Sacrificial rites were never irrational, however difficult it may be to perceive their object, and from a survey of comparative custom one can sometimes picture the scenes by which they were accompanied. It is only by such means that one can conjecturally explain the discovery near the temple-area at Gezer of animal bones, sliced, hacked, and broken into fragments, with no signs of having been cooked. One is tempted to refer to a rite practised by the Arabs of the Sinaitic desert towards the close of the fourth century A.D. The old ascete, Nilus, describes a solemn procession of chanting worshippers who move around an altar of rude stones upon which is bound a camel. The beast is stabbed, and the leader drinks of the gushing blood. At once the assembly hack the victim to pieces, devouring it raw until the whole is consumed—the entire ceremony begins with the rise of the morning star (in whose honour it was performed) and ends with the rising sun. Was some rite of this kind practised in Palestine? It must be a matter for conjecture; the least that can be said is that the scene is not too barbaric for our land and period.
Broken Offerings, e.g. figurines, models, and other articles, when found deposited in tombs, have been explained in the light of comparative custom as destroyed or 'killed' to the end that their 'soul' may accompany that of the deceased. But other ideas are evidently involved when the area of the sanctuary at Serabit proved to be covered with a mass of pottery, plaques, bracelets, wands, sistra, etc., so fragmentary that no single specimen could be pieced together. At Gezer, also, although the plaques of the goddess were fairly tough, all had been broken, and apparently with intention. We may compare the modern custom of breaking pottery in fulfilment of a vow, an interesting illustration of which was furnished by the late Professor Curtiss from Bludan on the road from Zebedany to Damascus. At a spot, familiarly known as the 'mother of pieces,' is a rock-platform with cave, shrine, sacred grove and hereditary ministers. Hither come the women to break a jar when they have gained their one wish, and it is singular to observe that the traditions which are attached to the custom include the belief that a girl, the patroness of the shrine, lies buried there. The likeness to the suggested rites at Gezer will be noticed (p. [37]). But the stories do not elucidate the peculiar treatment of the offerings, and the usage finds its most probable explanation in the persuasion that things once dedicated or put to a sacred use are 'holy,' and cannot be used for ordinary purposes. We touch upon a fundamental institution embodying a series of apparently paradoxical ideas—the universal 'tabu.'
'Holy' and 'Unclean.'—The terms Holy or Sacred (comp. the Latin sacer) are not to be understood in the ethical or moral sense. A holy thing is one which has been set aside, dedicated, or restricted; it is charged with supernatural influence which is contagious; everything that comes in contact with it also becomes holy. In some cases it is provided that this inconvenient sanctity may be purged; in others, the thing has to be destroyed. When the Talmud says that a Canonical Book of the Old Testament 'defiles' the hand, it means that the very sanctity of the book demands that the hand should be ceremonially purified or cleansed before touching anything else. 'Holy and unclean things,' to quote Robertson Smith, '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.'
Sacred Animals, in the light of the above, are those associated with cults which might be regarded as illegitimate. An example is afforded by the pig which enters into the rites and myths of Adonis, Attis, Ninib, and Osiris. In a cavern south of the monoliths of Gezer a number of pig-bones lay underneath a shaft which led to the cup-marked surface above (p. [16]); the circumstances recall the Thesmophoria, the caves and vaults in the Greek area connected with Demeter and Proserpine, and the use of the pig in mystic rites of chthonic and agricultural deities. In Palestine and Syria the animal was used in certain exceptional sacrifices which were recognised as idolatrous (Isaiah lxv. 4; lxvi. 17), and it was an open question whether it was really polluted or holy. If, as the excavations suggest, the sacrifice of the swine dates from the earliest inhabitants of Gezer, with whom it was also a domestic animal, it is interesting to observe the persistence of its character as a proper sacrificial animal from pre-Semitic times by the side of the apparently contradictory belief that it was also unclean.
The camel bones at Tell es-Sāfy, also, are of interest since Robertson Smith has shown that the animal (which became 'unclean' to the Israelites), though used by the Arabs for food and sacrifice, was associated with ideas of sanctity, and its flesh was forbidden to converts to Christianity. The model of a bronze cobra found in a temple-enclosure (p. [15]) might be conjecturally explained, but it will suffice to remember that serpents were and still are connected with spirits both benevolent and malevolent. The recurrence of models of the animal-world, the numerous representations upon seals of deer, gazelles, etc. (animals connected with Astarte), or the predilection for the lion upon objects discovered at Megiddo need not have any specific meaning for the religious ideas. On the other hand, the animal-like attributes which appear upon some plaques of the mother-goddess are scarcely meaningless. There is no ground for the assumption that Palestine was without the animal-deities and the deities with special sacred animals, which have left their traces in the surrounding lands, and it would be misleading to suppose that the myths and legends which have grown up around these features account for their origin. The conviction that man was made in the likeness of the gods (who are therefore anthropomorphic) implies certain conceptions of their nature, the development of which belongs to the history of religion, and in turning next to the spirit-world of Ancient Palestine it is necessary that we should be prepared to appreciate a mental outlook profoundly different from our own.
CHAPTER V
THE WORLD OF SPIRITS
Awe.—A fundamental sense of awe was felt in the presence of anything unusual or contrary to experience, and man's instinctive philosophy shaped his ideas from the suggestions of daily life, accounting for all cases of causation by assimilating them to the intentional acts of voluntary agents like himself. There was no doubt of the existence and influence of surrounding unseen powers; they must be cajoled, appeased, bribed and rewarded. Some were inevitably malevolent; with others man could enter into relations which were mutually beneficial. Even at the present day there is no clear distinction between what we should call the natural and the supernatural; a demon or a saint can appear in human or animal form; and the marvel or miracle is that which happens to lie outside the intellectual horizon of the individual. The modern phenomena can be traced back through early sources and appear now in grosser and now in more elevated forms; even the presence of any advanced material culture, or of more spiritual conceptions of the Godhead does not annihilate that lower supernaturalism which flourishes uncontrolled among more rudimentary races. It would be unreasonable to suppose that the religion of our period was more free from imprecision than that of more progressive peoples: the whole routine of life brought the individual into constant contact with unseen agencies, and the world of spirits involved a medley of beliefs, more embarrassing to the modern inquirer who seeks to systematise them, than to the Oriental mind which has always been able and willing to accept the incredible and the contradictory.