theocratic movement should contrast advantageously with an untheocratic time, unfavourable to any such movement, and that the spirit of David's rule should be the very opposite of the preceding administrations. Consequently, the stories of the Judges suffered no theocratic transformation. But transformation and development constitute the very life of Legend, which, if not accommodated to the new current of feeling, is abandoned, and ceases to live; having in its old form no meaning to a new age.

There are unequivocal testimonies which prove that to the theocratic mind the stories of the Judges were utterly dead, and were consequently neglected by it. Two of these testimonies deserve especial mention. The Book of Chronicles (dibhrê hay-yâmîm), which we have been long accustomed to regard as a history written in a strictly sacerdotal spirit, enumerating by name all the priests, Levites, singers and door-keepers of the central sanctuary of Jerusalem, utters not a syllable respecting the entire period of the Judges, but commences the history proper at the death of Saul and accession of David. And another part of the Canon, the Book of Ruth, the object of which is to connect David's genealogy with an idyl, and which expresses the moderate theocratic ideas of the restoration, while the matter of its narrative occupies no determinate chronological position, indicates this very chronological vagueness by the words wa-yehî bîmê shephôt hashshôphetîm, 'it was in the days when the Judges ruled,' i.e. it was once in the olden time (Ruth I. 1). The Judges' time' here denotes an indeterminate period, whose chronology is effaced. That period, in fact, does labour under an indefiniteness which almost baffles the chronologist, and the Biblical Canon itself could only be drawn up by leaving an excessively lax connexion between the three periods the occupation of Canaan by the Hebrews, the monarchy after David, and the untheocratic period lying between the two.

JUDGES' LEgends preserved in tHE NORTH. 289

But the Northern spirit was strongly attracted to the period of the Judges and the stories belonging to it, since it felt itself to be the continuator of the homogeneous spirit of the history of the times before David; and thus literature is indebted to an author belonging to the Northern kingdom for the ground-work of the Book of Judges. Thus then was accomplished the division of the mass of legends of the Hebrews.

As the drawing up of the Canon belongs to an age in which the antagonism between North and South had ceased to exist, the literary products of the North which were still preserved from old times obtained a place in it, though always brought into harmony with the all-pervading theocratic character by occasional interpolated modifications of sentiment.

CHAPTER IX.

PROPHETISM AND THE JAHVEH-RELIGION.

§ 1. THE most brilliant point in the history of Hebrew Religion is distinguished by an ingenious original idea, imported by the Hebrews into the development of religion -a single thought, yet in itself sufficient to secure for that short history a permanent place on the pages of universal history. The idea of JAHVEH is what I allude to.'

To the question, when this idea was born, the sublimity of which exerted so powerful and irresistible an influence over the noblest minds, it can only be answered that we labour in vain if we try to find the exact point of time of its origin. As the Nile, to which those who have been cradled on its banks ascribe a great magic force, cannot be easily traced to its source, so with the idea of Jahveh: we do not see it spring into life, we only see it after its creation, and observe how it works and kindles new spiritual life in the souls of those who acknowledge it. The Mohammedan idea of Allâh is the only one which may perhaps vie with the sublimity of that of Jahveh;

1 With respect to the originality and the specifically Hebrew character of the notion of Jahveh, I consider the most correct assertion yet made to be what Ewald declared in reference to the alleged Phenician Divine name Jah; for when we examine the passages and the data on which Movers' and Bunsen's opposite view is based, their apocryphal nature strikes us at the first glance. This is especially true (to mention one case only) of the passage of Lydus, De mens. IV. 38. 14: Οἱ Χαλδαῖοι τὸν θεὸν ΙΑΩ λέγουσιν . . . τῇ Φοινίκων γλώσσῃ καὶ ΣΑΒΑΩΘ δὲ πολλαχοῦ λέγεται κτλ. (See Bunsen, Egypts Place in Universal History, vol. IV. p. 193). As to the occurrence of the name Jahveh in the Assyrian theology there is not yet sufficient certainty. Eberhard Schrader, who refers to it, imagines the name to be borrowed from the Hebrew (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, p. 4).

