If a god and a goddess were worshipped together at the same sanctuary, 
 as was the case, for example, at Aphaca and Hierapolis, and if the two sacred 
 symbols at the sanctuary were a pole and a pillar of stone, it might naturally 
 enough come about that the pole was identified with the goddess and the 
 pillar with the god. The worship of Tammuz or Adonis was known at 
 Jerusalem in the time of Ezekiel (viii. 14), and with Adonis the goddess 
 Astarte must also have been worshipped, probably as the "queen of heaven " 
 (Jer. vii., xliv. ; cf. on this worship Kuencn in the Ven-lagen, etc., of the 
 Eoyal Acad, of Amsterdam, 1888). It is not therefore surprising that in 
 one or two late passages, written at a time when all the worship of the high 
 places was regarded as entirely foreign to the religion of Jehovah, the 
 Asherim seem to be regarded as the female partners of the Baalim ; i.e. 
 that the ashera Is taken as a symbol of Astarte (Judg. iii. 7). The prophets 
 of the ashera in 1 Kings xviii. 19, who appear along with the prophets of 
 the Tyrian Baal as ministers of the foreign religion introduced by Jezebel, 
 must have been prophets of Astarte. They form part of the Tyrian queen's 
 court, and eat of her table, so that they have nothing to do with Hebrew 
 religion. And conversely the old Hebrew sacred poles can have had nothing 
 to do with the Tyrian goddess, for Jehu left the ashera at Samaria standing 
 
LECT. V. ASHERA. 173 
 
 The general adoption of tree symbols at Canaanite 
 sanctuaries must be connected with the fact that all 
 Canaanite Baalim, whatever their original character, were 
 associated with naturally fertile spots (Baal's land), and 
 were worshipped as the givers of vegetable increase. We 
 have seen already in the case of sacred streams how the 
 life-blood of the god was conceived as diffused through 
 the sacred waters, which thus became themselves impreg- 
 nated with divine life and energy. And it was an easy 
 extension of this idea to suppose that the tree which 
 overshadowed the sacred fountain, and drew perennial 
 strength and freshness from the moisture at its roots, was 
 itself instinct with a particle of divine life. With the 
 ancients the conception of life, whether divine or human, 
 was not so much individualised as it is with us ; thus for 
 example all the members of one kin were conceived as 
 having a common life embodied in the common blood 
 which flowed through their veins. Similarly one and the 
 same divine life might be shared by a number of objects, 
 
 when he abolished all trace of Tyrian worship (2 Kings xiii. 6). There is 
 no evidence of the worship of a divine pair among the older Hebrews ; in 
 the time of Solomon Astarte worship was a foreign religion (1 Kings xi. 6), 
 and it is plain from .Jer. ii. 27 that in ordinary Hebrew idolatry the tree 
 or stock was the symbol not of a goddess but of a god. Even among the 
 Phoenicians the association of saci'ed trees with goddesses rather than with 
 gods is not so clear as is often supposed. From all this it follows that the 
 "prophets of the Ashera" in 1 Kings I.e. are very misty personages, and 
 that the mention of them implies a confusion between Astarte and the 
 Ashera, which no Israelite in Elijah's time, or indeed so long as the 
 northern kingdom stood, could have fallen into. In fact they do not 
 reappear either in v. 22 or in v. 40, and the mention of them seems to 
 be due to a late interpolation ("Wellh., Sexateuch, 2nd ed. (1889), p. 281). 
 
 The evidence offered by Assyriologists that Ashrat = Ashera was a 
 goddess (see Schrader in Zeitschr. f. Assyriologie, iii. 363 sq.) cannot 
 overrule the plain sense of the Hebrew texts. "Whether it suffices to show 
 that in some places the general symbol of deity had become a special 
 goddess is a question on which I do not offer an opinion ; but see G. 
 Hoffmann, Weber einige Phcen. Inschrr. (1889), p. 26 sqq., whose whole 
 remarks are noteworthy. In Cit. 51 {ZDMG. xxxv. 424) the goddess seems 
 to be called the mother of the sacred pole (mE'Kn DK)- 
 
174 LEGENDS OF lect. v. 
 
 if all of them were nourished from a common vital 
 source, and the elasticity of this conception made it very 
 easy to bring a variety of natural sacred objects of different 
 kinds into the worship of one and the same god. Elements 
 of water worship of tree worship and of animal worship 
 could all be combined in the ritual of a single anthropo- 
 morphic deity, by the simple supposition that the life of 
 the god flowed in the sacred waters and fed the sacred 
 tree. 
 
 As regards the connection of holy waters and holy trees, 
 it must be remembered that in most Semitic lands self- 
 sown wood can flourish only where there is imderground 
 water, and where therefore springs or wells exist beside 
 the trees. Hence the idea that the same life is manifested 
 in the water and in the siirrounding vegetation could 
 hardly fail to suggest itself, and, broadly speaking, the 
 holiness of fountains and that of trees, at least among the 
 northern Semites, appear to be parts of the same religious 
 conception, for it is only in exceptional cases that the one 
 is found apart from the other.^ 
 
 Where a tree was worshipped as the symbol of an 
 anthropomorphic god we sometimes find a transformation 
 legend directly connecting the life of the god with the 
 vegetative life of the tree. This kind of myth, in which 
 a god is transformed into a tree or a tree springs from the 
 blood of a god, plays a large part in the sacred lore of 
 Phrygia, where tree worship had peculiar prominence, and 
 is also common in Greece. The Semitic examples are not 
 numerous, and are neither so early nor so well attested as 
 to inspire confidence that they are genuine old legends 
 independent of Greek infiuence.^ The most important of 
 
 1 In Greece also it is an exception to find a sacred tree without its foun- 
 tain ; Botticher, p. 47. 
 
 2 Cf. Baudissin, op. cit. p. 214. 
 
LECT. V. HOLY TREES. 175 
 
 them is the myth told at Byblus in the time of Plutarch, 
 of the sacred erica which was worshipped in the temple 
 of Isis, and was said to have grown round the dead body of 
 Osiris. At Byblus, Isis and Osiris are really Astarte and 
 Adonis, so this may possibly be an original Semitic legend 
 of a holy tree growing from the grave of a god.^ 
 
 I apprehend, however, that the physical link between 
 trees and anthropomorphic gods was generally sought in 
 the sacred water from which the trees drew their life. 
 This is probable from the use of the terms Ba'l and 'Athari 
 to denote trees that need neither rain nor irrigation, and 
 indeed from the whole circle of ideas connected with Baal's 
 land. A tree belonged to a particular deity, not because it 
 was of a particular species, but simply because it was the 
 natural wood of the place where the god was worshipped 
 and sent forth his quickening streams to fertilise the 
 earth. The sacred trees of the Semites include every 
 prominent species of natural wood — the pines and cedars 
 of Lebanon, the evergreen oaks of the Palestinian hills, the 
 tamarisks of the Syrian jungles, the acacias of the Arabian 
 wadies, and so forth. So far as these natural woods are 
 concerned, the attempts that have been made to connect 
 individual species of trees with the worship of a single 
 deity break down altogether; it cannot, for example, be 
 said that the cypress belongs to Astarte more than to 
 Melcarth, who planted the cypress trees at Daphne. 
 
 ^ Plut., Is. et Os. §§ 15, 16. One or two features in the story are note- 
 worthy. The sacred erica was a mere dead stump, for it was cut down by 
 Isis and presented to the Byblians wrapped in a linen cloth and anointed 
 with myrrh like a corpse. It therefore represented the dead god. But as 
 a mere stump it also resembles the Hebrew ashera. Can it be that the 
 rite of draping and anointing a sacred stump supplies the answer to the 
 unsolved question of the nature of the ritual practices connected with the 
 Ashera ? Some sort of drapery for the anhera is spoken of in 2 Kings xxiii. 
 7, and the Assyrian representation cited on p. 171, note 1, perhaps repre- 
 sents the anointing of the sacred pole. 
 
176 FIERY 
 
 LECT. V. 
 
 Cultivated trees, on the other hand, such as the palm, 
 the olive and the vine, might a priori be expected, among 
 the Semites as among the Greeks, to be connected with 
 the special worship of the deity of the spot from which 
 their culture was diffused ; for religion and agricultural arts 
 spread together and the one carried the other with it. 
 Yet even of this there is little evidence ; the palm was a 
 familiar symbol of Astarte, but we also find a " Baal of the 
 palm-tree " (Baal Tamar) in a place-name in Judges xx. 
 33. The only clear Semitic case of the association of a 
 particular deity with a fruit tree is, I believe, that of the 
 ISTabatcean Dusares, who was the god of the vine. But 
 the vine came to the Nabatiieans only in the period of 
 Hellenic culture,^ and Dusares as the wine - god seems 
 simply to have borrowed the traits of Dionysus. 
 
 At Aphaca at the annual feast the goddess appeared in 
 the form of a fiery meteor, which descended from the 
 mountain-top and plunged into the water, while according 
 to another account fire played about the temple, presumably, 
 since an electrical phenomenon must have lain at the 
 foundation of this belief, in the tree-tops of the sacred 
 grove.^ In like manner Jehovah appeared to Moses in 
 the bush in flames of fire, so that the bush seemed to burn 
 yet not to be consumed. The same phenomenon, according 
 to Africanus ' and Eustathius ^ was seen at the terebinth 
 of Mamre ; the whole tree seemed to be aflame, but when 
 the fire sank again remained unharmed. As lights were 
 set by the well under the tree, and the festival was a 
 nocturnal one, this was probably nothing more than an 
 optical delusion exaggerated by the superstitious imagination, 
 a mere artificial contrivance to keep up an ancient belief 
 which must once have had wide currency in connection 
 
 ' Diodorus, xix. 94. 3. 2 Supra, p. 159, note 5. 
 
 = Georg. Syncellus, Bonn ed. p. 202. • Cited by Keland, p. 712. 
 
LECT. V. APPARITIONS. 177 
 
 with sacred trees, and is remarkable because it shows how 
 a tree might become holy apart from all relation to 
 agriculture and fertility. Jehovah, " who dwells in the 
 bush" (Deut. xxxiii. 16), in the arid desert of Sinai, was 
 the God of the Hebrews while they were still nomads 
 ignorant of agriculture ; and indeed the original seat of a 
 conception like the burning bush, which must have its 
 physical basis in electrical phenomena, must probably be 
 sought in the clear dry air of the desert or of lofty 
 mountains. The apparition of Jehovah in the burning 
 bush belongs to the same circle of ideas as His apparition 
 in the thunders and lightnings of Sinai. 
 
 When the divine manifestation takes such a form as 
 
 the flames in the bush, the connection between the god and 
 
 the material symbol is evidently much looser than in the 
 
 Baal type of religion, where the divine life is immanent 
 
 in the life of the tree ; and the transition is comparatively 
 
 easy from the conception of Deut. xxxiii. 16, where 
 
 Jehovah inhabits (not visits) the bush, as elsewhere He is 
 
 said to inhabit the temple, to the view prevalent in most 
 
 parts of the Old Testament, that the tree or the pillar at 
 
 a sanctuary is merely a memorial of the divine name, the 
 
 mark of a place where He has been found in the past and 
 
 may be found again. The separation between Jehovah 
 
 and physical nature, which is so sharply drawn by the 
 
 prophets and constitutes one of the chief points of 
 
 distinction between their faith and that of the masses, 
 
 whose Jehovah worship had all the characters of Baal 
 
 worship, may be justly considered as a development of the 
 
 older type of Hebrew religion. It has sometimes been 
 
 supposed that the conception of a god immanent in nature 
 
 is Aryan, and that of a transcendental god Semitic ; but 
 
 the former view is quite as characteristic of the Baal 
 
 worship of the agricultural Semites as of the early faiths 
 
 M 
 
178 DIVINATION 
 
 LECT. V. 
 
 of the agricultural Aryans. It is true that the higher 
 developments of Semitic religion took a different line, but 
 they did not grow out of Baal worship. 
 
 As regards the special forms of cultus addressed to 
 sacred trees, I can add nothing certain to the very scanty 
 indications that have already come before us. Prayers 
 were addressed to them, particularly for help in sickness, 
 but doubtless also for fertile seasons and the like, and they 
 were hung with votive gifts, especially garments and 
 ornaments, perhaps also anointed with unguents as if they 
 had been real persons. More could be said about the use 
 of branches, leaves or other parts of sacred trees in 
 lustrations, as medicine, and for other ritual purposes. 
 But these things do not directly concern us at present ; 
 they are simply to be noted as supplying additional 
 evidence, if such be necessary, that a sacred energy, that 
 is a divine life, resided even in the parts of holy trees. 
 
 The only other aspect of the subject which seems to 
 call for notice at the present stage is the connection of 
 sacred trees with oracles and divination. Oracles and 
 omens from trees and at tree sanctuaries are of the com- 
 monest among all races,^ and are derived in very various 
 ways, either from observation of phenomena connected 
 with the trees themselves, and interpreted as manifestations 
 of divine life, or from ordinary processes of divination 
 performed in the presence of the sacred object. Some- 
 times the tree is believed to speak with an articulate 
 voice, as the gharcad did in a dream to Moslim;^ but 
 except in a dream it is obvious that the voice of the 
 tree can only be some rustling sound, as of wind in the 
 branches, like that which was given to David as a token 
 
 ^ Cf. Bbtticlier, op. cii., ch. xi. 
 
 2 Supra, p. 126. The same belief in trees from which a spirit speaks oracles 
 occurs in a modem legend given hy Doughty, Ar. JDes., ii. 209. 
 
LECT. V. PROM TEEES. 179 
 
 of the right moment to attack the Philistines/ and requires 
 a soothsayer to interpret it. The famous holy tree near 
 Shechem, called the tree of soothsayers in Judg. ix. 37,^ 
 and the " tree of the revealer " in Gen. xii. 6, must have 
 been the seat of a Canaanite tree oracle.^ We have no 
 hint as to the nature of the physical indications that 
 guided the soothsayers, nor have I found any other case 
 of a Semitic tree oracle where the mode of procedure is 
 described. But the belief in trees as places of divine 
 revelation must have been widespread in Canaan. The 
 prophetess Deborah gave her responses under a palm near 
 Bethel, which according to sacred tradition marked the 
 grave of the nurse of Eachel.'' That the artificial sacred 
 tree or ashera was used in divination would follow from 
 1 Kings xviii. 19, were it not that there are good grounds 
 for holding that in this passage the prophets of the 
 asliera are simply the prophets of the Tyrian Astarte. 
 But in Hosea iv. 12 the "stock" of which the prophets' 
 contemporaries sought counsel can hardly be anything else 
 than the asliera? Soothsayers who draw their inspiration 
 
 ^ 2 Sam. V. 24. 2 A.y. "plain of Meonenim." 
 
 5 It was perhaps only one tree of a sacred grove, for Deut. xi. 30 speaks 
 of the " trees of the revealer " in the plural. 
 
 * Gen. XXXV. 8. There indeed the tree is called an cdlon, a word gene- 
 rally rendered oak. But allon, like elah and elon, seems to be a name 
 applicable to any sacred tree, perhaps to any great tree. Stade, Qesch. Is. 
 1. 455, would even connect these words with el, god, and the Phoenician 
 alonim. 
 
 'As the next clause says, "and their rod declareth to them," it is 
 commonly supposed that rhabdomancy is alluded to, i.e. the use of divining 
 rods. And no doubt the divining rod, in which a spirit or life is supposed 
 to reside, so that it moves and gives indications apart from the will of the 
 man who holds it, is a superstition cognate to the belief in sacred trees ; but 
 when "their rod" occurs in parallelism with "their stock" or tree, it 
 lies nearer to cite Philo Byblius ap. Eus., Pr. Ev. i. 10. 11, who speaks of 
 rods and pillars consecrated by the Phcenicians and worshipped by annual 
 feasts. On this view the rod is only a smaller ashera. Drusius therefore 
 seems to hit the mark in comparing Festus's note on delubrum, where the 
 Romans are said to have worshipped pilled rods as gods. See more on rod 
 
180 HOLY CAVES LECT. v. 
 
 from plants are found in Semitic legend even in the 
 Middle Ages.^ 
 
 To the two great natural marks of a place of worship, 
 the fountain and the tree, ought perhaps to be added 
 grottoes and caves of the earth. At the present day 
 almost every sacred site in Palestine has its grotto, and 
 that this is no new thiug is plain from the numerous 
 symbols of Astarte worship found on the walls of caves in 
 Phoenicia. There can be little doubt that the oldest 
 Phoenician temples were natural or artificial grottoes, and 
 that the sacred as well as the profane monuments of 
 Phcenicia, with their marked preference for monolithic 
 forms, point to the rock-hewn cavern as the original type 
 that dominated the architecture of the region.^ But if 
 this be so, the use of grottoes as temples in later times 
 does not prove that caverns as such had any primitive 
 religious significance. Eeligious practice is always con- 
 servative, and rock-hewn temples would naturally be used 
 after men had ceased to live like troglodytes in caves aiid 
 holes of the earth. Moreover ancient temples are in 
 most instances not so much houses where the gods live, as 
 storehouses for the vessels and treasures of the sanctuary. 
 The altar, the sacred tree, and the other divine symbols to 
 which acts of worship are addressed, stand outside in front 
 of the temple, and the whole service is carried on in the 
 open air. Now all over the Semitic world caves and pits 
 are the primitive storehouses, and we know that in Arabia 
 a pit called the gliahghab, in which the sacred treasure 
 
 ■worship in. Botticher, op. clt. xvi. 5. Was the omen derived from the 
 rod flourishing or withering ? We have such an omen in Aaron's rod 
 (Numb, xvii.), and Adonis rods, set as slips to grow or wither, seem to be 
 referred to in Isa. xvii. 10 sqq., a passage which would certainly gain fojce 
 if the withering of the slips was an ill omen. Divination from the flourish- 
 ing and withering of sacred trees is very common in antiquity (Botticher, 
 ch. xi.). 
 1 Chwolsohn, Ssdbier, iL 914. 2 Eenan, PMnicie, p. 822 sq. 
 
LECT. V. AND PITS. 181 
 
 was stored, was a usual adjunct to sanctuaries.^ At the 
 same time there seem to be weighty reasons for doubting 
 whether this is the whole explanation of cave sanctuaries. 
 In other parts of the world, as for example in Greece, 
 there are many examples of caves associated with the 
 worship of chthonic deities, and also with the oracles of 
 gods like Apollo, who are not usually looked upon as 
 chthonic or subterranean ; and the acts performed in these 
 caves imply that they were regarded as the peculiar seats 
 of divine energy and influence. The more common 
 opinion seems to be that the gods of the Semites were 
 never chthonic, in the sense that their seats and the 
 source of their influence were sought underground. But 
 even in Arabia the ghabyhab is not merely a treasure 
 house ; a victim is said to be brought to the ghahghab, and 
 the word is explained as the name of a place of sacrifice, 
 or the place where the blood was poured out.^ The blood 
 therefore was allowed to flow into the pit, just as the 
 annual human sacrifice at Dumeetha (Duma) was buried 
 under the altar that served as an idol.' It is doubtful 
 whether such rites necessarily imply that the god was 
 conceived as living underground, but they certainly lend 
 themselves readily to that conception, and among the 
 northern Semites there is at least one case where the 
 sacred pit in the sanctuary was supposed to be inhabited 
 by a subterranean deity. At the temple of Hierapolis 
 there was a cleft in the earth imder the temple, which 
 was thought to communicate with the great storehouse of 
 subterranean waters, and in later Hellenised legend was be- 
 lieved to have swallowed up the water of Deucalion's flood.* 
 
 1 "Wellhausen, Held. p. ]00. 
 
 2 Yacut, iii. 772 sq. ; Ibn Hisbam, p. 55, 1. 8. 
 ^ Porphyry, De Abst. ii. 56. 
 
 ■■ Luoian, De dea Syria, xiii. At Jerusalem also there was a cleft, in 
 whioh the waters of the flood disappeared. 
 
182 HOLY CAVES. 
 
 LECT. V. 
 
 Melito^ calls this cleft a well, and explains the ritual 
 of pouring water from the " sea " {i.e. the Euphrates) 
 into it, which was practised twice a year with great 
 solemnity, as designed to prevent the demon of the well 
 {i.e. the god of the subterranean waters) from issuing 
 forth to injure men. I take it that this is only a some- 
 what distorted form of the flood legend, and that the god 
 of the well is not substantially different from any other 
 Semitic Baal. Tor we know that the Baal was specially 
 connected with subterranean waters, and the same god 
 who in his goodwill sends fertilising streams, may be 
 supposed in his anger to send forth a destroying flood. 
 The ritual of pouring water into the cleft has its parallel 
 in the modern practice at the fountain of water before 
 the gates of Tyre, when in September the water beopmes 
 red and troubled, and the natives gather for a great feast 
 and restore its limpidity by pouring a pitcher of sea- 
 water into the source— presumably an offering to appease 
 the angry god.^ 
 
 That the Baalim, as gods of the subterranean waters 
 from which springs are fed, have a certain chthonic 
 character, appears also from the frequent occurrence, 
 especially beside sacred streams, of tombs of the god; 
 for a buried god is one who has his seat underground. 
 On the whole, therefore, I am inclined to conjecture that 
 caverns and clefts in the earth may not seldom have been, 
 like the cleft at Hierapolis, more than mere adjuncts to 
 the sanctuary, and may have been chosen as places of 
 worship because through them the god ascended and 
 descended to and from the outer world, and through them 
 the gifts of the worshipper could be brought nearer his 
 subterranean abode. And what seems particularly to 
 
 ' In Cureton, Spic. Syr., p. 25. 
 
 ' Volney, Mat pol. de la Syrie, ch. yiii.; Mariti, ii. 269. 
 
LECT. V. HOLY STONES. 183 
 
 strengthen this conjecture is that the adytum, or dark 
 inner chamber, found in many temples both among the 
 Semites and in Greece, was almost certainly in its origin 
 a cave ; indeed in Greece it was often wholly or partially 
 subterranean and is called fiejapov, which is the Semitic 
 mvD and means a cave. The adytum is not a constant 
 feature in Greek temples, and the name ^eyapou seems to 
 indicate that it was borrowed from the Semites.^ Where 
 it does exist it is a place of oracle, as the Holy of Holies 
 was at Jerusalem, and therefore cannot be looked upon 
 in any other light than as the part of the sanctuary where 
 the god is most immediately present. 
 
 From this obscure topic we pass at once into clearer 
 light when we turn to consider the ordinary artificial 
 mark of a Semitic sanctuary, viz. the sacrificial pillar, 
 cairn or rude altar. The sacred fountain and the sacred 
 tree are common symbols at sanctuaries, but they are not 
 invariably found, and in most cases they have but a 
 secondary relation to the ordinary ritual. In the more 
 advanced type of sanctuary the real meeting -place 
 between man and his god is the altar. The altar in its 
 developed form is a raised structure upon which sacrifices 
 are presented to the god. Most commonly the sacrifices 
 are fire-offerings, and the altar is the place where they 
 are burned, but in another type of ritual, of which the 
 Eoman lectisternium and the Hebrew oblation of shewbread 
 are famiKar examples, the altar is simply a table on which 
 a meal is spread before the deity. Whether fire is used 
 or not is a detail in the mode of presentation and does 
 not affect the essence of the sacrificial act. In either 
 case the offering consists of food, "the bread of God" 
 
 iThe possibility of this can hardly he disputed when we think of the 
 temple of Apollo at Delos, where the holy cave is the original sanctuary. 
 For this was a place of worship which the Greeks took over from the 
 Phoenicians. 
 
184 ALTAES AND LECT. v. 
 
 as it is called in the Hebrew ritual/ and there is no 
 real difference between a table and altar. Indeed the 
 Hebrew altar of burnt-offering is called the table of the 
 Lord, while conversely the table of shewbread is called 
 an altar.^ 
 
 The table is not a very primitive article of furniture/ 
 and this circumstance alone is enough to lead us to suspect 
 that the altar was not originally a raised platform on 
 which a sacrificial meal could be set forth. In Arabia, 
 where sacrifice by fire is almost unknown, we find no 
 proper altar, but in its place a rude pillar or heap of 
 stones, beside which the victim is slain, the blood being 
 poured out over the stone or at its base.* This ritual of 
 the blood is the essence of the offering ; no part of the 
 flesh falls as a rule to the god, but the whole is distributed 
 among the men who assist at the sacrifice. The sacred 
 stones, which are already mentioned by Herodotus, are 
 called ansab (sing, iiosb), i.e. stones set up, pillars. We 
 also find the name gharly, " blood-bedaubed," with reference 
 to the ritual just described. The meaning of this ritual 
 will occupy us later; meantime the thing to be noted 
 is that the altar is only a modification of the nosb, and 
 that the rude Arabian usage is the primitive type out 
 of which all the elaborate altar ceremonies of the more 
 cultivated Semites grew. Whatever else was done in 
 connection with a sacrifice, the primitive rite of sprinkling 
 or dashing the blood against the altar, or allowing it to 
 flow down on the ground at its base, was hardly ever 
 
 'Lev. xxi. 8, 17, etc.; cf. Lev. iii. 11. 
 
 2 Mai. L 7, 12 ; Ezek. xli. 22 ;. cf. Wellhausen, Prolegomena, p. 69. The 
 same word (TIJJ) is used of setting a table and disposing the pieces of the 
 sacrifice on the fire-altar. 
 
 'The old Arabian sofra is merely a skin spread on the ground, not a 
 raised table. 
 
 'Wellhausen, ffeid,, p. 113; cf. ibid. pp. 39 sq. 99. 
 
LECT. V. SACRIPICIAL STONES. 185 
 
 omitted ; ^ and this practice was not peculiar to the 
 Semites but was equally the rule with the Greeks and 
 Romans, and indeed with the ancient nations generally. 
 
 As regards fire sacrifices we shall find reason to doubt 
 ■whether the hearth on which the sacred flesh was con- 
 sumed was originally identical with the sacred stone or 
 cairn over which the sacrificial blood was allowed to flow. 
 It seems probable, for reasons that cannot be stated at 
 this point, that the more modern form of altar, which 
 could be used both for the ritual of the blood and as a 
 sacred hearth, was reached by combining two operations 
 which originally took place apart. But in any case it is 
 certain that the original altar among the northern Semites, 
 as well as among the Arabs, was a great stone or cairn 
 at which the blood of the victim was shed. At Jacob's 
 covenant with Laban no other altar appears than the 
 cairn of stones beside which the parties to the compact 
 ate together; in the ancient law of Ex. xx. 24, 25, it is 
 prescribed that the altar must be of earth or of unhewn 
 stone ; and that a single stone sufficed appears from 1 
 Sam. xiv. 32 sqq., where the first altar built by Saul is 
 simply the great stone which he caused to be rolled unto 
 him after the battle of Michmash, that the people might 
 slay their booty of sheep and cattle at it, and not eat the 
 flesh with the blood. The simple shedding of the blood by 
 the stone or altar consecrated the slaughter and made it a 
 legitimate sacrifice. Here, therefore, there is no difference 
 between the Hebrew altar and the Arabian nosh or gharly. 
 
 ^ There were indeed altars at which no animal sacrifices were presented. 
 Such are, among the Hebrews, the altar of incense and the table of shewbread, 
 and among the Phoenicians the altar at Paphos (Tac, Hist. ii. 3) ; perhaps 
 also the "altar of the pious" at Delos (Porph., De Ahst. ii. 28) was of 
 Phoenician origin. In later times certain exceptional sacrifices were burned 
 alive or slain without effusion of blood, but this does not touch the general 
 principle. 
 
186 THE HEBREW LECT. v. 
 
 Monolithic pillars or cairns of stone are frequently- 
 mentioned in the more ancient parts of the Old Testament 
 as standing at sanctuaries/ generally in connection with 
 a sacred legend about the occasion on which they were 
 set up by some famous patriarch or hero. In the Biblical 
 story they usually appear simply as memorial pillars, 
 without any definite ritual significance ; but this is due 
 to the fact that the narratives are conformed to the 
 standpoint of the law and of the later prophets, who 
 look on the ritual use of sacred pillars as idolatrous. 
 The condemnation of their use by the Hebrew prophets 
 is the best evidence that sxich pillars had an important 
 place among the appurtenances of Canaanite temples,^ and 
 as Hosea (iii. 4) speaks of the masseha, or pillar, as an 
 indispensable feature in the sanctuaries of northern Israel 
 in his time, we may be sure that by the mass of the 
 Hebrews the pillars of Shechem, Bethel, Gilgal and other 
 northern shrines were looked upon not as mere memorials 
 of historical events, but as necessary parts of the ritual 
 apparatus of a place of worship. That the special ritual 
 acts connected with the Canaanite masseia were essentially 
 the same as in the case of the Arabian nosb may be 
 gathered from Philo Byblius, who, in his pseudo-historical 
 manner, speaks of a certain Usous who consecrated two 
 pillars to fire and wind, and paid worship to them, pouring 
 out libations to them of the blood of beasts taken in 
 hunting.^ From these evidences, and especially from the 
 fact that libations of the same kind are applied to both, 
 
 ' At Shechem, Josh. xxiv. 26 ; Bethel, Gen. xxviii. 18 sqq. ; Gilead, 
 (Ramoth-Gilead), Gen. xxxi. 45 sqq. ; Gilgal, Josh. iv. 5 ; Mizpeh, 1 Sam. 
 vii. 12 ; Gibeon, 2 Sam. xx. 8 ; En-Rogel, 1 Kings i. 9. 
 
 2 Exod. xxxiv. 13 ; Deut. xii. 3 ; of. Micah t. 13 (12). For pillars A.V. 
 generally gives, incorrectly, "images." 
 
 'Euseb., Proep. Ev. i. 10. 10. Libations of blood are mentioned as a 
 heathenish rite in Psalm xvi. i . 
 
LECT V. MASSEBA. 187 
 
 it seems clear that the altar is a differentiated form of the 
 primitive rude stone pillar, the nosb or masseha} But the 
 sacred stone is more than an altar, for in Hebrew and 
 Canaanite sanctuaries the altar, in its developed form as a 
 table or hearth, does not supersede the pillar ; the two are 
 found side by side at the same sanctuary, the altar as a 
 piece of sacrificial apparatus, and the pillar as a visible 
 symbol or embodiment of the presence of the deity, which 
 in process of time comes to be fashioned and carved in 
 various ways, till ultimately it becomes a statue or anthro- 
 pomorphic idol of stone, just as the sacred tree or post was 
 ultimately developed into an image of wood. 
 
 It has been disputed whether the sacred stone at 
 Semitic sanctuaries was from the first an object of 
 worship, a sort of rude idol in which the divinity was 
 somehow supposed to be present. It is urged that in 
 the patriarchal religion the masseha is a mere mark 
 without intrinsic religious significance. But here the 
 answer is obvious," that the original sense of the patriarchal 
 symbols cannot be concluded from the sense put upon 
 them by the Biblical writers, who lived many centuries 
 after these ancient sanctuaries were first founded, and 
 that, at the time when the oldest of these narratives 
 were written, the Canaanites and the great mass of the 
 Hebrews certainly treated the masseha as a sort of idol 
 or embodiment of the divine presence. Moreover Jacob's 
 pillar is more than a mere landmark, for it is anointed, 
 just as idols were in antiquity, and the pillar itself, not 
 the spot on which it stood, is called " the house of God," ^ 
 
 ' For readers who do not know Hebrew it may be noted that nosh and 
 mas^eba are derived from the same root (NSB, "set up" ). Another name 
 for the pillar or cairn is y'lii, which occurs in place-names, both in Canaan 
 and among the Aramseans (Nisibis, "the pillars"); cf. Lagarde, Bildunrj 
 der Nomina, p. 95. 
 
 ' Gen. xxviii. 22. 
 
SACRED STONES. LECT. v. 
 
 as if the deity were conceived actually to dwell in the 
 stone, or manifest himself therein to his worshippers. 
 And this is the conception which appears to have been 
 associated with sacred stones everywhere. When the 
 Arab daubed blood on the nosb his object was to bring 
 the offering into direct contact with the deity, and in like 
 manner the practice of stroking the sacred stone with the 
 hand is identical with the practice of touching or stroking 
 the garments or beard of a man in acts of supplication 
 before him.^ Here, therefore, the sacred stone is altar and 
 idol in one; and so Porphyry (De Abst. ii. 56) in his 
 account of the worship of Duma in Arabia expressly 
 speaks of " the altar which they use as an idol." The 
 same conception must have prevailed among the Canaanites 
 before altar and pillar were differentiated from one another, 
 otherwise the pillar would have been simply changed into 
 the more convenient form of an altar, and there could have 
 been no reason for retaining both. So far as the evidence 
 from tradition and ritual goes, we can only think of the 
 sacred stone as consecrated by the actual presence of the 
 godhead, so that whatever touched it was brought into 
 immediate contact with the deity. How such a concep- 
 tion first obtained currency is a matter for which no direct 
 evidence is available, and which if settled at all can be 
 settled only by inference and conjecture. At this stage of 
 our enquiry it is not possible to touch on this subject 
 except in a provisional way. But some things may be 
 said which will at least tend to make the problem more 
 definite. 
 
 Let us note then that there are two distinct points to 
 
 be considered — (I) how men came to look on an artificial 
 
 structure as the symbol or abode of the god, (2) why the 
 
 particular artificial structure is a stone or a cairn of stones. 
 
 ■^ Wellhausen, p. 105 ; ibid. p. 52. 
 
LECT. V. SACRED STONES. 189 
 
 (1) In tree worship and in the worship of fountains 
 adoration is paid to a thing which man did not make, 
 which has an independent life, and properties such as to 
 the savage imagination may well appear to be divine. 
 On the same analogy ore can understand how natural 
 rocks and boulders, suited by their size and aspect to affect 
 the savage imagination, have acquired in various parts of 
 the world the reputation of being animated objects with 
 power to help and hurt man, and so have come to receive 
 religious worship. But the worship of artificial pillars 
 and cairns of stones, chosen at random and set up by man's 
 hand, is a very different thing from this. Of course not 
 the rudest savage believes that in setting up a sacred stone 
 he is making a new god ; what he does believe is that the 
 god comes into the stone, dwells in it or animates it, so that 
 for practical purposes the stone is thenceforth an embodi- 
 ment of the god, and may be spoken of and dealt with as 
 if it were the god himself. But there is an enormous 
 difference between worshipping the god in his natural 
 embodiment, such as a tree or some notable rock, and 
 persuading him to come and take for his embodiment a 
 structure set up for him by the worshipper. From the 
 metaphysical point of view, which we are always tempted 
 to apply to ancient religion, the worship of stocks and 
 stones prepared by man's hand seems to be a much cruder 
 thing than the worship of natural life as displayed in a 
 fountain or a secular tree ; but practically the idea that 
 the godhead consents to be present in a structure set 
 for him by his worshippers implies a degree of intimacy 
 and permanency in the relations between man and the 
 being he adores which marks an advance on the 
 worship of natural objects. It is true that the rule 
 of Semitic worship is that the artificial symbol can 
 only be set up in a place already consecrated by 
 
190 SACRED STONES LECT. v. 
 
 tokens of the divine presence ; but the sacred stone is not 
 merely a token that the place is frequented by a god, it 
 is also a permanent pledge that in this place he consents 
 to enter into stated relations with men and accept their 
 service. 
 
 (2) That deities like those of ancient heathenism, which 
 were not supposed to be omnipresent, and which were 
 commonly thought of as having some sort of corporeal 
 nature, could enter into a stone for the convenience of 
 their worshippers, seems to us a fundamental difficulty, 
 but was hardly a difficulty that would be felt by primitive 
 man, who has most elastic conceptions of what is possible. 
 When the principle is once granted that the god is willing 
 to meet with man in the way just described, there does 
 not seem to be any reason in the nature of things for 
 choosing one form of embodiment rather than another. 
 When we speak of an idol we generally think of an image 
 presenting a likeness of the god, because our knowledge of 
 heathenism is mainly drawn from races which had made 
 some advance in the plastic arts, and used idols shaped in 
 such a way as to suggest the appearance and attributes 
 which legend ascribed to each particular deity. But there 
 is no reason in the nature of things why the physical 
 embodiment which the deity assumes for the convenience 
 of his worshipper should be a copy of his proper form, and 
 in the earliest times to which the worship of sacred stones 
 goes back there was evidently no attempt to make the idol 
 a simulacrum. A cairn or rude stone pillar is not a 
 portrait of anything, and I take it that we shall go on 
 altogether false lines if we try to explain its selection as a 
 divine symbol by any consideration of what it looks like. 
 Even when the arts had made considerable progress the 
 Semites felt no need to fashion their sacred symbols into 
 likenesses of the gods. Melcarth was worshipped at Tyre in 
 
 & 
 
LECT. V. AS DIVINE SYMBOLS. 191 
 
 the form of two pillars,^ and at the great temple of Paphos, 
 down to Eoman times, the idol was not an anthropomorphic 
 image of Astarte but a conical stone.^ These antique 
 forms were not retained from want of plastic skill, or 
 because there were not well-known types on which images 
 of the various gods could be and often were constructed ; 
 for we see from the second commandment that likenesses 
 of things celestial, terrestrial and aquatic were objects of 
 worship in Canaan from a very early date. It was simply 
 not thought necessary that the symbol in which the divinity 
 was present should be like the god. 
 
 Phoenician votive cippi were often adorned with rude 
 figures of men, animals and the like, as may be seen in the 
 series of such monuments dedicated to Tanith and Baal 
 Hamman which are depicted in the Corpus Inscr. Sem. 
 These figures, which are often little better than hierogly- 
 phics, served, like the accompanying inscriptions, to indicate 
 the meaning of the cippus and the deity to which it was 
 devoted. An image in like manner declares its own 
 meaning better than a mere pillar, but the chief idol of a 
 great sanctuary did not require to be explained in this 
 way ; its position showed what it was without either figure 
 or inscription. It is probable that among the Phoenicians 
 and Hebrews, as among the Arabs at the time of Mohammed, 
 portrait images, such as are spoken of in the second com- 
 mandment, were mainly small gods for private use. For 
 public sanctuaries the sacred pillar or ashera sufficed. 
 
 '' Herod., ii. 44. Twin pillars stood also before the temples of Paphos and 
 Hierapolis, and Solomon set up two brazen pillars before his temple at 
 Jerusalem. As he named them "The Stablisher" and "It him is strength," 
 they were doubtless symbols of Jehovah. 
 
 ^ Tac. , Hist. ii. 2. Other examples are the cone of Elagabalus at Emesa 
 (Herodian, v. 3, 5) and that of Zeus Casius. More in Zoega, De obeliscis, 
 p. 203. The cone at Emesa was believed to have fallen from heaven, like the 
 idol of Artemis at Ephesus and other ancient and very sacred idols in 
 antiquity. 
 
192 SACRED STONES LECT. T. 
 
 The worship of sacred ston'es is often spoken of as if it 
 belonged to a distinctly lower type of religion than the 
 worship of images. It is called fetichism — a merely 
 popular term, which conveys no precise idea, but is vaguely 
 supposed to mean something very savage and contemptible. 
 And no doubt the worship of unshapen blocks is from the 
 artistic point of view a very poor thing, but from a purely 
 religious point of view its inferiority to image worship is 
 not so evident. The host in the mass is artistically as 
 much inferior to the Venus of Milo as a Semitic masseba 
 was, but no one will say that mediaeval Christianity is 
 a lower form of religion than Aphrodite worship. What 
 seems to be implied when sacred stones are spoken of as 
 fetiches is that they date from a time when stones were 
 regarded as the natural embodiment and proper form of 
 the gods, not merely as the embodiment which they took 
 up in order to receive the homage of their worshippers. 
 Such a view, I venture to think, is entirely without 
 foundation. Sacred stones are found in all parts of the 
 world and in the worship of gods of the most various kinds, 
 so that their use must rest on some cause which was 
 operative in all primitive religions. But that all or most 
 ancient gods were originally gods of stones, inhabiting 
 natural rocks or boulders, and that artificial cairns or pillars 
 are imitations of these natural objects, is against evidence 
 and quite incredible. Among the Semites the sacred pillar 
 is universal, but the instances of the worship of rocks and 
 stones in situ are neither numerous nor prominent, and 
 the idea of founding a theory of the origin of sacred stones 
 in general upon them could hardly occur to any one, except 
 on the perfectly gratuitous supposition that the idol or 
 symbol must necessarily be like the god.^ 
 
 1 The stone of al-Lat at Taif, in which the goddess -was supposed to dwell, 
 is identified by local tradition with a mass which seems to be a natural block 
 
LECT. V. AND FETICH WORSHIP. 193 
 
 The notion that the sacred stone is a simulacrum of 
 the god seems also to be excluded by the observation that 
 several pillars may stand together as representatives of a 
 single deity. Here, indeed, the evidence must be sifted 
 with some care, for a god and a goddess were often 
 worshipped together, and then each would have a pillar.^ 
 But this kind of explanation does not cover all the cases. 
 In the Arabian rite described in Herod, iii. 8, two deities 
 are invoked, but seven sa credstones are anointed with 
 blood, and a plurality of sacred stones round which the 
 worshippers circled in a single act of worship are frequently 
 spoken of in Arabian poetry.^ Similarly in Canaan the 
 place - name Anathoth means images of 'Anath in the 
 
 in situ, though not one of unusual size or form. See my Kinship, p. 293, and 
 Doughty, ii. 515. At 'Okaz the sacred circle was performed round rooks 
 {soMr, Yactit, iii. 705), presumably the remarkable group which I described 
 in 1880 in a letter to the Scotsman newspaper. " In the S.E. corner of the 
 small plain, which is barely two miles across, rises a hill of loose granite 
 blocks, crowned by an enormous pillar standing quite erect and flanked by 
 lower masses. I do not think that this pillar can be less than 50 or 60 feet 
 in height, and its extraordinary aspect, standing between two lesser guards 
 on either side, is the first thing that strikes the eye on nearing the plain." 
 The rock of Dusares, referred to by Steph. Byz., is perhaps the cliflf with a 
 waterfall which has been already mentioned {supra, p. 153), and so may be 
 compared with the rock at Kadesh from which the fountain gushed. The 
 sanctity of rocks from which water flows, or of rocks that form a sacred grotto, 
 plainly cannot be used to explain the origin of sacred cairns and pillars 
 which have neither water nor cavern. 
 
 That the phrase ''Rock of Israel," applied to Jehovah, has anything to do 
 with stone worship may legitimately be doubted. The use of baetylia, or 
 small portable stones to which magical life was ascribed, hardly belongs to 
 the present argument. The idol Abnil at Nisibis is simply ' ' the Cippus of 
 El " (Assem. i. 27). 
 
 ^ Cf Kinship, p. 293 sqq. p. 262. Whether the two gharl at Hira and 
 Faid ("Wellh., p. 40) belong to a pair of gods, or are a double image of one 
 deity, like the twin pillars of Heracles-Melcarth at Tyre, cannot be decideil. 
 Wellhausen inclines to the latter view, citing Hamdsa, 190. 15. But in 
 Arabic idiom the two 'Ozzas may mean al-'Ozza and her companion goddesra 
 al-Lat. Mr. C. Lyall suggests the reading gharlyaini. 
 
 2 Wellh., Heid. p. 99. The poets often seem to identify the god with 
 one of the stones, as al-'Ozza was identified with one of the three trees at 
 Nakhla. The ansab stand beside the god {Taj. iii. 560, 1. 1) or round him, 
 which probably means that the idol proper stood in the midst. In the verse 
 
 N 
 
194 ORIGIN OF LECT. V. 
 
 plural; and at Gilgal there were twelve sacred pillars 
 according to the number of the twelve tribes/ as at Sinai 
 twelve pillars were erected at the covenant sacrifice.^ 
 Twin pillars of Melcarth have already been, noticed at 
 Tyre, and are familiar to us as the " pillars of Hercules " 
 in connection with the Straits of Gibraltar. 
 
 Another view taken of sacred pillars and cippi is that 
 they are images, not of the deity, but of bodily organs taken 
 as emblems of particular powers or attributes of deity, 
 especially of life-giving and reproductive power. I will 
 say something of this theory in a note ; but as an explana- 
 tion of the origin of sacred stones it has not even a show 
 of plausibility. Men did not begin by worshipping 
 emblems of divine powers, they brought their homage and 
 offerings to the god himself. If the god was already con- 
 ceived as present in the stone, it was a natural exercise of 
 the artistic faculty to put something on the stone to indi- 
 cate the fact ; and this something, if the god was anthro- 
 pomorphically conceived, might either be a human figure, 
 or merely an indication of important parts of the human 
 figure. At Tabala in Arabia, for instance, a sort of crown 
 was sculptured on the stone of Al-Lat to mark her head. 
 In like manner other parts of the body may be rudely 
 designated, particularly such as distinguish sex. But that 
 the sacred cippus, as such, is not a sexual emblem is 
 plain from the fact that exactly the same kind of 
 
 of al-Farazdac, A gh. xix. 3, 1. 30, to which Wellhausen calls attention, the 
 Oxford MS. of the KTaoaid and that of the late Spitta-Bey read, 'ala hina Id 
 tuhya 'l-banatu wa-idhhumu 'uJcufun 'aid 'l-ansdbi hawla 'l-mudatowari, and 
 the scholia explain al-mudawivar as sanam yaduruna hawlahu. In the 
 line of al-A'sha (Ibn Hisham, 256. 8 ; M'org. Forsch. p. 258), the god who is 
 himself »iaM.m6, "set up as a pillar," is yet called "dhu 'l-rmsub." It is 
 impossible to believe that this distinction between one stone and the rest is 
 primitive. 
 
 1 Josh. iv. 20. These stones are probably identical with the stone-idols 
 (A.V. "c[uarries") of Judg. iii. 19, 26. 
 
 ^ Exod. xxiv. 4. 
 
LECT. V. SACRED STONES. 195 
 
 pillar or cone is used to represent gods and goddesses 
 indifferently.^ 
 
 On a review of all these theories it seems most probable 
 that the choice of a pillar or cairn as the primitive idol 
 was not dictated by any other consideration than con- 
 venience for ritual purposes. The stone or stone-heap was 
 a convenient mark of the proper place of sacrifice, and at 
 the same time, if the deity consented to be present at it, 
 provided the means for carrying out the ritual of the sacri- 
 ficial blood. Further than this it does not seem possible 
 to go, till we know why it was thought so essential to 
 bring the blood into immediate contact with the god 
 adored. This question belongs to the subject of sacrifice, 
 which I propose to commence in the next lecture. 
 
 1 See Additional Note E, Phallic Symbols. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 SACRIFICE PRELIMINAEY SURVEY. 
 
 We have seen in the course of the last lecture that the 
 practices of ancient religion require a fixed meeting-place 
 between the worshippers and their god. The choice of 
 such a place is determined in the first instance by the 
 consideration that certain spots are the natural haunts of 
 a deity, and therefore holy ground. But for most rituals 
 it is not sufficient that the worshipper should present his 
 service on holy ground ; it is necessary that he should 
 come into contact with the god himself, and this he 
 believes himself to do when he directs his homage to a 
 natural object, like a tree or a sacred fountain, which 
 is believed to be the actual seat of the god and embodi- 
 ment of a divine life, or when he draws near to an 
 artificial mark of the immediate presence of the deity. 
 In the oldest forms of Semitic religion this mark is a 
 sacred stone, which is at once idol and altar; in later 
 times the idol and the altar stand side by side, and the 
 original functions of the sacred stone are divided between 
 them ; the idol represents the presence of the god, and the 
 altar serves to receive the gifts of the worshipper. Both 
 are necessary to constitute a complete sanctuary, because 
 a complete act of worship implies not merely that the 
 worshipper comes into the presence of his god with gestures 
 of homage and words of prayer, but also that he lays before 
 the deity some material oblation. In antiquity an act of 
 
LECT. VI. SACRIFICE. 197 
 
 worship was a formal operation in which certain prescribed 
 rites and ceremonies must be duly observed. And among 
 these the oblation at the altar had so central a place that 
 among the Greeks and Eomans the words lepovpyia and 
 sacrificium, which in their primary application denote 
 any action within the sphere of things sacred to the gods, 
 and so cover the whole field of ritual, were habitually used, 
 like our English word sacrifice, of those oblations at the 
 altar round which all other parts of ritual turned. In 
 English idiom there is a further tendency to narrow the 
 word sacrifice to such oblations as involve the slaughter 
 of a victim. In the Authorised Version of the Bible 
 " sacrifice and offering '' is the usual translation of the 
 Hebrew zibah uminha, that is " bloody and bloodless 
 oblations." For the purposes of the present discussion, 
 however, it seems best to include both kinds of oblation ' 
 under the term " sacrifice ; " for a comprehensive term is 
 necessary, and the word "offering," which naturally sug- 
 gests itself as an alternative, is somewhat too wide, as it 
 may properly include not only sacrifices but votive offerings, 
 of treasure images and the like, which form a distinct 
 class from offerings at the altar. 
 
 Why sacrifice is the typical form of all complete acts 
 of worship in the antique religions, and what the sacrificial 
 act means, is an involved and difficult problem. The 
 problem does not belong to any one religion, for sacrifice 
 is equally important among all early peoples in aU parts 
 of the world where religious ritual has reached any con- 
 siderable development. Here, therefore, we have to deal 
 with an institution that must have been shaped by the 
 action of general causes, operating very widely and under 
 conditions that were common in primitive times to all 
 races of mankind. To construct a theory of sacrifice 
 exclusively on the Semitic evidence would be unscientific 
 
198 THE LEVITICAL lect. vi. 
 
 and misleading, but for the present purpose it is right to 
 put the facts attested for the Semitic peoples in the fore- 
 ground, and to call in the sacrifices of other nations to 
 confirm or modify the conclusions to which we are led. 
 For some of the main aspects of the subject the Semitic 
 evidence is very full and clear, for others it is fragmentary 
 and unintelligible without help from what is known about 
 other rituals. 
 
 Unfortunately the only system of Semitic sacrifice of 
 which we possess a full account is that of the second 
 temple at Jerusalem ; ^ and though the ritual of Jerusalem 
 as described in the Book of Leviticus is imdoubtedly based 
 on very ancient tradition, going back to a time when there 
 was no substantial difference, in point of form, between 
 Hebrew sacrifices and those of the surrounding nations, the 
 system as we have it dates from a time when sacrifice was 
 no longer the sum and substance of worship. In the long 
 years of Babylonian exile the Israelites who remained true 
 to the faith of Jehovah had learned to draw nigh to their 
 God without the aid of sacrifice and offering, and, when 
 they returned to Canaan, they did not return to the old 
 type of religion. They built an altar indeed, and restored 
 
 1 The detailed ritual laws of the Pentateuch belong to the post-exilic 
 document commonly called the Priestly Code, which was adopted as the 
 law of Israel's religion at Ezra's reformation (444 B. c. ). To the Priestly 
 Code belong the Book of Leviticus, together with the cognate parts of the 
 .adjacent Books, ExoJ. xxv.-xxxi., xxxv.-xl., and Numb, i.-x., xv.-xix., 
 xxv.-xxxvi. (with some inconsiderable exceptions). With the Code is 
 associated an account of the sacred history from Adam to Joshua, and some 
 ritual matter is found in the historical sections of the work, especially in 
 Exod. xii. , where the law of the Passover is mainly priestly, and represents 
 post-exilic usage. The law of Deuteronomy (seventh cent. B.C.) and the 
 older codes of Exod. xx.-xxiii., xxxiv., have little to say about the rules of 
 ritual, which in old times were matters of priestly tradition and not incor- 
 porated in a law-book. A just view of the sequence and dates of the several 
 parts of the Pentateuch is essential to the historical study of Hebrew religion. 
 Readers to whom this subject is new may refer to Wellhausen's Prolegomena 
 (Eng. Tr., Edin. 1883), and to the article "Pentateuch," i^^cyc. Brit., 9th 
 ed., or to my Old Test, in the Jewish Church (Edin. 1881). 
 
LECT. VI. SACRIFICES. 199 
 
 its ritual on the lines of old tradition, so far as these could 
 be reconciled with the teaching of the prophets and the 
 Deuteronomic law — especially with the principle that there 
 was but one sanctuary at which sacrifice could be accept- 
 ably offered. But this principle itself was entirely 
 destructive of the old importance of sacrifice, as the stated 
 means of converse between God and man. In the old 
 time every town had its altar, and a visit to the local 
 sanctuary was the easy and obvious way of consecrating 
 every important act of life. No such interweaving of 
 sacrificial service with everyday religion was possible 
 under the new law, nor was anything of the kind at- 
 tempted. The worship of the second temple was an 
 antiquarian resuscitation of forms which had lost their 
 intimate connection with the national life, and therefore 
 had lost the greater part of their original significance. 
 The Book of Leviticus, with all its fulness of ritual detail, 
 does not furnish any clear idea of the place which each 
 kind of altar service held in the old religion, when all 
 worship took the form of sacrifice. And in some parti- 
 culars there is reason to believe that the desire to avoid 
 all heathenism, the necessity for giving expression to new 
 religious ideas, and the growing tendency to keep the 
 people as far as possible from the altar and make sacrifice 
 the business of a priestly caste, had introduced into the 
 ritual features unknown to more ancient practice. 
 
 The three main types of sacrifice recognised by the 
 Levitical law are the whole burnt - offering ( ola), the 
 sacrifice followed by a meal of which the flesh of the victim 
 formed the staple {sMlem, zdbah), and the sin - offering 
 (Jiattath), with an obscure variety of the last named called 
 asham (A.V. " trespass-offering "). Of these 'ola and z^ia/i 
 are frequently mentioned in the older literature, and J;hey 
 are often spoken of together, as if all animal sacrifices 
 
200 THE MATERIAL LECT. vi. 
 
 fell under one or the other head. The use of sacrifice as 
 an atonement for sin is also recognised in the old literature, 
 especially in the case of the hurnt-offering, but there is 
 little or no trace of a special kind of offering appropriated 
 for this purpose before the time of Ezekiel/ The formal 
 distinctions with regard to Hebrew sacrifices that can be 
 clearly made out from the pre - exilic literature appear 
 to be — 
 
 (1) The distinction between animal and vegetable 
 oblations (zdbah and minim). 
 
 (2) The distinction between offerings that were consumed 
 by fire and such as were merely set forth on the sacred 
 table (the shewbread). 
 
 (3) The distinction between sacrifices in which the 
 consecrated gift is wholly made over to the god, to be 
 consumed on the altar or otherwise disposed of in his 
 service, and those at which the god and his worshippers 
 partake together in the consecrated thing. To the latter 
 class belong the zehahim, or ordinary animal sacrifices, in 
 which a victim is slain, its blood poured out at the altar, 
 and the fat of the intestines with certain other pieces 
 burned, while the greater part of the flesh is left to the 
 offerer to form the material of a sacrificial banquet. 
 
 These three distinctions, which are undoubtedly ancient, 
 and applicable to the sacrifices of other Semitic nations, 
 suggest three heads under which a preliminary survey of 
 the subject may be conveniently arranged. But not till 
 we reach the third head shall we find ourselves brought 
 face to face with the deeper aspects of the problem of the 
 origin and significance of sacrificial worship. 
 
 ^ See Wellhausen, Prolegomena, chap. ii. The Hebrew designations of 
 the species of sacrifices are to be compared with those on the Carthaginian 
 tables of fees paid to priests for the various kinds of offerings ; C. I. 8. 
 Nos. 165, 167 sqq., bnt tlie information given in these is so fragmentary 
 that it is difBcult to make much of it. See below, p. 219 n. 
 
LECT. VI. OF SACRIFICE. 201 
 
 1. The material of sacrifice. The division of sacrifices 
 into animal and vegetable offerings involves the principle 
 that sacrifices — as distinct from votive offerings of garments, ^ 
 weapons, treasure and the like — are drawn from edible 
 substances, and indeed from such substances as form the 
 ordinary staple of human food. The last statement is 
 strictly true of the Levitical ritual ; but, so far as the 
 flesh of animals is concerned, it was subject, even in the 
 later heathen rituals, to certain rare but important excep- 
 tions, unclean or sacred animals, whose flesh was ordinarily 
 forbidden to men, being offered and eaten sacramentally on 
 very solemn occasions. "We shall see by and by that in 
 the earliest times these extraordinary sacrifices had a very 
 great importance in ritual, and that on them depends the 
 theory of the earliest sacrificial meals; but, as regards later 
 times, the Hebrew sacrifices are sufficiently typical of the 
 ordinary usage of the Semites generally. The four-footed 
 animals from which the Levitical law allows victims to be 
 selected, are the ox the sheep and the goat, that is, the 
 " clean " domestic quadrupeds which men were allowed to 
 eat. The same quadrupeds are named upon the Cartha- 
 ginian inscriptions that give the tariff of sacrificial fees to 
 be paid at the temple,^ and in Lucian's account of the 
 Syrian ritual at Hierapolis.^ The Israelites neither ate nor 
 sacrificed camels, but among the Arabs the camel was 
 common food and a common offering. The swine, on the 
 other hand, which was commonly sacrificed and eaten in 
 Greece, was forbidden food to all the Semites,^ and occurs 
 as a sacrifice only in certain exceptional rites of the kind 
 already alluded to. Deer, gazelles and other kinds of 
 game were eaten by the Hebrews, but not sacrificed, and 
 from Deut. xii. 16 we may conclude that this was an 
 
 1 C. I. 8. Nos. 165, 167. ^ jy^^ Syria, liv. 
 
 3 Lucian, ul sup. (Syrians) ; Sozoinen, vi. 38 (all Saracens). 
 
202 THE MATERIAL 
 
 LECT. VI. 
 
 ancient rule. Among the Arabs, in like manner, a gazelle 
 was regarded as an imperfect oblation, a shabby substitute 
 for a sheep.-^ As regards birds, the Levitical law admits 
 pigeons and turtle-doves, but only as holocausts and in 
 certain purificatory ceremonies.^ Birds seem also to be 
 mentioned in the Carthaginian sacrificial lists ; what is 
 said of them is very obscure, but it would appear that they 
 might be used either for ordinary sacrifices (shelem halll) 
 or for special purposes piacular and oracular. That the 
 quail was sacrificed to the Tyrian Baal appears from 
 Athenseus, ix. 47, p. 3 9 2d 
 
 Fish again were eaten by the Israelites, but not 
 sacrificed; among their heathen neighbours, on the 
 contrary, fish — or at least certain kinds of fish — were 
 forbidden food, and were sacrificed only in exceptional 
 cases.^ 
 
 Among the Hebrew offerings drawn from the vegetable 
 kingdom, meal wine and oil take the chief place,* and 
 these were also the chief vegetable constituents of man's 
 
 1 Wellh., p. 112; Harith, Mo' all. 69; especially Lisan, vi. 211. The 
 reason of this rule, and certain exceptions, will appear in the sequel. 
 
 2 Lev. i. 14, xii. 6, 8, xiv. 22, xv. 14, 29 ; Numb. vi. 10. Two hirds, 
 of which one is slain and its blood used for lustration, appear also in the 
 ritual for cleansing a leper, or a house that has been aflfected with leprosy 
 (Lev. xiv. 4 sq., 49 sq.). Further, the turtle-dove and nestling (pigeon) 
 appear in an ancient covenant ceremony (Gen. xv. 9 sqq.). The fact that 
 the dove was not used by the Hebrews for any ordinary sacrifice, involving a 
 sacrificial meal, can hardly be, in its origin, independent of the sacrosanct 
 character ascribed to this bird in the religion of the heathen Semites. The 
 Syrians would not eat doves, and their very touch made a man unclean for 
 a day (Dea, Syria, liv.). In Palestine also the dove was sacred with the 
 Phcenicians and Philistines, and on this superstition is based the common 
 Jewish accusation against the Samaritaus, that they were worshippers of the 
 dove (see for all this Bochart, JHierozoicon, II. i. 1). Nay, sacred doves that, 
 may not be harmed are found even at Mecca. In legal times the dove was 
 of course a, "clean" bird to the Hebrews, but it is somewhat remarkable 
 that we never read of it in the Old Testament as an article of diet — not even 
 in 1 Kings v. 2 sqq. (A.V. iv. 22 sqq.) — though it is now one of the 
 commonest table-birds all over the East. 
 
 ' See below, p. 274. * Cf. Micah vi. 7 with Lev. ii. 1 sqq. 
 
LECT. VI. OF SACRIFICE. 203 
 
 daily food.^ In the lands of the ohve, oil takes the place that 
 butter and other animal fats hold among northern nations, 
 and accordingly among the Hebrews, and seemingly also 
 among the Phoenicians,^ it was customary to mingle oil 
 with the cereal oblation before it was placed upon the 
 altar, in conformity with the usage at ordinary meals. 
 In like manner no cereal offering was complete without 
 salt,* which, for physiological reasons, is a necessary of life 
 to all who use a cereal diet, though among nations that 
 live exclusively on flesh and milk it is not indispensable 
 and is often dispensed with. Wine, which as Jotham's 
 parable has it, " cheereth gods and men " * was added to 
 whole burnt-oli'eriags and to the oblation of victims of 
 whose flesh the worshippers partook.^ The sacrificial use 
 of wine, without which no feast was complete, seems to 
 have been universal wherever the grape was known,^ and 
 even penetrated to Arabia, where wine was a scarce and 
 costly luxury imported from abroad. Milk, on the other 
 hand, though one of the commonest articles of food among 
 the Israelites, has no place in Hebrew sacrifice, but 
 libations of milk were offered by the Arabs, and also at 
 Carthage.'' Their absence among the Hebrews may 
 perhaps be explained by the rule of Ex. xxiii. 18, Lev. 
 ii. 11, which excludes all ferments from presentation at 
 the altar; for in hot climates milk ferments rapidly and 
 is generally eaten sour.^ The same principle covers the 
 
 1 Psalm civ. 14 sq. 
 
 2 In C. I. S.'So. 165, 1. 14, the word ^^3 is to be interpreted by the aid of 
 Lev. vii. 10, and understood of bread or meal moistened with oil. 
 
 2 Lev. ii. 13. ^Judg. ix. 13. ^^ Numb. xv. 5. 
 
 8 An exception, Athen. xv. 48, in Greek sacrifices to the sun, where the 
 libation was of honey. 
 
 7 Wellh., p. Ill sq.; C. I. S. No. 165, 1. 14, No. 167, 1. 10. 
 
 8 The rule against offering fermented things on the altar was not observed 
 in northern Israel in all forms of sacrifice (Amos iv. 6), and traces of greater 
 freedom in this respect appear also in Lev. vii. 13, xxiii. 17. It is possible 
 that in its oldest form the legal prohibition of leaven applied only to the 
 
204 THE MATERIAL lect. vi. 
 
 prohibition of " honey," ^ which term, like the modern 
 Arabic dibs, appears to include fruit juice inspissated by- 
 boiling — a very important article of food in modern and 
 presumably in ancient Palestine. Fruit in its natural 
 state, however, was offered at Carthage,^ and was probably 
 admitted by the Hebrews in ancient times.^ Among the 
 Hebrews vegetable or cereal oblations were sometimes 
 presented by themselves, especially in the form of 
 first-fruits, but the commonest use of them was as an 
 accompaniment to an animal sacrifice. When the Hebrew 
 
 passover, to which Ex. xxiii. 18, xxxiv. 25, specially refer. In this 
 connection the prohihition of leaven is closely associated with the rule that 
 the fat and flesh must not remain over till the morning. For we shall find 
 by and by that a similar rule applied to certain Saracen sacrifices nearly 
 akin to the passover, which were even eaten raw, and had to be entirely 
 consumed before the sun rose. In this case the idea was that the efficacy 
 of the sacrifice lay in the living flesh and blood of the victim. Everything 
 of the nature of putrefaction was therefore to be avoided, and the connection 
 between leaven and putrefaction is obvious. 
 
 The only positive law against the sacrificial use of milk is that in Ex. 
 xxiii. 19, xxxiv. 26, "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk." 
 Mother's milk is simply goat's milk, which was that generally used ^Prov. 
 xxvii. 27), and flesh seethed in milk is still a common Arabian dish ; sour 
 milk is specified as the kind employed in P. E. F. Qu. St. 1888, p. 188. 
 The context of the passages in Exodus shows that some ancient form of sacri- 
 fice is referred to ; cf. Judg. vi. 19, where we have a holocaust of sodilen flesh. 
 A sacrificial gift sodden in sour milk would evidently be of the nature of 
 fermented food, and on this principle I have formerly accounted for its prohibi- 
 tion (0. T. in J. Ch. p. 438). But I do not now feel sure that this goes 
 to the root of the matter ; for there seem to be indications that many primi- 
 tive peoples regard milk as a kind of equivalent for blood, and as containing 
 a sacred life. Thus to eat a kid seethed in its mother's milk might be taken 
 as equivalent to eating "with the blood," and be forbidden to the Hebrews 
 along with the bloody sacraments of the heathen, of which more hereafter. 
 
 ^Lev. ii. 11. ^C. I. 8.'^o.\m. 
 
 ^The term hillullm, applied in Lev. xix. 24 to the consecrated fruit 
 borne by a new tree in its fourth year, is applied in Judg. ix. 27 to the 
 Canaanite vintage feast at the sanctuary. The Carthaginian fruit-offering 
 consisted of a branch bearing fruit, like the " ethrog " of the modern Jewish 
 feast of Tabernacles. The use of " goodly fruits " at this festival is ordained 
 in Lev. xxiii. 40, but their destination is not specified. In Carthage, 
 though the inscription that speaks of the rite is fragmentary, it seems to 
 be clear that the fruit was offered at the altar, for incense is mentioned 
 with it ; and this, no doubt, is the original sense of the Hebrew rite also. 
 
LECT. VI. OF SACRIFICE. 205 
 
 ate flesh, he ate hread with it and drank wine, and when 
 he offered flesh on the table of his God, it was natural that 
 he should add to it the same conconutants which were 
 necessary to make up a comfortable and generous meal. 
 
 Of these various oblations animal sacrifices are by far 
 the most important in all the Semitic countries. They 
 are in fact the typical sacrifice, so that among the 
 Phoenicians the word zihali, which properly means a 
 slaughtered victim, is applied even to offerings of bread 
 and oil.^ That cereal offerings have but a secondary 
 place in ritual is not unintelligible in connection with 
 the history of the Semitic race. For all the Semites 
 were originally nomadic, and the ritual of the nomad 
 Arabs and the settled Canaanites has so many points in 
 common that there can be no question that the main 
 lines of sacrificial worship were fixed before any part of 
 the Semitic stock had learned agriculture and adopted 
 cereal food as its ordinary diet. It must be observed 
 however that animal food — or at least the flesh of domestic 
 animals, which are the only class of victims admitted 
 among the Semites as ordinary and regular sacrifices — • 
 was not a common article of diet even among the 
 nomad Arabs. The everyday food of the nomad con- 
 sisted of milk, of game, when he could get it, and to a 
 limited extent of dates and meal — the latter for the most 
 part being attainable only by purchase or robbery. Flesh 
 of domestic animals was eaten only as a luxury or in 
 times of famine.^ If therefore the sole principle that 
 
 1 C. I. S. No. 165, 1. 12 ; 167, 1. 9. In the context nv can hardly mean 
 game, but must he taken, as in Josh. ix. 11 sqq., of cereal food, the ordinary 
 ' ' provision "of agricultural peoples. 
 
 ^ See the old narratives passim, and compare Doughty, i. 325 sq. The 
 statement of Frankel, Fremdworter, p. 31, that the Arabs lived mainly on 
 flesh, overlooks the importance of milk as an article of diet among all the 
 pastoral tribes, and must also be taken with the qualification that the flesh used 
 as ordinary food was that of wild beasts taken in hunting. On this point 
 
206 SACRIFICE AS THE LECT. vi. 
 
 governed the choice of the material of sacrifices had been 
 that they must consist of human food, milk and not flesh 
 would have had the leading place in nomad ritual, whereas 
 its real place is exceedingly subordinate. To remove this 
 difficulty it may be urged that, as sacrifice is food offered 
 to the gods, it ought naturally to be of the best and most 
 luxurious kind that can be attained ; but on this priaciple 
 it is not easy to see why game should be excluded, for a 
 gazelle is not worse food than an old camel.^ The true 
 solution of the matter lies in another direction, and cannot 
 be given till we come to look at the nature and significance 
 of the sacrificial feast. But that this is the quarter in 
 which the solution must be sought may, I think, be 
 made probable from the facts already before us. Among 
 the Hebrews no sacrificial meal was provided for the 
 worshippers unless a victim was sacrificed ; if the oblation 
 was purely cereal it was wholly consumed either on the 
 altar or by the priests, in the holy place, i.e. by the 
 representatives of the deity .^ In like manner the only 
 Arabian meal-offering about which we have particulars, 
 that of the god Ocaisir,^ was laid before the idol in 
 handfuls. The poor, however, were allowed to partake 
 of it, being viewed no doubt as the guests of the deity. 
 The cereal offering therefore has strictly the character of 
 
 the evidence ia clear ; Pliny, H. N. vi. 161, " nomadas lacte et ferina came 
 uesci ; " Agatharchidea ap. Diod. Sic. iii. 44. 2 ; Ammianus, xiv. 4, 6, 
 ' ' uictiis uniuersia caro ferina eat lactisque abundana copia qua suatentantur ; " 
 Nilua, p. 27. By theae expreas atatementa we muat interpret the vaguer 
 utterances of Diodorus (xix. 94. 9) and Agatharchidea {ap. Diod. iii. 43. 5) 
 about the ancient diet of the Nabatseana : the " nourishment supplied by 
 their herds " was mainly milk. Certain Arab tribes, like the modem Sleyb, 
 had no herda and lived wholly by hunting, and these perhaps are referred 
 to in what Agatharchidea says of the Banizomenes, and in the Syriac life 
 of Simeon Stylites (Aasemani, Mart. ii. 345), where at any rate hesra 
 d'haiwdthd meana game. 
 
 iCf. Gen. xxvii. 7. ^Lev. ii. 3, v. 11, vi. 16 (E.V. 22). 
 
 2 Yaciit S.V.; Wellh., p. 58 sq. 
 
LECT. Yi. FOOD OF THE GODS. ' 207 
 
 a tribute paid by the worshipper to his god, as indeed is 
 expressed by the name minJia, whereas when an animal 
 is sacrificed, the sacrificer and the deity feast together, part 
 of the victim going to each. The predominance assigned in 
 ancient ritual to animal sacrifice corresponds to the predomi- 
 nance of the type of sacrifice which is not a mere payment 
 of tribute but an act of social fellowship between the deity 
 and his worshippers, and the point to be explained is why 
 this social meal always includes the flesh of a victim. 
 
 All sacrifices laid upon the altar were taken by the 
 ancients as being literally the food of the gods. The 
 Homeric deities " feast on hecatombs," ^ nay, particular 
 Greek gods have special epithets designating them as the 
 goat-eater, the ram-eater, the bull-eater, even "the cannibal," 
 with allusion to human sacrifices.' Among the Hebrews 
 the conception that Jehovah eats the flesh of bulls and 
 drinks the blood of goats, against which the author of 
 Psalm 1. protests so strongly, was never eliminated from 
 the ancient technical language of the priestly ritual, in 
 which the sacrifices are called DTi^N Dnb, " the food of the 
 deity." In its origin this phrase must belong to the same 
 circle of ideas as Jotham's " wine which cheereth gods and 
 men." But in the higher forms of heathenism the crass 
 materialism of this conception was modified, in the case of 
 fire-offerings, by the doctrine that man's food must be 
 etherealised or sublimated into fragrant smoke before the 
 gods partake of it. This observation brings us to the 
 second of the points which we have noted in connection 
 with Hebrew sacrifice, viz. the distinction between sacrifices 
 that are merely set forth on the sacred table before the 
 deity, and such as are consumed by fire upon the altar. 
 
 2. The table of shewbread has its closest parallel in 
 the lectisternia of ancient heathenism, when a table laden 
 
 ^ Iliadj ix. 531. ^ alyotpotyos^ xptotpayast rav^o^o^yoSj Aiovvffos aif^Cfiffr^s^ 
 
208 LECTISTERNIA AND LECT. vi. 
 
 with meats was spread beside the idol. Such tables were 
 set in the great temple of Bel at Babylon/ and, if any 
 weight is to be given to the apocryphal story of Bel and 
 the Dragon in the Greek Book of Daniel, it was popularly 
 believed that the god actually consumed the meal provided 
 for him,^ a superstition that might easily hold its ground 
 by priestly connivance where the table was spread inside 
 a temple. A more primitive form of the same kind of 
 offering appears in Arabia, where the meal-offering to Ocaisir 
 is cast by handfuls at the foot of the idol, mingled with 
 the hair of the worshipper,' and milk is poured over the 
 sacred stones. A narrative of somewhat apocryphal 
 colour, given without reference to his authority by Sprenger,* 
 has it that in the worship of 'Amm-anas in Southern 
 Arabia whole hecatombs were slaughtered and left to be 
 devoured bji wild beasts. Apart from the exaggeration, 
 there may be something in this ; for the idea that sacred 
 animals are the guests or clients of the god is not alien to 
 Arabian thought,^ and to feed them is an act of religion 
 in many heathen systems, especially where, as in Egypt,^ 
 the gods themselves are totem-deities, i.e. personifications or 
 
 1 Herod, i. 181, 183 ; Diod. Sic. ii. 9. 7. 
 
 ^ The story, so far as it has a basis in actual superstition, is probably 
 drawn from Egyptian beliefs ; but in such matters Egypt and Babylon were 
 lunch alike ; Herod, i. 182. 
 
 3 The same thing probably applies to other Arabian meal-offerings, e.g. 
 the wheat and barley offered to Al-Kholasa (Azraci, p. 78). As the dove 
 was the sacred bird at Mecca, the epithet Mot'im al-tair, " he who feeds the 
 birds,'' applied to the idol that stood ujion Marwa (ibid.), seems to point to 
 similar meal-offerings rather than to animal victims left lying before the 
 god. The "idol" made of Jiais, i.e. a mass of dates kneaded up with 
 butter and sour milk, which the B. Hanifa ate up in time of famine (see 
 the lexx. s.v. ^lji.j'), probably belonged to the widespread class of cereal 
 offerings shaped as rude idols and eaten sacramentally (Liebreoht, Zur 
 Volkshimde., p. 436, ZDMG. xxx. 639). 
 
 * Leb. Moh. iiL 457. 
 
 * See above, p. 134 sqq., and the god-name Mot'im al-tair in the last 
 note but one. 
 
 « Strabo, xvii. 1. 39 sq. (p. 812). 
 
LECT. VI. SIMILAR OBLATIOKS. 209 
 
 individual representations of the sacred character and 
 attributes which, in the purely totem stage of religion, 
 were ascribed without distinction to all animals of the 
 holy kind. Thus at Cynopolis in Egypt, where dogs were 
 honoured and fed with sacred food, the local deity was the 
 divine dog Anubis, and similarly in Greece, at the sanctuary 
 of the Wolf-Apollo (Apollo Lycius) of Sicyon, an old tradi- 
 tion preserved — though in a distorted form — the memory of 
 a time when flesh used to be set forth for the wolves.^ It 
 is by no means impossible that something of the same sort 
 took place at certain Arabian shrines, for we have already 
 learned how closely the gods were related to the jinn and 
 the jinn to wild animals, and the list of Arabian deities 
 includes a Lion-god (Yaghuth) and a Vulture-god (ISTasr),^ 
 to whose worship rites like those described by Sprenger 
 would be altogether appropriate. 
 
 But, while it cannot be thought impossible that sacri- 
 ficial victims were presented on holy ground and left to be 
 devoured by wild beasts as the guests or congeners of the 
 gods, I confess that there seems to me to be no sufficient 
 evidence that such a practice had any considerable place 
 in Arabian ritual. The leading idea in the animal sacrifices 
 of the Semites, as we shall see by and by, was not that of 
 a gift made over to the god, but of an act of communion, 
 in which the god and his worshippers unite by partaking 
 together of the flesh and blood of a sacred victim. It 
 is true that in the case of certain very solemn sacrifices, 
 especially of piacula, to which class the sacrifices cited by 
 Sprenger appear to belong, the victim sometimes came to 
 
 1 Paus.aniaa, ii. 9. 7. The later rationalism which changed the Wolf-god 
 into a Wolf-slayer gave the story a corresponding twist by relating that the 
 flesh was poisoned, under the god's directions, with the leaves of a tree whose 
 trunk was j)reserved in the temple, like the sacred erica at Byblns. 
 
 2 See Kinship, p. 192, 209 ; Nbldeke, ZDMO. 1886, p. 186. See also for 
 the Himyarite Vulture-god, ZDMO. xxix. 600, and compare the eagle 
 standard of Morra, Nabigha, iv. 7, Ahlw. =xxi. 7, Dcr. 
 
 
 
210 THE ARABIAN lect. vi. 
 
 be regarded as so sacred that the worshippers did not 
 venture to eat of it at all, but that the flesh was burned 
 or buried or otherwise disposed of in a way that secured it 
 from profanation ; and among the Arabs, who did not use 
 burning except in the case of human sacrifices, we can 
 quite well understand that one way of disposing of holy 
 flesh might be to leave it to be eaten by the sacred 
 animals of the god. On the whole, however, all the 
 well-authenticated accounts of Arabian sacrifice seem to 
 indicate that the original principle, that the worshippers 
 must actually eat of the sacred flesh, was very rigorously 
 held to.^ Wellhausen indeed is disposed to think that the 
 practice of slaughtering animals and leaving them beside 
 the altar to be devoured by wild beasts was not confined 
 to certain exceptional cults, but prevailed generally in the 
 case of the widespread class of sacrifices called 'atair 
 (sing, 'atlra). According to Moslem tradition this name 
 was mainly applied to certain annual sacrifices presented 
 in the month Eajab, which originally corresponded to the 
 Hebrew Passover - month (Abib, Nisan).^ Here, therefore, 
 
 ^ The evidence of Nilus is very important in this connection ; for the 
 interval between his time and that of the oldest native traditions is scarcely 
 sufficient to allow for the development of an extensive system of sacrifice 
 without a sacrificial meal ; infra, p. 320. 
 
 " Cf. Wellhausen, p. 94 sq. To complete the parallelism of the Passover 
 with the Eajab offerings, Wellhausen desiderates evidence that the 'atair of 
 Rajab were firstlings. From the scholia to Harith's Moall. 69, it would 
 seem that they correspond rather to tithes, ^»ith which, and not with the 
 firstlings, I have compared them in my Propliets, p. 383, following Ewald, 
 Alterth. p. 398. The traditionists, e.g. Bokhari, vi. 207 (at the close of the 
 Kit. al-'acica), distinguish between firstlings {fara') and 'atira, but the line 
 of distinction is not sharp. The lexicons apply the name fara', not only 
 to firstlings sacrificed while their flesh was still like glue {Llsan, x. 120), 
 but also to the sacrifice of one beast in a, hundred, which is what the 
 scholiast above cited understands by the 'atlra. Conversely the Lisan, 
 vi. 210, defines the 'atlra as a firstling (awwal ma ynntaj) which was 
 sacrificed to the gods. If we could accept this statement without reserve, 
 in the general confusion of the later Arabs on the subject, it would supply 
 what Wellhausen desiderates. 
 
LECT. VI. ATAIR. 211 
 
 we seem to have to do with a very ancient sacrificial 
 custom, older than the separation of the Hebrews from 
 the Arabs, and it is precisely in connection with such very 
 ancient and therefore very holy rites that we might not 
 unreasonably expect to find the victim invested with a 
 sanctity so peculiar that no part of its flesh might be 
 eaten. But the positive evidence that it was so is very 
 meagre, and admits of a different explanation. " It is 
 remarkable," says Wellhausen, " how often we hear of the 
 'atair lying around the altar-idol, and sometimes in poetical 
 comparisons the slain are said to be left lying on the 
 battlefield like 'atair." ^ But on the Arabian method of 
 sacrifice the carcases of the victims naturally lie on the 
 ground, beside the sacred stone, till the blood, which is the 
 god's portion, has drained into the ghabghab, or pit at its 
 foot, and till all the other ritual prescriptions have been 
 fulfilled.^ Thus at a great feast when many victims were 
 offered together, the scene would resemble a battlefield. 
 It is not therefore necessary to suppose that the 'atair 
 at Eajab were not used for a sacrificial feast ; and, as the 
 name 'atlra seems to be also used in a more general sense 
 of any victim whose blood is applied to the sacred stones 
 at the sanctuary, it is hardly to be thought that there 
 was anything very exceptional in the form of the Eajab 
 ceremony. 
 
 It must be supposed that when gifts of food — 
 whether animal or cereal — -were first presented at the 
 
 1 Wellh., p. 115 ; of. the verses cited ibid. pp. 16, 56 ; and, for the poetical 
 comparisons, Ibn Hisham, 534. 4 ; Alcama, vi. 3 Soc. 
 
 2 Cf. the verses from Yaciit, iv. 852, translated by Wellhausen, p. 53 sq. 
 In the verse about Sowa', ibid. p. 16, I am inclined to point tuzallu. At 
 a feast, when the sun was hot, it was the custom to shade the flesh that 
 it might not putrefy; see Maidani, i. 133 (the first prov. under t '• i). 
 Maidani uses Ml II., but the parallel passage in Al-Mofaddal, p. 262 
 (Constant. A. H. 1301), has also Conj. IV. in the same sense. 
 
212 LIBATIONS OF lect. vi. 
 
 shrines of the gods, the belief was that they were actually 
 consumed by the deity. To enquire at length into the 
 origin of such a belief would carry us too far from our 
 present subject and trench on the question of the ultimate 
 nature and origin of the gods of heathenism. I will only 
 remark that when we find early races all over the world 
 possessed with the idea that their oblations serve as food 
 for the gods, we must not try to explain this away by 
 allegorical theories, but must look for facts that will 
 account for the ritual in a plain straightforward way. 
 So far as I know such facts are found only in connection 
 with the totem system of belief, for in totemism the gifts 
 laid before the sacred animals are actually eaten. Thus 
 in all religions in which the gods have been developed 
 out of totems, the ritual act of laying food before the 
 deity is perfectly intelligible. Whether we are entitled 
 to invert the argument, and conclude that the universal 
 practice of offering oblations of food to the gods indi- 
 cates that all heathen religions are based on totemism, 
 is another question, into which I cannot enter now. 
 
 But however this may be, the idea that the gods actually 
 consume the solid food that is deposited at their shrines is 
 too crude to subsist without modification beyond the savage 
 state of society ; the ritual may survive, but the sacrificial 
 gifts, which the god is evidently unable to dispose of him- 
 self, will come to be the perquisite of the priests, as in 
 the case of the shewbread, or of the poor, as in the meal 
 sacrifice to Ocaisir. In such cases the actual eating is 
 done by the guests of the deity, but the god himself may 
 still be supposed to partake of the meal in a subtle and 
 supersensuous way. It is interesting to note the gradations 
 of ritual that correspond to this modification of the original 
 idea. 
 
 In the more primitive forms of Semitic religion the 
 
LECT. VI. BLOOD AND WINE. 213 
 
 difficulty of conceiving that the gods actually partake of 
 food is partly got over by a predominant use of liquid 
 oblations ; for fluid substances, which sink in and disappear, 
 are more easily believed to be consumed by the deity than 
 obstinate masses of solid matter. 
 
 The libation, which holds quite a secondary place in the 
 more advanced Semitic rituals, and is generally a mere 
 accessory to a fire-offering, has great prominence among the 
 Arabs, to whom sacrifices by fire were practically unknown 
 except, as we shall see by and by, in the case of human 
 sacrifice. Its typical form is the libation of blood, the 
 subtle vehicle of the life of the sacrifice ; but milk, which 
 was used in ritual both by the Arabs and by the Phoeni- 
 cians, is also no doubt a very ancient Semitic libation. In 
 ordinary Arabian sacrifices the blood which was poured 
 over the sacred stone was all that fell to the god's part, the 
 whole flesh being consumed by the worshippers and their 
 guests ; and the early prevalence of this kind of oblation 
 appears from the fact that the word "]D3, " to pour," which in 
 Hebrew means to pour out a drink-offering, is in Arabic the 
 general term for an act of worship. 
 
 In the north Semitic ritual the most notable feature in 
 the libation, which ordinarily consisted of wine, but some- 
 times of water (1 Sam. vii. 6), is that it was not consumed 
 by flre, even when it went with a fire-offering. The Greeks 
 and Eomans poured the sacrificial wine over the flesh, but 
 the Hebrews treated it like the blood, pouring it out at the 
 base of the altar.^ In Ecclesiasticus the wine so treated is 
 even called " the blood of the grape," from which one is 
 tempted to conclude that here also blood is the typical 
 form of libation, and that wine is a surrogate for it, as 
 
 1 Ecclug. 1. 15 ; Jos., Anlt. iii. 9. 4. Numb. xv. 7 is sometimes cited as 
 proving that in older times the wine was poured over the sacrificial flesh, 
 hut see against this interpretation Numb, xxviii. 7. 
 
214 LIBATIOKS. LECT. VI. 
 
 fruit-juice seems to have been in certain Arabian rites.^ 
 It is true that the blood of the sacrifice is not called a 
 libation in Hebrew ritual, and in Psalm xvL 4 "drink- 
 offerings of blood " are spoken of as something heathenish. 
 But this proves that such libations were known ; and that 
 the Hebrew altar ritual of the blood is essentially a drink- 
 offering appears from Psalm 1. 13, where Jehovah asks, 
 " Will I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats ? " 
 and also from 2 Sam xxiii. 17, where David pours out as 
 a drink-offering the water from the well of Bethlehem, 
 refusing to drink " the blood of the men that fetched it in 
 jeopardy of their lives." Putting all this together, and 
 noting also that libations were retained as a chief part of 
 ritual in the domestic heathenism of the Hebrew women 
 in the time of Jeremiah,^ and that private service is often 
 more conservative than public worship, we are led to con- 
 clude (1) That the libation of blood is a common Semitic 
 practice, older than fire-sacrifices, and (2) That the libation 
 of wine is in some sense an imitation of, and a surrogate 
 for, the primitive blood-offering. 
 
