EARLY SEMITIC RELIGION.*

IN this first instalment of what promises to rank among the most important contributions to the history of Semitic re- ligion that have yet appeared either in England or Germany, Professor Robertson Smith traces the early development of the religious idea among the kindred peoples who anciently occupied the great Arabian peninsula and the broad tracts extending from the shores of the Mediterranean to the hill- ranges of Iran and Armenia. He does not include in his survey, he does not even mention, the Amharic and Ethiopian branches of the original Semitic stock, probably because no records or remains of these races in their nomad state have

been preserved. Of the life of the ancient dwellers in Arabia and Syria we have, on the contrary, a fairly sufficient and a fully trustworthy account in the Bible and in the older Arabic literature, while indications of varying value may be drawn from Phcenician and cuneiform sources. The subject is one of surpassing interest, for what Professor Robertson Smith rightly calls the positive, that is the revealed faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the only faiths, indeed, in any true sense of the term, that the world has known—do undoubtedly contain much that was antecedent to their announcement, without a comprehension of which they can themselves be only imperfectly compre- hended. If any proof were wanted of this position, it might be sufficient to rc fer to the ritual of sacrifice, which consti-

• Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. First Series. "The Fundamental Institutions." By W. Robertson Smith, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge. Edinburgh : Adam and Charles Black. 1889.

fitted, practically, the whole religion of the ancient Hebrews, and gave birth to the great doctrine of atonement that in its highest development became the cardinal principle of Christianity. But sacrifice is nowhere mentioned in the Bible as a divine revelation or command ; its practice is sanctioned and regulated rather than enjoined, and the rite is clearly one which the Mosaic revolution adopted but did not institute. Nor is sacrifice peculiar to Judaism ; it forms a more or less important element in every known religious system—save pure Buddhism, which is rather a philosophy than a religion—and stands therefore in need of an explanation which no particular religious system gives or can give, but which must be sought in the primitive history of mankind.

Such is, in fact, precisely the task which Professor Robertson Smith has mainly set himself to execute in the present volume, with special reference to the sacrificial systems of the repre- sentative Semitic races,—the Hebrews and the Arabs, among whom alone a distinct and ultimately supreme ethical signifi- cance came to attach itself to the mere ritual. The earlier lectures trace the origin not so much of the religious idea as of the religious community,—a subject Professor Robertson Smith has already ably dealt with in his well-known-Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, of which book, indeed, the present work is in great measure the natural sequel. Now, the earliest social unit was not the family, as is commonly supposed, but the kin-group, and there can be no doubt that in the most primitive times the kin-bond was maternal, not paternal. It was at a later stage, when male property in women came into existence, that the bond of kinship began to be traced through the male and not through the female ancestry. In this recognition of their kinship by the members of the group, and of the rights and duties involved in it, are to be sought the origins of personal ethics, but not, probably, of the religious idea. The latter arose out of a perception of the relations of the community to its environment, animate and inanimate. Primitive man would pass the frontier of animality when he began not only to feel, but to perceive and reflect upon the nature of his surroundings. His environment would appear to him full of inexplicable mystery and strange terror. He had, no doubt, a hard fight to maintain against his non-kindred fellows, and against the beasts of the wood, the thicket, and the field. He would not at first, we may take it, draw any very distinct frontier between men and beasts ; in both, the manifestations and habits of life were similar, in primitive times almost identical ; and the per- ception of differences of form, of which animals appear to be still for the most part incapable, belongs to a much later stage of development. Out of this confusion of human and animal life sprang totemism,—of so much we may be sure, though the nature of the process will always be a subject rather of specula- tion than of demonstration. Totemism is a universal fact in early history, and its beginnings were everywhere antecedent to the beginnings of any form of ritual. The fellowship with animals which is the essence of totemism, would, we may con- ceive, lead men to imagine them capable of affording in some measure that protection against the various perils that surrounded them, which they received from each other within the kin-group. A demonstration of this argument is quite feasible, but would be out of place here, even did space allow of it. Finally, if animals not actually dwelling with the group could be regarded as protectors—and every escape from danger would be looked upon as due to some favourable interference— much more could human beings, no longer within sensuous ken of the group be so regarded, and the foundations of theism would be thus laid in the trust placed in the power and continued affection of the ancestry. We must not omit to notice here the author's very ingenious theory of the dis- appearance of totemism through transference by the totem- clans to their herds, as they began to breed cattle and live on their milk, of the ideas of kinship and sanctity with which they formerly regarded wild animals.

