2 66 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The weight of interest will center 

 upon Colonel Mallery's demonstration 

 that the Israelites, at the period under 

 examination, were polytheists. The 

 interest is heightened by the appear- 

 ance, in the "Jewish Quarterly Re- 

 view" (London) for October, 1889, of 

 a learned and exhaustive article by 

 the Rev. Prof. A. H. Sayce, under the 

 title " Polytheism in Primitive Israel," 

 which comes to the same conclusion. 

 Most of the points mentioned by Colonel 

 Mallery in this regard are also brought 

 out by Prof. Sayce, of course independ- 

 ently and with much greater elabora- 

 tion. Some of his more striking pas- 

 pages may be quoted. He speaks of " the 

 Israelites who first ventured to use the 

 plural Elohim of their national God," 

 and adds : " The fact that the Israelites 

 never forgot that it [Elohim] was a plu- 

 ral term, that up to tlie last they often 

 employed it in a plural sense, proves 

 that the earliest users of it were wor 

 shipers of many deities. . . . We may 

 gather from the history of Micah, in 

 Judges xviii, that the worship of the 

 teraphim was the necessary accompani- 

 ment of the tribal worship of Yahveh, 

 as represented by a 'carved image,' and 

 in the case of the tribe of Dan, at all 

 events, it lasted ' until the day of the 

 captivity.' . . . Yahveh was not yet 

 conceived of as the sole god. ... It 

 was in Judah that the older cult first 

 died out of the popular belief. After 

 the division of the kingdom, Judah with 

 its central capital at Jerusalem formed 

 a compact and organized community, 

 in which the earlier tribal distinctions 

 which had marked it off from Simeon, 

 or Dan and Benjamin, were soon oblit- 

 erated. The dynasty of David welded 

 the community together, and the Temple 

 of Solomon became more and more the 

 center of the common faith. The wor- 

 ship that was carried on in it, the belief 

 of which it was the outward expression, 

 the religious teaching and influence 

 which emanated from it, gradually af- 

 fected the ideas and convictions of the 



Jewish people. A time came at length 

 when Josiah could venture to destroy 

 the ' high places ' where the old local 

 cults had been carried on for unnum- 

 bered generations, and order his subjects 

 to ' worship before the altar ' at Jerusa- 

 lem alone." Prof. Sayce also denies that 

 the Semites were fundamentally mono- 

 theistic. 



This publication by one of the most 

 learned of living Oriental scholars, who 

 is a professor in the University of Ox- 

 ford and a clergyman of the Church of 

 England, is important as corroborating 

 the statements of fact from which Colo- 

 nel Mallery has drawn anthropologic 

 lessons. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Scientific Papers of Asa Grav. Selected 

 by Charles Sprague Sargent. Boston 

 and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

 2 vols. Pp. 397 and 503. Price, $3 each. 



The literary value of the papers contained 

 in these volumes is equal to their scientific 

 value, and that is well understood. Botani- 

 cal criticism and description are not usually 

 classed among literary subjects, but Prof. 

 Gray made them one ; and a large proportion 

 of what he has written in that field is aestheti- 

 cally enjoyable. The period of his scientific 

 writing lasted fifty-three years from 1834 

 to 1887 and during that time he made a re- 

 markable number and variety of contribu- 

 tions, all stamped with evidence of thorough- 

 ness and the complete familiarity with his 

 subject that seem to have been habitual 

 with him. His writings are grouped by Mr. 

 Sargent in four divisions. The first in im- 

 portance contains his contributions to de- 

 scriptive botany, relating chiefly to the flora 

 of North America ; (i and although," says the 

 editor, " it did not fall to his lot . . . to elab- 

 orate any one of the great families of plants, 

 the extent and character of his contributions 

 to systematic botany will place his name 

 among those of the masters of the science." 

 Next in importance are his educational works, 

 manuals or text-books, the influence of which 

 on the development of botanical knowledge 

 in this country has been great. The third 



