The Idea of God in Early Religions

by F. B. Jevons

'May her spell be wrecked, and upon her
And upon her image may it recoil.'

If, now, such words, and the symbolical actions which are described and implied, were all that these Maklu tablets contained, it might be argued that these counter-spells were pure pieces of magic. The argument would not indeed be conclusive, because though the sentences are in the optative mood, there would be nothing to show on what, or on whom, the speaker relied for the fulfilment of his wish. But as it happens, it is characteristic of these Maklu tablets that they are all addressed to the gods by name, e.g. 'May the great gods remove the spell from my body,' or 'O flaming Fire-god, mighty son of Anu! judge thou my case and grant me a decision! Burn up the sorcerers and sorceress!' It is the gods that are prayed to that the word of the sorceress 'shall turn back to her own mouth; may the gods of might smite her in her magic; may the magic which she has worked be crumbled like salt.'

Thus these Maklu petitions are not counter-spells, as at first sight they may appear; nor are they properly to be treated as being themselves spells for the purpose of counteracting magic. They are in form and in fact prayers to the gods 'to undo the spell' and 'to force back the words' of the witch into her own mouth. But though in the form in which these Maklu petitions are preserved to us, they appear as prayers to the gods, and not as spells, or counter-spells; it is true, and important to notice, that, in some cases, the sentences in the optative mood seem quite detachable from the invocation of the gods. Those sentences may apparently have stood, at one time, quite well by themselves, and apart from any invocation of the gods; that is to say, they may originally have been spells or counter-spells, and only subsequently have been incorporated into prayers addressed to the gods.

Let us then assume that this was the case with some of these Maklu petitions, and let us consider what is implied when we make the assumption. What is implied is that there are some wishes, for instance those embodied in these Maklu petitions, which may be realised by means of spells, or may quite appropriately be preferred to the gods of the community. Such are wishes for the well-being of the individual worshipper and for the defeat of evil-doers who would do or are doing him wrong. When it is recognised that individuals—as well as the community—may come with their plaints before the gods of the community, the functions of those gods become enlarged, for they are extended to include the protection of individual members of the community, as well as the protection of the community, as such; and the functions of the community's gods are thus extended and enlarged, because the members of the community have become, in some degree, individuals conscious of their individuality. The importance, for the science of religion, of this development of self-consciousness is that the consciousness of self must be realised before self can consciously be abandoned, that is before self-will can be consciously surrendered.

As is shown by the Maklu petitions, there may come, in the course of the evolution of religion, a stage in which it is recognised that the individual worshipper may petition the gods for deliverance from the evil which afflicts them. And the petitions used appear in some cases, as we have seen, to have been adopted into the ritual of the gods, word for word as they were found already in existence. If then they were, both in the words in which they were expressed, and in the purpose which they sought to achieve, such that they could be taken up, as they were and without change, into the ritual of the community's gods, it would seem that, even before they were so taken up, they could not have been wholly, if at all, alien to the spirit of religion. What marks them as religious, in the cuneiform inscriptions, is their context: it shows that the power, relied on for the accomplishment of the desires expressed in these petitions, was the power of the gods. Remove the context, and it becomes a matter of ambiguity, whether the wish is supposed, by those who utter it, to depend for its realisation on some power, possessed and exercised by those who express the wish, or whether it is supposed to depend on the good will of some being vaguely conceived, and not addressed by name. But if eventually the wish, and the words in which it was expressed, are taken up into the worship of the gods, there seems a balance of probability that the wish was from the beginning rather in the nature of religion than of magic, rather a petition than a command; though the categories were not at first discriminated, and there was at first no clear vision of the quarter from which fulfilment of the wish was hoped for.