Modern research has made it abundantly clear that primitive religion was no trembling worship of dismal and maleficent deities, and Professor Robertson Smith is fully justified in writing :—

" From the earliest times religion, as distinct from magic or sorcery (always, it must be interpolated, like the notion of evil spirits, demons, jinn, gut, and the like, of later origin than religion itself), addresses itself to kindred and friendly beings, who may indeed be angry with their people for a time, but are always placable save to the enemies of their worshippers, or to renegade members of the community. 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 (one, by-the-bye, entirely opposed to the puritanic conception) of the word, begins."

It cannot be too strongly insisted upon that the ex- planation of the phenomena of primitive society must be of an extremely simple, even commonplace and unpoetic character, to be true. Primitive man was chiefly occupied with getting enough to eat, and his principal pleasure no doubt lay in having enough to eat. Professor Robertson Smith's account, therefore, of the origin of sacrifice is in full accordance not only with the results of research, but with the logic of human nature. Sacrifice is the oldest and most essential of all rites. It is antecedent to every form of reli- gion; and no form of religion attempts to give any account of its institution, the earliest history of which must not there- fore be sought elsewhere than in the phenomena of primitive society. The common meal of the kin-group over which the protecting ancestry presided, but as participants by right

quite as much as guests by honour, was the prototypal sacri- fice. How, it may be objected, could those be taken to participate who were not seen to be present? But are we not ourselves sensible of—

"the touch of a vanish'd hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still,"

though the hand is long since dust, and the last vibrations of the loved voice have ceased to tremble on the verge of space ? Primmval man did not die in his bed; his fate was more often a disappearance full of mystery to his fellows ; it is with reluctance that men even now believe it to be complete, as the still strong faith in ghosts sufficiently proves ; and we may well imagine that our earliest ancestors could draw no sharp dis- tinction between life and death,—nay, even between presence in definitely visible bodily form and that vague, viewless presence which millions still associate, as the highly intellec- tual Greeks did to the close of their history, with the otherwise inexplicable phenomena of Nature.

In considering Professor Robertson Smith's account of the Semitic sacrifices, it must be remembered that in dealing with his Hebrew materials, he adopts Wellhausen's Pentateuchal theory, regarding the law of Deuteronomy as an enactment of the seventh century B.C., and the Levitical law, contained in Leviticus, Exodus, and Numbers, as the outcome of Ezra's reform, made after the exile in 444 B.C. With this theory we are not here concerned, nor, within the limits of a notice like this, is it possible to deal with the author's views upon the history of sacrifice among the Jews, views whose criticism would often turn upon recondite points of Biblical scholarship for the dis- cussion of which these columns afford no sufficient or convenient arena. Stated shortly, they are as follows.

Beginning as commensal banquets, and as such of uni- versal occurrence among the Semites, and especially among the Jews, the sacrificial ritual follows a peculiar course of development, which nevertheless has many points in com- mon with its evolution among non-Semitic races. For the ordinary material of the rite, a kindred totem animal is sub- stituted, the sacrifice of a beast forbidden as food being taken to have a superior efficacy, increased by the conception that communion between the deity and his worshippers is rendered closer by partaking rather of the life, supposed to reside specially in its blood, than of the mere flesh of the victim.