THE CONCEPTION OF JAHVEH.

291

yet even that is far from occupying so lofty an eminence of religious thought as the idea of Jahveh.

If, translating the word Jahveh into a modern European language, we say that he is the one who 'Brings to be,' produces and works out Being, we do not in the most distant manner indicate the fulness of meaning which is embodied in that religious technical term. To appreciate it, a sympathising soul must be absorbed in all that the Prophets bring into connexion with the expression Jahveh. Shall I translate all that these inspired men declare of Jahveh? I should have to interpret the entire prophetic literature of the Hebrews, and yet should produce only a pale reflex of all the splendour which envelops Jahveh with glory in the speeches of the Prophets.

I have mentioned the Mohammedan idea of Allâh. Although etymologically identical with Elôhim, that name may afford a parallel to the Hebrew idea of Jahveh, not only in its essence and meaning, but also in its history. It was not unknown as a technical religious expression to the Arabs before the time of Mohammed. To the Preislamite or heathen system of Arabic theology, which had its centre in the sanctuary at Mekka, the Divine name Allâh was familiar. But with what a new meaning did the preaching of the epileptic huckster of Mekka inform it! Through the gospel of the Arabian Prophet Allâh became something quite new. Yet even in this respect Jahveh appears still grander. For, while the Mohammedan idea of God clings close to the etymological signification of the word Allâh, insisting primarily on might and unlimited omnipotence, in the Hebrew Prophets' idea of Jahveh the name becomes a mere accident and accessory, and the true meaning presses with its full weight in a direction quite distinct from the signification and etymology of the word, which was formed in an earlier age. I have already declared my opinion as to the period in which the Divine name Jahveh may have emerged into notice among the people (p. 272), and the impulse which

produced it. We can also demonstrate the existence of the name after that period from many proper names which are compounded with the name Jahveh, either full or abbreviated (into Jâhû or Jâ), that name forming either the first or the second member of the compound. From the fact that such names occur in the Northern as well as in the Southern kingdom, it is also evident that the name Jahveh itself had been formed before the separation.1 On the other hand, we ought not to infer too much from the early occurrence of such names in the canonical books. For, in the first place, not every Jô- at the beginning of proper names is an abbreviation of the Divine name; if our knowledge of the ancient forms of Hebrew speech could be extended, this Jô- would probably in many cases be degraded into the first syllable of a verb, as has been shown by M. Levy to be probably the case in the name Yo'êl (Joel); secondly, it must be remembered that there is a possibility that many of these names received a Jahveistic colouring only from the theocratic writers. The possibility of this is seen in the fact that even the name Yoseph, in which the first syllable has nothing to do with Yahveh, once occurs in the form Yehôsêph (Ps. LXXXI. 6 [5]), and still more clearly in the conversion of the name Hôshêa' into Yehoshua' (Joshua), which the Biblical narrator certainly refers to a very high antiquity (Num. XIII. 16). But at all events, we must not seek the

2

To this may be added that the Moabite Stone speaks of the vessels of Jahveh which king Mesha carried off as plunder from the Northern kingdom (line 18). Kuenen goes too far in finding a connexion between the worship of Jahveh in the Northern kingdom and the figures of bulls (Religion of Israel, I. 74 et seq).

2 In the article Ueber die nabathäischen Inschriften von Petra, Hauran u. s. w., in the Zeitsch. d. D. M. G., 1860, XIV. 410.

3 This must not be placed in the same category with cases in which the insertion of can be explained phonologically (Ewald, Ausführliches Lehrb. der hebr. Spr. § 192. c; Böttcher, I. 286). See the Agadic explanation of this, which I have quoted in the Zeitsch. d. D. M. G., 1872, XXVI. 769.

The changes of name mentioned in 2 Kings XXIII. 34, XXIV. 17, should also be considered here. It is not probable that these changes were ordered by the Kings of Egypt and of Babylon; for in that case the names received in