From this point of view, optative sentences, sentences which express the wishes of him who pronounces them, may, in the beginning, well have been ambiguous, because there was, in the minds of those who uttered them, no clear conception of the quarter to which they were addressed: the idea of God may have been vague to the extreme of vagueness. Some of these optative sentences however, were such that the community as a whole could join in them; and they were potentially, and became actually, prayers to the god of the community. The being to whom the community, as a whole, could pray, was thereby displayed as the god of the community. The idea of God became, so far, somewhat less vague, somewhat more sharply defined. Optative sentences, however, in which the community could not join, in which no one but the person who framed them could take part, could not be addressed to the god of the community. The idea of God thus was defined negatively: there were wishes which could not be communicated to him—those which were repugnant to the well-being of the community.

The prayers of savages, that is of the men who are probably still nearest to the circumstances and condition of primitive man, furnish the material from which we can best infer what was the idea of God which was present in their consciousness at those moments when it was most vividly present to them. In view of the infinite number and variety of the forms of religion and religious belief, nothing would seem, a priori, more reasonable than to expect an equally infinite number of various and contradictory ideas. Especially should this seem a reasonable expectation to those who consider the idea of God to be fundamentally, and of its very nature, impossible and untenable. And so long as we look at the attempts which have been made, by means of reflection upon the idea, to body it forth, we have the evidence of all the mythologies to show the infinite variety of monstrosities, which reflection on the idea has been capable of producing. If then we stop there, our a priori expectation of savage and irrational inconsistency is fulfilled to abundance and to loathsome excess. But to stop there is to stop short, and to accept the speculations of the savage when he is reflecting on his experience, instead of pushing forward to discover for ourselves, if we may, what his experience actually was. To discover that, we cannot be content to pause for ever on his reflections. We must push back to the moment of his experience, that is to the moments when he is in the presence of his gods and is addressing them. Those are the moments in which he prays and in which he has no doubt that he is in communion with his gods. It is, then, from his prayers that we must seek to infer what idea he has of the gods to whom he prays.

When, however, we take his prayers as the evidence from which to infer his idea of God, instead of the luxuriant overgrowth of speculative mythology, we find everywhere a bare simplicity, and everywhere substantial identity. If this is contrary to our expectation and at first seems strange, let us bear in mind that the science of morals offers a parallel, in this respect, to the science of religion. At one time it was, unconsciously but none the less decidedly, assumed that savages had a multiplicity of irrational and disgusting customs but no morals. The idea that there could be a substantial identity between the moral rules of different savage races, and even between their moral rules and ours, was an idea that simply was not entertained. Nevertheless, it was a fact, though unnoticed; and now it is a fact which, thanks to Dr Westermarck, is placed beyond dispute. 'When,' he says, 'we examine the moral rules of uncivilised races we find that they in a very large measure resemble those prevalent among nations of culture.' The human spirit throughout the process of its evolution is, in truth, one; the underlying unity which manifests itself throughout the evolution of morality is to be found also in the evolution of religion; and it is from the prayers of man that we can infer it.

The first and fundamental article of belief implied by the offering of prayers is that the being to whom they are offered—however vaguely he may be conceived—is believed to be accessible to man. Man's cry can reach Him. Not only does it reach Him but, it is believed, He will listen to it; and it is of His very nature that He is disposed to listen favourably to it. But, though He will listen, it is only to prayers offered in the right spirit that He will listen. The earliest prayers offered are in all probability those which the community sends up in time of trouble; and they must be offered in the spirit of repentance. It is with the conviction that they have offended that the community first turns to the being worshipped, by whom they hope to be delivered from the evil which is upon them, and by whom they pray to be forgiven.

Next, the offering of prayer implies the belief that the being addressed, not merely understands the prayers offered, but has the power to grant them. As having not only the power, but also the will so to do, he is approached not only with fear but also with hope. No approach would or could be made, if nothing could be hoped from it; and nothing could be hoped, unless the being approached were believed to have the power to grant the prayer. The very fact that approach is made shows that the being is at the moment believed to be one with whom it rests to grant or refuse the supplication, one than whom no other is, in this respect at least, more powerful, quo nihil maius.