We are fairly entitled to conclude, then, I believe, that a domestic cult of the manes or lares, the family dead, formed the general substratum of early Hebrew religion, though as in all other cases, owing to its purely personal nature, this universal cult makes but a small figure in the literature of the race, compared with the worship of the greater national gods and goddesses.
Second in the list of worshipful objects in early Israel come the sacred stones, about which I have already said a good deal in the chapter devoted to that interesting subject, but concerning whose special nature in the Semitic field a few more words may here be fitly added.
It is now very generally admitted that stone-worship played an exceedingly large and important part in the primitive Semitic religion. How important a part we may readily gather from many evidences, but from none more than from the fact that even Mohammad himself was unable to exclude from Islam, the most monotheistic of all known religious systems, the holy black stone of the Kaaba at Mecca. In Arabia, says Professor Robertson Smith, the altar or hewn stone is unknown, and in its place we find the rude pillar or the cairn, beside which the sacrificial victim is slain, the blood being poured out over the stone or at its base. But in Israel, the shaped stone seems the more usual mark of the ghost or god. Such a sacred stone, we have already seen, was known to the early Hebrews as a Beth-el, that is to say an “abode of deity,” from the common belief that it was inhabited by a god, ghost, or spirit. The great prevalence of the cult of stones among the Semites, however, is further indicated by the curious circumstance that this word was borrowed by the Greeks and Romans (in a slightly altered form) to denote the stones so supposed to be inhabited by deities. References to such gods abound throughout the Hebrew books, though they are sometimes denounced as idolatrous images, and sometimes covered with a thin veneer of Jehovism by being connected with the national heroes and with the later Jahweh-worship.
In the legend of Jacob’s dream we get a case where the sacred stone is anointed and a promise is made to it of a tenth of the speaker’s substance as an offering. And again, on a later occasion, we learn that Jacob “set up a pillar of stone, and he poured a drink-offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon;” just as, in the great phallic worship of the linga in India (commonly called the linga puja), a cylindrical pillar, rounded at the top, and universally considered as a phallus in its nature, is worshipped by pouring upon it one of five sacred anointing liquids, water, milk, ghee, oil, and wine. Similar rites are offered in many other places to other sacred stones; and in many cases the phallic value assigned to them is clearly shown by the fact that it is usual for sterile women to pray to them for the blessing of children, as Hindu wives pray to Mahadeo, and as so many Hebrew women (to be noted hereafter) are mentioned in our texts as praying to Jahweh.
A brief catalogue of the chief stone-deities alluded to in Hebrew literature may help to enforce the importance of the subject: and it may be noted in passing that the stones are often mentioned in connexion with sacred trees—an association with which we are already familiar. In the neighbourhood of Sichem was an oak—the “oak of the prophets” or “oak of the soothsayers”—by which lay a stone, whose holiness is variously accounted for by describing it as, in one place, an altar of Abraham, in another an altar of Jacob, and in a third a memorial of Joshua. But the fact shows that it was resorted to for sacrifice, and that oracles or responses were sought from it by its votaries. That is to say, it was a sepulchral monument. Near Hebron stood “the oak of Mamre,” and under it a sacred stone, accounted for as an altar of Abraham, to which in David’s time sacrifices were offered. Near Beersheba we find yet a third tree, the tamarisk, said to have been planted by Abraham, and an altar or stone pillar ascribed to Isaac. In the camp at Gilgal were “the twelve stones,” sometimes, apparently, spoken of as “the graven images,” but sometimes explained away as memorials of Jahweh’s help at the passing of the Jordan. Other examples are Ebenezer, “the helpful stone,” and Tobeleth, the “serpent-stone,” as well as the “great stone” to which sacrifices were offered at Bethshemesh, and the other great stone at Gibeon, which was also, no doubt, an early Hebrew deity.
So often is the name of Abraham connected with these stones, indeed, that, as some German scholars have suggested, Abraham himself may perhaps be regarded as a sacred boulder, the rock from which Israel originally; sprang.
In any case, I need hardly say, we must look upon such sacred stones as themselves a further evidence of ancestor-worship in Palestine, on the analogy of all similar stones elsewhere. We may conclude that, as in previously noted instances, they were erected on the graves of deceased chieftains.
And now we come to the third and most difficult division of early Hebrew religion, the cult of the great gods whom the jealous Jahweh himself finally superseded. The personality of these gods is very obscure, partly because of the nature of our materials, which, being derived entirely from Jehovistic sources, have done their best to overshadow the “false gods”; but partly also, I believe, because, in the process of evolving monotheism, a syncretic movement merged almost all their united attributes into Jahweh himself, who thus becomes at last the all-absorbing synthesis of an entire pantheon. Nevertheless, we can point out one or two shadowy references to such greater gods, either by name alone, or by the form under which they were usually worshipped.
The scholarship of the elder generation would no doubt have enumerated first among these gods the familiar names of Baal and Molech. At present, such an enumeration is scarcely possible. We can no longer see in the Baal of the existing Hebrew scriptures a single great god. We must regard the word rather as a common substantive,—“the lord” or “the master,”—descriptive of the relation of each distinct god to the place he inhabited. The Baalim, in other words, seem to have been the local deities or deified chiefs of the Semitic region; doubtless the dead kings or founders of families, as opposed to the lesser gods of each particular household. It is not improbable, therefore, that they were really identified with the sacred stones we have just been considering, and with the wooden ashera. The Baal is usually spoken of indefinitely, without a proper name, much as at Delos men spoke of “the God,” at Athens of “the Goddess,” and now at Padua of “il Santo,”—meaning respectively Apollo, Athene, St. Antony. Melcarth is thus the Baal of Tyre, Astarte the Baalath of Byblos; there was a Baal of Lebanon, of Mount Hermon, of Mount Peor, and so forth. A few specific Baalim have their names preserved for us in the nomenclature of towns; such are Baal-tamar, the lord of the palm-tree; with Baal-gad, Baal-Berith, Baal-meon, and Baal-zephon. But in the Hebrew scriptures, as a rule, every effort has been made to blot out the very memory of these “false gods,” and to represent Jahweh alone as from the earliest period the one true prince and ruler in Israel.
As for Molech, that title merely means “the king”; and it may have been applied to more than one distinct deity. Dr. Robertson Smith does not hesitate to hold that the particular Molech to whom human sacrifices of children were offered by the Jews before the captivity was Jahweh himself; it was to the national god, he believes, that these fiery rites were performed at the Tophet or pyre in the ravine just below the temple.