 In Hebrew ritual oil is not a libation, but when used in 
 sacrifice serves to moisten and enrich a cereal offering. The 
 ancient custom of pouring oil on sacred stones ^ was presum- 
 ably maintained at Bethel according to the precedent set 
 by Jacob ; and even in the fourth Christian century the 
 Bordeaux pilgrim speaks of the " lapis pertusus " at Jerusa- 
 lem " ad quem ueniunt ludsei singulis annis et ungunt 
 eum ; " but, as oil by itself was not an article of food, the 
 
 1 Kinship, p. 261 sq. ; Wellh., p. 121. 
 
 ^ Jer. xix. 13, xxxii. 29, xliv. 17, 18. Witli this worship on the hoxise- 
 tops, cf. what Strabo, xvi. 4. 26, tells of the daily offerings of libations and 
 incense presented to the sun by the Nabataeans at an altar erected on the 
 house-tops. The sacrificial act must be done in the presence of the deity (cf. 
 Nilus, pp. 30, 117), and if the sun or the q^ueen of heaven is worshipped, a 
 place open to the sky must be chosen. 
 
 5 Gen. xxviii. 18 ; xxxv. 14. 
 
LECT. VI. OIL OFFERINGS. 215 
 
 natural analogy to this act of ritual is to be sought in the 
 application of unguents to the hair and skin. The use of 
 unguents was a luxury proper to feasts and gala days, when 
 men wore their best clothes and made merry ; and from 
 Ps. xlv. 8 (E.V. 7) compared with Isa. Ixi. 3, we may con- 
 clude that the anointing of kings at their coronation is part 
 of the ceremony of investing them in the festal dress and 
 ornaments appropriate to their dignity on that joyous day 
 (cf. Cant. iii. 11). To anoint the head of a guest was a 
 hospitable act and a sign of honour ; it was the completion 
 of the toilet appropriate to a feast. Thus the sacred stone 
 or rude idol described by Pausanias (x. 24. 6) had oil poured 
 on it daily, and was crowned with wool at every feast. 
 We have seen that the Semites on festal occasions dressed 
 up their sacred poles, and they did the same with their 
 idols.^ With all this the ritual of anointing goes quite 
 naturally. But apart from this, the very act of applying 
 ointment to the sacred symbol had a religious significance. 
 The Hebrew word meaning to anoint (mashah) means 
 properly to wipe or stroke with the hand, which was used 
 to spread the unguent over the skin. Thus the anointing 
 of the sacred symbol is associated with the simpler form of 
 homage common in Arabia, in which the hand was passed 
 over the idol (tamassoh). In the oath described by Ibn 
 Hisham, p. 85, the parties dip their hands in unguent and 
 then wipe them on the Caaba. The ultimate source of the 
 use of unguents in religion will be discussed by and by in 
 connection with animal sacrifice. 
 
 The sacrificial use of blood, as we shall see hereafter, 
 is connected with a series of very important ritual ideas, 
 turning on the conception that the blood is a special seat of 
 the life. But primarily, when the blood is offered at the 
 altar, it is conceived to be drunk by the deity. Apart from 
 1 Ezek. xvi. 18. 
 
216 OFFERINGS lect. vi. 
 
 Psalm 1. 1 3 the direct evidence for this is somewhat scanty, 
 so far as the Semites are concerned ; the authority usually 
 appealed to is Maimonides, who states that the Sabians 
 looked on blood as the nourishment of the gods. So late 
 a witness would have little value if he stood alone, but 
 the expression in the Psalm cannot be mere rhetoric, and 
 the same belief appears among early nations in all parts 
 of the globe.^ ISTor does this oblation form an exception 
 to the rule that the offerings of the gods consist of human 
 food, for many savages drink fresh blood by way of 
 nourishment, and esteem it a special delicacy.^ 
 
 Among the Arabs, down to the age of Mohammed, blood 
 drawn from the veins of a living camel was eaten — in 
 a kind of blood pudding — in seasons of hunger, and 
 perhaps also at other times.^ We shall find however, as 
 we proceed, that sacrificial blood, which contained the life, 
 gradually came to be considered as something too sacred 
 to be eaten, and that in most sacrifices it was entirely 
 made over to the god at the altar. As all slaughter of 
 domestic animals for food was originally sacrificial among 
 the Arabs as well as among the Hebrews, this carried with 
 it the disuse of blood as an article of ordinary food ; and 
 
 ^ See Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 346. The testimony of Maimonides 
 will come before us again. 
 
 ^ See, for America, Bancroft, Native Races, i. 55, 492, ii. 344. In Africa 
 fresh blood is held as a dainty by all the negroes of the White Nile (Marno, 
 Seise, p. 79) ; it is largely drank by Masai warriors (Thomson, p. 430) ; and 
 also by the Gallas, as various travellers attest. Among the Hottentots the 
 pure blood of beasts is forbidden to women but not to men ; Kolbeu, State 
 of the Cape, i. 205, cf. 203. In the last case we see that the blood is sacred 
 food. For blood-drinking among the Tartars, see Yule's Marco Polo, i. 254, 
 and the editor's note. Where mineral salt is not used for food, the drinking of 
 blood supplies, as Thomson remarks, an important constituent to the system. 
 
 ' Maidani, ii. 119 ; Jfamasa, p. 645, last verse. From Agh. xvi. 107. 20, 
 one is led to doubt whether the practice was confined to seasons of famine, 
 or whether this kind of food was used more regularly, as was done, on the 
 other side of the Bed Sea, by the Troglodytes (Agatharchides in Fr. Qeog. 
 Or. i. 153). See further the Lexx,, s.vv, fasada, 'ilhiz, bajja, musawwad. 
 
LECT. Yi. OF BLOOD. 217 
 
 even when slaughter ceased to involve a formal sacrifice, it 
 was still thought necessary to slay the victim in the name 
 of a god and pour the blood on the ground.^ Among the 
 Hebrews this practice soon gave rise to an absolute pro- 
 hibition of blood-eating ; among the Arabs the rule was 
 made absolute only by Mohammed's legislation.^ 
 
 The idea that the gods partake only of the liquid parts 
 of the sacrifice appears, as has been already said, to indicate 
 a modification of the most crassly materialistic conception 
 of the divine nature. The direction which this modifica- 
 tion took may, I think, be judged of by comparing the 
 sacrifices of the gods with the oblations offered to the 
 dead. In the famous veKvia of the Odyssey ^ the ghosts 
 drink greedily of the sacrificial blood, and libations of 
 gore form a special feature in Greek offerings to heroes. 
 Among the Arabs, too, the dead are thirsty rather than 
 hungry, water and wine are poured upon their graves.* 
 Thirst is a subtler appetite than hunger, and therefore 
 more appropriate to the disembodied shades, just as it is 
 from thirst rather than from hunger that the Hebrews 
 and many other nations borrow metaphors for spiritual 
 longings and intellectual desires. Thus the idea that the 
 gods drink, but do not eat, seems to mark the feeling that 
 they must be thought of as having a less solid material 
 nature than men. 
 
 A farther step in the same direction is associated with 
 the introduction of fire sacrifices ; for, though there are 
 valid reasons for thinking that the practice of burning 
 
 ' "Wellh., p. 114. In an Arab encampment slaves sleep beside "the blood 
 and the dung" {Agh. viii. 74. 29) ; cf. 1 Sam. ii. 8. 
 
 2 Whether the blood of game was prohibited to the Hebrews before the 
 law of Lev. xvii. 13 is not quite clear ; Deut. xii. 16 is ambiguous. 
 
 ^ Bk. xi. ; of. Pindar, 01. i. 90, where the word x!//,xx/ivfixi is explained 
 by Hesychius as ra Ivayi^fitatrx twv »aret;^o/ji6vaiv J Pausan. , V. 13, § 2 ; Plut. , 
 Aristides, 21. 
 
 « Wellhausen, p. 161. 
 
218 SACRIFICES LECT. VI. 
 
 the flesh or fat" of victims originated in a different line 
 of thought (as we shall by and by see), the fire ritual 
 readily lent itself to the idea that the burnt flesh is simply 
 a food-offering etherealised into fragrant smoke, and that 
 the gods regale themselves on the odour instead of the 
 substance of the sacrifice. Here again the analogy of gifts 
 to the dead helps us to comprehend the point of view; 
 among the Greeks of the seventh century B.C. it was, as 
 we learn from the story of Periander and Melissa, a new 
 idea that the dead could make no use of the gifts buried 
 with them unless they were etherealised by fire.^ A 
 similar notion seems to have attached itself to the custom 
 of sacrifice by fire, combined probably at an early date 
 with the idea that the gods, as ethereal beings, lived in the 
 upper air, towards which the sacrificial smoke ascended in 
 savoury clouds. Thus the prevalence among the settled 
 Semites of fire sacrifices, which were interpreted as offer- 
 ings of fragrant smoke, marks the firm establishment of a 
 conception of the divine nature which, though not purely 
 spiritual, is at least stripped of the crassest aspects of 
 materialism. 
 
 3. The distinction between sacrifices which are wholly 
 made over to the god and sacrifices of which the god and 
 the worshipper partake together requires careful handhng. 
 In the later form of Hebrew ritual laid down in the 
 Levitical law, the distinction is clearly marked. To the 
 former class belong all cereal oblations (Heb. minha ; A.V. 
 " offering " or " meat-offering "), which so far as they are not 
 burned on the altar are assigned to the priests, and among 
 animal sacrifices the sin-offering and the burnt-offering or 
 holocaust. Most sin-offerings were not holocausts, but the 
 part of the flesh that was not burned fell to the priests. 
 
 1 Herodotus, v. 92 ; of. Joannes Lydus, Mens. iii. 27, where the object of 
 burning the dead is said to be to etherealise the body along with the soul. 
 
LECT. VI. BY FIRE. 219 
 
 To the latter class, again, belong the zebahlm or shelamim 
 (sing, zilah, sMlem, Amos v. 22), that is, all the ordinary- 
 festal sacrifices, vows and freewill offerings, of which the 
 share of the deity was the blood and the fat of the 
 intestines, the rest of the carcase (subject to the payment 
 of certain dues to the officiating priest) being left to the 
 worshipper to form a social feast.^ In judging of the 
 original scope and meaning of these two classes of sacrifice 
 it will bo convenient, in the first instance, to confine our 
 attention to the simplest and most common forms of 
 offering. In the last days of the kingdom of Judah, and 
 still more after the exile, piacular sacrifices and holocausts 
 acquired a prominence which they did not possess in 
 ancient times. The old history knows nothing of the 
 Levitical sin-offering ; the atoning function of sacrifice is 
 not confined to a particular class of oblation, but belongs to 
 all sacrifices.^ The holocaust, again, although ancient, is 
 
 ' In the English Bible zeiaJ/.im are rendered "sacrifices," and sAeZnmir)* 
 "peace-offerings." The latter rendering is not plausible, and the term 
 shelamim can hardly be separated from the verh shillem, to pay or discharge, 
 e.g. a vow. Zebah is the more general word, including (like the Arabic 
 dhibh) all animals slain for food, agreeably with the fact that in old times all 
 slaughter was sacrificial. In later times, when slaughter, and sacrifice were 
 no longer Identical, zebaJi was not precise enough to he used as a technical 
 term of ritual, and so the term shelamim came to be more largely used than 
 in the earlier literature. 
 
 On the sacrificial lists of the Carthaginians the terms corresponding to 
 njjjf and n3T seem to he 773 and njIIV. The former is the old Hebrew pipD 
 (Deut. xxxiii. 10 ; 1 Sam. vii. 9), the latter is etymologically quite obscure. 
 In the Carthaginian burnt-sacrifice a certain weight of the flesh was 
 apparently not consumed on the altar, but given to the priests (C /. S. 165), 
 as in the case of the Hebrew sin-offering, which was probahly a modification 
 of the holocaust. The pp3 DptJ', which appears along with y?2 and nyiV 
 in C. I. S. 165 (but not in C. /. S. 167), Is hardly a third co-ordinate species of 
 sacrifice. The editors of the Corpus regard it as a variety of the holocaust 
 {hoi. eiicharisticum), which is not easily reconciled with their own restitution 
 of 1. 11 or with the Hebrew sense of D^B'. Perhaps it is an ordinary sacrifice 
 accompanying a holocaust. 
 
 2 To zebah and minha, 1 Sam. iii. 14, xxvi. 19, and still more to the 
 holocaust, Micah vi. 6, 7. 
 
220 SACRIFICIAL MEALS lect. vi. 
 
 not in ancient times a common form of sacrifice, and unless 
 on very exceptional occasions occurs only in great public 
 feasts and in association with zehahim. The distressful 
 times that preceded the end of Hebrew independence drove 
 men to seek exceptional religious means to conciliate the 
 favour of a deity who seemed to have turned his back on 
 his people. Piacular rites and costly holocausts became, 
 therefore, more usual, and after the abolition of the local 
 high places this new importance was still further accentu- 
 ated by contrast with the decline of the more common 
 forms of sacrifice. When each local community had its 
 own high place, it was the rule that every animal slain for 
 food should be presented at the altar, and every meal at 
 which flesh was served had the character of a sacrificial 
 feast.-^ As men ordinarily lived on bread fruit and milk, 
 and ate flesh only on feast days and holidays, this rule was 
 easily observed as long as the local sanctuaries stood. 
 But when there was no altar left except at Jerusalem, the 
 identity of slaughter and sacrifice could no longer be main- 
 tained, and accordingly the law of Deuteronomy allows 
 men to slay and eat domestic animals everywhere, provided 
 only that the blood — the ancient share of the god — is 
 poured out upon the ground.'' When this new rule came 
 into force men ceased to feel that the eating of flesh was 
 essentially a sacred act, and though strictly religious meals 
 were still maintained at Jerusalem on the great feast days, 
 the sacrificial meal necessarily lost much of its old signifi- 
 cance, and the holocaust seemed to have a more purely 
 sacred character than the z^hah, in which men ate and 
 drank just as they might do at home. 
 
 ^ Hosea ix. 4. 
 
 ' Deut. xii. 15, 16 ; cf. Lev. xvii. 10 sq. The fat of the intestines was also 
 from ancient times reserved for the deity (1 Sam. ii. 16), and therefore it also 
 was forbidden food (Lev. iii. 17). The prohibition did not extend to the fat 
 distributed through other parts of the body. 
 
LECT. VI. AND HOLOCAUSTS. 221 
 
 But in ancient times the preponderance was all the 
 other way, and the zihah was not only much more frequent 
 than the holocaust but much more intimately bound up 
 with the prevailing religious ideas and feelings of the 
 Hebrews. On this point the evidence of the older litera- 
 ture is decisive ; zibah and minha, sacrifices slain to provide 
 a religious feast, and vegetable oblations presented at the 
 altar, make up the sum of the ordinary religious practices 
 of the older Hebrews, and we must try to understand these 
 ordinary rites before we attack the harder problem of 
 exceptional forms of sacrifice. 
 
 Now, if we put aside the piacula and whole burnt- 
 offerings, it appears that, according to the Levitical ritual, 
 the distinction between oblations in which the worshipper 
 shared, and oblations which were wholly given over to the 
 deity to be consumed on the altar or by the priests, corre- 
 sponds to the distinction between animal and vegetable 
 offerings. Tlie animal victim was presented at the altar 
 and devoted by the imposition of hands, but the greater 
 part of the flesh was returned to the worshipper, to be 
 eaten by him under special rules. It could be eaten only 
 by persons ceremonially clean, i.e. fit to approach the 
 deity ; and if the food was not consumed on the same day, 
 or in certain cases within two days, the remainder had to 
 be burned.^ The plain meaning of these rules is that the 
 flesh is not common but holy,^ and that the act of eating 
 it is a part of the service, which is to be completed before 
 men break up from the sanctuary.^ The z^bah, therefore, is 
 
 ^ Lev. vii. 15 sqq., xix. 6, xxii. 30. ^Hag. ii. 12 ; cf. Jer. xi. 15, LXX. 
 
 3 The old sacrificial feasts occupy but a single day (1 Sam. ix.), or at most 
 two days (1 Sam. xx. 27). When sacrificial occasions follow each other as 
 closely as possible, they come either daily or every three days, i.e. according 
 to our way of counting, every second day (Amos iv. 4, R.V.). Cf. 'Amir h. 
 al-Tofail, quoted by the scholiast to the Nacaid, MS. Oxon. f. 241i (a refer- 
 ence I owe to the late Prof. Wright) : Ala yd laita ahliwall ghaniyan, 
 lahumfi kulli thCdithatin dawanm, where dawar is explained as "feast." 
 
222 CEREAL LECT. VI. 
 
 not a mere attenuated offering, in which man grudges to 
 give up the whole victim to his God. On the contrary, the 
 central significance of the rite lies in the act of communion 
 between God and man, when the worshipper is admitted to 
 eat of the same holy flesh of which a part is laid upon the 
 altar as " the food of the deity." But with the minha 
 nothing of this kind occurs ; the whole consecrated offering 
 is retained by the deity, and the worshipper's part in the 
 service is completed as soon as he has made over his gift. 
 In short, while the zdhah turns on an act of communion 
 between the deity and his worshippers, the minima (as its 
 name denotes) is simply a tribute. 
 
 I will not undertake to say that the distinction so 
 clearly laid down in the Levitical law was observed before 
 the exile in all cases of cereal sacrifices. Probably it was 
 not, for in most ancient religions we find that cereal 
 offerings come to be accepted in certain cases as sub- 
 stitutes for animal sacrifices, and that in this way the 
 difference between the two kinds of offering gradually gets 
 to be obliterated.^ But in such matters great weight is to 
 be attached to priestly tradition, such as underlies the 
 Levitical ritual. The priests were not likely to invent a 
 distinction of the kind which has been described, and in 
 point of fact there is good evidence that they did not 
 invent it. For there is no doubt that in ancient times 
 the ordinary source of the minha was the offering of first- 
 fruits — that is, of a small but choice portion of the annual 
 produce of the ground, which in fact is the only cereal 
 oblation prescribed in the oldest laws.^ So far as can be 
 seen the first-fruits were always a tribute wholly made 
 
 ' So at Rome models in wax or dougt often took the place of animals. 
 The same thing took place at Athens : Hesychius, s.vv. fim; and 'iliSii/iiis 
 lim; ; cf. Thueyd., i. 126 and schol. At Carthage we have found the name 
 z4bah applied to vegetable offerings. 
 
 " Exod. xxii. 29, xxiii. 19, xxxiv. 26. 
 
LECT. VI. OFFERINGS. 223 
 
 over to the deity at the sanctuary. They were brought by. 
 the peasant in a basket and deposited at the altar,^ and so 
 far as they were not actually burned on the altar, they 
 were assigned to the priests^ — not to the ministrant as a 
 reward for his service, but to the priests as a body, as the 
 household of the sanctuary.^ 
 
 Among the Hebrews, as among many other agricultural 
 peoples, the offering of first-fruits was connected with the 
 idea that it is not lawful or safe to eat of the new fruit 
 until the god has received his due.* The offering makes 
 the whole crop lawful food, but it does not make it holy 
 food; nothing is consecrated except the small portion 
 offered at the altar, and of the remaining store clean 
 persons and unclean eat alike throughout the year. This, 
 therefore, is quite a different thing from the consecration 
 of animal sacrifices, for in the latter case the whole flesh 
 is holy, and only those who are clean can eat of it.^ 
 
 In old Israel all slaughter was sacrifice, and a man 
 could never eat beef or mutton except as a religious act, 
 but cereal food had no such sacred associations ; as soon 
 as God had received His due of first-fruits, the whole 
 domestic store was common. The difference between 
 cereal and animal food was therefore deeply marked, and 
 though bread was of course brought to the sanctuary to be 
 
 ^ Dent. xxvi. 1 sqq. 
 
 ^ Lev. xxiii. 17 ; Deut. xviii. 4. For the purpose of this argument it is 
 not necessary to advert to the distinction recognised by post-Biblical 
 tradition between reshlth and bilckurim, on which see Wellh. , Prolegomena, 
 3rd ed. p. 161 sq. 
 
 3 This follows from 2 Kings xxiii. 9. The tribute was sometimes paid to 
 a man of God (2 Kings iv. 42), which is another way of making it over to 
 the deity. In the Levitical law also the minha belongs to the priests as a 
 whole (Lev. vii. 10). This is an important point. What the ministrant 
 receives as a fee comes from the worshipper, what the priests as a whole 
 receive is given them by the deity. 
 
 * Lev. xxiii. 14 ; cf. Pliny, H. N. xviii. 8. 
 
 ' Hosea ix. 4 refers only to animal food. 
 
224 SACRIFICIAL LECT. VI. 
 
 eaten with the zebahlm, it had not and could not have the 
 same religious meaning as the holy flesh. It appears from 
 Amos iv. 4 that it vras the custom in northern Israel to 
 lay a portion of the worshipper's provision of ordinary 
 leavened bread on the altar with the sacrificial flesh, and 
 this custom was natural enough ; for why should not the 
 deity's share of the sacrificial meal have the same cereal 
 accompaniments as man's share ? But there is no indica- 
 tion that this oblation consecrated the part of the bread 
 retained by the worshipper and made it holy bread. The 
 only holy bread of which we read is such as belonged to 
 the priests, not to the offerer.^ In Lev. vii. 14, Numb. vi. 
 15, the cake of common bread is given to the priest 
 instead of being laid on the altar, but it is carefully 
 distinguished from the minha. In old times the priests 
 had no altar dues of this kind. They had only the first- 
 fruits and a claim to a piece of the sacrificial flesh,^ from 
 which it may be presumed that the custom of offering 
 bread with the zebah was not primitive. Indeed Amos 
 seems to mention it with some surprise as a thing not 
 familiar to Judaean practice. At all events no sacrificial 
 meal could consist of bread alone. All through the old 
 history it is taken for granted that a religious feast 
 necessarily implies a victim slain.^ 
 
 1 1 Sam. xxi. 4. ^ Deut. xviii. 3, 4 ; 1 Sam. ii. 13 sqq. 
 
 3 What has been said above of the contrast between cereal sacrificial gifts 
 and the sacrificial feast seems to me to hold good also for Greece and Rome, 
 with some modification in the case of domestic meals, which among the 
 Semites had no religious character, but at Rome were consecrated by a 
 portion being offered to the household gods. This, however, has nothing to do 
 with public religion, in which the law holds good that there is no sacred feast 
 without a victim, and that consecrated aparchce are wholly given over to 
 the sanctuary. The same thing holds good for many other peoples, and 
 seems, so far as my reading goes, to be the general rule. But there are 
 exceptions. My friend Mr. J. G. Frazer, to whose wide reading I never 
 appeal without profit, refers me to Wilken's Al/oeren van het eiland Beroe, 
 p. 26, where a true sacrificial feast is made of the first-fruits of rice. This 
 
LECT. ^^. FEAST. 225 
 
 The distinction which we are thus led to draw between 
 the cereal oblation, in which the dominant idea is that of 
 a tribute paid to the god, and animal sacrifices, which are 
 essentially acts of communion between the god and his 
 worshippers, deserves to be followed out in more detail. 
 But this task must be reserved for another lecture. 
 
 is called " eating the soul of the rice,'' so that the rice is viewed as a living 
 creature. In such a case it is not unreasonable to say that the rice may 
 be regarded as really an animate victim. Agricultural religions seem often 
 to have borrowed ideas from the older cults of pastoral times. 
 
LECTUEE VII. 
 
 FIRST-FRUITS, TITHES, AND SACKIFICIAL MEALS. 
 
 It became apparent to us towards the close of the last 
 
 lecture that the Levitical distinction between minha and 
 
 zdbah, or cereal oblation and animal sacrifice, rests upon 
 
 an ancient principle; that the idea of communion with 
 
 the deity in a sacrificial meal of holy food was primarily 
 
 confined to the zShah, or animal victim, and that the proper 
 
 significance of the cereal offering is that of a tribute paid 
 
 by the worshipper from the produce of the soil. Now we 
 
 have already seen that the conception of the national 
 
 deity as the Baal, or lord of the land, was developed in 
 
 connection with the growth of agriculture and agricultural 
 
 law. Spots of natural fertility were the Baal's land, 
 
 because they were productive without the labour of man's 
 
 hands, which, according to Eastern ideas, is the only basis 
 
 of private property in the soil ; and land which required 
 
 ■irrigation was also liable to the payment of a sacred 
 
 tribute, because it was fertilised by streams which belonged 
 
 to the god or even were conceived as instinct with divine 
 
 energy. This whole circle of ideas belongs to a condition 
 
 of society in which agriculture and the laws that regulate 
 
 it have made considerable progress, and is foreign to the 
 
 sphere of thought in which the purely nomadic Semites 
 
 moved. That the minha is not so ancient a form of 
 
 sacrifice as the z4hah will not be doubted, for nomadic life 
 
 is older than agriculture. But if the foregoing argument 
 
 22 e 
 
LECT. VIT. TITHES. 227 
 
 is correct, we can say more than this ; we can affirm that 
 the idea of the sacrificial meal as an act of communion is 
 older than sacrifice in the sense of tribute, and that the 
 latter notion grew up with the development of agricultural 
 life and the conception of the deity as Baal of the land. 
 Among the nomadic Arabs the idea of sacrificial tribute 
 has little or no place ; all sacrifices are free-will offerings, 
 and except in some rare forms of piacular oblation — 
 particularly human sacrifice — and perhaps in some very 
 simple offerings such as the libation of milk, the object 
 of the sacrifice is to provide the material for an act of 
 sacrificial communion with the god.' 
 
 In most ancient nations the idea of sacrificial tribute is 
 most clearly marked in the institution of the sacred tithe, 
 which was paid to the gods from the produce of the soil, 
 and sometimes also from other sources of revenue.^ In 
 antiquity tithe and tribute are practically identical, nor is 
 the name of tithe strictly limited to tributes of one-tenth, 
 the term being used to cover any impost paid in kind upon 
 a fixed scale. Such taxes play a great part in the 
 revenues of Eastern sovereigns, and have done so from a 
 very early date. The Babylonian kings drew a tithe from 
 imports,^ and the tithe of the fruits of the soil had the 
 first place among the revenues of the Persian satraps.* 
 The Hebrew kings in like manner took tithes of their 
 subjects, and the tribute in kind which Solomon drew 
 from the provinces for the support of his household may 
 
 1 Some points connected with this statement which invite attention, but 
 cannot be fully discussed at the present stage of the argument, -will be 
 considered in Additional Note F, Sacred Tribute in Arahia. 
 
 2 See the instances collected by Spencer, Lib. iii. cap. 10, § 1 ; Hermann, 
 Oottesdienstliche Alterth. d. Griechen, 2nd ed. § 20, note 4 ; Wyttenbach in 
 the index to his edition of Plutarch's Moralia, s.v. 'Hfxx.x!i!. 
 
 3 Arist., (Econ. p. 13526 of the Berlin edition. A tithe on imports is 
 found also at Mecca (Azraci, p. 107). 
 
 * Arist, (Econ. p. 1345^ 
 
228 THE TITHE IN 
 
 be regarded as an impost of this sort.^ Thus the in- 
 stitution of a sacred tithe corresponds to the conception 
 of the national god as a king, and so at Tyre tithes were 
 paid to Meloarth, "the king of the city." The Cartha- 
 ginians, as Diodorus 2 tells us, sent the tithe of produce 
 to Tyre annually from the time of the foundation of their 
 city. This is the earliest example of a Semitic sacred 
 tithe of which we have any exact account, and it is to be 
 noted that it is as much a political as a religious tribute ; 
 for the temple of Melcarth was the state treasury of Tyre, 
 and it is impossible to draw a distinction between the 
 sacred tithe paid by the Carthaginians and the political 
 tribute paid by other colonies, such as Utica.' 
 
 The oldest Hebrew laws require the payment of first- 
 fruits, but know nothing of a tithe due at the sanctuary. 
 And indeed the Hebrew sanctuaries in old time had not 
 such a splendid establishment as called for the imposition 
 of sacred tributes on a large scale. When Solomon 
 erected his temple, in emulation of Hiram's great buildings 
 at Tyre, a more lavish ritual expenditure became necessary ; 
 but as the temple at Jerusalem was attached to the palace, 
 this was part of the household expenditure of the sovereign, 
 and doubtless was met out of the imposts in natura levied 
 for the maintenance of the court.* In other words, the 
 maintenance of the royal sanctuary was a charge on the 
 king's tithes ; and so we find that a tenth directly paid 
 to the sanctuary forms no part of the temple revenues 
 
 1 1 Sam. vii. 15, 17 ; 1 Kings iv. 7 sqq. The "king's mowings " (Amos 
 vii. 1) belong to the same class of imposts, being a tribute in kind levied on the 
 spring herbage to feed the horses of the king (of. 1 Kings xviii. 5). Simi- 
 larly the Romans in Syria levied a tax on pasture-land in the month Nisan 
 for the food of their horses : see Bruns and Sachau, Syrisch- Rom. Bechts- 
 huch, Text L, § 121; and Wright, Notulce Syriacm (1887), p. 6. 
 
 2 Lib. XX. cap. 14. 
 
 ^ Jos., Antt. viii. 5. 3, as read by Niese after Gutschmid, 
 * Cf. 2 Kings xvi. 15 ; Ezek. xlv. 9 sqq. 
 
LECT. vir. OLD ISRAEL. 229 
 
 referred to in 2 Kings xii. 4. In northern Israel the 
 royal sanctuaries, of which Bethel was the chief/ were 
 originally maintained, in the same way, by the king 
 himself ; but as Bethel was not the ordinary seat of the 
 court, so that the usual stated sacrifices there could ,not 
 be combined with the maintenance of the king's table, 
 some special provision must have been made for them. 
 As the new and elaborate type of sanctuary was due to 
 Phoenician influence, it was PhcEnicia, where the religious 
 tithe was an ancient institution, which would naturally 
 suggest the source from which a more splendid worship 
 should be defrayed ; the service of the god of the land 
 ought to be a burden on the land. And the general 
 analogy of fiscal arrangements in the East makes it 
 probable that this would be done by assigning to the 
 sanctuary the taxes in kind levied on the surrounding 
 district ; " it is therefore noteworthy that the only pre- 
 Deuteronomic references to a tithe paid at the sanctuary 
 refer to the " royal chapel " of Bethel.^ 
 
 The tithes paid to ancient sanctuaries were spent in 
 various ways, and were by no means, what the Hebrew 
 tithes ultimately became under the hierocracy, a revenue 
 appropriated to the maintenance of the priests ; thus in 
 South Arabia we find tithes devoted to the erection of 
 sacred monuments.* One of the chief objects, however, 
 for which they were expended was the maintenance of 
 feasts and sacrifices of a public character, at which the 
 worshippers were entertained free of charge.^ This element 
 
 ^ Amos vii. 13. 
 
 2 Cf. the grant of the village of BsBtocECe for the maintenance of the 
 sanctuary of the place, "Waddington, No. 2720a. 
 
 ' Gen. xxviii. 22 ; Amos iv. i. 
 
 ' Mordtm. und Miiller, Sab. Denhn. No. 11. 
 
 ' Xen., Andb. v. 3. 9 ; Waddington, ut supra. Similarly the tithes of incense 
 paid to the priests at Sabota in South Arabia were spent on the feas which the 
 god spread for his guests for a certain number of days (Pliny, H. N xii. 63). 
 
230 THE TITHE IN 
 
 LECT. VII. 
 
 cannot have been lacking at the royal sanctuaries of the 
 Hebrews, for a splendid hospitality to all and sundry who 
 assembled at the great religious feasts was recognised as 
 the duty of the king even in the time of David.-' And 
 so we find that Amos enumerates the tithe at Bethel as 
 one of the chief elements that contributed to the jovial 
 luxurious worship maintained at that holy place. 
 
 If this account of the matter is correct, the tithes 
 collected at Bethel were strictly of the nature of a tribute 
 gathered from certain lands, and payment of them was 
 doubtless enforced by royal authority. They were not 
 used by each man to make a private religious feast for 
 himself and his family, but were devoted to the mainten- 
 ance of the public or royal sacrifices, at which there was 
 a great deal of mirth and banqueting, but the persons 
 who enjoyed the feast were not necessarily those who 
 furnished the supplies. This, it ought to be said, is not 
 the view commonly taken by modern critics. The old 
 festivities at Hebrew sanctuaries before the regal period 
 were maintained, not out of any public revenue, but by 
 each man bringing up to the sanctuary his own victim 
 and all else that was necessary to make up a hearty feast, 
 with the sacrificial flesh as its pilce de resistance/' It is 
 generally assumed that this description was still applicable 
 to the feasts at Bethel in Amos's time, and that the tithes 
 were the provision that each farmer brought with him to 
 feast his domestic circle and friends. At first sight this 
 view looks plausible enough, especially when we find that 
 the Book of Deuteronomy, written a century after Amos 
 prophesied, actually prescribes that the annual tithes should 
 be used by each householder to furnish forth a family 
 feast before Jehovah. But it is not safe to argue back 
 from the reforming ordinances of Deuteronomy to the 
 1 2 Sam. vi. 19. " 1 Sam. i. 21, 24, a. 3. 
 
LECT. VII. OLD ISRAEL. 231 
 
 practices of the northern sanctuaries, without checking the 
 inference at every point. The connection betv^een tithe 
 and tribute is too close and too ancient to allow us to 
 admit without hesitation that the Deuteronomic annual 
 tithe, which retains nothing of the character of a tribute, 
 is the primitive type of the institution. And this difficulty 
 is not diminished when we observe that the Book of 
 Deuteronomy recognises also another tithe, payable once 
 in three years, which really is of the nature of a sacred 
 tribute, although it is devoted not to the altar but to 
 charity. It is arbitrary to say that the first tithe of 
 Deuteronomy corresponds to ancient usage, and that the 
 second is an innovation of the author ; indeed some 
 indications of the Book of Deuteronomy itself point all 
 the other way. In Deut. xxvi. 12 the third year, in 
 which the charity tithe is to be paid, is called far excellence 
 " the year of tithing," and in the following verse the 
 charity tithe is reckoned in the list of " holy things," 
 while the annual tithe, to be spent on family festivities 
 at the sanctuary, is not so reckoned. In the face of these 
 difi&culties it is not safe to assume that either of the 
 Deuteronomic tithes exactly corresponds to old usage. 
 And, if we look at Amos's account of the worship at 
 Bethel as a whole, a feature which cannot fail to strike 
 us is that the luxurious feasts beside the altars which 
 he describes are entirely different in kind from the old 
 rustic festivities at Shiloh described in 1 Samuel. They 
 are not simple agricultural merry-makings of a popular 
 character, but mainly feasts of the rich, enjoying them- 
 selves at the expense of the poor. The keynote struck in 
 chap. ii. 7, 8, where the sanctuary itself is designated as the 
 seat of oppression and extortion, is re-echoed all through 
 the book ; Amos's charge against the nobles is not that 
 they are professedly religious and yet oppressors, bat that 
 
232 THE TITHE IN lect. vn. 
 
 their luxurious religion is founded on oppression, on the 
 gains of corruption at the sacred tribunal and other forms 
 of extortion. This is not the description of a primitive 
 agricultural worship, and not the association in which we 
 can look for the idyllic simplicity of the Deuteronomic 
 family feast of tithes. But it is the very association in 
 which one expects to find the tithe as I have supposed it 
 to be ; and I do not hesitate to conclude that the tribute 
 of wheat taken from the poor, which is set forth among 
 the extortions of Bethel in Amos v. 11, is nothing else 
 than the tithe itself. The poor paid the sacred tribute, 
 but it was the rich who were invited to the public banquet 
 it furnished forth. The revenues of the state religion, 
 originally designed to maintain a public hospitality at the 
 altar, and enable rich and poor alike to rejoice before their 
 God, were monopolised by a privileged class, and were 
 exacted with the unsparing severity which usually attends 
 such misappropriation. 
 
 This being understood, the innovations in the law of 
 tithes proposed in the Book of Deuteronomy become 
 sufficiently intelligible. In the kingdom of Judah there 
 was no royal sanctuary except that at Jerusalem, the 
 maintenance of which was part of the king's household 
 charges, and it is hardly probable that any part of the 
 royal tithes was assigned to the maintenance of the local 
 sanctuaries. But as early as the time of Samuel we find 
 religious feasts of clans or of towns, which are not a mere 
 agglomeration of private sacrifices, and so must have been 
 defrayed out of communal funds; from this germ,, as 
 religion became more luxurious, a fixed impost on land for 
 the maintenance of the public services, such as was 
 collected among the Phoenicians, would naturally grow. 
 Such an impost would be in the hands, not of the priests, 
 but of the heads of clans and communes, ie. of the rich, 
 
LECT. VII. OLD ISRAEL. 233 
 
 and would necessarily be liable to the same abuses as 
 prevailed in the northern kingdom. The remedy which 
 Deuteronomy proposes for these abuses is to leave each 
 farmer to spend his own tithes as he pleases at the central 
 sanctuary. But this provision, if it had stood alone, would 
 have amounted to the total abolition of a communal fund 
 which, however much abused in practice, was theoretically 
 designed for the maintenance of a public table, where 
 every one had a right to claim a portion, and which was 
 doubtless of some service to the landless proletariate, how- 
 ever hardly its collection might press on the poorer farmer.^ 
 This difficulty was met by the triennial tithe devoted to 
 charity, to the landless poor and to the landless Levite. 
 Strictly speaking, this triennial due was the only real 
 tithe left — the only impost for a religious purpose which 
 a man was actually bound to pay away — and to it the 
 whole subsequent history of Hebrew tithes attaches itself. 
 The other tithe, which was not a due but of a mere volun- 
 tary character, disappears altogether in the Levitical 
 legislation. 
 
 If this account of the Hebrew tithe is correct, that 
 institution is of relatively modern origin — as indeed is 
 indicated by the silence of the most ancient laws — and 
 throws very little light on the original principles of 
 Semitic sacrifice. The principle that the god of the land 
 claims a tribute on the increase of the soil was originally 
 expressed in the oifering of first-fruits, at a time when 
 sanctuaries and their service were too simple to need any 
 elaborate provision for their support. The tithe originated 
 when worship became more complex and ritual more 
 splendid, so that a fixed tribute was necessary for its 
 
 ^ The same principle was acknowledged in Greece, aro rut hfm yxf oi Trax'^' 
 ZSc-iti {Schol. on Aristoph. Plutiis, 596, in Hermann op. cit. § 15, note 16). So 
 too in the Arabian meal-offering to Ocaisir {supra, p. 206). 
 
234 TITHES AND lect. VII. 
 
 maintenance. The tribute took the shape of an impost on 
 the produce of land, partly because this was an ordinary 
 source of revenue for all public purposes, partly because 
 such an impost could be justified from the religious point 
 of view, as agreeing in principle with the oblation of first- 
 fruits, and constituting a tribute to the god from the 
 agricultural blessings he bestowed. But here the similarity 
 between tithes and first-fruits ends. The first-fruits consti- 
 tuted a private sacrifice of the worshipper, who brought 
 them himself to the altar and was answerable for the pay- 
 ment only to God and his own conscience. The tithe, on the 
 contrary, was a public burden enforced by the community 
 for the maintenance of public religion. In principle there 
 was no reason why it should not be employed for any 
 purpose, connected with the public exercises of religion, 
 for which money or money's worth was required ; the way 
 in which it should be spent depended not on the individual 
 tithe-payer but on the sovereign or the commune. In 
 later times, after the exile, it was entirely appropriated to 
 the support of the clergy. But in old Israel it seems to 
 have been mainly, if not exclusively, used to furnish forth 
 public feasts at the sanctuary. In this respect it entirely 
 differed from the first-fruits, which might be, and generally 
 were, offered at a public festival, but did not supply any 
 part of the material of the feast. The sacred feast, at 
 which men and their god ate together, was originally quite 
 unconnected with the cereal oblations paid in tribute to 
 the deity, and its staple was the zdhah — the sacrificial 
 victim. "We shall see by and by that in its origin the 
 z4hah was not the private offering of an individual house- 
 holder but the sacrifice of a clan, and so the sacrificial 
 meal had pre-eminently the character of a public feast. 
 Now when public feasts are organised on a considerable 
 scale, and furnished not merely with store of sacrificial 
 
LECT. VII. PUBLIC FEASTS. 235 
 
 flesh, but — as was the wont in Israel under the kings — 
 with all manner of luxurious accessories, they come to be 
 costly affairs, which can only be defrayed out of public 
 moneys. The Israel of the time of the kings was not a 
 simple society of peasants, all living in the same way, who 
 could simply club together to maintain a rustic feast by 
 what each man brought , to the sanctuary from his own 
 farm. Splendid festivals like those of Bethel were evi- 
 dently not furnished in this way, but were mainly banquets 
 of the upper classes in which the poor had a very subordi- 
 nate share. The source of these festivals was the tithe, 
 but it was not the poor tithe-payer who figured as host at 
 the banquet. The organisation of the feast was in the 
 hands of the ruling classes, who received the tithes and 
 spent them on the service in a way that gave the lion's 
 share of the good things to themselves ; though no doubt, 
 as in other ancient countries, the principle of a public feast 
 was not wholly ignored, and every one present had some- 
 thing to eat and drink, so that the whole populace was kept 
 in good humour.^ Of course it is not to be supposed that 
 the whole service was of this public character. Private 
 persons still brought up their own vows and free-will 
 offerings, and arranged their own family parties. But 
 these, I conceive, were quite independent of the tithes, 
 which were a public tax devoted to what was regarded as 
 the public part of religion. On the whole, therefore, the 
 tithe system has nothing to do with primitive Hebrew 
 religion ; the only point about it which casts a light back- 
 wards on the earlier stages of worship is that it could 
 
 1 The only way of escape from this conclusion is to suppose that the rich 
 nobles paid out of their own pockets for the more expensive parts of the 
 public sacrifices ; and no one who knows the East and reads the Book of 
 Amos will believe that. Nathan's parable about the poor man's one lamb, 
 which his rich neighbour took to make a feast (necessarily at that date 
 sacrificial), is an apposite illustration. 
 
236 SACRIFICIAL 
 
 LECT. Til. 
 
 hardly have sprung up except in connection with the idea 
 that the maintenance of sacrifice was a public duty, and 
 that the sacrificial feast had essentially a public character. 
 This point, however, is of the highest importance, and must 
 be kept clearly before us as we proceed. 
 
 Long before any public revenue was set apart for the 
 maintenance of sacrificial ritual, the ordinary type of 
 Hebrew worship was essentially social, for in antiquity all 
 religion was the affair of the community rather than of the 
 individual. A sacrifice was a public ceremony of a town- 
 ship or of a clan,^ and private householders were accustomed 
 to reserve their offerings for the annual feasts, satisfying 
 their religious feelings in the interval by vows to be dis- 
 charged when the festal season came round.^ Then the 
 crowds streamed into the sanctuary from all sides, dressed 
 in their gayest attire,^ marching joyfully to the sound of 
 music,* and bearing with them not only the victims 
 appointed for sacrifice but store of bread and wine to set 
 forth the feast.^ The law of the feast was open-handed 
 hospitality; no sacrifice was complete without guests, and 
 portions were freely distributed to rich and poor within 
 the circle of a man's acquaintance." Universal hilarity 
 
 ^ 1 Sam. ix. 12, xx. 6. In the latter passage " family'' means "clan," not 
 "domestic circle." See below, p. 258, note. 
 
 2 1 Sam. i. 3, 21. = Hosea ii. 15 (E.V. 13). 
 
 ' Isa. XXX. 29. 5 1 Sam. x. 3. 
 
 « 1 Sam. ix. 13 ; 2 Sam. vi. 19, xv. 11 ; Neli. viii. 10. The guests of 
 the sacrifice supply a figure to the prophets (Ezek. xxxix. 17 sqq.; Zeph. 
 i. 7). Nadab's refusal to allow David to share in his sheep-shearing feast 
 was not only churlish but a breach of religious custom ; from Amos iv. 5 it 
 would appear that with a free-will offering there was a free invitation to all 
 to come and partake. For the Arabian usage in like cases, see Wellhausen, 
 p. 114 sq. A banqueting hall for the communal sacrifice is mentioned as 
 early as 1 Sam . ix. 22, and the name given to it {lishlca) seems to be identical 
 with the Greek xirx", from which it may be gathered that the Phcenicians 
 had similar halls from an early date ; cf. Judg. ix. 27, xvi. 23 aqq. For 
 the communal feasts of the Syrians in later times, see Posidon. Apam. ap. 
 Athen., xii. 527 {Fr. Hut. Gr. iii. 258). 
 
LECT. vn. FESTIVALS. 237 
 
 prevailed, men ate drank and were merry together, rejoic- 
 ing before their God. The picture which I have drawn of 
 the dominant type of Hebrew worship contains nothing 
 peculiar to the religion of Jehovah. It is clear from the 
 Old Testament that the ritual observances at a Hebrew 
 and at a Canaanite sanctuary were so similar that to the 
 mass of the people Jehovah worship and Baal worship 
 were not separated by any well-marked line, and that in 
 both cases the prevailing tone and temper of the worshippers 
 were determined by the festive character of the service. 
 Nor is the prevalence of the sacrificial feast, as the 
 established type of ordinary religion, confined to the 
 Semitic peoples ; the same kind of worship ruled in 
 ancient Greece and Italy, and seems to be the universal 
 type of the local cults of the small agricultural com- 
 munities out of which all the nations of ancient civilisation 
 grew. Everywhere we find that a sacrifice ordinarily 
 involves a feast, and that a feast cannot be provided with- 
 out a sacrifice. Tor a feast is not complete without flesh, 
 and in early times the rule that all slaughter is sacrifice 
 was not confined to the Semites.^ The identity of religious 
 occasions and festal seasons may indeed be taken as the 
 determining characteristic of the type of ancient religion 
 generally ; when men meet their god they feast and are 
 glad together, and whenever they feast and are glad they 
 desire that the god should be of the party. This view is 
 proper to religions in which the habitual temper of the 
 worshippers is one of joyous confidence in their god, un- 
 troubled by any habitual sense of human guilt, and resting 
 
 1 It is Indian (Manu, v. 31 sqq. ) and Persian (Sprenger, Eranische Alterih. 
 iii. 578. Cf. Herod, i. 132; Strabo, xt. 3. 13, p. 732). Among the Romans 
 and the older Greeks there was something sacrificial about every feast, or 
 even about every social meal ; in the latter case the Romans paid tribute to 
 the household gods. On the identity of feast and sacrifice in Greece, see 
 Athenseus v. 19 ; Buohholz, Horn. Sealien, II. ii. 202, 213 stjq. 
 
238 MEANING OP LF.CT. vii. 
 
 on the firm conviction that they and the deity they adore 
 are good friends, who understand each other perfectly and 
 are united by bonds not easily broken. The basis of this 
 confidence lies of course in the view that the gods are part 
 and parcel of the same natural community with their 
 worshippers. The divine father or king claims the same 
 kind of respect and service as a human father or king, and 
 practical religion is simply a branch of social duty, an 
 understood part of the conduct of daily life, governed by 
 fixed rules to which every one has been trained from his 
 infancy. No man who is a good citizen, living up to the 
 ordinary standard of civil morality in his dealings with his 
 neighbours, and accurately following the ritual tradition in 
 his worship of the gods, is oppressed with the fear that the 
 deity may set a higher standard of conduct and find him 
 wanting. Civil and religious morality have one and the 
 same measure, and the conduct which suffices to secure the 
 esteem of men suffices also to make a man perfectly easy 
 as to his standing with the gods. It must be remembered 
 that all antique morality is an affair of social custom and 
 customary law, and that in the more primitive forms of 
 ancient life the force of custom is so strong that there is 
 hardly any middle course between living well up to the 
 standard of social duty which it prescribes, and falling 
 altogether outside the pale of the civil and religious com- 
 munity. A man who deliberately sets himself against the 
 rules of the society in which he lives must expect to be 
 outlawed, but minor offences are readily condoned as mere 
 mistakes, which may expose the offender to a fine but do 
 not permanently lower his social status or his self-respect. 
 So too a man may offend his god, and be called upon to 
 make reparation to him. But in such a case he knows, or 
 . can learn from a competent priestly authority, exactly what 
 he ought to do to set matters right, and then everything 
 
LECT. VII. SACRIFICIAL FEASTS. 239 
 
 goes on as before. In a religion of this kind there is no 
 room for an abiding sense of sin and unworthiness, or for 
 acts of worship that express the struggle after an unattained 
 righteousness, the longing for uncertain forgiveness. It is 
 only when the old religions begin to break down that these 
 feelings come in. The older national and tribal religions 
 work with the smoothness of a machine. Men are satis- 
 fied with their gods, and they feel that the gods are 
 satisfied with them. Or if at any time famine, pestilence 
 or disaster in war appears to shew that the gods are angry, 
 this casts no doubt on the adequacy of the religious system 
 as such, but is merely held to prove that a grave fault has 
 been committed by some one for whom the community is 
 responsible, and that they are bound to put it right by an 
 appropriate reparation. That they can put it right, and 
 stand as well with the god as they ever did, is not doubted ; 
 and when rain falls, or the pestilence is checked, or the 
 defeat is retrieved, they at once recover their old easy 
 confidence, and go on eating and drinking and rejoicing 
 before their god with the assurance that he and they are 
 on the best of jovial good terms. 
 
 The kind of religion which finds its proper aesthetic 
 expression in the merry sacrificial feast implies a habit of 
 mind, a way of taking the world as well as a way of 
 regarding the gods, which we have some difficulty in 
 realising. Human life is never perfectly happy and satis- 
 factory, yet ancient religion assumes that through the help 
 of the gods it is so happy and satisfactory that ordinary 
 acts of worship are all brightness and hilarity, expressing 
 no other idea than that the worshippers are well content 
 with themselves and with their divine sovereign. This 
 implies a measure of insouciance, a power of casting off the 
 past and living in the impression of the moment, which 
 belongs to the childhood of humanity, and can exist only 
 
"240 THE GODS AND lect. vii. 
 
 along with a childish unconsciousness of the inexorable 
 laws that connect the present and the future with the 
 past. Accordingly the more developed nations of antiquity, 
 in proportion as they emerged from national childhood, 
 began to find the old religious forms inadequate, and either 
 became less concerned to associate all their happiness with 
 the worship of the gods, and, in a word, less religious, or 
 else were unable to think of the divine powers as habitually 
 well pleased and favourable, and so were driven to look on 
 the anger of the gods as much more frequent and permanent 
 than their fathers had supposed, and to give to atoning 
 rites a stated and important place in ritual, which went 
 far to change the whole attitude characteristic of early 
 worship, and substitute for the old joyous confidence a 
 painful and scrupulous anxiety in all approach to the gods. 
 Among the Semites the Arabs furnish an example of the 
 general decay of religion, while the nations of Palestine in 
 the seventh century B.C. afford an excellent illustration of 
 the development of a gloomier type of worship under the 
 pressure of accumulated political disasters. On the whole, 
 however, what strikes the modern thinker as surprising is 
 not that the old joyous type of worship ultimately broke 
 down, but that it lasted so long as it did, or even that it 
 ever attained a paramount place among nations sfi advanced 
 as the Greeks and the Syrians. This is a matter which 
 well deserves attentive consideration. 
 
 First of all, then, it is to be observed that the frame 
 of mind in which men are well pleased with themselves, 
 with their gods, and with the world, could not have 
 donunated antiqiie religion as it did, unless religion had 
 been essentially the affair of the community rather than 
 of individuals. It was not the business of the gods of 
 heathenism to watch, by a series of special providences, 
 over the welfare of every individual. It is true that 
 
LECT. VII. THEIR WORSHIPPEES. 241 
 
 individuals laid their private affairs before the gods, and 
 asked with prayers and vows for strictly personal blessings. 
 But they did this just as they might crave a personal 
 boon from a king, or as a son craves a boon from a father, 
 without expecting to get all that was asked. What the 
 gods might do in this way was done as a matter of 
 personal favour, and was no part of their proper function 
 as heads of the community. The benefits which were 
 expected from the gods were of a public character, affect- 
 ing the whole community, especially fruitful seasons, 
 increase of flocks and herds, and success in war. So long 
 as the community flourished the fact that an individual 
 was miserable reflected no discredit on divine providence, 
 but was rather taken to prove that the sufferer was an 
 evil-doer, justly hateful to the gods. Such a man was out 
 of place among the happy and prosperous crowd that 
 assembled on feast days before the altar ; even in Israel 
 Hannah, with her sad face and silent petition, was a strange 
 figure at the sanctuary of Shiloh, and the unhappy leper, 
 in his lifelong afliiction, was shut out from the exercises 
 of religion as well as from the privileges of social life. 
 So too the mourner was unclean, and his food was not 
 brought into the house of God ; the very occasions of Ufa 
 in which spiritual things are nearest to the Christian, and 
 the comfort of religion is most fervently sought, were in 
 the ancient world the times when a man was forbidden 
 to approach the seat of God's presence. To us, whose 
 habit it is to look at religion in its influence on the life 
 and happiness of individuals, this seems a cruel law ; nay, 
 our sense of justice is offended by a system in which 
 misfortunes set up a barrier between a man and his God. 
 But whether in civil or in profane matters, the habit of 
 the old world was to think much of the community and 
 little of the individual Hfe, and no one felt this to be 
 
'242 JOYOUS CHAEACTER lect: vii. 
 
 unjust even though it bore hardly on himself. The god 
 was the god of the nation or of the tribe, and he knew 
 and cared for the individual only as a member of the 
 community. Why, then, should private misfortune be 
 allowed to mar by its ill-omened presence the public glad- 
 ness of the sanctuary ? 
 
 Accordingly the air of habitual satisfaction with them- 
 selves, their gods and the world, which characterises the 
 worship of ancient communities, must be explained without 
 reference to the vicissitudes of individual life. And so far 
 as the thing requires any other explanation than the 
 general insouciance and absorption in the feelings of the 
 moment characteristic of the childhood of society, I appre- 
 hend that the key to the joyful character of the antique 
 religions known to us lies in the fact that they took their 
 shape in communities that were progressive and on the 
 whole prosperous. If we realise to ourselves the conditions 
 of early society, whether in Europe or in Asia, at the 
 first daybreak of history, we cannot fail to see that a tribe 
 or nation that could not hold its own and make headway 
 must soon have been crushed out of existence in the 
 incessant feuds it had to wage with all its neighbours. 
 The communities of ancient civilisation were formed by 
 the survival of the fittest, and they had all the self- 
 confidence and elasticity that are engendered by success 
 in the struggle for life. These characters, therefore, are 
 reflected in- the religious system that grew up with the 
 growth of the state, and the type of worship that corre- 
 sponded to them was not felt to be inadequate till the 
 political system was undermined from within or shattered 
 by blows from without. 
 
 These considerations sufficiently account for the develop- 
 ment of the habitual joyous temper of ancient sacrificial 
 worship. But it is also to be observed that when the 
 
LECT. viT. OF ANCIENT RELIGION. 243 
 
 type was once formed it would not at once disappear, even 
 when a change in social conditions made it no longer an 
 adequate expression of the habitual tone of national life. 
 The most important functions of ancient worship were 
 reserved for public occasions, when the whole community 
 was stirred by a common emotion ; and among agricultural 
 nations the stated occasions of sacrifice were the natural 
 seasons of festivity, at harvest and vintage. At such times 
 every one was ready to cast otf his cares and rejoice before 
 his god, and so the coincidence of rehgious and agricultural 
 gladness helped to keep the old form of worship alive, 
 long after it had ceased to be in full harmony with men's 
 permanent view of the world. Moreover it must be 
 remembered that the spirit of boisterous mirth which 
 characterised the oldest religious festivals was nourished 
 by the act of worship itself. The sacrificial feast was not 
 only an expression of gladness but a means of driving 
 away care, for it was set forth with every circumstance of 
 gaiety, with garlands, perfumes and music, as well as with 
 store of meat and wine. The sensuous Oriental nature 
 responds to such physical stimulus with a readiness foreign 
 to our more sluggish temperament ; to the Arab it is an 
 excitement and a delight of the highest order merely to 
 have flesh to eat.^ From the earliest times, therefore, the 
 religious gladness of the Semites tended to assume an 
 orgiastic character and become a sort of intoxication of 
 the senses, in which anxiety and sorrow were drowned 
 for the moment. This is apparent in the old Canaanite 
 festivals, such as the vintage feast at Shechem described 
 in Judg. ix. 27, and not less in the service of the Hebrew 
 
 1 A current Arabic saying, which I have somewhere seen ascribed to 
 Taabbata Sharran, reckons the eating of flesh as one of the three great 
 deliglits of life. In Maidani, ii. 22, flesh and wine are classed together as 
 seductive luxuries. 
 
244 ORGIASTIC LECT. VII. 
 
 liigli places, as it is characterised by the prophets. Even 
 at Jerusalem the worship must have been boisterous 
 indeed, when Lam. ii. 7 compares the shouts of the storm- 
 ing party of the Chaldseans in the courts of the temple 
 with the noise of a solemn feast. Among the Nabatseans 
 and elsewhere the orgiastic character of the worship often 
 led in later times to the identification of Semitic gods, 
 especially of Dusares, with the Greek Dionysus. It is 
 plain that a religion of this sort would not necessarily 
 cease to be powerful when it ceased to express a habitu- 
 ally joyous view of the world and the divine governance ; 
 in evil times, when men's thoughts were habitually sombre, 
 they betook themselves to the physical excitement of 
 religion, as men now take refuge in wine. That this is 
 not a fancy picture is clear from Isaiah's description of 
 the conduct of his contemporaries during the approach of 
 the Assyrians to Jerusalem,^ when the multiplied sacrifices 
 that were offered to avert the disaster degenerated into a 
 drunken carnival — "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
 we die." And so in general when an act of Semitic 
 worship began with sorrow and lamentation — as in the 
 mourning for Adonis, or in the great atoning ceremonies 
 which became common in later times — a swift revulsion 
 of feeling followed, and the gloomy part of the ser- 
 vice was presently succeeded by a burst of hilarious 
 revelry, which, in later times at least, was not a purely 
 spontaneous expression of the conviction that man is 
 reconciled with the powers that govern his life and 
 rule the universe, but in great measure a mere orgiastic 
 excitement. The nerves were strung to the utmost 
 tension in the sombre part of the ceremony, and the 
 natural reaction was fed by the physical stimulus of the 
 revelry that followed. 
 
 ^ Isa. xxii. 12, 13, compared with i. 11 sqq. 
 
LECT. VII. EELIGION. 245 
 
 This, however, is not a picture of what Semitic religion 
 was from the first, and in its ordinary exercises, but of the 
 shape it tended to assume in extraordinary times of national 
 calamity, and still more under the habitual pressure of 
 grinding despotism, when the general tone of social life 
 was no longer bright and hopeful, but stood in painful 
 contrast to the joyous temper proper to the traditional 
 forms of worship. Ancient heathenism was not made for 
 such times, but for seasons of national prosperity, when its 
 joyous rites were the appropriate expression for the happy 
 fellowship that united the god and his worshippers to 
 the satisfaction of both parties. Then the enthusiasm of 
 the worshipping throng was genuine. Men came to the 
 sanctuary to give free vent to habitual feelings of thankful 
 confidence in their god, and warmed themselves into excite- 
 ment in a perfectly natural way by feasting together, as 
 people still do when they rejoice together. 
 
 In acts of worship we expect to find the religious ideal 
 expressed in its purest form, and we cannot easily think 
 well of a type of religion whose ritual culminates in a 
 jovial feast. It seems that such a faith sought nothing 
 higher than a condition of physical Men Stre, and in one 
 sense this judgment is just. The good things desired of 
 the gods were the blessings of earthly life, not spiritual but 
 carnal things. But Semitic heathenism was redeemed 
 from mere materialism by the fact that religion was not 
 the affair of the individual but of the community. The 
 ideal was earthly, but it was not selfish. In rejoicing 
 before his god a man rejoiced with and for the welfare 
 of his kindred, his neighbours and his country, and, in 
 renewing by a solemn act of worship the bond that united 
 him to his god, he also renewed the bonds of family social 
 and national obligation. We have seen that the compact 
 between the god and the community of his worshippers 
 
246 THE SOCIAL ELEMENT LECT. vil. 
 
 was not held to pledge the deity to make the private cares 
 of each member of the commuaity his own. The gods had 
 their favourites no doubt, for whom they were prepaired to 
 do many things that they were not bound to do ; but no 
 man could approach his god in a purely personal matter 
 with that spirit of absolute confidence which I have 
 described as characteristic of antique religions ; it was the 
 community, and not the individual, that was sure of the 
 permanent and imfailing help of its deity. It was a 
 national not a personal providence that was taught by 
 ancient religion. So much was this the case that in purely 
 personal concerns the ancients were very apt to turn, not 
 to the recognised religion of the family or of the state, but 
 to magical superstitions. The gods watched over a man's 
 civic life, they gave him his share in public benefits, the 
 annual largess of the harvest and the vintage, national 
 peace or victory over enemies, and so forth, but they were 
 not sure helpers in every private need, and above all they 
 would not help him in matters that were against the 
 interests of the community as a whole. There was there- 
 fore a whole region of possible needs and desires for which 
 religion could and would know nothing ; and if supernatural 
 help was sought in such things it had to be sought through 
 magical ceremonies, designed to purchase or constrain the 
 favour of demoniac powers with which the public religion 
 had nothing to do. Not only did these magical supersti- 
 tions lie outside religion, but in all well-ordered states they 
 were regarded as illicit. A man had no right to enter into 
 private relations with supernatural powers that might help 
 him at the expense of the community to which he 
 belonged. In his relations to the unseen he was bound 
 always to think and act with and for the community, and 
 not for himself alone. 
 With this it accords that every complete act of worship 
 
LECT. VII. IN EELIGION. 247 
 
 — for a mere vow was not a complete act till it was 
 fulfilled by presenting a sacrifice — had a public or quasi- 
 public character. Most sacrifices were offered on fixed 
 occasions, at the great communal or national feasts, but 
 even a private offering was not complete without guests, 
 and the surplus of sacrificial flesh was not sold but 
 distributed with an open hand.^ Thus every act of 
 worship expressed the idea that man does not live 
 for himself only but for his fellows, and that this partner- 
 ship of social interests is the sphere over which the 
 gods preside and on which they bestow their assured 
 blessing. 
 
 The ethical significance which thus appertains to the 
 sacrificial meal, viewed as a social act, received particular 
 emphasis from certain ancient customs and ideas connected 
 with eating and drinking. According to antique ideas 
 those who eat and drink together are by this very act tied 
 to one another by a bond of friendship and mutual 
 obligation. Hence when we find that in ancient religions 
 all the ordinary functions of worship are summed up in 
 the sacrificial meal, and that the ordinary intercourse 
 between gods and men has no other form, we are to 
 remember that the act of eating and drinking together is 
 the solemn and stated expression of the fact that all those 
 who share the meal are brethren, and that all the duties of 
 friendship and brotherhood are implicitly acknowledged in 
 their common act. By admitting man to his table the god 
 admits him to his friendship ; but this favour is extended 
 to no man in his mere private capacity ; he is received as 
 one of a community, to eat and drink along with his 
 fellows, and in the same measure as the act of worship 
 cements the bond between him and his god, it cements also 
 
 1 See above, p. 236. In Greece, in later times, sacrificial flesh was exposed 
 for sale (1 Cor. x. 25). 
 
248 ETHICAL VALUE OP lect. vii. 
 
 the bond between him and his brethren in the common 
 faith. 
 
 We have now reached a point in our discussion at 
 which it is possible to form some general estimate of the 
 ethical value of the type of religion which has been 
 described. The power of religion over life is twofold, 
 lying partly in its association with particular precepts of 
 conduct, to which it supplies a supernatural sanction, but 
 mainly in its influence on the general tone and temper 
 of men's minds, which it elevates to higher courage and 
 purpose, and raises above a mere brutal servitude to the 
 physical wants of the moment, by teaching men that their 
 lives and happiness are not the mere sport of the blind 
 forces of nature, but are watched over and cared for by 
 a higher power. As a spring of action this influence is 
 more potent than the fear of supernatural sanctions, for 
 it is stimulative, while the other is only regulative. But 
 to produce a moral effect on life the two must go together ; 
 a man's actions must be not only supported by the feeling 
 that the divine help is with him, but regulated by the 
 conviction that that help will not accompany him except 
 on the right path. In ancient religion, as it appears 
 among the Semites, the confident assurance of divine help 
 belongs, not to each man in his private concerns, but to 
 the community in its public functions and public aims ; and 
 it is this assurance that is expressed in public acts of 
 worship, where all the members of the community meet 
 together to eat and drink at the table of their god, and 
 so renew the sense that he and they are altogether at one. 
 JSTow, if we look at the whole community of worshippers 
 as absolutely one, personify them and think of them as a 
 single individual, it is plain that the effect of this type 
 of religion must be regarded as merely stimulative and 
 not regulative. When the community is at one with 
 
LECT. VII. SACRIFICIAL RELIGION. 249 
 
 itself and at one with its god, it may, for anything that 
 religion has to say, do exactly what it pleases towards 
 all who are outside it. Its friends are the god's friends, 
 its enemies the god's enemies ; it takes its god with it in 
 whatever -it chooses to do. As the ancient communities 
 of religion are tribes or nations, this is as much as to say 
 that, properly speaking, ancient religion has no influence 
 on intertribal or international morality — in such matters 
 the god simply goes with his own nation or his own tribe. 
 So long as we consider the tribe or nation of common 
 religion as a single subject, the influence of religion is 
 limited to an increase of the national self-confidence — a 
 quality very useful in the continual struggle for life that 
 was waged between ancient communities, but which beyond 
 this has no moral value. 
 
 But the case is very different when we look at the 
 religious community as made up of a multitude of 
 individuals, each of whom has private as well as public 
 purposes and desires. In this aspect it is the regulative 
 influence of ancient religion that is predominant, for the 
 good things which religion holds forth are promised to the 
 individual only in so far as he lives in and for the com- 
 munity. The conception of man's chief good set forth 
 in the social act of sacriflcial worship is the happiness 
 of the individual in the happiness of the community, and 
 thus the whole force of ancient religion is directed, so far 
 as the individual is concerned, to maintain the civil virtues 
 of loyalty and devotion to a man's fellows at a pitch of 
 confldent enthusiasm, to teach him to set his highest good 
 in the prosperity of the society of which he is a member, 
 not doubting that in so doing he has the divine power on 
 his side and has given his life to a cause that cannot fail. 
 This devotion to the common weal was, as every one knows, 
 the mainspring of ancient morality and the source of all 
 
250 ANCIENT MOLALITY. LECT. vil.. 
 
 the heroic virtues of which ancient history presents so 
 many illustrious examples. In ancient society, therefore, 
 the religious ideal expressed in the act of social worship 
 and the ethical ideal which governed the conduct of daily 
 life were wholly at one, and all morality — as morality was 
 then understood — was consecrated and enforced by religious 
 motives and sanctions. 
 
 These observations are fully applicable only to the 
 typical form of ancient religion, when it was still strictly 
 tribal or national. When nationality and religion began 
 to fall apart, certain worships assumed a character more 
 or less cosmopolitan. Even in heathenism therefore, in 
 its more advanced forms, the gods, or at least certain gods, 
 are in some measure the guardians of universal morality, 
 and not merely of communal loyalty. But what was thus 
 gained in comprehensiveness was lost in intensity and 
 strength of religious feeling, and the advance towards 
 ethical universalism, which was made with feeble and 
 uncertain steps, was never sufficient to make up for the 
 decline of the old heroic virtues that were fostered by the 
 narrower type of national faith. 
 
LECTUEE VIII. 
 
 THE ORIGINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF ANIMAL SACRIFICE. 
 
 Enough has been said as to the significance of the sacri- 
 ficial feast as we find it among ancient nations no longer 
 barbarous. Bnt to understand the matter fully we must 
 trace it back to its origin in a state of society much 
 more primitive than that of the agricultural Semites or 
 Greeks. 
 
 The sacrificial meal was an appropriate expression of the 
 antique ideal of religious life, not merely because it was a 
 social act and an act in which the god and his worshippers 
 were conceived as partaking together, but because, as has 
 already been said, the very act of eating and drinking 
 with a man was a symbol and a confirmation of fellowship 
 and mutual social obligations. The one thing directly 
 expressed in the sacrificial meal is that the god and his 
 worshippers are commensals, but every other point in their 
 mutual relations is included in what this involves. Those 
 who sit at meat together are united for all social effects, 
 those who do not eat together are aliens to one another, 
 without fellowship in religion and without reciprocal social 
 duties. The extent to which this view prevailed among 
 the ancient Semites, and still prevails among the Arabs, 
 may be brought out most clearly by reference to the law of 
 hospitality. Among the Arabs every stranger whom one 
 meets in the desert is a natural enemy, and has no protec- 
 tion against violence except his own strong hand or the fear 
 
 261 
 
252 THE BOND 
 
 LECT. VIII. 
 
 that his tribe will avenge him if his blood be spilt.^ But 
 if I have eaten the smallest morsel of food with a man, I 
 have nothing further to fear from him; "there is salt 
 between us " and he is bound not only to do me no harm, 
 but to help and defend me as if I were his brother.^ So 
 far was this principle carried by the old Arabs, that Zaid 
 al-Khail, a famous warrior in the days of Mohammed, 
 refused to slay a vagabond who carried off his camels, 
 because the thief had surreptitiously drunk from his father's 
 milk bowl before committing the theft.' It does not 
 indeed follow as a matter of course that because I have 
 eaten once with a man I am permanently his friend, for 
 the bond of union is conceived in a very realistic way, and 
 strictly speaking lasts no longer than the food may be 
 supposed to remain in my system.* But the temporary 
 bond is confirmed by repetition,^ and readily passes into a 
 permanent tie confirmed by an oath. " There was a sworn 
 alliance between the Libyan and the Mostalic, they were 
 wont to eat and drink together."® This phrase of an Arab 
 narrator supplies exactly what is wanted to define the 
 
 I This is the meaning of Gen. iv. 14 sq. Cain is " driven out from the 
 face of the cultivated land " into the desert, where his only prptection is 
 the law of blood revenge. 
 
 ^ The milha, or bond of salt, is not dependent on the actual use of mineral 
 salt with the food by which the bond is constituted. Milk, for example, 
 will serve the purpose. Cf. Burokhardt, Bedouins and Wahahys, i. 329, and 
 Kdmil, p. 284, especially the verse of Abu '1-Tamahan there cited, where salt 
 is interpreted to mean "milk." 
 
 ^ Agh. xvi. 51 ; cf. Kinship, p. 149 aq. 
 
 * Burton, Pilgrimage, iii. 84 (1st ed.), says that some tribes " require to 
 renew the bond every twenty-four hours," as otherwise, to use their own 
 phrase, " the salt is not in their stomachs " (almost the same phrase is used 
 in the verse of Abu '1-Tamahan referred to above). But usually the protec- 
 tion extended to a guest lasts three days and a third after his departure 
 (Burckhardt, op. cit. i. 136) ; or according to Doughty, i. 228, two nights 
 and the day between. 
 
 ' "0 enemy of God, wilt thou slay this Jew? Much of the fat on thy 
 paunch is of his substance" (Ibn Hisham, p. 553 sq.). 
 
 " Diw. Hodh. No. 87 (Kosegarten's ed. p. 170). 
 
LECT. vm. OP FOOD. 253 
 
 significance of the sacrificial meal. The god and his 
 worshippers are wont to eat and drink together, and by 
 this token their fellowship is declared and sealed. 
 
 The ethical significance of the common meal can be 
 most adequately illustrated from Arabian usage, but it was 
 not confined to the Arabs. The Old Testament records 
 many cases where a covenant was sealed by the parties 
 eating and drinking together. In most of these indeed the 
 meal is sacrificial, so that it is not at once clear that two 
 men are bound to each other merely by partaking of the 
 same dish, unless the deity is taken in as a third party to 
 the covenant. The value of the Arabian evidence is that 
 it supplies proof that the bond of food is valid of itself, 
 that religion may be called in to confirm and strengthen it, 
 but that the essence of the thing lies in the physical act of 
 eating together. That this was also the case among the 
 Hebrews and Canaanites may be safely concluded from 
 analogy, and appears to receive direct confirmation from 
 Josh. ix. 14, where the Israelites enter into alliance with 
 the Gibeonites by taking of their victuals, without consult- 
 ing Jehovah. A formal league confirmed by an oath 
 follows, but by accepting the proffered food the Israelites 
 are already committed to the alliance. 
 
 But we have not yet got to the root of the matter. 
 What is the ultimate nature of the fellowship which is 
 constituted or declared when men eat and drink together ? 
 In our complicated society fellowship has many types and 
 many degrees ; men may be united by bonds of duty and 
 honour for certain purposes, and stand quite apart in all 
 other things. Even in ancient times — for example, in the 
 Old Testament— 7-we find the sacrament of a common meal 
 introduced to seal engagements of various kinds. But in 
 every case the engagement is absolute and inviolable, it 
 constitutes what in the language of ethics, is called a duty 
 
254 POOD AND LECT. VIII. 
 
 of perfect obligation. Now in the most primitive society- 
 there is only one kind of fellowship which is absolute and 
 inviolable. To the primitive man all other men fall under 
 two classes, those to whom his life is sacred and those to 
 whom it is not sacred. The former are his fellows ; the 
 latter are strangers and potential foemen, with whom it is 
 absurd to think of forming any inviolable tie unless they 
 are first brought into the circle within which each man's 
 life is sacred to all his comrades. 
 
 But that circle again corresponds to the circle of 
 kinship, for the practical test of kinship is that the 
 whole kin is answerable for the life of each of its 
 members. By the rules of early society, if I slay my 
 kinsman, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, the act 
 is murder, and is punished by expulsion from the kin;^ 
 if my kinsman is slain by an outsider I and every other 
 member of my kin are bound to avenge his death by 
 killing the manslayer or some member of his kin. It 
 is obvious that under such a system there can be no 
 inviolable fellowship except between men of the same 
 blood. For the duty of blood revenge is paramount, and 
 every other obligation is dissolved as soon as it comes into 
 conflict with the claims of blood. I cannot bind myself 
 absolutely to a man, even for a temporary purpose, unless 
 during the time of our engagement he is put into a 
 kinsman's place. And this is as much as to say that a 
 stranger cannot become bound to me, unless at the same 
 time he becomes bound to all my kinsmen in exactly the 
 same way. Such is, in fact, the law of the desert ; when 
 any member of a clan receives an outsider through the 
 bond of salt, the whole clan is bound by his act, and must, 
 
 - ' Even in Homeric society no bloodwit can be accepted for slaughter 
 Within the kin ; a point which is commonly overlooked, e.g. by Buohholz, 
 Horn. Seal II. i. 76. 
 
LECT. viri. KINSHIP. 255 
 
 while the engagement lasts, receive the stranger as one of 
 themselves.^ 
 
 The idea that kinship is not purely an affair of birth, 
 but may be acquired, has quite fallen out of our circle 
 of ideas ; but so, for that matter, has the primitive con- 
 ception of kindred itself. To us kinship has no absolute 
 value, but is measured by degrees, and means much or 
 little, or nothing at all, according to its degree and other 
 circumstances. In ancient times, on the contrary, the 
 fundamental obligations of kinship had nothing to do 
 with degrees of relationship, but rested with absolute 
 and identical force on every member of the clan. To 
 know that a man's life was sacred to me, and that every 
 blood-feud that touched him involved me also, it was not 
 necessary for me to count cousinship with him by reckon- 
 ing up to our common ancestor; it was enough that we 
 belonged to the same clan and bore the same clan-name. 
 "What was my clan was determined by customary law, 
 which was not the same in all stages of society ; in the 
 earliest Semitic communities a man was of his mother's 
 clan, in later times he belonged to the clan of his father. 
 But the essential idea of kinship was independent of the 
 particular form of the law. A kin was a group of persons 
 whose lives were so bound up together, in what must be 
 called a physical unity, that they could be treated as parts 
 of one common life. The members of one kindred looked 
 on themselves as one living whole, a single animated mass 
 of blood, flesh and bones, of which no member could be 
 touched without all the members suffering. This point 
 of view is expressed in the Semitic tongues in many 
 
 1 This of course is to he understood only of the fundamental rights and 
 duties which turn on the sanctity of kindred hlood. The secondary 
 privileges of kinship, in matters of inheritance and the like, lie outside of 
 the present argument, and with regard to them the covenanted ally had not 
 the full rights of a kinsman {Kinship, p. 47). 
 
256 KINSHIP AND tECT. viii. 
 
 familiar forms of speech. In a case of homicide Arabian 
 tribesmen do not say, " The blood of M. or K has been 
 spilt," naming the man ; they say, " Our blood has been 
 spilt." In Hebrew the phrase by which one claims 
 kinship is "I am your bone and your flesh." ^ Both in 
 Hebrew and in Arabic " flesh '' is synonymous with " clan " 
 or kindred group.^ To us all this seems mere metaphor, 
 from which no practical consequences can follow. But 
 in early thought there is no sharp line between the meta- 
 phorical and the literal, between the way of expressing a 
 thing and the way of conceiving it ; phrases and symbols 
 are treated as realities. Now, if kinship means participa- 
 tion in a common mass of flesh blood and bones, it is 
 natural that it should be regarded as dependent, not 
 merely on the fact that a man was born of his mother's 
 body, and so was from his birth a part of her flesh, but 
 also on the not less significant fact that he was nourished 
 
 ■' Judg. ix. 2; 2 Sam. v. 1. Conversely in acknowledging kinship the 
 phrase is " Thou art my hone and my flesh " (Gen. xxix. 14 ; 2 Sam. xix. 12) ; 
 cf. Gen. xxxvii. 27, "our brother and our flesh." 
 
 ^ Lev. XXV. 49 ; Kinship, p. 149. In this book, p. 39 sq., I argued that 
 the common Arabian name for a kindred group [hayy) probably means 
 "life," and rests on the idea that one life runs through the veins of the 
 whole group. Prof. De Goeje, however, has given excellent reasons for 
 rejecting this view in a MS. note on my book, which I will here quote in 
 his own words : — "You say very justly (p. 167) of the tent of the wife: 
 ' This tent plaj-s quite a significant part both in marriage and in divorce.' 
 And so it does in protection (p. 42 sq.), etc. (p. 65 sqq.). My opinion is 
 that hayy is originally 'tent,' as well as hiwa, Heb. Tl, n'n and nin. It 
 has this original meaning in the expression sa'afu 'l-hayy, ' the paraphernalia 
 of the bride,' originally the palmsticks wherewith the tent was constructed 
 or adorned. We find the word too in this signification in the Berber 
 language (ihi, e.g. Earth, Meisen, v. 711). The word hiwa preserved the 
 old meaning. One says shadda (or damma) 'alaiha hiwdhu {e.g. Agh. xx. 
 7, 1. 8, 12) for hana 'alaiha, showing that your explanation of this phrase 
 (p., 167) is excellent. Thus we have in hayy the same metaphor as in hait, 
 ahl. Perhaps ahh [' brother '] has been diflferentiated from this same root. 
 From ' tent ' to ' dwelling-place of the family ' and to ' family ' the transition 
 is easy. An older example of the use of hayy for home is a verse of Taabbata 
 Sharran, TA. iv. 367 ; Hamasa, 383 uU." 
 
LECT. VIII. COMMON LIFE. 257 
 
 by her milk. And so we find that among the Arabs there 
 is a tie of milk, as well as of blood, which unites the 
 foster-child to his foster-mother and her kin. Again, 
 after the child is weaned, his flesh and blood continue to 
 be nourished and renewed by the food which he shares 
 with his commensals, so that commensality can be thought, 
 of (1) as confirming or even (2) as constituting kinship in \ 
 a very real sense.^ 
 
 As regards their bearing on the doctrine of sacrifice it 
 will conduce to clearness if we keep these two points 
 distinct. Primarily the circle of common religion and of 
 common social duties was identical with that of natural 
 kinship,^ and the god himself was conceived as a being of 
 the same stock with his worshippers. It was natural, 
 therefore, that the kinsmen and their kindred god should 
 seal and strengthen their fellowship by meeting together 
 from time to time to nourish their common life by a 
 common meal, to which those outside the kin were not 
 admitted. A good example of this kind of clan sacrifice, 
 in which a whole kinship periodically joins, is afforded by 
 the Eoman sacra gentilicia. As in primitive society no 
 man can belong to more than one kindred, so among the 
 Eomans no one could share in the sacra of two gentes — 
 to do so was to confound the ritual and contaminate the 
 purity of the gens. The sacra consisted in common anni- 
 versary sacrifices, in which the clansmen honoured the 
 gods of the clan and after them the " demons " of their 
 ancestors, so that the whole kin living and dead were 
 brought together in the service.^ That the earliest sacri- 
 ficial feasts among the Semites were of the nature of sacra 
 gentilicia is matter of inference rather than of direct 
 
 ^ Cf. Kinship, p. 149 sqq. " Supra, p. 51. 
 
 ' For proofs and further details see the evidence collected by Marc[uardt, 
 ROm. Staatsverwailung, 2iid ed. iii. 130 sq. 
 
 E 
 
258 GENTILE 
 
 LECT. VIII. 
 
 evidence, but is not on that account less certain. Tor 
 that the Semites form no exception to the general rule 
 that the circle of religion and of kinship were originally 
 identical, has been shewn in Lecture II. The only thing, 
 therefore, for which additional proof is needed is that the 
 sacrificial ritual of the Semites already existed in this 
 primitive form of society. That this was so is morally 
 certain on general grounds; for an institution like the 
 sacrificial meal, which occurs with the same general 
 features all over the world, and is found among the most 
 primitive peoples, must, in the nature of things, date 
 from the earliest stage of social organisation. And the 
 general argument is confirmed by the fact that after several 
 clans had begun to frequent the same sanctuary and 
 worship the same god, the worshippers still grouped them- 
 selves for sacrificial purposes on the principle of kinship. 
 In the days of Saul and David all the tribes of Israel 
 had long been united in the worship of Jehovah, yet the 
 clans still maintained their annual gentile sacrifice, at 
 which every member of the group was bound to be 
 present.-^ But evidence more decisive comes to us from 
 Arabia, where, as we have seen, men would not eat 
 together at all unless they were united by kinship or by 
 a covenant that had the same effect as natural kinship. 
 Under such a rule the sacrificial feast must have been 
 confined to kinsmen, and the clan was the largest circle 
 
 ' 1 Sam. XX. 6, 29. The word mishpaha, which the English Bible here 
 and elsewhere renders "family," denotes not a household but a clan. In 
 verse 29 the true reading is indicated by the Septuagint, and has been re- 
 stored by Wellhausen Cns \P ^1S NH). It was not David's brother, but 
 his brethren, that is his clansmen, that enjoined his presence. The annual 
 festivity, the duty of all clansmen to attend, the expectation that this 
 sacred duty would be accepted as a valid excuse for absence from court 
 even at the king's new-moon sacrifice, are so many points of correspondence 
 with the Roman gentile worship; cf. Gellius, xvi. 4. 3, and the other 
 passages cited by Manj^uardt, ut supra, p. 132, note 4. 
 
LECT. VIII. SACRIFICE. 259 
 
 that could unite in a sacrificial act. And so, though the 
 great sanctuaries of heathen Arabia were frequented at 
 the pilgrimage feasts by men of different tribes, who met 
 peaceably for a season under the protection of the truce 
 of God, we find that their participation in the worship of 
 the same holy place did not bind alien clans together in 
 any religious unity ; they worshipped side by side, but 
 not together. It is only under Islam that the pilgrimage 
 becomes a bond of religious fellowship, whereas in the 
 times of heathenism it was the correct usage that the 
 different tribes, before they broke up from the feast, should 
 engage in a rivalry of self-exaltation and mutual abuse, 
 which sent them home with all their old jealousies freshly 
 inflamed.^ 
 
 That the sacrificial meal was originally a feast of kins- 
 men, is apt to suggest to modern minds the idea that its 
 primitive type is to be sought in the household circle, and 
 that public sacrifices^ in which the whole clan united, are 
 merely an extension of such an act of domestic worship 
 as in ancient Eome accompanied every family meal. The 
 Eoman family never rose from supper till a portion of food 
 had been laid on the burning hearth as an offering to the 
 Lares, and the current opinion, which regards the gens as 
 nothing more than an enlarged household, naturally regards 
 
 1 See Goldziher, Muh. Stvd. i. 66. The prayer and exhortation of the 
 leader of the procession of tribes from 'Arafa (Agli. iii. 4; Wellh., p. 191) 
 seems to me to be meant for his own tribe alone. The prayer for ' ' peace 
 among onr women, a continuous range of pasture occupied by our herdsmen, 
 wealth placed in the hands of our most generous men," asks only blessings 
 for the tribe. And the admonition to observe treaties, honour clients, and 
 be hospitable to guests contains nothing that was not a point of tribal 
 morality. The ijdza, or right to give the signal for dissolving the worship- 
 ping assembly, belonged to a particular tribe ; it was the right to start first. 
 The man who gave the sign to this tribe closed the service for them by a 
 prayer and admonition. This is all that I can gather from the passage, and 
 it does not prove that the tribes had any other religious communion than 
 was involved in their being in one place at one time. 
 
260 GENTILE 
 
 LECT. VIII. 
 
 the gentile sacrifice as an enlargement of this domestic 
 rite. But the notion that the clan is only a larger house- 
 hold is not consistent with the results of modern research. 
 Kinship is an older thing than family life, and in the 
 most primitive societies known to us the family or house- 
 hold group was not a subdivision of the elan, but contained 
 members of more than one kindred. As a rule the savage 
 man may not marry a clanswoman, and the children are 
 of the mother's kin, and therefore have no communion of 
 blood religion with their father. In such a society there 
 is hardly any family life, and there can be no sacred 
 household meal. Before the family meal can acquire the 
 religious significance that it possessed in Eome, one of two 
 things must take place : either the primitive association 
 of religion with kinship must be dissolved, or means must 
 have been found to make the whole household of one 
 blood, as was done in Eome by the rule that the wife 
 upon her marriage was adopted into her husband's gens.'' 
 The rudest nations have religious rules about food, based 
 on the principle of kinship, viz. that a man may not eat the 
 totem animal of his clan ; and .they generally have some 
 rites of the nature of the sacrificial feast of kinsmen ; but 
 it is not the custom of savages to take their ordinary 
 daily food in a social way, in regular domestic meals. 
 Their habit is to eat irregularly and apart, and this habit 
 is strengthened by the religious rules, which often forbid 
 to one member of a household the food which is permitted 
 to another. 
 
