i8 7 o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 197 



But the justice of Kuenen s views may be tested on 

 other ground than these points of detail. The great 

 question is, after all, to explain the origin in Israel of the 

 spiritual conceptions of the prophets. Let us briefly 

 sketch Kuenen s theory on this point. 



Moses, as we have already seen, is not conceived as the 

 upholder of a spiritual Jahvism. The children of Israel, 

 in the times of Egyptian servitude, were, according to 

 Kuenen, polytheists of no high type. Of their many gods 

 one was an object of special veneration, a consuming fire- 

 god, nearly allied to the Canaanitish Moloch, who bore 

 the name of El Shaddai the &quot; mighty &quot; or &quot; violent god.&quot; 

 Moses, a man of strong religious and national spirit, 

 shared the faith of his brethren in an intenser form. The 

 contest between Israel and Egypt seemed to him a war 

 between the native gods of the oppressors and the majestic 

 Fire God of his own people. He felt himself entrusted by 

 El Shaddai with a mission to deliver his people. Associ 

 ated with this mission was the introduction of the name 

 Jahveh, by which Moses sought to express a new and 

 higher conception of the God, probably his life-going 

 power. The course of history could not fail to strengthen 

 the religious convictions of the leader of Israel. The God 

 who had delivered Israel was too great a God to suffer any 

 rival. Let Israel worship Him, and Him alone ! Thus 

 viewed, the monotheism of Moses is neither absolute nor 

 spiritual. Yet one important step towards the separation 

 between God and nature Moses must be conceived as 

 having taken. He brought Jahvism into union with 

 moral ideas. 



;&amp;lt; The enduring merit of Moses was, not that he intro 

 duced into Israel certain religious forms and services, but 

 that he established among his people a moral worship of 

 Jahveh. I will be to you a God, and ye shall be to me a 

 people : so speaks Jahveh, by the mouth of Moses, to 

 the tribes of Israel. The union between Jahveh and his 

 folk sealed by the deliverance from bondage, is secured 