Hence the importance attached to blood-sacrifices as distin- guished from the later offerings (rainha) of fruits and cereals. The blood, however, among the Hebrews at an early period came to be regarded as peculiarly appropriate to the deity,

and was only (in some cases) sprinkled upon the worshippers. So far, the idea of a commensal feast is not lost sight of, but the notion of a tribute to the God makes its appearance with the quasi-consecration to him of the blood—due chiefly perhaps to the fact that men were ceasing to eat raw flesh, and hit upon the plan of reserving the blood, which could not be sub- jected to the influence of fire, as the special portion of the deity—the utilitarian advantages of which device are obvious. As the nomad state gave way to the agricultural, and the authority of chief or King became more real and permanent, the sacrifice assumed more and more the character of a feast provided by the deity with the contributions of the wor- shippers, and offerings of grain and fruit accompanied or even replaced the living victims. In the sin-offering of the Hebrews that dates from the seventh century B.C., a period

of great national distress, the victim is slain "before Jehovah," and none but the priests may eat of the flesh,—a phase of sacrificial specialisation which marks the beginning of the exclusive sacerdotalism of the Jews and of the abolition of local rituals, which finally brought about their destruction, for it put an end to the common religious fervour of the nation, and by intensifying the holiness of Jehovah, widened the gulf between him and his people. Although to these sin-offerings the idea of atonement was peculiarly attached, the notion became inherent in the rite at a much earlier period, when the sacrificial feast was regarded as a renewal by commensal partaking of food of the bond between the deity and his worshippers, which some error of the latter had broken. With the decay of the feeling of kinship with the deity, the ideas of tribute and atonement became prominent. They are particularly so in the Levitical law, and under the influence of the prophets the doctrine of atonement, from the first the distinctive and dominant characteristic of the religion of Israel, attained a development under which all memory of its origin was lost, and the sacri- ficial ritual itself became a mere ceremonial. "I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs or of he-goats," said the Lord by the mouth of the great son of Amoz ; "put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn to do well." It was time this spiritualisation of the doctrine of sacrifice was effected, for Jehovah was no longer the kindred protector of his people, but a justly irritated Lord and King, to be appeased not by the blood of victims but by the repentance of those who despised his ordinances.

The sin-offering in its later significance, but not in its original form, was peculiar to the Hebrew people. In no other sacrificial system did piacular offerings distinctly rise above ritual observances into a means of personal righteousness. Isaiah does not forbid blood-sacrifices, but denounces them, unless accompanied with a contrite heart. But in its latest and most perfect form of holocaust, or whole burnt-offering, where no trace, even of a mere ceremonial nature, of the com- mensal feast is preserved, we find a bond of connection with the fire-sacrifices of the ancient Arabs of the greatest im- portance and interest. Those sacrifices were offered to the sky-deity, the Lord of the waters above the firmament which refreshed the whole land. Lit the Allah of Islam, who, we may remark, may be compared with the T'ien of the Chinese, and perhaps with the Am e or Ama, which means both sky and rain, of the ancient Japanese. The North Semitic sacrifices, on the other hand, were, in early times at least, offered to the Baalim, or local deities of the waters under the earth, which gave natural fertility to particular tracts. There was, there- fore, a prior tendency to monotheism among the Southern Semites, a tendency which the Hebrews carried with them into Canaan ; and in the struggle which ensued between the mono- theistic and polytheistic tendencies thus brought into intimate contact lay, it may be, the whole history of early Israel, and the seeds of that spiritual development which was to culminate in the completely dematerialised God of Christianity.

Such appear to be the main outlines of Professor Robertson Smith's account of the development of the sacrificial idea

among the Hebrews. It rests in great measure upon Well- hausen's theory of the Pentateuchal chronology, for it is clear that if the Levitical and Deuteronomic codes were really the work of Moses, they must have been either the outcome of a long antecedent evolution—of which history affords no in- dependent traces—or a direct message from the God of Israel to his chosen people.