 We have no direct evidence as to the rules and habits 
 of the Semites in the state of primitive savagery, though 
 
 1 In Greece, according to the testimony of Theophrastus, ap. Porph., De 
 Abst. ii. 20 (Beriiays, p. 68), it was customary to pay to the gods an aparche 
 of every meal. The term i.ttt.fx,iirlau seems to place this offering under the 
 head of gifts rather than of sacriiicial communion, and the gods to whom the 
 offering was made were not, as at Eome, family gods. 
 
LECT. VIII. 
 
 SACRIFICE. 261 
 
 there is ample proof of an indirect kind that they originally- 
 reckoned kinship through the mother, and that men often, 
 if not always, took their wives from strange kins. It is 
 to be presumed that at this stage of society the Semite did 
 not eat with his wife and children, and it is certain that if 
 he did so the meal could not have had a religious character, 
 as an acknowledgment and seal of kinship and adherence 
 to a kindred god. But in fact the family meal never 
 became a fixed institution among the Semites generally. 
 In Egypt, down to the present day, many persons hardly 
 ever eat with their wives and children,^ and among the 
 Arabs, boys who are not of full age do not presume to eat 
 in the presence of their parents, but take their meals 
 separately or with the women of the house.^ No doubt 
 the seclusion of women has retarded the development 
 of family life in Mohammedan countries ; but for most 
 purposes this seclusion has never taken much hold on the 
 desert, and yet in northern Arabia no woman will eat 
 before men.^ I apprehend that these customs were 
 originally formed at a time when a man and his wife and 
 family were not usually of one kin, and when only kinsmen 
 would eat together.* But be this as it may, the fact 
 remains that in Arabia the daily family meal has never 
 
 ' Lane, Mod. Egyptians, 5th ed. i. 179 ; cf. Arabian Nights, chap. ii. 
 note 17. 
 
 = Burckhardt, Bed. and Wah. i. 355 ; Doughty, ii. 142. 
 
 ' Burckhardt, op. cit. i. 349. Conversely Ibn Mojawir, ap. Sprenger, 
 Postrouten, p. 151, tells of southern Arabs who would rather die than accept 
 food at the hand of a woman. 
 
 * In Arabia, even in historical times, the wife was not adopted into her 
 husband's kin. The children in historical times were generally reckoned to 
 the father's stock ; but there is much reason to think that this new rule of 
 kinship, when it first came in, did not mean that the infant was born into 
 his father's clan, but that he was adopted iuto it by a formal act, which did 
 not always take place in infancy. We find that young children follow their 
 mother (Kinship, p. 114), and that the law of blood revenge did not prevent 
 fathers from killing their youog daughters {ibid. p. 279 sgq.). Of this 
 more hereafter. 
 
262 GENTILE LECT. VIII. 
 
 been an established institution with such a religious 
 signiiicance as attaches to the Eoman supper.^ 
 - The sacrificial feast, therefore, cannot be traced back to 
 the domestic meal, but must be considered as having been 
 from the first a public feast of clansmen. That this is 
 true not only for Arabia but for the Semites as a whole 
 might be inferred on general grounds, inasmuch as all 
 Semitic worship manifestly springs from a common origin, 
 and the inference is confirmed by the observation that 
 even among the agricultural Semites there is no trace of a 
 sacrificial character being attached to ordinary household 
 meals. The domestic hearth among the Semites was not 
 an altar as it was at Eome.^ 
 
 Almost all varieties of human food were offered to the 
 gods, and any kind of food suffices, according to the laws 
 of Arabian hospitality, to establish that bond between two 
 men which in the last resort rests on the principle that 
 only kinsmen eat together. It may seem, therefore, that 
 in the abstract any sort of meal publicly partaken of by a 
 company of kinsmen may constitute a sacrificial feast. 
 The distinction between the feast and an ordinary meal 
 lies, it may seem, not in the material or the copiousness of 
 the repast, but in its public character. When men eat 
 alone they do not invite the god to share their food, but 
 when the clan eats together as a kindred unity the kindred 
 god must also be of the party. 
 
 Practically, however, there is no sacrificial feast according 
 to Semitic usage except where a victim is slaughtered. 
 The rule of the Levitical law, that a cereal oblation, when 
 
 ^ The naming of God, by which every meal is consecrated according to 
 Mohammed's precept, seems in ancient times to have been practised only 
 when a victim was slaughtered; cf. "Wellh., p. 114. Here the tahlU 
 corresponds to the blessing of the sacrifice, 1 Sam. ix. 13. 
 
 ^ The passover became a sort of household sacrifice after the exile, but was 
 not so originally. See Wellhausen, Prolegomena, ch. iii. 
 
LECT. VIII. SACEIFICE. 263 
 
 offered alone, belongs wholly to the god and gives no 
 occasion for a feast of the worshippers, agrees with the 
 older history, in which we never find a sacrificial meal of 
 which flesh does not form part. Among the Arabs the 
 usage is the same ; a religious banquet implies a victim. 
 It appears, therefore, to look at the matter from its merely 
 human side, that the slaughter of a victim must have been 
 in early times the only thing that brought the clan together 
 for a stated meal. Conversely, every slaughter was a clan 
 sacrifice, that is, a domestic animal was not slain except to 
 procure the material for a public meal of kinsmen. This 
 last proposition seems startling, but it is confirmed by the 
 direct evidence of Nilus as to the habits of the Arabs of 
 the Sinaitic desert towards the close of the fourth Christian 
 century. The ordinary sustenance of these Saracens was 
 derived from pillage or from hunting, to which, no doubt, 
 must be added, as a main element, the milk of their herds. 
 When these supplies failed they fell back on the flesh 
 of their camels, one of which was slain for each clan 
 (a-vyyeveia) or for each group which habitually pitched 
 their tents together (ava-Krjvio) — which according to known 
 Arab usage would always be a fraction of a clan^ — and 
 the flesh was hastily devoured by the kinsmen in dog-like 
 fashion, half raw and merely softened over the fire. 
 
 To grasp the force of this evidence we must remember 
 that, beyond question, there was at this time among the 
 Saracens private property in camels, and that therefore, so 
 far as the law of property went, there could be no reason 
 why a man should not kill a beast for the use of his own 
 family- And though a whole camel might be too much 
 for a single household to eat fresh, the Arabs knew and 
 
 ^ NUi opera quoedam nondum edita (Paris, 1639), p. 27. The iruyyiviix 
 answers to the Arabic batn, the cvcxnnx to the Arabic T^ayy, in the sense of 
 encampment. 
 
264 SAEACElSr LECT. viir. 
 
 practised the art of preserving flesh by cutting it into strips 
 and drying them in the sun. Under these circumstances 
 private slaughter could not have failed to be customary, 
 unless it was absolutely forbidden by tribal usage. In 
 short, it appears that while milk, game, the fruits of pillage 
 were private food which might be eaten in any way, the 
 camel was not allowed to be killed and eaten except in a 
 public rite, at which all the kinsmen assisted. 
 
 This evidence is all the more remarkable because, among 
 the Saracens of whom Mlus speaks, the slaughter of a 
 camel in times of hunger does not seem to have been con- 
 sidered as a sacrifice to the gods. For a couple of pages 
 later he speaks expressly of the sacrifices which these 
 Arabs offered to the morning star, the sole deity that they 
 acknowledged. These could be performed only when the 
 star was visible, and the whole victim — flesh, skin and 
 bones — had to be devoured before the sun rose upon it, and 
 the day-star disappeared. As this form of sacrifice was 
 necessarily confined to seasons when the planet Venus was 
 a morning star, while the necessity for slaughtering a 
 camel as food might arise at any season, it is to be inferred 
 that in the latter case the victim was not recognised as 
 having a sacrificial character. The Saracens, in fact, had 
 outlived the stage in which no necessity can justify 
 slaughter that is not sacrificial. The principle that the 
 god claims his share in every slaughter has its origin in the 
 religion of kinship, and dates from a time when the tribal 
 god was himself a member of the tribal stock, and when 
 therefore his participation in the sacrificial feast is only 
 one aspect of the rule that no kinsman must be excluded 
 from a share in the victim. But the Saracens of Nilus, 
 like the Arabs generally in the last ages of heathenism, 
 had ceased to do sacrifice to the tribal or clan gods with 
 whose worship the feast of kinsmen was originally con- 
 
LECT. -VIII. SACRIFICE. 265 
 
 nected. The planet Venus, or Lucifer, was not a tribal 
 deity, but, as we know from a variety of sources, was 
 worshipped by all the northern Arabs, to whatever kin 
 they belonged. It is not therefore surprising that in case 
 of necessity we should meet with a slaughter in which the 
 non-tribal deity had no part ; but it is noteworthy that, 
 after the victim had lost its sacrificial character, it was 
 still deemed necessary that the slaughter should be the 
 affair of the whole kindred. That this was so, while 
 among the Hebrews, on the other hand, the rule that all 
 legitimate slaughter is sacrifice survived long after house- 
 holders were permitted to make private sacrifices on their 
 own account, is characteristic of the peculiar development 
 of Arabia, where, as Wellhausen has justly remarked, 
 religious feeling was quite put in the shade by the feeling 
 for the sanctity of kindred blood. Elsewhere among the 
 Semites we see the old religion surviving the tribal system 
 on which it was based, and accommodating itself to the 
 new forms of national life ; but in Arabia the rules and I 
 customs of the kin retained the sanctity which they 
 originally derived from their connection with the religion 
 of the kin, long after the kindred god had been forgotten 
 or had sunk into quite a subordinate place. I take it, 
 however, that the eating of camels' flesh continued to be 
 regarded by the Arabs as in some sense a religious act, 
 even when it was no longer associated with a formal act of 
 sacrifice ; for abstinence from the flesh of camels and wild 
 asses was prescribed by Symeon Stylites to his Saracen 
 converts,^ and traces of an idolatrous significance in feasts 
 of camels' flesh appear in Mohammedan tradition.^ 
 
 The persistence among the Arabs of the scruple against 
 private slaughter for a man's own personal use may, I 
 think, be traced in a modified form in other parts of Arabia 
 1 Theodoret, ed. Nosselt, iii. 1274 sq. ^ Wellh., p. 114 ; Kinship, p. 262. 
 
 I 
 
266 GENTILE LECT. VIII. 
 
 and long after the time of Nilus. Even in modern times, 
 when a sheep or camel is slain in honour of a guest, the 
 good old custom is that the host keeps open house for his 
 neighbours, or at least distributes portions of the flesh as 
 far as it will go. To do otherwise is still deemed churlish, 
 though not illegal, and the old Arabic literature leaves the 
 impression that in ancient times this feeling was still 
 stronger than it is now, and that the whole encampment 
 was considered when a beast was slain for food/ But be 
 this as it may, it is highly significant to find that, even in 
 one branch of the Arabian race, the doctrine that hunger 
 itself does not justify slaughter, except as the act of the 
 clan, was so deeply rooted as to survive the doctrine that 
 all slaughter is sacrifice. This fact is sufficient to remove 
 
 ^,-the last doubt as to the proposition that all sacrifice was 
 originally clan sacrifice, and at the same time it puts the 
 slaughter of a victim in a new light, by classing it among 
 the acts which, in primitive society, are illegal to an 
 individual, and can only be justified when the whole clan 
 shares the responsibility of the deed. So far as I know, 
 
 ^ there is only one class of actions recognised by early nations 
 to which this description applies, viz. actions which involve 
 an invasion of the sanctity of the tribal blood. In fact, a 
 life which no single tribesman is allowed to invade, and 
 which can be sacrificed only by the consent and common 
 action of the kin, stands on the same footing with the life 
 of the fellow-tribesman. Neither may be taken away by 
 
 ^ Compare especially the story of Mawia's courtship {Aghdni, xvi. 104 ; 
 Caiissin de Perceval, ii. 613). The beggar's claim to a share in the feast Is 
 doubtless ultimately based on religious and tribal usage rather than on 
 personal generosity. Cf. Deut. xxvi. 13. Similarly among the Zulus, 
 ' ' when a man kills a cow — which, however, is seldom and reluctantly done, 
 unless it happens to be stolen property — the whole population of the hamlet 
 assemble to eat it without invitation ; and people living at a distance of ten 
 miles will also come to partake of the feast " (Shaw, Memorials of South 
 Africa, p. 59). 
 
LECT. Yiii. SACRIFICE. 267 
 
 private violence, but only by the conseut of the kindred 
 and the kindred god. And the parallelism between the 
 tvro cases is curiously marked in detail by what I may call 
 a similarity between the ritual of sacrifice and of the execu- 
 tion of a tribesman. In both cases it is required that, as 
 far as possible, every member of the kindred should be not 
 only a consenting party but a partaker in the g.ct, so that 
 whatever responsibility it involves may be equally dis- 
 tributed over the whole elan. This is the meaning of the 
 ancient Hebrew form of execution, where the culprit is 
 stoned by the whole congregation. 
 
 The idea that the life of a brute animal may be pro- 
 tected by the same kind of religious scruple as the life of 
 a fellow-man is one which we have a difficulty in grasping, 
 or which at any rate we are apt to regard as more proper 
 to a late and sentimental age than to the rude life of 
 primitive times. But this difficulty mainly comes from 
 our taking up a false point of view. Early man had 
 certainly no conception of the sacredness of animal life 
 as such, but neither had he any conception of the sacred- 
 ness of human life as such. The life of his clansman was 
 sacred to him, not because he was a man, but because he 
 was a kinsman ; and, in like manner, the life of an animal,' 
 of his totem kind is sacred to the savage, not because itj 
 is animate, but because he and it are sprung from the same > 
 stock and are cousins to one another. 
 
 It is clear that the scruple of Nilus's Saracens about 
 killing the camel was of this restricted kind ; for they had 
 no objection to kill and eat game. But the camel they 
 would not kill except under the same circumstances as 
 make it lawful for many savages to kill their totem, i.e. 
 under the pressure of hunger or in connection with 
 exceptional religious rites.^ The parallelism between the 
 
 ^Frazer, Toiemism, pp. 19, 48. 
 
268 PROHIBITION OF lect. viii. 
 
 Arabian custom and totemism is therefore complete except 
 in one point. There is no direct evidence that the scruple 
 against the private slaughter of a camel was due to feelings 
 of kinship. But, as we have seen, there is this indirect 
 evidence, that the consent and participation of the clan, 
 which was required to make the slaughter of a camel 
 legitimate, is the very thing that is needed to make the 
 death of a kinsman legitimate. 
 
 The presumption thus created that the regard paid by 
 the Saracens for the life of the camel turned on the same 
 principle of kinship between men and certain kinds of 
 animals which is the prime factor in totemism, would not 
 be worth much if it rested only on an isolated statement 
 about a particular branch of the Arab race. But it is 
 to be observed that the same kind of restriction on the 
 private slaughter of animals must have existed in ancient 
 times among all the Semites. We have found reason to 
 believe that among the early Semites generally no slaughter 
 was legitimate except for sacrifice, and we have also found 
 reason, apart from Nilus's evidence, for believing that all 
 Semitic sacrifice was originally the act of the community. 
 If these two propositions are true, it follows that all the 
 Semites at one time protected the lives of animals proper 
 for sacrifice, and forbade them to be slain except by the 
 act of the clan, that is, except under such circumstances 
 as would justify or excuse the death of a kinsman. Now, 
 if it thus appears that the scruple against private slaughter 
 of an animal proper for sacrifice was no mere individual 
 peculiarity of Nilus's Saracens, but must at an early period 
 have extended to all the Semites, it is obvious that the 
 conjecture which connects the scruple with a feeling of 
 kinship between the worshippers and the victim gains 
 greatly in plausibility. For the origin of the scruple 
 must now be sought in some widespread and very primi- 
 
LECT. VIII. PRIVATE SLAUGHTER. 2G9 
 
 tive habit of thought, and it is therefore apposite to point 
 out that among primitive peoples there are no binding 
 precepts of conduct except those that rest on the principle 
 of kinship.^ This is the general rule which is found in 
 operation wherever we have an opportunity of observing 
 rude societies, and that it prevailed among the early 
 Semites is not to be doubted. Indeed among the Arabs 
 the rule held good without substantial modification down 
 to the time of Mohammed. No life and no obligation 
 was sacred unless it was brought within the charmed 
 circle of the kindred blood. 
 
 Thus the prima facie presumption, that the scruple in 
 question had to do with the notion that certaiii animals 
 were akin to men, becomes very strong indeed, and can 
 hardly be set aside unless those who reject it are prepared 
 to show that the idea of kinship between men and beasts, 
 as it is found in most primitive nations, was altogether 
 foreign to Semitic thought, or at least had no substantial 
 place in the ancient religious ideas of that race. But I 
 do not propose to throw the burden of proof on the 
 antagonist. 
 
 I have already had occasion in another connection to 
 shew by a variety of evidences that the earliest Semites, 
 like primitive men of other races, drew no sharp line of 
 distinction between the nature of gods, of men, and of 
 beasts, and had no difficulty in admitting a real kinship 
 between (a) gods and men, (6) gods and sacred animals, 
 (c) families of men and families of beasts.^ As regards 
 the third of these points, the direct evidence is fragmen- 
 tary and sporadic ; it is sufficient to prove that the idea of 
 
 ^ In religions based on kinsliip, where the god and his worshippers are 
 of one stock, precepts of sanctity are, of course, coTered by the principle 
 of kinship 
 
 2 Supra, pp. 42 sqq., 84 sqq. 
 
270 THE VICTIM A 
 
 LECT. VIII. 
 
 kinship between races of men and races of beasts was not 
 foreign to the Semites, but it is not sufficient to prove 
 that such a belief was widely prevalent, and had pro- 
 minence enough to justify us in taking it as one of the 
 fundamental principles on which Semitic ritual was 
 founded. But it must be remembered that the three 
 points are so connected that if any two of them are 
 established, the third necessarily follows. Now, as regards 
 (a), it is not disputed that the kinship of gods with their 
 worshippers is a fundamental doctrine of Semitic religion ; 
 it appears so widely and in so many forms and applica- 
 tions, that we cannot look upon it otherwise than as one 
 of the first and most universal principles of ancient faith. 
 Again, as regards (b), a belief in sacred animals, which 
 are treated with the reverence due to divine beings, is an 
 essential element in the most widespread and important 
 Semitic cults. All the great deities of the northern 
 Semites had their sacred animals, and were themselves 
 worshipped in animal form, or in association with animal 
 symbols, down to a late date ; and that this association 
 implied a veritable unity of kind between animals and 
 gods is placed beyond doubt, on the one hand, by the 
 fact that the sacred animals, e.(/. the doves and fish of 
 Atargatis, were reverenced with divine honours ; and, on 
 the other hand, by theogonic myths, such as that which 
 makes the dove-goddess be born from an egg, and trans- 
 formation myths, such as that of Bambyce, where it was 
 believed that the fish-goddess and her son had actually 
 been transformed into fish.^ 
 
 ' Examples of the evidence on this head have been given above ; a fuller 
 account of it will fall to be given in a future course of lectures. Meantime 
 the reader may refer to Kinship, chap. vii. I may here, however, add a 
 general argument which seems to deserve attention. We have seen {supra, 
 p. 134 sqq.) that holiness is not based on the idea of property. Holy animals, 
 and holy things generally, are prioiarily conceived, not as belonging to the 
 
LECT. VIII. SACRED ANIMAL. 271 
 
 Now if it thus appears that kinship between the gods 
 and their worshippers, on the one hand, and kinship 
 between the gods and certain kinds of animals, on the 
 other, are deep - seated principles of Semitic religion, 
 manifesting themselves in all parts of the sacred institu- 
 tions of the race, we must necessarily conclude that 
 kinship between families of men and animal kinds was an 
 idea equally deep-seated, and we shall expect to find that 
 sacred animals, wherever they occur, will be treated with 
 the regard which men pay to their kinsfolk. 
 
 Indeed in a religion based on kinship, where the god 
 and his worshippers are of one stock, the principle of 
 sanctity and that of kinship are identical. The sanctity 
 of a kinsman's life and the sanctity of the godhead are not 
 two things, but one ; for ultimately the only thing that 
 is sacred is the common tribal life, or the common blood 
 which is identified with the life. Whatever being par- 
 takes in this life is holy, and its holiness may be 
 described indifferently, either as participation in the 
 divine life and nature, or as participation in the kindred 
 blood. 
 
 Thus the conjecture that sacrificial animals were 
 originally treated as kinsmen is simply equivalent to the 
 conjecture that sacrifices were drawn from animals of a 
 holy kind, whose lives were ordinarily protected by reli- 
 gious scruples and sanctions ; and in support of this position 
 a great mass of evidence can be adduced, not merely for 
 Semitic sacrifice, but for ancient sacrifice generally. 
 
 In the later days of heathenism, when animal food was 
 
 deity, but as being themselves instinct with divine power or life. Thus a 
 holy animal is one which has a divine life ; and if it be holy to a particular 
 god, the meaning must be that its life and his are somehow bound up 
 tooether. From what is known of primitive ways of thought we may infer 
 that this means that the sacred animal is akin to the god, for all valid and 
 permanent relation between individuals is conceived as kinship. 
 
272 MYSTIC 
 
 LECT. VIII. 
 
 commonly eaten, and the rule that all legitimate 
 slaughter must be sacrificial was no longer insisted on, 
 sacrifices were divided into two classes ; ordinary 
 sacrifices, where the victims were sheep, ozen or other 
 beasts habitually used for food, and extraordinary 
 sacrifices, where the victims were animals whose flesh 
 was regarded as forbidden meat. The Emperor Julian ^ 
 tells us that in the cities of the Eoman empire such 
 extraordinary sacrifices were celebrated once or twice 
 a year in mystical ceremonies, and he gives as an example 
 the sacrifice of the dog to Hecate. In this case the 
 victim was the sacred animal of the goddess to which it 
 was offered ; Hecate is represented in mythology as 
 accompanied by demoniac dogs, and in her worship she 
 loved to be addressed by the name of Dog.^ Here, 
 therefore, the victim is not only a sacred animal, but an 
 animal kindred to the deity to which it is sacrificed. The 
 same principle seems to lie at the root of all exceptional 
 sacrifices of unclean animals, i.e. animals that were not 
 ordinarily eaten, for we have already seen that the idea of 
 unclean ness and holiness meet in the primitive conception 
 of taboo. I leave it to classical scholars to follow this 
 out in its application to Greek and Eoman sacrifice ; but 
 as regards the Semites it is worth while to establish the 
 point by going in detail through the sacrifices of unclean 
 beasts that are known to us. 
 
 1. The swine. According to Al-Nadlm the heathen 
 Harranians sacrificed the swine and ate swine's flesh 
 once a year.^ This ceremony is ancient, for it appears 
 in Cyprus in connection with the worship of the Semitic 
 Aphrodite and Adonis. In the ordinary worship of 
 Aphrodite swine were not admitted, but in Cyprus wild 
 
 1 Orat. V. p. 176. " Porph., De Abst. iii. 17, iv. 16. 
 
 « Fihrisi, p. 326, I Z aq. 
 
LECT. vni. SACRIFICES. 273 
 
 boars were sacrificed once a year on April 2} The same 
 sacrifice is alluded to in the Book of Isaiah as a heathen 
 abomination,^ with which the prophet associates the sacri- 
 fice of two other unclean animals, the dog and the mouse. 
 We know from Lucian that the swine was esteemed sacro- 
 sanct by the Syrians,^ and that it was specially sacred to 
 Aphrodite or Astarte is affirmed by Antiphanes, ap. Athen., 
 iii. 49. 
 
 2. The dog. This sacrifice, as we have seen, is mentioned 
 in the Book of Isaiah, and it seems also to be alluded to 
 as a Punic rite in Justin, xviii. 1. 10, where we read that 
 Darius sent a message to the Carthaginians forbidding 
 them to sacrifice human victims and to eat the flesh of 
 dogs : in the connection a religious meal must be under- 
 stood. In this case the accounts do not connect the rite 
 with any particular deity to whom the dog was sacred,* 
 but we know from Al-Nadim that the dog was sacred 
 among the Harranians. They offered sacrificial gifts to 
 it, and in certain mysteries dogs were solemnly declared 
 to be the brothers of the mystae.* A hint as to the 
 identity of the god to whom the dog was sacred may 
 perhaps be got from Jacob of Sarug, who mentions " the 
 Lord with the dogs" as one of the deities of Carrhse.^ 
 This god again may be compared with the huntsman 
 Heracles of the Assyrians '' who is figured on cylinders 
 accompanied by a dog,^ and appears to _ be the same deity 
 
 ' Lydus, De Mensibus, Bonn ed. p. 80. Exceptional saorifioes of swine to 
 Aphrodite also took place at Argos (Athen., iii. 49) and in Thessaly (Strabo, 
 ix. 5. 17), hut the Semitic origin of these rites is not so certain as in the 
 case of the Cyprian goddess. 
 
 2 Isa. Ixv. 4, Ixvi. 3, 17. ^ Dea Syria, liv. 
 
 * Movers, Phoenizier, i. 404, is quite unsatisfactory. 
 
 " Fihrist, p. 326, 1. 27 ; cf. p. 323, 1. 28 ; p. 324, 1. 2. 
 
 « ZDMQ. xxix. 110 ; cf. vol. xlii. p. 473. 
 
 7 Tacitus, Ann. xii. 13. 
 
 8 Oazelte ArcUol. 1879, p. 178 sqq. 
 
 S 
 
274 MYSTIC LECT. VIII. 
 
 whose name, as it occurs on the monuments, is usually 
 read Adar.^ The Tyrian Heracles or Melcarth also appears 
 accompanied by a dog in the legend of the invention of 
 the purple dye preserved by Pollux.^ 
 
 3. Fish, or at least certain species of fish, were sacred 
 to Atargatis and forbidden food to all the Syrians, her 
 worshippers, who believed — as totem peoples do — that if 
 they ate the sacred flesh they would be visited by ulcers.' 
 Yet Mnaseas (a-p. Athen., viii. 37) tells us that fish were 
 daily cooked and presented on the table of the goddess, 
 being afterwards consumed by the priests; and Assyrian 
 cylinders display the fish laid on the altar or presented 
 before it, while, in one example, a figure which stands by 
 in an attitude of adoration is clothed, or rather disguised, 
 in a gigantic fish skin.* The meaning of such a disguise 
 is well known from many savage rituals ; it implies that 
 
 ■' The Sicilian god Adranus, whose sacred dogs are mentioned ty ^Eliau, 
 Nat. An. xi. 20 (confirmed by monumental evidence ; Ganneaii, Rec. de 
 Arch. Or. i. 236), is generally identified with Adar (the Adrammelech of 
 the Bible); see Holm, Gesch. Sic. i. 95, 377. 
 
 ^ Pollux, i. 46 ; Malalas, p. 32. If the conjecture that the Heracles 
 worshipped by the lihi in the Cynosarges at Athens was really the 
 Phoenician Heracles can be made out, the connection of this deity with 
 the dog will receive further confirmation. For Cynosarges means " the 
 dog's yar.l" (AVachsmuth, Athen. i. 461). Steph. Byz. s.v. explains the 
 name by a legend that while Diomo.'! was sacrificing to Heracles, a white 
 dog snatched the sacrificial pieces and laid them down on the spot where 
 the sanctuary afterwards stood. The dog is here the sacred messenger who 
 declares the will of the god, like the eagle of Zeus in Malalas, p. 199 ; cf. 
 Steph. Byz. s.v. yxXtZTxi. The sanctity of the dog among the Phcenicians 
 seems also to be confirmed by the proper names N3?3, DvXD73, and by 
 the existence of a class of sacred ministers called "dogs" (O. I. S. No. 86, 
 cf. Dent, xxiii. 18 (19)). Reinach and G. Hoffmann, op. cit. p. 17, are 
 hardly right in thinking of literal dogs ; but in any case that would only 
 strengthen the argument. 
 
 In Moslem countries dogs are still regarded with a curious mixture of 
 respect and contempt. They are unclean, but it is an act of piety to feed 
 them ; and to kill a. dog, as I have observed at Jeddah, is an act that excites 
 a good deal of feeling. 
 
 s See the evidence collected by Selden, de Dlis Syris, Synt. ii. cap. 3. 
 
 •■ Menaut, Glyptique, ii. 53. 
 
MCT. vni. SACRIFICES. 275 
 
 the ■worshipper presents himself as a fish, i.e. as a being 
 kindred to his sacrifice, and doubtless also to the deity to 
 which it is consecrated. 
 
 4. The mouse appears as an abominable sacrifice in 
 Isa. Ixvi. 17, along with the swine and "the abomination" 
 (YP^)- The last word is applied in the Levitical law ^ to 
 creeping vermin generally (pK* = Arab, hanash), a term 
 which included the mouse and other such small quadrupeds 
 as we also call vermin. All such creatures were unclean in 
 an intense degree, and had the power to communicate un- 
 cleanness to whatever they touched. So strict a taboo is 
 hardly to be explained except by supposing that, like the 
 Arabian hanash^ they had supernatural and demoniac quali- 
 ties. And in fact, in Ezek. viii. 10, we find them as objects 
 of superstitious adoration. On what authority Maimonides 
 says that the Harranians sacrificed field-mice I do not know,' 
 but the Biblical evidence is sufficient for our purpose. 
 
 5. The horse was sacred to the Sun-god, for 2 Kings 
 xxiii. 11 speaks of the horses which the kings of Judah 
 had consecrated to this deity — a superstition to which 
 Josiah put an end. At Rhodes, where religion is through- 
 out of a Semitic type, four horses were cast into the sea as 
 a sacrifice at the annual feast of the sun.* The winged 
 horse (Pegasus) is a sacred symbol of the Carthaginians. 
 
 6. The dove, which the Semites would neither eat nor 
 touch, was sacrificed by the Eomans to Venus ; ^ and as the 
 Eoman Venus-worship of later times was largely derived 
 from the Phoenician sanctuary of Eryx, where the dove had 
 peculiar honour as the companion of Astarte,* it is very 
 possible that this was a Semitic rite, though I have not 
 
 1 Lev. xi. 41. " Supra, p. 121. 
 
 ' Ed. Munk, vol. iii. p. 64, or Chwolsohn, Ssabier, ii. 456. 
 « Festus, s.v. " October eqnus ; " cf. Pausanias, iii. 20. 4 (sacrifice of horses 
 to the Sun at Taygetus) ; Kinship, p. 208 sq. 
 
 = Propertius, iv. 5. 62. ^ ^Maa, ^. A. iv. 2. 
 
276 MYSTIC 
 
 LECT. VllPi 
 
 found any conclusive evidence that it was so. It must 
 certainly have been a very rare sacrifice ; for the dove 
 among the Semites had a quite peculiar sanctity, and 
 Al-Nadim says expressly that it was not sacrificed by 
 the Harranians.^ It was, however, offered by the Hebrews, 
 in sacrifices which we shall by and by see reason to regard 
 as closely analogous to mystical rites ; and in Juvenal, vi. 
 459 sqq., the superstitious matrons of Eome are represented 
 as calling in an Armenian or Syrian (Commagenian) 
 haruspex to perform the sacrifice of a dove, a chicken, 
 a dog, or even a child. In this association an exceptional 
 and mystic sacrifice is necessarily implied.^ 
 /■ The evidence of these examples is unambiguous. When 
 an unclean animal is sacrificed it is also a sacred animal. 
 If the deity to which it is devoted is named, it is the 
 deity which ordinarily protects the sanctity of the victim, 
 and, in some cases, the worshippers either in words or by 
 symbolic disguise claim kinship with the victim and the 
 god. Further, the sacrifice is generally limited to certain 
 solemn occasions, usually annual, and so has the character 
 of a public celebrity. In several cases the worshippers 
 partake of the sacred flesh, which at other times it would 
 be impious to touch. All this is exactly what we find 
 among totem peoples. Here also the sacred animal is 
 forbidden food, it is akin to the men who acknowledge 
 its sanctity, and if there is a god it is akin to the god. 
 And, finally, the totem is sometimes sacrificed at an annual 
 feast, with special and solemn ritual. In such cases the 
 flesh may be buried or cast into a river, as the horses of 
 the sun were cast into the sea,* but at other times it is 
 
 1 Fihrist, p. 319, 1. 21. 
 
 ^ Cf. the ntn, C. /. 8. No. 165, 1. 11. Some other sacrifices of wild 
 animals, which present analogies to these mystic rites, will be considered in 
 Additional Note G, Sacrijices of Sacred Animals. 
 
 ' Bancroft, iii. 168 ; Frazer, Totemism, p. 48. 
 
LECT. viii. SACRIFICES. 277 
 
 eaten as a mystic sacrament.^ These points of contact 
 with the most primitive superstition cannot be accidental ; 
 they show that the mystical S9,crifices, as Julian calls 
 them, the sacrifices of animals not ordinarily eaten, are not 
 the invention of later times, but have preserved with great 
 accuracy the features of a sacrificial ritual of extreme 
 antiquity. 
 
 To a superficial view the ordinary sacrifices of domestic 
 animals, such as were commonly used for food, seem to 
 stand on quite another footing; yet we have been led, 
 by an independent line of reasoning, based on the 
 evidence that all sacrifice was originally the act of the 
 clan, to surmise that they also in their origin were 
 rare and solemn offerings of victims whose lives were 
 ordinarily deemed sacred, because, like the unclean sacred 
 animals, they were of the kin of the worshippers and of 
 their god.^ 
 
 And in point of fact precisely this kind of respect and 
 reverence is paid to domestic animals among many pastoral 
 
 ^ The proof of this has to be put together out of the fragmentary evidence 
 which is generally all that we possess on such matters. As regards America 
 the most conclusive evidence comes from Mexico, where the gods, though 
 certainly of totem origin, had become anthropomorphic, and the victim, who 
 was regarded as the representative of the god, was human. At other times 
 paste idols of the god were eaten sacramentally. But that the ruder 
 Americans attached a sacramental virtue to the eating of the totem appears 
 from what is related of the Bear clan of the Ouataouaks {Lettres idif. e.t cur. , 
 vi. 171), who when they kill a bear make him a feast, of his own flesh, and 
 tell him not to resent being killed; "tu as de I'esprit, tu vols que nos 
 enfauts souffrent la faim, ils t'aiment, ils veulent te faire entrer dans leur 
 corps, n'est il pas glcrieux d'etre mange par des enfans de Capitaine ? " The 
 bear feast of the Ainos of Japan (fully described by Scheube in Mitth. 
 deutsch. Oesellsch. S. und S. O. Aliens, No. 22, p. 44 sq.) is a sacrificial 
 feast on the flesh of the bear, which is honoured as divine, and slain 
 with many apologies to the gods, on the pretext of necessity. The 
 ' eating of the totem as medicine (Frazer, p. 23) belongs to the same circle 
 of ideas. See also infra, p. 296. 
 
 2 Strictly speaking the thing is much more than a surmise, even on the 
 evidence already before us. But I prefer to understate rather than overstate 
 the case in a matter of such complexity. 
 
278 SANCTITY LECT. vill. 
 
 peoples in various parts of the globe. They are regarded 
 on the one hand as the friends and kinsmen of men, and 
 on the other hand as sacred beings of a nature akin to the 
 gods ; their slaughter is permitted only under exceptional 
 circumstances, and in such cases is never used to provide 
 a private meal, but necessarily forms the occasion of a 
 public feast, if not of a public sacrifice. The clearest case 
 is that of Africa. Agatharchides,-' describing the Troglodyte 
 nomads of East Africa, a primitive pastoral people in the 
 polyandrous stage of society, tells us that their whole 
 sustenance was derived from their flocks and herds. When 
 pasture abounded, after the rainy reason, they lived on 
 milk mingled with blood (drawn apparently, as in Arabia, 
 from the living animal), and in the dry season they had 
 recourse to the flesh of aged or weakly beasts. But the 
 butchers were regarded as unclean. Further, " they gave 
 the name of parent to no human being, but only to the ox 
 and cow, the ram and ewe, from whom they had their 
 nourishment." Here we have all the features which our 
 theory requires ; the beasts are sacred and kindred beings, 
 for they are the source of human life and subsistence. 
 They are killed only in time of need, and the butchers are 
 unclean, which implies that the slaughter was an impious 
 act. 
 
 Similar institutions are found among all the purely 
 pastoral African peoples, and have persisted with more or 
 less modification or attenuation down to our own time.^ 
 The common food of these races is milk or gaiue,' cattle 
 
 1 The extracts of Photius and Diodorus are printed together in Fr. Geog. 
 Gr. i. 153. The former has some points which the latter omits. 
 
 2 For the evidence of the sanctity of cattle among modern rude peoples, I 
 am largely indebted to my friend Frazer. 
 
 ' Sallust, Jugurtha, 89 (Numidians) ; Alberti, De Kaffers (Amst. 1810), 
 p. 37 ; Lichtenstein, Seifen, i. Hi. Out of a multitude of proofs I cite 
 these, as being drawn from the parts of the continent most remote from one 
 another. 
 
LECT. VIII. OF CATTLE. 279 
 
 are seldom killed for food, and only on exceptional 
 occasions, such as the proclamation of a war, the circum- 
 cision of a youth, or a wedding,^ or in order to obtain 
 a skin for clothing, or because the creature is maimed 
 or old.^ 
 
 In such cases the feast is public, as among Nilus's 
 Saracens,^ all blood relations and even all neighbours having 
 a right to partake. Further, the herd and its members 
 are objects of affectionate and personal regard,* and are 
 surrounded by sacred scruples and taboos. Among the 
 Caffres the cattle kraal is sacred ; women may not enter 
 it,^ and to defile it is a capital offence.* Finally, the 
 notion that cattle are the parents of men, which we 
 find in Agatharehides, survives in the Zulu myth that 
 men, especially great chiefs, " were belched up by a 
 cow." ' 
 
 These instances may suffice to show how universally 
 the attitude towards domestic animals, described by 
 Agatharehides, is diffused among the pastoral peoples of 
 Africa. But I must still notice one peculiar variation 
 
 ^ So among the Caffres (Fleming, Southern Africa, p. 260 ; Lichtenstein, 
 Beisen, i. 442). 
 
 ^Alberti, p. 163 (Caffres); cf. Gen. iii. 21, and Herod., iv. 189. The 
 religious significance of the dress of skin, which appears in the last cited 
 passage, will occupy us later. 
 
 ^ So among the Zulus {supra, p. 266, note) and among the Caffres 
 (Alberti, ut supra). 
 
 * See in particular the general remarks of Munzinger on the pastoral 
 peoples of East Africa, Ostafr. Studien (2nd ed. 1883), p. 547 : " The nomad 
 values his cow above all things, and weeps for its death as for that of a 
 child." Again : "They have an incredible attachment to the old breed of 
 cattle, which they have inherited from father and grandfather, and keep a 
 record of their descent " — a trace of the feeling of kinship between the herd 
 and the tribe, as in Agatharehides. See also Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, 
 i. 59 (3rd ed. 1878), and compare 2 Sam. xii. 3. 
 
 * Fleming, p. 214. 
 
 ^ Lichtenstein, i. 479, who adds that the punishment will not seern severe 
 if we consider how holy their cattle are to them. 
 ' Lang, Myth Bilual, etc. i. 179. 
 
280 SANCTITY LECT. Viir. 
 
 of the view that the life of cattle is sacred, which occurs 
 both in Africa and among the Semites. Herodotus ^ tells 
 us that the Libyans, though they ate oxen, would not touch 
 the flesh of the cow. In the circle of ideas which we 
 have found to prevail throughout Africa this distinction 
 must be connected, on the one hand, with the prevalence 
 of kinship through women, which necessarily made the 
 cow more sacred than the ox, and, on the other, with the 
 fact that it is the cow that fosters man with her milk. 
 The same rule prevailed in Egypt, where the cow was 
 sacred to Hathor-Isis, and also' among the Phoenicians, 
 who both ate and sacrificed bulls, but would as soon have 
 eaten human flesh as that of the cow.^ 
 
 The importance of this evidence for our enquiry is all 
 the greater because there is a growing disposition among 
 scholars to recognise an ethnological connection of a 
 somewhat close kind between the Semitic and African races. 
 But the ideas which I have attempted to unfold are not 
 the property of a single race. How far the ancient 
 holiness of cattle, and especially of the cow, among the 
 Iranians, presents details analogous to those which have 
 come before us, is a question which I must leave to the 
 professed students of a very obscure literature ; it seems 
 at least to be admitted that the thing is not an innovation 
 of Zoroastrianism, but common to the Iranians with their 
 Indian cousins, so that the origin of the sacred regard 
 paid to the cow must be sought in the primitive nomadic 
 life of the Indo-European race. But to show that exactly 
 
 1 Bk. iv. ch. 186. 
 
 ' See Porphyry, De Abst. ii. 11, for both nations ; and, for the Egyptians, 
 Herod., ii. 41. The Phoenician usage can hardly be ascribed to Egyptian 
 iniliience, for at least a preference for male victims is found among the 
 Semites generally, even where the deity is a goddess. See what Chwolsohn, 
 Ssabier, ii. 77 sqq. , adduces in illustration of the statement of the Fihrisl that 
 the Harranians sacrificed only male victims. 
 
LECT. VIII. OF CATTLE. 281 
 
 such notions as we have found in Africa appear among 
 pastoral peoples of quite different race, I will cite the case 
 of the Todas of South India. Here the domestic animal, 
 the milk-giver and the main source of subsistence, is the 
 buffalo. " The buffalo is treated with great kindness, 
 even with a degree of adoration,"^ and certain cows, the 
 descendants from mother to daughter of some remote 
 sacred ancestor, are hung with ancient cattle bells and 
 invoked as divinities.'^ Further, "there is good reason 
 for believing the Todas' assertion that they have never 
 at any time eaten the flesh of the female buffalo," and 
 the male they eat only once a year, when all the adult 
 males in the village join in the ceremony of killing and 
 eating a young bull calf, which is killed with special 
 ceremonies and roasted by a sacred fire. Venison, on the 
 other hand, they eat with pleasure.^ At a funeral one 
 or two buffaloes are killed ; * "as each animal falls, men, 
 women and children group themselves round its head, 
 and fondle, caress, and kiss its face, then sitting in groups 
 of pairs . . . give way to wailing and lamentation." These 
 victims are not eaten, but left on the ground. 
 
 These examples may suffice to show the wide diffusion 
 among rude pastoral peoples of a way of regarding sacred 
 animals with which the Semitic facts and the inferences 
 I have drawn from them exactly correspond ; let us now 
 enquire how far similar ideas can be shewn to have 
 prevailed among the higher races of antiquity. In this 
 
 1 Marshall, Travels among the Todas (1873), p. 130. 
 
 ^Ibid. p. 131. 
 
 ^ Ibid. p. 81. The sacrifice is eaten only by males. So among the 
 Caffres certain holy parts of an ox must not be eaten by women ; and in 
 Hebrew law the duty of festal worship was confined to males, though women 
 were not excluded. Among the Todas men and women habitually eat 
 apart, as the Spartans did ; and the Spartan blood-broth may be compared 
 with the Toda animal sacrifice. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 176. 
 
282 SANCTITY LECT. VIII. 
 
 connection I would first of all direct your attention to 
 the wide prevalence among all these nations of a belief 
 that the habit of slaughtering animals and eating flesh 
 is a departure from the laws of primitive piety. Except 
 in certain ascetic circles, priestly or philosophical, this 
 opinion bore no practical fruit ; men ate flesh freely 
 when they could obtain it, but in their legends of the 
 golden age it was told how in the earliest and happiest 
 days of the race, when man was at peace with the gods 
 and with nature, and the hard struggle of daily toil had 
 not begun, animal food was unknown, and all man's wants 
 were supplied by the spontaneous produce of the bounteous 
 earth. This, of course, is not true, for even on anatomical 
 grounds it is certain that our remote ancestors were carni- 
 vorous, and it is matter of observation that primitive 
 nations do not eschew the use of animal food in general, 
 though certain kinds of flesh are forbidden on grounds 
 of piety. But, on the other hand, the idea of the golden 
 age cannot be a mere abstract speculation without any 
 basis in tradition. The legend in which it is embodied 
 is part of the ancient folk-lore of the Greeks,^ and the 
 practical application of the idea in the form of a 
 precept of abstinence from flesh, as a rule of perfection 
 or of ceremonial holiness, is first found, not among in- 
 novating and speculative philosophers, but in priestly 
 circles — e.g. in Egypt and India — whose lore is entirely 
 based on tradition, or in such philosophic schools as 
 that of Pythagoras, all whose ideas are characterised 
 by an extraordinary regard for ancient usage and 
 superstition. 
 
 In the case of the Egyptian priests the facts set forth 
 by Porphyry in his book Be Abstinentia, iv. 6 sqq., on the 
 
 1 Hesiod, Works and Days, 109 sqq. Cf. Preller-Eobert, I. i. p. 87 sqi-, 
 for the other literature of the subject. 
 
LECT. VIII. OF CATTLE. 283 
 
 authority of Chseremon,' enable us to make out distinctly the 
 connection between the abstinence imposed on the priests 
 and the primitive beliefs and practice of the mass of the 
 people. 
 
 From ancient times every Egyptian had, according to 
 the nome he lived in, his own particular kind of forbidden 
 flesh, venerating a particular species of sacred animal, 
 exactly as totemistic savages still do. The priests 
 extended this precept, being in fact the ministers of a 
 national religion, which gathered into one system the 
 worships of the various nomes ; but only some of them 
 went so far as to eat no flesh at all, while others, who 
 were attached to particular cults, ordinarily observed 
 abstinence only from certain kinds of flesh, though 
 they were obliged to confine themselves to a strictly 
 vegetable diet at certain religious seasons, when they were 
 specially engaged in holy functions. It is, however, 
 obvious that the multitude of local prohibitions could not 
 have resulted in a general doctrine of the superior piety of 
 vegetarianism, unless the list of animals which were sacred 
 in one or other part of the country had included those 
 domestic animals which in a highly cultivated country like 
 Egypt must always form the chief source of animal food. 
 In Egypt this was the case, and indeed the greatest and 
 most widely recognised deities were those that had associa- 
 tions with domesticated animals. In this respect Egyptian 
 civilisation declares its afiinity to the primitive usages 
 and superstitions of the pastoral populations of Africa 
 generally ; the Calf -god Apis, who was supposed to be 
 incarnate in an actual calf at Memphis, and the Cow- 
 goddess Isis-Hathor, who is either represented in the form 
 of a cow, or at least wears a cow's horns, directly connect 
 
 1 The authority is good ; see Bemays, Theophrastos' Schri/t Ueher From- 
 mtgktit (Breslau, 1866), p. 21. 
 
284 SANCTITY 
 
 LECT VIII. 
 
 the dominant cults of Egypt with the sanctity ascribed to 
 the bovine species by the ruder races of Eastern Africa, 
 with whom the ox is the most important domestic animal ; 
 and it is not therefore surprising to learn that even in later 
 times the eating of cow's flesh seemed to the Egyptians 
 a practice as horrible as cannibalism. Cows were never 
 sacrificed, and though bulls were offered on the altar, and 
 part of the flesh eaten in a sacrificial feast, the sacrifice 
 was only permitted as a piaculum, was preceded by a 
 solemn fast, and was accompanied by public lamentation 
 as at the death of a kinsman/ In like manner at the 
 annual sacrifice at Thebes to the Eam-god Amen, the 
 worshippers bewailed the victim, thus declaring its kin- 
 ship with themselves, while, on the other hand, its kinship 
 or identity with the god was expressed in a twofold way, 
 for the image of Amen was draped in the skin of the 
 sacrifice, while the body was buried in a sacred coffin.^ 
 
 In Egypt the doctrine that the highest degree of holi- 
 ness can only be attained by abstinence from all animal 
 food was the result of the political fusion of a number of 
 local cults in one national religion, with a national priest- 
 hood that represented imperial ideas. Nothing of this sort 
 took place in Greece or in most of the Semitic lands,^ and 
 in these accordingly we find no developed doctrine of 
 priestly asceticism in the matter of food.* 
 
 Among the Greeks and Semites, therefore, the idea of 
 
 1 Herod., ii. 39 sq. 2 Herod., ii. 42. 
 
 ' Babylonia is perhaps an exception. 
 
 ' On the supposed case of the Essenes see Lucius's hooks on the Essenes 
 and Therapeutse, and Schtirer, Oesch. des Jiid. Volhes, ii. 478. The Thera- 
 peutse, whether Jews or Christian monks, appear in Egypt, and most 
 probably they were Egyptian Christians. Later developments of Semitic 
 asceticism almost certainly stood under foreign influences, among which 
 Buddhism seems to have had a larger and earlier share than it has been 
 usual to admit. In old Semitic practice, as among the modern Jews and Mos- 
 lems, religious fasting meant abstinence from all food, not merely from flesh. 
 
LECT. VIII; OP CATTLK 285 
 
 a golden age, and the trait that in that age man was 
 vegetarian in his diet, must be of popular not of priestly 
 origin. Now in itself the notion that ancient times were 
 better than modern, that the earth was more productive, 
 men more pious and their lives less vexed with toil and 
 sickness, needs no special explanation ; it is the natural 
 result of psychological laws which apply equally to the 
 memory of individuals and the memory of nations. But 
 the particular trait of primitive vegetarianism, as a 
 characteristic feature of the good old times, does not fall 
 under this general explanation, and can only have arisen 
 at a time when there was still some active feeling of 
 pious scruple about killing and eating flesh. This scruple 
 cannot have applied to all kinds of flesh, e.g. to game, but 
 it must have covered the very kinds of flesh that were 
 ordinarily eaten in the agricultural stage of society, to 
 which the origin of the legend of the golden age un- 
 doubtedly belongs. Flesh, therefore, in the legend means 
 the flesh of domestic animals, and the legend expresses 
 a feeling of respect for the lives of these animals, and an 
 idea that their slaughter for food was an innovation not 
 consistent with pristine piety. 
 
 When we look into the details of the traditions which 
 later writers cite in support of the doctrine of primaeval 
 vegetarianism, we see that in effect this, and no more than 
 this, is contained in them. The general statement that 
 early man respected all animal life is mere inference, but 
 popular tradition and ancient ritual alike bore testimony 
 that the life of the swine and the sheep,^ but above all of 
 the ox,^ was of old regarded as sacred, and might not be 
 
 iPorph., DeAhst. ii. 9. 
 
 '^ Ibid. ii. 10, 29 sq. ; Plato, Leges, vi. p. 782 ; Pausanias, viii. 2. 1 sqq. 
 compared with i. 28. 10 (bloodless sacrifices under Cecrops, sacrifice of an 
 ox in the time of Erechtheus), 
 
286 THE BUPHONIA 
 
 LECT. VIII. 
 
 taken away except for religious purposes, and even then 
 only with special precautions to clear the worshippers from 
 the guilt of murder. 
 
 To make this quite plain it may be well to go in some 
 detail into the most important case of all, that of the ox. 
 That it was once a capital offence to kill an ox, both in 
 Attica and in the Peloponnesus, is attested by Varro.^ So 
 far as Athens is concerned this statement seems to be 
 drawn from the legend that was told in connection with 
 the annual sacrifice of the Diipolia, where the victim was a 
 bull, and its death was followed by a solemn enquiry as to 
 who was responsible for the act.^ In this trial every one 
 who had anything to do with the slaughter was called as a 
 party; the maidens who drew water to sharpen the axe 
 and knife threw the blame on the sharpeners, they put it 
 on the man who handed the axe, he on the man who 
 struck down the victim, and he again on the one who cut 
 its throat, who finally fixed the responsibility on the knife, 
 which was accordingly found guilty of murder and cast 
 into the sea. According to the legend this act was a mere 
 dramatic imitation of a piacular sacrifice devised to expiate 
 the offence of one Sopatros, who killed an ox that he saw 
 eating the cereal gifts from the table of the gods. This 
 impious offence was followed by famine, but the oracle 
 declared that the guilt might be expiated if the slayer 
 were punished and the victim raised up again in connection 
 with the same sacrifice in which it died, and that it would 
 then go well with them if they tasted of the flesh and did 
 not hold back. Sopatros himself, who had fled to Crete, 
 undertook to return and devise a means of carrying out 
 these injunctions, provided that the whole city would share 
 the responsibility of the murder that weighed on his 
 
 1 if. E. ii. 5. 
 
 2 Pausanias, i. 24. 4 ; Theophrastus ap. Porph., De Abst. ii. 30. 
 
tECT. -VIII. AT ATHENS. 287 
 
 conscience ; and so the ceremonial was devised, which con- 
 tinued to be observed down to a late date.^ Of course the 
 legend as such has no value ; it is derived from the ritual, 
 and not vice versa ; but the ritual itself shews clearly that 
 the slaughter was viewed as a murder, and that it was felt 
 to be necessary, not only to go through the form of throw- 
 ing the guilt on the knife, but to distribute the responsibility 
 as widely as possible, by employing a number of sacrificial 
 ministers — who it may be observed were chosen from 
 different kindreds — and making it a public duty to taste 
 of the flesh. Here, therefore, we have a well-marked case 
 of the principle that sacrifice is not to be excused except 
 by the participation of the whole community.^ This rite 
 does not stand alone. At Tenedos the priest who offered 
 a bull - calf to Dionysus avOpcoiroppaia-rr]^ was attacked 
 with stones and had to flee for his life,' and at Corinth in 
 the annual sacrifice of a goat to Hera Acraea, care was 
 taken to shift the responsibility of the death off the 
 shoulders of the community by employing hirelings as 
 ministers. Even they did no more than hide the knife in 
 such a way that the goat, scraping with its feet, procured 
 its own death.* But indeed the idea that the slaughter t 
 of a bull was properly a murder, and only to be justified I 
 on exceptional sacrificial occasions, must once have been , 
 general in Greece ; for ^ovtpovia (jSovcpoveiv, /3oucf)6voi) or/ 
 " ox-murder," which in Athens was the name of the/ 
 
 ^ Aristophanes alludes to it as a very old-world rite (Nubes, 985), but the 
 observance was still kept up in the days of Theophrastus in all its old 
 quaintness. In Pausanias's time it had undergone some simplification, 
 unless his account is inaccurate. 
 
 ^ The further feature that the ox chooses itself as victim, by approaching 
 the altar and eating the gifts laid on it, is noticeable, both because a similar 
 rite recurs at Eryx, as will be mentioned presently, and because in this way 
 the victim eats of the table of the gods, i.e. is acknowledged as divine. 
 
 3 ^lian, N. A. xii. 34. 
 
 • Hesychius, a.v. «'('? aTya ; Zenobius on the same proverb ; Schol. on Eurip., 
 Medea. 
 
'288 THE SEMITIC 
 
 LECT. vni. 
 
 peculiar sacrifice of the Diipolia, is in older Greek a 
 general term for the slaughter of oxen for a sacrificial feast.^ 
 And that the " ox-murder " must be taken quite literally 
 appears iu the sacrifice at Tenedos, where the bull-calf 
 wears the cothurnus and its dam is treated like a woman 
 in childbed. Here the kinship of the victim with man is 
 clearly expressed, but so also is his kinship with the 
 " man-slaying " god to whom the sacrifice is offered, for 
 the cothurnus is proper to Bacchus, and that god was often 
 represented and invoked as a buU.^ 
 
 The same combination of ideas appears in the Hebrew 
 and Phoenician traditions of primitive abstinence from flesh 
 and of the origin of sacrifice. The evidence in this case 
 requires to be handled with some caution, for the Phoe- 
 nician traditions come to us from late authors, who are 
 gravely suspected of tampering with the legends they 
 record, and the Hebrew records in the Book of Genesis, 
 though they are undoubtedly based on ancient popular 
 lore, have been recast under the influence of a higher faith, 
 and purged of such elements as were manifestly inconsisteiat 
 with Old Testament monotheism. As regards the Hebrew 
 accounts, a distinction must be drawn between the earlier 
 Jahvistic story and the post-exile narrative of the priestly 
 historian. In the older account, just as in the Greek fable 
 of the Golden Age, man, in his pristine state of innocence, 
 lived at peace with all animals,^ eating the spontaneous 
 fruits of the earth ; but after the fall he was sentenced to 
 earn his bread by agricultural toil. At the same time his 
 
 1 See Iliad, vii. 466 ; the Homeric hymn to Mercury, 436, in a story which 
 seems to be one of the many legends about the origin of sacrifice ; Mscii. 
 Prom. 530. 
 
 == See especially Plutarch, Qu. Gr. 36. Another example to the same 
 effect is that of the goat dressed up as a maiden, which was offered to 
 Artemis Munychia [Parcemiogr. Or. i. 402, and Eustathius as there cited by 
 the editors). 
 
 ■ Cf. Isa. xi. 6 so. 
 
LECT. vin. GOLDEN AGE. 289 
 
 war with hurtful creatures (the serpent) began, and 
 domestic animals began to be slain sacrificially, and their 
 skins used for clothing.^ In the priestly history, on the 
 other hand, man's dominion over animals, and seemingly 
 also the agricultural life, in which animals serve man in 
 the work of tillage, are instituted at the creation.* In this 
 narrative there is no Garden of Eden, and no Fall except 
 the growing corruption that precedes the Flood. After the 
 Flood man receives the right to kill and eat animals, if 
 their blood is poured upon the ground,^ but sacrifice begins 
 only with the Mosaic dispensation. Now, as sacrifice and 
 slaughter were never separated, in the case of domestic 
 animals, till the time of Deuteronomy, this form of the 
 story cannot be ancient ; it rests on the post-Deuteronomic.^ 
 law of sacrifice, and especially on Lev. xvii. 10 sq. The '. 
 original Hebrew tradition is that of the Jahvistic story, ' 
 which agrees with Greek legend in connecting the sacrifice/ 
 of domestic animals with a fall from the state of pristine: 
 innocence.* This, of course, is not the main feature in the \ 
 Biblical story of the Fall, nor is it one on which the narrator [ 
 lays stress, or to which he seems to attach any special 
 significance. But for that very reason it is to be presumed 
 that this feature in the story is primitive, and that it must 
 be explained, like the corresponding Greek legend, not by 
 
 ' Gen. ii. 16 sqq., iii. 15, 21, iv. 4. I am disposed to agree with Budde 
 (Bibl. Urgeschichte, p. 83) that the words of ii. 15, "to dress it and to keep 
 it," are by a later hand. They agree with Gen. i. 26 sqq. (priestly), but not 
 with iii. 17 (Jahvistic). 
 
 ' Gen. i. 28, 29, where the use of corn as well as of the fruit of trees is 
 implied. 
 
 ^ Gen. ix. 1 sq. 
 
 * The Greek legend in the Works and Days agrees with the Jahvistic 
 story also in ascribing the Fall to the fault of a woman. But this trait does 
 not seem to appear in all forms of the Greek story (see Preller-Robert, i. 94 
 sq. ), and the estrangement between gods and men is sometimes ascribed to 
 Prometheus, who is also regarded as the inventor of fire and of animal 
 sacrifice. 
 
 T 
 
290 PHCENICIAN 
 
 LECT. vm. 
 
 the aid of principles peculiar to the Old Testament revela- 
 tion, but by considerations of a more general kind. There 
 are other features in the story of the G-arden of Eden — 
 especially the tree of life — which prove that the original 
 basis of the narrative is derived from the common stock of 
 North Semitic folk-lore ; and that this common stock in- 
 cluded the idea of primitive vegetarianism is confirmed by 
 Philo Byblius,^ whose legend of the primitive men, who 
 lived only on the fruits of the soil and paid divine honour 
 to these, has too peculiar a form to be regarded as a mere 
 transcript either from the Bible or from Greek literature. 
 
 It is highly improbable that among the ancient Semites 
 the story of a golden age of primitive fruit-eating can have 
 had its rise in any other class of ideas than those which 
 led to the formation of a precisely similar legend in Greece. 
 The Greeks concluded that primitive man did not eat the 
 flesh of domestic animals because - their sacrificial ritual 
 regarded the death of a victim as a kind of murder, only to 
 be justified under special circumstances, and when it was 
 accompanied by special precautions, for which a definite 
 historical origin was assigned. And just in the same way 
 the Cypro-Phcenician legend which Porphyry* quotes from 
 Asclepiades, to prove that the early Phoenicians did not eat 
 flesh, turns on the idea that the death of a victim was 
 originally a surrogate for human sacrifice, and that the 
 first man who dared to taste flesh was punished with death. 
 The details of this story, which exactly agree with Lamb's 
 humorous account of the discovery of the merits of roast 
 sucking pig, are puerile and cannot be regarded as part of 
 an ancient tradition, but the main idea does not seem to 
 be mere invention. We have already seen that the Phoeni- 
 cians would no more eat cow-beef than human flesh ; it 
 
 1 Ap. Eus., Pr. Mv. i. 106 [Fr. Hist. Gr. iii. 565). 
 
 2 De Abst. iv. 15. 
 
LECT. VIII. SACRIFICES. 291 
 
 can hardly, therefore, be questioned that in ancient times 
 the whole bovine race had such a measure of sanctity as 
 would give even to the sacrifice of a bull the very character 
 that our theory requires. And when Asclepiades states'i 
 that every victim was originally regarded as a surrogate 
 for a human sacrifice, he is confirmed in a remarkable way 
 by the Elohistic account of the origin of burnt-sacrifice in 
 Gen. xxii., where a ram is accepted in lieu of Isaac. This i 
 narrative presents another remarkable point of contact 
 with Phoenician belief. Abraham says that God Himself 
 will provide the sacrifice (ver. 8), and at ver. 13 the ram 
 presents itself unsought as an offering. Exactly this prin- 
 ciple was observed down to late times at the great Astarte 
 temple at Eryx, where the victims were drawn from the 
 sacred herds nourished at the sanctuary, and were believed 
 to offer themselves spontaneously at the altar.^ This is 
 quite analogous to the usage at the Diipolia, where a 
 number of cattle were driven round the sacred table, and 
 the bull was selected for slaughter that approached it and ate 
 of the sacred popana, and must be regarded as one of the 
 many forms and fictions adopted to free the worshippers 
 of responsibility for the death of the victim. All this 
 goes to show that the animal sacrifices of the Phoenicians 
 were regarded as quasi-human. But that the sacrificial 
 kinds were also viewed as kindred to the gods may be con- 
 cluded from the way in which the gods were represented. 
 The idolatrous Israelites worshipped Jehovah under the 
 form of a steer, and the second commandment implies that 
 idols were made in the shape of many animals. So, too, 
 the bull of Europa, Zeus Asterius, is, as his epithet implies, 
 
 1 JElian, ^. ^. x. 50 ; cf. Isa. liii. 7 ; Jer. xi. 19 (R.V.) ; but especially 
 1 Sam. vi. 14, where the kine halt at the sacrificial stone (Diog. Laert., i, 
 10. 3). That the victim presents itself spontaneously or comes to the altar 
 willingly is a feature in many worships (Porph., De Ahst. i. 25 ; Aristotle, 
 Mir. Ausc. 137). 
 
292 COW-ASTARTE lect. viii. 
 
 the male counterpart of Astarte, with whom Europa was 
 identified at Sidon.^ Astarte herself was figured crowned 
 with a bull's head/ and the place name Ashteroth 
 Karnaim^ is derived from the sanctuary of a horned 
 Astarte. It may indeed be questioned whether this last is 
 identical with the cow-Astarte of Sidon, or is rather a 
 sheep-goddess ; for in Deut. vii. 1 3 the produce of the 
 flock is called the " Ashtaroth of the sheep " — an antique 
 expression that must have a religious origin. This sheep- 
 Aphrodite was specially worshipped in Cyprus, where 
 her annual mystic or piacular sacrifice was a sheep, 
 and was presented by worshippers clad in sheepskins, thus 
 declaring their kinship at once with the victim and with 
 the deity.* 
 
 It is well to observe that in the most ancient nomadic 
 times, to which the sanctity of domestic animals must be 
 referred, the same clan or community will not generally 
 be found to breed more than one kind of domestic animal. 
 Thus in Arabia, though the lines of separation are nob 
 so sharp as we must suppose them to have formerly 
 been, there is still a broad distinction between the 
 camel breeding tribes of the upland plains and the 
 shepherd tribes of the mountains ; and in like manner 
 sheep and goats are the flocks appropriate to the steppes 
 of Eastern Palestine, while kine and oxen are more 
 suitable for the well-watered Phcsnician mountains. Thus 
 in the one place we may expect to find a sheep-Astarte, 
 
 1 De Dea Syria, iv. ; Kinship, p. 306. 
 
 2 Philo Byb.,/r. 24 {Fr. Hist. Gr. iii. 569). 
 
 ' Gen. xiv. 5. Kueiien in his paper on De Melecheth des Hemels, p. 37, 
 thinks it possible that the true reading is "Ashteroth and Karnaim." 
 But the identity ot the later Carnain or Carnion with Ashtaroth or mntS'W, 
 "the temple of Astarte" (Josh. xxi. 27), is confirmed by the fact that there 
 was a ri/j-svas or sacred enclosure there (1 Mao. v. 43). See further ZDM6., 
 xxix. 431, note 1. 
 
 * See Additional Note H, The Sacrifice of a Sheep to the Cyprian Aphrodite. 
 
LECT. VIII. AND SHEEP-ASTARTE. 293 
 
 and in another a cow - goddess, and the Hebrew idiom 
 in Deut. vii. 13 agrees with the fact that before the 
 conquest of agricultural Palestine, the Hebrews, like their 
 kinsmen of Moab, must have been mainly shepherds not 
 cowherds/ 
 
 I have now, I think, said enough about the sanctity of 
 domestic animals ; the application to the doctrine of sacri- 
 fice must be left for another lecture. 
 
 ^ The great ancestress of the house of Joseph is Eachel, "the ewe." For 
 the Moabites see 2 Kings iii. 4. 
 
LECTUEE IX. 
 
 THE SACRAMENTAL EFFICACY OF ANIMAL SACRIFICE, AND 
 
 COGNATE ACTS OF RITUAL THE BLOOD COVENANT 
 
 BLOOD AND HAIR OFFERINGS. 
 
 In the course of the last lecture we were led to look with 
 some exactness into the distinction drawn in the later ages 
 of ancient paganism between ordinary sacrifices, where the 
 victim is one of the animals commonly used for human 
 food, and extraordinary or mystical sacrifices, where the signi- 
 ficance of the rite lies in an exceptional act of communion 
 with the godhead, by participation in holy flesh which is 
 ordinarily forbidden to man. Analysing this distinction, 
 and carrying back our examination of the evidence to the 
 primitive stage of society in which sacrificial ritual first 
 took shape, we were led to conclude that in the most 
 ancient times all sacrificial animals had a sacrosanct cha- 
 racter, and that no kind of beast was ofiered to the gods 
 which was not too holy to be slain and eaten without a 
 religious purpose, and without the consent and active 
 participation of the whole clan. 
 
 Por the most primitive times, therefore, the distinction 
 drawn by later paganism between ordinary and extra- 
 ordinary sacrifices disappears. In both cases the sacred 
 function is the act of the whole community, which is 
 conceived as a circle of brethren, united with one another 
 and with their god by participation in one life or life-blood. 
 The same blood is supposed to flow also in the veins of the 
 
 Ml 
 
LECT. IX. THE BLOOD BOND. 295 
 
 victim, so that its death is at once a shedding of the tribal 
 blood and a violation of the sanctity of the divine life that 
 is transfused through every member, human or irrational, 
 of the sacred circle. Nevertheless the slaughter of such 
 a victim is permitted or required on solemn occasions, and 
 all the tribesmen partake of its flesh, that they may 
 thereby cement and seal their mystic unity with one 
 another and with their god. In later times we find the 
 conception current that any food which two men partake 
 of together, so that the same substance enters into their 
 flesh and blood, is enough to establish some sacred unity 
 of life between them ; but in ancient times this significance 
 seems to be always attached to participation in the flesh of 
 a sacrosanct victim, and the solemn mystery of its death 
 is justified by the consideration that only in this way can 
 the sacred cement be procured which creates or keeps alive 
 a living bond of union between the worshippers and their 
 god. This cement is nothing else than the actual life of 
 the sacred and kindred animal, which is conceived as 
 residing in its flesh, but especially in its blood, and so, in 
 the sacred meal, is actually distributed among all the 
 participants, each of whom incorporates a particle of it 
 with his own individual life. 
 
 The notion that, by eating the flesh, or particularly by 
 drinking the blood, of another living being, a man absorbs 
 its nature or life into his own, is one which appears 
 among primitive peoples in many forms. It lies at the 
 root of the widespread practice of drinking the fresh blood 
 of enemies — a practice which was familiar to certain 
 tribes of the Arabs before Mohammed and which tradition 
 still ascribes to the wild race of Cahtan ^ — and also of the 
 
 1 See the evidence in Kinship, p. 284 ; and of. Doughty, ii. 41, where the 
 better accounts seem to limit the drinking of human blood by the Cahtan 
 to the blood covenant. 
 
296 THE BLOOD lect. ix. 
 
 habit observed by many savage huntsmen of eating some 
 part {e.g. the liver) of dangerous carnivora, in order 
 that the courage of the animal may pass into them. 
 And in some parts of the world, where men have the 
 privilege of choosing a special kind of sacred animal 
 either in lieu of, or in addition to, the clan totem, 
 we find that the compact between the man and the 
 species that he is thenceforth to regard as sacred is 
 sealed by killing and eating an animal of the species, 
 which from that time forth becomes forbidden food to 
 him.^ 
 
 But the most notable application of the idea is in the 
 rite of blood-brotherhood, examples of which are found all 
 over the world.^ In the simplest form of this rite two 
 men become brothers by opening their veins and sucking 
 one another's blood. Thenceforth their lives are not two 
 but one. This form of covenant is still known in the 
 Lebanon' and in some parts of Arabia.* In ancient 
 Arabic literature there are many references to the blood 
 covenant, but instead of human blood that of a victim slain 
 at the sanctuary is employed. The ritual in this case is 
 that all who share in the compact must dip their hands 
 into the gore, which at the same time is applied to the 
 sacred stone that symbolises the deity, or is poured forth 
 at its base. The dipping of the hands into the dish 
 
 ' Frazer {Totemism, p. 54) has collected evidence of the killing, hut not 
 of the eating. For the latter he refers me to Cruickshank, Oold Coast 
 (1853), p. 133 sg. 
 
 ' See the collection of evidence in Trumbull, The Blood Covenant (New 
 York, 1885); and compare for the Arabs, Kinship, pp. 48 sqq., 261 ; Well- 
 hausen, p. 120 ; Goldziher, Literaturbl. f. or. Phil. 1886, p. 24, Muh. 
 Stud. p. 67. In what follows I do not quote examples in detail for things 
 sufficiently exemplified in the books just cited. 
 
 ^ Trumbull, p. 5 sq. 
 
 * Doughty, ii. 41. The value of the evidence is quite independent of the 
 accuracy of the statement that the Cahtan still practise the rite ; at least 
 the tradition of such a rite subsists. See also Trumbull, p. 9. 
 
LECT. IX. COVENANT. 297 
 
 implies communion in an act of eating/ and so the 
 members of the bond are called " blood-lickers." There 
 seems to be no example in the old histories and poems of 
 a covenant in which the parties lick one another's blood. 
 But we have seen that even in modern times the use of 
 human blood in covenants is not unknown to the Semites, 
 and the same thing appears for very early times from 
 Herodotus's account of the form of covenant used by the 
 Arabs on the borders of Egypt.^ Blood was drawn with 
 a sharp stone from the thumbs of each party, and smeared 
 on seven sacred stones with invocation of the gods. The 
 smearing makes the gods parties to the covenant, but 
 evidently the symbolical act is not complete unless at the 
 same time the human parties taste each other's blood. It 
 is probable that this was actually done, though Herodotus 
 does not say so. But it is also possible that in course of 
 time the ritual had been so far modified that it was deemed 
 sufficient that the two bloods should meet on the sacred 
 stone.^ The rite described by Herodotus has for its object 
 the admission of an individual stranger ^ to fellowship with 
 an Arab clansman and his kin ; the compact is primarily 
 between two individuals, but the obligation contracted by 
 the single clansman is binding on all his " friends," i.e. 
 on the other members of the kin. The reason why it is so 
 binding is that he who has drunk a clansman's blood is no 
 longer a stranger but a brother, and included in the mystic 
 circle of those who have a share in the life-blood that is 
 common to all the clan. Primarily the covenant is not a 
 
 1 Matt. xxT. 23. ^ Herod., iii. 8. 
 
 ' Some further remarks on the various modifications of covenant cere- 
 monies among the Semites will be found in ^ dditional Note I. 
 
 * The ceremony might also take place between an Arab and his " towns- 
 man " {xrTos), which, I apprehend, must mean another Arab, but one of a 
 different clan. For if a special contract between two clansmen were meant, 
 there would be no meaning in the introduction to the "friends " who agree 
 to share the covenant obligation. 
 
298 THE BLOOD LECT. ix. 
 
 special engagement to this or that particular effect, but a 
 bond of troth and life-fellowship to all the effects for which 
 kinsmen are permanently bound together. And this being 
 so, it is a matter of course that the engagement has a 
 religious side as well as a social, for there can be no 
 brotherhood without community of sacra, and the sanction 
 of brotherhood is the jealousy of the tribal deity, who 
 sedulously protects the holiness of kindred blood. This 
 thought is expressed symbolically by the smearing of the 
 two bloods, which have now become one, upon the sacred 
 stones, which is as much as to say that the god himself is 
 a third blood-licker, and a member of the bond of brother- 
 hood.^ It is transparent that in ancient times the deity 
 so brought into the compact must have been the kindred 
 god of the clan to which the stranger was admitted ; but 
 even in the days of Herodotus the old clan religion had 
 already been in great measure broken down ; all the Arabs 
 of the Egyptian frontier, whatever their clan, worshipped 
 the same pair of deities, Orotal and Alilat (Al-Lat), and 
 these were the gods invoked in the covenant ceremony. 
 If therefore both the contracting parties were Arabs, of 
 different clans but of the same region, neither could feel 
 that the covenant introduced him to the sacra of a new 
 god, and the religious meaning of the ceremony would 
 simply be that the gods whom both adored took the 
 compact under their protection. This is the ordinary 
 sense of covenant with sacrifice in later times, e.g. among 
 the Hebrews, but also among the Arabs, where the deity 
 invoked is ordinarily Allah at the Caaba or some other 
 great deity of more than tribal consideration. But that 
 the appeal to a god already acknowledged by both parties 
 
 ' Compare the blood coyenant which a Mosquito Indian used to form with 
 the animal kind he chose as his protectors; Bancroft, i. 740 sq. (Frazer, 
 p. 55). 
 
LECT. IX. COVENANT. 299 
 
 is a departure from the original sense of the rite is 
 apparent from the application of the blood, not only to the 
 human contractors, but to the altar or sacred stone, which 
 continued to be an invariable feature in covenant sacrifice ; 
 for this part of the rite, as we have just seen, has its full 
 and natural meaning only in a ceremony of initiation, 
 where the new tribesman has to be iatroduced to the god 
 for the first time and brought into life-feUowship with him, 
 or else in a periodical clan sacrifice held for the purpose of 
 refreshing and renewing a bond between the tribesmen and 
 their god, which by lapse of time may seem to have been 
 worn out. 
 
 In Herodotus the blood of the covenant is that of the 
 human parties ; in the cases known from Arabic literature 
 it is the blood of an animal sacrifice. At first sight this 
 seems to imply a progress in refinement and an aversion 
 to taste human blood. But it may well be doubted 
 whether such an assumption is justified by the social 
 history of the Arabs,^ and we have already seen that the 
 primitive form of the blood covenant has survived into 
 modern times. Eather, I think, we ought to consider that 
 the ceremony described by Herodotus is a covenant between 
 individuals, without that direct participation of the whole 
 kin, which, even in the time of Nilus, many centuries later, 
 was essential in those parts of Arabia to an act of sacrifice 
 involving the death of a victim. The covenants made by 
 sacrifice are generally if not always compacts between 
 whole kins, so that here sacrifice was appropriate, while at 
 the same time a larger supply of blood was necessary than 
 could well be obtained without slaughter. That the blood 
 of an animal was accepted in lieu of the tribesmen's own 
 blood is generally passed over by modern writers without 
 
 ' See the examples of cannibalism and the drinking of human hlood cited 
 in Kinship, p. 284 sq. 
 
300 COVENAKT LECT. IX. 
 
 explanation. But an explanation is certainly required, and 
 is fully supplied only by the consideration that, the victim 
 being itself included in the sacred circle of the kin, whose 
 life was to be communicated to the new-comers, its blood 
 served in all respects the same purpose as actual man's 
 blood would have done. On this view the rationale of 
 covenant sacrifice is perfectly transparent, and calls for no 
 further remark. 
 
 I do not, however, believe that the origin of sacrifice 
 can possibly be sought in the covenant between whole 
 kins — a kind of compact which in the nature of things 
 cannot have become common till the tribal system was 
 weak, and which in primitive times was probably quite 
 unknown. Even the adoption of individuals into a new 
 clan, so that they renounced their old kin and sacra, is 
 held by the most exact students of early legal custom to 
 be, comparatively speaking, a modern innovation on the 
 rigid rules of the ancient blood-fellowship ; much more, 
 then, must this be true of the adoption or fusion of wholg 
 clans. I apprehend, therefore, that the use of blood drawn 
 from a living man for the initiation of an individual into 
 new sacra, and the use of the blood of a victim for the 
 similar initiation of a whole clan, must both rest in the 
 last resort on practices that were originally observed 
 within the bosom of a single kin. 
 
 To such sacrifice the idea of a covenant, whether between 
 /the worshippers mutually or between the worshippers and 
 / their god, is not applicable, for a covenant means artificial 
 ; brotherhood, and has no place where the natural brother- 
 hood of which it is an imitation already subsists. The 
 Hebrews, indeed, who had risen above the conception 
 that the relation between Jehovah and Israel was that 
 of natural kinship, thought of the national religion as 
 constituted by a formal covenant-sacrifice at Mount Sinai, 
 
LECT. IX. SACRIFICE. 301 
 
 where the blood of the victims was applied to the altar 
 on the one hand, and to the people on the other,^ or even 
 by a still earlier covenant rite in which the parties were 
 Jehovah and Abraham.' And by a further development 
 of the same idea, every sacrifice is regarded in Ps. 1. 5 
 as a covenant between God and the worshipper.' But in 
 purely natural religions, where the god and his community 
 are looked upon as forming a physical unity, the idea that 
 religion rests on a compact is out of place, and acts of 
 religious communion can only be directed to quicken and 
 confirm the life - bond that already subsists between the 
 parties. Some provision of this sort may well seem to be 
 necessary where kinship is conceived in the very realistic 
 way of which we have had so many illustrations. Physical 
 unity of life, regarded as an actual participation in one 
 common mass of flesh and blood, is obviously subject to 
 modification by every accident that affects the physical 
 system, and especially by anything that concerns the 
 nourishment of the body and the blood. On this ground 
 alone it might well seem reasonable to reinforce the sacred 
 life from time to time by a physical process. And this 
 merely material line of thought naturally combines itself 
 with considerations of another kind, which contain the 
 
 ' Ex. xxiv. 4 sqq. ^ Gen. xv. 8 sqq. 
 
 ' That Jehovah's relation to Israel is not natural but ethical, is the doctrine 
 of the prophets, and is emphasised, in dependence on their teaching, in the 
 Book of Deuteronomy. But the passages cited show that the idea has its 
 foundation in pre-prophetic times ; and indeed the prophets, though they 
 give it fresh and powerful application, plainly do not regard the conception 
 as an innovation. In fact, a nation like Israel is not a natural unity like a 
 clan, and Jehovah as the national God was, from the time of Moses down- 
 ward, no mere natural clan god, but the god of a confederation, so that here 
 the idea of a covenant religion is entirely justified. The worship of Jehovah 
 throughout all the tribes of Israel and Judah is probably older than the 
 genealogical system that derives all the Hebrews from one natural parent ; 
 of. Kinship, p. 257. Mohammed's conception of heathen religion as resting 
 on alliance CWellh., p. 123) is also to be explained by the fact that the 
 great gods of Arabia in his time were not the gods of single clans. 
 
OFFERINGS OF lect. ix. 
 
 germ of an ethical idea. If the physical oneness of the 
 deity and his community is impaired or attenuated, the 
 help of the god can no longer be confidently looked for. 
 And conversely, when famine, plague or other disaster 
 shows that the god is no longer active on behalf of his 
 own, it is natural to infer that the bond of kinship with 
 him has been broken or relaxed, and that it is necessary 
 to retie it by a solemn ceremony, in which the sacred life 
 is again distributed to every member of the community. 
 From this point of view the sacramental rite is also an 
 atoning rite, which brings the community again into 
 harmony with its alienated god, and the idea of sacrificial 
 communion includes within it the rudimentary conception 
 of a piacular ceremony. In all the older forms of Semitic 
 ritual the notions of communion and atonement are bound 
 lip together, atonement being simply an act of com- 
 munion designed to wipe out all memory of previous 
 3strangement. 
 
 The actual working of these ideas may be seen in two 
 different groups of ritual observance. Where the whole 
 community is involved, the act of communion and atone- 
 ment takes the shape of sacrifice. But, besides this 
 communal act, we find what may be called private acts 
 of worship, in which an individual seeks to establish a 
 physical link of union between himself and the deity, 
 apart from the sacrifice of a victim, either by the use of 
 his own blood in a rite analogous to the blood covenant 
 between private individuals, or by other acts involving 
 an identical principle. Observances of this kind are 
 peculiarly instructive, because they exhibit in a simple 
 form the same ideas that lie at the root of the complex 
 system of ancient sacrifice; and it will be profitable to 
 devote some attention to them before we proceed further 
 with the subject of sacrifice proper. By so doing we shall 
 
LECT. IX. ONES OWN BLOOD. 303 
 
 indeed be carried into a considerable digression, but I hope 
 that we shall return to our main subject with a firmer 
 grasp of the fundamental principles involved.^ 
 
 In the ritual of the Semites and other nations, both 
 ancient and modern, we find many cases in which the 
 worshipper sheds his own blood at the altar, as a means of 
 recommending himself and his prayers to the deity.^ A 
 classical instance is that of the priests of Baal at the 
 contest between the god of Tyre and the God of Israel 
 (1 Kings xviii. 28). Similarly at the feast of the Syrian 
 goddess at Mabbog, the Galli and devotees made gashes in 
 their arms, or offered their backs to one another to beat,^ 
 exactly as is now done by Persian devotees at the annual 
 commemoration of the martyrdom of Hasan and Hosain.* 
 I have elsewhere argued that the general diffusion of 
 this usage among the Aramaeans is attested by the Syriac 
 word ethkashshaf, " make supplication," literally " cut 
 oneself." = 
 
 The current view about such rites in modern as in 
 ancient times has been that the effasion of blood' without 
 taking away life is a substitute for human sacrifice,^ an 
 explanation which recommends itself by its simplicity, and 
 
 ^ For the subject discussed in the following paragraphs, compare especially 
 the copious collection of materials by Dr. G. A. Wilken, Ueber das 
 Haaropfer, etc., Amsterdam, 1886-7. 
 
 2 Cf. Spencer, Ltg. Bit. Heb. ii. 13. 2. ^ Dea Syria, 1. 
 
 ' This seems to be a modern survival of the old rites of Anaitis-worship, 
 for the similar observances in the worship of Bellona at Rome under the 
 empire were borrowed from Cappadocia, and apparently from a form of the 
 cult of Anaitis (see the refs. in Rbscher, «.«.). The latter, again, was closely 
 akin to the worship of the Syrian goddess, and appears to have been 
 developed to a great extent under Semitic influence. See my paper on 
 "Ctesias and the Semiramis Legend," English Hist. Rev., April 1887. 
 
 =• Joum. Phil. xiv. 125 ; cf. Noldeke in ZDMG. xl. 723. 
 
 ^ See Pausanias, iii. 16. 10, where this is the account given of the bloody 
 ilagellation of the Spartan ephebi at the altar of Artemis Orthia. Similarly 
 Euripides, Iph. Taur. 1458 sqq.; cf. also Bourke, Snake Dance of the Zunis, 
 p. 196 ; and especially Wilken, oji. cit. p. 68 sqq. 
 
504 OFFERINGS OF 
 
 LECT. IX. 
 
 probably hits the truth with regard to certain eases. But 
 as a general explanation of the offering of his own blood 
 by a suppliant, it is not quite satisfactory. Human 
 sacrifice is offered not on behoof of the victim, but at the 
 expense of the victim on behoof of the sacrificing com- 
 munity, while the shedding of one's own blood is in many 
 cases a means of recommending oneself to the godhead. 
 Further, there is an extensive class of rites prevalent 
 among savage and barbarous peoples in which blood- 
 shedding forms part of an initiatory ceremony, by which 
 .^ youths, at or after the age of puberty, are admitted to 
 the status of a man, and to a full share in the social 
 privileges and sacra of the community. In both cases 
 the object of the ceremony must be to tie, or to confirm, 
 Ja blood-bond between the worshipper and the god by a 
 means more potent than the ordinary forms of stroking, 
 embracing or kissing the sacred stone. To this effect the 
 blood of the man is shed at the altar, or applied to the 
 image of the god, and has exactly the same efficacy as in 
 the forms of blood covenant that have been already 
 discussed.^ And that this is so receives strong confirma- 
 rtion from the identical practices observed among so many 
 [nations in mourning for deceased kinsmen. The Hebrew 
 law forbade mourners to gash or puncture themselves in 
 honour of the dead,^ evidently associating this practice, 
 which nevertheless was common down to the close of the 
 old kingdom,^ with heathenish rites. Among the Arabs 
 
 1 That the blood must fall on the altar, or at its foot, is expressly attested 
 in certain cases, e.g. in the Spartan worship of Artemis Orthia, and in 
 various Mexican rites of the same kind ; see Sahagun, Nouvelle Dspagne 
 (French Tr. 1880), p. 185. In Tibullus's account of Bellona worship (Lib. 
 i. EI. 6, TV. 45 sqq.) the blood is sprinkled on the idol ; the church -fathers 
 add that those who shared in the rite drank one another's blood. 
 
 ^ Lev. xix. 28, xxi. 5 ; Deut. xiv. 1. 
 
