A Comparative View of Religions

by Johannes Henricus Scholten

THE RELIGION OF THE SEMITES.

I. THE PHŒNICIANS, SYRIANS, BABYLONIANS, CARTHAGINIANS, AND ARABIANS.

In the Semitic races the religious spirit rose above nature-worship in the effort to separate God from nature, and to elevate him above nature as Lord, Baal (plural Baalim, either from the different places where he was worshiped, or the various names under which he was worshiped), Bel, El, Adon (Adonis). Thus Bel among the Babylonians, Baal among the Ammonites and Moabites, was the god of light, the lord of heaven, the creator of mankind, who had his throne above the clouds and was invoked on mountains.[7] Also the title Molech and Baal Molech to designate the Supreme Being among the ancient Phoenicians and Carthaginians, and the nations nearest related to Israel, the Moabites and Ammonites, as well as the derived names Milcom (Kamos) [Chemosh, Eng. ver.], among the Ammonites, and Melkartht at Tyre and Carthage, indicate, like Baal, an original effort to conceive God as the ruler of nature. Agreeing with this conception of the Deity, there is manifest, as well in the worship of Baal as of Molech and the female Astarte (Melecheth)[8] [Ashtaroth, Eng. ver.], worshiped with him, partly in the abstinence from marriage, partly in the human sacrifice, especially the sacrifice of the first-born, the aim, through abnegation of the life of sense, and through the sacrifice, even though unnatural, of what is dearest to man, to appease a divinity who as lord and governor rules and subjects to himself the power of nature and every propensity of sense.[9]

In spite of the effort to elevate the Deity as Lord and King above nature, most of the Semitic nations gradually sank back into the old nature-worship, and, uniting with the worship of the highest God, Baal and Bel, that of a female divinity under the names of Baaltis, Beltis, Aschera, Mylitta, they made religion to consist in the sacrifice of chastity to the will of the Deity, as the fruitful, productive power of nature, and thus fell into gross immorality.[10]

Religion appears in another form among the Semites in the worship of the stars among the Babylonians and ancient Arabians. This astrolatry, originally a kind of fetichism, became nature-worship, and gradually rose to the worship of the intelligence manifested to our contemplation in the movement of the heavenly luminaries. Astrology arose, and religion no longer expressed itself in passive acquiescence, but was united with the effort to guide the life by the knowledge to be drawn, as men imagined, from the motion of the stars.

ISRAELITISH RELIGION.

a. Its origin. The patriarchal religion. Mosaism. Prophetism.

While most of the Semitic nations, in opposition to the effort to elevate God above nature as lord and governor, returned to the old nature-religion with its grossly sensual worship of the divine, and others got no farther than to the conception of a deity, who, like a consuming fire, stood opposed to nature, and was to be appeased and propitiated by human sacrifices, there was developed among the Israelitish people, gradually and in constantly higher measure, in connection with a higher moral and religious disposition, the worship of God as a being who, though distinct from nature, is yet not opposed to it, and thus no longer demands human sacrifices, but obedience and moral consecration.

The common origin of the religion of the Israelites and that of their Semitic relations, though hardly evident even in the oldest monuments of the Hebrew literature, appears from the following facts and particulars: firstly, the composition of Israelitish names not only with El, but also with Baal, such as Jerubbaal (adversary of Baal), (Gideon),[11] Esbaal,[12] Meribbaal,[13] names which afterwards, on account of the aversion which the ever-increasing distance in religion between the Israelitish nation and the nations related to it must, from the nature of the case, have inspired against the name of Baal, are changed into Jerubboseth,[14] Isboseth,[15] and Mephiboseth[16], as also the interchanging of El and Baal,[17] of Baal-jada[18] and Eljada,[19] seem to point to an ancient period when the name Baal (Lord) was used, like El, Elohim, El Eljon, El Schaddai, Adonai, even among the Israelites, to designate the Supreme Being. Secondly, the God of Abraham (Elohim), although he desires no human sacrifices, nevertheless praises the willingness of the father to offer up his first-born, and sees in that the highest proof of devotedness and obedience.[20] Thirdly, circumcision, already before Moses[21] the bloody symbol of consecration to God,[22] and also the right of Jahveh to the first-born, and the necessity of ransoming them from him,[23] imply an earlier conception of the deity as a being, who, although on a higher development of the religion he is not indeed any longer thought to desire human sacrifice, nevertheless has a right to such a sacrifice, and thus demands indemnity for remitting it. Fourthly, the later conception, of Jahveh as a destroying fire, and the way in which the God of Israel is conceived in connection with fire, and as manifesting himself in fire,[24] betray, even in the midst of a more advanced religious development, an original relationship with the like conceptions of the other Semites. Fifthly, even in the orthodox Jahveh-worship, some symbols, as the twelve oxen in the porch of the temple,[25] the horns of the altar for burnt-offerings,[26] perhaps also the in part oxlike form of the cherubim,[27] point to an earlier worship of the deity under the form of an ox, the symbol of the highest might, especially among the Semitic races.[28]

In confirmation of the supposition thus suggested of a community of origin in the religion of the Israelites and in that of the nations related to them, there is also to be remarked, firstly, the sympathy always felt among the people of Israel for the worship of Baal and Molech, in face of the strongest opposition on the part of the prophets;[29] secondly, the statement of Amos,[30] that even in the wilderness the Israelites worshiped Molech; thirdly, the fact that in the time of the Judges, Jephthah offered his daughter to Jahveh,[31] and still later the feeling, not driven out even by Mosaism, that the wrath of Jahveh must be appeased by human blood,[32] a necessity which David recognizes;[33] fourthly, the ancient custom in Israel, as in the nations related to them, of worshiping the deity on mountains and heights,[34] against which the priestly legislation strove in the interest of the pure worship of Jahveh;[35] fifthly, the heterodox worship of Jahveh in the kingdom of the ten tribes under the form of a calf.[36]