 ' Jer. xvi. 6. The funeral feast which Jeremiah mentions in tne follow- 
 ing verse (see the Revised Version, and compare Hos. ix. 4), and which has 
 
LECT. IX. one's own blood. 305 
 
 iu like manner, as among the Greeks and other ancient 
 nations, it was customary in mourning to scratch the face 
 to the effusion of blood.^ The original meaning of this 
 practice appears in the form which it has retained 
 among certain rude nations. In New South Wales, 
 " several men stand by the open grave and cut each 
 other's heads with a boomerang, and hold their heads 
 over the grave so that the blood from the wound falls on 
 the corpse." ^ Similarly in Otaheite the blood as well as 
 the tears shed in mourniug were received on pieces of 
 linen, which were thrown on the bier.' Here the applica- 
 tion of blood and tears to the dead is a pledge of enduring 
 affection ; and in Australia the ceremony is completed by 
 cutting a piece of flesh from the corpse, which is dried, 
 cut up and distributed among the relatives and friends 
 of the deceased ; some suck their portion " to get strength 
 and courage." The two-sided nature of the rite in this 
 case puts it beyond question that the object is to make an 
 enduring covenant with the dead. 
 
 Among the Hebrews and Arabs, and indeed among 
 many other peoples both ancient and modern, the lacera- 
 tion of the flesh in mourning is associated with the practice 
 of shaving the head or cutting off part of the hair and 
 
 for its object to comfort the mourners, is, I apprehend, in its origin a feast of 
 communion with the dead ; cf. Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 26 sqq. This 
 act of communion consoles the survivors ; but in the oldest times the 
 consolation has a physical basis ; thus the Arabian solwdn, or draught that 
 makes the mourner forget his grief, consists of water with which is mingled 
 dust from the grave (Wellh., p. 142), a form of communion precisely 
 similar in principle to the Australian usage of eating a small piece of 
 the corpse. 
 
 1 "Wellh., p. 160, gives the necessary citations. Cf. on the rites of 
 mourning in general, Bokhari, ii. 75 sq., and Ireytag in his Latin version 
 of the Hamdaa, i. 430 sq. 
 
 2 F. Bonney in Joum. Anthrop. Inst. xiii. (1884), p. 134. For this and 
 the following reference I am indebted to my friend Frazer. 
 
 3 Cook's First Voyage, Bk. i. ch. 19. 
 
 U 
 
306 OrFERINGS LECT. IX. 
 
 depositing it in the tomb or on the funeral pyre.^ Here 
 also a comparison of the usage of more primitive races 
 shews that the rite was originally two-sided, and had exactly 
 the same sense as the offering of the mourner's blood. 
 For among the Australians it is permitted to pull some 
 hair from the corpse in lieu of a part of its flesh. The 
 hair, in fact, is regarded by primitive peoples as a living 
 and important part of the body, and as such is the 
 object of many taboos and superstitions.^ Thus when the 
 hair of the living is deposited with the dead, and the 
 hair of the dead remains with the living, a permanent 
 ^ond of connection unites the two. 
 
 Now among the Semites and other ancient peoples the 
 hair-offering is common, not only in mourning but in the 
 
 '' See for the Arabs (among whom the practice was confined to women) 
 the authorities referred to above ; also Krehl, Eel. der Araber, p. 33, and 
 Goldziher, Muh. Stud. i. 248 ; note also the epithet halac = halica, 
 ' ' death. " For the Hebrews — whose custom was not to shave the whole head 
 but only the front of it — see Jer. xvi. 6 ; Amos viii. 10 ; Ezek. vii. 18 ; 
 and the legal prohibitions Lev. xix. 27 ; Deut. xiv. 1 ; cf. also Lev. xxi. 
 5 ; Ezek. xliv. 20. In the Hebrew case it is not expressly said that the 
 hair was laid on the tomb, but in Arabia this was done in the times of 
 heathenism, and is still done by some Bedouin tribes, according to the 
 testimony of modern travellers. A notable feature in the Arabian custom 
 is that alter sliaving her head the mourner wrapped it in the sicab, a cloth 
 stained with her own blood. See the verse ascribed to the poetess Al- 
 Khansa in Taj, s.v. 
 
 ^ Enc. Brit, article "Taboo." Wilkeu (op. cit. p. 78 sqq., and "De 
 Simsonsage," Gids, 1888, No. 5) has collected many instances to shew that 
 the hair is often regarded as the special seat of life and strength. It may 
 be conjectured that this idea is connected with the fact that the hair 
 continues to grow, and so to manifest life, even in mature age, and this 
 conjecture is supported by the fact that the nails are among many peoples 
 the object of similar superstitious regard. The practice of cutting off the 
 hair of the dead, or a part of it, is pretty widely diffused ; see Wilken, 
 Hcuiropfer, p. 74, and for the Arabs an isolated statement of a Mahiiby 
 Arab in Doughty, i. 450, to which Mr. Doughty does not appear to attach 
 much weight. Yet it seems to me that a custom of cutting off the hair of 
 the dead is implied, when we read that the Bekrites before the desperate 
 battle of Cidda shaved their heads as devoting themselves to death (Ham. 
 253, I. 17). Wilken supposes that the hair was originally cut away from 
 the corpse, or from the dying man, to facilitate the escape of the soul from 
 
LECT. IX. OF HAIR. 307 
 
 worship of the gods, and the details of the ritual in the 
 two cases are so exactly similar that we cannot doubt that 
 a single principle is involved in both. The hair of Achilles 
 was dedicated to the river-god Spercheus, in whose honour 
 it was to be shorn on his safe return from Troy ; but 
 knowing that he should never return, the hero transferred 
 the offering to the dead Patroclus, and laid his yellow locks 
 in the hand of the corpse. Arab women laid their hair 
 on the tomb of the dead ; young men and maidens in 
 Syria cut off their flowing tresses and deposited them in 
 caskets of gold and silver in the temples.^ The Hebrews 
 shaved the forepart of the head in mourning ; the 
 Arabs of Herodotus habitually adopted a like tonsure in 
 honour of their god Orotal, who was supposed to wear 
 his hair in the same way.^ To argue from these parallels 
 
 the body. This notion might very well recommend itself to the savage 
 mind, inasmuch as the hair continues to gi'ow for some time after death. 
 Bat when we find the hair of the dead used as a means of divination, or as a 
 charm, as is done among many peoples (Wilken, Ilaaropfer, Anh. ii.), we 
 arc led to think that the main object in cutting it off must be to preserve 
 it a£ a means of continued connection with tlie dead. The possession of hair 
 from a man's head or of a shaving from his nails is, in primitive magic, a 
 potent means of getting and retaining a hold over him. This, I suppose, 
 is the reason why an Arab before releasing a captive cut off his hair and 
 put it in his quiver ; see the authorities cited by Wilken, p. Ill, and add 
 Rasmussen, Addit. p. 70 sg. On the same principle Mohammed's hair was 
 preserved by his followers and worn on their persons (Muh. in Med. 429). 
 One such hair is the famous relic in the mosque of the Companion at 
 Cairawan. 
 
 ^ Dea Syria, Ix., where modern editors, by a totally inadmissible con- 
 jecture, make it appear that maidens offered their locks, and youths only 
 their beard. Cf. Ephraem Syrus, Op. Syr. i. 246 ; the Syriac version of 
 Lev. xix. 27 renders " ye shall not let your hair grow long," and Ephraem 
 explains that it was the custom of the heathen to let their hair grow for a 
 certain time, and then on a fixed day to shave the head in a temple or beside 
 a sacred fountain. 
 
 ^ The peculiar Arab tonsure is already referred to in Jer. xxv. 23, 
 E.V. It is found elsewhere in antiquity, e.g. in Euboea and in some parts 
 of Asia Minor {Iliad, ii. 542 ; Pint., Tlies. 5 ; Strabo, x. 3. 6 ; Choerilus ap. 
 Jos., (.'. Ap. i. 22 ; Pollux, ii. 28). At Delphi, where Greek ephehi were 
 wont to offer the long hair of their childhood, this peculiar cut was called 
 6»mU, for Theseus was said to have shorn only his front locks at the temple. 
 
30§ OFFERINGS 
 
 LECT. IX. 
 
 between customs of mourning and of religion that the 
 worship of the gods is based on the cult of the dead, 
 would be to go beyond the evidence ; what does appear 
 is that the same means which were deemed ef&cacious 
 to maintain an enduring covenant between the living 
 and the dead were used to serve the religious purpose 
 of binding together in close union the worshipper and his 
 god. 
 
 Starting from this general principle, we can explain 
 without difficulty the two main varieties of the hair- 
 offering as it occurs in religionr Tn its nature the 
 offering is a personal one, made on behalf of an individual, 
 not of a community. It does not therefore naturally 
 find a place in the stated and periodical exercises of 
 local or tribal religion, where a group of men is gathered 
 together in an ordinary act of communal worship. Its 
 proper object is to create or to emphasise the relation 
 between an individual and a god, and so it is in place 
 either in ceremonies of initiation, by which a new member 
 is incorporated into the circle of a particular religion, or 
 in connection with special vows and special acts of devo- 
 tion, by which a worshipper seeks to knit more closely 
 the bond between himself and his god. Thus in Greek 
 religion the hair-offering occurs either at the moment when 
 a youth enters on manhood, and so takes up a full share 
 in the religious as well as the political responsibilities of 
 a citizen, or else in fulfilment of a vow made at some 
 moment when a man is in special need of divine succour. 
 The same thing is true of Semitic religion, but to make 
 this clear requires some explanation. 
 
 Among the Curetes this was the way in which warriors wore their hair'; 
 presumably, therefore, children let the front locks grow long, and sacrificed 
 them on entering manhood, just as among the Arabs the two side locks are 
 the distinguishing mark of an immature lad. i 
 
LECT. IX. OP HAIR. 309; 
 
 In early societies a man's religion is determined by his 
 birth, for he is destined from his birth to become a 
 member of a particular political and social circle, which 
 is at the same time a distinct religious community. But 
 in many cases, perhaps in most, this destination has to be 
 confirmed by a formal act of admission to the community. 
 The child or immature stripling is not yet a full member 
 of his tribe or nation, he has not yet full civil privileges 
 and responsibilities, and in general, on the principle that 
 civil and religious status are inseparable, he has no full 
 part either in the rights or in the duties of the communal 
 religion. He is excluded from many religious ceremonies, 
 and conversely he can do without offence things which on 
 religious grounds are strictly forbidden to the full tribes- 
 man. Among rude nations the transition from civil and 
 religious immaturity to maturity is frequently preceded 
 by certain probationary tests of courage and endurance ; 
 for the full tribesman must above all things be a warrior. 
 In any case the step from childhood to manhood is too im- 
 portant to take place without a formal ceremony, and public 
 rites of initiation, importing the full and final incorporation 
 of the neophyte into the civil and religious fellowship 
 of his tribe or community.^ It is clear from what has 
 already been said that the application of the blood of the 
 youth to the sacred symbol, or the depositing of his hair 
 at the shrine of his people's god, is a fitting and significant 
 feature in such a ritual ; and among very many rude 
 peoples one or other of these ceremonies is actually 
 observed in connection with the rites which every young 
 man must pass through before he attains the position of a 
 warrior, and is allowed to marry and exercise the other 
 
 ^ In some cases the rite seems to be connected witli the transference of 
 the lad from the mother's to the father's kin. But for the present argu- 
 ment, it is not necessary to discuss this aspect of the matter, 
 
310 INITIATORY LECT. IX. 
 
 prerogatives of perfect manhood. Among wholly barbar- 
 ous races these initiation ceremonies have a very great 
 importance, and are often extremely repulsive in character. 
 The blood-offering in particular frequently takes a form 
 which makes it a severe test of the neophyte's courage — • 
 as in the cruel flagellation of Spartan ephebi at the altar 
 of Artemis Orthia, or in the frightful ordeal which takes 
 the place of simple circumcision in some of the wilder 
 mountain tribes of Arabia.^ As manners become less 
 fierce, and society ceases to be organised mainly for war, 
 the ferocity of primitive ritual is naturally softened, and 
 the initiation ceremony gradually loses importance, and 
 ultimately becomes a mere domestic celebration, which in 
 its social aspect may be compared to the private festivities 
 of a modern family when a son comes of age, and in its 
 religious aspect to the first communion of a youthful 
 Catholic. When the rite loses political significance, and 
 becomes purely religious, it is not necessary that it should 
 be deferred to the age of full manhood ; indeed the natural 
 tendency of pious parents will be to dedicate their child 
 as early as possible to the god who is to be his protector 
 through life. Thus circumcision, which, as will be shewn 
 hereafter, was originally a preliminary to marriage, and so a 
 ceremony of introduction to the full prerogative of manhood, 
 is now generally undergone by Mohammedan boys before 
 they reach maturity, while, among the Hebrews, infants were 
 circumcised on the eighth day from birth. Similar varia- 
 tions of usage apply to the Semitic hair-offering. Among 
 the Arabs in the time of Mohammed it was common to 
 sacrifice a sheep on the birth of a child, and then to shave 
 the head of the infant and daub the scalp with the blood of 
 the victim. This ceremony — called 'acica, or " the cutting 
 
 1 The connection between circumcision and the initiatory blood-offering 
 will he considered more fully in another place. 
 
LECT. IX. HAIR-OFFERINGS. 311 
 
 off of the hair " — was designed to " avert evil from the 
 child," and was evidently an act of dedication by which 
 the infant was brought under the protection of the god 
 of the community.^ Among Lucian's Syrians, on the other 
 hand, the hair of boys and girls was allowed to grow 
 unshorn as a consecrated thing from birth to adolescence, 
 and was cut off and dedicated at the sanctuary as a neces- 
 sary preliminary to marriage. In other words, the hair- 
 offering of youths and maidens was a ceremony of religious 
 initiation, through which they had to pass before they were 
 admitted to the status of social maturity. The same thing 
 appears to have occurred, at least in the case of maidens, 
 at Phoenician sanctuaries ; for the female worshippers at 
 the Adonis feast of Byblus, who, according to the author 
 just cited, were required to sacrifice either their hair or 
 their chastity,^ appear from other accounts to have been 
 generally maidens, of whom this act of devotion was 
 
 ^ That the hair was regarded as an offering appears from the Moslem 
 practice, referred by tradition to the example of Fatima, of bestowing in alms 
 its weight of silver. Alms are a religious oblation, and in the similar 
 custom which Herod., ii. 65, Died., i. 83, attest for ancient Egypt, the silver 
 was paid to the sanctuary. See for further details Kinship, p. 152 sqq., 
 where I have dwelt on the way in which such a ceremony would facilitate 
 the change of the child's kin, when the rule that the son followed the 
 father and not the mother began to be established. I still think that 
 this point is worthy of notice, and that the desire to fix the child's re- 
 ligion, and with it his tribal connection, at the earliest possible moment, 
 may have been one cause for performing the ceremony in infancy. Bnt 
 Nbldeke's remarks in ZDMG. xl. 184, and a fuller consideration of the 
 whole subject of the hair-oifering, have convinced me that the name 'acica 
 is not connected with the idea of change of kin, but is derived from the 
 cutting away of the first hair. In this, however, I see a confirmation of the 
 view that among the Arabs, as among the Syrians, the old usage was to 
 defer the cutting of the first hair till adolescence, for 'acca is a very strong 
 term to apply to the shaving of the scanty hair of a new-born infant, while 
 it is quite appropriate to the sacrifice of the long locks characteristic of 
 boyhood. Cf. also the use of the same verb in the phrases 'occat tami- 
 matuhu {Kamil, 405, 1. 19), 'acca 'l-shahahu tdmvmati (Taj, s.v.), used of 
 the cutting away, when manhood was reached, of the amulet worn during 
 childhood. 
 2 Dea Syria, vi. 
 
312 THS hair-offering LECT. IX. 
 
 exacted as a preliminary to marriage.^ I apprehend that 
 among the Arabs, in like manner, the 'aclca was originally 
 a ceremony of initiation into manhood, and that the 
 transference of the ceremony to infancy was a later in- 
 novation, for among the Arabs, as among the Syrians, 
 young lads let their hair grow long, and the sign of 
 immaturity was the retention of the side locks, which 
 adult warriors did not wear.'' The cutting of the side 
 locks was therefore a formal mark of admission into man- 
 hood, and in the time of Herodotus it must also have been 
 a formal initiation into the worship of Orotal, for other- 
 wise the religious significance which the Greek historian 
 attaches to the shorn forehead of the Arabs is unintelligible. 
 At that time, therefore, we must conclude that a hair- 
 offering, precisely equivalent to the 'aclca, took place upon 
 entry into manhood, and thereafter the front hair was 
 habitually worn short as a permanent memorial of this 
 dedicatory sacrifice. It is by no means clear that even in 
 later times the initiatory ceremony was invariably per- 
 formed in infancy, for the name 'acica, which in Arabic 
 denotes the first hair as well as the religious ceremony of 
 cutting it off, is sometimes applied to the ruddy locks of a 
 lad approaching manhood,* and figuratively to the plumage 
 of a swift young ostrich or the tufts of an ass's hair, 
 neither of which has much resemblance to the scanty 
 down on the head of a new-born babe.* 
 
 It would seem, therefore, that the oldest Semitic usage, 
 both in Arabia and in Syria, was to sacrifice the hair of 
 
 ' Sozomen, v. 10. 7. Cf. Socrates, i. 18, and the similar usage ia 
 Babylon, Herod., i. 199. "We are not to suppose that participation in 
 these rites was confined to maidens before marriage (Euseb., Vit. Const, iii. 
 58. 1), but it appears that it was obligatory on them. 
 
 2 See Wellh., Held. p. 119. 
 
 ^ Imraulcais, 3. 1 ; see also Lisdn, xii. 129, 1. 18, and Dozy, s.v, 
 
 * Zohair, 1. 17; JDiu). Hodh. 232. 9. The sense of "down," which 
 Nbldeke, ut supra, gives to the word in these passages, is hardly appropriate. 
 
LECT. IX. IN LATER LIFE. 313 
 
 childhood upon admission to the religious and social status 
 of manhood. 
 
 The bond between the worshipper and his god 'which 
 was established by means of the hair -offering had an 
 enduring character, but it was natural to renew it from 
 time to time, -when there was any reason to fear that the 
 interest of the deity in his votary might have been relaxed. 
 Thus it was customary for the inhabitants of Taif in Arabia 
 to shave their heads at the sanctuary of the town whenever 
 they returned from a journey.^ Here the idea seems to be 
 that absence from the holy place might have loosened the 
 religious tie, and that it was proper to bind it fast again. 
 In like manner the hair-offering formed part of the ritual 
 in every Arabian pilgrimage,^ and also at the great feasts 
 of Byblus and Bambyce,^ which were not mere local 
 celebrations, but drew worshippers from distant parts. 
 The worshipper in these cases desired to attach himself 
 as firmly as possible to a deity and a shrine with which 
 he could not hope to keep up frequent and regular con- 
 nection, and thus it was fitting that, when he went forth 
 from the holy place, he should leave part of himself 
 behind, as a permanent link of union with the temple 
 and the god that inhabited it. 
 
 The Arabian and Syrian pilgrimages with which the 
 hair-offering was associated were exceptional services ; in 
 many cases their object was to place the worshipper under 
 the protection of a foreign god, whose cult had no place in 
 the pilgrim's local and natural religion, and in any case 
 
 1 Muh. in Med. p. 381. 
 
 ^ Wellh., p. 117 ; Goldziher, op. cit. p. 249. That the hair was shaved 
 as an offering appeirs most clearly in the worship of Ocaisir, where it was 
 mixed with an oblation of meal. 
 
 ^ Vea Syria, vi., Iv. In the latter case the eyebrows also were shared, 
 and the sacrifice of hair from the eyebrow reappears in Peru, in the laws of 
 the Incas. On the painted inscription' of Citium (C. I. S. No. 86), barbers 
 (D3PJ) are enumerated among the stated ministers of the temple. 
 
314 THE HAIE-OFFEEING LECT. ix. 
 
 the service was not part of a man's ordinary religious 
 duties, but was spontaneously undertaken as a work of 
 special piety, or under the pressure of circumstances that 
 made the pilgrim feel the need of coming into closer 
 touch with the divine powers. Among the Hebrews, at 
 least in later times, when stated pilgrimages to Jerusalem 
 were among the ordinary and imperative exercises of 
 every man's religion, the pilgrimage did not involve a hair- 
 offering, nor is it probable that in any part of antiquity 
 this form of service was required in connection with 
 ordinary visits to one's own local temple. The Penta- 
 teuchal law recognises the hair-offering only in the case 
 of the peculiar vow of the ISTazarite, the ritual of which 
 is described in Num. vi. The details there given do 
 not help us to understand what part the Nazarite held 
 in the actual religious life of the Jews under the law, 
 but from Josephus ^ we gather that the vow was generally 
 taken in times of sickness or other trouble, and that it 
 was therefore exactly parallel to the ordinary Greek vow 
 to offer the hair on deliverance from urgent danger. From 
 the antique point of view the fact that a man is in straits 
 or peril is a proof that the divine powers on which his life 
 is dependent are estranged or indifferent, and a warning to 
 bring himself into closer relation with the god from whom 
 he is estranged. The hair- offering affords the natural 
 means towards this end, and if the offering cannot be 
 accomplished at the moment, it ought to be made the 
 subject of a vow, for a vow is the recognised way of 
 antedating a future act of service and making its efficacy 
 begin at once. A vow of this kind, aiming at the redin- 
 tegration of normal relations with the deity, is naturally 
 more than a bare promise; it is a promise for the per- 
 formance of which one at once begins to make active 
 ^B. J. ii. 15. ]. 
 
LECT. IX. IN VOWS. 315 
 
 preparation, so that the life of the votary from the time 
 when he assumes the engagement is taken out of the 
 ordinary sphere of secular existence, and becomes one 
 continuous act of religion.^ As soon as a man takes 
 the vow to poll his locks at the sanctuary, the hair is a 
 consecrated thing, and as such inviolable till the moment 
 for discharging the vow arrives ; and so the flowing locks 
 of the Hebrew Nazarite or of a Greek votary like Achilles 
 are the visible marks of his consecration. In like manner 
 the Arabian pilgrim, whose resolution to visit a distant 
 shrine was practically a vow,^ was not allowed to poll 
 or even to comb and wash his locks till the pilgrimage 
 was accomplished ; and on the same principle the whole 
 course of his journey, from the day when he first set his 
 face towards the temple with the resolution to do homage 
 there, was a period of consecration (ihrdm),^ during which 
 he was subject to a number of other ceremonial restrictions 
 or taboos, of the same kind with those imposed by actual 
 presence in the sanctuary. 
 
 The taboos connected with pilgrimages and other vows 
 require some further elucidation, but to go into the matter 
 now would carry us too far from the point immediately 
 before us. I will therefore reserve what I have still to say 
 on this subject for an additional note.^ What has been 
 said already covers all the main examples of the hair-offer- 
 ing among the Semites. They present considerable variety 
 of aspect, but the result of our discussion is that they can 
 
 1 Of course if the vow is conditional on something to happen in the future, 
 the engagement does not necessarily come into force till the condition is 
 fulfilled. 
 
 * In Mohammedan law it is expressly reckoned as a vow. 
 
 '■' Under Islam the consecration of the pilgrim need not begin till he 
 reaches the boundaries of the sacred territory. But it is permitted, and 
 according to many authorities preferable, to assume the ihrdm on leaving 
 one's home, and this was the ancient practice. 
 
 * See Additional Note K. The Taboos incident to Pilgrimages and Vows.. 
 
316: OFFERINGS OF lect. IX. 
 
 be referred to a single principle. In their origin the hair- 
 offering and the offering of one's own blood are precisely 
 similar in meaning. But the blood - offering, while it 
 presents the idea of life union with the god in the strongest 
 possible form, is too barbarous to be long retained as an 
 ordinary act of religion. It continued to be practised, 
 among the civilised Semites, by certain priesthoods and 
 societies of devotees ; but in the habitual worship of laymen 
 it either fell out of use or was retained only in a very 
 attenuated form, in the custom of tattooing the flesh with 
 punctures in honour of the deity.^ The hair-offering, on 
 the other hand, which involved nothing offensive to civilised 
 feelings, continued to play an important part in religion to 
 the close of paganism, and even entered into Christian ritual 
 in the tonsure of priests and nuns.^ 
 
 Closely allied to the practice of leaving part of oneself 
 
 ^ For the trTiy/i.ara on the wrists and n.ects of the heathen Syrians the 
 classical passage is Dea Syria, lix. ; compare for further evidence the discus- 
 sion in Spencer, Leg. Bit. Heb. ii. 14 ; and see also Kinship, p. 213 sqq. 
 The tattooed marks were the sign that the worshipper belonged to the god ; 
 thus at.the temple of Heracles at the Canobio mouth of the Nile, the fugitive 
 slave who had been marked with the sacred stigmata could not be reclaimed 
 by his master (Herod., ii. 113). The practice therefore stands on one line 
 with the branding or tattooing of cattle, slaves and [irisoners of war. But in 
 Lev. xix. 28, where tattooing is condemned as a heathenish practice, it is 
 immediately associated with incisions in the flesh made in mourning or in 
 hononr of the dead, and this suggests that in their ultimate origin the 
 stigmata are nothing more than the permanent scars of punctures made to 
 draw blood for a ceremony of self-dedication to the deity. Among the Arabs 
 I find no direct evidence of a religious significance attached to tattooing, and 
 the practice appears to have been confined to women, as was also the habitual 
 use of amulets in mature life. The presumption is that this coincidence is 
 not accidental, but that the tattooed marks were originally sacred stigmata 
 like those of the Syrians, and so were conceived to have the force of a charm. 
 Pietro della Valle (ed. 1843), i. 395, describes the Arabian tattooing, and says 
 that it is practised all over the East by men as well as by women. But so 
 far as I have observed, it is only Christian men that tattoo in Syria, and 
 with them the pattern chosen is a sacred symbol, which has been shown to 
 me as a proof that a nian was exempt from the military service to which 
 Moslems are liable. 
 
 * The latter was practised in Jerome's time in the monasteries of Egypt 
 and Syria {Ep. 147 ad Sabinianum). 
 
LECT. IX. CLOTHING AND RA.6S. 317 
 
 — whether blood or hair — in contact with the god at the 
 sanctuary, are offerings of part of one's clotlies or other 
 things that one has worn, such as ornaments or weapons. 
 In the Iliad Glaucus and Diomede exchange armour in 
 token of their ancestral friendship ; and when Jonathan 
 makes a covenant of love and brotherhood with David, he 
 invests him with his garments, even to his sword, his bow, 
 and his girdle.^ Among the Arabs he who seeks pro- 
 tection lays hold of the garments of the man to whom 
 he appeals, or more formally ties a knot in the head- 
 shawl of his protector.^ In the old literature "pluck 
 away my garments from thine " means " put an end to our 
 attachment." ° The clothes are so far part of a man that 
 they can serve as a vehicle of personal connection. Hence 
 the religious significance of suspending on an idol or 
 Dhat Anwai, not only weapons, ornaments and complete 
 garments, but mere shreds from one's raiment. These 
 rag - offerings are still to be seen hanging on the sacred 
 trees of Syria and on the tombs of Mohammedan saints ; 
 they are not gifts in the ordinary sense, but pledges of 
 attachment. In all probability the rending of garments in 
 mourning was originally designed to procure such an offer- 
 ing for the dead, just as the tearing of the hair on the like 
 
 1 1 Sam. xviii. 3 sq. I presume that by ancient law Saul was bound to 
 acknowledge tbe formal covenant thus made between David and liis son, and 
 that this ought to be taken into account in judging of the subsequent 
 relations between the three. 
 
 2 "Wellhausen, Jfeidenthum, p. 105, note 3 ; Burckhardt, Bed. and Wah. 
 i. 130 sq. ; Blunt, Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, i. 42. The knot, sajs 
 Burckhardt, is tied that the protector may look out for witnesses to prove 
 the act, and "the same custom is observed when any transaction is to be 
 witnessed." But primarily, I apprehend, the knot is the symbolic sign of 
 the engagement that the witnesses are called to prove, and I was told in the 
 Hijaz that the suppliant gets a fragment of the fringe of the shawl to keep 
 as his token of the transaction. In the covenant sacrifice, Herod., iii. 8, the 
 blood is applied to the sacred stones with threads from the garments of the 
 two contracting parties. 
 
 3 Imraulc, Moall. 1. 21. 
 
318 ATONING FORCE LECT. ix. 
 
 occasion is not a natural sign of mourning, but a relic of 
 the hair-offering. Natural signs of mourning must not be 
 postulated lightly ; in all such matters habit is a second 
 nature.^ 
 
 Finally, I may note in a single word that the counter- 
 part of the custom of leaving part of oneself or of one's 
 clothes with the deity at the sanctuary, is the custom of 
 wearing sacred relics as charms, so that something belong- 
 ing to the god remains always in contact with one's 
 person. 
 
 The peculiar instructiveness of the series of usages 
 which we have been considering, and the justification for 
 the long digression from the subject of sacrifice into which 
 they have led us, is that in them we find the conception of 
 ceremonies, designed to establish a life-bond between the 
 worshipper and his god, dissociated from the death of a 
 victim and from every idea of penal satisfaction to the 
 deity. They have indeed an atoning force, whenever they 
 are used to renew relations with a god who is temporarily 
 estranged, but this is merely a consequence of the concep- 
 tion that the physical link which they establish between 
 the divine and human parties in the rite binds the god to 
 the man as well as the man to the god. Even in the case 
 of the blood-offering there is no reason to hold that the 
 pain of the self-inflicted wounds had originally any signifi- 
 cant place in the ceremony. But no doubt, as time went 
 on, the barbarous and painful sacrifice of one's own blood 
 came to be regarded as more efficacious than the simpler 
 and commoner hair-offering; for in religion what is un- 
 usual always appears to be more potent, and more fitted to 
 reconcile an offended deity. 
 
 1 It is to be noted that all expressions of sorrow and distress are derived 
 from the formal usages employed in primitive times in mourning for the 
 dead. 
 
LECT. IX. OP BLOOD-OFFERINGS. 319 
 
 The use of the Syriac word ethkashshaph seems to show 
 that the sacrifice of one's own blood was mainly associated 
 among the Aramaeans with deprecation or supplication to 
 an angry god, and though I cannot point among the Semites 
 to any formal atoning ceremony devised on this principle, 
 the idea involved can be well illustrated by a rite still 
 sometimes practised in Arabia, as a means of making atone- 
 ment to a man for offences short of murder. With bare 
 and shaven head the offender appears at the door of the 
 injured person, holding a knife in each hand, and, reciting a 
 formula provided for the purpose, strikes his head several 
 times with the sharp blades. Then drawing his hands over 
 his bloody scalp, he wipes them on the doorpost. The 
 other must then come out and cover the suppliant's head 
 with a shawl, after which he kills a sheep, and they sit 
 down together at a feast of reconciliation. The character- 
 istic point in this rite is the application of the blood to the 
 doorpost, which, as in the passover service, or in the Arabian 
 custom of sprinkling the blood of a sacrifice on the tents 
 of a host going out to battle,^ is equivalent to applying it 
 to the person of the inmates. Here, therefore, we still see 
 the old idea at work, that the reconciling value of the rite 
 lies, not in the self-inflicted wounds, but in the application 
 of the blood to make a life-bond between the two parties. 
 
 On the same analogy, when we turn to those blood- 
 rites in which a whole community takes part, and in which 
 therefore a victim has to be slaughtered to provide the 
 material for the ceremony, we may expect to find that, 
 at least in old times, the significant part of the ceremony 
 does not lie in the death of the victim, but in the appli- 
 cation of its life or life-blood ; and in this expectation we 
 shall not be disappointed. 
 
 Of all Semitic sacrifices those of the Arabs have the rudest 
 
 ^ Waoidi, ed. Kremer, p. 28, 1. 8. 
 
320 AEABIAK 
 
 LECT. IX. 
 
 and most visibly primitive character ; and among the Arabs, 
 where there was no complicated fire-ceremony at the altar, 
 the sacramental meal stands out in full relief as the very 
 essence of the ritual. Now in the oldest known form of 
 Arabian sacrifice, as described by Nilus, the camel chosen 
 as the victim is bound upon a rude altar of stones piled 
 together, and when the leader of the band has thrice led 
 the worshippers round the altar in a solemn procession 
 accompanied with chants, he inflicts the first wound, while 
 the last words of the hymn are still upon the lips of the 
 congregation, and in all haste drinks of the blood that 
 gushes forth. Forthwith the whole company fall on the 
 victim with their swords, hacking off pieces of the quiver- 
 ing flesh and devouring them raw with such wild haste 
 that, in the short interval between the rise of the day star, 
 which marked the hour for the service to begin, and the 
 disappearance of its rays before the rising sun, the entire 
 camel, body and bones, skin, blood and entrails, is wholly 
 devoured. The plain meaning of this is that the victim was 
 devoured before its life had left the still warm blood and 
 flesh — raw flesh is called " living " flesh in Hebrew and 
 Syriac — and that thus in the most literal way all those who 
 shared in the ceremony absorbed part of the victim's life 
 into themselves. One sees how much more forcibly than 
 any ordinary meal such a rite expresses the establishment 
 or confirmation of a bond of common life between the 
 worshippers, and also, since the blood is shed upon the 
 altar itself, between the worshippers and their god. 
 
 In this sacrifice, then, the significant factors are two : the 
 conveyance of the living blood to the godhead, and the 
 absorption of the living flesh and blood into the flesh and 
 blood of the worshippers. Each of these is effected in the 
 .simplest and most direct manner, so that the meaning 
 of the ritual is perfectly transparent. In later Arabian 
 
LECT. IX. SACRIFICE. 321 
 
 sacrifices, and still more iu the sacrifices of the more 
 civilised Semitic nations, the primitive crudity of the 
 ceremonial was modified, and the meaning of the act is 
 therefore more or less disguised, but the essential type of 
 the ritual remains the same. 
 
 In all Arabian sacrifices except the holocaust — which 
 occurs only in the case of human victims — the godward 
 side of the ritual is summed up in the shedding of the 
 victim's blood, so that it flows over the sacred symbol, or 
 gathers in a pit (ghabghab) at the foot of the altar idol. 
 An application of the blood to the summit of the sacred 
 stone may be added, but that is all.-' "What enters the 
 ghahghab is held to be conveyed to the deity ; thus at 
 certain Arabian shrines the pit under the altar was the 
 place where votive treasures were deposited. A pit to 
 receive the blood existed also at Jerusalem under the 
 altar of burnt-offering, and similarly in certain Syrian 
 sacrifices the blood was collected in a hollow, which 
 apparently bore the name of mashkan, and thus was 
 designated as the habitation of the godhead.^ 
 
 In Arabia, accordingly, the most solemn act in the ritual 
 is the shedding of the blood, which in NlIus's narrative 
 takes place at the moment when the sacred chant comes 
 to an end. This, therefore, is the crisis of the service, to 
 which the choral procession round the altar leads up.^ 
 In later Arabia the tawdf, or act of circling the sacred 
 stone, was still a principal part of religion ; but even 
 
 1 Zohair, x. 24. 
 
 ^ See the text published by Dozy and De Goeje in the Actes of the 
 Leyden Congress of Orientalists, 1883, vol. iii. pp. 337, 363. For the 
 ghahghab, see p. 181 supra, and Wellhausen, p. 100. Compare also the 
 Persian ritual, Strabo, xv. 3. 14, and that of certain Greek sacrifices, 
 Plutarch, Aristides, xxi. : rov To-vfiov us rm •^u^ky o-^a^a?. 
 
 3 The festal song of praise (7?n, tahlU) properly goes -with the dance 
 round the altar (of. Ps. xxvi. 6 sq.), for in primitive times song and dance 
 are inseparable, 
 
 X 
 
322 ARABIAN 
 
 LECT. IX. 
 
 before Mohammed's time it liad begun to be dissociated 
 from sacrifice, and become a meaningless ceremony. 
 Again, the original significance of the wocuf, or " standing," 
 which in the ritual of the post-Mohammedan pilgrimage 
 has in like manner become an unmeaning ceremomy, is 
 doubtless correctly explained by Wellhausen, who compares 
 it with the scene described by more than one old poet 
 where the worshippers stand round the altar idol, at a 
 respectful distance, gazing with rapt attention, while the 
 slaughtered victims lie stretched on the ground. The 
 moment of this act of adoration must be that when the 
 slaughter of the victims is just over, or still in progress, 
 and their blood is draining into the ghahghah, or being 
 applied by the priest to the head of the nosh} 
 
 In the developed forms of North Semitic worship, 
 where fire - sacrifices prevail, the slaughter of the victim 
 loses its importance as the critical point in the ritual. 
 The altar is above all things a hearth, and the burning of 
 the sacrificial fat is the most solemn part of the service. 
 
 This, however, is certainly not primitive ; for even in 
 the period of fire - sacrifice the Hebrew aitar is called 
 natD, that is " the place of slaughter," ^ and in ancient 
 times the victim was slain on or beside the altar, just as 
 among the Arabs, as appears from the account of the 
 sacrifice of Isaac, and from 1 Sam. xiv. 34.^ The 
 latter passage proves that in the time of Saul the Hebrews 
 still knew a form of sacrifice in which the offering was 
 
 1 Wellh., p. 56 sq. ; Yacut, iii. 94, 1. 13 sq. (cf. Noldeke in .^i)ilf (?. 1887, 
 p. 721) ; ibid. p. 182, 1. 2 sq. (supra, p. 211). 
 
 ^ Aram, niadbah, Arab, madhbah ; the latter means also a trench in the 
 ground, which is intelligible from what has been said about the gJiabghab. 
 
 3 Snpra, p. 185. In Ps. cxviii. 27 the festal victim is bound with 
 cords to the horns of the altar, a relic of ancient usage which was no 
 longer intelligible to the Septuagint translators or to the Jewish traditional 
 expositors. Cf. the sacrificial stake to which the victim is bound in Vedic 
 sacrifices. 
 
LECT. IX. SACRIFICE. 323 
 
 completed in the oblation of the blood. And even in 
 the case of fire-sacrifice the blood was not cast upon the 
 flames, but dashed against the sides of the altar or poured 
 out at its foot ; the new ritual was not able wholly to 
 displace the old. 
 
 As regards the manward part of the ritual, the revolt- 
 ing details given by Ndus have naturally no complete 
 parallel in the worship of the more civilised Semites, or 
 even of the later Arabs. In lieu of the scramble described 
 by Mlus — the wild rush to cut gobbets of flesh from the 
 still quivering victim — we find among the later Arabs a 
 partition of the sacrificial flesh among all who are present 
 at the ceremony. Yet it seems possible that the ijaza, or 
 " permission,'' that is, the word of command that terminates 
 the wocuf, was originally the permission to fall upon the 
 slaughtered victim. In the Meccan pilgrimage the ijaza 
 which terminated the wocuf at 'Arafa was the signal for 
 a hot race to the neighbouring sanctuary of Mozdalifa, 
 where the sacred flre of the god Cozah burned ; it was, in 
 fact, not so much the permission to leave 'Arafa as to draw 
 near to Cozah. The race itself is called ifacla, which may 
 mean either " dispersion " or " distribution." It cannot 
 well mean the former, for 'Arafa is not holy ground, but 
 merely the point of assemblage, just outside the Haram, 
 at which the ceremonies began, and the station at 'Arafa 
 is only the preparation for the vigil at Mozdahfa. On 
 the other hand, if the meaning is " distribution," the ifacla 
 answers to the rush of Mlus's Saracens to partake of the 
 sacriflce. The only difference is that at Mozdalifa the 
 crowd is not allowed to assemble close to the altar, but 
 has to watch the performance of the solemn rites from 
 afar; compare Ex. xix. 10-13.^ 
 
 ' It may be noted that the ceremonies at Mozdalifa lay wholly between 
 sunrise and sunset, and that there was apparently one sacrifice just at or 
 
324 BLOOD-BATING IN lect. ix. 
 
 The substitutiou of an orderly division of the victim 
 for the scramble described by Mlus does not touch the 
 meaning of the ceremonial. Much more important, from 
 its effect in disguising an essential feature in the ritual", 
 is the modification by v?hich, in most Semitic sacrifices, 
 the flesh is not eaten ravr but sodden or roasted, for in 
 this way the point is lost that the participants receive 
 into themselves the very life of the victim. But it is 
 obvious that this change could not fail to establish itself 
 with the progress of civilisation, and various indications 
 remain to shew that the idea of communion in the actual 
 life of the victim was not altogether lost. Even in the 
 latest, post-exilic, part of the Pentateuchal legislation it 
 was found necessary in the law of the Passover to forbid 
 the Paschal lamb to be devoured raw ; and that bloody 
 morsels were consumed by the heathen in Palestine, and 
 also by the less orthodox Israelites, is apparent from 
 Zech. ix. 7, Ezek. xxxiii. 25,-^ Lev. xix. 26. The context 
 of these passages, and the penalty of excommunication 
 attached to the eating of blood in Lev. vii. 27, justify us 
 in assuming that the heathen practice had a directly 
 religious significance, and occurred in connection with 
 sacrifice to heathen deities. That the eating of blood was 
 in fact used, as an act of communion with heathen deities, 
 is affirmed by Maimonides, not as a mere inference from 
 the Biblical texts, but on the basis of Arabic accounts of 
 
 after sunset and another before sunrise, — another point of contact with the 
 ritual described by Nilus. The mooT/' corresponding to the morning sacrifice 
 was of course held at Mozdalifa within the Haram, for the pilgrims were 
 already consecrated by the previous service. Nabigha in t\^-o places speaks 
 of a race of pilgrims to a place called Hal. If the reference is to the Meccan 
 l}ajj, Hal must be Mozdalifa, not, as the geographers suppose, a place at 
 'Arafa. 
 
 ' I cannot comprehend why Comill coiTects Ezek. xxxiii. 25 by Ezek. xviii. 
 6, xxii. 9, and not conversely ; cf. LXX. on Lev. xix. 26, where the same 
 mistake occurs. 
 
LECT. IX. LATER SACRIFICES. 325 
 
 the religion of the Harranians.^ It would seem, however, 
 that even among the heathen of the Northern Semitic 
 lands the ritual of blood-eating must have been rare ; 
 presumably, indeed, it was confined to certain mystic 
 initiations, and did not extend to ordinary sacrifices.^ 
 
 In the legal sacrifices of the Hebrews blood was never 
 eaten, but in the covenant sacrifice of Ex, xxiv. it is 
 sprinkled on the worshippers, which, as we have already 
 learned by a comparison of the various forms of the blood 
 covenant between men, has the same meaning. In later 
 forms of sacrifice this feature disappears, and the com- 
 munion between god and man, which is still the main 
 thing in ordinary sacrifices, is expressed by burning part 
 of the flesh on the altar, while the rest is cooked and 
 eaten by the worshippers. But ' the application of the 
 
 1 Dalulat al-Halnn, iii. 46, vol. iii. p. 104 of Munk's ed. (Paris, 1866) 
 and p. 371 of his translation. That Maimonides had actual accounts of the 
 Harraniaus to go on appears by comparing the passage with that quoted 
 above from an Arabic source in the Actes of the Leydeu Congress ; but 
 there may be a, doubt whether his authorities attested blood-eating among 
 the Harranians, or only supplied hints by which he interpreted the Biblical 
 evidence. 
 
 ^ For the mystic sacrifices of the heathen Semites see above, p. 272 sqq. 
 That these sacrifices were eaten with the blood appears from a comparison 
 of Isa. Ixv. 4, Ixvi. 3, 17. All these passages refer to the same circle of rites, 
 in which the victims chosen were such animals as were strictly taboo in 
 ordinary life — the swine, the dog, the mouse and vermin (fpEJ') generally. 
 To such sacrifices, as we learn from bcvi. 17, a peculiar consecrating and 
 purifying efficacy was attached, which must be ascribed to the sacramental 
 participation in the sacrosanct flesh. The flesh was eaten in the form of 
 broth, which in Ixv. 4 is called broth of piggullm, i.e. of carrion, or flesh so 
 killed as to retain the blood in it (Ezek. iv. 14 ; cf. Zech. ix. 7). We are 
 to think, therefore, of a broth made with the blood, like the black broth of 
 the Spartans, which seems also to have been originally a sacred food, reserved 
 for wamors. The dog-sacrifice in Ixvi. 3 is killed by breaking its neck, 
 which agrees with this conclusion. Similarly in the mysteries of the Ainos 
 the sacred bear, which forms the sacrifice, is killed without effusion of blood ; 
 cf. the Indian rite, Strabo, xv. 1. 54 (Satapatha Brahmana, tr. Eggeling, ii. 
 190), and the Cappadocian, ihid. xv. 3. ]5 ; also the Finnish sacrifice, 
 Mannhardt, Ant. Wold u. Fddkulte, p. 160, and other cases of the same 
 kind, Journ. R. Geog. Soc. vol. iii. p. 283, vol. xl. p. 171. Spencer 
 compares the wixra, of Acts xv. 20. 
 
326 THE SPRINKLING lect. ix. 
 
 living blood to the worshipper is retained in certain special 
 cases — at the consecration of priests and the purification 
 of a leper ^ — where it is proper to express in the strongest 
 way the establishment of a special bond between the god 
 and his servant,^ or the restitution of one who has been 
 cut off from religious fellowship with the deity and the 
 community of his worshippers. In like manner, in the 
 forms of sin-ofifering described in Lev. iv., it is at least 
 required that the priest should dip his finger in the blood 
 of the victim ; and in this kind of ritual, as is expressly 
 stated in Lev. x. 17, the priest acts as the representative 
 of the sinner or bears his sin. Again, the blood of the 
 Paschal lamb is applied to the door-posts, and so extends 
 its efficacy to all within the dwelling — the " house " in all 
 the Semitic languages standing for the household or family. 
 Quite similarly, before the Coraish went forth to the battle 
 of Bedr, camels were slaughtered, and every tent was 
 sprinkled with the blood of a victim whose life was still in 
 it.^ This last detail supplies a noteworthy parallel to 
 Mlus's narrative ; and so also the precept that the passover 
 must be eaten in haste, in ordinary outdoor attire, and 
 that no part of it must remain till the morning, becomes 
 intelligible if we regard it as having come down from a 
 time when the living flesh was hastily devoured beside the 
 altar before the sun rose.^ From all this it is apparent 
 
 1 Ley. viii. 23, xiv. 6, 14. 
 
 ^ The relation between God and His priests rests on a covenant (Dent. 
 xxxiii. 9 ; Mai. ii. 4 sqq.). ' Wacidi, ed. Kremer, p. 28, 1. 8. 
 
 * There is so much that is antique about the Paschal ritual that one is 
 tempted to think that the law of Ex. xii. 46, " neither shall ye break a 
 bone thereof," may be a prohibition of some usage descended from the rule, 
 given by Nilus, that the bones as well as the flesh must be consumed. Were 
 the bones in certain sacrifices pounded and eaten ? If so, we can understand 
 the Harranian legend {Fihrist, p. 322,-1. 29), that the bones of the murdered 
 Tammuz were pounded in a mill ; for the legends of the death of the gods — 
 as we see in the Dionysiac myths — are ordinarily projections into mythology 
 of the rules of sacrificial ritual. 
 
LECT. IX. OF BLOOD. 327 
 
 that the ritual described by Nilus is by no means an 
 isolated invention of the religious fancy, in one of the most 
 barbarous corners of the Semitic world, but a very typical 
 embodiment of the main ideas that underlie the sacrifices 
 of the Semites generally. Even in its details it probably 
 comes nearer to the primitive form of Semitic worship than 
 any other sacrifice of which we have a description. 
 
 We may now take it as made out that, throughout the 
 Semitic field, the fundamental idea of sacrifice is not that 
 of a sacred tribute, but of communion between the god and 
 his worshippers by joint participation in the living flesh 
 and blood of a sacred victim. We see, however, that in 
 the more advanced forms of ritual this idea becomes 
 attenuated and tends to disappear, at least in the commoner 
 kinds of sacrifice. When men cease to eat raw or living 
 flesh, the blood, to the exclusion of the solid parts of the 
 body, comes to be regarded as the vehicle of life and the 
 true res sacravienti. And the nature of the sacrifice as a 
 sacramental act is still further disguised when — for reasons 
 that will by and by appear more clearly — -the sacramental 
 blood is no longer drunk by the worshippers but only 
 sprinkled on their persons, or finally finds no manward 
 application at all, but is wholly poured out at the altar, 
 so that it becomes the proper share of the deity, while the 
 flesh is left to be eaten by man. This is the common 
 form of Arabian sacrifice, and among the Hebrews the 
 same form is attested by 1 Sam. xiv. 34. At this stage, 
 at least among the Hebrews, the original sanctity of the 
 life of domestic animals is still recognised in a modified 
 form, inasmuch as it is held unlawful to use their flesh for 
 food except in a sacrificial meal. But this rule is not 
 strict enough to prevent flesh from becoming a familiar 
 luxury. Sacrifices are multiplied on trivial occasions of 
 religious. gladness or social festivity, and the rite of eating 
 
328 ATONING LECT. IX. 
 
 at the sanctuary loses the character of an exceptional 
 sacrament, and means no more than that men are invited 
 to feast and be merry at the table of their god, or that no 
 feast is coraplete in which the god has not his share. 
 
 This stage in the evolution of ritual is represented by 
 the worship of the Hebrew high places, or, beyond the 
 Semitic field, by the religion of the agricultural com- 
 munities of Greece. Historically, therefore, it coincides 
 with the stage of religious development in which the 
 deity is conceived as the king of his people and the lord 
 of the land, and as such is habitually approached with 
 gifts and tribute. It was the rule of antiquity, and still 
 is the rule in the East, that the inferior must not present 
 himself before his superior without a gift to " smooth his 
 face" and make him gracious.^ The same phrase is 
 habitually applied in the Old Testament to acts of 
 sacrificial worship, and in Ex. xxiii. 1 5 the rule is formu- 
 lated that no one shall appear before Jehovah empty- 
 handed. Awpa 6eov<; ireWei, Stw^' alBoiov; ^aaiXija?. 
 
 As the commonest gifts in a simple agricultural state of 
 society necessarily consisted of grain, fruits and cattle, 
 which served to maintain the open hospitality that pre- 
 vailed at the courts of kings and great chiefs, it was natural 
 that animal sacrifices, as soon as their sacramental signifi- 
 cance fell into the background, should be mainly regarded 
 as gifts of homage, presented at the court of the divine 
 king, out of which he maintained a public table for his 
 worshippers. In part they were summed up along with 
 the cereal oblations of first-fruits as stated tributes, which 
 every one who desired to retain the favour of the god was 
 expected to present at fixed seasons, in part they were 
 
 M'JQ n^n, Prov. xix. 6; Ps. xlv. 13 (12), E.V., " intreat his favour.' 
 In the Old Testament the phrase is much oftener used of acts of worship 
 addressed to the deity, e.g. 1 Sam. xiii. 12, of the burnt-offering. 
 
LECT. IX. OFFERINGS. 329 
 
 special offerings with which the worshipper associated 
 special petitions, or with which he approached the deity to 
 present his excuses for a fault and request forgiveness.^ 
 In the case where it is the business of the worshipper to 
 make satisfaction for an offence, the gift may assume 
 rather the character of a fine payable at the sanctuary; 
 for in the oldest free communities personal chastisement 
 is reserved for slaves, and the offences of freemen are 
 habitually wiped out by the payment of an amerce- 
 ment.^ But in the older Hebrew custom the fines 
 paid to the sanctuary do not appear to have taken the 
 form of victims for sacrifice, but rather of payments in 
 money to the priest,* and the atoning effect ascribed to 
 gifts and sacrifices of all kinds seems simply to rest on 
 the general principle that a gift smooths the face and 
 pacifies anger. 
 
 It has sometimes been supposed that this is the oldest 
 form of the idea of atoning sacrifice, and that the elaborate 
 piacula, which begin to take the chief place in the altar 
 ritual of the Semites from the seventh century onwards, 
 are all developed out of it. The chief argument that 
 appears to support this view is that the whole burnt- 
 offering, which is entirely made over to the deity, the 
 worshipper retaining no part for his own use, is prominent 
 among piacular sacrifices, and may even be regarded as 
 the piacular sacrifice ipar excellence. In the later forms 
 of Syrian heathenism the sacrificial meal practically 
 disappears, and almost the whole altar service consists of 
 
 ^ 1 Sam. xxvi. 19, " If Jeliovah liath stirred thee up against me, let Him 
 be gratified by an oblation." 
 
 '' The reason of this is that not even a chief can strike or mutilate a free- 
 man without exposing himself to retaliation. This is still the case among 
 the Bedouins, and so it was also in ancient Israel ; see my Old Testament 
 in the Jewish Church (Edin. 1881), p. 367. 
 
 3 2 Kings xii. 16 ; cf. Amos ii. 8, Hos. iv. 8. 
 
330 HOLOCAUSTS AND 
 
 piacular holocausts/ and among the Jews the highest sin- 
 offerings, whose blood was brought into the inner sanctuary, 
 were wholly consumed, but not upon the altar,^ while the 
 flesh of other sin-offerings was at least withdrawn from the 
 offerer and eaten by the priests. 
 
 We have seen, however, that a different and profounder 
 conception of atonement, as the creation of a life - bond 
 between the worshipper and his god, appears in the most 
 primitive type of Semitic sacrifices, and that traces of it 
 can still be found in many parts of the later ritual. Forms 
 of consecration and atonement in which the blood of the 
 victim is applied to the worshipper, or the blood of the 
 worshipper conveyed to the symbol of godhead, occur in all 
 stages of heathen religion, not only among the Semites but 
 among the Greeks and other races ; and even on k 'prim-i 
 grounds it seems probable that when the Northern Semites, 
 in the distress and terror produced by the political con- 
 vulsions of the seventh century, began to cast about for 
 rites of extraordinary potency to conjure the anger of the 
 gods, they were guided by the principle that ancient and 
 half obsolete forms of ritual are more efficacious than the 
 everyday practices of religion. 
 
 Further, it is to be observed that in the Hebrew ritual 
 both of the holocaust and of the sin-offering the victim 
 is slain at the altar "before Jehovah," a phrase which is 
 wanting in the rule about ordinary sacrifices, and implies 
 that the act of slaughter and the effusion of the blood 
 beside the altar have a special significance, as in the 
 ancient Arabian ritual. Moreover, in the sin - offering 
 there is still — although in a very attenuated form — a 
 
 ' That tlie Harranians never ate sacrificial flesh seems to be an exaggera- 
 tion, but one based on the prevalent character of their ritual ; see Chwolsohn, 
 ii. 89 sq. 
 
 2 Lev. vi. 23 (30), xvi. 27, iv. 11, 20. 
 
LECT. IX. SIN-OFFERINGS. 331 
 
 trace of the manward application of the blood, when 
 the priest dips his finger in it, and so applies it to the 
 horns of the altar, instead of merely dashing it against 
 the sides of the altar from a bowl ; ^ and also as regards 
 the destination of the flesh, which is eaten by the priests 
 in the holy place, it is clear from Lev. x. 17 that the 
 flesh is given to the priests because they minister as the 
 representatives of the sinful people, and that the act of 
 eating it is an essential part of the ceremony, exactly as in 
 the old ritual of communion. In fact the law expressly 
 recognises that the flesh and blood of the sin-offering is a 
 sanctifying medium of extraordinary potency ; whosoever 
 touches the flesh becomes holy, the garment on which the 
 blood falls must be washed in a holy place, and even the 
 vessel in which the flesh is sodden must be broken or 
 scoured to remove the infection of its , sanctity.^ That 
 this is the reason why none but the priests are allowed 
 to eat of it has been rightly discerned by Ewald ; ^ the 
 flesh, like the sacramental cup in the Eoman Catholic 
 Church, was too sacred to be touched by the laity. Thus 
 the Levitical sin-ofi'ering is essentially identical with the 
 ancient sacrament of communion in a sacred life; only 
 the communion is restricted • to the priests, in accordance 
 with the general principle of the priestly legislation, 
 which surrounds the holy things of Israel by fence 
 within fence, and makes all access to God pass through 
 the mediation of the priesthood. 
 
 I am not aware that anything quite parallel to the 
 ordinary Hebrew sin-offering occurs among the other 
 Semites ; and indeed no other Semitic religion appears 
 to have developed to the same extent the doctrine of 
 
 1 Lev. iv. 6, 17, 34, compared with chap. iii. 2. p-\1 is to sprinkle or dash 
 from the bowl, pITD. 
 
 2 Lev. vi. 20 (27). .' Alterthumer, 3rd ed. p. 87 sq. 
 
332 HOLINESS OF lect. ix. 
 
 the consuming holiness of God, and the consequent need 
 for priestly intervention between the laity and the most 
 holy things. But among the Eomans the flesh of certain 
 piacula was eaten by the priests, and in the piacular 
 sacrifice of the Arval brothers the ministrants also partook 
 of the blood. -^ Among the Greeks, again, piacular victims 
 — like the highest forms of the Hebrew sin-offering — 
 were not eaten at all, but either burned, or buried, or 
 cast into the sea, or carried up into some desert mountain 
 far from the foot of man.^ It is commonly supposed 
 that this was done because they were unclean, being 
 laden with the sins of the guilty worshippers ; but this 
 explanation is excluded, not only by the analogy of the 
 Hebrew sin-offering, which is a cddesh codashlm, or holy 
 thing of the first class, but by various indications in Greek 
 myth and ritual. For to the Greeks earth and sea are 
 not impure but holy, and at Troezen a sacred laurel was 
 believed to have grown from the buried carcase of the 
 ^dctim used in the atonement for Orestes.^ Further, the 
 favourite piacular victims were sacred "animals, e.g. the 
 swine ■ of Demeter and the dog of Hecate, and the 
 essential part of the lustration consisted in the applica- 
 tion of the blood of the offering to the guilty person, 
 which is only intelligible if the victim was a holy sacra- 
 ment. It was indeed too holy to be left in permanent 
 contact with a man who was presently to return to 
 common life, and therefore it was washed off again 
 with water.* According to Porphyry the man who 
 touched a sacrifice designed to avert the anger of the 
 gods was required to bathe and wash his clothes in 
 
 ^ Marquardt, Sacralwesen, p. 185 ; Servius on Mn., iii. 231. 
 
 ^ Hippocrates, ed. Littr^ vi. 362. 
 
 ' Pausanias, ii. 31. 8. 
 
 < ApoU. Ehod., Argon, iv. 702 sqq. Cf. Schoemann, Or. AUerth. II. v. 13. 
 
LECT. IX. SIN-OFFERINGS. 333 
 
 running water before entering the city or his house/ an 
 ordinance which recurs in the case of such Hebrew sin- 
 offerings as were not eaten, and of the red heifer whose 
 ashes were used in lustrations. These were burnt " with- 
 out the camp," and both the ministrant priest and the 
 man who disposed of the body had to bathe and wash 
 their clothes exactly as in the Greek ritual.^ 
 
 From all this it would appear that the sin-offering and 
 other forms of piacula, including the holocaust, in which 
 there is no sacrificial meal of which the sacrificer himself 
 partakes, are yet lineally descended from the ancient 
 ritual of sacrificial communion between the worshippers 
 and their god, and at bottom rest on the same principle 
 with those ordinary sacrifices in which the sacrificial meal 
 played a chief part. But the development of this part of 
 our subject must be reserved for another lecture, in which 
 I will try to explain how the original form of sacrifice 
 came to be differentiated into two distinct types of 
 worship, and gave rise on the one hand to the " honorific " 
 or ordinary, and on the other to the " piacular " or 
 exceptional sacrifices of later times. 
 
 1 De Abst. ii. 4i. 
 
 2 Lev. xvi. 24, 28 ; Numb. xix. 7-10. 
 
LECTURE X. 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF SACiaFICIAL EITUAL 
 
 FIRE-SACEIFICES AND PIACULA. 
 
 "We have come to see that the sin-offering as well as the 
 ordinary sacrificial meal is lineally descended from the 
 primitive sacrifice of communion, in which the victim is 
 a sacred animal that may not ordinarily be killed or used 
 for food. But while in the one case the notion of the 
 special holiness and inviolable character of the victim has 
 gradually faded away, in the other this aspect of the 
 sacrifice has been intensified, till even a religious participa- 
 tion in the flesh is regarded as an impiety. Each of these 
 opposite processes can to a certain extent be traced from 
 stage to stage. As regards the sacrificial meal we find, 
 both in the case of Nilus's Saracens and in that of African 
 peoples, with whom the ox has a sanctity similar to that 
 which the Arabs ascribed to the camel, that the sacra- 
 mental flesh begins to be eaten as food under the pressure 
 of necessity ; and when this is done, it also begins to be 
 cooked like other food. Then we have the stage, repre- 
 sented by the early Hebrew religion, in which domestic 
 animals are freely eaten, but only on condition that they 
 are presented as sacrifices at the altar and consumed in a 
 sacred feast. And, finally, a stage is reached in which, as 
 in Greece in the time of the Apostle Paul, sacrificial meat 
 is freely sold in the shambles, or, as in Arabia before 
 Mohammed, nothing more is required than that the beast 
 
LECT. X. DEVELOPMENT OF ATONING RITES. 335 
 
 designed for food shall be slain in the name of a god. In 
 piacular sacrifices, on the other hand, we find, in a variety 
 of expressions, a struggle between the feeling that the 
 victim is too holy to be eaten or even touched, and the 
 principle that its atoning efficacy depends on the participa- 
 tion of the worshippers in its life, flesh and blood. In 
 one rite the flesh may be eaten, or the blood drunk, but 
 only by consecrated priests ; in another, the flesh is burned, 
 but the blood is poured on the hands or body of the sinner ; 
 in another, the lustration is effected with the ashes of the 
 victim (the red heifer of the Jewish law) ; or, finally, it is 
 enough that the worshipper should lay his hands on the 
 head of the victim before its slaughter, and that then its 
 life-blood should be presented at the altar. 
 
 The reasons for the gradual degradation of ordinary 
 sacrifice are not far to seek ; they are to be found, on the 
 one hand, in the general causes which make it impossible for 
 men above the state of savagery to retain a literal faith in 
 the consanguinity of animal kinds with gods and men, and, 
 on the other hand, in the pressure of hunger, and afterwards 
 in the taste for animal food, which in a settled country 
 could not generally be gratified except by eating domestic 
 animals. But it is not so easy to understand, first, why 
 in spite of these influences certain sacrifices retained their 
 old sacrosanct character, and in many cases became so 
 holy that men were forbidden to touch or eat of them at 
 all ; and, second, why it is this class of sacrifices to which a 
 special piacular efficacy is assigned, 
 
 In looking further into this matter we must distinguish 
 between the sacred domestic animals of pastoral tribes — 
 the milk-givers, whose kinship with men rests on the 
 principle of fosterage — and those other sacred animals of 
 wild or half-domesticated kinds, such as the dove and the 
 swine, which even in the later days of Semitic heathenism 
 
336 TWO KINDS OF lect. x. 
 
 were surrounded by strict taboos, and looked upon as in 
 some sense partakers of a divine nature. The latter are 
 undoubtedly the older class of sacred beings ; for observa- 
 tion of savage life in all parts of the world shows that the 
 belief in sacred animals, akin to families of men, attains its 
 highest development in tribes which have not yet learned 
 to breed cattle and live on their milk. Totemism pure 
 and simple has its home among races like the Australians 
 and the North American Indians, and seems always to 
 lose ground after the introduction of pastoral life. It 
 would appear that the notion of kinship with milk-giving 
 animals through fosterage has been one of the most 
 powerful agencies in breaking up the old totem-religions, 
 just as a systematic practice of adoption between men was 
 a potent agency in breaking up the old exclusive system 
 of clans. As the various totem clans began to breed 
 cattle and live on their milk, they transferred to their 
 herds the notions of sanctity and kinship which formerly 
 belonged to species of wild animals, and thus the way was 
 at once opened for the formation of religious and political 
 communities larger than the old totem kins. In almost 
 all ancient nations in the pastoral and agricultural stage, 
 the chief associations of the great deities are with the milk- 
 giving animals ; and it is these animals, the ox, the sheep, 
 the goat, or in Arabia the camel, that appear as victims in 
 the public and national worship. But experience shows 
 that primitive religious beliefs are practically indestructible, 
 except by the destruction of the race in which they are 
 ingrained, and thus we find that the new ideas of what I 
 may call pastoral religion overlaid the old notions, but did 
 not extinguish them. For example, the Astarte of the 
 Northern Semites is essentially a goddess of flocks and 
 herds, whose symbol and sacred animal is the cow, or 
 (among the sheep - rearing tribes of the Syro - Arabian 
 
LECT. X. SACKED ANIMALS. 337 
 
 desert) the ewe.^ But this pastoral worship appears to 
 have come on the top of certain older faiths, in which the 
 goddess of one kiadred of men was associated with fish, 
 and that of another kindred with the dove. These 
 creatures,- accordingly, though no longer prominent in 
 ritual, were still held sacred and surrounded by taboos, 
 implying that they were of divine nature and akin to 
 the goddess herself. The very fact that they were not 
 regularly sacrificed, and, therefore, not regularly eaten 
 even in religious feasts, tended to preserve their antique 
 sanctity long after the sacrificial flesh of beeves and sheep 
 had sunk almost to the rank of ordinary food ; and thus, 
 as we have seen in considering the case of the mystic 
 sacrifices of the Eoman Empire, the rare and exceptional 
 rites, in which the victim was chosen from a class of 
 animals ordinarily tabooed as human food, retained even 
 in later paganism a sacramental significance, almost 
 absolutely identical with that which belonged to the 
 oldest sacrifices. It was still felt that the victim was 
 of a divine kind, and that, in partaking of its flesh and 
 blood, the worshippers enjoyed a veritable communion 
 with the divine life. That to such sacrifices there was 
 ascribed a special cathartic and consecrating virtue requires 
 no explanation, for how can the impurity of sin be better 
 expelled than by a draught of sacred life ? and how can 
 man be brought nearer to his god than by physically 
 absorbing a particle of the divine nature ? 
 
 It is, however, to be noted that piacula of this kind, in 
 which atonement is eflected by the use of an exceptional 
 victim of sacred kind, do not rise into prominence till the 
 national religions of the Semites fall into decay. The 
 public piacular sacrifices of the independent Semitic 
 states appear, so far as our scanty information goes, to 
 
 1 Supra, p. 292. 
 Y 
 
338 MYSTIC LECT. X, 
 
 have been mainly drawn from the same kinds of domestic 
 animals as supplied the ordinary sacrifices, except where 
 an exceptional emergency demanded a human victim. 
 Among the Hebrews, in particular, there is no trace of 
 anything answering to the later mystic sacrifices up to the 
 time of the captivity. At this epoch, when the national 
 religion appeared to have utterly broken down, and the 
 judgment of those who were not upheld by the faith of 
 the prophets was that " Jehovah had forsaken His land," ^ 
 all manner of strange sacrifices of unclean creatures — the 
 swine, the dog, the mouse and other vermin — began to 
 become popular, and were deemed to have a" peculiar 
 purifying and consecrating power.^ The creatures chosen 
 for these sacrifices are such as were unclean in the first 
 degree, and surrounded by strong taboos of the kind which 
 in heathenism imply that the animal is regarded as divine ; 
 and in fact the sacrifices of vermin described in the Book 
 of Isaiah have their counterpart in the contemporary 
 worship of all kinds of vermin described by Ezekiel.^ 
 Both rites are evidently part of a single superstition, 
 the sacrifice being a mystical communion in the body 
 and blood of a divine animal. Here, therefore, we have 
 a clear case of the re-emergence into the light of day of 
 a cult of the most primitive totem type, which had been 
 banished for centuries from public religion, but must have 
 been kept alive in obscure circles of private or local 
 sxiperstition, and sprang up again on the ruins of the 
 national faith, like some noxious weed in the courts of a 
 deserted temple. But while the ritual and its interpreta- 
 ion are still quite primitive, the resuscitated totem 
 mysteries have this great difference from their ancient 
 
 1 Ezek. viii. 12. 
 
 2 Isa. Ixv. 3 sqq., Ixvi. 3, 17 ; see above, p. 273 sq., p. 325, note 2. 
 ' Ezek. viii. 10. 
 
LECT. X. PIACULA. 339 
 
 models, that they are no longer the exclusive possession 
 of particular kins, but are practised, by men who desert 
 the religion of their birth, as means of initiation into a 
 new religious brotherhood, based not on natural kinship, 
 but on mystical participation in the divine life held forth 
 in the sacramental sacrifice. From this point of view the 
 obscure rites described by the prophets have a vastly 
 greater importance than has been commonly recognised ; 
 they mark the first appearance in Semitic history of the 
 tendency to found religious societies on voluntary associa- 
 tion and mystic initiation, instead of natural kinship and 
 nationality. This tendency was not confined to the 
 Hebrews, nor did it reach its chief development among 
 them. The causes which produced a resuscitation of obsolete 
 mysteries among the Jews were at work at the same period 
 among all the Northern Semites ; for everywhere the old 
 national deities had shown themselves powerless to resist 
 the gods of Assyria and Babylon. And among these 
 nations the tendency to fall back for help on primitive 
 superstitions was not held in check, as it was among the 
 Hebrews, by the counter -influence of the Prophets and 
 the Law. From this period, therefore, we may date with 
 great probability the first rise of the mystical cults which 
 played so large a part in the later developments of 
 ancient paganism, and spread their influence over the 
 whole Graeco-Eoman world. Most of these cults appear 
 to have had their origin among the Northern Semites, or 
 in the parts of Asia Minor that fell under the empire of 
 the Assyrians and Babylonians. The leading feature that 
 distinguishes them from the old public cults, with which 
 they entered into competition; is that they were not based 
 on the principle of nationality, but sought recruits from 
 men of every race who were willing to accept initiation 
 through the mystic sacraments ; and in pursuance of this 
 
340 ATONEMENT BY LECT. X 
 
 object they carried on a missionary propaganda in all parts 
 of the Eoman Empire, in a way quite alien to the spirit 
 of national religion. The nature of their sacramental sacri- 
 fices, so far as it is known to us, indicates that they were 
 of a like origin with the Hebrew superstitions described 
 by Isaiah ; they used strange victims, invoked the gods by 
 animal names, and taught the initiated to acknowledge 
 kinship with the same animals.^ To pursue this subject 
 further would carry us beyond the limits of our present 
 task ; for a full discussion of mystical sacrifices cannot 
 be confined to the Semitic field. These sacrifices, as we 
 have seen, lie aside from the main development of the 
 national religions of the Semites, and they acquire public 
 importance only after the collapse of the national systems. 
 In later times they were much sought after, and were 
 held to have a peculiar efficacy in purging away siu, and 
 bringing man into living union with the gods. But 
 their atoning efficacy proceeds on quite different lines 
 from that of the recognised piacular rites of national 
 religion. In the latter the sinner seeks reconciliation 
 with the national god whom he has offended, but iu 
 mystic rehgion he takes refuge from the divine wrath 
 by incorporating himself in a new religious community. 
 Something of the same kind takes place in more primitive 
 society, when an outlaw, who has been banished from the 
 social and religious fellowship of his clan for shedding 
 kindred blood, is received by the covenant of adoption 
 into another clan. Here also the act of adoption, which 
 is a religious as well as a civil rite, is in so far an act 
 of atonement that the outlaw has again a god to receive 
 his worship and his prayers ; but he is not reconciled to 
 the god of his former worship, for it is only in a some- 
 what advanced stage of polytheism that acceptance by one 
 
 ' Porph., De Abst. iv. 16, compared with Fihrisf, p. 326, 1. 25 sq. 
 
LECT. X. FOREIGN RITES. 341 
 
 god puts a man right with the gods as a whole. Among 
 the Greeks, where the gods formed a sort of family circle, 
 and were accessible to one another's influence, the outlaw, 
 like Orestes, wanders about in exile, till he can find a god 
 willing to receive him and act as his sponsor with the 
 other deities ; and here, therefore, as in the mystical rites 
 of the Semites, the ceremony of purification from blood- 
 shed is essentially a ceremony of initiation into the cult 
 of some god who, like the Apollo of Troezen, makes it 
 his business to receive suppliants. But among the older 
 Semites there was no kinship or friendship between the 
 gods of adjacent tribes or nations, and there was no way 
 of reconciliation with the national god through the media- 
 tion of a third party, so that all atoning sacrifices were 
 necessarily offered to the national god himself, and drawn, 
 like ordinary sacrifices, from the class of domestic animals 
 appropriated to his worship. 
 
 In the oldest stage of pastoral religion, when the tribal 
 herd possessed inviolate sanctity, and every sheep or camel 
 —according as the tribe consisted of shepherds or camel- 
 herds — was regarded as a kinsman, there was no occasion 
 and no place for a special class of atoning sacrifices. The 
 relations between the god and his worshippers were 
 naturally as good and intimate as possible, for they were 
 based on the strongest of all ties, the tie of kinship. To 
 secure that this natural good understanding should continue 
 unimpaired, it was only necessary that the congenital bond 
 of kinship should not wear out, but continue strong and 
 fresh. And this was provided for by periodical sacrifices, 
 of the type described by Mlus, in which a particle of the 
 sacred life of the tribe was distributed, between the god 
 and his worshippers, in the sacramental flesh and blood of 
 an animal of the holy stock of the clan. To make the 
 sacrifice effective it was only necessary that the victim 
 
342 HUMAN 
 
 LECT. X. 
 
 should be perfect and without fault — a point which is 
 strongly insisted upon in all ancient sacrifice — i.e. that 
 the sacred life should be completely and normally 
 embodied in it. In the later ages of antiquity there was a 
 very general belief — the origin of which will be explained 
 as we proceed — that in strictness the oldest rituals 
 demanded a human victim, and that animal sacrifices were 
 substitutes for the life of a man. But in the oldest times 
 there could be no reason for thinking a man's life better 
 than that of a camel or a sheep as a vehicle of sacramental 
 communion ; indeed, if we may judge from modern examples 
 of that primitive habit of thought which lies at the root of 
 Semitic sacrifice, the animal life would probably be deemed 
 purer and more perfect than that of man. 
 
 On the other hand, there is every reason to think that 
 even at this early stage certain impious crimes, notably 
 murder within the kin, were expiated by the death of the 
 offender. But the death of such a criminal cannot with 
 any justice be called a sacrifice. Its object was simply to 
 eliminate the impious person from the society whose 
 sanctity he had violated, and outlawry was accepted as an 
 alternative to execution. 
 
 As time went on the idea of the full kinship of men 
 with their cattle began to break down. The Saracens of 
 Mlus killed and ate their camels in time of hunger, but 
 we may be sure that they would not in similar circum- 
 stances have eaten one another. Thus even in a society 
 where the flesh of the tribal camel was not ordinary food, 
 and where private slaughter was forbidden, a camel's life 
 was no longer as sacred as that of a man ; it had begun to 
 be recognised that human life, or rather the life of a tribes- 
 man, was a thing of unique sanctity. At the same time 
 the old forms of sacrifice were retained, and the tradition 
 of their old meaning cannot have been lost, for the ritual 
 
LECT. X. SACRIFICE. 343 
 
 forms were too plainly significant to be misinterpreted. 
 In short, the life of a camel, which no longer had the full 
 value of a tribesman's life for ordinary purposes, was 
 treated as a tribesman's life when it was presented at the 
 altar ; so that here we have already a beginning of the idea 
 that the victim qua victim possesses a sacrosanct character, 
 which does not belong to it merely in virtue of its natural 
 kind. But now also, let it be noted, it is expressly attested 
 that the sacrificial camel is regarded as the substitute for 
 a human victim. The favourite victims of the Saracens 
 were young and beautiful captives, but if these were not 
 to be had they contented themselves with a white and 
 faultless camel. As to the veracity of this account there 
 is no question ; Nilus's own son, Theodiilus, when a captive 
 in the hands of these barbarians, escaped being sacrificed 
 only by the accident that, on the appointed morning, his 
 captors did not awake till the sun rose, and the lawful hour 
 for the rite was past ; and there are well-authenticated 
 instances of the sacrifice of captives to Al-'Ozza by the 
 Lakhmite king of Al-Hira at least a century later.^ 
 
 It is true that in these cases the victims are aliens and 
 not tribesmen, as in strictness the sense of the ritual 
 requires ; but the older Semites, when they had recourse to 
 human sacrifice, were more strictly logical, and held with 
 rigour to the fundamental principle that the life of the 
 victim must be a kindred life.^ The modification accepted 
 by the Saracens was one for which there was the strongest 
 motive, and accordingly all over the world we find cases 
 of human sacrifice in which an alien is substituted for a 
 
 1 Noldeke's Tahari, p. 171 (Procop., Pers. ii. 28 ; Land, Anecd. iii. 247). 
 
 2 See, for the Hebrews, Gen. xxii.; 2 Kings xxi. 6 ; Micai vi. 7 ; for the 
 Moabites, 2 Kings iii. 27 ; for the Phoenicians, Philo Byblius in Fr. Hist. 
 Or. iii. 570 (Eus., Pr. Ev. 156 D) ; Porph., De Abst. ii. 56 ; for the Cartha- 
 ginians, Porph., ibid. ii. 27, and Diodorus, xx. 14; for the Syrians, Dea 
 Syr. Iviii.; for the Babylonians, 2 Kings xvii. 31. 
 
344 HUMAN LECT. X. 
 
 tribesman. This was not done in accordance with any 
 change- in the meaning of the ritual, for originally the 
 substitution was felt to be a fraud on the deity; thus 
 Diodorus tells us that the Carthaginians, in a time of 
 trouble, felt that their god was angry because slave boys 
 had been privily substituted for the children of their best 
 families ; and elsewhere we find that it is considered 
 necessary to make believe that tlie victim is a tribesman, 
 or even, as in the human sacrifices of the Mexicans, to 
 dress and treat him as the representative of the deity to 
 whom he is to be offered. Perhaps something of this kind 
 was in the mind of ISTilus's Saracens when they drank with 
 prisoners destined to death, and so admitted them to boon 
 fellowship.^ 
 
 From a purely abstract point of view it seems plausible 
 enough that the Saracens, who accepted an alien as a 
 substitute for a tribesman, might also accept a camel as 
 a substitute for a man. The plan of substituting an 
 offering which can be more readily procured or better 
 spared, for the more costly victim which traditional 
 ritual demands, was largely applied throughout antiquity, 
 and belongs to the general system of make - believe by 
 which early nations, that are entirely governed by regard 
 for precedents, habitually get over difficulties in the 
 
 1 Nilus, p. 66, where, however, the slaughter is not formally a sacrifice. 
 The narrative represents the offer of drink as mere mockery, hut it is 
 difiScult to reconcile this with known Arabian custom ; see above, p. 252. 
 A more serious attempt to adopt Theodulus into the Saracen community 
 seems to have been made after his providential escape from death ; he was 
 invited to eat unclean things and sport with the women (p. 117). The 
 combination is significant, and as ftiitpoipayiiv must refer to the eating of 
 idolatrous 'meats, presumably camel's flesh, — which Symeon Stylites forbade 
 to his Arab converts, — the question arises whether ymxi^i vpotrtrxiZuv has not 
 also a reference to some religious practice, and whether Wellhausen, p. 40, 
 has not been too hasty in supposing that the orgies of the Arabian Venus 
 renounced by the converts just mentioned are mere rhetorical orgies ; cf. 
 Kinship, p. 295. 
 
SACRIFICE. 345 
 
 strict carrying out of traditional rules. If a Eoman 
 rite called for a stag as victim, and a stag could not 
 be had, a sheep was substituted and feigned to be a stag 
 (cervaria ovis), and so forth. The thing was really a fraud, 
 but one to which the gods were polite enough to shut 
 their eyes rather than see the whole ceremony faU. But 
 in the particular case before us it is difficult to believe 
 that the camel was substituted for a man, and ultimately 
 for a tribesman. In that case the ritual of the camel- 
 sacrifice would have been copied from that of human 
 sacrifice, but in reality this was not so. The camel was 
 eaten, but the human victim was burned, after the blood 
 had been poured out as a libation,^ and there can be no 
 question that the former is the more primitive rite. I 
 
 ' This appears from what we read of the preparations for the sacrifice of 
 Theodiilus, among which are mentioned frankincense (the accompaniment 
 of fire-offerings) and a bowl for the libation, p. 110 ; and, at p. 113, Theodiilus 
 prays: " Let not my blood be made a libation to demons, nor let unclean 
 spirits be made glad with the sweet smoke of my flesh." See Wellhausen, 
 p. 113, who conjectures that in Arabia human sacrifices were generally 
 burned, citing Yacut, iv. 425, who tells that every clan of Rabi'a gave a 
 son to the god Moharric, "the burner," at Salman (in 'Iiao, on the pilgrim 
 road from Cufa). Nbldeke, in ZDMG. xli. 712, doubts whether the reference 
 is to human sacrifice ; for Yacut (i.e. Ibn al-Kalbi) presently cites examples 
 of men of different clans called "sons of Moharric," which may imply that 
 the sons were not sacrificed, but consecrated as children of the god. This, 
 however, is so peculiar an institution for Arabia that it still remains 
 probable that the consecration was a, substitute for sacrifice. At Salman, 
 in the neighbourhood of Hira, we are in the region of the human sacrifices 
 of the Lakhmite kings. And these were probably burnt-offerings ; cf. the 
 legend of the holocaust of one hundred prisoners by 'Amr b. Hind, Kamil, 
 p. 97. Hence this king is said to have been called Moharric ; but, as 
 Noldeke observes [Ohassan. Fiirsten [1887], p. 7), Moharric without the 
 article is hardly a mere epithet [lacab), and I apprehend that the Lakhmite 
 family was called "the family of Moharric" after their god, presumably 
 Lucifer, the morning star, who afterwards became feminine as al-'Ozza 
 (supra, p. 57, note 1). The Ghassanid princes of the house of Jafna were 
 also called "the family of Moharric," Ibn Cot., p. 314; Ibn Dor., p. 259, 
 and here the tradition is that their ancestor was the first Arab who burned 
 his enemies in their encampment. This, however, is obviously a form of 
 hirem, and must, I take it, be a religions act. For the "family" {aX) 
 of a god, as meaning his worshippers, see Kinship, p. 258. 
 
346 HUMAN LECT. X. 
 
 apprehend, therefore, that human sacrifice is not more 
 ancient than the sacrifice of sacred animals, and that 
 the prevalent belief of ancient heathenism, that animal 
 victims are an imperfect substitute for a human life, 
 arose by a false inference from traditional forms of 
 ritual that had ceased to be understood. In the oldest 
 rituals the victim's life is manifestly treated as sacred, 
 and in some rites, as we have seen in our examination 
 of the Attic BupJionia, the idea that the slaughter is 
 really a murder, i.e. a shedding of kindred blood, was 
 expressed down to quite a late date. When the full 
 kinship of animals with men was no longer recognised 
 in ordinary life, all this became unintelligible, and was 
 explained by the doctrine that at the altar the victim 
 took the place of a man. 
 
 This doctrine appears all over the ancient world in 
 connection with atoning sacrifices, and indeed the false 
 inference on which it rests was one that could not fail 
 to be drawn wherever the old forms of sacrifice had been 
 shaped at a time when cattle were revered as kindred 
 beings. And this appears to have been the case in the 
 beginnings of every pastoral society. Accordingly, to 
 cite but a few instances, the notion that animal sacrifice 
 is accepted in lieu of an older sacrifice of the life of a 
 man appears among the Hebrews, in the story of Isaac's 
 sacrifice,^ among the Phceniciahs,^ among the Egyptians, 
 where the victim was marked with a seal bearing the 
 image of a man bound, and with a sword at his throat,^ 
 and also among the Greeks, the Eomans, and many other 
 nations.* As soon, however, as it came to be held that 
 
 1 Gen. xxii. 13 ; of. Lev. xvii. 11. = Porph., De Aist. iv. l.'i. 
 
 ' Plut. , Is. et Os. xxxi. 
 
 ' See the examples in Porph., De Ahst. ii. 54 sqq., and for the Eomans 
 Ovid, Fasti, vi. 162. We have had before us Greek rites where the vietim is 
 disguised as a man ; hut conversely human sacrifices are often dressed up as 
 
LECT. X. SACRIFICE. 347 
 
 cattle were merely substitutes, and that the full sense of 
 the sacrifice was not brought out without an actual human 
 victim, it was naturally inferred that the original form 
 of offering was more potent, and was indicated on all 
 occasions of special gravity. Wherever we find the 
 doctrine of substitution of animal life for that of man, 
 we find also examples of actual human sacrifice, some- 
 times confined to seasons of extreme peril, and sometimes 
 practised periodically at solemn annual rites.-' 
 
 I apprehend that this is the point from which the 
 special development of piacular sacrifices, and the distinc- 
 tion between them and ordinary sacrifices, takes its start. 
 It was impossible that the sacrificial customs should con- 
 tinue unmodified where the victim was held to represent 
 a man and a tribesman, for even savages commonly refuse 
 to eat their own kinsfolk, and to growing civilisation the 
 idea that the gods had ordained meals of human flesh, or 
 of flesh that was as sacred as that of a man, was too 
 repulsive to be long retained. But when I say " repulsive," 
 
 animals, or said to represent animals : an example, from the worship at 
 Hierapolis-Bamljyce, is found in Dea Syria, Iviii., where fathers sacrificing 
 their children say that they are not children but beeves. 
 
 ^ Examples of human sacrifices, many of which subsisted within the 
 Eoman Empire down to the time of Hadrian, are collected by Porphyry, 
 nt supra, on whom Eusebius, Prcep. Ev. iv. 16, Laus Const, xiii. 7, 
 depends. See also Clem. Alex., Coh. ad Genies, p. 27 (p. 36, Potter) ; 
 cf. Hermann, Gr. AUh. ii. § 27. In what follows I confine myself to the 
 Semites ; it may therefore be noted that, in antiquity generally, liuman 
 victims were buried, burned, or cast into the sea or into a river (cf. Mann- 
 hardt's essay on the Lityerses legend). Yet indications survive that they 
 were originally sacrifices of communion, and as such were tasted by the 
 worshippers : notably in the most famous case of all, the human sacrifice 
 offered in Arcadia to Zeus Lycseus — the wolf-god — where a fragment of the 
 exta was placed among the portions of sacrificial flesh derived from other 
 victims that were offered along with the human sacrifice, and the man 
 who tasted it was believed to become a were -wolf (Plato, Rep. viii. 15, 
 p. 565 D ; Pausanias, viii. 2). 
 
 Of the human sacrifices of rude peoples those of the Mexicans are perhaps 
 the most instractive, for in them the theanthropic character of the victim 
 comes out most clearly. 
 
348 HUMAK LECT. X. 
 
 I put the matter rather in the light in which it appears to 
 us, than in that wherein it presented itself to the first men 
 who had scruples about cannibalism. Primarily the horror 
 of eating human flesh was no doubt superstitious ; it was 
 felt to be dangerous to eat so sacrosanct a thing, even with 
 all the precautions of religious ceremonial. Accordingly, 
 in human sacrifices, and also in such other offerings as 
 continued to be performed with a ritual simulating human 
 sacrifice, the sacrificial meal tended to fall out of use; 
 while, on the other hand, where the sacrificial meal was 
 retained, the tendency was to drop such features in the 
 ritual as suggested the disgusting idea of cannibalism.'^ 
 And so the apparent paradox is explained, that precisely in 
 those sacrifices in which the victim most fully retained its 
 original theanthropic character, and was therefore most 
 efficacious as a vehicle of atonement, the primitive idea of 
 atonement by communion in the sacred flesh and blood 
 was most completely disguised. The modifications in the 
 form of ritual that ensued, when sacrifices of a certain 
 class were no longer eaten, can be best observed by 
 taking the case of actual human sacrifice and noting 
 how other sacrifices of equivalent significance follow its 
 modeL 
 
 Whether the custom of actually eating the flesh survived 
 in historical times in any case of human sacrifice is more 
 than doubtful,^ and even in the case of animal piacula — 
 
 ^ Of course neither tendency was consistently carried out in every detail 
 of ritual ; there remains enough that is common to honorific and piaculat 
 sacrifice to enable us to trace them back to a common source. 
 
 ^ According to Mohammedan accounts the Harranians in the Middle Ages 
 annually sacrificed an infant, and boiling down its iiesh, baked it into cakes, 
 of which only freeborn men were allowed to partake (Fihrist, p. 323, 1. 6 sqq.; 
 cf. Chwolsohn's Excursus on Human Sacrifice, vol. ii. p. 142). But in regard 
 to the secret mysteries of a forbidden religion, such as Syrian heathenism 
 was in Arabian times, it is always doubtful how far we can trust a hostile 
 narrator, who, even if he did not merely reproduce popular fictions, might 
 easily take for a real human sacrifice what was only the mystic offering of a 
 
LECT. X. SACEIFICE. 349 
 
 apart from those of mystic type, in which the idea of 
 initiation into a new religion was involved — the sacrificial 
 meal is generally wanting or confined to the priests. The 
 custom of drinking the blood, or at least of sprinkling it 
 on the worshippers, may have been kept up longer ; there 
 is some probability that it was observed in the human 
 sacrifices of Nilus's Saracens ;^ and the common Arabian 
 belief that the blood of kings, and perhaps also of other men 
 of noble descent, is a cure for hydrophobia and demoniacal 
 possession, seems to be a reminiscence of blood-drinking 
 in connection with human sacrifice, for the Greeks in like 
 manner, who ascribed epilepsy to demoniacal possession, 
 sought to cure it by piacular offerings and purifications 
 with blood.^ 
 
 theanthropic animal. The new-born infant corresponds to the Arabian /ar-a', 
 otfered while its flesh was still like glue, and to the Hebrew piaculum of a 
 sucking lamb in 1 Sara. vii. 9. 
 
 ' The reason for thinking this is that on the Arabian mode of sacrifice a 
 bowl was not required to convey the blood to the deity, while it would be 
 necessary if the blood was drunk by the worshippers or sprinkled upon them. 
 It is true that the narrative speaks also of the preparation of a libation — 
 whether of water or of wine does not appear — but this in the Arabian ritual 
 can hardly be more than a vehicle for the more potent blood, just as the 
 blood was mixed with water in Greek sacrifices to heroes. Water as a 
 vehicle for sacrificial ashes appears in the Hebrew ritual of the red heifer 
 (Fumb. xix. 9), and is prescribed as a vehicle for the blood of lustration in 
 Lev. xiv. 5 sq. In the legends cited in the next note we find the notion 
 that if the blood of a human victim touches the ground, vengeance will be 
 taken for it. That the drinking of human blood, e.g. from an enemy slain 
 in battle, was a Saracen practice, is attested by Ammianus and Procopius 
 (see Kinship, p. 284 sqq.) ; and the anecdote given by Wellh., p. 120, from 
 Agh. xii. 144, where a husband, unable to save his wife from the enemy, 
 kills her, anoints himself with her blood, and fights till he is slain, illustrates 
 the significance which the Arabs attached to human blood as a vehicle of 
 communion. 
 
 ^ Hippocrates, ed. Littrd, vi. 362. The evidence for this Arabian supersti- 
 tion is collected by Freytag in his notes to the Hamasa, ii. 583, and by 
 Wellh., p. 142. It consists in poetical and proverbial allusions, to which may 
 be added a verse in Mas'iidi, iii. 193, and in a legend from the mythical 
 story of Queen Zabba {Agh. xiv. 74 ; Tabari, i. 760 ; Maidani, i. 205 sqq.), 
 where a king is slain by opening the veins of his arms, and the blood, to be 
 used as a magical medicine, is gathered in a bowl. Not a drop must fall on 
 
350 DISPOSAL OP LECT. X. 
 
 When the sacrosanct victim ceased to be eaten, it was 
 necessary to find some other way of disposing of its flesh. 
 It will be remembered that, in the sacrificial meals of 
 Mlus's Saracens, it was a point of religion that the whole 
 carcase should be consumed before the sun rose ; the victim 
 was so holy that no part of it could be treated as mere 
 waste. The problem of disposing of the sacred carcase 
 was in fact analogous to that which occurs whenever a 
 kinsman dies. Here, too, the point is to find a way of 
 dealing with the body consistent with the respect due to 
 the dead — a respect which does not rest on sentimental 
 grounds, but on the belief that the corpse is taboo, a source 
 of very dangerous supernatural influences of an infectious 
 kind. In later times this infectiousness is expressed as 
 uncleanness, but in the primitive taboo, as we know, 
 sanctity and uncleanness meet and are indistinguishable. 
 Now, as regards the kindred dead generally, we find a great 
 range of funeral customs, all directed to make sure that 
 the corpse is properly disposed of, and can no longer be a 
 source of danger to the living, but rather of blessing.^ In 
 certain cases it is the duty of the survivors to eat up their 
 dead, just as in Nilus's sacrifice. This was the use of the 
 Issedones, according to Herodotus, iv. 26. At other times 
 
 the ground, otherwise there will be blood-revenge for it. I cannot but 
 suspect that the legend is based on an old form of sacrifice applied to captive 
 chiefs (cf. the case of Agag) ; it is described as the habitual way of killing 
 kings. The rule that not a drop of the blood must fall on the ground appears 
 also in Caffre sacrifice ; Maclean, Gaffre Laws, p. 81. According to later 
 authorities, cited in the Taj al-'Arus (i. 3. 181 of the old edition), it was 
 enough for this cure to draw a drop of blood from the finger of a noble, and 
 drink it mixed with water. 
 
 This subject has been fully handled by Mr. J. G. Frazer in Journ. 
 Anthrop. Inst. xv. 64 sqq., to which I refer for details. I think Mr. Frazer 
 goes too far in supposing that mere fear of ghosts rules in all these observ- 
 ances. Not seldom we find also a desire for continued fellowship with the 
 dead, under sifch conditions as make the fellowship free from danger. 
 In the language of physios sanctity is a polar force, it both attracts and 
 repels. 
 
LECT. X SACRIFICIAL FLESH. 351 
 
 the dead are thrown outside the kraal, to be eaten by wild 
 beasts (Masai land), or are deposited in a desert place 
 which men must not approach ; but more commonly the 
 body is buried or burned. All these practices reappear in 
 the case of such sacrifices as may not be eaten. Mere 
 exposure on the soil of the sanctuary was perhaps the use 
 in certain Arabian cults,^ but this, it is plain, could not 
 suffice unless the sacred enclosure was an adyton forbidden 
 to the foot of man. Hence at Duma the annual human 
 victim is buried at the foot of the altar idol,^ and elsewhere, 
 perhaps, the corpse is hung up between earth and heaven 
 before the deity.^ Or else the sacrosanct flesh is carried 
 away into a desert place in the mountains, as was done in 
 the Greek piacula of which Hippocrates speaks, or is 
 simply flung down (a precipice) from the vestibule of the 
 temple, as was the use of Hierapolis.* Among the Hebrews, 
 on the same principle, the heifer offered in atonement 
 for an untraced murder was sacrificed by striking off 
 its head in a barren ravine.^ 
 
 1 Supra, p. 208 sqq. 
 
 - Porph., De Abst. ii. 56. In old Arabia little girls were often buried 
 alive by tbeir fathers, apparently as sacrifices to the goddesses, see Kinship, 
 p. 281. A similar form of human sacrifice probably lies at the root of the 
 legend about the tombs of the lovers whom Semirarais buried alive (Syncellus, 
 i. 119, from John of Antioch), for though these lovers are gods, all myths of 
 the death of gods seem to be derived from sacrifices of theanthropic victims. 
 
 " Deut. xxi. 21 ; cf. 1 Sam. xxxi. 10. The execution of criminals con- 
 stantly assumes sacrificial forms, for tlie tribesman's life is sacred even if he 
 be a criminal, and he must not be killed in a common way. This principle 
 is finally extended to all religious executions, in which, as the Hebrews and 
 Moabites say, the victim is devoted, as a herem, to the god (Stele of Mesha, 
 1. 17). In one peculiar sacrifice at Hierapolis {Dea Syr. xlix. ) the victims 
 were suspended alive from trees, and the trees were then set on fire. The 
 fire is perhaps a later addition, and the original rite may have consisted in 
 suspension alone. The story of a human victim hung up in the temple 
 at Carrhse by the Emperor Julian (Thood., H. E. iii. 21), and the similar 
 stories in the Syriac Julian-romances (ed. Hoflfm., p. 247, etc.), are too 
 apocryphal to be used, though they probably reflect some obsolete popular 
 superstition. 
 
 * Dea Syria, Iviii. ' Deut. xxi. 4. 
 
352 HUMAN 
 
 LECT. X. 
 
 Most commonly, however, human sacrifices, and in 
 general all such sacrifices as were not eaten, were burned ; 
 and this usage is found not only among the Hebrews and 
 Phoenicians, with whom fire - sacrifices were common, but 
 among the Arabs, who seem to have admitted the fire- 
 offering in no other case. In the more advanced rituals 
 the use of fire corresponds with the conception of the gods 
 as subtle beings, moving in the air, whose proper nourish- 
 ment is the fragrant smoke of the burning flesh ; so that 
 the burnt-offering, like the fat of the vitals in ordinary 
 victims, is the food of the gods, and falls under the head of 
 sacrificial gifts. But in the Levitical ritual this explana- 
 tion is sedulously excluded in the case of the sin-ofiering ; 
 the fat is burned on the altar, but the rest of the flesh, so 
 far as it is not eaten by the priests, is burned outside the 
 camp, i.e. outside the walls of Jerusalem, so that in fact 
 the burning is merely an additional precaution added to 
 the older rule that the sacred flesh must not be left 
 exposed to human contact. But the Levitical sin-offering 
 is only a special development of the old piacular holocaust, 
 and thus the question at once suggests itself whether in its 
 first origin the holocaust was a subtle way of conveying a 
 gift of food to the god ; or whether rather the victim was 
 burned, because it was too sacred to be eaten and yet must 
 not be left undisposed of. In the case of the Arabian 
 holocaust, which is confined to human victims, this is 
 certainly the easiest explanation; and even among the 
 Hebrews and their neighbours it would seem that human 
 sacrifices were not ordinarily burned on the altar or even 
 within the precincts of the sanctuary, but rather outside the 
 city. It is plain from various passages of the prophets 
 that the sacrifices of children among the Jews before the 
 captivity, which are commonly known as sacrifices to 
 Moloch, were regarded by the worshippers as oblations to 
 
LECT. X. HOLOCAUSTS. 353 
 
 Jehovah, under the title of king,^ yet they were not pre- 
 sented at the temple, but consumed outside the town at 
 the Tophet in the ravine below the temple.^ From Isa. 
 XXX. 33 it appears that Tophet means a pyre, such as is 
 prepared for a king. But the Hebrews themselves did not 
 burn their dead, unless in very exceptional cases,' and 
 burial was equally the rule among their Phcenician neigh- 
 bours, as is plain from researches in their cemeteries,* 
 and apparently among all the Semites. Thus, when the 
 prophet describes the deep and wide pyre " prepared for 
 the king," he does not draw his figure from ordinary life, 
 nor is it conceivable that he is thinking of the human 
 sacrifices in the valley of Hinnom, a reference which would 
 bring an utterly discordant strain into the imagery. What 
 he does refer to is a rite well known to Semitic religion, 
 which was practised at Tarsus down to the time of Dio 
 Chrysostom, and the memory of which survives in the 
 Greek legend of Heracles - Melcarth, iu the story of 
 Sardanapalus, and in the myth of Queen Dido. At Tarsus 
 there was an annual feast at which a very fair pyre was 
 erected, and the local Heracles or Baal burned on it iu 
 effigy.^ This annual commemoration of the death of the 
 
 ' Jer. vii. 31, xix. 5, xxxii. 3.5 ; Ezek. xxiii. 39 ; Micah vi. 7. The form 
 Moloch (LXX.), orrather Molech(Heb.), is nothing but i/fifecA, "king,"read 
 with the vowels rf bosheth, "shameful thing;" see Hoffmann in Stade's 
 Zeitschr. iii. (1883) p. 124. In Jer. xix. 5 delete ^j;3i5 D'bv with LXX. 
 
 2 The valley of Hinnom is the Tyropceon; see Enc. Brit., arts. "Jeru- 
 salem" and "Temple." 
 
 ^ Saul's body was burned (1 Sam. xxxi. 12), possibly to save it from the 
 risk of exhumation by the Philistines, but perhaps rather with a religious 
 iutention, and almost as an act of worship, since his bones were buried under 
 the sacred tamarisk at Jabesh. In Amos vi. 10 the victims of a plague are 
 burued, which is to be understood by comparing Lev. xx. li, xxi. 9, Amos 
 ii. 1, and remembering that plague was a special mark of divine ^vrath 
 (2 Sam. xxiv.), so that its victims might well be regarded as intensely taboo. 
 
 ■» This is true also of Carthage ; Tissot, La Prov. d'Afrique, i. 612 ; 
 Justin, xix. 1. 
 
 ^ See 0. Mitller, " Sandon und Sardanapal," in Ehein. Mus. , Ser. i., Bd. iii. 
 
 Z 
 
354 HUMAN LECT. X. 
 
 god in fire must have its origin in an older rite, in which 
 the victim was not a mere effigy but a theanthropic sacri- 
 fice, i.e. an actual man or sacred animal, whose life, according 
 to the antique conception now familiar to us, was an 
 
 » 
 
 embodiment of the divine-human life. 
 
 The significance of the death of the god in Semitic 
 religion is a subject on which I must not enter in this 
 connection ; we are here concerned with it only in so far 
 as the details, scenic or mythical, of the death of the god 
 throw light on the ritual of human sacrifice. And for 
 this purpose it is well to cite also the legend of the death 
 of Dido as it is related by Timaeus,! where the pyre is 
 erected outside the walls of the palace, i.e. of the temple 
 of the goddess, and she leaps into it from the height of 
 the edifice. According to Justin tlie pyre stood " at the 
 end of the town ; " in fact the sanctuary of Coelestis, which 
 seems to represent the temple of Dido, stood a little way 
 outside the citadel or original city of Carthage, on lower 
 ground, and, at the beginning of the fourth century of our 
 era, was surrounded by a thorny jungle, which the popular 
 imagination pictured as inhabited by asps and dragons, the 
 guardians of the sanctuary.^ It can hardly be doubted that 
 the spot at which legend placed the self-sacrifice of Dido 
 to her husband Sicharbas was that at which the later 
 Carthaginian human sacrifices were performed.^ 
 
 We have therefore a series of examples all pointing 
 to human sacrifice beneath and outside the city. At 
 Hierapolis the victims are cast down from the temple, but 
 
 1 Fr. Hist. Or. i. 197; cf. Justin, xviii. 6. On Dido as identical with 
 Tanith (Tent), h '^xlfuav tH; Kxfxi^iyos, see the ingenious conjectures of G. 
 Hoffmann, Phoen. Inachr. p. 32 sq. 
 
 ^ Tissot, i. 653. Silius Ital., i. 81 sqq., also describes the temple of Dido 
 as enclosed in a thick grove, and surrounded by awful mystery. 
 
 ' The name Siehar-bas, Pj;3~l3r> "commemoration of Baal," is not a 
 divine title, but is to be understood from Ex. xx. 24. 
 
LECT. X. HOLOCAUSTS. 355 
 
 we do not read that they are burned ; at Jerusalem they 
 are burned in the ravine below the temple, but not cast 
 down. At Carthage the two rites meet, the sacrifice is 
 outside the city and outside the walls of the temple ; but 
 the divine victim leaps into the pyre, and later victims, as 
 Diodorus tells us,^ were allowed to roll into a fiery pit 
 from a sort of scaffold in the shape of an image of the god 
 with outstretched arms. In this last shape of the rite the 
 object plainly is to free the worshippers from the guilt of 
 bloodshed; the child was delivered alive to the god, and 
 he committed it to the flames. For the same reason, at 
 the so-called sacrifice of the pyre at Hierapolis, the holo- 
 causts were burnt alive,^ and so was the Harranian sacri- 
 fice of a bull to the planet Saturn described by Dimashki.^ 
 This last sacrifice is the lineal descendant of the older 
 human sacrifices of which we have been speaking ; for 
 the Carthaginian Baal or Moloch was identified with Saturn, 
 and at Hierapolis the sacrificed children are called oxen. 
 But in the more ancient Hebrew rite the children offered 
 to Moloch were slaughtered before they were burned.* And 
 that the burning is secondary, and was not the original 
 substance of the rite, appears also from the use of Hiera- 
 polis, where the sacrifice is simply flung from the temple. 
 So too, although Dido in Timseus flings herself into the fire, 
 there are other forms of the legend of the sacrifice of a Semitic 
 goddess, in which she simply casts herself down into water.* 
 
 ^ DioJ., XX. 14. ^ Dea Syria, xlix. 
 
 3 Ed. Mehreii, p. 40 (Fr. Transl. p. 42). 
 
 * Ezek. xvi. 20, xxiii. 39 ; Gen. xxii. 10. The inscriptions in Gesenius, 
 MoH. Phcen. p. 448 sq., which have sometimes been cited in this connec- 
 tion, are now known to have nothing to do with human sacrifice. 
 
 » The Semiramis legend at Hierapolis and Asoalon ; the legend of the 
 death of Astarte at Aphaca (Meliton), which must be identified with the 
 falling of the star into the water at the annual feast, just as in another 
 legend Aphrodite after the death of Adonis throws herself from the 
 Leucadian promontory (Ptol., Nov. Hist. vii. p. 198, West.). 
 
356 HUMAN 
 
 LECT. X. 
 
 When the burning came to be the essence of the rite, 
 the spot outside the city where it was performed might 
 naturally become itself a sanctuary, though it is plain 
 from the descriptions of the temple of Dido that the 
 sanctuary was of a very peculiar and awful kind, and 
 separated from contact with man in a way not usual in 
 the shrines of ordinary worship. And when this is so 
 the deity of this awful sanctuary naturally comes to be 
 regarded as a separate divinity, rejoicing in a cult which 
 the other gods abhor. But originally, we see, the human 
 sacrifice is offered to the ordinary god of the community, 
 only it is not consumed on the altar in the sanctuary, but 
 cast down into a ravine outside, or burned outside. This 
 rule appears to be universal, and I may note one or two 
 other instances that confirm it. Mesha burns his son as a 
 holocaust to Chemosh, not at the temple of Chemosh, but 
 on the wall of his beleaguered city ; ^ being under blockade, 
 he could not go outside the wall. Again, at Amathus the 
 human sacrifices offered to Jupiter Hospes were sacrificed 
 " before the gates," ^ and here the Jupiter Hospes of the 
 Eoman narrator can be none other than the Amathusian 
 Heracles or Malika, whose name, preserved by Hesychius, 
 identifies him with the Tyrian Melcarth. Or, again, Malalas ^ 
 tells us that the 22nd of May was kept as the anniversary 
 of a virgin sacrificed at the foundation of Antioch, at 
 sunrise, "half-way between the city and the river," and 
 afterwards worshipped like Dido as the Fortune of the town. 
 
 All this is so closely parallel to the burning of the flesh 
 of the Hebrew sin-offerings outside the camp that it seems 
 hardly doubtful that originally, as in the Hebrew sin- 
 offering, the true sacrifice, i.e. the shedding of the blood, took 
 place at the temple, and the burning was a distinct act. 
 
 1 2 Kings iii. 27. * Ovid., Metaph. x. 224 ; cf. Movers, i. 408 sq. 
 
 3 P. 200 of the Bonn ed. 
 
LECT. X. HOLOCAUSTS. 357 
 
 An intermediate stage is exhibited in the sacrifice of the 
 red heifer, where the whole ceremony takes place outside 
 the camp, but the blood is sprinkled in the direction of the 
 sanctuary (Numb. xix. 4). And in support of this view 
 let me press one more point that has come out in our 
 evidence. The human holocaust is not burned on an 
 altar, but on a pyre or fire pit constructed for the occasion. 
 This appears both in the myths of Dido and Heracles and 
 in actual usage. At Tarsus a very fair pyre is erected 
 yearly for the burning of Heracles ; in the Carthaginian 
 sacrifice of boys the victims fall into a pit of flame, and 
 in the Harranian ox-sacrifice the victim is fastened to a 
 grating placed over a vault filled with burning fuel ; 
 finally, Isaiah's Tophet is a broad and deep excavation 
 filled with wood. All these arrangements are totally 
 unlike the old Semitic altar or sacred stone, and are mere 
 developments of the primitive fireplace, made by scooping 
 a hollow in the ground.'^ It appears then that in the 
 ritual of human sacrifice, and therefore by necessary 
 
 ' It seems to me that nSD is properly an Aramaic name for a fireplace, or 
 for the framework set on the fire to support the victim, which appears in the 
 Harranian sacrifice and, in a modified form, at Carthage. For we are not to 
 think of the brazen idol as a shapely statue, but as a development of the dogs 
 of a primitive fireplace. I figure if to myself as a pillar or cone with a rude 
 head and arms, something like the divine symbol so often figured on 
 Carthaginian Tanith cippi. Now the name for the stones on which a pot 
 
 is set, and then for any stand or tripod set upon a fire, is in Arabic ttAijI, 
 Othflya, in Syriac ]_»_2lZ, Tfayd, of which we might, according to known 
 analogies, have a variant tfdth. The corresponding Hebrew word is 
 nSK'N (for shfdth), which means an ashpit or dunghill, but primarily must 
 
 have denoted the fireplace, since the denominative verb DSK' is "to set on 
 a pot." In nomad life the fireplace of one day is the ash-heap of the next. 
 Now at the time when the word nSD first appears in Hebrew, the chief 
 foreign influence in Judasan religion was that of Damascus (2 Kings xvi.), 
 and there is therefore no improbability in the hypothesis that DSD is an 
 Aramaic word. The pronunciation tofeth is quite precarious, for LXX. has 
 ra.(piS, and the Massorets seem to have given the loathsome thing the points 
 of bosheth. 
 
358 ALTARS OF lect. x. 
 
 inference in the ritual of the holocaust generally, the 
 burning was originally no integral part of the ceremony, 
 and did not take place on the altar or even within the 
 sanctuary, but in a place apart, away from the habitations 
 of man. Tor human sacrifices and for solemn piacula 
 this rule continued to be observed even to a late date, but 
 for ordinary animal holocausts the custom of burning the 
 flesh in the court of the sanctuary must have established 
 itself pretty early. Thus, as regards the Hebrews, both the 
 oldest narrators of the Pentateuch (the Jahvist and the 
 Elohist) presuppose the custom of burning holocausts and 
 other sacrifices on the altar,-' so that the fusion is already 
 complete between the sacred stone to receive the blood, and 
 the hearth on which the flesh was burned. But this does 
 not carry us back beyond the eighth or ninth century B.C., 
 and the oldest history still preserves traces of a different 
 custom. The burnt-sacrifices of Gideon and Manoah are 
 not offered on an altar but on the bare rock,^ and even 
 at the opening of Solomon's temple the fire-offerings were 
 burned not on the altar, but in the middle of the court in 
 front of the naos, as was done many centuries later at 
 Hierapolis on the day of the Pyre-sacrifice. It is true that 
 in 1 Kings viii. 64 this is said to have been done only 
 because " the brazen altar that was before the Lord " was 
 not large enough for so great an occasion ; but it is very 
 doubtful whether there was in the first temple any other 
 brazen altar than the two brazen pillars, Jachin and Boaz, 
 which corresponded to the antique altar cippus, and so 
 might indeed be sprinkled with sacrificial blood, but could 
 not be used as altars of burnt-offering. The first definite 
 
 1 Gen. viii. 20, xxii. 9. Ex. xx. 24 makes the holocaust be slaughtered 
 on the altar, but does not expressly say that it was burned on it. 
 
 ^ Judg. vi. 20, xiii. 19 ; Judg. vi. 26, the more modern story of Gideon's 
 offering, gives the modern ritual. 
 
LECT. X. BTJKNT-OFFEEING. 359 
 
 appearance of a formal built-up altar of burnt-offeriDg at 
 the temple of Jerusalem is in the reign of Ahaz, who had 
 one constructed on the model of the altar of Damascus. 
 This altar, and not the brazen altar, was again the model 
 for the altar of the second temple, which was of stone not 
 of brass, and it is plain from the narrative of 2 Kings xvi., 
 especially in the form of the text which has been preserved 
 by the Septuagint, that Ahaz's innovation was not merely 
 the introduction of a new architectural pattern, but involved 
 a modification of the whole ritual.^ 
 
 We may now pass on to the case of ordinary fire- 
 offerings in which only the fat of the vitals is consumed 
 on the altar. It is easy to see that, when men began to 
 shrink from the eating of sacrificial flesh, they would not 
 necessarily at once take refuge in entire abstinence. The 
 alternative was to abstain from partaking of those parts 
 in which the sacred life especially centred. Accordingly 
 we find that in ordinary Hebrew sacrifices the whole blood 
 is poured out at the altar as a thing too sacred to be 
 eaten.^ Again, the head is by many nations regarded as 
 a special seat of the soul, and so, in Egyptian sacrifice, the 
 head was not eaten but thrown into the Nile,' while 
 among the Iranians the head of the victim was dedicated 
 to Haoma, that the immortal part of the animal might 
 return to him. But a not less important seat of life, 
 according to Semitic ideas, lay in the viscera, especially in 
 
 1 See Additional Note L, The Altar at Jerusalem. I may add that, in 
 1 Kings xviii., Elijah's altar does not seem to be a raised structure, but 
 simply a circle marked out by twelve standing stones and a trench. 
 
 2 Among the Hottentots blood is allowed to men but not to women ; 
 the female sex being among savages excluded from many holy privileges. 
 Similarly the flesh of the Hebrew sin-offering must be eaten only by males 
 (Lev. vi. 22 (29)), and among the Caffres the head, breast and heart are 
 man's part (Liohtenstein, p. 451). 
 
 3 Herod., ii. 39. The objection to eating the head is very widely spread ; 
 we find it in Bavaria as late as the fifteenth century (Usener, Beligionsgesch. 
 Untensuchungen, ii. 84). 
 
360 SACREDNESS OP lect. x. 
 
 the kidneys and the liver, which in the Semitic dialects 
 are continually named as the seats of emotion, or more 
 broadly in the fat of the omentum and the organs that 
 lie in and near it.^ Now it is precisely this part of the 
 victim, the fat of the omentum with the kidneys and the 
 lobe of the liver, which the Hebrews were forbidden to 
 eat, and, in the ease of sacrifice, burned on the altar. 
 
 The ideas connected with the kidney fat and its appur- 
 tenances may be illustrated by the usages of primitive 
 peoples in modern times. When the Australians kill an 
 enemy in blood revenge, " they always abstract the kidney 
 fat, and also take off a piece of the skin of the thigh " [or 
 a piece of the flank].^ " These are carried home as trophies. 
 . . . The caul fat is carefully kept by the assassin, and 
 used to lubricate himself ; " he thinks, we are told, that 
 thus the strength of the victim enters into him.^ When 
 
 ^ The Aratic Khilh (Heb. ':hn, Syr. helba) primarily denotes the 
 omentum or midriff, but includes the fat or suet connected therewith ; see 
 Lev. iii. 3. An Arab says of a woman who has inspired him with passion, 
 " she has overturned my heart and torn my midriff " (Lane, p. 782). So 
 in Ps. xvi. 10 the sense is not "they have closed their fat (unfeeling) 
 heart," but " they have shut up their midriff, and so are inserisible to pity." 
 From this complex of fat parts the fat of the kidneys is particularly selected 
 by the Arabs, and by most savages, as the special seat of life. One says 
 " I found him with his kidney fat," meaning I found him brisk and all 
 alive (Lane, p. 1513). In Egypt, according to Burckhardt {Ar. Prov. No. 
 301), " when a sheep is kOled by a private person, some of the bystanders 
 often take away the kidneys, or at least the fat that incloses them, as due 
 to the public from him who slaughters the sheep." This, I take it, is a relic 
 of old sacrificial usage ; what used to be given to the god is now given in 
 charity. 
 
 2 The thigh is a seat of life and especially of procreative power, as appears 
 very clearly in the idiom of the Semites {Kinship, p. 34). From this 
 may be explained the sacredness of the nervus ischiadicus among the 
 Hebrews (Gen. xxxii. 33), and similar superstitions among other nations. Is 
 this also the reason why the "fat thigh-bones" are an altar-portion among 
 the Greeks ? The nature of the lameness produced by injury to the sinew of 
 the thigh socket is explained by the Arabic lexx., s.v. ij.U. ; the man 
 can only walk on the tips of his toes. This seems to have been a common 
 affection, for poetical metaphors are taken from it. 
 
 ' Brough Smyth, ii. 289, i. 102. 
 
LECT. X. KIDNEY FAT. 361 
 
 the Basutos offer a sacrifice to heal the sick, as soon as 
 the victim is dead, they hasten to take the epiploon or 
 intestinal covering, which is considered the most sacred 
 part, and put it round the patient's neck. . . . The gall 
 is then poured on the head of the patient. After a 
 sacrifice the gall bladder is invariably fastened to the 
 hair of the individual for whom the victim has been slain, 
 and becomes a sign of purification.^ 
 
 The importance attached by various nations to these 
 vital parts of the body is very ancient, and extends to 
 regions where sacrifice by fire is unknown. The point 
 of view from which we are to regard the reluctance to eat 
 of them is that, being more vital, they are more holy 
 than other parts, and therefore at once more potent and 
 more dangerous. All sacrificial flesh is charged with au 
 awful virtue, and all sacra are dangerous to the unclean 
 or to those who are not duly prepared ; but these are so 
 holy and so awful that they are not eaten at all, but dealt 
 with in special ways, and in particular are used as power- 
 ful charms.^ 
 
 We see from the case of the Basuto sacrifice that it is 
 by no means true that all that man does not eat must be 
 given to the god, and the same thing appears in other 
 examples. The Hebrews pour but the blood at the altar, 
 but the Greeks use it for lustration and the old Arabs as 
 a cure for madness. The Persians restore the head and 
 with it the life to Haoma, while the Tauri, according to 
 Herodotus, iv. 103, in their human sacrifices, bury the 
 body or cast it down from the cliff on which the temple 
 
 ' Casalis, p. 250. 
 
 ^ This may be illustrated by the case of the blood of sacrificial victims. 
 Among the Greeks bull's blood was regarded as a poison ; but for this 
 belief there is no physiological basis, the danger lay in its sacred nature. 
 But conversely it was used under divine direction as a medicine ; jElian, 
 N. A. xi. 35. On blood as a medicine see also Pliny, H. N. xxviii. 43, 
 xxvi. 8 ; and Adams's Paulus JSgineta, iii. 25 sq. 
 
362 USE OF THE LECT. X. 
 
 stands, but fix the head on a pole above their houses as a 
 sacred guardian. Among the Semites, too, the magical 
 use of a dried head had great vogue. This sort of charm 
 is mentioned by Jacob of Edessa,^ and hares' heads were 
 worn as amulets by Arab women.^ So, too, when we find 
 bones, and especially dead men's bones, used as charms," 
 we must think primarily of the bones of sacrifices. 
 Nilus's Saracens at least broke up the bones and ate the 
 marrow, but the solid osseous tissue must from the first 
 have defied most teeth unless it was pounded, and so it 
 was particularly likely to be kept and used as a charm. 
 Of course the sacred bones may have been often buried, 
 and when fire was introduced they were likely to be burned, 
 as is the rule with the CafFres.* As the sacrifices of the 
 Caffres are not fire-sacrifices, it is clear that in this case 
 the bones are burned to dispose of the holy substance, not 
 to provide food for the gods. But even when the bones 
 or the whole carcase of a sacrosanct victim are burned, the 
 sacred virtue is not necessarily destroyed. The ashes of 
 sacrifice are used, like the blood, for lustrations of various 
 kinds, as we see in the case of the red heifer among the 
 Hebrews ; and in agricultural religions such ashes are very 
 commonly used to give fertility to the land. That is, the 
 sacred elements, after they cease to be eaten, are still used 
 in varied forms as a means of communicating the divine life 
 and life-giving or cleansing virtue to the worshippers, their 
 houses, their lands, and all things connected with them. 
 
 1 Qu. 43 ; see more examples in Kay.<ier's notes, p. 142, and in a paper by 
 Jahn, Ber. d. Sachs. Oes. d. Wiss. 1854, p. 48. For the magical human 
 head, of which we read so much in the latest forms of Semitic heathenism, 
 see Chwolsohn, ii. 150 sqq., and the Actes of the Leyden Congress, ii. 365 sq. 
 
 2 Diw. Hvdh. clxxx. 9 ; ZDMG. xxxix. 329. 
 
 'Examples infra, Add. Note C, p. 429. The very dung of cattle 
 was a charm in Syria (Jacob of Edessa, Qu. 42), to which many parallels 
 exist, not only in Africa, but among the Aryans of India. 
 
 * Maclean, p. 81. 
 
LECT. X. KIDNEY FAT. 363 
 
 In the later fire-rituals the fat of the victim, with its 
 blood, is quite specially the altar food of the gods. But 
 between the practice which this view represents and the 
 primitive practice, in which the whole body was eaten, we 
 must, I think, in accordance with what has just been said, 
 insert an intermediate stage, which can still be seen and 
 studied in the usage of primitive peoples. Among the 
 Damaras the fat of particular animals is supposed to 
 possess certain virtues, and is carefully collected and kept 
 in vessels of a particular kind. A small portion dissolved 
 in water is given to persons who return home safely after 
 a lengthened absence ; . . . the chief makes use of it as 
 an unguent for his body.^ So too " dried flesh and fat " 
 are used as amulets by the Wamaquas.^ Among the 
 Bechuanas lubrication with grease is part of the ceremony 
 of admission of girls into womanhood, and among the 
 Hottentots young men on their initiation into manhood are 
 daubed with fat and soot.^ Grease is the usual unguent 
 all over Africa, and from these examples we see that its 
 use is not merely hygienic, but has a sacred meaning. 
 Indeed, the use of various kinds of fat, especially human 
 fat, as a charm, is common all over the world, and we learn 
 from the Australian superstition quoted above that the 
 reason of this is that the fat, as a special seat of life, is a 
 vehicle of the living virtue of the being from which it is 
 taken. Now we have seen in speaking of the use of 
 unguents in Semitic religion,* that this particular medium 
 has in some way an equivalent value to blood, for which it 
 may be substituted in the covenant ceremony, and also in 
 the ceremony of bedaubing the sacred stone as an act of 
 
 1 Anderson, Lahe Ngami, p. 223. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 330. The dried flesh reminds us of the Arabian custom of 
 drying strips of sacrificial flesh on the days of Mina (Wellh., p. 79). 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 465 ; Kolben, i. 121. * Supra, p. 215. 
 
364 BURNING LECT. X. 
 
 homage. If, now, we remember that the oldest unguents 
 are animal fats, and that vegetable oil was unknown to 
 the Semitic nomads,^ we are plainly led to the conclusion 
 that unction is primarily an application of the sacrificial 
 fat, with its living virtues, to the persons of the wor- 
 shippers. On this view the anointing of kings, and 
 the use of unguents on visiting the sanctuary, are at 
 once intelligible.^ 
 
 The agricultural Semites anointed themselves with olive 
 oil, and burned the sacrificial fat on the altar. This could 
 be done without any fundamental modification of the old 
 type of sacred stone or altar pillar, simply by making a 
 hollow on the top to receive the grease ; and there is some 
 reason to think that fire-altars of this simple kind, which 
 in certain Phoenician types are developed into altar candle- 
 sticks, are older than the broad platform- altar proper for 
 receiving a burnt-offering.^ But there are evidences even 
 in the Old Testament that it' was only gradually that the 
 burning of the fat came to be an integral part of the altar 
 ritual. In 1 Sam. ii. 15 we find a controversy between 
 the priests and the people on this very topic. The 
 worshippers maintain that the priest has no claim to his 
 fee of flesh till the fat is burned; but the priests assert their 
 right to have a share of raw flesh at once. It is assumed 
 in the argument that if the priests held back their claim 
 till they had burned the fat, the flesh would be already 
 cooked — so the worshippers at least did not wait to see 
 the fat burned. And probably the priests had precedent 
 on their side, for the old law of Ex. xxiii. 18 only 
 
 1 Frankel, FremdwHrter, p. 147. 
 
 ^ The use of u-nguents by witches when they desire to transform them- 
 selves into animal shape, — as we find it, for example, in Apuleius's novel, — 
 belongs to the same region of superstition, and to that most primitive form 
 of the superstition which turns on the kinship of men with animals. 
 
 ' See below, Additional Note L. 
 
LECT. X. OF THE FAT. 365 
 
 requires that the fat of a festal sacrifice shall be burned 
 before daybreak — the sacrifice itself having taken place in 
 the evening. 
 
 I fear that these details may seem tedious, but the 
 cumulative evidence which they afford that the burning of 
 the flesh or fat held quite a secondary place in ancient 
 sacrifice, and was originally no integral part of the oblation 
 at the altar, is of the greatest importance for the history of 
 sacrificial ideas. They show how impossible it is to regard 
 animal sacrifices as primarily consisting in a gift of food to 
 the gods, and how long it was before this notion superseded 
 the original notion of communion between men and their 
 gods in the life of the sacrifice. 
 
 I do not suppose that it is possible on the basis of the 
 evidences that have come before us to reconstruct from 
 step to step the whole history of the development of fire- 
 sacrifices. But we can at least see in a general way how the 
 chief modifications of sacrificial ritual and idea came in. 
 
 Originally neither the flesh nor the life of the victim 
 could be regarded as a gift or tribute — i.e. as something 
 which belonged to the worshipper, and of which he 
 divested himself in order to make it over to the object of 
 his worship. It is probable that sacrifice is older than 
 the idea of private property, and it is certain that its 
 beginnings go back to a time when _ the owner of a sheep, 
 an ox, or a camel had no right to dispose of its life 
 according to his own good pleasure. Such an animal 
 could only be slain in order that its life might be distri- 
 buted between all the kin and the kindred god. At this 
 stage the details of the ritual are shaped by the rule that 
 ' no part of the life must be lost, and that therefore the 
 whole body, which is the vehicle of the life, must be 
 distributed and used up in the holy ritual. In the first 
 instance, therefore, everything must be eaten up, and eaten 
 
366 ORIGIN OF LECT. X. 
 
 while it is still alive — fresh and raw. Gradually this 
 rule is modified, partly because it is difficult to insist, 
 in the face of growing civilisation, on the rule that 
 even bones, skin and offal must be devoured, and partly 
 because there is increasing reluctance to partake of the 
 holy life.^ This reluctance again is connected with the 
 growth of the distinction between degrees of holiness. 
 Not every man is holy enough to partake of the most 
 sacred sacraments without danger. What is safe for a 
 consecrated chief or priest is not safe for the mass of the 
 people. Or even it is better that the most sacred parts of 
 the victim should not be eaten at all ; the blood and the 
 fat are medicines too powerful to be taken internally, but 
 they may be sprinkled or daubed on the worshippers, while 
 the sacrificinl meal is confined to the parts of the flesh in 
 which the sacred life is less intensely present. Or, finally, 
 it is most seemly and most safe to withdraw the holiest 
 things from man's use altogether, to pour out the whole 
 blood at the altar, and to burn the fat. All this applies 
 to ordinary sacrifices, in which the gradual concentration 
 of the holiness of the victim in its fat and blood tends to 
 make the rest of the flesh appear less and less holy, till 
 ultimately it becomes almost a common thing. But, on 
 special occasions, where the old ritual is naturally observed 
 with antique rigidity, and where, therefore, the victim is 
 treated at the altar as if it were a tribesman, the feeling 
 of sacred horror against too close an approach to things 
 most holy extends to the whole flesh, and develops itself, 
 especially in connection with actual human sacrifice, into 
 the rule that no part of such victims may be eaten, but 
 that the whole must be reverently burned. 
 
 If we may generalize from the case of Arabia, where 
 the holocaust was confined to human victims and the fat 
 "■ Probably these two reasons are fundamentally one. 
 
LECT. X. FIRE-SACEIFICE. 367 
 
 of ordinary sacrifices was not burned, it would appear that 
 it was human sacrifice that first gave rise to the use of fire 
 as a safe means of disposing of the bodies of the holiest 
 victims. From this practice that of burning the fat in 
 common sacrifices may very well have been derived. But 
 the evidence is not sufficient to justify a positive con- 
 clusion on the matter, and it is quite possible that the use 
 of fire began among the Northern Semites in connection 
 with ordinary sacrifices, simply as a means of dealing with 
 such parts of the victim as were not or could not be eaten, 
 and yet were too holy to be left undisposed of. The 
 Hebrew ritual of ordinary sacrifices is careful to prescribe 
 that what is not eaten on the first or second day shall be 
 burned.^ This is evidently a mere softening of the old 
 rule that the flesh of the victim must be consumed without 
 delay, while it is still alive and quivering, into the rule 
 that it must not be allowed to putrefy and decompose ; 
 and this again, since the close connection between putre- 
 faction and fermentation is patent even to the unscientific 
 observer, seems also to be the principle on which ferments 
 are excluded from the altar. The use of fire in sacrifice, 
 as the most complete and thorough means of avoiding 
 putrefaction in whatever part of the victim cannot or may 
 not be eaten, must have suggested itself so naturally 
 wherever fire was known, that no other reason is necessary 
 to explain its wide adoption. The burial of the sacrificial 
 flesh, of which we have found one or two examples, does 
 not appear to have met with so much favour, and indeed 
 was not so satisfactory from the point of view indicated by 
 the rules of Hebrew ritual.^ 
 
 The use of fire in this sense does not involve any 
 fundamental modification in the ideas connected with 
 sacrifice. The critical point in the development is when 
 "• Lev. vii. 15 sqq. ' See Additional Note. M, ffif/h Places. 
 
368 FIRE-SACRIPICE. lect. x. 
 
 the fat of ordinary victims, or still more, the whole flesh 
 of the holocaust, is burned within the sanctuary or on the 
 altar, and is regarded as being thus made over to the deity. 
 This point claims to be examined more fully, and must be 
 reserved for consideration at our next meeting. 
 
LECTUEE XI. 
 
 SACRIFICIAL GIFTS AND PIACULAE SACEIFICES THE SPECIAL 
 
 IDEAS INVOLVED IN THE LATTER. 
 
 In connection with the later Semitic sacrifices fire is 
 employed for two purposes, apparently quite independent 
 of one another. Its ordinary use is upon the altar, where 
 it serves to subKmate, and so to convey to deities of an 
 ethereal nature, gifts of solid flesh, which are regarded as 
 the food of the gods. But in certain Hebrew piacula the 
 sacrificial flesh is burned without the camp, and is not 
 regarded as the food of the gods. The parts of the victim 
 which in the highest form of piacula are burned outside 
 the camp are the same which in lower forms of the sin- 
 ofi'ering were eaten hj the priests as representatives of the 
 worshippers, or which in ordinary sacrifices would have 
 been eaten by the worshippers themselves. Here, there- 
 fore, the fire seems to play the same part that is assigned to 
 it under the rule that, if an ordinary sacrifice is not eaten 
 up within one or two days, the remnant must be burned. 
 All sacrificial flesh is holy, and must be dealt with accord- 
 ing to fixed ritual rules, one of which is that it must not 
 be allowed to putrefy. Ordinary sacrificial flesh may be 
 either eaten or burned, but sin-offerings are too holy to be 
 eaten except by the priests, and in certain cases are too 
 holy to be eaten even by them, and therefore must be 
 burned, not as a way of conveying them to the deity, but 
 simply as a way of fitly disposing of them. 
 
 2a 
 
370 ORIGIN OF LECT. XI. 
 
 It is commonly supposed that the first use of fire was 
 upon the altar, and that the burning outside the camp is 
 a later invention, expressing the idea that, in the case of a 
 sacrifice for sin, the deity does not desire a material gift, 
 but only the death of the offender. The ritual of the 
 Hebrew sin-offering lends itself to such an interpretation 
 readily enough, but it is impossible to believe that its 
 origin is to be explained on any such view. If the sin- 
 ofifering is merely a symbolical representation of a penal 
 execution, why is the flesh of the victim holy in the first 
 degree ? and why are the blood and fat offered upon the 
 altar ? But it is unnecessary to press these minor objections 
 to the common view, which is refuted more conclusively 
 by a series of facts that have come before us in the course 
 of the last lecture. There is a variety of evidence that fire 
 was applied to sacrifices, or to parts of sacrifices, as an 
 alternative to their consumption by the worshippers, before 
 the altar became a hearth, and before it came to be thought 
 that what was burned was conveyed, as etherealised food, 
 to the deity. The Hebrew piacula that were burned 
 outside the camp represent an older form of ritual than 
 the holocaust on the altar, and the thing that really needs 
 explanation is the origin of the latter. 
 
 Originally all sacrifices were eaten up by the worshippers. 
 By and by certain portions of ordinary sacrifices, and the 
 whole flesh of extraordinary sacrifices, ceased to be eaten. 
 What was not eaten was burned, and in process of time it 
 came to be burned on the altar and regarded as made over 
 to the god. Exactly the same change took place with the 
 sacrificial blood, except that here there is no use of fire. 
 In the oldest sacrifices the blood was drunk by the 
 worshippers, and after it ceased to be drunk it was all 
 poured out at the altar. The tendency evidently was to 
 convey directly to the godhead every portion of a sacrifice 
 
LECT. XI. BURNT-OFFERINGS. 371 
 
 that was not consumed by the worshipper ; but how did 
 this tendency arise 1 
 
 I daresay that some of you will be inclined to say that 
 I am making a difficulty of a matter that needs no expla- 
 nation. Is it not obvious that a sacrifice is a consecrated 
 thing, that consecrated things belong to the god, and that 
 the altar is their proper place ? No doubt this seems to 
 be obvious, but it is precisely the things that seem obvious 
 which in a subject like ours require the most careful 
 scrutiny. You say that consecrated things belong to the 
 god, but we saw long ago that this is not the primitive 
 idea of holiness. A holy thing is taboo, i.e. man's contact 
 with it and use of it are subject to certain restrictions, but 
 this idea does not in early society rest on the belief that it 
 is the property of the gods. Again you say that a sacrifice 
 is a consecrated thing, but what do you mean by this ? If 
 you mean that the victim became holy by being selected 
 for sacrifice and presented at the altar, you have not 
 correctly apprehended the nature of the oldest rites. Por 
 in them the victim was naturally holy, not in virtue of its 
 sacrificial destination, but because it was an animal of holy 
 kind. So long as the natural hohness of certain animal 
 species was a living element in popular faith, it was by no 
 means obvious that holy things belong to the god, and 
 should find their ultimate destination at the altar. 
 
 In later heathenism the conception of holy kinds and 
 the old ideas of taboo generally had become obsolete, and 
 the ritual observances founded upon them were no longer 
 understood. And, on the other hand, the comparatively 
 modern idea of property had taken shape, and began to 
 play a leading part both in religion and in social life. The 
 victim was no longer a naturally sacred thing, over which 
 man had very limited rights, and which he was required to 
 treat as a useful friend rather than a chattel, but was 
 
372 GIFT THEORY lect. xi. 
 
 drawn from the absolute property of the worshipper, of 
 which he had a right to dispose as he pleased. Before its 
 presentation the victim was a common thing, and it was 
 only by being selected for sacrifice that it became holy. 
 If, therefore, by presenting his sheep or ox at the altar, the 
 owner lost the right to eat or sell its flesh, the explanation 
 could no longer be sought in any other way than by the 
 assumption that he had surrendered his right of property 
 to another party, viz., to the god. Consecration was in- 
 terpreted to mean a gift of man's property to the god, and 
 everything that was withdrawn by consecration from the 
 free use of man was conceived to have changed its owner. 
 The blood and fat of ordinary sacrifices, or the whole flesh 
 in the case of the holocaust, were withdrawn from human 
 use ; it was held, therefore, that they had become the 
 property of the god, and were reserved for his use. This 
 being so, it was inevitable that the burning of the flesh 
 and fat should come to be regarded as a method of convey- 
 ing them to the god ; and, as soon as this conclusion was 
 drawn, the way was open for the introduction of the 
 modern practice, in which the burning took place on the 
 altar. The transformation of the altar into the hearth, on 
 which the sacrificial flesh was consumed, marks the final 
 establishment of a new view of holiness, based on the 
 doctrine of property, in which the inviolability of holy 
 things is no longer made to rest on their intrinsic super- 
 natural quality, but upon their appropriation to the use 
 and service of the gods. The success of this new view is 
 not surprising, for in every department of early society 
 we find that as soon as the notion of property, and of 
 transfers of property from one person to another, gets firm 
 footing, it begins to swallow up all earlier formulas for the 
 relations of persons and things. But the adaptation of 
 old institutions to new ideas can seldom be effected without 
 
LECT. XI. OF SACRIFICE. 373 
 
 leaving internal contradictions between the old and the 
 new, which ultimately bring about the complete dissolu- 
 tion of the incongruous system. The new wine bursts the 
 old bottles, and the new patch tears the old garment 
 asunder. 
 
 In the case of ordinary sacrifices the theory that holy 
 things are the property of the deity, and that the consecra- 
 tion of things naturally common implies a gift from man 
 to his god, was carried out with little difficulty. It was 
 understood that at the altar the whole victim is made 
 over to the deity and accepted by him ; but that the 
 main part of the flesh is returned to the worshipper, to 
 be eaten sacrificially as a holy thing at the table of the 
 god. This explanation went well enough with the con- 
 ception of the deity as a king or great lord, whose temple 
 was the court at which he sat to receive the homage of 
 his subjects and tenants, and to entertain them with 
 princely hospitality. But it did not satisfactorily account 
 for the most characteristic feature in sacri6ce, the applica- 
 tion of the blood to the altar, and the burning of the fat 
 on the sacred hearth. For these, according to the received 
 interpretation, were the food of the deity ; and so it 
 appeared that the god was dependent on man for his 
 daily nourishment, although, on the other hand, all the 
 good things that man enjoyed he owed to the gift and 
 favour of his god. This is the weak point in the current 
 view of sacrifice which roused the indignation of the author 
 of Psalm 1., and afforded so much merriment to later 
 satirists like Lucian. The difficulty might be explained 
 away by a spiritualising interpretation, which treated the 
 material altar gift as a mere symbol, and urged that the 
 true value of the offering lay in the homage of the 
 worshipper's heart, expressed in the traditional oblation. 
 But the religion of the masses never took so subtle a 
 
374 GIFT THEORY lect. xi, 
 
 view as this, and to the majority of the worshippers even 
 in Israel, before ' the exile, the dominant idea in the 
 ritual was that the material oblation afforded a physical 
 satisfaction to the god, and that copious offerings were 
 an infallible means of keeping him in good humour. So 
 long as sacrifice was exclusively or mainly a social service, 
 performed by the community, the crassness of this con- 
 ception found its counterpoise in the ideas of religious 
 fellowship that have been expounded in Lecture VII.'^ 
 But in private sacrifice there was little or nothing to 
 raise the transaction above the level of a mere bargain, 
 in which no ethical consideration was involved, but the 
 good understanding between the worshipper and his god 
 was maintained by reciprocal friendly offices of a purely 
 material kind. This superficial view of religion served 
 very well in times of prosperity, but it could not stand 
 the strain of serious and prolonged adversity, when 
 it became plain that religion had to reckon with the 
 sustained displeasure of the gods. In such circumstances 
 men were forced to conclude that it was useless to attempt 
 to appease the divine wrath by gifts of things which the 
 gods, as lords of the earth, already possessed in abundance. 
 It was not only Jehovah who could say, " I will take no 
 bullock out of thy house, nor he -goats from thy folds ; 
 for every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a 
 thousand hills." The Baalim too were in their way lords 
 of nature, and even from the standpoint of heathenism 
 it was absurd to suppose that they were really dependent 
 on the tribute of their worshippers. In short, the gift- 
 theory of sacrifice was not enough to account for the rule 
 that sacrifice is the sole and sufficient form of every act 
 of worship, even in religions which had not realised, with 
 the Hebrew prophets, that what the true God requires of 
 1 Supra, p. 245 sqq. 
 
LECT. XI. OF SACRIFICE. 375 
 
 His worshippers is not a material oblation, but " to do 
 justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God." 
 
 If the theory of sacrifice as a gift or tribute, taken from 
 man's property and conveyed to the deity, was inadequate 
 even as applied to ordinary oblations, it was evidently still 
 more inadequate as applied to the holocaust, and especially 
 to human sacrifice. It is commonly supposed that the 
 holocaust was more powerful than ordinary sacrifices, 
 because the gift to the god was greater. But even in 
 ordinary sacrifices the whole victim was consecrated and 
 made over to the god ; only in the holocaust the god kept 
 everything to himself, while in ordinary sacrifices he 
 invited the worshipper to dine with him. It does not 
 appear that there is any good reason, on the doctrine of 
 sacrificial tribute, why this difference should be to the 
 advantage of the holocaust. In the case of human sacri- 
 fices the gift-theory led to results which were not only 
 absurd but revolting — absurd, since it does not follow 
 that because a man's first-born son is dearer to himself 
 than all his wealth, the life of that son is the most 
 valuable gift that he can offer to his god ; and revolting, 
 when it came to be supposed that the sacrifice of children 
 as fire-offerings was a gift of food to a deity who delighted 
 in human flesh.^ So detestable a view of the nature of 
 the gods cannot fairly be said to correspond to the general 
 character of the old Semitic religions, which ought to be 
 judged of by the ordinary forms of worship and not by 
 exceptional rites. If the gods had been habitually 
 conceived as cannibal monsters, the general type of ritual 
 would have been gloomy and timorous, whereas really it 
 was full of joyous and even careless confidence. I 
 conclude, therefore, that the child-devouring King of the 
 later Moloch-worship owes his cannibal attributes, not to 
 
 1 Ezek. xvi. 20, xxiii. 37. 
 
376 GIFT THEORY lect. xi. 
 
 the fundamental principles of Semitic religion, but to false 
 logic, straining the gift-theory of sacrifice to cover rites to 
 which it had no legitimate application. And this con- 
 clusion is justified when we find that, though human 
 sacrifices were not unknown in older times, the ancient 
 ritual was to burn them without the camp — a clear proof 
 that their flesh was not originally regarded as a food- 
 offering to the deity.^ 
 
 On the whole, then, the introduction of ideas of 
 
 property into the relations between men and their gods 
 
 seems to have been one of the most fatal aberrations in 
 
 the development of ancient religion. In the beginnings 
 
 of human thought, the natural and the supernatural, the 
 
 material and the spiritual, were confounded, and this 
 
 confusion gave rise to the old notion of holiness, which 
 
 turned on the idea that supernatural influences emanated, 
 
 like an infection, from certain material things. It was 
 
 necessary to human progress that this crude conception 
 
 should be superseded, and at first sight we are disposed to 
 
 see nothing but good in the introduction of the notion 
 
 that holy things are forbidden to man because they are 
 
 reserved for the use of the gods, and that the danger 
 
 associated with illegitimate invasion of them is not due to 
 
 any deadly supernatural influence, directly proceeding from 
 
 the holy object, but to the wrath of a personal god, who 
 
 will not suffer his property to be tampered with. In one 
 
 direction this modification was undoubtedly beneficial, for 
 
 the vague dread of the unknown supernatural, which in 
 
 savage society is so strong that it paralyses progress of 
 
 every kind, and turns man aside from his legitimate task 
 
 of subduing nature to his use, receives a fatal blow as soon 
 
 as all supernatural processes are referred to the will and 
 
 ^ Compare the remarks on the sacrifice of the first-horn, infra, Additiona 
 Note r. 
 
LECT. XI. OF SACRIFICE. 377 
 
 power of known deities, whose converse with man is 
 guided by fixed laws. But it was in the last degree 
 unfortunate that these fixed laws were taken to be largely 
 based on the principle of property ; for the notion of 
 property materialises everything that it touches, and its 
 introduction into religion made it impossible to rise to 
 spiritual conceptions of the deity and his relations to man 
 on the basis of traditional religion. On the other hand, 
 the more ancient idea of living communion between the 
 god and his worshippers, which fell more and more into 
 the background under the theory of sacrificial gifts, 
 contained an element of permanent truth wrapped up in 
 a very crude embodiment, and to it therefore all the 
 efforts of ancient heathenism towards a better way of 
 converse with the divine powers attach themselves, 
 taking hold of those forms and features of sacrifice 
 which evidently involved something more than the mere 
 presentation to the deity of a material tribute. And as 
 the need for something more than the ordinary altar gifts 
 supplied was not habitually present to men's minds, but 
 forced itself upon them in grave crises of life, and particu- 
 larly in times of danger, when the god seemed to be 
 angry with his people, or when at any rate it was of 
 importance to niake sure that he was not angry, all the 
 aspects of worship that go beyond the payment of gifts 
 and tribute came to be looked upon as having a special 
 atoning character, that is, as being directed not so much 
 to maintain a good understanding with the deity, as to 
 renew it when it was interrupted. 
 
 When the idea of atonement is taken in this very 
 general form, there is obviously no sharp line between 
 atoning and ordinary sacrifices ; for in ordinary life the 
 means that are used to keep a man in good humour will 
 often suffice to restore him to good humour, if they are 
 
378 GIFTS AND LECT. XI. 
 
 sedulously employed. On this analogy a mere gift, 
 presented at a suitable moment, or of greater value than 
 usual, was often thought sufficient to appease the divine 
 wrath ; a general atoning force was ascribed to all sacri- 
 fices, and the value of special piacula was often estimated 
 simply by the consideration that they cost the worshipper 
 more than an everyday offering. We have seen that even 
 human sacrifices were sometimes considered from this 
 point of view ; and in general the idea that every offence 
 against the deity can be appraised, and made good by a 
 payment of a certain value, was not inconsistent with the 
 principles of ancient law, which deals with offences against 
 persons on the doctrine of retaliation, but admits to an 
 almost unlimited extent the doctrine that the injured 
 party may waive his right of retaliation in consideration 
 of a payment by the offender. But it is not the doctrine 
 of ancient law that an injured party can be compelled to 
 accept material compensation for an offence ; and therefore, 
 even on ordinary human analogies, no religious system 
 could be regarded as complete which had not more 
 powerful means of conjuring the divine displeasure than 
 were afforded by the mere offer of a gift or payment. 
 In point of fact all ancient religions had sacrificial 
 ceremonies of this more powerful kind, in which the 
 notion of pleasing the god by a gift either found no 
 expression at all, or evidently did not exhaust the signifi- 
 cance of the ritual ; and these are the sacrifices to which 
 the distinctive name of piacula is properly applied. 
 
 It is sometimes supposed that special piacula did not 
 exist in the older Semitic religions, and were invented for 
 the first time when the gift -theory of sacrifice began to 
 break down. But this supposition is incredible in itself, 
 and is not consistent with the historical evidence. It is 
 incredible that a gift should have been the oldest known 
 
LECT. XI. SPECIAL PIACULA. 379 
 
 way of reconciling an offended god, for in ordinary life 
 atonement by fine came in at a relatively late date, and 
 never entirely superseded the lex talionis ; and it is 
 certain, from what we have learned by observing the old 
 form of piacular holocausts, that these sacrifices were not 
 originally regarded as payments to the god, but arose on 
 q^uite different lines, as an independent development of the 
 primitive sacrifice of communion, whose atoning ef&cacy 
 rested on the persuasion that those in whose veins the 
 same life - blood circulates cannot be other than friends, 
 bound to serve each other in all the offices of brother- 
 hood. 
 
 It has appeared in the course of our inquiry that two 
 kinds of sacrifice, which present features inconsistent with 
 the gift-theory, continued to be practised by the ancient 
 Semites ; and to both kinds there was ascribed a special 
 efficacy in persuading or constraining the favour of the 
 gods. The first kind is the mystic sacrifice, represented by 
 a small class of exceptional rites, in which the victim was 
 drawn from some species of animals that retained even in 
 modem times their ancient repute of natural holiness. 
 Sacrifices of this sort could never fall under the gift-theory, 
 for creatures naturally holy are not man's property, but, so 
 far as they have an owner at all, are the property of the 
 god. The significance attached to these sacrifices, and the 
 nature of their peculiar efficacy, has already received 
 sufficient attention. The other kind of offering which was 
 thought of as something more than a mere gift, consisted 
 of holocausts, and other sacrifices, whose flesh was not con- 
 veyed to the god and eaten at his table, but burned without 
 the camp, or buried, or cast away in a desert place. This 
 kind of sacrifice we have already studied from a formal 
 point of view, considering the way in which its ritual was 
 differentiated from the old communion sacrifice, and also 
 
380 MEANING OF lect. xi. 
 
 the way in which most sacrifices of the kind were ulti- 
 mately brought under the class of sacrificial gifts, by the 
 introduction of the practice of burning the flesh on the 
 altar or burying it in the gliahghab ; but we have not yet 
 considered the way in which these successive modifications 
 of ritual were interpreted and made to fit into the general 
 progress of social institutions and ideas. A consideration 
 of this side of the subject is necessary to complete our 
 study of the principles of ancient sacrifice, and to it the 
 remainder of the present lecture will be devoted. 
 
 It must, however, be remembered that in ancient religion 
 there was no authoritative interpretation of ritual. It was 
 imperative that certain things should be done, but every 
 man was free to put his own meaning on what was done. 
 Now the more complicated ritual prestations, to which 
 the elaborate piacular services of later times must be 
 reckoned, were not forms invented, once for all, to express a 
 definite system of ideas, but natural growths, which were 
 slowly developed through many centuries, and in their 
 final form bore the imprint of a variety of influences, to 
 which they had been subjected from age to age under the 
 changing conditions of human life and social order. Every 
 rite therefore lent itself to more than one interpretation, 
 according as this or that aspect of it was seized upon as 
 the key to its meaning. Under such circumstances we 
 must not attempt to fix a definite interpretation on any of 
 the developments of ancient ritual ; all that we can hope 
 to do is to trace in the ceremonial the influence of succes- 
 sive phases of thought, the presence of which is attested 
 to us by other movements in the structure of ancient society, 
 or conversely to show how features in ritual, of which the 
 historical origin had been forgotten, were accounted for on 
 more modern principles, and used to give support to new 
 ideas that were struggling for practical recognition. 
 
LECT. XI. SPECIAL PIACULA. 381 
 
 From the analysis of the ritual of holocausts and other 
 piaeula given in the last two lectures, it appears that 
 through all the varieties of atoning ceremony there runs 
 a common principle ; the victim is sacrosanct, and the 
 peculiar value of the ceremony lies in the operation per- 
 formed on its life, whether that life is merely conveyed to 
 the god on the altar, or is also applied to the worshippers 
 by the sprinkling of the blood, or some other lustral 
 ceremony. Both these features are nothing more than 
 inheritances from the most primitive form of sacramental 
 communion ; and in the oldest sacrifices their meaning is 
 perfectly transparent and unambiguous, for the ritual 
 exactly corresponds with the primitive ideas, that holiness 
 means kinship to the worshippers and their god, that all 
 sacred relations and all moral obligations depend on 
 physical unity of life, and that unity of physical life can 
 be created or reinforced by common participation in living 
 flesh and blood. At this earliest stage the atoning force 
 of sacrifice is purely physical, and consists in the redinte- 
 gration of the congenital physical bond of kinship, on 
 which the good understanding between the god and his 
 worshippers ultimately rests. But in the later stage of 
 religion, in which sacrifices of sacrosanct victims and 
 purificatory offerings are exceptional rites, these antique 
 ideas were no longer intelligible ; and in ordinary sacrifices 
 those features of the old ritual were dropped or modified 
 which gave expression to obsolete notions about holiness, 
 and the physical transfer of holy life from the victim 
 to the worshippers. Here, therefore, the question arises 
 why that which had ceased to be intelligible was still 
 preserved in a peculiar class of sacrifices. The obvious 
 answer is that it was preserved by the force of use and 
 precedent. 
 
 It is common, in discussions of the significance of 
 
382 ORIGIN OF 
 
 LECT. XI. 
 
 piacular ritual, to begin with the consideration that piacula 
 are atonements for sin, and to assume that the ritual was 
 devised with a view to the purchase of divine forgiveness. 
 But this is to take the thing by the wrong handle. The 
 characteristic features in piacular sacrifice are not the 
 invention of a later age, in which the sense of sin and 
 divine wrath was strong, but are features carried over 
 from a very primitive type of religion, in which the sense 
 of sin, in any proper sense of the word, did not exist at 
 all, and the whole object of ritual was to maintain the 
 bond of physical holiness that kept the religious community 
 together. What we have to explain is not the origin of 
 the sacrificial forms that later ages called piacular, but the 
 way in which the old type of sacrifice came to branch off 
 into two distinct types. And here we must consider that, 
 even in tolerably advanced societies, the distinction between 
 piacular and ordinary offerings long continued to be mainly 
 one of ritual, and that the former were not so much 
 sacrifices for sin, as sacrifices in which the ceremonial 
 forms, observed at the altar, continued to express the 
 original idea that the victim's life was sacrosanct, and 
 in some way cognate to the life of the god and his 
 worshippers. Thus, among the Hebrews of the pre- 
 prophetic period, it certainly appears that a peculiar potency 
 was assigned to holocausts and other exceptional sacrifices, 
 as a means of conjuring the divine displeasure ; but a 
 certain atoning force was ascribed to all sacrifices ; and, 
 on the other hand, sacrifices of piacular form and force 
 were offered on many occasions when we cannot suppose 
 the sense of sin or of divine anger to have been present in 
 any extraordinary degree. For example, it was the custom 
 to open a campaign with a burnt -offering, which in old 
 Israel was the most solemn piaculum ; but this did not 
 imply any feeling that war was a divine judgment and a 
 
LECT. XI. SPECIAL PIACTJLA. 383 
 
 sign of the anger of Jehovah.'^ It appears rather that the 
 sacrifice was properly the consecration of the warriors ; for 
 the Hebrew phrase for opening war is " to consecrate war " 
 (non^D t^lp), and warriors are consecrated persons, subject 
 to special taboos.^ Here, therefore, it lies near at hand to 
 suppose that the holocaust is simply the modification, on 
 lines which have been already explained, of an ancient 
 form of sacramental communion; and this is confirmed 
 by comparison with the Arabian use, where, at the open- 
 ing of a campaign, victims are slain and the living blood 
 applied to the tents of the warriors.^ The Greeks in like 
 manner commenced their wars with piacular sacrifices of 
 the most solemn kind ; indeed, according to Phylarchus,* 
 a human victim was at one time deemed indispensable ; 
 but this probably means no more than that the offerings 
 made on such an occasion were of the exceptional and 
 sacrosanct character with which legends of actual human 
 sacrifice are so frequently associated. One illustration of 
 Phylarehus's statement will occur to every one, viz. the 
 sacrifice of Iphigenia ; and here it is to be noted that, 
 while all forms of the legend are agreed that Agamemnon 
 must have committed some deadly sin, before so terrible an 
 offering was required of him, there is no agreement as to 
 
 ^ The burnt-offering at the opening of a campaign appears in Judg. vi. 20 
 (cf. ver. 26), xx. 26 ; 1 Sain. vii. 9, xiii. 10. In Judg. xi. 31 we have, 
 instead of a sacriiice before the war, a vow to offer a holocaust on its success- 
 ful termination. The view taken by the last redactor of the historical 
 books (Judg., Sam., Kings), that the wars of Israel with its neighbours 
 were always chastisements for sin, is not ancient ; cf. Gen. xxvii. 29, xlix. 8 ; 
 Numb. xxiv. 24 ; Deut. xxxiii. 29. 
 
 ^ Isa. xiii. 3 ; Jer. li. 8. See supra, p. 148, and Additional Note D. 
 
 * Supra, p. 326. I conjecture that the form of gathering warriors 
 together by sending round portions of a victim that has been hewn into 
 pieces (1 Sam. xi. 7 ; cf. Judg. xix. 29) had originally a sacramental sense, 
 similar to that expressed by the covenant form in which the victim is cut 
 in twain ; cf. Additional Note I, and the Scythian custom noticed by Lucian, 
 Toxaris, § 48. 
 
 ' Ap. Porph., De Abst. ii. 56. 
 
384 ORIGIN OF LECT. XI. 
 
 what his sin was. It is not therefore unreasonable to 
 think that in the original story the piaculum was simply 
 the ordinary preliminary to a campaign, and that later 
 ages could not understand why such a sacrifice should 
 be made, except to atone for mortal guilt.-' 
 
 If, now, it be asked why the ordinary preliminary to a 
 campaign was a sacrifice of the exceptionally solemn kind 
 which in later times was deemed to have a special reference 
 to sin, the answer must be that the ritual was fixed by 
 immemorial precedent, going back to the time when all 
 sacrifices were of the sacramental type, and involved the 
 shedding of a sacrosanct life. At that time every sacrifice 
 was an awful mystery, and not to be performed except on 
 great occasions, when it was most necessary that the bond 
 of kindred obligation between every member of the com- 
 munity, divine and human, should be as strong and fresh 
 as possible. The outbreak of war was plainly such an 
 occasion, and it is no hazardous conjecture that the rule 
 of commencing a campaign with sacrifice dates from the 
 most primitive times.^ Accordingly the ceremonial, to be 
 observed in sacrifice on such an occasion, would be pro- 
 tected by well-established tradition, and the victim would 
 continue to be treated at the altar with all the old ritual 
 forms which implied that its blood was holy and akin to 
 man's, long after the general sanctity of all animals of 
 sacrificial kind had ceased to be acknowledged in daily 
 life. And in the same way sacrifices of exceptional form, 
 in which the victim was treated as a human being, or its 
 blood was applied in a primitive ceremonial to the persons 
 
 1 The opening of a campaign appears also in Africa as one of the rare 
 occasions that justify the slaughter of a victim from the tribal herds ; see 
 above, p. 279. 
 
 2 There is also some reason to think that in very ancient times a sacrifice 
 was appointed to be offered after a victory. See Additional Note N, Sacrifice, 
 hy Victoriovs Warriors. 
 
LECT. XI. SPECIAL PIACULA. 385 
 
 of the worshippers, or its Hash was regarded as too sacred 
 to be eaten, would continue to be offered on all occasions 
 which were marked out, as demanding a sacrifice, by some 
 very ancient rule, dating from the time when the natural 
 sanctity of sacrificial kinds was still recognised. In such 
 cases the ancient ceremonial would be protected by im- 
 memorial custom ; while, on the other hand, there would 
 be nothing to prevent a more modern type of ritual from 
 coming into use on occasions for which there was no 
 ancient sacrificial precedent, e.g. on such occasions as arose 
 for the first time under the conditions of agricultural life, 
 when the old sanctity of domestic animals was very much 
 broken down. Sacrifices were vastly more frequent with 
 the agricultural than with the pastoral nations of antiquity, 
 but, among the older agricultural Semites, the occasions 
 that called for sacrifices of exceptional or piacular form 
 were not so numerous that they may not fairly be regarded 
 as broadly corresponding to the rare occasions for which 
 the death of a victim was already prescribed by the rules 
 of their nomadic ancestors. 
 
 This, it may be said, is no more than a hypothesis, but 
 it satisfies the conditions of a legitimate hypothesis, by 
 postulating the operation of no unknown or uncertain 
 cause, but only of that force of precedent which in all 
 times has been so strong to keep alive religious forms of 
 which the original meaning is lost. And in certain cases, 
 at any rate, it is very evident that rites of exceptional 
 form, which later ages generally connected with ideas of 
 sin and atonement, were merely the modern representatives 
 of primitive sacraments, kept up through sheer force of 
 habit, without any deeper meaning corresponding to the 
 peculiar solemnity of their form. Thus the annual piacula 
 that were celebrated, with exceptional rites, by most nations 
 
 of antiquity are not necessarily to be regarded as liaving 
 
 2b 
 
386 ANNUAL LECT. XI. 
 
 their first origin in a growing sense of sin or fear of divine 
 wrath, — although these reasons operated in later times to 
 multiply such acts of service and increase the importance 
 attached to them, — but are often nothing more than sur- 
 vivals of ancient annual sacrifices of communion in the 
 body and blood of a sacred animal. For in some of these 
 rites, as we have seen in Lecture VIII.,-'- the form of com- 
 munion in flesh too holy to be eaten except in a sacred 
 mystery is retained ; and, where this is not the case, there 
 is at least some feature in the annual piaculum which 
 reveals its connection with the oldest type of sacrifice. 
 It is a mistake to suppose that annual religious feasts date 
 only from the beginnings of agricultural life, with its 
 yearly round of seed-time and harvest ; for in all parts of 
 the world annual sacraments are found, and that not 
 merely among pastoral races, but even in rude hunting 
 tribes that have not emerged from the totem stage.^ And 
 though some of these totem sacraments involve actual 
 communion in the flesh and blood of the sacred animal, 
 the commoner case, even in this primitive stage of society, 
 is that the theanthropic victim is deemed too holy to be 
 eaten, and therefore, as in the majority of Semitic piacula, 
 is burned, buried, or cast into a stream.^ It is certainly 
 illegitimate to connect these very primitive piacula with 
 any explicit ideas of sin and forgiveness ; they have their 
 
 1 Supra, p. 272 sqq. 
 
 2 For examples of annual sacraments by sacrifice of the totem, see Frazer, 
 Totemism, p. 48, and supra, p. 277, note 1. 
 
 ' I apprehend that in most climates the vicissitudes of the seasons are 
 certainly not less important to the savage huntsman or to the pastoral 
 barbarian than to the more civilised tiller of the soil. From Doughty's 
 account of the pastoral tribes of the Arabian desert, and also from wliat 
 Agatharchides tells us of the herdsmen by the Red Sea, we perceive that 
 in the purely pastoral life the seasons when pasture fails are annual periods 
 of semi-starvation for man and beast. Among still ruder races, like the 
 Australians, who have no domestic animals, the difference of the sea,sons is 
 yet more painfully felt ; so much so, indeed, that in some parts of Australia 
 
PIAODLA. 387 
 
 origin in a purely naturalistic conception o£ holiness, and 
 mean nothing more than that the mystic unity of life in 
 the religious community is liable to wear out, and must be 
 revived and strengthened from time to time. 
 
 Among the annual piacula of the more advanced Semites 
 ■which, though they are not mystical sacrifices of an " un- 
 clean" animal, yet bear on their face the marks of extreme 
 antiquity, the first place belongs to the Hebrew Passover, 
 held in the spring month Nisan, where the primitive 
 character of the offering appears not only from the details 
 of the ritual,^ but from the coincidence of its season with 
 that of the Arabian sacrifices in the month Eajab. 
 Similarly in Cyprus, on the first of April, a sheep was 
 offered to Astarte (Aphrodite) with ritual of a character 
 evidently piacular.2 At Hierapolis, in like manner, the 
 chief feast of the year was the vernal ceremony of the 
 Pyre, in which animals were burned alive — an antique 
 ritual which has been illustrated in the last lecture. And 
 again, among the Harranians, the first half of Msan was 
 marked by a series of exceptional sacrifices of piacular 
 colour.^ 
 
 So remarkable a concurrence in the season of the great 
 annual piacular rites of Semitic communities leaves little 
 doubt as to the extreme antiquity of the institution. 
 
 children are not "born except at one season of the year ; the annual changes 
 of nature have impressed themselves on the life of man to a degree hardly- 
 conceivable to us. In pastoral Arabia domestic cattle habitually yean in 
 the brief season of the spring pasture (Doughty, i. 429), and this would 
 serve to fix an annual season of sacrifice. 
 
 1 Supra, p. 326. Note also that the head and the inwards have to be 
 eaten, i.e. the special seats of life (Ex. xii. 9). 
 
 2 Lydns, De Mens. iv. 45 ; cf. Additional Note H. The xx^mv marks 
 the sacrifice as piacular, whether my conjecture xs;3iV 'nrKfrxo-f^ivai for xsiJ/a 
 l<rxs5r«ir/isvo» is accepted or not. 
 
 3 Fihrist, p. 322. Traces of the saoredness of the month Nisan are found 
 also at Palmyra {Enc. Brit, xviii. 199, note 2), and among the Nabatseans, 
 as Berger has inferred from a study of the inscriptions of Madain-§alih. 
 
ANNUAL LECT. XI. 
 
 Otherwise the season of the annual piacula is not material 
 to our present purpose, except in so far as its coincidence 
 with the yeaning time appears to be connected with the 
 frequent use of sucking lambs and other very young 
 animals as piacular victims. This point, however, seems 
 to be of some importance as an indirect evidence of the 
 antiquity of annual piacula. The reason often given for 
 the sacrifice of very young animals, that a man thus got 
 rid of a sacred obligation at the very cheapest rate, is not 
 one that can be seriously maintained ; while, on the other 
 hand, the analogy of infanticide, which in many savage 
 countries is not regarded as murder, if it be performed 
 immediately after birth, makes it very intelligible that, in 
 those primitive times when a domestic animal had a life 
 as sacred as that of a tribesman, new-born calves or lambs 
 should be selected for sacrifice. The selection of an annual 
 season of sacrifice coincident with the yeaning-time may 
 therefore be plausibly referred to the time when sacrificial 
 slaughter was still a rare and awful event, involving 
 responsibilities which the worshippers were anxious to 
 reduce, by every device, within the narrowest possible limits. 
 The point, which I took a little time ago, that sacrifices 
 of piacular form are not necessarily associated with a sense 
 of sin, or even with a sense of the anger of the god, comes 
 out very clearly in the case of annual piacula. Among 
 the Hebrews, under the Law, the annual expiation on the 
 great Day of Atonement was directed to cleanse the people 
 from all their sins,^ i.e. according to the Mishnic interpre- 
 tation, to purge away the guilt of all sins, committed during 
 the year, that had not been already expiated by penitence, 
 or by the special piacula appointed for particular offences ; ^ 
 but there is little or no trace of any view resembling this 
 in connection with the annual piacula of the heathen 
 ^ Lev. xvi. 30. ^ Yoma, viii. 8, 9. 
 
I.ECT. XI. PIACULA. 389 
 
 Semites ; and even in the Old Testament this interpreta- 
 tion appears to be modern. The Day of Atonement is a 
 much less ancient institution than the Passover ; and in 
 the Passover, though the ' sprinhled blood has a protecting 
 efficacy, the law prescribes no forms of humiliation and 
 contrition such as are enjoined for the more modern rite. 
 Again, the prophet Ezekiel, whose sketch of a legislation 
 for Israel, on its restoration from captivity, is older 
 than the law of Leviticus, does indeed provide for two 
 annual atoning ceremonies, in the first and in the seventh 
 month ;^ but the point of these ceremonies lies in an 
 elaborate application of the blood to various parts of the 
 temple, with the object of " reconciling the house." This 
 reference of the sacrifice reappears also in Lev. xvi. ; 
 the sprinkling of the blood on the great Day of Atone- 
 ment " cleanses the altar, and makes it holy from all the 
 uncleanness of the children of Israel." ^ Here an older and 
 merely physical conception of the ritual breaks through, 
 which has nothing to do with the forgiveness of sin ; for 
 uncleanness in the Levitical ritual is not an ethical concep- 
 tion. It seems that the holiness of the altar is liable to 
 be impaired, and requires to be annually refreshed by an 
 application of holy blood — a conception which it would be 
 hard to justify from the higher teaching of the Old Testa- 
 ment, but which is perfectly intelligible as an inheritance 
 from primitive ideas about sacrifice, in which the altar- 
 idol on its part, as well as the worshippers on theirs, is 
 periodically reconsecrated by the sprinkling of holy {i.e. 
 kindred) blood, in order that the life -bond between the 
 god it represents and his kindred worshippers may be kept 
 fresh. This is the ultimate meaning of the sprinkling 
 
 1 Ezek. xlv. 19, 20 (LXX.). 
 
 2 Lev. xvi. 19; cf. ver. 33, where the atonement extends to the whole 
 sanctuary. 
 
390 ANNUAL LECT. XI. 
 
 with a tribesmaa's blood, which, as Theophrastus tells us, 
 was demanded yearly by so many altars of antiquity, and 
 also of the yearly sprinkling where the victim was not a 
 man but a sacrosanct or theanthropic animal. 
 
 The " reconciling of the house " or the " cleansing of the 
 altar," however, are mere priestly phrases, which had no 
 intelligible meaning to the worshippers themselves in the 
 later ages of antique religion. And, as I have already said, 
 it does not appear that any heathen nation habitually 
 looked on the annual piacula as a means of obtaining 
 forgiveness for the sins of the community during the past 
 year. On the contrary, the explanation was generally 
 sought in a myth, and the myth was founded on the 
 features of the ritual. The annual piacular sacrifice was 
 very often an actual human victim. Thus, to confine 
 ourselves to Semitic worships, although the same thing is 
 true also of Greece, a yearly human sacrifice was offered 
 by the Arabs of Dumaetha,-' and by the Carthaginians.^ 
 And where this was not the case we sometimes find a 
 legend that in old times a human victim had been offered, 
 but that an animal sacrifice had come to be accepted in its 
 room. Thus, for example, the annual victim at Laodicea 
 ad Mare was a stag, but the story was that in former 
 times a maiden was sacrificed.® In such cases, if at all, 
 one would suppose that the awful rite would have served 
 to quicken the sense of human sinfulness, and lead men 
 to approach the altar with genuine contrition for their 
 personal failures to attain the standard of divine righteous- 
 ness. But, as a rule, no such ideas seem to have been 
 suggested, and the rite was simply taken as an established 
 thing, sufficiently explained when the circumstances had 
 
 1 Porph., De Abst. ii. 56. 
 
 2 Ibid. ii. 27 (from Theoplirastus) ; Pliny, H. N. xxxvi. 29. 
 
 ^ This interesting sacrilice is discussed at length in Additional Nott G. 
 
LECT. XI. 
 
 PIACULA. 391 
 
 been related under which the sacrifice was first instituted. 
 In some cases indeed, at least in Greece/ it was taught that 
 the annual sacrifice had been appointed as a punishment for 
 some ancient crime, for which the community was bound 
 to make yearly satisfaction from generation to generation. 
 Among the Semites, however, the myth generally assumed 
 another aspect, and the annual piaculum was taken to be a 
 commemoration of the death of the god. Originally, the 
 death of the god was nothing else than the death of the 
 theanthropic victim ; but, when this ceased to be under- 
 stood, it was thought that the piacular sacrifice represented 
 an historical tragedy, in which the god was killed. Thus 
 at Laodicea the annual sacrifice of the stag that stood for 
 a maiden, and was offered to the goddess of the city, stands 
 side by side with a legend that the goddess was a maiden, 
 who had been sacrificed to consecrate the foundation of 
 the town, and was thenceforth worshipped as its Fortune, 
 like Dido at Carthage ; it was therefore the death of the 
 goddess herself which was annually renewed in the piacular 
 rite. The same explanation applies to those scenic re- 
 presentations that have been spoken of in the last lecture, 
 where the deity is yearly burned in effigy ; for the effigy 
 in such cases takes the place of an actual victim. And 
 in like manner the annual mourning for the death of 
 Adonis, which supplies the closest parallel in point of 
 form to the fasting and humihation on the Hebrew Day 
 of Atonement, is simply a scenic commemoration of the 
 death of the god, in which the worshippers take part 
 
 1 Thus the annual sacrifice to Hera Acrsea at Corinth {supra, p. 287) was 
 an atonement for the death of the children of Medea. 
 
 2 The substitution of an effigy for a human sacrifice, or a victim represent- 
 ing a god, is very common. The Romans, for example, substituted puppets 
 of rushes or wool for human offerings in the Argea and the worship of 
 Mania. In Mexico, again, human victims were habitually regarded as 
 incarnations of the deity, but also paste images of the gods were made and 
 eaten sacramentally. 
 
892 ANNUAL DEATH lect. xi. 
 
 with appropriate wailing and lamentation, but without 
 any thought corresponding to the Christian idea that the 
 death of the God -man is a death for the sins of the 
 people. On the contrary, if, as in the Adonis myth, 
 an attempt is made to give some further account of the 
 annual rite than is supplied by the story that the god 
 had once been killed and rose again, the explanation 
 offered is derived from the physical decay and regenera- 
 tion of nature. The Canaanite Adonis or Tammuz was 
 a form of the local Baal, who, as we have already learned, 
 was regarded by his worshippers as the source of all 
 natural growth and fertility. His death therefore meant 
 a temporary suspension of the life of nature, and was held 
 to be annually repeated, not merely in ritual symbol at 
 the sanctuary, but in the annual withering and decay of 
 vegetative life. And this death of the life of nature the 
 worshippers lament out of natural sympathy, without any 
 moral idea, just as modern man is touched with natural 
 melancholy at the falling of the autumn leaves.^ 
 
 1 The further discussion of the Adonis myth, and other legends of the 
 death of the gods, must be reserved for a future course of lectures, dealing 
 with Semitic mythology in detail. I may here, however, say briefly that 
 the mourning for Adonis was not, in my judgment, originally a lament over 
 decaying nature, but simply the official mourning over the slaughter of a 
 theanthropic victim in whose death the god died. The accounts we possess 
 of the scenic representation of the Adonis tragedy, tell us how he was repre- 
 sented dead on a bier, and carried out to be cast into the sea, but they say 
 nothing of a representation of his death. This, however, cannot have been 
 lacking in the original rite, and was probably dropped because it was mis- 
 understood. If the reference in Zech. xii. 10, 11, to the mourning of 
 Hadadrimmon is really, as seems most probable, an allusion to some form 
 of the lamentation for Adonis, it seeniis that the piercing of him who is 
 mourned over must also be part of the figure, and refer to a symbolical 
 representation of the death of the god. My own belief is that the piaoular 
 sacrifice of swine at Cyprus, on April 2, represents the death of the god 
 himself, not an act of vengeance for his death, just as in Crete the sacrifice 
 of a bull by tearing it in pieces with the teetb (Firmicus, cap. 6) represented 
 the death of the Bull-god Dionysus. Adonis, in short, is the Swine-god, and 
 in this, as in many other cases, the sacred victim has been changed by false 
 interpretation into the enemy of the god. 
 
LECT. XI. OF THE GOD. 393 
 
 The interpretation of the death of the god as correspond- 
 ing to the annual withering up of nature, which was 
 naturally suggested by the ideas of Baal-worship, effectually 
 shut the door to any ethical interpretation of the annual 
 religious mourning. That the God-man dies for His people, 
 and that His death is their life, is an idea which was in 
 some degree foreshadowed by the oldest mystical sacrifices. 
 It was foreshadowed, indeed, in a very crude and material- 
 istic form, and without any of those ethical ideas which 
 the Christian doctrine of the atonement derives from a 
 profounder sense of sin and divine justice. And yet the 
 voluntary death of the divine victim, which we have seen 
 to be a conception not foreign to ancient sacrificial ritual, 
 contained the germ of the deepest thought in the Christian 
 doctrine : the thoiight that the Eedeemer gives Himself for 
 His people, that " for their sakes He consecrates Himself, 
 that they also might be consecrated in truth." ' But in Baal- 
 worship, when the death of the god becomes a mere cos- 
 mical process, and the most solemn rites that ancient religion 
 knew sank to the level of a scenic representation of the 
 yearly revolutions of the seasons, the features of primseval 
 ritual which contained germs of better things are effectually 
 hidden out of sight, and the offices of religion cease to 
 appeal to any higher feeling than that of sympathy with 
 the changing moods of nature. 
 
 In the brighter days of Semitic heathenism the annual 
 wailing for the god hardly suggested any serious thought 
 that was not presently drowned in an outburst of mirth 
 saluting the resurrection of the Baal on the following 
 morning ; and in more distressful times, when the gloomier 
 aspects of religion were those most in sympathy with the 
 prevailing hopelessness of a decadent nation — such times 
 as those in which Ezekiel found the women of Jerusalem 
 
 1 John xvii. 19. 
 
394 INTERPRETATION OF lect. xi. 
 
 mourning for Tammuz — the idea that the gods themselves 
 were not exempt from the universal law of decay, and had 
 ordered this truth to be commemorated in their temples 
 by bloody, or even human, sacrifices, could only favour the 
 idea that religion was as cruel as the relentless march of 
 adverse fate, and that man's life was ruled by powers that 
 were not to be touched by love or pity, but, if they could 
 be moved at all, would only be satisfied by the sacrifice of 
 man's happiness and the surrender of his dearest treasures. 
 The close psychological connection between sensuality and 
 cruelty, which is familiar to students of the human mind, 
 displays itself in ghastly fashion in the sterner aspects of 
 Semitic heathenism ; and the same sanctuaries which, in 
 prosperous times, resounded with licentious mirth and carnal 
 gaiety, were filled in times of distress with the cowardly 
 lamentations of worshippers, who to save their own lives 
 were ready to give up everything they held dear, even to 
 the sacrifice of a first-born or only child. 
 
 On the whole the annual piacula of Semitic heathenism 
 appear theatrical and unreal, when they are not cruel and 
 repulsive. The stated occurrence of gloomy rules at fixed 
 seasons, and without any direct relation to human conduct, 
 gave the whole ceremony a mechanical character, and so 
 made it inevitable that it should be either accepted as a 
 mere scenic tragedy, whose meaning was summed up in a 
 myth, or interpreted as a proof that the divine powers 
 were never thoroughly reconciled to man, and only tolerated 
 their worshippers in consideration of costly atonements 
 constantly renewed. I apprehend that even in Israel the 
 annual piacula, which were observed from an early date, 
 had little or no share in the development of the higher 
 sense of sin and responsibility which characterise the 
 religion of the Old Testament. The Passover is a rite of 
 the most , primeeval antiquity ; and in the local cults 
 
LECT. XI. ANNUAL PIACULA. 395 
 
 annual mournings, like the lamentation for Jephthah's 
 daughter — which undoubtedly was connected with an 
 annual sacrifice, like that which at Laodicea commemorated 
 the mythical death of the virgin goddess — had been yearly 
 repeated from very ancient times. Yet only after the 
 exile, and then only by a sort of afterthought, which does 
 not override the priestly idea that the annual atonement is 
 above all a reconsecration of the altar and the sanctuary, 
 do we find the annual piaculum of the Day of Atonement 
 interpreted as a general atonement for the sins of Israel 
 during the past year. In the older literature, when 
 exceptional and piacular rites are interpreted as satisfac- 
 tions for sin, the offence is always a definite one, and the 
 piacular rite has not a stated and periodical character, but 
 is directly addressed to the atonement of a particular sin 
 or course of sinful life. Annual atonements, so far as they 
 received anything more than a mythical interpretation, 
 appear — if we may judge from the case of the Passover — 
 to have been regarded as a means of placing the worshippers 
 in a special way under the divine protection, without any 
 express reference to the taking away of guilt. 
 
 The conception of piacular rites as a satisfaction for sin 
 appears to have arisen, after the original sense of the 
 theanthropic sacrifice of a kindred animal was forgotten, 
 mainly in connection with^ the view that the life of the 
 victim was the equivalent of the life of a human member 
 of the rehgious community. We have seen that when the 
 victim was no longer regarded as naturally holy, and 
 equally akin to the god and his worshippers, the ceremony 
 of its death was still performed with solemn circumstances, 
 not appropriate to the slaughter of a mere common beast. 
 It was thus inevitable that the victim should be regarded 
 either as a representative of the god, or as the representa- 
 tive of a tribesman, whose life was sacred to his fellows 
 
396 SACRIFICES AND lect. xi. 
 
 The former interpretation predominated in the annual 
 piacula of the Baal religions, but the latter was that 
 naturally indicated in such atoning sacrifices as were not 
 periodical, but called for by special emergencies which 
 did not lend themselves to a mythical interpretation. 
 For we have already seen that in old times the circum- 
 stances of the slaughter were those of a death which could 
 only be justified by the consent, and even by the active 
 participation, of the whole community, i.e. of the judicial 
 execution of a kinsman/ In later times this rule was 
 modified, and in ordinary sacrifices the victim was slain 
 either by the oiferer, or by professional slaughterers, who 
 fonned a class of inferior ministers at the greater sanctu- 
 aries.^ But communal holocausts and piacula continued to 
 be slain by the chief priests or by the heads of the 
 community or by their chosen representatives, so that the 
 slaughter retained the character of a solemn public act.* 
 
 ■^ Supra, p. 266 fig. 
 
 ^ In O. I. S. No. 86 the ministers of the temple include a class of 
 slaughterers (Dn3T), and so it was at Hierapolis {Dea Syria, xliii.). Among 
 the Jews, at the second temple, the Levites often acted as slaughterers ; but 
 before the captivity the temple slaughterers were uncircumcised foreigners 
 (Ezek. xliv. 6 sqq.), a usage which probably had its origin in the fact that 
 the temple was properly the king's chapel, and that the victims, at least in 
 older times, were mainly slain to provide his table. For " chief slaughterer " 
 is in Hebrew the title of the chief of the bodyguard ; the slaughter of cattle 
 being in ancient times an ofBce not unworthy of a warrior [Odys. i. 108 ; 
 Enrip., Ehctra, 815 ; cf. 0. T. in J. Ch., p. 426) ; and the bodyguard of 
 the Judsean kings, which also attended them in the temple, was composed of 
 foreigners. Foreign guards were preferred, because no feeling of kinship 
 could come in to prevent them executing the king's orders against any of 
 his subjects. Were foreigners preferred as butchers on a similar principle ? 
 "We have seen that among the Troglodytes the butcher was unclean, and 
 that at Corinth the annual piaculum to Hera Acraea was killed by slaves 
 {supra, pp. 278, 287). 
 
 = Thus in the Old Testament we find young men as sacrificers in Ex. 
 xxiv. 5 ; the elders in Lev. iv. 15, Dent. xxi. 4 ; Aaron in Lev. xvi. 15 ; . 
 cf. Yoma, iv. 3. All sacrifices, except the last named, might, according to 
 the Rabbins, be killed by any Israelite. 
 
 The choice of " young men," or rather " lads, " as sacrificers in Ex. xxiv. 
 
LECT. XI. JUDICIAL EXECUTIONS. 397 
 
 Again, the feeling that the slaying involves a grave 
 responsibility, and must be justified by divine permission, 
 was expressed by the Arabs, even in ordinary slaughter, 
 by the use of the bismillah, i.e. by the slaughterer striking 
 the victim in the name of his god/ But in many piacula 
 this feeling was carried much further, and care was taken 
 to slay the victim without bloodshed, or to make believe 
 that it had killed itself.^ Certain holocausts, like those of 
 the Pyre-festival at Hierapolis, were burned alive ; and 
 other piacula were simply pushed over a height, so that 
 they might seem to kill themselves by their fall. This 
 was done at Hierapolis, both with animals and with 
 human victims ; and according to the Mishna the Hebrew 
 scapegoat was not allowed to go free in the wilderness, 
 but was killed by being pushed over a precipice.' The 
 same kind of sacrifice occurs in Egypt, in a rite which 
 is possibly of Semitic origin,* and in Greece, in more 
 than one case where the victims were human.* 
 
 All such forms of sacrifice are precisely parallel to 
 
 is curiously analogous to the choice of lads as executioners. Judg. viii. 20 
 is not an isolated case, for Nilus also (p. 67) says that the Saracens charged 
 lads with the execution of their captives. 
 
 ■^ The same feeling is expressed in Lev. xvii. 11 ; Gen. viii. 3 nqij. 
 
 ^ The blood that calls for vengeance is blood that falls on the ground 
 (Gen. iv. 10). Hence blood to which vengeance is refused is said to be 
 trodden under foot (Ibn Hisham, p. 79, ult, p. 861, 1. 5), and forgotten 
 blood is covered by the earth (Job xvi. 18). And so we often find the idea 
 that a death in which no blood is shed, or none falls upon the ground, does 
 not call for vengeance. Infanticide in Arabia was effected by burying the 
 child alive ; captive kings were slain by bleeding them into a cup, and if 
 one drop touched the gi-ound it was thought that their death would be 
 revenged (supra, p. 349, note 2). Applications of this principle to sacri- 
 fices of sacrosanct and kindred animals are frequent ; they are strangled or 
 killed with a, blunt instrument {supra, p. 325 ; note also the club or 
 mallet that appears in sacrificial scenes on ancient Chaldean cylinders, 
 Menant, Olyptique, i. 151), or at least no drop of their blood must fall 
 on the ground (Bancroft, iii. 168). 
 
 3 Dea Syria, Iviii. ; Yoma, vi. 6. 
 
 * Plutarch, Is. et Os. § 30 ; cf. Additional Note G. 
 
 ' At the Thargelia, and in the Leucadian ceremony. 
 
398 SACRIFICES AND lect. xi. 
 
 those which were employed in sacred executions, i.e. in 
 the judicial slaying of members of the community. The 
 criminal in ancient times was either stoned by the whole 
 congregation, as was the usual form of the execution among 
 the ancient Hebrews ; or strangled, as was commonly done 
 among the later Jews ; or drowned, as in the Eoman punish- 
 ment for parricide, where the kin in the narrower sense 
 is called on to execute justice on one of its own members ; 
 or otherwise disposed of in some way which either avoids 
 bloodshed or prevents the guilt of blood from being fixed 
 on an individual. These coincidences between the ritual 
 of sacrifice and of execution are not accidental ; in each 
 case they had their origin in the scruple against shedding 
 kindred blood ; and, when the old ideas of the kinship 
 of man and beast became unintelligible, they helped to 
 establish the view that the victim whose life was treated 
 as equivalent to that of a man was a sacrifice to justice, 
 accepted in atonement for the guilt of the worshippers. 
 The parallelism between piacular sacrifice and execution 
 came out with particular clearness where the victim was 
 wholly burnt, or where it was cast down a precipice ; for 
 burning was the punishment appointed among the Hebrews 
 and other ancient nations for impious offences,^ and casting 
 from a cliff is one of the commonest forms of execution.^ 
 
 The idea originally connected with the execution of 
 a tribesman is not exactly penal in our sense of the 
 
 ^ Gen. xxxviii. 24 ; Lev. xx. 14, xxi. 9 ; Josh. vii. 15. 
 
 ^ The Tarpeian rock at Rome will occur to every one. Among the Hebrews 
 we find captives so killed (2 Chron. xxv. 12), and in our own days the Sinai 
 Arabs killed Prof. Palmer by making him leap from a rock ; cf. also 2 Kings 
 viii. 12, Hos. x. 14, from which it would seem that this was the usual way 
 of killing non-combatants. I apprehend that the obscure form of execution 
 "before the Lord," mentioned in 2 Sam. xxi. 9 (and also Numb. xxv. 4), is 
 of the same sort, for the victims fall and are killed ; JJpin will answer to 
 
 ■; t Note that this religious execution takes place at the season of the 
 paschal piaculum. 
 
LECT. XI. JUDICIAL EXECUTIONS. 399 
 
 word ; the object is not to punish the oflender, but to 
 rid the community of an impious member — ordinarily a 
 man who has shed the sacred tribal blood. Murder and 
 incest, or offences of a like kind against the sacred laws 
 of blood, are in primitive society the only crimes of which 
 the community as such takes cognisance ; the offences of 
 man against man are matters of private law, to be settled 
 between the parties on the principle of retaliation or by 
 the payment of damages. But murder, to which as the 
 typical form of crime we may confine our attention, is an 
 inexpiable offence, for which no compensation can be 
 taken ; the man who has killed his kinsman or his 
 covenant ally, whether of design or by chance, is impious, 
 and must be cut off from his community by death or 
 outlawry. And in such a case the execution or banish- 
 ment of the culprit is a religious duty, for if it is not 
 performed the anger of the deity rests on the whole kin 
 or community of the murderers.^ 
 
 In the oldest state of society the punishment of a 
 murderer is not on all fours with a case of blood-revenge. 
 Blood-revenge applies to manslaughter, i.e. to the killing of 
 a stranger. And in that case the dead man's kin make no 
 effort to discover and punish the individual slayer ; they 
 hold his whole kin responsible for his act, and take 
 vengeance on the first of them on whom they can lay 
 hands. In the case of murder, on the other hand, the 
 point is to rid the kin of an impious person, who has 
 violated the sanctity of the tribal blood, and here there- 
 fore it is important to discover and punish the criminal 
 himself. But if he cannot be discovered, some other means 
 must be taken to blot out the impiety and restore the 
 harmony between the community and its god, and for this 
 purpose a sacramental sacrifice is obviously indicated, such 
 
 1 Deut. xxi. 1-9. 
 
400 DOCTEINE OF lect. xi. 
 
 as Deut. xxi. provides for the purging of the community 
 from the guilt of an untraced murder. In such a case it 
 was inevitable that the sacrifice, performed as it was with 
 circumstances closely akin to those of an execution, should 
 come to be regarded as a surrogate for the death of the 
 true culprit. And this interpretation was all the more 
 readily established because, from an early date, the alliance 
 of different kins had begun to give rise to cases of homi- 
 cide in which the line of distinction was no longer clear 
 between murder and manslaughter, between the case where 
 the culprit himself must die, and the case where any life 
 kindred to his may suffice. Thus in the time of David ^ 
 the Israelites admit that a crime calling for expiation was 
 committed by Saul when he slew the Gibeonites, who were 
 the sworn allies of Israel. But, on the other hand, the 
 Gibeonites claim satisfaction under the law of blood- 
 revenge, and ask that in lieu of Saul himself certain 
 members of his house shall be given up to them. And in 
 this way the idea of substitution is brought in, even in a 
 case which is, strictly speaking, one of murder. 
 
 In all discussion of the doctrine of substitution as 
 applied to sacrifice, it nnist be remembered that private 
 sacrifice is a younger thing than clan sacrifice, and that 
 private piacula offered by an individual for his own sins 
 are of comparatively modern institution. The mortal sin 
 of an individual — and it is only mortal sin that has to be 
 considered in this connection — was a thing that affected 
 the whole community, or the whole kin of the offender. 
 Thus the inexpiable sin of the sons of Eli is visited on 
 his whole clan from generation to generation ; ^ the sin of 
 Achan is the sin of Israel, and as such is punished by the 
 defeat of the national army ; ^ and the sin of Saul and 
 " his bloody house " (i.e. the house involved in the blood- 
 ^ 2 Sam. xxi. " 1 Sam. ii. 27 sqq. ' Josh. vii. 1, 11. 
 
LECT. XI. SUBSTITUTION. 401 
 
 shed) leads to a three years' famine. Accordingly it is 
 the business of the community to narrow the responsibility 
 for the crime, and to free itself of the contagious taint by 
 fixing the guilt either on a single individual, or at least on 
 his immediate kin, as in the case of Achan, who was stoned 
 and then burned with his whole family. Hence, when a 
 tribesman is executed for an impious offence, he dies on 
 behalf of the community, to restore normal relations 
 between them and their god ; so that the analogy with 
 sacrifice is very close in purpose as well as in form. And 
 so, the cases in which the anger of the god can be traced 
 to the crime of a particular individual, and atoned for by his 
 death, are very naturally seized upon to explain the cases in 
 which the sin of the community cannot be thus individualised, 
 but where, nevertheless, according to ancient custom, recon- 
 ciliation is sought through the sacrifice of a theanthropic 
 victim. The old explanation, that the life of the sacrosanct 
 animal is used to retie the life-bond between the god and his 
 worshippers, fell out of date when the kinship of races of 
 men with animal kinds was forgotten. A new explanation 
 had to be sought ; and none lay nearer than that the sin 
 of the community was concentrated on the victim, and 
 that its death was accepted as a sacrifice to divine justice. 
 This explanation was natural, and appears to have been 
 widely adopted, though it hardly became a formal dogma, 
 for ancient religion had no official dogmas, but contented 
 itself with continuing to practise antique rites, and letting 
 every one interpret them as he would. Even in the 
 Levitical law the imposition of hands on the head of the 
 victim is not formally interpreted as a laying of the sins of 
 the people on its head, except in the case of the scape-goat.^ 
 And in this case the carrying away of the people's guilt 
 to an isolated and desert region (nnn px) has its nearest 
 
 ' Lev. xvi. 21. 
 
 2c 
 
402 PIACULA AND lect. xi. 
 
 analogies, not in ordinary atoning sacrifices, but in those 
 physical methods of getting rid of an infectious taboo 
 which characterise the lowest forms of superstition. The 
 same form of disinfection recurs in the Levitical legis- 
 lation, where a live bird is made to fly away with the 
 contagion of leprosy,^ and in Arabian custom, when a 
 widow before remarriage makes a bird fly away with 
 the uncleanness of her widowhood.^ In ordinary burnt- 
 offerings and sin-offerings the imposition of hands is not 
 offlcially interpreted by the Law as a transference of sin 
 to the victim, but rather has the same sense as in acts of 
 blessing or consecration,^ where the idea no doubt is that the 
 physical contact between the parties serves to identify them, 
 but not specially to transfer guilt from the one to the other. 
 In the Levitical ritual all piacula, both public and 
 private, refer only to sins committed unwittingly. As 
 regards the sin-offering for the people this is quite intelli- 
 gible, in accordance with what has just been said ; for if the 
 national sin can be brought home to an individual, he of 
 course must be punished for it. But the private sin- 
 offerings presented by an individual, for sins committed 
 unwittingly, and subsequently brought to his knowledge, 
 appear to be a modern innovation ; before the exile the 
 private offences for which satisfaction had to be made at 
 the sanctuary were not mortal sins, and gave no room for 
 the application of the doctrine of life for life, but were 
 atoned for by a money payment, on the analogy of the 
 satisfaction given by payment of a fine for the offences of 
 
 ^ Lev. xiv. 7, 53 ; cf. Zech. v. 5 sqq. 
 
 2 Tajal-Ariis, s.v. ^^, VIII. (Lane, s.v. ; 0. T. in J. Ch. p. 439; 
 
 "Wellh., p. 156). An Assyrian parallel in Records of the Past, ix. 151. It 
 is indeed probable that in the oldest times the outlawry of a criminal meant 
 nothing more than freeing the community, just in this way, from a 
 deadly contagion. 
 • Gen. xlriii. 14; Num. viii. 10; Deut. xxxiv. 9 ; cf. 2 Kings ii. 13 sqq. 
 
LECT. XI. DIVINE JUSTICE. 403 
 
 man against man (2 Kings xii. 16). And, on the whole, 
 while there can be no doubt that public piacula were often 
 regarded as surrogates for the execution of an offender, 
 who either was not known or whom the community 
 hesitated to bring to justice, I very much doubt whether 
 private offerings were often viewed in this hght ; even the 
 sacrifice of a child, as we have already seen, was conceived 
 rather as the greatest and most exorbitant gift that a 
 man can offer.^ The very idea of an execution implies a 
 pubhc function, and not a private prestation, and so I 
 apprehend that the conception of a satisfaction paid to 
 divine justice could not well be connected with any but 
 public piacula. In these the death of the victim might 
 very well pass for the scenic representation of an execution, 
 and so represent the community as exonerating itself from 
 all complicity in the crime to be atoned for. Looked at in 
 this view, atoning rites no doubt served in some measure 
 to keep ahve a sense of divine justice and of the imperative 
 duty of righteousness within the community. But the 
 moral value of such scenic representation was probably 
 not very great ; and where an actual human victim was 
 offered, so that the sacrifice practically became an execu- 
 tion, and was interpreted as a punishment laid on the com- 
 munity by its god, the ceremony was so wholly deficient in 
 distributive justice that it was calculated to perplex, 
 rather than to educate, the growing sense of morality. 
 
 Christian theologians, looking on the sacrifices of the 
 Old Testament as a type of the sacrifice on the cross, 
 and interpreting the latter as a satisfaction to divine 
 justice, have undoubtedly over-estimated the ethical lessons 
 embodied in the Jewish sacrificial system; as may be 
 inferred even from the fact that, for many centuries, the 
 
 ' The Greek piacula for murder were certainly not regarded as executions, 
 but as cathartic rites. 
 
404 CATHARTIC lect. xi. 
 
 official theology of the Church was content to interpret 
 the death of Christ as a ransom for mankind paid to the 
 devil, or as a satisfaction to the divine honour (Anselm) 
 rather than as a recognition of the sovereignty of the 
 moral law of justice. If Christian theology shews such 
 variations in the interpretation of the doctrine of substitu- 
 tion, it is obviously absurd to expect to find a consistent 
 doctrine on this head in connection with ancient sacrifice ;^ 
 and it may safely be affirmed that the influence of piacular 
 sacrifices, in keeping the idea of divine justice before the 
 minds of ancient nations, was very slight compared with 
 the influence of the vastly more important idea that the 
 gods, primarily as the vindicators of the duties of kinship, 
 and then also of the wider morality which ultimately 
 grew up on the basis of kinship, preside over the public 
 exercise of justice, give oracles for the detection of hidden 
 ofifences, and sanction or demand the execution of guilty 
 tribesmen. Of these very real functions of divine justice 
 the piacular sacrifice, when interpreted as a scenic 
 execution, is at best only an empty shadow. 
 
 Another interpretation of piacular sacrifice, which has 
 great prominence in antiquity, is that it purges away 
 guilt. The cleansing efi'ect of piacula is mainly associated 
 with the application to the persons of the worshippers of 
 sacrificial blood or ashes, or of holy water and other things 
 of sacred virtue, including holy herbs and even the 
 fragrant smoke of incense. This is a topic which it would 
 be easy to illustrate at great length and with a variety of 
 curious particulars; but the principle involved is so 
 simple that little would be gained by the enumeration of 
 all the different substances to which a cathartic virtue was 
 
 1 Jewish theology has a great deal to say about the acceptance of the 
 merits of the righteous on behalf of the wicked, but very little about atone- 
 ment through sacrifice. 
 
LECT. XI. SACRIFICES. 405 
 
 ascribed, either by themselves or as accessories to an 
 atoning sacrifice. A main point to be noted is that 
 ritual purity has in principle nothing to do with physical 
 cleanliness, though such a connection was ultimately 
 established by the common use of water as a means of 
 lustration. Primarily, purification means the application 
 to the person of some medium which removes a taboo, 
 and enables the person purified to mingle freely in the 
 ordinary life of his fellows. It is not therefore identical 
 with consecration, for the latter often brings special taboos 
 with it. And so we find that the ancients used purifica- 
 tory rites after as well as before holy functions.' But 
 as the normal life of the member of a religious community 
 is in a broad sense a holy life, lived in accordance with 
 certain standing precepts of sanctity, and in a constant 
 relation to the deity of the community, the main use of 
 purificatory rites is not to tone down, to the level of 
 ordinary life, the excessive holiness conveyed by contact 
 with sacrosanct things, but rather to impart to one who 
 has lost it the measure of sanctity that puts him on the 
 level of ordinary social life. So much indeed does this 
 view of the matter predominate, that among the Hebrews 
 all purifications are ordinarily reckoned as purification 
 from uncleanness ; thus the man who has burned the red 
 heifer or carried its ashes, becomes ceremonially unclean, 
 though in reality the thing that he has been in contact 
 with was not impure but most holy ; ^ and similarly the 
 handling of the Scriptures, according to the Eabbins, 
 defiles the hands, ie. entails a ceremonial washing. Puri- 
 fications, therefore, are performed by the use of any of 
 the physical means that re-establish normal relations with 
 the deity and the congregation of his worshippers — in 
 
 ' See infra. Additional Note C, p. 432 sq , and supra, p. 332 sq 
 2 Numb. xix. 8, 10. 
 
406 CATHARTIC lect. xi. 
 
 short, by contact with something that contains and can 
 impart a divine virtue. For ordinary purposes the use 
 of living water may suffice, for, as we know, there is a 
 sacred principle in such water. But the most powerful 
 cleansing media are necessarily derived from the body and 
 blood of sacrosanct victims, and the forms of purification 
 embrace such rites as the sprinkling of sacrificial blood 
 or ashes on the person, anointing with holy unguents, or 
 fumigation with the smoke of incense, which from early 
 times was a favourite accessory to sacrifices. It seems 
 probable, however, that the religious value of incense was 
 originally independent of animal sacrifice, for frankincense 
 was the gum of a very holy species of tree, which was 
 collected with religious precautions.^ Whether, therefore, 
 the sacred odour was used in unguents or burned like an 
 altar sacrifice, it appears to have owed its virtue, like the 
 gum of the samora tree,^ to the idea that it was the blood 
 of an animate and divine plant. 
 
 It is easy to understand that cathartic media, like holi- 
 ness itself, were of various degrees of intensity, and were some- 
 times used, one after another, in an ascending scale. All 
 contact with holy things has a dangerous side; and so, before 
 a man ventures to approach the holiest sacraments, he 
 prepares himself by ablutions and other less potent cathartic 
 applications. On this principle ancient religions developed 
 very complicated schemes of purificatory ceremonial, but in 
 all grave cases these culminated in piacular sacrifice; "with- 
 out shedding of blood there is no remission of sin." ^ 
 
 In the most primitive form of the sacrificial idea the 
 blood of the sacrifice is not employed to wash away an 
 
 ^ Pliny, xii. 54. The right even to see the trees was reserved to certain 
 holy families, who, when engaged in harvesting the gum, had to abstain from 
 all contact with women and from participation in funerals. 
 
 ^ Supra, p. 126. 3 Heb. ix. 22. 
 
LECT. XI. 
 
 SACRIFICES. 407 
 
 impurity, but to convey to the worshipper a particle of 
 holy life. The conception of piacular media as purifi- 
 catory, however, involves the notion that the holy medium 
 not only adds something to the worshipper's life, and 
 refreshes its sanctity, but expels from him something that 
 is impure. The two views are obviously not inconsistent, 
 if we conceive impurity as the wrong kind of life, which is 
 dispossessed by inoculation with the right kind. Some 
 idea of this sort is, in fact, that which savages associate 
 with the uncleanness of taboo, which they commonly 
 ascribe to the presence in or about the man of " spirits " or 
 liviag agencies ; and the same idea occurs in much higher 
 forms of religion, as when, in the Catholic Church, exor- 
 cisms to expel devils from the catechumen are regarded as 
 a necessary preliminary to baptism. 
 
 Among the Semites the impurities which were thought 
 of as cleaving to a man, and making him unfit to mingle 
 freely in the social and religious life of his community, were 
 of very various kinds, and often of a nature that we should 
 regard as merely physical, e.g. uncleanness from contact 
 with the dead, from leprosy, from eating forbidden food, 
 and so forth. All these are mere survivals of savage 
 taboos, and present nothing instructive for the higher 
 developments of Semitic religion. They were dealt with, 
 where the uncleanness was of a mild form, mainly by 
 ablutions ; or where the uncleanness was more intense, by 
 more elaborate ceremonies involving the use of sacrificial 
 blood,^ of sacrificial ashes,^ or the like. Sometimes, as we 
 have seen, the Hebrews and Arabs conveyed the impurity 
 to a bird, and allowed it to fly away with it.' 
 
 1 Lev. xiv. 17, 51. ^ Numb. xix. 17. 
 
 ' Supra, p. 402. In the Arabian case the woman also threw away a 
 piece of camel's dung, which must also be supposed to have become the 
 receptacle for her impurity ; or she cut her nails or plucked out part of her 
 hair (cf. Deut. xxi. 12), in which, as specially important parts of the body 
 
408 BLOOD-GUILTINESS. lect. xi. 
 
 There is, however, one form of impurity, viz. that of blood- 
 shed, with which important ethical ideas connected them- 
 selves. Here also the impurity is primarily a physical 
 one ; it is the actual blood of the murdered man, staining 
 the hands of the slayer, or lying unatoned and unburied 
 on the ground, that defiles the murderer and his whole 
 community, and has to be cleansed away. We have 
 already seen ^ that the Semitic religions provide no atone- 
 ment for the murderer himself, that can restore him to his 
 original place in his tribe, and this principle survives in 
 the Hebrew law, which does not admit piacula for mortal 
 sins. The ritual idea of cleansing from the guilt of blood 
 is only applicable to the community, which disavows the 
 act of its impious member, and seeks the restoration of 
 its injured holiness by a public sacrificial act. Thus 
 in Semitic antiquity the whole ritual conception of the 
 purging away of sin is bound up with the notion of the 
 solidarity of the body of worshippers — the same notion 
 which makes the pious Hebrews confess and lament not 
 only their own sins, but the sins of their fathers.^ When 
 the conception that the community, as such, is responsible 
 for the maintenance of holiness in all its parts, is combined 
 with the thought that holiness is specially compromised by 
 crime, — for in early society bloodshed within the kin is the 
 typical form, to the analogy of which all other crimes are 
 referred, — a solid basis is laid for the conception of the 
 religious community as a kingdom of righteousness, which 
 lies at the root of the spiritual teaching of the Hebrew 
 prophets.. The stricter view of divine righteousness which 
 distinguishes Hebrew religion from that of the Greeks, even 
 
 {supra, p. 306, note 2), the impure life might be supposed to be concentrated ; 
 or she anointed herself with perfume, i.e. with a holy medium, or rubbed 
 herself against an ass, sheep or goat, i.e. a holy animal. 
 
 ^ Supra, p. 3iQ sq., 402. 
 
 ' Ho3. i. 9 ; Jer. iii. 25 ; Ezra ix. 7 ; Ps. cvi. 6. 
 
LECT. XI. PENITENCE. 409 
 
 before the prophetic period, is mainly connected with the 
 idea that, so far as individuals are concerned, there is no 
 atonement for mortal sin.^ This principle indeed is 
 common to all races in the earliest stages of law and 
 religion ; but among the Greeks it was early broken 
 down, for reasons that have been already explained,^ while 
 among the Hebrews it subsisted, without change, till a date 
 when the conception of sin was sufficiently developed to 
 permit of its being interpreted, as was done by the 
 prophets, in a way that raised the religion of Israel 
 altogether out of the region of physical ideas, with which 
 primitive conceptions of holiness are bound up. 
 
 We had occasion a moment ago to glance at the subject 
 of confession of sin and lamentation over it. The connec- 
 tion of this part of religion with piacular sacrifice is 
 important enough to deserve a separate consideration. 
 
 Among the Jews the great Day of Expiation was a day 
 of humiliation and penitent sorrow for sin, for which a 
 strict fast and all the outward signs of deep mourning were 
 prescribed.' Similar forms of grief were observed ou all 
 occasions of solemn supplication at the sanctuary, not only 
 by the Hebrews,* but by their neighbours.* On such 
 occasions, where the mourners assemble at a temple or 
 high place, we must, according to the standing rules of 
 ancient religion, assume that a piacular sacrifice formed 
 the culminating point of the service ; ^ and conversely it 
 appears probable that forms of mourning, more or less 
 
 1 Exod. xxi. 14. ^ Supra, p. 341. 
 
 ' According to Toma, viii. 1, washing, unguents, and the use of shoes 
 were forbidden. 
 
 * 1 Sam. vii. 6 ; Isa. xxxvii. 1 ; Joel ii. 12 sgq. ' Isa. xv. 2 sqq. 
 
 * In Hos. vii. 14 the mourners who howl upon their heds are engaged in 
 a religious function. And as ordinary mourners lie on the ground, I take it 
 that the beds are the couches on which men reclined at a sacrificial banquet 
 (Amos ii. 8, vi. 4), which here has the character, not of a joyous feast, but 
 of au atoning rite. 
 
410 MOUENING IN lect. xi. 
 
 accentuated, habitually went with piacular rites, not only 
 when they were called for by some great public calamity, 
 but on other occasions too. For we have already seen that 
 in the annual piacula of the Baal religion there was also a 
 formal act of mourning, which, however, was not an ex- 
 pression of penitence for sin, but a lament over the dead 
 god. In this last case the origin and primary significance 
 of the obligatory lamentation is sufficiently transparent ; for 
 the death of the god is originally nothing else than the 
 death of the theanthropic victim, which is bewailed by 
 those who assist at the ceremony, exactly as the Todas 
 bewail the slaughter of the sacred buffalo.^ On the same 
 principle the Egyptians of Thebes bewailed the death of 
 the ram that was annually sacrificed to the god Amen, 
 and then clothed the idol in its skin and buried the 
 carcase in a sacred cof&n.^ Here the mourning is for the 
 death of the sacrosanct victim, which, as the use of the 
 skin indicates, represents the god himself. But an act of 
 lamentation was not less appropriate in piacular rites, 
 where the victim was thought of rather as representing 
 a man of the kindred of the worshippers ; and primarily, 
 as we know, the theanthropic victim was equally akin to 
 the god and to the sacrificers. 
 
 I think it can be made probable that a form of lamenta- 
 tion over the victim was part of the oldest sacrificial ritual, 
 and that this is the explanation of such rites as the howl- 
 ing (oXoXvy^) which accompanied Greek sacrifices, and in 
 which, as in acts of mourning for the dead, women took 
 the chief part. Herodotus (iv. 189) was struck with the 
 resemblance between the Greek practice and that of the 
 Libyans, a race among whom the sacredness of domestic 
 animals was very marked. The Libyans killed their 
 sacrifices without bloodshed, by throwing them over their 
 > Supra, p. 281. s Herod., ii. 42. 
 
LECT. XI. SACKIFICE. 411 
 
 huts ^ and then twisting their necks. Where bloodshed is 
 avoided in a sacrifice we may be sure that the life of the 
 victim is regarded as human or theanthropic, and the 
 howling can be nothing else than an act of mourning. 
 Among the Semites, in like manner, the shouting {hallel, 
 tahlil) that accompanied sacrifice may probably, in its 
 oldest shape, have been a wail over the death of the 
 victim, though it ultimately took the form of a chant of 
 praise (Hallelujah), or, among the Arabs, degenerated into 
 a meaningless repetition of the word lahhaika. For it is 
 scarcely legitimate to separate the Semitic talilll from the 
 Greek and Libyan oXoXvyi], and indeed the roots ^^n and ^^^ 
 (Ar. Jj!j), " to chant praises " and " to howl," are closely 
 connected.^ 
 
 In ordinary sacrificial service the ancient attitude of 
 awe at the death of the victim was transformed into one 
 of gladness, and the shouting underwent a corresponding 
 change of meaning.'' But piacular rites continued to be 
 
 ' This is analogous to the sprinkling of blood on a tent. 
 
 " On this topic consult, but with caution. Movers, Phoen. i. 246 sq. The 
 Arabic ahalla, tahlil, is primarily connected with the slaughter of the victim 
 {supra, p. 321). Meat that has been killed in the name of an idol is ma 
 ohilla lighairi 'llah, and the tahlil includes (1) the bhmilldh of the sacrificer, 
 (2) the shouts of the congregation accompanying this act, (3) by a natural 
 extension, all religious shouting. If, now, we note that the bismillah is the 
 form by which the sacrificer excuses his bold act, and that tahlil .ilso means 
 "shrinking back in terror" (see Nbldeke in ZDMO. xli. 723), we can 
 hardly doubt that the shouting was originally not joyous, but an expression 
 
 of awe and anguish. The derivation of Ij^^ from A\s>> t^^ ^^'^ moon 
 (Lagarde, Orientalia, ii. 19 ; Snouck-Hurgronje, Het mdckaansche Feest, p. 
 75), is tempting, but must be given up. Compare on the whole matter 
 Wellh., p. 107 sqq. 
 
 ^ This transition was probably much easier than it seems to us ; for shout- 
 ing in mourning and shouting in joy seem both to be primarily directed to 
 drive away evil influences. Of course, men, like children, are noisy when they 
 are glad, but the conventional shrill cries of women in the East (zaghdrit) 
 are not natural expressions of joy, and to my recollection do not differ 
 materially from the sound made in wailing. On this point, however, I 
 should be gUd to be confirmed or corrected by other observers. 
 
412 FASTING WITH LECT. XI. 
 
 conducted with signs of mourning, which were interpreted, 
 as we have seen, sometimes as a lamentation for the 
 death of the god, and sometimes as forms of penitent 
 supplication. 
 
 That feelings of contrition find an expression in acts of 
 mourning, is an idea so familiar to us that at first sight it 
 seems to need no explanation ; but a little reflection will 
 correct this impression, and make it appear by no means 
 unreasonable to suppose that the forms of mourning 
 observed in supplicatory rites were not primarily expres- 
 sions of sorrow for sin, or lamentable appeals to the com- 
 passion of the deity, but simply the obligatory wailing for 
 the death of a kindred victim. The forms prescribed are 
 identical with those used in mourning for the dead ; and 
 if it be urged that this is merely an expression of the 
 most pungent grief, I reply that we have already found 
 reason to be chary in assuming that certain acts are 
 natural expressions of sorrow, and to recognise that the 
 customs observed in lamentation for the dead had originally 
 a very definite meaning, and could not become general ex- 
 pressions of grief till that meaning was forgotten/ And it 
 is surely easier to suppose that the ancient rites of lamenta- 
 tion for the victim changed their sense, when men fell out 
 of touch with the original meaning of them, than that they 
 were altogether dropped for a time, and then resumed with 
 a new meaniag. 
 
 Again, the idea that the gods have a kindred feeling with 
 their worshippers, and are touched with compassion when 
 they see them to be miserable, is no doubt familiar even to 
 early religions. But formal acts of worship in antiquity, 
 as we have seen from our analysis of sacrificial rites, are 
 directed, not merely to appeal to the sentiment of the deity, 
 but to lay him under a social obligation. Even in the 
 ' Supra, p. 304 sq., p. 317 sq. 
 
LECT. XI. SACRIFICE. 413 
 
 theology of the Eabbins penitence atones only for light 
 offences, all grave offences demanding also a material 
 prestation.^ If this is the view of later Judaism, after all 
 that had been taught by the prophets as to the worthless- 
 ness of material offerings, in the eyes of a God who looks 
 at the heart, it is hardly to be thought that in heathen 
 religions elaborate forms of mourning and supplication 
 were nothing more than appeals to divine compassion. 
 And, in fact, there is no doubt that some of the forms 
 which we are apt to take as expressions of intense grief or 
 self-abasement before the god, had originally quite another 
 meaniag. Tor example, when the worshippers gash their 
 own flesh in rites of supplication, this is not an appeal to 
 the divine compassion, but a purely physical means of 
 establishing a blood-bond with the god.* Again, the usage 
 of religious fasting is commonly taken as a sign of sorrow, 
 the worshippers being so distressed at the alienation of 
 their god that they cannot eat ; but there are very strong 
 reasons for believing that, in the strict Oriental form in 
 which total abstinence from meat and drink is prescribed, 
 fasting is primarily nothing more than a preparation for 
 the sacramental eating of holy flesh. Some savage nations 
 not only fast, but use strong purges before venturing to eat 
 holy meat ; ^ similarly the Harranians fasted on the eighth 
 of Nisan, and then broke their fast on mutton, at the same 
 time offering sheep as holocausts ; * the modern Jews fast 
 from ten in the morning before eating the Passover ; and 
 even a modern Catholic must come to the communion with 
 an empty stomach. Similarly the ashes which were strewn 
 on the head in acts of religious mourning ^ are probably in 
 the first instance the ashes of the victim, and so sacramental, 
 
 1 Toma, viii. 8, nbp mi''2]i bv mD3D naitm. 
 
 2 Supra, p. 303 sqq. ' Thomson, 3Iasai Land, p. 430. 
 
 * Fihrist, p. 322. ° Ta'anlih, ii. 2, and Bartenora's note. 
 
414 SKIN OF LECT. XI. 
 
 just as in ordinary mourning the dust strewn on the head 
 is primarily the dust from the grave, which is thus applied 
 to the person externally, as in the Arabian solwcln, or 
 draught of consolation,^ it is taken internally mixed with 
 water.^ On the whole, then, the conclusion seems to be 
 legitimate, that the ritual of penitent confession and 
 humiliation for sin follows the same law that we have 
 found to hold good in other departments of ritual observ- 
 ance ; the original interpretation turns on a physical con- 
 ception of holiness, and it is only gradually and incompletely 
 that physical ideas give way to ethical interpretation. 
 
 To the account that has been given of various aspects 
 of the atoning ef&cacy of sacrifice, and of ritual observances 
 that go with sacrifice, I have still to add some notice of 
 a very remarkable series of ceremonies, in which the skin 
 of the sacrosanct victim plays the chief part. In Mlus's 
 sacrifice the skin and hair of the victim are eaten up like 
 the rest of the carcase, and in some piacula, e.^. the 
 Levitical red heifer, the victim is burned skin and all. 
 Usually, however, it is flayed ; and in later rituals, where 
 rules are laid down determining whether the skin shall 
 belong to the sacrificer or be part of the priest's fee, the 
 hide is treated merely as an article of some commercial 
 value which has no sacred significance.^ But we have seen 
 that in old times all parts of the sacrosanct victim were 
 intensely holy, even down to the offal and excrement, and 
 
 ' Supra, p. 304, note 3. , 
 
 ^ The black garments of mourning are primarily sordid garments, stained 
 
 with dust or ashes, as appears in the Hebrew root y\p. Sackcloth, i.e. hair-' 
 
 cloth, is worn by mourners, not because it macerates the flesh, but because of 
 
 its sordid colour. 
 
 ' By the Levitical law (Lev. vii. 8) the skin of the holocaust goes to the 
 ministrant priest ; in other cases it must be inferred that it was retained by 
 the owner. In the Carthaginian tariffs the. usage varies, one temple giving 
 the hides of victims to the priests and another to the owner of the sacrifice 
 (a /. S. Nos.. 165, 167). 
 
LECT. XI. THE VICTIM. 415 
 
 whatever was not eaten or burned was used for other 
 sacred purposes, and had the force of a charm. The skin, 
 in particular, is used in antique rituals either to clothe the 
 idol or to clothe the worshippers. The meaning of both 
 these rites was sufficiently perspicuous at the stage of 
 religious development in which the god, his worshippers, 
 and the victim were all members of one kindred. 
 
 As regards the draping of the idol or sacred stone in the 
 skin, it will be remembered that in Lecture V. we came to 
 the conclusion that in most cases sacred stones are not 
 naturally holy, but are arbitrary erections, which become 
 holy because the god consents to dwell in them. "We also 
 find a widespread idea, persisting even in the ritual of the 
 Jewish Day of Atonement, that the altar (which is only a 
 more modern form of the sacred stone) requires to be conse- 
 crated with blood, and periodically reconsecrated in the same 
 way.-' In fact it is the sacred blood that makes the stone 
 holy and a habitation of divine life ; as in all the other 
 parts of ritual, man does not begin by persuading his god 
 to dwell in the stone, but by a theurgic process he actually 
 brings divine life to the stone. All sanctuaries are conse- 
 crated by a theophany ; but in the earliest times the 
 sacrifice is itself a rudimentary theophany, and the place 
 where sacred blood has once been shed is the fittest place 
 to shed it again. From this point of view it is natural 
 not only to pour blood upon the altar-idol, but to anoint it 
 with sacred fat, to fix upon it the heads and horns of 
 sacrifices, and so forth. All these things are done in 
 various parts of the world,^ and when the sacred stone is 
 on the way to become an idol, and primarily an animal- 
 
 ^ Ezek. xliii. 18 sqq. ; Ley. viii. 15 ; Ezek. xlv. 18 aqq. ; Lev. xvi. 33. 
 
 '^ The heads of oxen are common sj'mbols on Greek altars, and this is only 
 a modern surrogate for the actual heads of victims. The horns of the 
 Semitic altar have perhaps the same origin. 
 
416 SKIN OF LECT. XI. 
 
 idol, it is peculiarly appropriate to dress it in the skin of 
 the divine victim. 
 
 On the other hand, it is equally appropriate that the 
 worshipper should dress himself in the skin of a victim, 
 and so, as it were, envelop himself in its sanctity. To 
 rude nations dress is not merely a physical comfort, but a 
 fixed part of social religion, a thing by which a man con- 
 stantly bears on his body the token of his religion, and 
 which is itself a charm and a means of divine protection. 
 Among African nations, where the sacredness of domestic 
 animals is still acknowledged, one of the few purposes 
 for which a beast may be killed is to get its skin as a 
 cloak; and in the Book of Genesis (iii. 21) the primitive 
 coat of skin is given to the first men by the deity Himself. 
 Similarly Herodotus, when he speaks of the sacrifices and 
 worship of the Libyans,^ is at once led on to observe 
 that the segis, or goat-skin, worn by the statues of Athena, 
 is nothing else than the goat-skin, fringed with thongs, 
 which was worn by the Libyan women ; the inference 
 implies that it was a sacred dress.^ When the dress of 
 sacrificial skin, which at once declared a man's religion 
 and his sacred kindred, ceased to be used in ordinary life, 
 it was still retained in holy and especially in piacular 
 functions. We have had before us various examples of 
 this : the Assyrian Dagon- worshipper who offers the mystic 
 
 1 Herod., iv. 188 sqq.; that the victims were goats is suggested hy the 
 context, but becomes certain by comparison of Hippocrates, ed. Littr^, 
 vi. 356. 
 
 2 The thongs correspond to the fringes on the garment prescribed by 
 Jewish law, which had a sacred significance (Numb. xv. 38 sqq.). One of 
 the oldest forms of the fringed garment is probably the ralit, or girdle of 
 skin slashed into thongs, which was worn by Arab children, and also, it is 
 said, by worshippers at the Caaba. From this primitive garment are derived 
 the thongs and girdles with lappets that appear as amulets among the Arabs 
 {harim, morassa'a; the latter is pierced, and another thong passed through 
 it) ; compare the magical thongs of the Luperci, cut from the skin of the 
 piaculum, whose touch cured sterility. 
 
LECT. XI. THE VICTIM. 417 
 
 fish-sacrifice to the Fish-god draped ia a fish-skin ; the old 
 Phcenician sacrifice of game by men clothed in the skin of 
 their prey ; the Cyprian sacrifice of a sheep to the Sheep- 
 goddess, in which sheep-skins are worn.^ Similar examples 
 are afforded by the Dionysiac mysteries and other Greek 
 rites, and by almost every rude religion; while in later 
 cults the old rite survives at least in the religious use of 
 animal masks.^ When worshippers present themselves at 
 the sanctuary, already dressed in skins of the sacred kind, 
 the meaning of the ceremony is that they come to worship 
 as kinsmen of the victim, and so also of the god. But 
 when the fresh skin of the victim is applied to the 
 worshipper in the sacrifice, the idea is rather an impart- 
 ing to him of the sacred virtue of its life. Thus in 
 piacular and cathartic rites the skin of the sacrifice is 
 used in a way quite similar to the use of the blood, but 
 dramatically more expressive of the identification of the 
 worshipper's life with that of the victim. In Greek 
 piacula the man on whose behalf the sacrifice was per- 
 formed simply put his foot on the skin (k(oSiov) ; at 
 Hierapolis the pilgrim put the head and feet over his 
 own head while he knelt on the skin ; ^ in certain late 
 Syrian rites a boy is initiated by a sacrifice in which his 
 feet are clothed in slippers made of the skin of the 
 sacrifice.* These rites do not appear to have suggested 
 any idea, as to the meaning of piacular sacrifice, different 
 from those that have already come before us ; but as the 
 skin of a sacrifice is the oldest form of a sacred garment, 
 appropriate to the performance of holy functions, the figure 
 of a "robe of righteousness," which is found both in the 
 
 ' Supra, pp. 274, 292 ; and Additional Notes G and H. 
 
 " Such masks were used by the Arabs of Nejran in rites which the Bisliop 
 Gregentius, in the laws he made for his flock (ch. xxxiv.), denounces as 
 heathenish (Boissonade, Anecd. Gr., vol. v.) 
 
 ^ Dea Syria, Iv. ' Ades of the Leyden Congress, ii. 1. 336 (361). 
 
 2 D 
 
418 THEOLOGICAL lect. xi. 
 
 Old Testament and in the New, and still supplies one of 
 the commonest theological metaphors, may be ultimately 
 traced back to this source. 
 
 On the whole it is apparent, from the somewhat tedious 
 discussion which I have now brought to a close, that the 
 various aspects in which atoning rites presented them- 
 selves to ancient worshippers have supplied a variety of 
 religious images which passed into Christianity, and still 
 have currency. Eedemption, substitution, purification, 
 atoning blood, the garment of righteousness, are all 
 terms which in some sense go back to antique ritual. 
 But in ancient religion all these terms are very vaguely 
 defined ; they indicate impressions produced on the mind 
 of the worshipper by features of the ritual, rather than 
 formulated ethieo- dogmatical ideas; and the attempt to 
 find in them anything as precise and definite as the 
 notions attached to the same words by Christian theo- 
 logians is altogether illegitimate. The one point that 
 comes out clear and strong is that the fundamental idea 
 of ancient sacrifice is sacramental communion, and that 
 all atoning rites are ultimately to be regarded as owing 
 their efficacy to a communication of divine life to the 
 worshippers, and to the establishment or confirmation of 
 a living bond between them and their god. In primitive 
 ritual this conception is grasped in a merely physical and 
 mechanical shape, as indeed, in primitive life, all spiritual 
 and ethical ideas are still wrapped up in the husk of a 
 material embodiment. To free the spiritual truth from 
 the husk was the great task that lay before the ancient 
 religions, if they were to maintain the right to continue 
 to rule the minds of men. That some progress in this 
 direction was made, especially in Israel, appears from our 
 examination. But on the whole it is manifest that none 
 of the ritual systems of antiquity was able by mere 
 
LECT. XI. METAPHORS. 419 
 
 natural development to shake itself free from the con- 
 genital defect inherent in every attempt, to embody 
 spiritual truth in material forms. A ritual system must 
 always remain materialistic, even if its materialism is 
 disguised under the cloak of mysticism. 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES. 
 
 ADDITIOXAL XOTE A (p. 120). 
 
 THE TEANSFORMATIONS OF THE JINN". 
 
 I CANNOT recall any old legend in which the jinn change from 
 one animal form to another. WeUhausen thinks that the demon 
 in Frej'tag, Ar. Prov. i. 364 (Maidani, i. 181), which appeared in. 
 the form of a black ostrich, was really a snake, because the fever 
 that attacked the man who shot at it was such as, according to 
 Arabian superstitions, is produced by a snake bite. This is very 
 ingenious, but hardly conclusive. The idea that sickness is the 
 result of offending the jinn is still current in Arabia, and I had 
 myself from Al-mas, a servant of the Sherif of Mecca, the story 
 of a jinnl — a hairy creature, apparently an ape — that he saw in 
 the wild country at the upper end of Batn Marr; his companion 
 shot at it, and died soon after with the symptoms of rheumatism 
 fever. In totem superstitions it is a common idea that an insult 
 to the totem is followed by sickness (Frazer, p. 16 sqq.). 
 
 The locus dassicus for the transformation of the ghill, i.e. the 
 kind of jinn that attacks men and leads them astray or devours 
 them, is verse 8 of the Banat So'ad of Ka'b b. Zohair, which 
 Damiri (ii. 214) declares to be the source of the belief. This of 
 course is not correct, as the verb tagliawwala proves. But the 
 proper sense of this verb is not to undergo a metamorphosis, but 
 merely to change one's aspect. In the hadUh cited in the Lisdn, 
 S.V., and by Damiri, ii. 214. 16, taghawwalat lahu 'l-gMlan is 
 equivalent to the German spuken. The ghiil appears by night, 
 and therefore fitfully, uncertainly, and in indeterminate form. 
 Similarly, Dhu '1-Eomma, cited in the Sihdh, speaks of the fear- 
 some and trackless desert where troops of ostriches taghawwalat, 
 i.e. appear and disappear like demons. The verse of the Nacaid 
 
422 THE JINN. NOTE B. 
 
 of Jarir, cited in the Lisan, xiv. 21, stands thus in the Leyden 
 MS. f. .51r, as the late Professor Wright told me, — 
 Fayauman yujarlna 'l-hawa ghaira ma siban 
 wayauman tara minhunna ghulan taghawwala, 
 with the note al-tagawwul al-talawwun wdltafattul. See also Ibn 
 Hisham's commentary on the Banat So'ad (ed. Guidi), p. 75, 1. 7. 
 In all this I can see no support for the idea that the true 
 form of the jinn is serpentine, and that all other animal forms 
 are mere metamorphoses ; even in later accounts, like that 
 of Damiri, the essential prerogative of the jinn is that it can 
 assume human form. 'Not can I see any evidence that in 
 Imraulcais, lii. 29, the " teeth of ghiils " mean teeth of serpents. 
 The interpreters are not agreed on this explanation, which seems 
 to be a mere piece of later rationalism. It is one thing to say 
 that all serpents are jinn, and another to say that all jinn are 
 serpents. 
 
 ADDITIONAL NOTE B (p. 130). 
 
 GODS, DEMONS, AND PLANTS OR ANIMALS. 
 
 The object of .this note is to consider some difficulties that 
 may be felt with regard to the argument in the text. 
 
 1. The importance which I have attached to Arabian supersti- 
 tions about the jinn, as affording a clue to the origin of local 
 sanctuaries, may appear to be excessive when it is observed that 
 the facts are almost all drawn from one part of the Semitic field. 
 "What evidence is there, it may be asked, that these Arabian 
 superstitions are part of the common belief of the Semitic race ? 
 That the other Semites had their goblins and spectres will not of 
 course be denied ; but were these so like the Arabian jinn that 
 what is proved as to the ultimate nature of the latter may be 
 extended to the former ? To this I reply, in the first place, that 
 the Arabian conception proves upon analysis to have nothing 
 peculiar about it. It is the ordinary conception of all primitive 
 savages, and involves ideas that only belong to the savage mind. 
 To suppose that it originated in Arabia, for special and local 
 reasons, after the separation of the other Semites, is therefore to 
 run in the teeth of all probability. Again, the little we do know 
 about the goblins of the Northern Semites is in full agreement 
 
KOTE B. DEMONIAC PLANTS. 423 
 
 with the Arabian facts. The demons were banished from Hebrew 
 religion, and hardly appear in the Old Testament except in poetic 
 imagery. But the D''T'J;b' or hairy ones, the Jv'^'h or nocturnal 
 goblin, are exactly like the Arahian jinn (Wellhausen, p. 135). 
 
 The main point, however, is that the savage view of nature, 
 which ascribes to plants and animals discourse of reason, and super- 
 natural or demoniac attributes, can be shown to have prevailed 
 among the Northern Semites as well as the Arabs. The savage 
 point of view is constantly found to survive, in connection with 
 practices of magic, after it has been superseded in religion proper ; 
 and the superstitions of the vulgar in modern civilised countries are 
 not much more advanced than those of the rudest nations. So, too, 
 among the Semites, magical rites and vulgar superstitions are not 
 so much survivals from the higher official heathenism of the 
 great sanctuaries as from a lower and more primitive stage of 
 belief, which the higher forms of heathen worship overshadowed 
 but did not extinguish. And the view of nature that pervades 
 Semitic magic is precisely that savage view which we have found 
 to underlie the Arabian belief in the jinn. Of the magical 
 practices of the ancient Syrians, which persisted long after the 
 introduction of Christianity, some specimens are preserved in the 
 Canons of Jacob of Edessa, edited in Syriac by Lagarde, Eel. iur. 
 ecd. ant. (Leipz. 1856), and translated by Kayser, Die Canones 
 Jacob's von Edessa (Leipz. 1886). One of these, used in cases of 
 sickness, was to dig up the root of a certain kind of thorn called 
 " ischiac,'' and make an offering to it, eating and drinking beside 
 the root, which was treated as a guest at the feast (Qu. 38). 
 Another demoniac plant of the Northern Semites is the Baaras, 
 described by Josephus, B. J. vii. 6. 3, which flees from those who 
 try to grasp it, and whose touch is death so long as it is rooted in 
 the ground. This plant seems to be the mandrake (Ar. yabruh), 
 about which the Arabs tell similar stories, and which even the 
 ancient Germans thought to be inhabited by a spirit. "When the 
 plants in Jotham's parable speak and act like men, this is mere 
 personification ; but the dispute of the mallow and the mandrake, 
 which Maimonides relates from the forged Naiateean Agriculture 
 (Chwolsohn, Ssabier, ii. 459, 914), and which prevents the mallow 
 from supplying her prophet with responses, is a genuine piece of 
 old Semitic superstition. In matters of this sort we caunot doubt 
 that even a forger correctly represents popular beliefs. As 
 regards animals, the demoniac character of the serpent in the 
 
424 SEMITIC 
 
 NOTE B. 
 
 Garden of Eden is unmistakeable ; the serpent is not a mere 
 temporary disguise of Satan, otherwise its punishment would bo 
 meaningless. The practice of serpent charming, repeatedly- 
 referred to in the Old Testament, is also connected with the 
 demoniac character of the creature ; and in general the idea that 
 animals can be constrained by spells, e.g. prevented from injuring 
 flocks and vineyards (Jacob of Ed., Qu. 46), rests on the same 
 view, for the power of wizards is over demons and beings that 
 are subject to the demons. 
 
 One of the most curious of the Syrian superstitions is as 
 follows : — When caterpillars infest a garden, the maidens are 
 assembled; a single caterpillar is taken, and one of the girls is 
 constituted its mother. The insect is then bewailed and buried, 
 and the mother is conducted to the place where the other cater- 
 pillars are, amidst lamentations for her bereavement. The whole 
 of the caterpillars will then disappear {op. cit, Qu. 44). Here it is 
 clearly assumed that the insects understand and are impressed by 
 the tragedy got up for their benefit. The Syriac legends of Tiir 
 "Abdin, collected by Prym and Socin (Gott. 1881), are full of 
 beasts with demoniac powers. In these stories each kind of beast 
 forms a separate organised community ; they speak and act like 
 men, but have supernatural powers, and close relations to the jinn 
 that also occur in the legends. In conclusion, it may be observed 
 that the universal Semitic belief in omens and guidance given 
 by animals belongs to the same range of ideas. Omens are not 
 blind tokens ; the animals know what they tell to men. 
 
 2. If the argument in the text is correct, it may be asked why 
 there are not direct and convincing evidences of Semitic totemism. 
 You argue, it may be said, that traces of the old savage view of 
 nature, which corresponds to totemism, are still clearly visible in 
 the Semitic view of demons. But in savage nations that view is 
 habitually conjoined with the belief that one kind of demon — or 
 more correctly one kind of plants or animals endowed with 
 demoniac qualities — is allied by kinship with each kindred of 
 men. How does this square with the Arabian facts, in which all 
 demons or demoniac animals habitually appear as man's enemies ? 
 The general answer to this difficulty is that totems, or friendly 
 demoniac beings, rapidly develop into gods when men rise above 
 pure savagery ; whereas unfriendly beings, lying outside the circle 
 of man's organised life, are not directly influenced by the social 
 progress, and retain their primitive characteristics unchanged. 
 
KOTE B. TOTEMISM. 425 
 
 "When men deem themselves to be of the same hlood with u 
 particular animal kind, every advance in their way of thinking 
 about themselves reacts on their ideas about the sacred animals. 
 When they come to think of their god as the ancestor of their 
 race, they must also think of him as the ancestor of their totem 
 animals, and, so far as our observation goes, they tend to figure 
 him as having animal form. The animal god concentrates on his 
 own person the respect that used to be paid to all animals of the 
 totem kind, or at least the respect paid to them is made to depend 
 on the worship he receives. Finally, the animal god, who, as a 
 demoniac being, has many human attributes, is transformed into 
 an anthropomorphic god, and his animal connections fall quite 
 into the background. But nothing of this sort can happen to the 
 demoniac animals that are left outside, and not brought into 
 fellowship with men. They remain as they were, till the progress 
 of enlightenment — a slow progress ftniong the mass of any race — 
 gradually strips them of their supernatural attributes. Thus it is 
 natural that the belief in hostile demons of plant or animal kinds 
 should survive long after the friendly kinds have given way to 
 individual gods, whose original totem associations are in great 
 measure obliterated. At the stage which even the rudest Semitic 
 peoples had reached when they first become known to us, it would 
 be absurd to expect to find examples of totemism pure and simple. 
 What we may expect to find is the fragmentary survival of totem 
 ideas, in the shape of special associations between certain kinds of 
 animals on the one hand, and certain tribes or religious communi- 
 ties and their gods on the other hand. And of evidence of this 
 kind there is, we shall see, no lack in Semitic antiquity. For the 
 present I will only cite some direct evidences of kinship or 
 brotherhood between human communities and animal kinds. 
 Ibn al-Mojawir relates that when the B. Harith, a tribe of South 
 Arabia, find a dead gazelle, they wash it, wrap it in cerecloths 
 and bury it, and the whole tribe mourns for it seven days 
 (Sprenger, Postrouten, p. 151). The animal is buried like a man, 
 and mourned for as a kinsman. Among the Arabs of Sinai the 
 wahr (the coney of the Bible) is the brother of man, and it is said 
 that he who eats his flesh will never see father and mother again. 
 In the Harranian mysteries the worshippers acknowledged dogs, 
 ravens and ants as their brothers {Fihiist, p. 326, 1. 27). At 
 Baalbek the yevvaio% or ancestral god of the town, was worshipped in 
 the form of a lion (Damascius, Vit. Isid. § 203; of. bv2 13, "leon- 
 
426 ELOHIM. NOTE B. 
 
 topodion," Low, Aram. Pflanzenamen, p. 406 ; Gr. Hoffmann, Phoen. 
 Jnschr. 1889, p. 27). On the banks of the Euphrates, according 
 to Aristotle, Mir. Ausc. 149 sq., there was found a species of 
 small serpents that attacked foreigners, but did not molest 
 natives, which is just what a totem animal is supposed to do. 
 
 3. If the oldest sanctuaries of the gods were originally haunts of 
 a multiplicity of jinn, or of animals to which demoniac attributes 
 were ascribed, we should expect to find, even in later times, some 
 trace of the idea that the holy place is not inhabited by a single 
 god, but by a plurality of sacred denizens. If the relation between 
 the worshipping community and the sanctuary was formed in the 
 totem stage of thought, when the sacred denizens were still veri- 
 table animals, all animals of the sacred species would multiply 
 unmolested in the holy precincts, and the individual god of the 
 sanctuary, when such a being came to be singled out from the 
 indeterminate plurality of totem creatures, would still be the 
 father and protector of all animals of his own kind. And accord- 
 ingly we do find that many Semitic sanctuaries gave shelter to 
 various species of sacred animals, the dogs of Adranus, the doves 
 of Astarte, the gazelles of Tabala and Mecca, and so forth. But, 
 apart from this, we may expect to find traces of vague plurality in 
 the conception of the godhead as associated with special spots, to 
 hear not so much of the god as of the gods of a place, and that 
 not in the sense of a definite number of clearly individualised 
 deities, but with the same indefiniteness as characterises the con- 
 ception of the jinn. I am inclined to think that this is the idea 
 which underlies the Hebrew use of the plural D^nijS, and the 
 Phoenician use of DPS, in a singular sense, on which cf. Hoffmann, 
 op. cit. p. 17 sqq. Merely to refer this to primitive polytheism, 
 as is sometimes done, does not explain how the plural form is 
 habitually used to designate a single deity. But if the Elohim of 
 a place originally meant all its sacred denizens, viewed collectively 
 as an indeterminate sum of indistinguishable beings, the transition 
 to the use of the plural in a singular sense would follow naturally, ^ 
 as soon as this indeterminate conception gave way to the concep- 
 tion of an individual god of the sanctuary. Further, the original 
 indeterminate plurality of the EloMm appears in the conception 
 of angels as Bne EIoMm, " sons of Elohim," which, according to 
 linguistic analogy, means "beings of the Elohim kind." In the 
 Old Testament the " sons of God " form the heavenly court, and 
 ordinarily when an angel appears on earth he appears alone and on 
 
NOTE C. 
 
 HOLINESS. 427 
 
 a special mission. But, in some of the oldest Hebrew traditions, 
 angels frequent holy places, such as Bethel and Mahanaim, when 
 they have no message to deliver (Gen. xxviii. 12, xxxii. 2). 
 That the angels, as " sons of God," form part of the old Semitic 
 mythology is clear from Gen. vi. 2, 4, for the sons of God who 
 contract marriages with the daughters of men are out of place in 
 the religion of the Old Testament, and the legend must have heen 
 taken over from a lower form of faith ; perhaps it was a local 
 legend connected with Mount Hermon (Hilary on Ps. cxxxiii., 
 cited by Eeland, Palcestina, p. 323). Ewald (Lehre der Bihel, 
 ii. 283) rightly observes that in Gen. xxxii. 28-30 the meaning 
 is that an angel has no name, i.e. no distinctive individuality ; ho 
 is simply one of a class ; cf. p. 119, note, supra. Yet in wrestling 
 with him Jacob wrestles with DTlts (cf. Hos. xii. 4). 
 
 That the Arabic jinn is not a loan-word, as has sometimes 
 been supposed, is shewn by Noldeke, ZDMG. xli, 717. 
 
 ADDITIONAL NOTE C (p. 143). 
 
 HOLINESS, UNCLEANNESS AND TABOO. 
 
 VAEiors parallels between savage taboos, and Semitic rules of 
 holiness and uncleanness, will come before us from time to time ; 
 but it may be useful to bring together at this point some detailed 
 evidences that the two are in their origin indistinguishable. 
 
 Holy and unclean things have this in common, that in both cases 
 certain restrictions lie on men's use of and contact with them, and 
 that the breach of these restrictions involves supernatural dangers. 
 The difference between the two appears, not in their relation to 
 man's ordinary life, but in their relation to the gods. Holy things 
 are not free to man, because they pertain to the gods ; uncleanness 
 is shunned, according to the view taken in the higher Semitic 
 religions, because it is hateful to the god, and therefore not to be 
 tolerated in his sanctuary, his worshippers, or his land. But that 
 this explanation is not primitive can hardly be doubted, when we 
 consider that the acts that cause uncleanness are exactly the same 
 which among savage nations place a man under taboo, and that 
 these acts are often involuntary, and often innocent, or even 
 necessary to society. The savage, accordingly, imposes a taboo on 
 
428 UNCLEANNESS note C. 
 
 a woman in childbed, or during her courses, and on the man 
 who touches a corpse, not out of any regard for the gods, but 
 simply because birth and everything connected with the propaga- 
 tion of the species on the one hand, and disease and death on the 
 other, seem to hira. to involve the action of superhuman agencies 
 of a dangerous kind. If he attempts to explain, he does so by 
 supposing that on these occasions spirits of deadly power are 
 present ; at all events the persons involved seem to him to be 
 sources of mysterious danger, which has all the characters of an 
 infection, and may extend to other people unless due precautions 
 are observed. This is not scientific, but it is perfectly intelligible, 
 and forms the basis of a consistent system of practice ; wherean, 
 when the rules of uncleanness are made to rest on the will of the 
 gods, they appear altogether arbitrary and meaningless. The affinity 
 of such taboos with laws of uncleanness comes out most clearly 
 when we observe that uncleanness is treated like a contagion, 
 which has to be washed away or otherwise eliminated by physical 
 means. Take the rules about the uncleanness produced by the 
 carcases of vermin in Lev. xi. 32 sqq. ; whatever they touch 
 must be washed ; the water itself is then unclean and can pro- 
 pagate the contagion ; nay, if the defilement affect an (unglazed) 
 earthen pot, it is supposed to sink into the pores, and cannot be 
 washed out, so that the pot must be broken. Kules like this 
 have nothing in common with the spirit of Hebrew religion ; they 
 can only be remains of a primitive superstition, like that of the 
 savage who shuns the blood of uncleanness, and such like things, 
 as a supernatural and deadly virus. The antiquity of the Hebrew 
 taboos, for such they are, is shewn by the way in which many of 
 them reappear in Arabia; cf. for example Deut. xxi. 12, 13, with 
 the Arabian ceremonies for removing the impurity of widowhood 
 (Lane, p. 2409, or Taj al-Arus, quoted in Wellhausen, p. 156). In 
 the Arabian form the ritual is of purely savage type ; the danger 
 to life that made it unsafe for a man to marry the woman was 
 transferred in the most materialistic way to an animal, which it 
 was believed generally died in consequence, or to a bird. So, too, 
 in the law for cleansing the leper (Lev. xiv. 4 sqq.) the impurity 
 is transferred to a bird, which flies away with it ; compare also the 
 ritual of .the scape-goat. So, again, the impurity of menstruation 
 was recognised by all the Semites,^ as in fact it is by all primitive 
 
 ^ The precept of the Coran, ii. 222, rests on ancient practice ; see Baidan'i 
 on the passage, Hamasa, p. 107, last verse, and Agh. xvi. 27, 31. For the 
 
NOTE C. AND TABOO. 429 
 
 and ancient peoples. Now among savages this impurity is dis- 
 tinctly connected with the idea that the blood of the menses is 
 dangerous to man, and even the Romans held that "nihil facile 
 reperiatur mulierum profluuio magis mirificum," or more full of 
 deadly qualities (Pliny, H. N. vii. 64). Similar superstitions are 
 current with the Arabs, a great variety of supernatural powers 
 attaching themselves to a woman in this condition (Cazwlni, i. 365). 
 Obviously, therefore, in this case the Semitic taboo is exactly like 
 the savage one ; it has nothing to do with respect for the gods, 
 but springs from mere terror of the supernatural influences 
 associated with the woman's physical condition. That unclean 
 things are tabooed on account of their inherent supernatural 
 powers or associations, appears further from the fact that just these 
 things are most powerful in magic ; menstruous blood in particular 
 is one of the strongest of charms in most countries, and so it was 
 among the Arabs (Cazwini, ut supra). Wellhausen has shewn how 
 closely the ideas of amulet and ornament are connected {Heid. p. 
 14-3), but has not brought out the equally characteristic fact that 
 unclean things are not less potent. Such amulets are called by 
 the Arabs tanjls, monajjasa ; and it is explained that the heathen 
 Arabs used to tie unclean things, dead men's bones and menstruous 
 rags, upon children, to avert the jinn and the evil eye (Camus, s.v.) ; 
 cf. Jacob of Edessa, op. cit. Qu. 43. 
 
 We have seen, in the example of the swine, that prohibitions 
 against using, and especially eating, certain animals belong in the 
 higher Semitic religions to a sort of doubtful ground between the 
 unclean and the holy. This topic cannot be fully elucidated till 
 we come to speak of sacrifice, when it will appear probable that 
 most of these restrictions, if not all of them, are parallel to the 
 taboos which totemism lays on the use of sacred animals as food. 
 Meantime it may be observed that such prohibitions, like those 
 that have been already considered, manifest their savage origin 
 by the nature of the supernatural sanction attached to them. As 
 the Elk clan of the Omahas believe that they cannot eat the elk 
 without boils breaking out on their bodies, so the Syrians, with whom 
 
 Syrian heathen, Fihrist, p. 319, 1. 18. Acoordiog to Wahidy, Axhab, women 
 in their courses were not allowed to remain in 1he house, which is a 
 common savage rule. Girls at their first menstruation seem to have been 
 strictly confined to a hut or tent ; see th» Lisdn on the term mo'sir. This 
 is also common all over the world. Widows were similarly confined ; see the 
 Lexx. n.v. ^ks~. 
 
430 HOLINESS 
 
 NOTE C. 
 
 fish were sacred to Atargatis, thought that if they ate a sprat or 
 au anchovy they were visited with ulcers, swellings and wasting 
 disease.! In both cases the punishment of the impious act is not 
 a divine judgment, in our sense of that word, but flows directly 
 from the malignant influences resident in the forbidden thing, 
 which, so to speak, avenges itself on the offender. With this it 
 agrees that the more notable unclean animals possess magical 
 powers ; the swine, for example, which the Saracens as well as the 
 Hebrews and Syrians refused to eat (Sozomen, vi. 38), supplies 
 many charms and magical medicines (Cazwini, i. 393). 
 
 The irrationality of laws of uncleanness, from the standpoint of 
 spiritual religion or even of the higher heathenism, is so manifest 
 that they must necessarily be looked on as having survived from 
 an earlier form of faith and of society. And, this being so, I do 
 not see how any historical student can refuse to class them with 
 savage taboos. The attempts to explain them otherwise, which 
 are still occasionally met with, seem to be confined to speculative 
 writers, who have no knowledge of the general features of thought 
 and belief in rude societies. As regards holy things in the proper 
 sense of the word, i.e. such as are directly coimected with the 
 worship and service of the gods, more difliculty may reasonably 
 be felt; for many of the laws of holiness may seem to have a good 
 and reasonable sense even in the higher forms of religion, and to 
 find their suflicient explanation in the habits and institutions of 
 advanced societies. At present the most current view of the 
 meaning of restrictions on man's free use of holy things is that 
 holy things are the god's property, and I have therefore sought 
 {supra, p. 134 sqq.) to show that the idea of property does not 
 suffice to explain the facts of the case. A man's property consists 
 of things to which he has an exclusive right ; but in holy things 
 the worshippers have rights as well as the god, though their rights 
 are subject to definite restrictions. Again, an owner is bound to 
 respect other people's property while he preserves his own ; but 
 the principle of holiness, as appears in the law of asylum, can be 
 used to override the privileges of human ownership. In this 
 respect holiness exactly resembles taboo. The notion that certain 
 things are taboo to a god or a chief means only that he, as the 
 stronger person, and not only stronger but invested with super- 
 
 1 Menander ap. Porph., De Abst. iv. 15; Plut., Be Saperst. x. ; Selden, 
 Be Bits Syris, Synt. ii. Cap. 3. For savage parallels, see Frazer, Totemlsm, 
 p. 16 sqq. 
 
NOTE C. AKD TABOO. 431 
 
 natural power, and so very dangeroiis to offend, will not allow 
 any one else to meddle with theai. To bring the taboo into force 
 it is not necessary that there should be prior possession on the 
 part of god or chief ; other people's goods may become taboo, and 
 be lost to their original owner, merely by contact with the sacred 
 person or with sacred things. Even the ground on which a king 
 of Tahiti trod became taboo, just as the place of a theophany was 
 thenceforth holy among the Semites. Nor does it follow that 
 because a thing is taboo from the use of man, it is therefore in any 
 real sense appropriated to the use of a god or sacred person ; the 
 fundamental notion is merely that it is not safe for ordinary 
 people to use it ; it has, so to speak, been touched by the infection 
 of holiness, and so becomes a new source of supernatural danger. 
 In this respect, again, the rules of Semitic holiness show clear 
 marks of their origin in a system of taboo ; the distinction that 
 holy things are employed for the use of the gods, while unclean 
 things are simply forbidden to man's use, is not consistently 
 carried out, and there remain many traces of the view that holi- 
 ness is contagious, just as uncleanness is, and that things which 
 are to be retained for ordinary use must be kept out of the way of 
 the sacred infection. Of things undoubtedly holy, but not in any 
 way used for the divine service, the consecrated camels of the 
 Arabs afford a good example. But in old Israel also we find 
 something of the same kind. By the later law (Lev. xxvii. 27) 
 the firstling of a domestic animal that could not be sacrificed, and 
 which the owner did not care to redeem, was sold for the benefit 
 of the sanctuary, but by the old law (Ex. xiii. 13, xxxiv. 20) its 
 neck was broken — a less humane rule than that of Arabia, where 
 animals tabooed from human use were allowed to run free.^ 
 
 Of the contagiousness of holiness there are many traces exactly 
 similar to taboo. In Isa. Ixv. 5 the heathen mystce warn the 
 bystander not to approach them lest he become taboo.^ The flesh 
 of the Hebrew sin-offering, which is holy in the first degree, con- 
 veys a taboo to every one who touches it, and if a drop of the 
 blood falls on a garment, this must be washed, i.e. the sanctity 
 must be washed out, in a holy place, while the earthen pot in 
 
 1 This parallel shows that the Arabian institution is not a mere degenerate 
 form of an older consecration to positive sacred uses. 
 
 ^ The sufax shows that the verb is transitive ; not " for I am holier than 
 thou," but "for I would sanctify thee." We should therefore point it as 
 Pid. 
 
43S 
 
 SACKED NOTE c. 
 
 •which the sacrifice is sodden must he hroken, as in the case where 
 dead vermin falls in a vessel and renders it unclean (Lev. vi. 27 sq. 
 [Heb. ver. 20 sq.] ; cf. Lev. xvi. 26, 28). At Mecca, in the times 
 of heathenism, the sacred circuit of the Caaba was made by the 
 Bedouins either naked, or in clothes borrowed from one of the 
 Horns, or religious community of the sa,cred city. Wellhausen has 
 shown that this usage was not peculiar to Mecca, for at the 
 sanctuary of Al-Jalsad also it was customary for the sacrificer to 
 borrow a suit from the priest ; and the same custom appears in the 
 worship of the Tyrian Baal (2 Kings x. 22), to which it may be 
 added that, in 2 Sam. vi. 14, David wears the priestly ephod at 
 the festival of the inbringing of the ark. He had put off his 
 usual clothes, for Michal calls his conduct a shameless exposure 
 of his person; see also 1 Sam. xix. 24. The Meccan custom is 
 explained by saying that they would not perform the sacred rite 
 in garments stained with sin, but the real reason is quite different. 
 It appears that sometimes a man did make the circuit in his own 
 clothes, but in that case he could neither wear them again nor sell 
 them, but had to leave them at the gate of the sanctuary (Azraci, 
 p. 125). They became taboo by contact with the holy place and 
 function. If any doubt remains as to the correctness of this ex- 
 planation it will, I trust, be dispelled by a quotation from Short- 
 land's Southern Districts of New Zealand (p. 293 sq.), which has been 
 given to me by my friend Frazer. " A slave or other person not 
 sacred would not enter a 'wahi tapu,' or sacred place, without 
 having first stripped off his clothes ; for the clothes, having 
 become sacred the instant they entered the precincts of the ' wahi 
 tapu,' would ever after be useless to him in the ordinary business 
 of his life.'' 
 
 In the case of the garment stained by the blood of the sin- 
 offering, we see that taboos produced by contact with holy things, 
 like those due to uneleanness, can be removed by washing. In 
 like manner among the Jews the contact of a sacred volume or a 
 phylactery " defiled the hands," and called for an ablution, ^ and 
 the high priest on the Day of Atonement washed his flesh with 
 water, not only when he put on the holy garments of the day, but 
 when he put them off (Lev. xvi. 24 ; cf. Mishna, YOmd, viii. 4). 
 In savage countries such ablutions are taken to be a literal 
 physical removal of the contagious principle of the taboo, and all 
 symbolical interpretations of them are nothing more than an 
 ^ See p. 405, supra. 
 
NOTE C. GARMENTS. 433 
 
 attempt, in higher stages of religious development, to justify 
 adhesion to traditional ritual. 
 
 These examples may suffice to show that it is impossible to 
 separate the Semitic doctrine of holiness and uncleanness from the 
 system of taboo. If any one is not convinced by them, I am 
 satisfied that he will not bo convinced by an accumulation of 
 evidence. But as the subject is curious in itself, and may 
 possibly be found to throw light on some obscure customs, I wUl 
 conclude this part of the subject by some additional remarks, of 
 a more conjectural character, on the costume worn at the sanctuary. 
 The use of special vestments by priestly celebrants at religious 
 functions is very widespread, and has relations which cannot be 
 illustrated till we come to speak of sacrifice.^ But it is certain 
 that originally every man was his own priest, and the ritual 
 observed in later times by the priests is only a development of 
 what was originally observed by all worshippers. As regards the 
 matter of vestments, it was certainly an early and widespread 
 custom to make a difference between the dress of ordinary life 
 and that donned on sacred occasions. The ancient Hebrews, on 
 approaching the presence of the Deity, either washed their 
 clothes (Ex. xix. 10) or changed them (Gen. xxxv. 2), that is, 
 put on their best clothes, and the women also wore their jewels 
 (Hos. ii. 13 [15]; cf. Sozomen's account of the feast at Mamre, 
 H. E. ii. 4). 
 
 The washing is undoubtedly to remove possible uncleanness, 
 and in Gen. xxxv. 2 the change of garments has the same 
 association. But the instances given above shew that, if it was 
 important not to carry impurity into the sanctuary, it was equally 
 necessary not to carry into ordinary life the marks of contact with 
 holy places and things. As all festive occasions in antiquity were 
 sacred occasions, it may be presumed that best clothes were also 
 holy clothes, reserved for festal purposes. They were perfumed 
 (Gen. xxvii. 15, 27), and perfume among the Semites is a very 
 holy thing (Pliny, xii. 54), used in purifications (Herod., i. 198), 
 and applied, according to Phoenician ritual, to all those who 
 stood before the altar, clad in the long byssus robes, with a single 
 purple stripe, which were appropriated to religious offices (Silius, 
 iii. 23 sqq.; cf. Herodian, v. 5. 10). Jewels, too, such as women 
 wore in the sanctuary, had a sacred character ; the Syriac word 
 
 ' See what is said of the skin of the victim as furnishing a sacred dress, 
 supra, p. 416 sq. 
 
 2e 
 
434 JEWELS. NOTE C. 
 
 for an earring is c'ddsM, "the holy thing," and generally speaking 
 jewels serve as amulets.^ On the whole, therefore, holy dress and 
 gala dress are one and the same thing, and it seems, therefore, 
 legitimate to suppose that in early times best clothes meant clothes 
 that were taboo for the purposes of ordinary life. But of course 
 the great mass of people in a poor society could not keep a 
 special suit for sacred occasions. Such persons would either 
 wash their clothes after as well as before any specially sacred 
 function (Lev. vi. 27, xvi. 26, 28), or would have to borrow 
 sacred garments. Shoes could not well be washed, unless they 
 were mere linen stockings, as in the Phoenician sacred dress 
 described by Herodian ; they were therefore put off before 
 treading on holy ground (Ex. iii. 5 ; Josh. v. 15, etc.).^ 
 
 Among primitive peoples, taboos are often used to protect 
 human rights by a supernatural sanction, or to cover the encroach- 
 ments of chiefs and privileged persons on the rights of others. 
 To the latter usage a Semitic parallel has been given above 
 (supra, p. 136), while an exact parallel to the former lies in the 
 usage of laying a curse on an object to prevent it from being 
 interfered with (Judg. xvii. 2). Among the older Hebrews the 
 obligation of a curse does not depend on any consideration of its 
 reasonableness (1 Sam. xiv. 24 sqq.) ; it is a mechanical taboo. 
 Compare for the Arabs, Wellh., Held. p. 125 sqq. In Zech. v. 3 
 it is a new thing, characteristic of a better age, that the curse 
 of God seizes on every thief or perjurer, without having been 
 specially invoked in each case ; cf. JJiw. Hodh. No. 245. 
 
 Closely allied to this kind of curse is the ban (Heb. hdrem) by 
 which impious sinners, or enemies of the community and its god, 
 were devoted to utter destruction. The ban is a form of devotion 
 to the deity, and so the verb "to ban" is sometimes rendered 
 " consecrate " (Micah iv. 13) or, "devote" (Lev. xxvii. 28 sq.). 
 But in the oldest Hebrew times it involved the utter destruction, 
 not only of the persons involved, but of their property ; and only 
 
 ^ As amulets, jewels are maiuly worn to protect the chief organs of action 
 (the hands and the feet), but especially the orifices of the body (ear-rings ; 
 nose-rings, hanging over the mouth ; jewels on the forehead, hanging down 
 and protecting the eyes). Similarly the lower orifices of the trunk are 
 protected by clothing, which has a sacred meaning (supra, p. 416 re.). Similar 
 remarks apply to tattooing, staining with stibium and henna, etc. 
 
 2 [A person about to consult the oracle of Trophonius, after being washed 
 and anointed, put on a linen shirt and shoes of the country, !jTi>in(rii/i.ivos 
 WiXiif'"! xffi'Ti'ixs (Pausanias, ix. 39). — J. G. Frazer.] 
 
NOTE D. THE BAN. 435 
 
 metals, after they had passed through the fire, were added to the 
 treasure of the sanctuary (Josh. vi. 24, vii. 24; 1 Sam. xv.). 
 Even cattle were not sacrificed, but simply slain, and the devoted 
 city must not be rebuilt (Deut. xiii. 16 ; Josh. vi. 26).i Such a 
 ban is a taboo, enforced by the fear of supernatural penalties 
 (1 Kings xvi. 34), and, as with taboo, the danger arising from it 
 is contagious (Deut. vii. 26 ; Josh, vii.) ; he that brings a 
 devoted thing into his house falls under the same ban himself. 
 
 .ADDITIONAL NOTE D (p. 148). 
 
 TABOOS ON THE INTERCOURSE OF THE SEXES. 
 
 According to Herodotus, ii. 64, almost all people.^, except the 
 Greeks and Egyptians, fiCcryovTai iv Ipoicn koX awh yvvaiKav 
 avtcrra/*£i/oi aXovToi ia-ipxovTai h Ipov. This is good evidence of 
 what the Greeks and Egyptians practised ; but the assertion about 
 other nations is incorrect, at least as regards the Semites and 
 parts of Asia Minor,^ whose religion had much in common with 
 theirs. As regards the evidence, it comes to the same thing 
 whether we are told that certain acts were forbidden at the 
 sanctuary, or to pilgrims bound for the sanctuary, or that no one 
 could enter the sanctuary without purification after committing 
 them. We find that among the Arabs sexual intercourse was 
 forbidden to pilgrims to Mecca. The same rule obtained among 
 the Minaeans in connection with the sacred office of collecting 
 frankincense (Pliny, IT. iV. xii. 54). Among the Hebrews we 
 find the restriction in connection with the theophany at Sinai 
 (Ex. xix. 15) and the use of consecrated bread (1 Sam. xxi. 5); 
 Sozomen, ii. 4, attests it for the heathen feast at Mamre ; and 
 Herodotus himself tells us that among the Babylonians and Arabs 
 
 ' In Judg. ix. 45 the site is sown with salt, which is ordinarily explained 
 with reference to the infertility of saline ground. But the strewing of salt 
 has elsewhere a religious meaning (Ezek. xliii. 24), and is a symbol of 
 consecration. Similarly Hesychlus explains the phrase, ipcc; I'xurviiga.r 'Hit 
 
 KuTpiuv /fcrnpoyraiv xpi^cis fzi6 ay.os KdTff-fi'affSxt Tiffiv, 
 
 ^ See the inscription of Apollo Lermenus, Journ. Hell. Studies, viii. 380 
 S22'., — this was not a Greek cult. 
 
436 TABOOS ON NOTE D. 
 
 every conjugal act was immediately followed, not only by an 
 ablution, but by such a fumigation as is still practised in the 
 Siidan (Herod., i. ] 98). This restriction is not directed against 
 immorality, for it applies to spouses ; nor does it spring from 
 asceticism, for the temples of the Semitic deities were thronged 
 with sacred prostitutes ; who, however, were careful to retire with 
 their partners outside the sacred precincts (Herod., i. 199, efw rov 
 Ipov; cf. Hos. iv. 14, which curiously agrees in expression with 
 Ham. p. 599, second verse, where the reference is to the love- 
 making of the Arabs just outside the hima). 
 
 The extension of this kind of taboo to warriors on an expedition 
 is common among rude peoples, and we know that it had place 
 among the Arabs ; see Agh. xiv. 67 (Tabari, ed. Kosegarten, i. 
 144), XV. 161, and the verse of Al-Akhtal, cited by Freytag, 
 Hamdsa, Vers. Lot. ii. 154. In the Old Testament war and 
 warriors are often spoken of as consecrated, — a phrase which seems 
 to be connected, not merely with the use of sacred ceremonies at 
 the opening of a campaign, but with the idea that war is a holy 
 function, and the camp a holy place (Deut. xxiii. 10-15). That 
 the taboo on sexual intercourse applied to warriors in old Israel 
 cannot be positively affirmed, but is probable from Deut. xxiii. 
 
 10, 11, compared with 1 Sam. xxi. 5, 6 [E.V. 4, 5] ; 2 Sam. xi. 
 
 11. The passage in 1 Sam., which has always been a crux 
 interpretum, calls for some remark. It seems to me that the text 
 can be translated as it stands, if only we take EHp'' as a plural, 
 which is possible without adding 1. David says, "Nay, but women 
 are forbidden to us, as has always been my rule when I go on an 
 expedition, so that the gear (clothes, arms, etc.) of the young 
 men is holy even when it is a common (not a sacred) journey ; 
 how much more so when [Prov. xxi. 27] to-day they will be 
 consecrated, gear and all." David distinguisshes between expedi- 
 tions of a common kind, and campaigns which were opened by 
 the consecration of the warriors and their gear. He hints that 
 his present excursion is of the second kind, and that the ceremony 
 of consecration will take place as soon as he joins his men ; but he 
 reminds the priest that his custom has been to enforce the rules 
 of sanctity even on ordinary expeditions. CJnp'' should perhaps 
 be pointed as Pzial. The word mvj) might more exactly be 
 rendered " taboo," for it is evidently a technical expression. So 
 in Jer. xxxvi. 5, " I am "IISJ?, I cannot go into the temple," does 
 not mean "I am imprisoned" (cf. ver. 19), but "I am restrained 
 
NOTE E. 
 
 WARRIOES. 437 
 
 from entering the sanctuary by a ceremonial impurity." It seems 
 to me that the proverbial niTJJl llVV, one of those phrases which 
 name two categories, under one or other of which everybody is 
 included, means "he who is under taboo, and he who is free;" 
 cf. also nvj?2, 1 Sam. xxi. 7 [8], and mxV, "tempus clausum." The 
 same sense appears in Arabic mo'dr, applied to a girl who is shut 
 up under the taboo which, in almost all early nations, affects girls 
 at the age of puberty. 
 
 ADDITIONAL NOTE E (p. 195). 
 
 THE SUPPOSED PHALLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SACRED POSTS AND 
 PILLARS. 
 
 That sacred posts and pillars among the Semites are phallic 
 symbols is an opinion which enjoys a certain currency, mainly 
 through the influence of Movers ; but, as is so often the case with 
 the theories of that author, the evidence in its favour is of the 
 slenderest. For the pre-Hellenistic period Movers relies on 1 
 Kings XV. 13, 2 Chron. xv. 16, taking nvbsD, after the Vulgate, to 
 mean dmulacrum Pria-pi ; but this is a mere guess, not supported 
 by the other ancient versions. He also appeals to Ezek. xvi. 17, 
 which clearly does not refer to phallic worship, but to images of 
 the Baalim ; the passage is imitated from Hos. ii. Many recent 
 commentators suppose that ^^ "hand," in Isa. Ivii. 8 means the 
 phallus. This is the merest conjecture, and, even if it were 
 certain, the use of T in the sense of cippus, signpost, would still 
 have to be explained, not by supposing that every monument or 
 road mark was a phallic pillar, but from the obvious symbohsm 
 which gives us the word fingerpost. The PhcBnician cippi 
 dedicated to Tanith and Baal Hamman often have a hand figured 
 on them, but a real hand, not a phallus. 
 
 In ancient times obscene symbols were used without offence to 
 denote sex, and female symbols of this kind are found in many 
 Phoenician grottoes scratched upon the rock. Herodotus, ii. 106, 
 says that he saw in Syria Palsestina stelse engraved with yvmiKos 
 a'&ola, presumably mosseboth dedicated to female deities ; but how 
 this can support the view that the masseba represents dvSpos 
 alSolov I am at a loss to see. Indeed, the whole phallic theory 
 
438 PHALLIC SYMBOLS. note f. 
 
 seems to be wrecked on the fact tliat the masseba represents male 
 and female deities indifferently. At a later date the two great 
 pillars that stood in the Propylaea of the temple of Hierapolis are 
 called phalli by Lucian {Dea Syr. xvi.). Such twin pillars are 
 very common at Semitic temples ; even the temple at Jerusalem 
 had them, and they are shown on coins representing the temple at 
 Paphos ; so that Lucian's evidence seems important, especially as 
 he tells us that they bore an inscription to the effect that " these 
 phalli were set up by Dionysus to his mother Hera." But the 
 inscription appears to have been in Greek, and proves only that 
 the Greeks, who were accustomed to phallic symbols in Dionysus- 
 worship, and habitually regarded the licentious sacred feasts of 
 the Semites as Dionysiac, put their own interpretation on the 
 pillars. In § xxviii. of Lucian's work it clearly appears that the 
 meaning and use of the pillars was an open question. Men were 
 accustomed to ascend them, and spend a week on the top — like 
 the Christian Stylites of the same region. Lucian thinks that 
 this too was done because of Dionysus, but the natives said either 
 that at the immense height (which is stated at 300 fathoms) they 
 held near converse with the gods and prayed for the good of all 
 Syria, or that the practice was a memorial of the flood, when men 
 were driven by fear to ascend trees and mountains. It is not 
 easy to extract anything phallic out of these statements. 
 
 Besides this, Movers (i. 680) cites the statement of Arnobius, 
 Adv. Gentes, v. 19 (p. 212), that phalli, as signs of the grace of the 
 deity, were presented to the mystx of the Cyprian Venus; but 
 the use of the phallus as an amulet — which was very widespread 
 in antiquity — can throw no light on the origin of sacred pillars. 
 Everything else that he adduces is purely fantastic and without a 
 particle of evidence, and I have not found anything in more recent 
 writers to strengthen his argument. 
 
 ADDITIGlSrAL NOTE F (p. 227). 
 
 SACKED TRIBUTE IN ARABIA THE GIFT OP FIRSTLINGS. 
 
 I HAVE stated in the text that the idea of sacred tribute has 
 little or no place among the nomadic Arabs, and it will hardly be 
 
NOTE F. SACRED TRIBUTE. 439 
 
 disputed that, broadly speaking, this statement accords with the 
 facts. But it is important to determine, with as much precision 
 as possible, whether the conception of tribute and gifts of homage 
 paid to the deity had any place at all in the old religion of the 
 purely nomadic Semites, and if it had, to define that place with 
 exactness. As the full discussion of this question touches on 
 matters which go beyond the subject of Lecture VII., I have 
 reserved the topic for an additional note. 
 
 Among the agricultural Semites the idea of a sacred tribute 
 appears mainly in connection with first-fruits and tithes of 
 agricultural produce. Animal sacrifices were ultimately brought 
 under the category of gifts of homage ; and so, when they were 
 not presented as free-will offerings, but in accordance with ritual 
 laws that demanded certain definite oblations for definite occasions, 
 they also came to be looked upon as a kind of tribute. But we 
 have seen that, even in the later rituals, there was a clear distinction 
 between cereal oblations, which were simply payments to the god, 
 and animal sacrifices, which were used to furnish a feast for the 
 god and his worshippers together. The explanation that the 
 victim is wholly given up to the god, who then gives back part of 
 it to the worshipper, that he may feast at the temple as the guest 
 of his deity, is manifestly too artificial to be regarded as primitive ; 
 and if, on the other hand, we look on a sacrifice, simply as a feast 
 provided by the worshipper, at which the god is the chief guest, 
 it does not appear that, according to ancient ideas, any payment 
 of tribute, or even any gift, is involved. Hospitality is not placed 
 by early nations under the category of a gift ; when a man 
 slaughters an animal, every one who is present has his share in 
 the feast as a matter of course, and those who eat do not feel that 
 any present has been made to them. And in like manner it seems 
 very doubtful whether the oblations of milk which were poured 
 out before certain Arabian idols can in any proper sense be called 
 gifts — i.e. transfers of valuable property — for in the desert it is 
 still a shame to sell milk (Doughty, i. 215, ii. 443), and a draught 
 from the milk-bowl is never refused to any one. In a society 
 where milk and meat are never sold, and where only a churl 
 refuses to share these articles of food with every by-passer, we 
 must not look to the sacrificial meal as a proof that the Arabs 
 paid tribute to their gods. 
 
 The agricultural tribute of first-fruits and tithes is a charge on 
 the produce of the land, paid to the gods as Baalim or landlords. 
 
440 TAXATION 
 
 NOTE F. 
 
 In this form tribute cannot appear among pure nomads. But 
 tribute is also paid to kings who are not landlords, by subjects 
 who are not their tenants. An example of such a tribute is the 
 royal tithe in Israel, which was paid by the free landowners ; and 
 on this analogy it seems quite conceivable that a sacred tribute 
 paid to the god, as king or chief of his worshippers, might arise 
 in a purely nomadic community. In examining this possibility, 
 however, we must have regard to the actual constitution of 
 Arabian society. 
 
 Among the free tribes of the Arabian desert there is no taxa- 
 tion, and the chiefs derive no revenue from their tribesmen, but, 
 on the contrary, are expected to use their wealth with generosity 
 for the public benefit. A modern Sheikh or Emir, according to 
 Burckhardt's description {Bed. and Wah. i. 118), is expected to 
 treat strangers in a better style than any other member of the 
 tribe, to maintain the poor, and to divide among his friends 
 whatever presents he may receive. " His means of defraying these 
 expenses are the tribute he exacts from the Syrian villages, and 
 his emoluments from the Mecca pilgrim caravan," — in short, black- 
 mail. Black-mail is merely a regulated form of pillage, and the 
 gains derived from it correspond to those which in earlier times 
 came directly from the plundering of enemies and strangers. In 
 ancient Arabia the chief took the fourth part of the spoils of 
 war (Ham. p. 336, last verse; Wacidi, ed. Kr. p. 10), and had 
 also certain other perquisites, particularly the right to select 
 for himself, before the division, some special gift, such as a 
 damsel or a sword (the so-called safdyd, Ham. p. 458, last verse ; 
 and Abu Obaida ap. Eeiske, An. Mos. i. 26 sqq. of the notes).i 
 Among the Hebrews, in like manner, the chief received a liberal 
 share of the booty (1 Sam. xxx. 20), including some choice gift 
 corresponding to the safayd (Judg. v. 30, viii. 24). In the 
 Levitical law a fixed share of the spoil is assigned to the 
 sanctuary (Num. xxxi. 28 sqq.), just as in the Moslem theocracy 
 the chief's fourth is changed to a fifth, payable to Allah and his 
 prophet, but partly used for the discharge of burdens of charity 
 and the like, such as in old times fell upon the chiefs (Sura 
 viii. 42). These fixed sacred tributes are modern, both in Arabia 
 and in Israel ; but even in old times the spoils of war were a chief 
 source of votive offerings. The votive offerings of the Arabs 
 
 ^ Among the Arabs a sacrifice [naci'a) preceded the division of the spoil ; 
 see below, Additional Note N. 
 
NOTE F. IN ARABIA. 441 
 
 frequently consisted of weapons (Wellh., p. 110; cf. 1 Sam. xxi. 9); 
 and, among the Hebrews, part of the chief's booty was generally 
 consecrated (Judg. viii. 27; 2 Sam. viii. 10 sq.; Micah iv. 13). 
 Similarly, Mesha of Moab dedicates part of his spoil to Chemosh ; 
 and in Greece the sacred tithe occurs mainly in the form of a 
 percentage on the spoils of war. It is obvious, however, that the 
 apportionment of a share of booty to the chief or to the god does 
 not properly fall under the category of tribute. And on the 
 general Arabian principle that a chief must not tax his own 
 tribesmen, it does not appear that there was any room for the 
 development of a system of sacred dues, so long as the gods were 
 tribal deities worshipped only by their own tribe. Among the 
 Arabs tribute is a payment to an alien tribe or to its chiefs, 
 either by way of black-mail, or in return for protection. A king 
 who receives gifts and tribute is a king reigning over subjects 
 who are not of his own clan, and whom therefore he is not bound 
 to help and protect at his own expense. I apprehend that the 
 oldest Hebrew taxation rested on this principle ; for even Solomon 
 seems to have excluded the tribe of Judah from his division of 
 the kingdom for fiscal purposes (1 Kings iv. 7 sqq.), while David, 
 as a prosperous warrior, who drew vast sums from conquered 
 nations, probably raised no revenue from his Israelite subjects. 
 As regards Saul, we know nothing more than that he enriched 
 his own tribesmen (1 Sam. xxii. 7). The system of taxation 
 described in 1 Sam. viii. can hardly have been in full force till 
 the time of Solomon at the earliest, and its details seem to 
 indicate that, in fiscal as in other matters, the developed Hebrew 
 kingship took a lesson from its neighbours of Phoenicia, and 
 possibly of Egypt. 
 
 To return, however, to the Arabs : the tributes which chiefs 
 and kings received from foreigners were partly transit dues from 
 traders (Pliny, H. N. xii. 63 sqq.). In such tribute the gods had 
 their share, as Pliny expressly relates for the case of the incense 
 traffic, and as Aaraci (p. 107) appears to imply for the case of 
 Greek merchants at Mecca. Commerce and religion were closely 
 connected in all the Semitic lands; the greatest and richest 
 temples are almost always found at cities which owed their 
 importance to trade. 
 
 Of the other kind of tribute, paid by a subject tribe to a 
 prince of alien kin, a lively picture is afforded by Agh. x. 12, 
 where we find Zohair b. Jadhima sitting in person at the fair of 
 
442 SACRED TRIBUTE. note f. 
 
 'Okaz to collect from the Hawazin, wlio frequented this annual 
 market, their gifts of ghee, curds and small cattle. In like manner 
 the tribute of the pastoral Moabites to the kings of the house of 
 'Omri was paid in sheep (2 Kings iii. 4) ; and on such analogies 
 we can very well conceive that sacrificial oblations of food might 
 be regarded as tribute, wherever the worshippers were not the 
 tribesmen but the clients of their god. But to suppose that 
 sacrifices generally were regarded by the ancient Semitic nomads 
 as tributes and gifts of homage, is to suppose that the typical form 
 of Semitic religion is clientship, a position which is altogether 
 untenable. 
 
 Thus it would seem that all we know of the social institutions 
 of the Arabs is in complete accordance with the results, obtained 
 in the text of these lectures, with regard to the original meaning of 
 sacrifice. The conclusion to which the ritual points, viz. that the 
 sacrifice was in no sense a payment to the god, but simply an act 
 of communion of the worshippers with one another and their 
 god, is in accord with the relations that actually subsisted between 
 chiefs and their tribesmen ; and when we read that in the time of 
 JMohammed the ordinary worship of household gods consisted in 
 stroking them with the hand as one went out and in (Muh. in 
 Med. p. 350), we are to remember that reverent salutation was all 
 that, in ordinary circumstances, a great chieftain would expect 
 from the meanest member of his tribe. At the pilgrimage feasts 
 of the Arabs, as of the Hebrews, no man appeared without a 
 gift ; but this was in the worship of alien gods. 
 
 In a payment of tribute two things are involved — (1) a transfer 
 of property, and (2) an obligation, not necessarily to pay on a 
 fixed scale, but at least to pay something. That an Arabian 
 sacrifice cannot without straining bo conceived as a transfer of 
 property has appeared in the course of this note, and is shown 
 from another point of view in Lecture XI. (supra, p. 371 sqq.). And 
 in most sacrifices the second condition is also unfulfilled, for in 
 Arabia it is left to a man's free will whether he will appear before 
 the god and do sacrifice, even in the sacred month of Eajab. 
 
 It seems, however, to be probable that the absolute freedom of 
 the individual will in matters of religious duty, as it appears 
 among the Arabs in the generations immediately preceding Islam, 
 was in part due to the breaking up of the old religion. There 
 can, for example, be hardly a doubt that the ascetic observances 
 during a war of blood-revenge, which in the time of the prophet 
 
NOTE F. FIRSTLINGS. 443 
 
 were assumed by a voluntary vow, were at one time imperatively 
 demanded by religious custom {infra, Note K). Again, there wore 
 certain religious restrictions on the use of a man's property which, 
 even in later times, do not seem to have been pvTrely optional, e.g. 
 the prohibition of using for common work a camel which had 
 produced ten female foals. But, in older times at least, such a 
 camel was not given over in property to the god ; the restriction 
 was simply a taboo {supra, p. 139). 
 
 There is, however, one Arabian sacrifice which has very much 
 the aspect of a fixed due payable to the god, viz. the sacrifice of 
 firstlings (^ ; fara'). It has already been remarked {supra, 
 
 p. 210, note 2) that the accounts which have been handed down 
 to us about the fara' are confused and uncertain ; but although 
 the word seems to have been extended to cover other customary 
 sacrifices, it appears properly to denote " the foal or lamb which is 
 first cast." This is the definition given in the liadltli, which in 
 such matters has always great weight, and it is confirmed by the 
 proverb in Maidani, ii. 20 (Freytag, Ar. Pr. ii. 212). As we also 
 learn from the Jiadlth (Lisan, s.v.) that the custom was to sacrifice 
 the fara' when it was still so young that the flesh was like glue 
 and stuck to the skin, it would seem that this sacrifice must be 
 connected with the Hebrew sacrifice of the first-born of kine and 
 sheep, which according to the oldest law (Ex. xxii. 30) was to 
 be offered on the eighth day from birth. There is an unfortunate 
 ambiguity about the definition of the Arabian fara', for the first 
 birth may mean either the first birth of the dam, or the first birth 
 of the year, and Maidani takes it in the latter sense, making /ar«' 
 a synonym of roia', i.e. a foal which being born in the rati, or 
 season of abundant grass, when the mother was well fed, naturally 
 grew up stronger and better than foals born later (cf. Gen. iv. 4). 
 But apart from the analogy of the Hebrew firsthngs, which 
 are quite unambiguously explained as first-born (Dm ^t3^, Ex. 
 xxxiv. 19), there are other uses of the Arabic word fara' which 
 make Maidani's interpretation improbable ; and the presumption 
 is that, however the rule may have been relaxed or modified in 
 later times, there was a very ancient Semitic custom, anterior to 
 the separation of the Arabs and Hebrews, of sacrificing the first- 
 born of domestic animals. The conclusion that this offering was, 
 for nomadic life, what the offering of first-fruits was among 
 agricultural peoples, viz. a tribute paid to the gods, seems so 
 obvious that it requires some courage to resist it. Yet, from what 
 
444 SACEinCE OF 
 
 NOTE F. 
 
 has been already said, it seems absolutely impossible that, at the 
 very early date when the Hebrews and Arabs lived together, any 
 tribute could have been paid to the god as chief or king ; and, 
 even in the form of the sacrifice of firstlings which is found among 
 the Hebrews, there seem to be indications that the parallelism 
 with the offering of first-fruits is less complete than at first sight 
 it seems to be. 
 
 The first-fruits are an annual gift of the earliest and choicest 
 fruits of the year, but the firstlings are the first oiTspring of an 
 animal. Their proper parallel in the vegetable kingdom is there- 
 fore found in the law of Lev. xix. 23 sqq., which ordains that for 
 three years the fruit of a new orchard shall be treated as " uncir- 
 cumcised," and not eaten, that the fourth year's fruit shall be 
 consecrated to Jehovah, and that thereafter the fruit shall be 
 common. The characteristic feature in this ordinance, from which 
 its original meaning must be deduced, is the taboo on the produce 
 of the first three years, not the offering at the temple paid in the 
 fourth year. And that some form of taboo lies also at the bottom 
 of the sacrifice of firstlings, appears from the provision of the older 
 Hebrew law that, if a firstling ass is not redeemed by its owner, 
 its neck shall be broken (Ex. xxxiv. 20). "We see, however, 
 that the tendency was to bring all such offerings under the 
 category of sacred tribute ; for by the later law (Lev. xxvii. 27) 
 the ass that is not redeemed is to be sold for the benefit of the 
 sanctuary, and even in the older law all the first-born of men 
 must be redeemed. 
 
 Primarily, a thing that is taboo is one that has supernatural 
 qualities or associations, of a kind that forbid it to be used for 
 common purposes. This is all that is involved, under the older 
 law, in the holiness of the firstling ass ; it is such an animal as 
 the Arabs would have allowed to go free, instead of killing it. 
 But in the very earliest times all domestic animals had a certain 
 measure of holiness, and were protected by certain taboos which 
 prevented them from being used by man as mere chattels ; and 
 so it would appear that the holiness of the first-born, which is 
 congenital (Lev. xxvii. 26), is only a higher form of the original 
 sanctity of domestic animals. The correctness of this conclusion 
 can be verified by a practical test ; for, if firstlings are animals of 
 special intrinsic holiness, the sacrifices to which they are appropriate 
 will be special acts of communion, piacular holocausts or the like, 
 and not mere common sacrificial meals. And this is actually the 
 
NOTE F. rmSTLINGS. 445 
 
 case in tlie oldest Hebrew times ; for the Passover, which is the 
 sacrifice of firstlings -par excellence, is an atoning rite of a quite 
 exceptional kind (supra, p. 387).'- 
 
 Further, there is a close connection between the firstlings and 
 the piacular holocaust ; both are limited to males, and the holo- 
 caust of Samuel (1 Sam. vii. 9) is a sucking lamb, while from 
 Ex. XX. 30 we see that firstlings were offered on the eighth day 
 (or, probably, as soon after it as was practicable ; cf. Lev. 
 xxii. 27). 
 
 The consecration of first-born male children (Ex. xiii. 13, 
 xxii. 28, xxxiv. 20) has always created a difficulty. The legal 
 usage was to redeem the human firstlings, and in Numb. iii. this 
 redemption is further connected in a very complicated way with 
 the consecration of the tribe of Levi. It appears, however, that 
 in the period immediately before the exile, when sacrifices of 
 first-born children became common, these grisly offerings were 
 supposed to fall under the law of firstlings (Jer. vii. 31, xix. 5 ; 
 Ezek. XX. 25). To conclude from this that at one time the 
 Hebrews actually sacrificed all their first-born sons is absurd ; 
 but, on the other hand, there must have been some point of 
 attachment in ancient custom for the belief that the deity asked 
 for such a sacrifice. In point of fact, even in old times, when 
 exceptional circumstances called for a human victim, it was a 
 child, and by preference a first-born or only child, that was 
 selected by the peoples in and around Palestine.^ This is 
 commonly explained as the most costly offering a man can 
 make ; but it is rather to be regarded as the choice for a special 
 purpose of the most sacred kind of victim. I apprehend that 
 all the prerogatives of the first-born among Semitic peoples are 
 originally prerogatives of sanctity; the sacred blood of the kin 
 flows purest and strongest in him (Gen. xlix. 3). Neither in 
 the case of children, nor in that of cattle, did the congenital 
 
 ' That the paschal sacrifice was originally a saciifiee of firstlings is clearly 
 brought out by Wellhausen, Prohgomena, ch. iii. § 1, 1. Ultimately the 
 paschal lamb and the firstlings fell apart ; the foiiner was retained, with 
 much of its old and characteristic ritual, as a domestic sacrifice, while the 
 latter continued to be presented at the sanctuary and ofi"ered on the altar, 
 the whole flesh being the perquisite of the priest (Num. xviii. 18). But in 
 the law of Deuteronomy (xii. 17 sqq., xv. 19 ^gg'.) the firstlings have not yet 
 assumed the character of a sacred tribute. 
 
 2 2 Kings iii. 27 ; Philo Byblius in Fr. Hist. Gr. iii. 571 ; cf. Porph., 
 De Abst. ii. 56, tuv ^i'/.reiTuv nva. 
 
446 FIRST-BORN. NOTE g. 
 
 holiness of the first-born originally imply that they must be 
 sacrificed, or given to the deity on the altar, but only that if 
 sacrifice was to be made they were the best and fittest, because 
 the holiest, victims. But when the old ideas of holiness became 
 unintelligible, and holy beasts came to mean beasts set aside for 
 sacrifice, an obvious extension of this new view of holiness 
 demanded that the human first-born should be redeemed, by 
 the substitution of an animal victim (Gen. xxii.) ; and from this 
 usage again the Moloch sacrifices were easily developed in the 
 seventh century, when ordinary means seemed too weak to conjure 
 the divine anger. 
 
 In the Passover we find the sacrifice of firstlings assuming the 
 form of an annual feast, in the spring season. Such a combina- 
 tion is possible only when the yeaning time falls in spring. So 
 far as sheep are concerned, there were two lambing times in 
 ancient Italy, some sheep yeaning in spring, others in autumn, 
 and the latter were the goodlier and stronger, according to Eoman 
 writers on agriculture. That the same thing was true of Palestine 
 may perhaps be inferred from the old versions of Gen. xxx. 41, 
 42.1 j^^t; ijj Arabia all cattle, small and great, yean in the season 
 of the spring pasture, so that here we have the necessary condi- 
 tion for a spring sacrifice of firstlings,^ and also a reason, more 
 conclusive than the assertion of the Lisdn {mipra, p. 210), for 
 identifying the Arabian Eajab sacrifices with the sacrifice of 
 firstlings. 
 
 ADDITIOISrAL NOTE G (p. 276). 
 
 SACRIFICES OF SACKED ANIMALS. 
 
 In the text I have spoken only of animals corresponding to 
 Julian's definition of the creatures suited for mystical piacula, 
 viz. that they were such as were ordinarily excluded from 
 human diet. But there are other animals which, though not 
 
 1 Not from the text itself ; cf. Bochart, Pars I. Lib. ii. cap. 46. Much of 
 what is said in recent commentaries on these verses is nonsense ; taken 
 from Bochart at second hand and spoiled in the taking. 
 
 ^ Doughty, Arabia Deserta, i. 429. 
 
NOTE G. SACRED ANIMALS. 447 
 
 strictly forbidden food in the times of which, we have record, 
 retained a certain reputation of natural holiness, which gave them 
 a peculiar virtue when used in sacrifice. Of course, when the 
 sacredness of an animal species ceases to he marked hj the 
 definite taboos that we find in the case of the swine, the dog, 
 or the dove, the proof that it was once held to be holy in a 
 particular religious circle becomes dependent on circumstantial 
 evidence, and more or less vague. But it seems worth while to 
 cite one or two examples in which the point can be fairly well 
 made out, or at least made sufficiently probable to deserve further 
 examination. 
 
 1. Deer and antelopes of various kinds were sacred animals 
 in several parts of the Semitic field; see Kinship, p. 194 sq. 
 They were not indeed forbidden food, but they had special 
 relations to various deities. Troops of sacred gazelles occur down 
 to a late date at sanctuaries, e.g. at Mecca and Tabala (Wellh., p. 
 102), and in the island spoken of by Arrian, vii. 20. Moreover 
 stags or gazelles occur as sacred symbols in South Arabia, in 
 connection with 'Athtar-worship ; at Mecca, probably in connec- 
 tion with the worship of Al-'Ozza, and in Phoenicia, both on gems 
 and on coins of Laodicea ad INIare. Further, Ibn TMojawir speaks 
 of a South Arab tribe which, when a gazelle was found dead, 
 solemnly buried it and mourned for seven days. 
 
 j^o kind of wild quadruped was an ordinary sacrificial animal 
 among the Semites, and even the Arabs regard a gazelle as a mean 
 substitute for a sheep ; but in certain rituals we find the stag or 
 gazelle as an exceptional sacrifice. The most notable case is the 
 annual stag sacrifice at Laodicea on the Phoenician coast, which 
 was regarded as a substitute for a more ancient sacrifice of a 
 maiden, and was offered to a goddess whom Porphyry calls 
 Athena {De Aid. ii. 56), while Pausanias (iii. IG. 8) identifies 
 her with the Brauronian Artemis, and supposes that the cult was 
 introduced by Seleucus. But the town (Kamitha in Phoenician, 
 according to Philo ap. Steph. Byz.) is much older than its re- 
 christening by Seleucus, and, if the goddess had really been 
 Greek, she would not have been identified with Athena as well 
 as with Artemis. She was, in fact, a form of Astarte, the ancient 
 Tyche of the city, who, according to the usual manner of the 
 later euhemeristic Syrians, was supposed to have been a virgin, 
 immolated when the city was founded, aud thereafter worshipped 
 as a deity (Malalas, p. 203). Here, therefore, we have one of the 
 
448 USOUS. NOTE G. 
 
 many legends of the death of a deity which are grafted on a rite 
 of annual human sacrifice ; or on the annual sacrifice of a sacred 
 animal, under circumstances that showed its life to be taken as 
 having the value of a human life on the one hand, or of the 
 life of the deity on the other. The stag, whose death has such 
 significance, is a theanthropic victim, exactly as in the mystic 
 sacrifices discussed in the text. 
 
 Of the stag or gazelle as a Phoenician sacrifice we have further 
 evidence from Philo Byblius {Pr. Ev. i. 10. 10) in the legend of 
 the god Usous, who first taught men to clothe themselves in the 
 skins of beasts taken in hunting, and to pour out their blood 
 sacrificially before sacred stones. This god was worshipped at 
 the sanctuary he instituted, at an annual feast, and doubtless 
 with the ceremonies he himself devised, i.e. with libations of the 
 blood of a deer or antelope — for these are the important kinds of 
 game in the district of the Lebanon — presented by worshippers 
 clad in deer-skins. The wearing of the skin of the victim, as we 
 have seen at p. 417, is characteristic of mystical and piacular rites. 
 Most scholars, from Scaliger downwards, have compared Usous 
 with Esau ; but it has not been observed that the scene of Isaac's 
 blessing, where his son must first approach him with the savoury 
 flesh of a gazelle, has all the air of a sacrificial scene. Moreover, 
 Jacob, who substitutes kids for gazelles, wears their skin upon 
 his arms and neck. The goat, which here appears as a substitute 
 for the game ofiered by the huntsman Esau, was one of the chief 
 Hebrew piacula, if not the chief of all. In Babylonia and Assyria 
 also it has an exceptional place among sacrifices ; see the repre- 
 sentation in Menant, Glyptique, vol. i. p. 146 sqq., vol. ii. p. 68. 
 What is obsolete in common life often survives in poetic phrase 
 and metaphor, and I am tempted to see in the opening words of 
 David's dirge on Saul (" The gazelle, Israel, is slain on thy high 
 places," 2 Sam. i. 19) an allusion to some ancient sacrifice of 
 similar type to that which survived at Laodicea. 
 
 2. The wild ass was eaten by the Arabs, and must have been 
 eaten with a religious intention, since its flesh was forbidden to 
 his converts by Symeon the Stylite. Conversely, among the 
 Harranians the ass was forbidden food, like the swine and the 
 dog; but there is no evidence that, like these animals, it was 
 sacrificed or eaten in exceptional mysteries. Yet when we 
 find one section of Semites forbidden to eat the ass, while 
 another • section eats it in a way which to Christians appears 
 
NOTE G. SACRED ANIMALS. 449 
 
 idolatrous, the presumption that the animal was anciently sacred 
 becomes very strong. An actual ass -sacrifice appears in Egypt 
 in the worship of Typhon (Set or Sutech), who was the chief 
 god of the Semites in Egypt, though Egyptologists doubt whether 
 he was originally a Semitic god. The ass was a Typhonic animal, 
 and in certain religious ceremonies the people of Coptus sacrificed 
 asses by casting them down a precipice, while those of Lycopolis, 
 in two of their annual feasts, stamped the figure of a bound ass 
 on their sacrificial cakes (Plut., Is. et Os. § 30); see, for the 
 meaning of these cakes, supra, pp. 208, note 3, 222, note 1 ; and 
 for sacrifice by casting from a precipice, supra, pp. 355, 397. Both 
 forms indicate a mystic or piacular rite, and stand on one line 
 with the holocausts of living men to Typhon mentioned by 
 Manet ho {ibid. § 73). If it could be made out that these rites 
 were really of Semitic origin, the ass would be a clear case of 
 an ancient mystic piaciilura within our field ; but meantime the 
 matter must rest doubtful. It may, however, be noted that the old 
 clan-name Hamor ( " he-ass ") among the Canaanites in Shechem, 
 seems to confirm the view that the ass was sacred with some of the 
 Semites ; and the fables of ass-worship among the Jews (on 
 which compare Bochart, Hierozoicon, Pars I. Lib. ii. cap. 18) 
 probably took their rise, like so many other false statements 
 of a similar kind, in a confusion between the Jews and their 
 heathen neighbours. As regards the eating of wild asses' flesh 
 by the Arabs, I have not found evidence in Arabic literature 
 that in the times before Mohammed it had any religious 
 meaning, though Cazwini tells us that its flesh and hoofs supplied 
 powerful charms, and this is generally a relic of sacrificial use. 
 See also supra, p. 408, note. On the religious associations of the 
 ass in classical antiquity, and the use of the ass's head as a charm, 
 see Compte Rendu de la Com. Imp. Arch, pour 1863, p. 228 sq., 
 and Bmchte of the Saxon Society of Sciences, 1854, p. 48. 
 
 It has been supposed that the " golden " Set, worshipped by the 
 Semitic Hyksos in the Delta, was a Sun-god (E. Meyer, Gesch. des 
 Alt. p. 135). If this be so, the horses of the sun may have 
 succeeded to the older sanctity of the ass ; for the ass is much 
 more ancient than the horse in the Semitic lands. 
 
 3. To these two examples of sacred quadrupeds I am inclined 
 to add one of a sacred bird. The quaU sacrifice of the Phoenicians 
 is said by Eudoxus {ap. Athen., ix. 47) to commemorate the 
 resurrection of Heracles. But this was an annual festival at 
 
 2f 
 
450 QUAIL SACRIFICE. NOTE h. 
 
 Tyre, in the month Peritius (February — March), i.e. just at the 
 time when the quail returns to Palestine, immense crowds 
 appearing in a single night (Jos., Ant. viii. 5. 3, compared with 
 Tristram, Fauna, p. 124). An annual sacrifice of this sort, 
 connected with a myth of the death of the god, can hardly be other 
 than the mystical sacrifice of a sacred animal ; and it is to be 
 noted that the ancients regard quail's flesh as dangerous food, 
 producing vertigo and tetanus, while on the other hand an 
 ointment made from the brain is a cure for epilepsy (Bochart, II. 
 i. 15). Lagarde {Gr. Uehers. der Prom. p. 81) once proposed to 
 
 connect the Arabic j\^^ " quail," with the god Eshmun-Iolaos, 
 
 who restored Heracles to life by giving him a quail to smell at ; 
 if this be right, the god-name must be derived from that of the 
 bird, and not vice versa. If the other name for the quail, \ . 
 
 salwa (in spite of Heb. vE*), is from a root meaning to forget 
 (Lagarde, Nomina, p. 190), it may be connected with the idea that 
 the quail feeds on hellebore, and that its flesh produces vertigo. 
 Is this why it is sacrificially eaten in connection with the death 
 of the god % Is it in fact a solwdn, or means of forgetting grief 
 in an act of communion with the dead ? 
 
 ADDITIONAL NOTE H (p. 292). 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF A SHEEP TO THE CYPRIAN APHRODITE. 
 
 Instead of a note on this subject, I here print a paper read 
 before the Cambridge Philological Society in 1888, of which 
 only a brief abstract has hitherto been published : — 
 
 The peculiar rite which forms the subject of the present paper 
 is known to us from a passage in Joannes Lydus, De Mensibus, 
 iv. 45, which has been often referred to by writers on ancient 
 religion, but, so far as my reading goes, without any notice being 
 taken of a most serious difficulty, which it seems impossible to 
 overcome without a change of the text. Lydus in the chapter in 
 question begins by describing the practices by which women of 
 the higher and lower classes respectively did honour to Venus on 
 the Calends of April. Here, of course, he is speaking of Roman 
 
NOTE H. CYPRIAN APHRODITE. 451 
 
 iisage, as is plain from the general plan of his book and from the 
 ceremonies he specifies. The honourable women did service to 
 Venus virep o/xovoias icai fiiov (TuKfipovo^. This agrees with the 
 worship of Venus verticordia, the patroness of female virtue, 
 whose worship Ovid connects with the Calends of April {Fasti, 
 iv. 155 sq.), and Mommsen conjectures to have been mentioned 
 under that day in the Fasti Preen. Again, Lydus says that the 
 women of the common sort bathed in the men's baths, crowned 
 with myrtle, which agrees with Ovid {ibid. 139 sq.), Plutarch 
 {Numa, c. 19), and the service of Fortuna uirilis in the Fast. 
 Preen. The transition from this Roman worship of Venus to 
 the Cyprian ritual of the same day, is made by a remark as to 
 the victims proper to the goddess. Venus, he says, was wor- 
 shipped with the same sacrifices as Juno, but in Cyprus Trpo/SaToi/ 
 KotSim i<TK€Traa'iJ.€vov cfwiOvov r-g 'A^poSiVj;" 6 8e TpoTro<s t^s lepaTeias 
 cy Ty Kvirpoi aTrb ri/s K.opiv6ov Trap-^XOi ttotc. As Lydus goes On 
 to say that thereafter {etra Se), on the second of April, they sacrificed 
 wild boars to the goddess, on account of the attack of that animal 
 on Adonis, it is clear that the sacrifice of a sheep took place on 
 the first of April, and that Engel {Kypros, ii. 155) entirely over- 
 looks the context when he says that, according to Lydus, the 
 ordinary sacrifices of Aphrodite were the same as those of Hera, 
 but that in Cyprus a favourite sacrifice to the former goddess was 
 a sheep with a woolly fleece. Lydus does not say that a sheep 
 was a favourite Cyprian sacrifice to Aphrodite, but that it was 
 the sacrifice appropriated to the first of AprU. The very point of 
 the passage is that the Eoman feast of the first of April appears 
 in Cyprus with variations in detail. 
 
 This coincidence cannot be accidental, and the explanation is 
 not far to seek. The Cyprian Aphrodite is the Semitic Astarte, 
 and her ritual is throughout marked with a Semitic stamp. It is 
 to Semitic ritual, therefore, that we must look for the origin of 
 the April feast. Now, among the Syrians Nisan is the month 
 corresponding to April, and on the first three days of Nisan, as 
 we learn from the Fihrist, the Syrians of Sarran, who clung to 
 the ancient Astarte-worship far into the Middle Ages, visited the 
 temple of the goddess in groups (Lydus's a-vviOvov), offered sacri- 
 fices, and burned living animals. The burning of living animals 
 answers to the ceremonies observed at Hierapolis in the great 
 feast of the Syrian goddess at the incoming of spring, when, as 
 we read in Lucian, goats, sheep and other living creatures were 
 
452, SACEinCES OF THE note h. 
 
 suspended on a pyre, and the whole was consumed. The feast, 
 therefore, is an annual spring feast of Semitic origin. The Eoman 
 observance was less solemn, and of a popular kind rather than 
 part of the State religion. Macrobius {Sat i. 12. 12-15) tells us, 
 indeed, that at Eome this festival was not ancient, but was intro- 
 duced for an historical reason which he omits to record. Now, a 
 new ritual at Eome was almost certainly a borrowed one, and 
 there is ample evidence (for which it is enough to refer to 
 Preller's Romisdie Mythologie) that the most influential centre of 
 Venus-worship in the West, and that which had most to do with 
 the development of her cult in Italy, was the great temple at 
 Eryx, the "[IN of the Carthaginians. From Phoenician inscrip- 
 tions it is certain that the goddess of Eryx ("JIK mntJ'y, G. I. S. 
 No. 140, ef. No. 135) was Astarte; and thus it is easily under- 
 stood that the Asiatic festival found its way to Eome. A festival 
 so widespread, and one which held its ground so long, is well 
 worthy of careful examination. 
 
 "When Lydus, in passing from the Eoman to the Cyprian rite, 
 says eTt/taro Sc 7] 'Acj)po8iTrj rots avTols oTs koI rj 'Hpa, I cannot 
 find with Engel that be makes any general statement that, as a 
 rule, the same sacrifices were appropriate to Venus and to Juno. 
 Oriental worships allowed a far greater range in the choice of 
 victims for a single deity or temple than was customary in Greece 
 or Eome. For the Carthaginian temples of Baal this appears 
 from extant inscriptions ; and as regards Astarte-Aphrodite, Tacitus 
 (Hist. iii. 2) tells us that at Paphos, and yElian {Nat. An. x. 50) 
 that at Eryx, the worshipper chose any kind of sacrifice he pleased. 
 This liberty, which was evidently surprising to the Eomans and 
 the Greeks, was probably due to the syncretism which established 
 itself at an early date at all the great Semitic sanctuaries ; one 
 deity, as we see in the case of Hierapolis, combining a number of 
 characters which originally belonged to difi'erent gods, and uniting 
 at a single temple a corresponding variety of ancient rituals. 
 Such syncretism was probably very ancient among the cosmo- 
 politan Phoenicians ; and throughout the Semitic world it received 
 a great impulse by the breaking up of the old small states through 
 Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian conquests. The political and 
 religious cosmopolitanism of the East under the Macedonians 
 rested on a basis which had been prepared centuries before. 
 
 In the "West no such powerful political agencies were at work 
 to develop an early tendency to syncretism, nor was it so, easy to 
 
NOTE H. CYPRIAN APHRODITE. 453 
 
 confound the well-marked individualities of the Western Pantheon 
 as to combine the hazy personalities of different Baals or Astartes. 
 When the need for cosmopolitan forms of worship arose, Eastern 
 gods and rituals were borrowed, as in the case of Sarapis ; and 
 the old acknowledged worships still retained their individual 
 peculiarities. It is known that neither Juno nor Hera admitted 
 such a free choice of victims for her shrine as was permitted at 
 Eryx and Paphos. Their ordinary sacrifice was a cow ; for, like 
 other goddesses, they preferred victims of their own sex (Arnobius, 
 vii. 19). But, so far as the Oriental Aphrodite had a preference, 
 it was for male victims. So Tacitus tells us for Paphos, and 
 Plautus also in the Poenulus has " sex agnos immolavi Veneri." 
 This preference was presumably connected with the androgynous 
 character ascribed to the Eastern goddess in Cyprus and else- 
 where, and of itself is sufficient to separate her sacrifices, as a 
 whole, from those of Juno and Hera.i Besides, the favourite 
 victim of Aphrodite was the goat (Tac, Hist. iii. 2), which, except 
 at Sparta (Pausanias, iii. 15. 9) and in the annual piacular sacrifice 
 of Hera Acrsea at Corinth (Hesychius, s.v. a*i alya ; Zenobius 
 on the same proverb; Schol. on Eurip., Medea), was excluded from 
 the altars of Hera. Juno has relations to the goat at Lanuvium, 
 but at Rome her cultus was closely related to that of Jupiter, 
 from whose offerings the goat was strictly excluded (Arnobius, 
 vii. 21). 
 
 I have perhaps spent too much time on this argument, for 
 surely the context itself is sufficient to show that Lydus is not 
 speaking of Venus-worship in general. AVhat he says is that on 
 the Calends of April — a special occasion — Venus was worshipped 
 at Rome with the sacrifices of Juno. And as he is speaking of a 
 ritual in which the worshippers were women, I think we may go 
 a step further and recall the fact that the Calends of every month 
 were sacred to Juno Lucina, to whom on that day the regina 
 sacrorum ofiered in the Eegia a sow or ewe-lamb (Macrob., i. 15. 19). 
 The functions of Lucina, as the patroness of virtuous matrons and 
 the family life of women, were so nearly identical with those of 
 Venus vvrticordia that their sacrifices might well be the same. 
 And if this be so, it was natural for Lydus to pass on as he does 
 to a remark on the Cyprian ritual, where the same sacrifices occur 
 with characteristic variations. The sex of the victims is different, 
 
 1 The preference for male victims seems however to have other connections 
 also ; see p. 280, supra. 
 
454 SHEEP SACRIFICE TO note h. 
 
 for a reason already explained, and the sacrifices are divided 
 between two days. But the victims are still the sheep and the 
 pig, so that the fundamental identity of the Roman and the 
 Eastern service of the day receives fresh confirmation. 
 
 So far all is plain ; but now we come to the unsolved difficulty. 
 It lies in the phrase Trpo/Sarov kioSiu ItTKeiraa-fiivov. These words 
 describe the characteristic peculiarity, for the sake of which our 
 author turns aside to mention the Cyprian rite, and it seems to 
 be in relation to this feature that he observes that " the manner 
 of the priestly service " was derived from Corinth. Unfortunately 
 we know nothing of the Corinthian ritual referred to. The 
 Corinthian Aphrodite-worship was Oriental in type, and any 
 feature in it which reappears at Cyprus is almost certainly 
 PhoBnician. That Cyprus borrowed from Corinth is far less 
 likely than that both borrowed from the East, and the authority 
 of Lydus is not enough to outweigh this probability. The 
 allusion to Corinth, however, is of value as teaching us that the 
 peculiar rite was not merely local ; and, further, the allusion to 
 " priestly service " shows that the sacrifice in question — as indeed 
 is implied in the word a-vviOvov — was not a private offering, but a 
 public rite performed at a great temple. But this does not explain 
 the words KcoSt'o) eo-Kcjracr/icVoi'. It is plain that the meaning 
 cannot be " a sheep with a woolly fleece," as Engel renders, nor 
 does it seem possible to understand with the Due de Luynes 
 {Num. et Insc. Gypr. p. 6), "un b61ier convert de toute sa 
 toison." If the words could bear this meaning, the rendering 
 would be plausible enough, for we have seen that in the Syrian 
 form of the festival the victims were given to the flames alive. 
 But if Lydus had meant that the victim was consumed by fire, 
 skin and all, he would have given KOiSto) the article, and would 
 have used a more precise word than crwiOvov. And can kAov 
 be used of the sheep-skin on the sheep, or co-KeTraer/ttVov of the 
 natural coat ? The plain sense of the words is that the sheep was 
 wrapped in a sheep-skin when it was presented for sacrifice, not 
 that its skin was left upon it, or wrapped round the sacrificial 
 flesh before it was laid on the altar. 
 
 If the skin had been that of a different kind of animal, we 
 might have explained the rite by the same principle of make- 
 believe which we find in the Roman offering of the cervaria ov-is, 
 the sheep that was made to pass for a stag ; for the ordinary 
 meaning of skin- wearing in early religion is to simulate identifica- 
 
NOTE H. THE CYPRIAN APHRODITE. 455 
 
 tion with the animal whose skin is worn. But to wrap a sheep 
 in a sheep-skin is like gilding gold. I propose therefore to change 
 a single letter, and read ia-Ke-7racriJ.€voL, a change which produces a 
 sense good in itself and strongly recommended hy the context and 
 by analogy. 
 
 The significance of the k<L&wv or sheep-skin in ancient ritual has 
 been illustrated by Lobeck in his Aglaoplianius, and by Preller in 
 his commentary on Polemo. It always appears in connection with 
 atoning and mystic rites, and in the majority of Greek examples 
 the practice appears to have been that the person to be purged of 
 guilt set his feet, or his left foot, upon the skin of a sacrificed 
 ram. But this was not the only way of using the Ktahiov. In 
 Thessaly there was, according to Dicaearchus, a ceremony, observed 
 at the greatest heat of summer, in which the worshippers ascended 
 Mount Pelion to the temple of Zeus Acraeus, clad in new sheep- 
 skins {Fr. Hist. Gr. ii. 262). "When Pythagoras was purified by 
 the priests of Morgus in Crete, he was made to lie beside water 
 (the sea by day, the river by night), wrapped in the fleece of a 
 black lamb, and descended to the tomb of Zeus clad in black 
 wool (Porph., Vita Pyih. § 17). Again, the first sacrifice of every 
 worshipper at Hierapolis was a sheep. Having partaken of the 
 flesh, the sacrificer laid the skin on the ground, and knelt on it, 
 taking up the feet and head over his own head. In this posture 
 he besought the deity to accept his offering. Here it is evident 
 that the ceremony expresses the identification of the sacrificer 
 with the victim. He has taken its flesh into his body, and he 
 covers himself with its skin. It is, as it were, the idea of sub- 
 stitution turned outside in. The direct symbolism of vicarious 
 sacrifice, where an animal's life is accepted in place of the life of 
 a human being, is to treat the victim as if it were a man. At 
 Tenedos, for example, the bull-calf sacrificed to Bacchus wears the 
 cothurnui?, and the mother cow is treated like a woman in child- 
 bed. But in our case the symbolism is inverted; instead of 
 making believe that the victim is a man, the ritual makes believe 
 that the man is the victim, and so brings the atoning force of the 
 sacrifice into immediate application to him. 
 
 It is evident that if this kind of symbolism be applied, not to 
 purification of an individual, but to a general and public atoning 
 service, the priests, as the representatives of the community on 
 whose behalf the rite is performed, are the persons to whom the 
 skin of the victim must be applied. And if there are many 
 
456 ATONING SACEIFICE NOTE H. 
 
 priests and only one victim, it will be convenient not to use the 
 actual skin of the sacrifice, which only one can wear at a time, 
 but to clothe all the ministers in skins of the same kind. This, 
 according to my conjecture, is what was done in Cyprus. And 
 here I would ask whether the context, which alludes to the 
 manner of the priestly service, does not show that some reference 
 to the priests has been already made or implied. Such a reference 
 the proposed emendation supplies. 
 
 Upon this view of the passage it is necessarily involved that 
 the rite described was expiatory. And that it was so seems to 
 appear from several arguments. The sacrifice of the following 
 day consisted in wild boars, and was explained in connection with 
 the Adonis myth, so that its Semitic origin is not doubtfiil. 
 Even in Greece the pig is the great purificatory sacrifice, but in 
 Semitic religion the offering of this animal is not a mere ordinary 
 piaciilum, but a mystic rite of the most exceptional kind (supra, 
 p. 272). Now, if the sacrifice of the second day of the feast was 
 mystic, and therefore piacular in the highest degree, we may bo 
 sure that the first day's sacrifice was no ordinary sacrificial meal 
 of a joyous character. For a man must first be purified, and then 
 sit down gladly at the table of the gods, and not conversely. 
 Again, the Syrian and Roman rites, which we have found reason 
 to regard as forms of the same observance, were plainly piacular 
 or purificatory. In Eome we have the women bathing, which is 
 a form of lustration, and wearing myrtle, which had purifying 
 virtues, for it was with myrtle twigs that the Eomans and 
 Sabines in the time of Romulus purged themselves at the temple 
 of Venus Cloacina (Preller, Bmn. Myth. 3rd ed. i. 439). And in 
 the Syrian rite, where animals are burned alive to the goddess, 
 the atoning nature of the sacrifice is unmistakeable, and the idea 
 of a mere sacrificial feast is entirely excluded. 
 
 A further argument for the atoning character of the rite may be 
 derived from the choice of the victim, for next to the swine the 
 ram was perhaps the commonest sin-offering in antiquity (cf. 
 Hesychius, s.v. 'AKJipoSiaia aypa) ; so much so, that Stephani, in the 
 Compte Rendu for 1869, explains the frequent occurrence of rams' 
 heads and the like in ancient ornament as derived from the 
 association of the animal with the power of averting calamity. 
 Such ornaments are in fact a-iroTpcnraia. It is always dangerous 
 to apply general arguments of this kind to the interpretation of a 
 particular ritual ; for the same victim may be an atoning sacrifice 
 
NOTE H. OF A SHEEP. 457 
 
 in one rite and an ordinary sacrifice in another, and it by no 
 means follows that because, for example, a piaciilar bull was 
 offered to Zeus, the same piaculum would be appropriate to the 
 Eastern Aphrodite. But in the case of the sheep used as a sin- 
 offering, we have evidence that there was no limitation to a single 
 deity; for when Epimenides was brought to Athens to check the 
 plague, he suffered black and white sheep to stray at will from the 
 Areopagus, and ordered each to be sacrificed, where it lay down, 
 to the nameless deity of the spot (Diog. Laert., i. 10). This form 
 of atonement came from Crete, which was one of the stepping- 
 stones by which Oriental influence reached Greece, so that the 
 example is the more appropriate to our present argument. And 
 that, in point of fact, sheep or rams were offered as piacular 
 sacrifices at the altars of the Eastern Aphrodite, seems to follow 
 from the Hierapolitan ritual already mentioned. The same thing 
 is implied for Carthage in the Poenulus of Plautus, where the 
 sacrifice of six male lambs is directed to propitiate the angry 
 goddess. 
 
 These considerations will, I hope, be found sufficient to justify 
 my general view of the Cyprian rite, and to support the proposed 
 correction on the text. The sacrifice was piacular, and the 
 K(iSiov was therefore appropriate to the ritual ; but on the received 
 text the use of it is entirely unintelligible, whereas the correction 
 ia-K€ira(riJ,evoL restores a sense which gives to this feature the same 
 character as it possesses in analogous ceremonies. But the most 
 interesting aspect of the ceremony is only brought out when 
 we connect it with a fact which I have hitherto kept in the 
 background, because its significance depends on a theory of piacular 
 and mystic sacrifice which is not yet generally accepted. A 
 sheep, or a sheep's head, is a religious symbol of constant occur- 
 rence on Cyprian coins; and some of these coins show us a figure, 
 which experts declare to be that of Aphrodite, clinging to the neck 
 and fleece of a running ram. This device has been compared 
 with others, which appear to be Eastern though not Cyprian, in 
 which Aphrodite rides on a ram (see De Luynes, Num. Cypr. PL 
 V. 3, vi. 5, and the references in Stephani, Gompte Rendu pour 
 1869, p. 87). The inference is that in Cyprus the sheep was the 
 sacred animal of Aphrodite-Astarte. In this connection it is 
 important to note that the sheep is of frequent occurrence on 
 Semitic votive cippi of the class dedicated to Tanith (a form of 
 Astarte) and Baal-Hamman. Examples will be found in C. I. S, 
 
458 AST ARTE AS A note h. 
 
 Pt. I. Nos. 398, 419, and in a oippus from Sulci, figured in 
 Perrot and Chipiez, iii. 253. The figures on this class of cippi are 
 of various kinds, and sometimes convey allusions to sacrifices 
 (C. /. S. p. 282 sq.), but it appears to have been essential to 
 introduce a figure or symbol of the deity. And vi^hen animals 
 are figured, they appear to be such symbols. Thus we find fish, 
 which are known to have been sacred to Astarte, and forbidden 
 food to her worshippers ; a bull or cow couching, the symbol of 
 the Sidonian Astarte ; the elephant, which was not a sacrifice ; the 
 horse, which appears so often on the coins of Carthage, and is 
 certainly a divine symbol, as it is sometimes winged. On these 
 analogies I conclude that among the Carthaginians, as in Cyprus, 
 the sheep was sacred to and symbolic of Astarte. To speak quite 
 exactly, one ought to say to a particular type of Astarte ; for as 
 this goddess, in the progress of syncretism so characteristic of 
 Semitic religion, absorbed a great number of local types, she had 
 a corresponding multiplicity of sacred animals, each of which was 
 prominent at particular sanctuaries or in particular rites. Thus 
 the dove- Aphrodite is specially associated with Ascalon, and the 
 Cow-goddess with Sidon, where she was identified with Europa, 
 the bride of the bull-Zeus (Dea Syria, iv.), and, according to Philo 
 Byblius, placed the head of a bull upon her own. The sheep- 
 Astarte is another type, but it also seems to have its original 
 home in Canaan, for in Deut. vii. 13 the produce of the flock is 
 called "the Ashtaroth of the sheep," A phrase like this, which 
 has descended from religion into ordinary life, and is preserved 
 among the monotheistic Hebrews, is very old evidence for the 
 association of Astarte with the sheep ; and it is impossible to 
 explain it except by frankly admitting that Astarte, in one of her 
 types, had originally the form of a sheep, and was a sheep herself, 
 just as in other types she was a dove or a fish. 
 
 To this it may be objected that the ram or sheep is not the 
 symbol of Tanith, but of the associated male deity Baal-Haniman, 
 who in a terra-cotta of the Barre collection (Perrot et Chipiez, iii. 
 73) is represented with ram's horns, and laying his hand on the 
 head of a sheep. But the inscription (C. I. S. No. 419), cited 
 above, is dedicated to Tanith, not to Tanith and Baal-Hamman 
 conjointly, from which it appears that the accompanying symbol 
 was appropriate to the goddess as well as to her male partner. 
 
 It is reasonable that the same animal symbol should belong to 
 the male and female members of a syzygy ; and in the case of a 
 
NOTE H. SHEEP-GODDESS. 459 
 
 goddess who was often represented as androgynous, it is not even 
 necessary to suppose that her symbol would be the ewe and lier 
 partner's the ram. But in fact the sheep-symbols on the Tanith 
 cippi, which are commonly called rams, are hornless, and so 
 presumably stand for ewes. On the other hand, all wild sheep 
 and many domestic breeds are horned in both sexes, so that there 
 is no difficulty about a horned Sheep-goddess. The triangle 
 surmounted by a circle, with horns bent outwards, which is 
 commonly found on Tanith cippi, is probably a symbol of the god 
 or the goddess indifferently. And here the horns, being concave 
 outwards, can neither be bull's horns nor the horns of the crescent 
 moon, but must be the horns of sheep. 
 
 The Cypriote coins of Aphrodite, in which she clings in a 
 swimming attitude to a running ram, recall the legend of Helle 
 and the golden ram, but they also are obviously parallel to the 
 type of Europa and the bull. On this analogy we ought to 
 remember that the male god specially associated with the ram is 
 Hermes, and that the Cyprian goddess was worshipped in an 
 androgynous form, to which Theophrastus gives the name of 
 Hermaphroditus. I have already cited tliis androgynous character 
 ■ to explain why the Paphian (and apparently the Punic) Aphrodite 
 preferred male victims ; it now supplies an additional reason for 
 supposing that it was the androgynous or bearded Astarte that 
 was specially connected with the ram. On one of the cippi 
 already cited, in which Tanith is figured under the symbol of a 
 sheep (C. I. S. 419), the inscription is not as usually "to the 
 Lady Tanith," but "to my Lord Tanith." If this is not a 
 sculptor's error it points in the same direction. And it seems not 
 unlikely that the standing title, ^ya p njn, which has given rise 
 to so much discussion, means nothing more than Tanith with 
 Baal's face — the bearded goddess. 
 
 If, now, the Cyprian goddess was a Sheep-deity, our rite presents 
 us with a piacular sacrifice in which priests, disguised as sheep, 
 offer to the Sheep-goddess an animal of her own kind. The 
 ceremony therefore is exactly parallel to the Eoman Lupercalia, 
 a purificatory sacrifice to Faunus under the name of Lupercus. 
 The image of Lupercus at the Lupercal was naked, and was clad 
 in a goat-skin (Justin, xliii. 1. 7). Here, at the great lustration of 
 15th February, the Luperci, who have the same name as their god, 
 sacrifice goats and run about the city naked, daubed with mud 
 and girt with goat-skins, applying to the women who desire to 
 
460 THE BLOOD-COVENANT NOTE I. 
 
 participate in the benefits of the rite strokes of thongs which were 
 cut from the skins of the victims, and were called fehrua. Both 
 sacrifices are complete types of that most ancient form of sacra- 
 mental and piacnlar mystery in which the worshippers attest their 
 kinship with the animal-god, and offer in sacrifice an animal of the 
 same kind, which, except on these mystical occasions, it would be 
 impious to bring upon the altar. 
 
 ADDITIONAL NOTE I (p. 297). 
 
 FURTHER REMARKS ON THE BLOOD COVENANT. 
 
 An evidence for the survival among the Arabs of the form of 
 covenant described by Herodotus, in which blood is drawn from 
 the parties themselves, seems to lie in the expression milidsh, 
 "scarified," for "confederates" (Nabigha, xxiv. 1 Ahlw. = xvii. 
 1 Der.). Goldziher, in an interesting review of my Kinship 
 {Literaturhl. f. or. Phil. 1886, p. 25), thinks that the term properly 
 means "the burnt ones,'' which is the traditional interpretation, 
 and suggests that we have in it an example of a covenant by fire, 
 such as Jauhari (see Wellh., p. 124) and Nowairi (Easm., Add. 
 p. 75, 1. 11 sqq.) speak of under the head of ndr al-liula. It does 
 not, however, seem that in the latter case the fire touched the 
 parties ; what we are told is that every tribe had a sacred fire, 
 and that, when two men (obviously two tribesmen) had a dispute, 
 they were made to swear beside the fire, while the priests cast salt 
 on it. An oath by ashes and salt is mentioned by Al-A'sha in a 
 line cited by Wellhausen from Agh. xx. 139, and, as the ashes of 
 the cooking pot {ramad al-cidr) are a metonym for hospitality, 
 there is perhaps nothing more in the oath by fire and salt than an 
 appeal to the bond of common food that unites tribesmen. This 
 does not indeed fully account for the fact that the fire is called 
 " the fire of terror," and that the poetical references to it show the 
 oath to have really been a terrible one, i.e. dangerous to the man 
 that perjured himself ; but it is to be remembered that, according 
 to Arabian belief, a man who broke an oath of purgation was 
 likely to die by divine judgment (Bokhari, iv. 219 sq., viii. 40 sq.). 
 
NOTE I. AND ITS SURROGATES. 461 
 
 I think, therefore, that, in the present state of the evidence, we 
 must not attempt to connect the mihash with the ndr al-hula. If 
 the former term really means " burnt ones," we must rather 
 suppose that the reference is to the practice of branding with the 
 tribal mark or wasm (which is also called ndr, Easm., Add. p. 76) ; 
 for we learn from Agh. vii. 110, 1. 26, that the ivasm was some- 
 times applied to men as well as to cattle. But (lijs^ primarily 
 means "to scarify," and, as it is plain from the article in the 
 Lisan that the traditional explanation of the word was uncertain, 
 I take it that the best and most natural view is to interpret 
 viihdsh as " scarified ones." 
 
 In process of time the Arabs came to use various substitutes for 
 the blood of covenant, e.g. robh, i.e. inspissated fruit juice (or 
 perhaps the lees of clarified butter), perfumes, and even holy 
 water from a sacred spring {Kinship, p. 261 ; Wellh., p. 121). In 
 all these cases we can still see that there was something about 
 the substitute which made it an equivalent for blood. As regards 
 " living water " this is obvious from what has been said in Lecture 
 v., p. 158 sgg., on the holiness of sacred springs. Again, perfumes 
 were habitually used in the form of unguents ; and unguents 
 — primarily sacred suet — are equivalent to blood, as has appeared in 
 Lecture X., p. 363 sqq. ' If robh in this connection means lees of 
 butter, the use of it in covenant- making is explained by the 
 sacredness of unguents ; but if, as the traditions imply, it is fruit 
 juice, we must remember that, in other cases also, vegetable juices 
 are looked upon as a kind of blood {supra, pp. 126, 213). 
 Compare what Lydus, De mermbus, iv. 29, says of the use of 
 bean juice for blood in a Eoman ceremony, with the explanation 
 that the bean (xm/ios) kvu at/Aa : the whole passage is notable, 
 and helps to explain the existence of a bean-clan, the geiis Fabia, 
 at Eome ; cf. also the Attic hero Kva/AtVijs. 
 
 The Hebrew phrase n''"i3 ma, "to make [literally, to cut) a 
 covenant," is generally derived from the peculiar form of sacrifice 
 mentioned in Gen. xv., Jer. xxxiv. 18, where the victim is cut 
 in twain and the parties pass between the pieces ; and this rite 
 again is explained as a symbolic form of imprecation, as if those 
 who swore to one another prayed that, if they proved unfaithful, 
 they might be similarly cut in pieces. But this does not explain 
 the characteristic feature in the ceremony — the passing between 
 the pieces; and, on the other hand, we see from Ex. xxiv. 8, 
 " this is the blood of the covenant which Jehovah hath cut with 
 
462 VOWS AND NOTE K. 
 
 you," that tlie dividing of the sacrifice and the application of the 
 blood to both parties go together. The sacrifice presumably was 
 divided into two parts (as in Ex. I.e. the blood is divided into 
 two parts), when both parties joined in eating it ; and, when it 
 ceased to be eaten, the parties stood between the pieces, as a 
 symbol that they were taken within the mystical life of the 
 victim. This interpretation is confirmed by the usage of Western 
 nations, who practised the same rite with dogs and other extra- 
 ordinary victims, as an atoning or purificatory ceremony ; see the 
 examples collected by Bochart, Hierozoicon, lib. ii. capp. 33, 56. 
 There are many examples of a sacrifice being carried, or its blood 
 sprinkled, round the place or persons to which its efficacy is to 
 extend. 
 
 I 
 
 "ADDITIONAL NOTE K (p. 315). 
 
 THE TABOOS INCIDENT TO PILGRIMAGES AND VOWS. 
 
 The subject of the taboos, or sacred restrictions, imposed on a 
 pilgrim or other votary, is important enough to deserve a detailed 
 examination. These restrictions are sometimes optional, so that 
 they have to be expressed when the vow is taken ; at other times 
 they are of the nature of fixed and customary rules, to which every 
 one who takes a vow is subject. To the latter class belong, e.g., 
 the restrictions imposed upon every Arab pilgrim — he must not 
 cut or dress his hair, he must abstain from sexual intercourse, and 
 from bloodshed and so forth ; to the former class belong the special 
 engagements to which the Hebrews give the name of &dr or issar 
 (obligatio), e.g. Ps. cxxxii. 3 sq., "I will not enter my house 
 or sleep on my bed until," etc.; Acts xxiii. 14, "We will not 
 eat until we have killed Paul." It is to be observed that restric- 
 tions of the optional class are evidently more modern than the 
 other, and only come in when the fixity of ancient custom begins 
 to break down ; in old Arabia it was the rule that one who was 
 engaged on a blood -feud must abstain from women, wine and 
 unguents, but in the time of the prophet we find these abstinences 
 made matter of special engagments, e.g. Wacidi, ed. Kr. 182. 6 = 
 Ibn Hisham, 543. 8 ; Agh. vi. 99>. 24, 30. Where the engagement 
 
KOTE K. PILGRIMAGE. 463 
 
 is optional, it naturally assumes the character of an incentive to 
 prompt discharge of the vow ; the votary stimulates his own zeal 
 by imposing on himself abstinence from certain of the comforts of 
 life till his task is discharged ; see Marzuci as quoted by Reiske, 
 Abulfeda, vol. i. p. 18 of the Adnotationes, where the phrase via 
 taktarithu 'l-nafsu hihi may be compared with the tysj Tm)h "IDN 
 of Numb. XXX. 14. But the stated abstinences which go as a 
 matter of course with certain vows cannot be explained on this 
 principle, and when they are examined in detail, it becomes mani- 
 fest that they are simply taboos incident to a state of consecration, 
 the same taboos in fact which are imposed, without a vow, on 
 every one who is engaged in worship or priestly service in the 
 sanctuary, or even every one who is present in the holy place. 
 Thus the Hebrew Nazarite was required to abstain from wine, and 
 from uncleanness due to contact with the dead, and the same rules 
 applied to priests, either generally or when they were on service 
 (Lev. X. 9, xxi. 1 sqq.). Again, the taboo on sexual intercourse 
 which lay on the Arabian pilgrim applies, among the Semites 
 generally, to every one who is engaged in an act of worship or 
 present in a holy place (see above, p. 435) ; and the prohibition of 
 bloodshed, and therefore also of hunting and killing game, is only 
 an extension of the general rule that forbids bloodshed on holy 
 ground. Further, when the same taboos that attach to a pilgrim 
 apply also to braves on the war-path, and especially to men 
 who are under a vow of blood-revenge, it is to be remembered 
 that with the Semites, and indeed with all primitive peoples, war 
 is a sacred function, and the warrior a consecrated person (cf. pp. 
 383, 436). The Arabic root holla (Heb. ^^n) applied to the dis- 
 charge {lit. the untying) of a vow, is the same which is regularly 
 iised of emergence from a state of taboo (the ihrdm, ihe'idda of 
 widowhood, etc.) into ordinary life. 
 
 Wellhausen observes that the Arabic nadhara and the Hebrew 
 ITJ both mean primarily " to consecrate." In an ordinary vow a 
 man consecrates some material thing, in the vow of pilgrimage or 
 war he consecrates himself for a particular purpose. The Arabs 
 have but one root to express both forms of vow, but in Hebrew 
 and Syriac the root is differentiated into two : llj, 5jJ, "to vow," 
 but inJ, r-P) "a consecrated person." The Syriac ngzir, not- 
 withstanding its medial z, is not a mere loan-word from the Old 
 Testament, but is applied, for example, to maidens consecrated to 
 the service of Bel this (Is. Ant. i. 212, 1. 130). 
 
464 VOWS AND NOTE K. 
 
 In the case of pilgrimage it seems that the votary consecrates 
 himself by devoting his hair, vs'hich is part of himself, as an offer- 
 ing at the sanctuary. Whether the consecration of the vi^arrior 
 was originally effected in the same way, and the discharge of the 
 vow accomplished by means of a hair- offering, can only be matter 
 of conjecture, but is at least not inconceivable. If it was so, the 
 deity to whom the hair was dedicated must have been the kindred 
 god of the clan, who alone, in primitive religion, could be conceived 
 as interested in the avenging of the tribal blood ; and we may 
 suppose that the hair-offering of the warriors took place in con- 
 nection with the " sacrifice of the home-comers," to be spoken of 
 in note N, infra. It must, however, be observed that all over the 
 world the head and hair of persons under taboo are peculiarly 
 sacred and inviolable, and that the primitive notions about the 
 hair as a special seat of life, which have been spoken of at p. 306, 
 are quite sufificient to account for this, without reference to the hair- 
 offering, which is only one out of many applications of these ideas. 
 It is easy, for example, to understand why, if an important part of 
 the life resides in the hair, a man whose whole life is consecrated 
 — e.g. a Maori chief, or the Flamen Dialis, or in the Semitic field 
 such a person as Samuel or Samson — should either be forbidden 
 to cut his hair at all, or should be compelled, when he does so, to 
 use special precautions against the profanation of the holy growth. 
 From Ezek. xliv. 20 we may conclude that some Semitic priests 
 let their hair grow unpolled, like Samuel, and that others kept 
 it close shaved, like the priests of Egypt; both usages may be 
 explained on a single principle, for the risk of profaning the hair 
 could be met by not allowing it to grow at all, as well as by not 
 allowing it to be touched. Among the Hebrews, princes as well as 
 priests were consecrated persons, and nazir sometimes means a 
 prince, while nezer, " consecration,'' means " a diadem." As a 
 diadem is in its origin nothing more than a fillet to confine hair 
 that is worn long, I apprehend that in old times the hair of Hebrew 
 princes, like that of a Maori chief, was taboo, and that Absalom's 
 long locks (2 Sam. xiv. 26) were the mark of his political pre- 
 tensions, and not of his vanity. "When the hair of a Maori chief 
 was cut it was collected and buried in a sacred place or hung on 
 a tree ; and it is noteworthy that Absalom's hair was cut annually 
 at the end of the year — i.e. in the sacred season of pilgrimage, and 
 that it was collected and weighed, which suggests a religious rite 
 similar to that mentioned by Herod., ii. 65. 
 
NOTE K. PILGRIMAGE. 465 
 
 While the general principle is clear, that the restrictions laid on 
 persons under a vow were originally taboos, incident to a state of 
 consecration, it is not to be supposed that we can always explain 
 these taboos in detail ; for in the absence of direct evidence, it is 
 often almost impossible for modern man to divine the workings 
 of the primitive mind. 
 
 Something, however, may be said about two or three rules 
 which seem, at first sight, to lend colour to the notion that the 
 restrictions are properly privations, designed to prevent a man 
 from delaying to fulfil his vow. The Syrian pilgrim, during his 
 whole journey, was forbidden to sleep on a bed. With this rule 
 Wellhausen compares the custom of certain Arabs, who, during 
 the ihrdm, did not enter their houses by the door, but broke in 
 from behind, — a practice which is evidently an evasive modifica- 
 tion of an older rule that forbade the house to be entered at all. 
 The link required to connect the Syrian and Arabian rules is 
 supplied by Ps. cxxxii. 3, and with the latter may also be 
 compared the refusal of Uriah to go down to his house during a 
 campaign (2 Sam. xi. 11), and perhaps also the Hebrew usage of 
 living in booths at the Feast of Tabernacles, to which there are 
 many parallels in ancient religion. From the point of view of 
 taboo, this rule is susceptible of two interpretations ; it may either 
 be a precaution against uncleanness, or be meant to prevent the 
 house and bed from becoming taboo, and unfit for profane use, by 
 contact with the consecrated person. In favour of the second 
 view may be cited the custom of Tahiti, where the kings habitually 
 abstained from entering an ordinary house, lest it should become 
 taboo, and be lost to its owner. However this may be, the Syrian 
 practice can hardly be separated from the case of priests like the 
 Selli at Dodona, who were dviTrroiroSes ;!^a/x.at€wai, nor the rule 
 against entering a house from the similar restriction imposed on 
 the religious order of the Eechabites (Jer. xxxv. 9 sq.). The 
 Eechabites, like the Ifazarites and Arabian votaries, abstained 
 also from wine, and the same abstinence was practised by 
 Egyptian priests (Porph., De Abst iv. 6) and by the Pythagoreans, 
 whose whole life was surrounded by a network of taboos. These 
 parallels leave no doubt that the rule of abstinence is not an 
 arbitrary privation, but a taboo incident to the state of consecration. 
 From Judg. xiii. 4 it would seem that fermented drinks fall into 
 the same class with unclean meats; compare the prohibition of 
 ferments in sacrifice. Again, the Arabian rule against washing 
 
 2 G 
 
466 THE ALTAR NOTE L. 
 
 or anointing the head is not ascetic, but is simply a consequence 
 from the inviolability of the head, -which must not be touched in 
 a way that might detach hairs. The later Arabs did not fully 
 understand these rules, as appears from the variations of the 
 statements by diiferent authorities about one and the same vow ; 
 cf. for example, the references given at the beginning of this note 
 for the vow of Abu Sofyan. Finally, the peculiar dress prescribed 
 to the Arabian pilgrim is no doubt a privation to the modem 
 Moslem, but the dress is really nothing else than the old national 
 garb of Arabia, which became sacred under the influence of 
 religious conservatism, combined with the principle already ex- 
 plained {supra, p. 432), that a man does not perform a sacred 
 function in his everyday clothes, for fear of making them taboo. 
 
 ADDITIONAL NOTE L (p. 359). 
 
 THE ALTAR AT JERUSALEM. 
 
 That there was always an altar of some kind before the temple 
 at Jerusalem might be taken for granted, even without the express 
 mention of it in 2 Kings xi. 11 (1 Kings viii. 22, 54); but this 
 passage throws no light on the nature of the altar. Let us 
 consider separately {a) the altar of burnt-offering, (6) the brazen 
 altar. 
 
 {a) According to 1 Kings ix. 25, Solomon huilt an altar of 
 burnt-offering, and offered on it three times a year. A built altar 
 is an altar of stone, such as Ahaz's altar and the altar of the 
 second temple were. There is no other trace of the existence of 
 such an altar before the time of Ahaz, and the verse, which is 
 omitted by the Septuagint, belongs to a series of fragmentary 
 notices, which form no part of the original narrative of Solomon's 
 reign, and are of various dates and of uncertain authority. Apart 
 from this passage we first read of a built altar in 2 Kings xvi., 
 viz. that which Ahaz erected on the model of the altar (i.e. the 
 chief altar) at Damascus. Ahaz's innovation evidently proved 
 permanent, for the altar of the second temple was also a platform 
 of stone. According to the Massoretic text of 2 Kings xvi. 14, as 
 
NOTE L. 
 
 AT JERUSALEM. 467 
 
 it is usually translated, a brazen altar was removed to make way 
 for Ahaz's altar, but tbis sense is got by straining a corrupt text ; 
 Dlp''1 cannot govern tbe preceding accusative, and to get sense we 
 must eitlier omit nnton riNI at tbe beginning of the verse or read 
 ?]1 for nx. Tbe former course, wbicb bas tbe authority of tbe 
 LXX., seems preferable ; but in either case it follows that we must 
 point 3"]i5^1, and that tbe whole verse is an elaborate description 
 of tbe new ritual introduced by the king. Tbe passage in fact 
 now runs thus (v. 12) : "The king went up upon the new altar 
 (v. 13) and burned bis holocaust and his cereal oblation, and 
 poured out bis libation ; and he dashed tbe blood of the 
 peace-offerings that were for himself against the altar (v. 14) of 
 brass that was before Jehovah, and drew nigh from before the 
 naos, between the naos and tbe (new) altar (cf. Ezek. viii. 16 ; 
 Joel ii. 17) and applied it {i.e. some of tbe blood) to the northern 
 flank of the altar." The brazen altar, therefore, stood quite close 
 to tbe naos, and tbe new altar stood somewhat further off, pre- 
 sumably in tbe middle of the court, which since Solomon's time 
 had been consecrated as the place of burnt-offering. Further, 
 it appears that the brazen altar was essentially an altar for the 
 sprinkling of blood ; for tbe king dashes tbe blood of his shelamim 
 against it before applying tbe blood to the new altar. But, 
 according to ver. 15, be ordains that in future tbe blood of 
 sacrifices shall be applied to tbe new or great altar, while the 
 brazen altar is reserved for one particular kind of offering by the 
 king himself ("ip^b "b, E.V. " for me to inquire by "). The nature 
 of this offering is not clear from tbe words used in ver. 15, but from 
 ver. 14 it appears that it consisted of shelamim offered by the 
 king in person. In short, the old altar is not degraded but 
 reserved for special use ; henceforth none but tbe king himself is 
 to pour sacrificial blood upon it. 
 
 (6) It appears, then, that the brazen altar was an ancient and 
 sacred thing, which had existed long before Abaz, and continued 
 after his time. Yet there is no separate mention of a brazen altar 
 either in the description of Solomon's temple furniture (1 Kings 
 vii.) or in tbe list of brazen utensils carried off by the Cbaldseans. 
 Tbe explanation suggested by Wellbausen (Prolegomena, 3rd ed. p. 
 45), that the making of the brazen altar bas been omitted from 
 1 Kings vii. by some redactor, who did not see the need of a new 
 brazen altar in addition to that which the priestly author of tbe 
 Pentateuch ascribes to Moses, does not fully meet the case, and 
 
468 CANDLESTICK 
 
 NOTE L. 
 
 I can see no way out of the difficulty except to suppose that the 
 hrazen altar of 2 Kings xvi. is identical with one of the two 
 Ijillars Jachin and Boaz. In the old time there was no difference 
 between an altar and a sacred stone or pillar, and the brazen 
 piUars are simply the ancient sacred stones — which often occur 
 in pairs — translated into metal. Quite similarly in Strabo (iii. 
 5. 5) the brazen pillars of Hercules at Gades, which were twelve 
 feet high, are the place at which sailors do sacrifice. Of course, 
 an altar of this type belongs properly to the old fireless type of 
 sacrifice ; but, so long as the holocaust was a rare offering, it was 
 not necessary to have a huge permanent hearth - altar ; it was 
 enough to erect from time to time a pyre of wood in the middle 
 of the court. It is true that 2 Kings xvi. speaks only of one 
 brazen altar used for the sprinkling of the sacrificial blood, but 
 it is intelLigible that usage may have limited this function to 
 one of the two pillars. 
 
 I am inclined therefore to think that the innovation of Ahaz 
 lay in the erection of a permanent altar hearth, and in the intro- 
 duction of the rule that in ordinary cases this new altar should 
 serve for the blood ritual as well as for the fire ritual. One can 
 thus understand the fulness with which the ritual of the new 
 altar is described, for the rule of Ahaz was that which from his 
 time forward was the law of the sanctuary of Jerusalem. I feel, 
 however, that there still remains a difficulty as regards the burn- 
 ing of the fat of the shelamim, which was practised in Israel even 
 before the royal period (1 Sam. ii. 16). In great feasts it would 
 appear that the fat of ordinary offerings was burned, along with 
 the holocaust, on the pavement of the court (1 Kings viii. 64), 
 but what was done with it on other occasions it is not so easy 
 to say. It is very noteworthy, however, that the details of the 
 capitals of the brazen pillars are those of huge candlesticks or- 
 cressets. They had bowls (1 Kings vii. 41) like those of the 
 golden candlestick (Zech. iv. 3), and gratings like those of an 
 altar hearth. They seem therefore to have been built on the 
 model of those altar candlesticks which we find represented on 
 Phoenician monuments ; see G. I. S. Pt. I. pi. 29, and Perrot and 
 Chipiez, Hist, de UAH, vol. iii. figs. 81 sqq. The similarity to 
 a candlestick, which strikes us in the description of the Hebrew 
 pillars, is also notable in the twin detached pillars which are 
 represented on coins as standing before the temple at Paphos. 
 See the annexed figure. Similar cressets, with worshippers before 
 
NOTE L. 
 
 ALTARS. 
 
 469 
 
 them in the act of adoration, are figured on Assyrian engraved 
 stones ; see, for example, Menant, Glyptique Orient, vol. ii. fig. 
 46. In most of the Assyrian examples 
 it is not easy to draw the line between 
 the candelabrum and the sacred tree 
 crowned with a star or crescent moon. 
 The Hebrew pillar altars had also asso- 
 ciations with the sacred tree, as appears 
 from their adornment of pomegranates, 
 but so had the golden candlestick, in 
 which the motive of the ornament was 
 taken from the almond tree (Ex. xxxvii. 17 sqq.). 
 
 It seems difficult to believe that the enormous pillars of 
 Solomon's temple, which, if the measures are not exaggerated, 
 were twenty-seven feet high, were actually used as fire altars ; 
 but, if they were, the presumption is that the cressets were fed 
 with the suet of the sacrifices. And perhaps this is after all a 
 less violent supposition than that the details of a Phoenician 
 altar candelabrum were reproduced in them in a meaningless 
 way. At any rate there can be no doubt that one type of fire 
 altar among the Phoenicians and Assyrians was a cresset rather 
 than a hearth, and as this type comes much nearer to the old 
 cippus than the broad platform fitted to receive a holocaust, I fancy 
 that it must be regarded as the oldest type of fire altar. In other 
 words, the permanent fire altar began by adding to the sacred stone 
 an arrangement for consuming the fat of ordinary sacrifices, at a 
 time when holocausts were stiJl burned on a pyre. If the word 
 "Ariel," "hearth of El," originally meant such a pillar altar, we 
 get rid of a serious exegetical difficulty in 2 Sam. xxiii. 20 ; for 
 on this view it will appear that Benaiah's exploit was to over- 
 throw the twin fire pillars of the national sanctuary of Moab— 
 an act which in these days probably needed more courage than 
 to kill two "lion-like men," as the English Version has it. On 
 the stele of Mesha (1. 12), an Ariel appears as somethmg that 
 can be moved from its place, which accords with the view now 
 suggested. Compare the twin pillars of the Tyrian Baal, one of 
 which shone by night (Herod., ii. 44). It will be observed that 
 this line of argument lends some plausibility to Grotms s sugges- 
 tion that the hammamm of Isa. xvii. 8, xxvii. 9, etc., are -Kvp^ia. 
 Finally, it mav be noted that Amos ix. 1 becomes far more 
 
470 SANCTUARIES note m. 
 
 intelligible if the altar at Bethel was a pillar crowned by a sort of 
 capital bearing a bowl like those at Jerusalem. For then it will 
 be the altar itself that is overthrown, as the context and the 
 parallelism of ch. iii. 14 seem to require: "smite the capital 
 tiU the bowls ring again, and dash them in pieces on the heads 
 of the worshippers." 
 
 ADDITIONAL NOTE M (p. 367). 
 
 HIGH PLACES. 
 
 In the text of the lectures I have tried to work out the history 
 of the fire altar, and shew how the place of slaughter and the 
 pyre ultimately met in the altar hearth. In the present note I 
 will give some reasons for thinking that the gradual change of 
 view, which made the burning and not the slaughter the chief 
 thing in sacrifice, also left its mark in another way, by influencing 
 the choice of places for worship. 
 
 It has been observed in Lecture V. (p. 157) that the sanctuaries 
 of the Northern Semites commonly lay outside and above the 
 town. This does not seem to have been the case in Arabia, 
 where, on the contrary, most sanctuaries seem to have lain in moist 
 hollows, beside wells and trees. And even in the Northern 
 Semitic lands we have found traces of sanctuaries beside fountains, 
 beneath the towns, which were older than the high places on the 
 hiUs. At Jerusalem the sanctity of Gihon and En-Eogel is older 
 than that of the waterless plateau of Zion above the town. 
 
 Now, in the discussion of the natural marks of holy. places, we 
 saw how well-watered spots, thickets and the like, might naturally 
 come to be taken as sanctuaries, and we also found it to be 
 intelligible that mountain ranges should be holy tracts ; but we 
 have not found any natural reason for fixing a sanctuary on a 
 bare and barren eminence. It is often supposed that altars were 
 built on such spots because they were open to the heaven, and 
 nearer than other points of earth to the heavenly gods ; but this 
 explanation takes a great deal for granted that we have no right 
 to assume. On the other hand, if the explanation of the origin of 
 burnt-offering given above is correct, it is obvious that the barren 
 and unfrequented hill-top above a town would be one of the most 
 natural places to choose for burning the holocaust. In process of 
 
NOTE N. 
 
 ON HILL-TOPS. 471 
 
 time a particular point on the hill would become the established 
 place of burning, and, as soon as the burnt flesh began to be 
 regarded as a food-offering presented to the deity, the place of 
 burning would be itself a sanctuary. Ultimately it would become 
 the chief sanctuary of the town, and be fitted up with all the 
 ancient apparatus of sacred posts and sacrificial pillars. 
 
 That the high places, or hill sanctuaries, of the Semites were 
 primarily places of burnt sacrifice cannot be proved by direct 
 evidence, but may, I think, be made probable, quite apart from 
 the argument that has just been sketched. In Arabia we read of 
 only one sanctuary that had " a place of burning,'' and this is the 
 hill of Cozah at Mozdalifa. Among the Hebrews the sacrifice of 
 Isaac takes place on a mountain (Gen. xxii. 2), and so does the 
 burnt sacrifice of Gideon. The annual mourning on the mountains 
 at Mizpeh in Gilead must have been connected with a sacrifice on 
 the mountains, which, like that of Laodicea, was thought to 
 represent an ancient human sacrifice (Judg. xi. 40). In Isa. xv. 2 
 the Moabites in their distress go up to the high places to mourn, 
 and presumably to offer atoning holocausts. It is to offer burnt 
 sacrifice that Solomon- visits the high place at Gibeon (1 Kings 
 iii. 4), and in general, ntsp, " to burn sacrificial flesh '' (not as E.V. 
 " to burn incense"), is the usual word applied to the service of the 
 high places. A distinction between a high place (hama) and an 
 altar {mizbeah) is acknowledged in the Old Testament down to the 
 close of the kingdom (2 Kings xxiii. 15; Isa. xxxvi. 7); but 
 ultimately bama is the name applied to any idolatrous shrine or 
 altar. 
 
 ADDITIONAL NOTE N (p. 384). 
 
 SACEIFICB BY VICTORIOUS WARRIORS. 
 
 According to Aba "Obaida, the Arabs, after a successful foray, 
 sacrificed one beast from the spoil, and feasted upon it before the 
 division of the booty {Ham. p. 458 ; Eeiske, An. Mos. i. 26 si^q. 
 of the notes ; cf. Lisan, x. 240). This victim is called nadCa, or 
 more fully naciat al-coddam, "the naeia of the home -comers." 
 The verb «Ji3 is used generally of sacrificing for a guest, but its 
 primary sense is to split or rend, so that the name of nacia seems 
 to denote some peculiar way of killing the victim. Now it 
 
472 THE SAOEIFICE 
 
 NOTE N. 
 
 appears from the narrative of Nilus that the victims of the 
 Saracens were derived from the choicest part of the booty, from 
 which they selected for sacrifice, by preference a handsome boy, 
 or if no boys had been captured, a white and immaculate camel. 
 The camel exactly corresponds to the nacia of the Arabs, and the 
 name probably means a victim torn to pieces in the way described 
 by Nilus. It seems probable, therefore, that the sacrifice made for 
 warriors on their return from a foray was not an ordinary feast, 
 but an antique rite of communion, in which the victim was a 
 sacred animal, or might even be an actual man. 
 
 That the warriors on their return should unite in a solemn act 
 of service is natural enough ; the thing falls under the same 
 category with the custom of shaving one's head at the sanctuary 
 on returning from a journey, and is, in its oldest meaning, simply 
 a retying of the sacred links of common life, which may have 
 grown weak through absence from the tribal seat. But of course 
 a sacrifice of this kind would in later times appear to be piacular 
 or lustra], and accordingly, in the Levitical law, an elaborate 
 purification is prescribed for warriors returning from battle, before 
 they are allowed to re-enter their homes (Numb. xxxi. 19 sqq.). 
 In ancient Arabia, on the other hand, where warriors were under 
 the same taboos as a man engaged on pilgrimage, the nacta was 
 no doubt the means of untying the taboo, and so returning to 
 ordinary life. 
 
 These remarks enable us to put the sacrifice of captives, or of 
 certain chosen captives, in a somewhat clearer light. This 
 sacrifice is not an act of blood-revenge, for revenge is taken in 
 hot blood on the field of battle. The captive is simply, as Nilus 
 puts it, the choicest part of the prey, chosen for a religious 
 purpose ; and the custom of preferring a human victim to a 
 camel is probably of secondary growth, like other customs of 
 human sacrifice. It seems, however, to be very ancient, for Saul 
 undoubtedly spares Agag in order that he may be sacrificed, and 
 Samuel actually accomplishes this ofiering by slaying him "before 
 the Lord" in GUgal. And in this, as in other cases of human 
 sacrifice, the choice of an alien instead of a tribesman is not of the 
 essence of the rite, for Jephthah looses his vow on his return 
 from smiting the Ammonites by the sacrifice of his own daughter. 
 
 According to the Arabian lexicographers, the term nacia may 
 be applied to sacrifices made on various occasions other than 
 return from war, e.g. to a coronation feast, or that which a man 
 
NOTE N. OF HOME-COMERS. 473 
 
 makes for his intimates on' his marriage ; Avhile ultimately the 
 word appears to assume a very general sense, and be applied to 
 any slaughter to entertain a guest. For the occasions on which 
 the Arabs were wont to kill a victim, which are very much the 
 same as those on which slaughter of the sacred cattle is permitted 
 by African peoples (supi'a, p. 279), note the verse cited in Lisan, 
 vi. 226, X. 240 (and with a variation, Taj, v. 519, 1. 2), where the 
 desirable meats include the Jchors, the tdhdr, and the nacl'a. 
 The first, which is the name applied to the broth given to women 
 in child-bed, denotes also the feast made at a birth ; the idhdr is 
 the feast at a circumcision. In Journ. PMl. xiv. 124, I have 
 connected the hhors with the Hebrew Ct^'in, " charms." Charmed 
 food is of covirse primarily holy food. 
 
INDEX OF PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Genesis. 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 xxxvi. 28 
 
 
 ... 43 
 
 iii. 3 
 
 ... 360 
 
 i. 2 ... 
 
 
 ... 97 
 
 XXX vii. 27 
 
 
 ... 256 
 
 iii. 11 
 
 ... 184 
 
 i. 28, 29 
 
 
 ... 289 
 
 xxxviii. 24 
 
 
 ... 398 
 
 iu. 17 
 
 ... 220 
 
 ii. 16 soo. 
 
 
 ... 289 
 
 xii. 46 sqq. 
 
 
 ... 185 
 
 iv. 
 
 ... 326 
 
 iii. 15, 21 
 
 
 ... 289 
 
 xlviii. 14 
 
 
 ... 402 
 
 iv. 6,11,17,20,34 
 
 330, 331 
 
 IT. 4, 5 ... 
 
 162, 
 
 289, 443 
 
 xUx. 3... 
 
 
 ... 445 
 
 iv. 15 
 
 ... 396 
 
 iv. 10 ... 
 
 
 ... 397 
 
 xiix. 8 ... 
 
 
 ... 383 
 
 V. 11 
 
 ... 206 
 
 iv. 14 sg. 
 
 
 ... 252 
 
 xlix. 25 
 
 
 ... 97 
 
 vi. 16 (22) ... 
 
 ... 206 
 
 ■vi. 2, 4... 
 
 
 ... 427 
 
 
 
 
 vi. 20 (27) 331 
 
 , 432, 434 
 
 vii. 11 ... 
 
 
 ... 97 
 
 
 
 
 vi. 22 (29) ... 
 
 ... 359 
 
 viii. 3 sqq. 
 
 
 ... 397 
 
 Exodus. 
 
 
 vi. 23(30) ... 
 
 ... 330 
 
 viii. 20 
 
 
 ... 358 
 
 
 
 
 vii. 8 
 
 ... 414 
 
 ix. 1 sq. 
 
 
 ... 289 
 
 iii. 1 sqq. 
 
 
 110, 136 
 
 vii. 10 
 
 ... 223 
 
 X. 
 
 
 5 
 
 iii. 5 ... 
 
 
 ... 434 
 
 vii. 13 
 
 ... 203 
 
 xii. 6 ... 
 
 
 ... 179 
 
 xii. 9 ... 
 
 
 ... 387 
 
 vii. 14 
 
 ... 224 
 
 xii. 7 ... 
 
 
 ... 108 
 
 xii. 46... 
 
 
 ... 326 
 
 vii. 15 sqq. 
 
 221, 367 
 
 xiv. 5 ... 
 
 
 ... 292 
 
 xiii 13 
 
 
 431, 445 
 
 vii. 27 
 
 ... 324 
 
 xiv. 13 
 
 
 ... 119 
 
 xvii. 15 
 
 
 ... 108 
 
 viii. 15 
 
 ... 415 
 
 XV. 8 $qq. 
 
 "202, 
 
 301, 461 
 
 xix. 
 
 
 ... 136 
 
 viii. 23 
 
 ... 326 
 
 xxi. 21 
 
 
 ... 43 
 
 XLX. 4 ... 
 
 
 ... Ill 
 
 X. 7 
 
 ... 331 
 
 xxi. 33 
 
 
 ... 170 
 
 xix. 10-13 
 
 
 ... 323 
 
 X. 9 
 
 ... 463 
 
 xxii. 
 
 
 343, 446 
 
 xix. 15... 
 
 
 ... 435 
 
 X. 17 
 
 ... 326 
 
 xxii. 2 ... 
 
 
 ... 471 
 
 xix. 20... 
 
 
 ... 433 
 
 xi. 32 sqq. 
 
 ... 428 
 
 xxii. 8-13 
 
 
 ... 291 
 
 XX. 24 sq. 
 
 110;i85,354, 358 
 
 xi. 41 
 
 ... 275 
 
 xxii. 9 ... 
 
 
 ... 358 
 
 XX. 30 ... 
 
 
 ... 445 
 
 xii. 6, 8 
 
 ... 202 
 
 xxii. 10 
 
 
 ... 355 
 
 xxi. 13, 14 
 
 
 138, 409 
 
 xiv. 4,6,14,22,49 
 
 202, 326, 
 
 xxii. 18 
 
 
 ... 346 
 
 xxii. 28 
 
 
 ... 445 
 
 
 428 
 
 xxii. 14 
 
 
 ... 108 
 
 xxii. 29 
 
 
 ... 222 
 
 xiv. 7, 53 
 
 ... 402 
 
 xxiT. 11 
 
 
 ... 157 
 
 xxii. 30 
 
 
 ... 443 
 
 xiv. 17, 51 ... 
 
 ... 407 
 
 xxvi. ... 
 
 
 ... 99 
 
 xxiii. 15 
 
 
 ... 328 
 
 xvi. 15 
 
 ... 396 
 
 xxvii. 7 
 
 
 ... 206 
 
 xxiii. 18 
 
 
 ... 203 
 
 xvi. 19, 33 ... 
 
 389, 415 
 
 xxvii. 15, 27 
 
 
 ... 433 
 
 xxiii. 19 
 
 "204 
 
 222, 364 
 
 xvi. 21 
 
 ... 401 
 
 xxvii. 29 
 
 
 ... 383 
 
 xxiv. 4 sqq. 
 
 194,301,325,396 
 
 xvi. 24 
 
 ... 432 
 
 xxviii. 12 
 
 
 ... 427 
 
 xxiv. 8 
 
 
 ... 461 
 
 xvi. 24, 28 ... 
 
 ... 333 
 
 xxviii. 18 sqq. 
 
 108, 
 
 186, 214 
 
 xxxiv. 13 
 
 
 ... 186 
 
 xvi. 26, 28 ... 
 
 432, 444 
 
 xxviii. 22 
 
 
 187, 229 
 
 xxxlv. 19 
 
 
 ... 443 
 
 xvi. 27 
 
 ... 330 
 
 xxix. 14 
 
 
 ... 256 
 
 xxxiv. 20 
 
 ■431, 
 
 444, 445 
 
 xvi. 30 
 
 ... 388 
 
 XXX. 41, 42 
 
 
 ... 446 
 
 xxxiv. 26 
 
 
 204, 222 
 
 xvi. 33 
 
 ... 415 
 
 xxxi. 45 sqq. 
 
 
 ... 186 
 
 xxxvii. 17 sqq. 
 
 ... 469 
 
 xvii. 7 
 
 ... 113 
 
 xxxii. 2 
 
 
 ... 427 
 
 
 
 
 xvii. 11 
 
 346, 397 
 
 xxxa 28, 30 
 
 
 ... 427 
 
 
 
 
 xvii. 10, 11 ... 
 
 220, 289 
 
 xxxii. 33 
 
 
 ... 360 
 
 Leviticus 
 
 
 xvii. 13 
 
 ... 217 
 
 XXXV. 2 
 
 
 ... 433 
 
 
 
 
 xix, 6 ... 
 
 ... 221 
 
 XXXV. 8 
 
 
 ... 179 
 
 i. 14 ... 
 
 
 ... 202 
 
 xix. 17 
 
 ... 407 
 
 XXXV. 14 
 
 
 ... 214 
 
 ii. 1 sqq. 
 
 
 202, 206 
 
 xix. 23 893. -•• 
 
 149, 444 
 
 xxxvi. 14 
 
 
 ... 43 
 
 ii. 11, 13 
 
 
 203, 204 
 
 xix. 24 
 
 ... 204 
 
47(5 I 
 
 NDEX ( 
 
 3P PASSA( 
 
 JES 
 
 OF 
 
 SCRIPTURE. 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 xix. 26 
 
 ... 324 
 
 xxiii. 10-15 
 
 
 
 436 
 
 ii. 13 sqq. 
 
 
 ... 221 
 
 xix. 27 
 
 306, 307 
 
 xxvi. 1 sqq. 
 
 
 
 223 
 
 ii. 15 . 
 
 
 ... 364 
 
 xix. 28 
 
 304, 316 
 
 xxvi. 12 
 
 
 
 231 
 
 ii. 16 ... 
 
 
 220, 468 
 
 XX. 14 
 
 ... 353 
 
 xxvi. 13 
 
 
 
 266 
 
 ii. 27 sqq. 
 
 
 ... 400 
 
 xxi. 1 sqq. 
 
 ... 463 
 
 xxxii. 6 
 
 ... 
 
 
 42 
 
 iii. 14 . 
 
 
 ... 219 
 
 xxi. 5 
 
 304, 306 
 
 xxxiii. 2 
 
 
 
 111 
 
 iv. 7 sqq. 
 
 
 ... 38 
 
 xxi. 8, 17 sqq. 
 
 ... 184 
 
 xxxiii. 9 
 
 
 
 326 
 
 vi. 14 ... 
 
 
 ... 291 
 
 xxi. 9 
 
 353, 398 
 
 xxxiii. 13 
 
 
 
 97 
 
 vii. 6 ... 
 
 
 ... 409 
 
 xxii. 27 
 
 ... 445 
 
 xxxiii. 16 
 
 
 
 177 
 
 vii. 9 ... 
 
 ■349 
 
 , 383, 445 
 
 xxii. 30 
 
 ... 221 
 
 xxxiii. 29 
 
 
 
 383 
 
 vii. 12 ... 
 
 
 ... 186 
 
 xxiii. 14 
 
 ... 223 
 
 xxxiv. 9 
 
 
 
 402 
 
 vii. 15, 17 
 
 
 ... 228 
 
 xxiii. 17 
 
 203, 223 
 
 
 
 
 
 viii. 
 
 
 ... 67 
 
 XXV. 23 
 XXV. 49 
 
 ... 78 
 ... 256 
 
 Joshua. 
 
 
 
 ix. 
 
 Ix. B ... 
 
 
 ... 221 
 ... 119 
 
 xxvii. 26 
 
 ... 414 
 
 iv. 5 
 
 
 
 186 
 
 ix. 11 ... 
 
 
 ... 157 
 
 xxvii. 27 
 
 431, 444 
 
 iv. 20 ... 
 
 
 
 194 
 
 ix. 12, 13 
 
 
 236, 262 
 
 xxvii. 28 
 
 ... 434 
 
 v. 15 ... 
 vi. 24 ... 
 vi. 26 ... 
 
 
 
 434 
 435 
 435 
 
 X. 3 ... 
 
 xi. 7 ... 
 xii. 12 ... 
 
 
 230, 236 
 ... 383 
 ... 66 
 
 Numbers 
 
 
 vii. 
 
 vu. 1, 11 
 
 
 
 435 
 400 
 
 xiii. 10... 
 xiii. 12... 
 
 
 ... 383 
 ... 328 
 
 iii 
 
 ... 445 
 
 vii. 15 ... 
 
 
 
 398 
 
 xiv. 24 sqq. 
 
 
 ... 434 
 
 V. 11 sqq. 
 
 ... 164 
 
 vii. 24 ... 
 
 
 
 435 
 
 xiv. 32 sq. 
 
 
 ... 185 
 
 vi. 10 
 
 ... 202 
 
 ix. 14 ... 
 
 
 
 253 
 
 xiv. 34 ... 
 
 
 322, 327 
 
 vi. IS sqq. 
 
 ... 314 
 
 xxii. 19 
 
 
 
 92 
 
 xiv. 35 ... , 
 
 
 ... 108 
 
 vi. 15 
 
 ... 224 
 
 xxiv. 26 
 
 
 
 186 
 
 XV. 
 
 
 ... 435 
 
 viii. 10 
 
 ... 402 
 
 
 
 
 
 xvii. 34 
 
 
 ... 119 
 
 XV. 5 
 
 ... 203 
 
 
 
 
 
 xviii. 3 sqq. 
 
 .'. 
 
 ... 317 
 
 XV. 7 
 
 ... 213 
 
 Judges. 
 
 
 
 xix. 24... 
 
 
 ... 432 
 
 XV. 38 
 
 ... 416 
 
 
 
 
 
 XX. 6, 29 
 
 
 236, 258 
 
 xvii. 
 
 ... 180 
 
 iii. 3 ... 
 
 
 
 93 
 
 XX. 27 ... 
 
 
 ... 221 
 
 xviii. 18 
 
 ... 445 
 
 iii. 7 ... 
 
 
 
 172 
 
 xxi. 4 ... 
 
 
 • ... 224 
 
 xix. 4 
 
 ... 357 
 
 iii. 19, 20 
 
 
 
 194 
 
 xxi. 5, 6 
 
 
 435, 43H 
 
 xix. 7-10 
 
 333, 405 
 
 V. 4 sqq. 
 
 
 
 111 
 
 xxi. 7 ... 
 
 
 ... 437 
 
 xxi. 17, 18 ... 
 
 127, 167 
 
 V. 30 ... 
 
 
 • •• 
 
 440 
 
 xxi. 9 ... 
 
 
 ... 441 
 
 xxi. 29 
 
 ... 42 
 
 vi. 19 ... 
 
 
 
 204 
 
 xxii. 7 ... 
 
 
 ... 441 
 
 xxiv. 24 
 
 ... 383 
 
 vi. 20 ... 
 
 "io9 
 
 383 
 
 358 
 
 xxvi. 19 37, 47, 92, 219, 329 
 
 XXV. 4 ... 
 
 ... 39S 
 
 vi. 26 ... 
 
 
 358 
 
 38.^ 
 
 XXX. 20 
 
 
 ... 440 
 
 xxviii. 7 
 
 ... 213 
 
 viii. 20 
 
 
 
 396 
 
 XXX. 26 
 
 
 ... 38 
 
 XXX. 14 
 
 ... 463 
 
 viii. 23 
 
 
 
 66 
 
 xxxi. 10 
 
 
 ... 351 
 
 xxxi. 19 sqq. ... 
 
 ... 472 
 
 viii. 24... 
 
 
 
 440 
 
 xxxi. 12 
 
 
 ... 353 
 
 xxxL 28 sqq. ... 
 
 ... 440 
 
 viii. 27... 
 ix. 2 ... 
 
 
 
 441 
 256 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ix. 8 sqq. 
 
 119, 
 
 126 
 
 423 
 
 2 Samuel. 
 
 
 Deutekonomy. 
 
 ix. 13 ... 
 
 
 
 203 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ix. 27 ... 
 
 "204, 
 
 236, 
 
 243 
 
 i. 19 ... 
 
 
 ... 448 
 
 i. 
 
 ... 91 
 
 ix. 37 ... 
 
 
 
 179 
 
 ii. 13 ... 
 
 
 ... 157 
 
 iii. 6 
 
 ... 91 
 
 ix. 45 ... 
 
 
 
 435 
 
 V. 1 ... 
 
 
 ... 256 
 
 iv. 19 
 
 ... 37 
 
 xi. 31 ... 
 
 
 
 383 
 
 V. 21 ... 
 
 
 ... 38 
 
 vii. 13 
 
 ... 458 
 
 xL 40 ... 
 
 
 
 471 
 
 V. 25 ... 
 
 
 ... 179 
 
 vii. 26 
 
 ... 435 
 
 xiii. 4 ... 
 
 
 
 465 
 
 vi. 14 ... 
 
 
 ... 432 
 
 xi. 30 
 
 ... 179 
 
 xiii. 19 
 
 
 109, 
 
 358 
 
 vi. 19 ... 
 
 
 230, 236 
 
 xii. 3 
 
 ... 186 
 
 xvi. 2, 3 sqq. 
 
 
 
 236 
 
 viii. 10 sqq. 
 
 
 ... 441 
 
 xii. 16 ... 201, 
 
 217, 220 
 
 xvii. 2 ... 
 
 
 
 431 
 
 ix. 14 ... 
 
 
 ... 38 
 
 xii. n sqq. 
 
 ... 445 
 
 xix. 29 ... 
 
 
 
 383 
 
 xi. 11 ... 
 
 
 ... 4B5 
 
 xiii. 16 
 
 ... 435 
 
 XX. 33 ... 
 
 
 
 176 
 
 xiv. 26... - 
 
 
 ... 464 
 
 xiv. 1 42, 
 
 304, 306 
 
 
 
 
 
 XV. 11 ... 
 
 
 ... 236 
 
 XV. 19 sgg. ... 
 
 ... 445 
 
 
 
 
 
 xix. 12... 
 
 
 ... 256 
 
 xvi. 21 
 
 171, 172 
 
 Ruth. 
 
 
 
 XX. 8 ... 
 
 
 ... 186 
 
 xviii. 4 
 
 223, 224 
 
 i. 14 sqq. 
 
 
 
 37 
 
 xxi. ... 
 
 
 ... 400 
 
 xxi. 1-9 
 
 ... 399 
 
 
 
 
 
 xxi. 9 ... 
 
 
 ... 3, 98 
 
 xxi. 4 
 
 xxi. 12 
 
 351, 396 
 408, 428 
 
 1 SAlfUEL. 
 
 
 
 xxiii. 16 
 xxiii. 17 
 
 
 ... 157 
 
 ... 214 
 
 xxi. 18 
 
 ... 60 
 
 i. 3, 21 
 
 
 
 236 
 
 xxiii. 20 
 
 
 ... 41)9 
 
 xxi. 21 
 
 ... 351 
 
 i. 21, 24 
 
 
 ... 
 
 230 
 
 xxiv. ... 
 
 
 ... 353 
 
INDEX OF PASSAGES OP SCRIPTURE. 
 
 477 
 
 1 KlNSS. 
 
 i. 9, 38... 
 i. 32 sq. 
 iii, 4 ... 
 iv. 7 sqq. 
 iv.l9 ... 
 vii. 
 
 vii. 21 ... 
 vii. 41 ... 
 viii. 23, 54 
 viii. 64... 
 ix. 25 ... 
 xi. 5 
 
 xii. 30 ... 
 XV. 13 ... 
 xvi. 31... 
 xvi. 33... 
 xvi. 34... 
 xviii. 5... 
 xviii. ... 
 xviii. 19 
 xviii. 28 
 xviii. 33 sqq. 
 xxi. 1 ... 
 xxi. 13, 19 
 xxii. 38 
 
 2 Kings. 
 
 ii. 13 sqq. 
 ii. 21 ... 
 iii. 4 
 
 iii. 27 ... 
 iv. 42 ... 
 viiL 12... 
 X. 22 ... 
 xi. 11 ... 
 xii. 4 ... 
 xiL 16 ... 
 xiii. 6 ... 
 xiii. 9 ... 
 XV. 5 ... 
 xvi. 11 sqq. 
 xvi. 14... 
 xvi. 15 ... 
 xvii. 26 
 xvii. 31 
 xxi. 6 ... 
 xxi. 7 ... 
 xxiii. 6... 
 xxiii. 7... 
 xxiii. 9... 
 xxiii. 11 
 xxiii. 15 
 
 
 PACE 
 
 157, 
 
 186 
 
 
 67 
 
 
 471 
 
 228 
 
 441 
 
 
 91 
 
 
 467 
 
 
 191 
 
 
 468 
 
 
 466 
 
 358 
 
 4(i8 
 
 
 466 
 
 
 173 
 
 
 165 
 
 171 
 
 437 
 
 
 91 
 
 
 171 
 
 
 435 
 
 
 228 
 
 146 
 
 359 
 
 172 
 
 179 
 
 
 303 
 
 
 91 
 
 
 91 
 
 
 157 
 
 
 157 
 
 
 157 
 
 293 
 
 ,442 
 
 343, 306, 445 
 
 223 
 
 398 
 
 432 
 
 466 
 
 229 
 
 ... 329, 403 
 ... 172, 173 
 
 126 
 
 67 
 
 359, 466 
 
 467, 468 
 
 228 
 
 24, 77,92, 115 
 
 343 
 
 343 
 
 171 
 
 171 
 
 175 
 
 223 
 
 275 
 
 471 
 
 ix. 7 
 
 1 Chbonicles. 
 
 xxix. 15 
 
 2 Chrohicles. 
 
 XV. 16 .. 
 XXV. 12 
 
 78 
 
 437 
 398 
 
 Ezra. 
 
 Nehemiah. 
 
 ii. 12 .. 
 viii. 10 
 
 V. 22 ., 
 xiii. 16 
 xvi. 18 
 
 Job. 
 
 Psalms. 
 
 PAGR 
 
 408 
 
 157 
 236 
 
 115 
 163 
 397 
 
 1. 
 
 i. 3 .. 
 
 i. 5 
 
 i. 13 .. 
 
 XV. 
 
 xvi. 4 .. 
 
 xvi. ID.. 
 
 xxvi. 6 sqq. ... 
 
 xxxix. 12 [Htb. 13] 
 
 xlv. 8(7) 
 
 xlv. 13(12) ... 
 
 civ. 14 sqq. 
 
 civ. 16 ... 
 
 cvi. 6 ... 
 
 cxviii. 27 
 
 cxix. 19 
 
 cxxxii. 3 sq. 
 
 cxlviii. 7 
 
 373 
 
 98 
 
 301 
 
 207, 214, 216 
 
 77 
 
 186, 214 
 360 
 
 321 
 
 78 
 215 
 ... 328 
 ... 203 
 ... 98 
 ... 408 
 ... 322 
 ... 78 
 462, 465 
 ... 161 
 
 Proverbs. 
 
 XV. 3 ... 
 xix. 6 ... 
 xxi. 27... 
 xxvii. 27 
 XXX. 17 
 
 66 
 328 
 436 
 204 
 
 60 
 
 Ecclesiastes. 
 xii. 13 25 
 
 Canticles. 
 
 iii. 11 215 
 
 vii. 5 146 
 
 Isaiah. 
 
 i. 11 sqq. 
 ii. 2 sqq. 
 X. 10 ... 
 xi. 2 ... 
 
 244 
 75 
 66 
 25 
 
 xi. 6 sq. 
 xiii. 3 ... 
 xiii. 21... 
 XV. 2 sqq. 
 xvii. 8 ... 
 xvii. 10 sqq. 
 xxii. 12, 13 
 xxx. 29 
 XXX. 33 
 xxxiii. 14 '^ 
 xxxiv. 14 
 xxxvi. 7 
 xxxvii 1 
 xlix. 15 
 liii. 7 ... 
 Ivii. 8 ... ' 
 Ixi. 3 ... 
 Ixii. 4 ... 
 Ixv. 3 sqq. 
 Ixv. 4 ... 
 Jxv. 5 ... 
 Ixvi. 3, 17 
 
 PAGE 
 2i^H 
 
 383 
 
 113 
 
 409, 471 
 171, 172 
 
 180 
 
 244 
 
 230 
 
 353 
 
 163 
 
 113 
 
 471 
 
 409 
 
 58 
 
 291 
 
 437 
 
 215 
 
 101 
 
 338 
 
 273, 325 
 
 4,31 
 
 273, 325, 338 
 
 Jeremiah, 
 
 ii. n 
 
 ii. 27 
 
 iii. 25 
 
 vii. 
 
 vii. 31 
 
 xi. 15 (Ixx.) .. 
 xvi. 6 ... 
 xix. 5 ... 
 xix. 13 ... 
 XXV. 23 
 xxxii. 29 
 xxxii. .35 
 xxxiv. 18 
 XXXV. 9 sq. 
 xxxvi. 5, 15 .. 
 
 xliv 
 
 xliv. 17, 18 .. 
 Ii. 8 
 
 ... .-'.7 
 42, 173 
 ... 408 
 ... 172 
 353, 445 
 ... 221 
 304, 3li(i 
 353, 44."> 
 ... 214 
 307, 353 
 ... 214 
 ... 353 
 ... 461 
 ... 4H5 
 ... 436 
 ... 172 
 ... 214 
 ... 3:3 
 
 Lamentations. 
 
 ii. 7 
 
 244 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 iv. 14 ... 
 vii. 18 ... 
 viii. 10... 
 viii. 12... 
 viii. 14... 
 viii. 16... 
 xvi. 17... 
 xvi. 18... 
 xvi. 20... 
 xviii. 6... 
 XX. 25 ... 
 xxii. 9 ... 
 xxiii. 37 
 
 ... 325 
 
 ... 300 
 
 122, 338 
 
 ... 338 . 
 
 ... 172 
 
 ... 4.7 
 
 ... 437 
 
 ... 215 
 
 3.55, 375 
 
 ... 324 
 
 ... 445 
 
 ... .324 
 
 ... 375 
 
478 
 
 INDEX OF PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 xxiii. 39 
 xxxiii. 25 
 xxxix. 17 sqq. 
 
 xli. 22 
 
 xliii. 18 sqq. ... 
 xliii. 24 
 
 xliv 
 
 xliv. 6 sqq. 
 xliv. 20 
 xIt. 9 sqq. 
 xlv. 18 sqq. ... 
 xlv. 19, 20 (Ixx.) 
 xlvii 
 
 PAOE 
 
 353, 355 
 
 ... 324 
 
 ... 236 
 
 ... 184 
 
 ... 415 
 
 ... 435 
 
 ... 77 
 
 ... 396 
 
 306, 4B4 
 
 ... 228 
 
 ... 415 
 
 ... 389 
 
 ... 167 
 
 HOSBA. 
 
 11. 
 
 Ssqq. 
 
 11. 
 
 15 (13) 
 
 u. 
 
 20 (18) 
 
 Ill 
 
 4 ... 
 
 IV 
 
 
 IV 
 
 8 ... 
 
 IV. 
 
 12 ... 
 
 IV. 
 
 14 ... 
 
 VU 
 
 . 14 ... 
 
 viii. 1 ... 
 
 IX 
 
 3 ... 
 
 IX. 
 
 4 ... 
 
 IX 
 
 15 ... 
 
 X. 
 
 9 ... 
 
 X. 
 
 14 ... 
 
 XI. 
 
 1 ... 
 
 xii. 4 ... 
 
 92, 220, 
 
 ... 437 
 
 ... 95 
 
 236, 433 
 
 ... 115 
 
 ... 186 
 
 ... 24 
 
 ... 329 
 
 ... 179 
 
 ... 436 
 
 ... 409 
 
 ... 94 
 
 ... 91 
 
 223, 304 
 
 ... 94 
 
 ... 408 
 
 ... 398 
 
 ... 42 
 
 ... 427 
 
 ii. 12 I 
 ii. 17 
 
 i. 2 
 ii. 1 
 
 Joel. 
 
 Amos. 
 
 409 
 467 
 
 ii. 7,8... 
 iii. 12 ... 
 ill. 14 ... 
 iv. 4 
 iv. 5 
 
 V. 11 ... 
 v. 19 ... 
 V. 22 ... 
 vi. 4 
 
 vi. 10 ... 
 vii. 1 ... 
 vii. 13 ... 
 vii. 17 ... 
 viii. 10... 
 viii. 14... 
 ix. 1 ... 
 ix. 3 
 
 PAGE 
 
 231, 329, 409 
 
 119 
 
 470 
 
 221, 224, 229 
 203, 236 
 
 232 
 
 Ill 
 
 219 
 
 409 
 
 353 
 
 228 
 
 229 
 
 92 
 
 306 
 
 ... 165, 166 
 
 469 
 
 146 
 
 MlCAH. 
 
 iv. 13 434, 441 
 
 V. 6(5)... ... ... 91 
 
 V. 12 sqq. ... 172, 186 
 
 vi. 7 ... 202, 219, 343, 353 
 vii. 14 146 
 
 Habakkuk. 
 
 . 13 ... 
 iii. 3 ... 
 
 66 
 111 
 
 Zephaniah. 
 i. 7 236 
 
 Hagoai. 
 ii. 12 221 
 
 1 CORINTHIAKS. 
 X. 25 247 
 
 Zeohakiah. I Hebbews. 
 ... 1461 
 ... 353liv. 3 468 1 ix. 22 406 
 
 V. 3 ... 
 V. 5 sqq. 
 ix. 7 ... 
 xi. 3 ... 
 xii 10, 11 
 
 PAOE 
 
 ... 434 
 ... 402 
 324, 325 
 ... 124 
 ... 392 
 
 Malachi. 
 
 i. 6 ... 
 
 ... 59 
 
 i. 7,12... . 
 
 ... 184 
 
 ii. 4 sqq. 
 
 ... 326 
 
 ii. 11 ... 
 
 ... 43 
 
 iii. 17 ... 
 
 46, 60 
 
 ECOLESIASTICUS. 
 
 1.15 
 
 Matthew. 
 
 XXV. 23 
 
 xi. 24 
 
 xvii. 19 
 
 xxiii. 14 
 
 Luke. 
 
 John. 
 
 Acts. 
 
 213 
 
 297 
 
 113 
 
 393 
 
 462 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Abibaal, father of Hiram, 45 
 Ablution after a piacular sacrifice, 
 
 332 sq. ; removes taboo, 432 
 Absalom, long hair of, 464 
 Acacia, see Samora 
 Achan, 401 
 
 'Aclca, ceremony, 310 sq. 
 Adar, god, 274 
 Adonis, divine title, 68 ; Swine-god, 
 
 392 ; worship of, 172, 311, 456 ; 
 
 mourning for, 391 sq. ; gardens, 
 
 180 ; sacred river, 145, 158 sg. 
 Adranus, god, 274 n., 426 
 Adytum, 183 
 
 Africa, cattle sacred in, 278 sqq. 
 Ahaz, altar of, 359 
 'Ain al-Bacar, at Acre, 166 re. 
 Altar as place of slaughter, 322 ; as 
 
 table, 183 ; as hearth, 358 sqq. ; 
 
 cleansing of, 389 ; Ahaz's, 359, 466 
 Altars, candlestick, 364, 468 
 Amathus, human sacrifices at, 356 ; 
 
 asylum, 138 n. 
 Amen, god, how worshipped, 284 ; 
 
 annual sacrifice to, 410 
 ' Amm-anas, Arabian god, 208 
 Amulets, 362,429; cut off' on reaching 
 
 manhood, 311 ; of thongs, 416 ; 
 
 found in rivers, 167 ; jewels as, 
 
 434 ; phalli as, 438. See Charm 
 Anaitis, worship of, 303 n. 
 Anathoth, 193 
 Angels, 426 sq. 
 Animal gods, 425 
 Animals used for sacrifice, 201 ; 
 
 sanctity of, based on their kinship 
 
 with man, 267 sqq. ; substitution 
 
 of, for human victims, 346 ; sacred, 
 
 in Egypt, 208 sq., 283 ; unclean, 
 
 276 
 Annual piacula, 385 sqq. 
 Anointing, 215, 364 
 Ansdb, sacred stones, 184, 193 
 
 Anselm, 147, 404 
 Anthropomorphism, 84 
 Antioch, annual feast at, 356 
 Aphaca, 128, 155, 159, 161 sq., 
 
 176 
 Apis, Calf-god, 283 
 Apollo Lermenus, 435 n. 
 April, Calends of, 450 sqq. 
 Arab tribes, named from gods, 46 
 Arabia, pilgrimage in, 102 sq. ; 
 
 primitive sacrifice in, 320 ; sacred 
 
 tract (Hima) in, 134 sq., 145 sqq. ; 
 
 sanctuaries in, 104, 134 sq. ; 
 
 temples in, 105 ; commerce of, 71; 
 
 taxation in, 440 
 'Arafa, prayer at, 257 n.; wocvf at, 
 
 323 
 Ariel, 469 
 
 Aristocracy and kingship, 73 
 Artemis Munychia, 288 re. 
 Artemis Orthia, 303 sq. 
 Article, use of, in Heb., 119 n. 
 Ashamasan lake, 164 
 "l1Vi; = taboo, 436 sq. 
 Asceticism, in relation to food, 284 
 Asclepiades, 290 
 Ashera, or sacred pole, 171 sqq. 
 Ashes, lustrations with, 362 ; oath 
 
 by, 460 
 Ashteroth Karnaim, 292 
 Ass, sacred, 448 sq. ; firstling, 444 ; 
 
 head of, as charm, 449 
 Assyrian conquests, their influence 
 
 on religion, 36, 65, 77 sq. 
 Astarte, goddess of herds and flocks, 
 
 336 ; incorrectly called Ashera, 
 
 172 '/i. ; as Cyprian Aphrodite, 
 
 451 ; of Eryx, 452 ; her sacrifices, 
 
 453 ; various types of, 458 
 Astral deities, as rain-givers, 100 ; 
 
 worship of, 127 re. 
 Asylum, 138 sq. 
 'Atair, pi. of 'Atira, q.v. 
 
480 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Atargatis, bom from the Euplirates, 
 160 ; changed into a fish, 159 ; 
 sacred fish of, 160 n. 
 
 'Aiharl (Land of Athtar), 97 «. 
 
 'Athtar, god, 59, 93, 447; god of 
 wells, 97 
 
 'Atira, Arabian sacrifice, 210 sqq. 
 
 Atonement, function of, ascribed to 
 all sacrifice, 219 ; with one's own 
 blood, 319 ; by gifts, 328 sq., 377 
 nq. ; annual, 388 ; for murder, 
 400 ; connection with idea of com- 
 munion, 302 ; dav of, in Levitical 
 law, 388 sq., 395," 409, 432; Chris- 
 tian doctrine of, 393. See Piacula 
 
 Atoning sacrifices, development of, 
 377 sq. 
 
 Baal, meaning of the word, 92 sqq. ; 
 
 in sense of liusband, 101 ; house 
 
 or land of, 95 sqq. ; as divine title 
 
 (ha'l) in Arabia, 103 sq. ; Tanith 
 
 (with the) face of, 459 
 Baal-Berith, 93 b. 
 Baal Hamman, 92 n. ; votive cippi of, 
 
 191, 457 sq. 
 Baal-Marcod, 93 n. 
 Baal-Zebnb, 93 n. 
 Baalim, Canaanite, 39 ; as life-givers, 
 
 99 
 Baaras, magical plant, 423 
 Babylonians, diverse from other Sem- 
 ites, 8 sq. ; of mixed blood, 14 sq. 
 Bfetocfece, 229 n. 
 Baetylia, 193 
 Ba'l, meaning of the term, 95 sq. See 
 
 Baal 
 Bambyce. See Hierapolis 
 Ban (herem), 140 n., 351, 434 
 Banqueting-house, 236 
 Banii Sahm, feud with the jinn, 121 
 Barahut in Hadramaut, 127 
 Barlm, charm, 416 n. 
 Bathgen, cited, 43 
 Bathing in sacred springs, 153 n., 
 
 168 
 Bean juice, 461 
 Beasts, of thejiun, 122; kindreds of, 
 
 120 
 Bed, pilgrim must not sle^p on, 465 
 Beersheba, 165 
 Bel, table spread for, at Babylon, 
 
 208 ; human wife of, 50 
 Belus, sacred river, 155, 167 
 Berosus, legend of creation of men, 
 
 44 ; of chaos, 87 
 Bethel, 109 ; tithe paid at, 229 sq. ; 
 
 feasts at, 235 ; altar at, 470 
 Bird, live, in purification, 402, 4^7 
 Birds sacrificed, 202 
 
 4«7 
 
 Bismillah, 397, 411 n. 
 
 Black-mail, 440 
 
 Blood, as food, 216 ; drinking of, 295, 
 320, 324, 349, 359 n. ; libations 
 of, 214 ; lustrations with, 326, 
 332, 361 ; ofiferings of one's own, 
 303 ; sprinkling of, 319, 325 sq. ; 
 sanctity of kindred, 256, 265 ; of 
 gods, flows in sacred waters, 159 ; 
 of bulls, superstitions about, 
 361 n. ; of the grape, 213 sq. ; 
 covenant, 296 sqq. ; revenge, 33 
 sq., 72, 254, 397 «., 399 ; among 
 beasts, 120 
 
 Bloodshed, impurity of, 408 
 
 Bone, means kin, 256 
 
 Booths, at Feast of Tabernacles, 463 
 
 Boys wear long hair, 311 sq. ; as 
 executioners, 397 n. 
 
 Buffalo sacred with the Todas, 281 
 
 Bull's blood, superstitions about, 
 ■361 n. 
 
 Buphonia at Athens, 286 sq., 291 
 
 Burial of sacrifices, 351 
 
 Burning, execution by, 398 ; of the 
 dead, 353 
 
 Burning bush, 176 
 
 Burnt-offering, a piacular sacrifice, 
 329 ; before a campaign, 382 S7. 
 See Fire sacrifices and Holocaust 
 
 Byblus, Adonis - worship at, 311 ; 
 sacred erica at, 175 
 
 Cahtan, tribe, 295 sq. 
 
 Cairn, sacred, 183, 185 
 
 Cais, meaning of word, 154 sq. 
 
 Camels, sacrificed by Arabs, 201, 320 ; 
 slaughter of, by Nilus's' Saracens, 
 263 ; flesh of, forbidden to Chris- 
 tian Arabs, 265 ; sacred in Arabia, 
 139, 431, 443 
 
 Campaign, sacrifice before, 382 sq. 
 
 Canaanites, were Semites, 5 
 
 Candlestick altars, 364 
 
 Cannibalism, 347 sq. 
 
 Caphtor, 12 
 
 Captives, sacrifice of, 343, 345 n. 
 
 Carmel, sanctity of, 145 sq. 
 
 Carthage, deities of, 154 ; sacrificial 
 taritt's at, 201 sq. ; human sacrifice 
 at, 344, 354 sg., 357, 390 
 
 Cattle, sacred, 278 sqq. 
 
 Caus, god, 68 ». 
 
 Caves, sacred, 180 sqq. 
 
 Oedesha (temple - prostitute), 45 »., 
 133 
 
 Cereal ofiferings, wholly made over to 
 the god, 218 sq., 222 sq. 
 
 Cervaria ovis, 345 
 
 Chaboras, sacred river, 157 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 481 
 
 Charms, ttotigs as, 416 n. ; head of 
 victim as, 362 ; dung as a, 362 n. ; 
 fat as a, 363 ; unclean things as, 
 429 
 Chastity, sacrifice of, 311 
 Cherubim, 87 
 Children sacrificed under the name 
 
 of cattle, 347 n. 
 Chthonic deities, 181 
 Circumcision, 310 
 
 Clan, not a larger household, 260 ; 
 sacra of, 232, 257 nqq. ; in Israel, 
 258 
 Clean animals, 201 
 Clients, Ihsq. ; of a god, 11 sq., 442 ; 
 stamped with camel mark in Arabia, 
 139 
 Colocasium, healing plant, 167 
 Commensality, 251 
 Commerce, Arabian, 71 ; and re- 
 ligion, 441 
 Communion, and atonement, 302 ; 
 idea of, in ancient sacrifice, 377, 
 418 
 Communities, structure of antique, 
 
 33 sqq. 
 Coney {hyrax Syr.), 425 
 Conical idols, 191 
 
 Contrition, ritual expression of, 412 
 Coran, Sura vi. 137 explained, 102 
 Covenant, by food, 252 sqq.; by sacri- 
 fice, 300 ; of Jehovah and Israel, 
 300 sq. ; ritual forms in, 296, 460 
 sqq. 
 Cow, not eaten in Egypt and Phce- 
 
 nicia, 280, 284 
 Cow-Astarte, 292 
 
 Coza^i, fire of, at Mozdalifa, 323, 471 
 Cuneiform records, 14 sq. 
 Cup of consolation, 305 n. 
 Curse, as taboo, 434 
 Cynosarges at Athens, 274 n. 
 Cyprus, piacular sacrifice in, 387, 451 
 
 Daphne, 128 n., 138 »., 158 ; oracle 
 
 o'f, 163 ; sacred cypresses at, 163, 
 
 170 
 David and Jonathan, 317 
 Day of Atonement, 388 sq., 395 
 Dead, drink-offerings to the, 217 
 Death of the gods, 354 sq., 391 sq. 
 Deborah, palm of, 179 
 Deer not sacrificed by the Hebrews, 
 
 201 ; annual sacrifice of, at Lao- 
 
 dicea, 390, 447 
 Do Goeje, Professor, 122 ■«., 139 n., 
 
 154 n., 256 
 Deities change their sex, 52 
 Delphi, hair-offering at, 307 n. 
 Demoniac plants, 423 
 
 Demons, how distinguished from 
 gods, 112 sqq. ; men descended 
 from, 50 ; serpent, 113 n., 125 sq., 
 354 ; in springs, 153, 156. See 
 Jinn 
 
 Deuteronomic tithe, 231 
 
 Bhdt anwdt, 169, 317 
 
 Diadem, why worn by kings, 464 
 
 Dibs, or grape honey, 204 
 
 Dido, 354, 391 
 
 Diipolia (Buphonia), 286 sq., 291 
 
 Dionysus, cctifuToffaUrm, 287 ; Semi- 
 tic gods identified with, 176, 244, 
 438 
 
 Dog, sanctity of, 273 ; sacrificed 
 mystically, 273 ; Hecate's, 332 
 
 Dogma wanting in ancient religions, 
 18 
 
 Domestic animals, sanctity of, 
 266 859'., 21% sqq. 
 
 Dove, forbidden food, 202 n., 275 ; 
 sacred to Astarte, ib. ; at Mecca, 
 208 n. ; sacrificed, 202 n., 275 sqq. 
 
 Dried flesh, 264, 363 
 
 Duma (Dumat al-Jandal), 351 
 
 Dumaetha. See Duma 
 
 Dung as a charm, 362 n. 
 
 Dusares, Wine-god, 176, 244 ; pool 
 of, 153, 164 
 
 Eden, garden of, 98 n. , 289 
 Edessa, sacred fish at, 161 
 Edom, god-name, 43 
 Effigy, god burned in, 353 ; substi- 
 tuted for victim, 391 
 Egypt, sacred animals in, 208 sq., 
 
 283 ; vegetarianism in, 283 
 Elam (Susiana), 6 
 Elders, the council of, 34 ; slay the 
 
 sacrifice, 396 
 Elijah, Festival of, at Carmel, 146 n. 
 Elohlm, pi. in sing, sense, 426 
 Elusa, 57 n. 
 
 Ephca, fountain at Palmyra, 154 
 Epic poetry, wanting among the 
 
 Semites, 49 sq. 
 Erica, sacred, at Bvblus, 175 
 Eryx, sanctuary of, 275, 287, 291, 
 
 452 ; sacrifice to Astarte at, 291 
 Ethlcaslishaf, "make supplication," 
 
 303 
 Ethrog, 204 n. 
 Etiquette, sacred, 147 
 Euhemerism, 44, 447 
 Euphrates, sacred river, 157, 167 
 Europa, 292 
 Executions, analogy to sacrifice, 
 
 351 n., 398 sq. 
 Exorcism, 407 
 Ezrdh, free tribesman, 75 
 
 2 H 
 
482 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Fables, origin of, 119 
 
 Fall, story of the, 288 sq. 
 
 Family meal, 260 sq. 
 
 Fara', Brstling, 210 n., 443 
 
 Fasting, original sense, 413 
 
 Fat, forbidden food, 220 ; burning of 
 
 the, 364 ; as a charm, 363 
 Father, authority of, 60 
 Fatherhood, divine, 41 sqq. ; in 
 
 heathen religions is physical father- 
 hood, 42 sqq., 49 ; in the Bible, 42 
 Fellowship, by eating together, 
 
 247 sq. 
 Ferments excluded from the altar, 
 
 203, 367 
 Festivals, saoriiicial, 236 sqq. 
 Fetichism, 192 
 Fines in ancient law, 329, 378 ; at 
 
 the sanctuary, 329 
 Fire sacrifices, 217 sq. ; development 
 
 of, 352 .tg'., 365 sq. 
 First-born, holiness of, 444 sq. 
 First-fruits, 222 sqq. 
 Firstlings, in Arabia, 104, 210, 443 sq. 
 Fish, sacred, at Ascalon, 158 ; in the 
 
 Chaboras, 157 ; at Hierapolis, 160 ; 
 
 at Edessa, 161 ; mystic sacrifice of, 
 
 274 ; forbidden food, 430 
 Fish -skin, ministrant clad in, 274, 
 
 416 
 Flesh, laceration of, in mourning, 
 
 304; "living," 320; raw, 320, 
 
 324 ; dried, 363 ; means kin, 256 ; 
 
 used as food, 205 sq., 282 ; when 
 
 first eaten by the Hebrews, 288 sq. ; 
 
 of corpse as charm, 305 
 Flood legend at Hierapolis, 181, 438 
 Fosterage makes kinship, 267 
 Fountains, sacred, 153 sqq. ; hair- 
 
 ofl'ering at, 307 n. See Springs, 
 
 Waters 
 Frankincense, sanctity of, 406, 435 
 Fringes of garment, 416 n. 
 Fruit, offered in sacrifice, 204 ; "un- 
 
 circumcised," 444 ; juice of, in 
 
 ritual, 461 
 Fumigation, 406, 436 
 Funeral customs, 305, 350 
 Fusion of religious communities, 39 
 
 Galli at Hierapolis, 303 
 Game, as food, 205 ; in sacrifice, 201 
 Garden of Eden, 98 n., 289 
 Garments, covenant by exchange of, 
 
 317 ; sacred, 416 sq., 432 sq. 
 Gazelle, sacrifice of, 202 ; golden, 
 
 153 ; sacred, 424, 447 
 Genii. See Jinn. 
 Gerim, or clients, 75 sq. 
 Ghabghab, 180 sq., 211, 321 
 
 Gharcad tree, oracle from, 126, 178 
 Ghariy ("bedaubed" stone), 147 n., 
 
 184 
 Ghul (Ghoul), 119 n., 121 re., 421 
 Gibeonites, 253, 400 
 Gifts, ancient use of, 328 ; as homage, 
 328 sq. ; cast into sacred waters, 
 161 
 Gift theory of sacrifice, 373 sq. ; in- 
 adequacy of, 365, 375 
 Gilgal, twelve sacred stones at, 194 
 Girls, seclusion of, 429 re., 437 
 Goat in sacrifice, 201, 448, 453 
 Goils, how distinguished from demons, 
 112 sqq. ; viewed as a part of nature, 
 83 ; relation of, to worshippers, 29 
 sqq. ; as a part of antique society, 
 
 30 ; local relations of, 91 ; nature 
 of the, 24 ; death of the, 354 sq., 
 391 sq. ; habitation of the, 94, 
 106 sq. ; congenital relations to, 
 
 31 ; believed to fight for their 
 worshippers, 38 ; fusion of, 39 
 
 Golden age, legend of, 285 
 
 Gi'eek influence on the Semites, 12 
 
 Groves at sanctuaries, 170 
 
 Habitation of the gods, 94, 106 sq. 
 
 Hadramaut, werewolves in, 86 ; trial 
 of witches in, 163 
 
 Hair, as relic, 307 n. ; cut ofl' in 
 mourning, 305 sq. ; superstitions 
 connected with, 306 re. ; offering 
 of, 307 sq. ; offering of, in Penta- 
 teuch, 314 ; taboos on, 464 
 
 Halac, epithet of death, 306 re. 
 
 HaXlel, 321, 411 
 
 Hanash, creeping things, 121, 275 
 
 Hands laid on head of victim, 335, 
 401 sq. 
 
 Hanging, execution by, 351 
 
 Hannibal, oath of, 154 
 
 Harb b. Omayya, slain by the Jinn, 
 125 
 
 Harranians, sacrifices of, 272 sqq., to 
 Saturn, 355, see Syrians ; alleged 
 human sacrifices among, 348 n. ; 
 faets of, 413 ; mysteries of, 425 
 
 Hasan and Hosain, 303 
 
 Haunts of the jinn, 123 
 
 Hayy, "tribe," meaning of the 
 word, 256 re. 
 
 Head of the victim, not eaten, 359 ; 
 used as charm, 362, 449, 456 
 
 Healing springs, 153, 167 
 
 Heliopolis (Baalbek), 156, 425 
 
 Hera Acrsea, 287, 391 
 
 Heracles, as huntsman, 273 ; at 
 Tarsus, 353 ; and the Hydra, 167 ; 
 Tyrian, see Melcarth 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 483 
 
 Herem (ban), 140 n., 351, 434 
 
 Heimaphroditus, 459 
 
 Hermon, Mount, 145, 427 
 
 Hierapolis, 157,160, 303, ?51n., 417 ; 
 pilgrimage to, 80 ; ritual of, 201, 
 455 
 
 High places, 171, 470 sq. 
 
 Hima, or sacred tract, in Arabia, 
 134 sq., 145 sqq. 
 
 Hinnom, valley of, 353 
 
 Hittites, 11 sq. 
 
 Holiness, of the gods, 133 ; of the 
 sanctuary, 134 ; of animals, 371 ; 
 relations of, to the idea of pro- 
 perty, 134 sq., 371 sq. ; rules of, 
 141 sqq. ; Semitic roots denoting, 
 140 ; relation to uncleanness, 405, 
 427 ; to taboo, 142, 430 sqq. ; con- 
 tagious, 431 sqq. ; congenital, 
 444 sq. 
 
 Holocaust, origin of, 352 ; rare in 
 ancient times, 21 9 sq. 
 
 Holy, meaning of the word, 90, 
 132 sqq. 
 
 Holy places, ^Qsqq.; caves, 18Q sqq. ; 
 stones, 186 sqq. ; trees, 169 sqq. ; 
 older than temples. 111 
 
 Homeric poems, religious importance 
 of, 32 
 
 Hems, sacred community of Mecca, 
 ■ 432 
 
 Honey, excluded from altar, 204 ; 
 in Greek sacrifice, 203 n. 
 
 Horeb, Mount, 136, 145 
 
 Horns of the altar, 415 
 
 Horse sacrificed to the sun, 275 
 
 Hosxjitality, law of, 76 ; in Arabia, 
 252 ; at sacrificial feasts, 236, 247, 
 266 ; not a gift, 439 
 
 House of Baal, 95 
 
 Household gods, 191, 442 
 
 House-tops, worship on, 214 
 
 Human blood, superstitions about, 
 349, 397 n. 
 
 Human sacrifice, 343 sqq. ; in the 
 Roman Empire, 347 n. 
 
 Hysena, superstitions about, 122 n., 
 126 n. 
 
 Hydrophobia, 349 
 
 Ibn Tofail, grave of, 146 
 
 Idlchir. See Lemon-grass 
 
 Idols, not necessarily simulacra, 
 190 ; origin of anthropomorphic, 
 194 ; in animal form, 291 ; in 
 form of cone, 191 ; of paste in 
 Arabia, 208 n. 
 
 Jhram, 315, 465 
 
 I'jaza, 323 
 
 Ilal, place, 324 n. 
 
 Imposition of hands, 335, 401 sq. 
 
 Impurity, 148, 407, 428. See Un- 
 cleanness 
 
 Imraulcais at Tabala, 47 n. 
 
 Incense, used in purification, 406 ; 
 tithes of, 229 
 
 Infanticide, 351 n., 388, 397 n. 
 
 Initiation ceremonies, 309 ; mystical, 
 339 sq. 
 
 Iphigenia, sacrifice of, 383 
 
 Isaac, sacrifice of, 291 ; blessing of, 
 448 
 
 Ishtar, mother goddess, 56 
 
 Islam, meaning of, 80 n. 
 
 Izdubar, 50 
 
 Jachin and Boaz, 191, 358 sq.; 468 
 
 Jar allah, 77 
 
 Jealousy, of the deity, 147 ; water of, 
 164 
 
 Jeliovah, prophetic conception of 
 sovereignty of, 66, 75, 81 ; abso- 
 lute justice of, 74 
 
 Jephthah's daughter, 395 
 
 Jewels, use of, 433 sq. 
 
 Jinn (Arabian demons), 113 sqq. ; 
 have no individuality, 119 ; akin 
 to wild beasts, 120 sqq. ; at feud 
 with men, 121 ; haunts of, 123 ; 
 of healing springs, 153 ; trans- 
 formations of, 421 
 
 Joppa, sacred fountain at, 159 
 
 Julian, 272, 351 re. 
 
 Justice of the gods, 62 
 
 Kadesh, fountain of, judgment at, 
 165, 193 n. 
 
 rr-na ma, 46i 
 
 Khalasa, place, hi n. 
 
 Khalasa (Kholasa), deity, 208 n. 
 
 Khors (W^inn), 473 
 
 Kid in mother's milk, 204 n. 
 
 Kidney fat, 360 sqq. 
 
 Kiu, the oldest circle of moral obliga- 
 tion, 254 ; how conceived, 255 
 
 Kindreds of beasts, 120 
 
 Kingship, origin of, 34 sq. ; charac- 
 ter ot Semitic, 63 ; as a social 
 force, 73 ; not feudal, 91 ; divine, 
 66 sqq. 
 
 Kings, blood of, superstition about, 
 349 ; killed by bleeding, 349 n., 
 397 n. 
 
 Kinship, of gods, men and animals, 
 269 ; of gods and men with natural 
 things, 275 ; may be acquired, 255 
 
 K<aJ/ow, 417, 454 sq. 
 
 Kolaib-Wail, 137 re., 146 
 
 Lacekation of flesh in mourning, 304 
 
484 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, source of the sucking 
 
 pig story, 290 
 Land, property in, 94 ; of the gods, 
 
 91 sq. 
 Language, "how far a criterion of race, 
 
 6 sqq. 
 Laodicea ad Mare, 390 sq., 447 
 Lapis pertusus at Jerusalem, 214 
 Lat (A1-), worshipped by the Naba- 
 
 taeans, 56 ; in Herodotus, 298 ; 
 
 stone of, at Taif, 192 n. ; image of, 
 
 at Tabala, 194 
 Leaven, excluded from altar, 203 
 Leavened bread, offered on altar, 
 
 203 n., 224 
 Lectisternia, 207 sq. 
 Lemon-grass at Mecca, 134 n. 
 Leontes, river, 155 sq. 
 Leper, cleansing of, 402, 428 
 Leucadian promontory, 355 n., 397 n. 
 Leviathan, 161 
 Levitical ritual, characterised, 198 
 
 sqq. 
 Libations, 213 sqq. 
 Libyans of Herodotus, 410, 416 
 Lion, divine symbol, 156, 425 
 Lion-god in Arabia, 209 
 Lishka (xiirxn), 236 re. 
 Live bird in lustrations, 402 
 Living flesh, 320 
 Living water, 127 
 Lizards, metamorphosed men, 86 
 Local god, kinship with, 116 
 Long-suffering of the gods, 62 
 Lucifer, 57, 151 n., 265 
 Lud (Lydia), 6 
 Luperci, 459 
 Lustrations, with blood, 326, 33-2 ; 
 
 with ashes, 362 ; sacrificial, 406 
 Lydus, De. Mens. iv. 45, emended, 455 
 
 Mabbog. See Hierapolis 
 Madhhah in sense of trench, 322 n. 
 Magical superstitions, why forbidden, 
 
 246 ; rest on savage views of nature, 
 
 427 
 Make-believe in ancient religion, 344 
 
 sq. 
 Male victims preferred, 280 n. 
 Males, holy food eaten only by, 181 n. 
 Mamre, sanctuary of, 109 ; sacred 
 
 well at, 162, 166 n. ; feast at, 433, 
 
 435 
 Manahil, sacred trees, 169 
 Mandrake, 423 
 Manslaughter, 399 
 Mama, god, 68 n. 
 Masai, 216, 351, 413 
 Masks, 417 
 ■Masseba, sacred stone, 186, 437 sq. 
 
 Meal-offering in Arabia, 206, 208 
 Mecca, haram of, 134, 136, 147 ; 
 
 well Zamzam at, 153 ; idols at, 
 
 208 n. ; sacred circuit at, 432 ; 
 
 character of the cult at, 105 n. 
 Megaron in Greek temples, 183 
 Melcarth, 67 ; at Tyre, 190 ; at 
 
 Daphne, 163, 170, 175 ; tithes paid 
 
 to, 228 ; annual resurrection of, 
 
 449 sq. 
 Menstruation, impurity of, 428 sq. 
 Meribah, or Kadesh, 165 
 Mesha, king of Moab, 38, 61 ; sacri- 
 fices his son, 356 ; dedicates part 
 
 of spoil to Ohemosh, 441 
 Metamorphosis, myths of, 86 sq. 
 Mexican sacrifices, 344, 347, 391 
 Midriff, a seat of life and feeling, 360 
 Mihash, 460 
 
 Milha, or bond of salt, 252 
 Milk, main diet of pastoral nomads, 
 
 205 ; in sacrifice, 203, 208, 439 ; 
 
 not sold in Arabia, 439 ; makes 
 
 kinship, 257, 336 
 Mimosa thought to be animate, 125 
 Minha, cereal tribute, 200, 207, 218, 
 
 222 ; drawn from first-fruits, 222 
 Mohammed, compared with. Moses, 
 
 70 
 Moharric, Arabian god, 345 n. 
 Moloch-worship, 351 sq., 375 
 Monotheism, alleged tendency of 
 
 Semites towards, 74 
 Monsters in Semitic art, 87 
 Morality and antique religion, 53, 
 
 248 sq. 
 Morassa'a, charm, 416 n. 
 Morning star, worship of, 151 n., 264 
 Mo'sir, girl under confinement at 
 
 age of puberty, 429 re., 437 
 Motherhood of deities, 62, 56 sqq. 
 Mofim al-tair, god, 208 re. 
 Mourning, at piacular rites, 409 sq. ; 
 
 laceration of flesh in, 30, 304 
 Mouse, sacred victim, 275 
 Mozdalifa, 323, 471 
 Murder, 399 
 
 Myrtle, in lustration, 456 
 Mystery, Christianity why so desig- 
 nated, 80 n. 
 Mystical cults, 339 sq. 
 Mystic sacrifices, 272, 325, 337 sqq., 
 
 379 
 Myth, place of, in ancient religion, 
 
 18 sqq. ; derived from ritual, 19 ; 
 
 value of, in the study of ancient 
 
 faiths, 21 
 Mythology, Semitic, why scanty, 49 
 
 NABAT.EAN DiONYSUs (Dusares), 176 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 48t 
 
 Nacta, sacriSce called, 471 sqq. 
 
 Naked worshippers at Mecca, 432 
 
 Nakhla, sacred acacia at, 169 
 
 Nar-al-hiila,, 460 
 
 1D3, 213 
 
 Nasr, Vulture-god, 209 
 
 Nationality and religion, 36 sq., 73 
 
 sq. 
 Nature of things not discriminated 
 
 by early man, 84 
 Nazarite, 314, 463 
 Nilus, 263, 320, 342, 343, etc. 
 Nimrod, 91 n. 
 
 Nisan, sacred month, 387, 451 
 Nisibis, named from sacred stones, 
 
 187 n. 
 Nomads, food of, 205 
 Nosb, sacred stone, 184 
 
 Oath of purgation, 164 sqq., 460 
 Obelisks as idols, 191 
 Ocaisir, Arabian god, 206, 208 
 Oil, in sacrifice, 203 ; sacred fountain 
 
 of, 164 
 'Okaz, sanctuary of, 193 ; fair of, 441 
 
 'OXaku'yri, 410 Sq. 
 
 Ombos and Tentyra, feuds of, 33 
 
 Omens from animals, 424 
 
 Oracles, from trees, 126, 178 sq. ; at 
 
 wells, 162 sq. 
 Ordeals by water, 163 sqq. 
 Orestes, 341 
 Orgiastic element in ancient religion, 
 
 243 sqq. 
 Orgies of the Arabian Venus, 344 n. 
 Orontes, legend of the river, 156, 
 
 161 
 Orotal, 298, 307, 312 
 Orwa, holy well of, 153 
 Otaheite (Tahiti), 305, 431, 465 
 Outlaw, purification of, 340 sq. 
 Ox, in sacrifice, 201 ; sacredness of, 
 
 280 ; in. Greece, 286 sqq. 
 
 Palmbttjm, 153 
 
 Palm - tree worshipped at Nejran, 
 
 169 
 Palmyra, sacred fountain at, 154 
 Paneas, 166, 167 
 Pan-Hellenic ideas, 32 
 Pantheon, Semitic, 40 
 Parental authority, 59 sq. 
 Parricide, 398 
 Particularism of ancient Semitic 
 
 religion, 36 sqq., 54 
 Passover, 204, 326, 387 ; as sacrifice 
 
 of firstlings, 445 sq. ; Arabian 
 
 equivalent of, 210 re. 
 Pastoral peoples regard their herds as 
 
 sacred, 278 sqq. 
 
 Pastoral religion, 336 
 
 Pasture land, tax on, 228 n. 
 
 Patron, god conceived as, 79 
 
 Pegasus, 275 
 
 Pentateuch, composition of, 198 n. 
 
 Perfume, in worship, 433 
 
 Periander and Melissa, 218 
 
 Petra, mother and son worshipped 
 
 at, 57 
 Phallic symbols, 194, 437 sq. 
 Philistines, origin of, 12 
 Philo Byblius, cosmogony of, 44 ; 
 
 cited, 169, 179 re., 186, 290, 292, 
 
 343, 448 
 Phcenicia, tithes in, 228 sq. 
 Phceuicians, hair-offerings of, 311 
 Piacula, 209, 378 ; annual, 385 sqq. ; 
 
 Greek, 332; Levitical, 326, 330, 
 
 402 ; mystic, 379 ; Roman, 332 ; at 
 
 opening of campaign, 382 sq. 
 Piacular rites, distinctive characters 
 
 of, 379 sq. ; interpretation of, 380 ; 
 
 antique features in, how preserved, 
 
 381 sqq. ; not originally sin-offer- 
 ings, 382 
 Pilgrimage, 80 ; in Arabia, 102 sqq. ; 
 
 not a bond of religious union, 259 ; 
 
 hair-offering in connection with, 
 
 313, 464 sq. ; ascetic observances 
 
 in, 465 ; dress worn in, 466 
 Pillar altar, 188 
 Pillar, sacred, 183 sqq. 
 Pillars, twin, as symbols, 438 ; of 
 
 Hercules, 190, 194 
 Pit under an altar, 321 
 Pole, sacred, 171 sqq. 
 Polyandry, of goddesses, 58 sq. 
 Precedent, the rule of ritual, 22, 
 
 110 
 Precipice, captives thrown from, 
 
 398 re. 
 Priesthoods, hereditary, 48, 79 
 Priests, eat sin-ottering, 331 xq. ; 
 
 slay victim, 396 
 Proper names, theophorous, 43, 45 
 
 sq., 67 sq., 79, 100 sq. 
 Property, in land, 94 ; in water, 99 ; 
 
 notion of, introduced into religion, 
 
 376 
 Prophets of the Ashera, 172 re. 
 Providence of the gods, 64 ; not 
 
 personal in heathenism, 246 
 Public parks, 137 
 Purification, by sacrifice, 404 sq. ; by 
 
 bathing, 153 re., 168, 332, 406 
 Pyre-festival at Hierapolis, 351, 355, 
 
 358, 387, 397, 451 
 
 QuATL, sacrifice of,__202, 449 
 Queen of heaven, 172 
 
486 
 
 GENEEAL INDEX. 
 
 Eabbath, divine title, 68 
 
 Rag-offerings, 317 
 
 Rain-givers, astral deities as, 100 
 
 Rajab, sacrificial month, 210, 387, 
 442, 446 
 
 Ram's head as charm, 456 
 
 Raw flesh, 320, 324 
 
 Rechabites, 465 
 
 Hed heifer, 333, 335, 357 
 
 Regions, holy. 111, 134, 145, 150 sqq. 
 
 Regulative influence of religion, 
 248 sqq. 
 
 Relics worn as charms, 318 
 
 Religion, positive and traditional, 
 1 sq. ; hereditary, 30, 38 ; relation 
 between Hebrew and Canaanite, 4 ; 
 development of, in East and West, 
 contrasted, 35 sq. ; oldest form is 
 religion of kinship, 51 sqq. 
 
 Religion, ancient, a part of public 
 lil'e, 22, 29 ; ethical value of, 63, 
 248 sq. ; make-believe in, 344 sq. ; 
 materialistic but not selfish, 245 ; 
 offers no consolation to private 
 suffering, 241 ; habitually cheerful, 
 237 : and public spirit, 249 
 
 Religious and political institutions, 
 analogy of, 22 ; beliefs, persistency 
 of, 336 ; restrictions, moral value 
 of, 144 ; communities, structure 
 of, 29 sqq., 258 sq. ; fusion of, 39 
 
 Rhabdomancy, 179 re. 
 
 Righteousness, divine, 408 
 
 Ritual, place of, in early religion, 18 
 
 Rivers, sacred, 145, 158 sq. ; of 
 Phoenicia, 155, 159; of Syria, 156 
 
 Sobb, fruit juice, 461 
 
 Robe of righteousness, 41 7 
 
 Rocks in situ, worshipped, 192 
 
 Royal houses, sprung from gods, 45 
 
 Rules of holiness, 141 sqq. 
 
 Sacra gentilicia, 257 
 Sacred regions. 111, 134 sqq. 
 Sacrifice, 196 sqq. ; meaning of the 
 word, 197 ; svnonymous with 
 slaughter, 223 ; "by fire. 107, 217 
 sqq., 352 ; is the typical form of 
 ancient worship, 197 ; material of, 
 201 ; milk in, 203 ; oil in, 203 ; 
 salt in, 252 ; animal, 205 sqq. ; 
 human, 343 sqq., 347 «., 344, 
 354 sq., 356, 357, 390 ; of tribes- 
 men, 343 ; of captives, 343, 472 ; 
 of children, 445 ; under name of 
 cattle, 347 n. ; of new-born victims, 
 349 m., 388, 443 ; of firstlings, 445 ; 
 how eaten, 221 ; primitive Arabian, 
 320 ; charms derived from, 361 sq. ; 
 gift theory of, 273 sq., 365, 375, 
 
 442 ; is communion, 442 ; is 
 originally a communal act, 2S6 sqq. , 
 257 sqq. ; godward and manward 
 parts of, 320 sqq. ; stated occasions 
 of, 384 sg., 473 
 
 Sacrifices are the food of the gods, 
 207 ; simply laid on holy ground, 
 20S sqq. ; buried, 107, 351 ; thrown 
 into water, 107, 359 ; species 
 of, in Leviticus, 199 sq. ; species 
 of, at Carthage, 219 re. ; mystic, 
 272, 325, 337 sqq. ; killed with- 
 out effusion of blood, 325 re., 397 ; 
 piacular, 332 ; atoning, develop- 
 ment of, 377 sqq. 
 
 Sacrificial feast, involves slaughter, 
 224 ; social character of, 236, 253, 
 263 ; view of life underlying, 239 ; 
 ethical significance of, 247, 253 ; 
 older than family meal, 262 
 
 Sacrosanct victim, in Greece, 286 sq. 
 
 Safaya, 440 
 
 Salm in theophorous names, 79 
 
 Salman, worship of Moliarric at, 
 345 re. 
 
 Salt, in sacrifice, 203 ; bond of, 252 ; 
 strewing of ground with, 435 n. 
 
 Samora (acacia), magic use of gum of 
 the, 126, 406 
 
 Sanbulos, huntsman Baal of, 50 )?. 
 
 Sanctuaries, how constituted, 107 
 sq., 188, 415 ; physical characters 
 of, 128, 145 ; in Arabia, 134 sqq. 
 
 Sanctuary, taboos affecting, 124 ; 
 Isaiah's conception of the, 110 
 
 Saturn, Carthaginian,355 ; Harranian, 
 sacrifice to, 355 
 
 Satyrs (sl'mm) in 0. T., 113 
 
 Scapegoat, 397, 401 ; analogies to, 402 
 
 Scriptures, the, defile the hands, 405 
 
 Si'lrlm, 113 
 
 Selli, at Dodona, 465 
 
 Semiramis, 351, 355 
 
 Semitic peoples enumerated, 1 ; 
 origin of the name, 5 ; geographical 
 dispersion, 11 ; original home, 11 ; 
 homogeneity and constancy of 
 type, 13 sq. ; alleged tendency of, 
 to monotheism, 74 
 
 Semitic speech, 9 -sg. 
 
 Serpent in Gen. iii. , 423 sq. 
 
 Serpent-demons, 113 »., 125 sq., 
 354, 421 sq. ; in springs, 153, 157 
 
 Servant {'abd, 'ebed), use of the 
 word, 68 sqq. 
 
 Set (Typhon), 449 
 
 Seven wells, sanctity of, 165 sq. 
 
 Sex of victim, 280, 453 
 
 Shaving the head, a sacrificial act, 
 306 sq. 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 487 
 
 Shecliem, oracular tree at, 179 
 Sheep, piacular sacrifice, 450 sq. 
 Sheep-Astarte, 291, 457 sq. 
 Sheep-skin worn by sacriBcers in 
 
 Cyprus, 417, 454 sq. 
 Sheikh Adi, valley of, 164 
 Shelcanlm (sing, shdem) explained, 
 
 219 
 Shew-bread, 207 sq. 
 Shoes, put off on holy ground, 434 
 Sicab, 306 n. 
 Sioharbas (^JJl lat), 354 
 Sin, notion of, foreign to the oldest 
 
 worships, 382 
 Sin-offering, 199 ; wliy not tasted by 
 the laity, 330 ; viewed as an execu- 
 tion, 403 ; Hebrew, 326, 330 sq. ; 
 sacrosanct, 332, 431 
 Sinai, sanctity of, 110 sq. 
 Sinew that shrank, 360 
 Skin of sacrifice, 414 sqq., 448 ; as 
 
 sacred dress, 416 sq. 
 Slaughter, private, forbidden, 263 ; 
 of victim, by whom performed, 
 396 ; requires consent of clan, 266 ; 
 originally identical with sacrifice, 
 223 
 Slaves sleep beside the blood and the 
 
 dung, 217 n. 
 Sleyb, hunting tribe, 206 
 Society, religious, in antiquity, 
 
 29 sqq. 
 Solidarity of gods and their worship- 
 pers, 33 
 Solwan, 305 n., 414 
 Sons of God (Bne Elohim), 426 
 Soul and body, 85 
 
 Sovereignty of Jehovah, prophetic 
 conception of, 66, 75, 81, 152 sgg. 
 Spoils of war, how divided, 440 
 Springs, sacred, 127 sq. ; bathing in, 
 
 153 n., 168. See Waters 
 Sprinkling of blood, 319, 325 sq. 
 Stag sacrifice at Laodicea, 390 sq., 
 
 447 
 Stars, thought to live, 127 
 Stigmata, 316 
 
 Stimulative influence of religion, 249 
 
 Stone, sacred, as symbol of deity, 189 
 
 sqq. ; daubed with blood, 184, 188 ; 
 
 stroked with the hand, 80, 188, 
 
 215 ; at Bethel, 187 ; anointed, 
 
 214 ; in Phoinicia, 186 
 
 Strangers, protected, 75 sq. 
 
 Strangling, of victim, 325 ; execution 
 
 by, 398 
 Stroking, salutation by, 80, 188, 215, 
 
 442 
 Stygian waters, 154, 164 
 
 Subjugation of nature by man, 115 
 
 Substitution of animals for human 
 victims, 346 ; doctrine of, 402 sqq. 
 
 Swine, holy or unclean, 143, 429 ; for- 
 bidden food to all Semites, 201 ; as 
 mystic sacrifices, 272 sq. ; as pia- 
 cula, 332, 457 
 
 Swine-god (Adonis), 392 n. 
 
 Symbols, divine, 151 sqq.; phallic, 
 194, 437 
 
 Syncretism of later Semitic heathen- 
 ism, 16, 452 
 
 Syrians, hair-offerings of, 307, 311 ; 
 sacrifices of later, 272, 275, 321, 355; 
 magic of, 423 sq. 
 
 Taabbata Sharran, 121 
 
 Tabala, oracle at, 47 n. ; sacred 
 
 gazelles at, 447 
 Table of the gods, 184 
 Taboo explained, 142 sq.\ relation of, 
 
 to holiness, 427 sqq. ; removed by 
 
 wMhing, 432 ; on sexual inter- 
 course, 435 sqq., 462 
 Taboos affecting the sanctuary, 124, 
 
 148 
 Ta'iiti. See Otaheite 
 Tallin, 321, 411 
 
 Taim, in theophorous names, 80 
 Tammuz, his bones pounded, 326 n. 
 
 See Adonis 
 Tanith (Artemis, Dido), 56 ; pillars 
 
 of, 191, 437, 457 sq. ; with the 
 
 face of Baal, 459 
 Tarsus, annual festival at, 353, 357 
 Tattooing, 316 
 Tawdf, 321 
 
 Taxation, ancient, 227, 440 sq. 
 Temple, at Jerusalem, 228 ; worship 
 
 of second, 198 sq.; altars of, 359, 
 
 466 sqq. 
 Temples, in Arabia, 105; above towns, 
 
 167 ; treasures at, 137 ; rock-hewn, 
 
 180 
 Tenedos, sacrifice to Dionysus at, 287 
 Terebinth, feast and fair of the, 162 ; 
 
 at Mamre, burns and is not con- 
 sumed, 176 
 Theanthropic victim, 391, 395 
 Theodulus, son of Nilus, 342 sqq. 
 Theophany, 108, 112, 415 
 Theophorous proper names, 43, 45 
 
 sq., 67 sq., 79 sq., 100 sq. 
 Therapeutae, 284 n. 
 Thorayya, wells called, 153 n., 166 7i. 
 Tiberias, seven wells at, 166 n. 
 Tithes, 227 sq. ; in Arabia, 229 ; at 
 
 Bethel, 230 ; in Deuteronomy, 231 ; 
 
 in Levitical law, 233 ; how spent, 
 
 23i sq.; of booty, iiO sq. 
 
488 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Todas, their sacred buffaloes, 281 
 
 Tonsure, Arabian, 307 ; of Greek 
 ephebi, ib., n. 
 
 Tophet, 353 ; etymology of word, 
 357 
 
 Totem mysteries, 276 sq. 
 
 Totemism, 117 sq. ; Semitic, 130, 
 424 ; decline of, 336 
 
 Totems, fed as an act of worship, 
 208 sq. 
 
 Traditional religion, 1 sq.; an affair 
 of race, 6 
 
 Transcendency of the godhead, 49 ; 
 not a primitive idea, 89, 177 
 
 Transformation myths, 86 sq. 
 
 Treasures at temples, 137 
 
 Trees, viewed as animate or de- 
 moniac, 125 ; sacred worship of, in 
 Syria, 169 ; oracles from, 169, 
 178 sq.; deities transformed into, 
 174 ; are of all species, 175 ; how 
 worshipped, 178 
 
 Trespass offering, 199 
 
 Tribal religion in Arabia, 46 sq. 
 
 Tribesmen, sacrifice of, 343 
 
 Tribute, sacred, 99, 227 ; in Arabia, 
 102, 438 sqq. ; on commerce, 441 
 
 Troezen, sacred laxirel at, 332 ; Apollo 
 of, 341 
 
 Troglodytes, described by Agathar- 
 ehides, 278 
 
 Typhoeus, 127 
 
 Typhon (Set), 449 
 
 Unclean land means a foreign land, 
 92 
 
 Unclean things in magic, 429 
 
 Uncleanness, 405, 427 sqq. ; rules 
 of, 143; infectious, 428. See Im- 
 purity 
 
 Unction, unguents, ritual of, 214 sq., 
 363 sq. 
 
 Usous, Phoenician god, 186 ; relation 
 to Esau, 448 
 
 Uz, the same as 'Aud ? 43 re. 
 
 Vegetable offerings, 202 sqq. 
 Vegetarianism, primitive, 282, 285 ; 
 
 Philo Byblius on, 290 
 Venus, Arabian, orgies of, 344 n. 
 Vermin, sacrifice of, 275 ; worship 
 
 of, 338 
 Vestments, priestly, 433 
 
 Victim, by whom slain, 396 ; effigy 
 substituted for, 391 ; head of, not 
 eaten, 359 ; used as charm, 362 ; 
 offers itself spontaneously, 291 ; 
 theanthropic, 391, 395 ; cast from 
 a precipice, 351, 355, 397 ; new- 
 born, sacrifice of, 349 n., 388, 443 ; 
 cut in twain, 460 sq. 
 
 View of life underlying antique 
 religion, 239 sqq. 
 
 Virgin mother, 56 sq. 
 
 Volcanoes, superstitions about, 127 
 
 Votive offerings, 197, 440 sq. 
 
 Vows, 314 ; taboos incident to, 462 
 sqq. 
 
 Vulture-god in Arabia, 209 
 
 "Warriors, consecrated, 148, 383 ; 
 taboos on, 148, 436, 462 sq. 
 
 Washing of garments, 433 
 
 "Water, living, 127 ; ordeals by, 163 
 sqq. ; property in, 99 ; poured into 
 sacred well, 182 ; as libation, 213 ; 
 in lustration, 349, 407 sq. 
 
 Waters, healing, in Ezekiel, 167 ; 
 sacred, 128, 154 ; discoloured at 
 certain seasons, 159, 182 ; blood 
 of gods in, 169 ; gifts cast into, 
 161 ; Stygian, 154, 164 
 
 Waterspout personified, 161 n. 
 
 Wells, sacred, 152 ; ritual of, 162 sq. 
 
 Were-wolf, 347 n. ; in Hadramaut, 
 ■86 
 
 Widow, secluded as impure, 429 n. ; 
 purification of, in Arabia, 402 n., 
 407 «., 428 
 
 Wild beasts, dread of, 115, 124 
 
 Wine, libations of, 203, 213 sq. ; re- 
 ligious abstinence from, 465 
 
 Witches, trial by water, 163 
 
 Wocuf, 322 sq. 
 
 Wolf Apollo at Sicyon, 209 
 
 Women, may not eat the holiest 
 things, 281 ; do not eat with men, 
 261 
 
 Yaohuth (Lion-god), 38, 209 
 Yeaning time, 388, 446 
 
 Zamzam, holy well, 153 
 
 Z^baji, zehahim, meaning of the word, 
 
 219 ; at Carthage, includes cereal 
 
 offerings, 205 
 
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