is;;] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 393 



tribes. &quot; But while among the latter the naive notions 

 of a child-like age resolved themselves into the materialistic 

 form presented by Philo, in Israel, through the agency of 

 the spirit of prophecy, the notion of a physical breath of 

 God was transformed into that of a spiritual God &quot; and 

 Creator. &quot; This confirms what appears in all comparison 

 of Old Testament religion with the views of kindred 

 nations. The elements of a natural religion once common 

 to all Semitics have passed into the religion of revelation, 

 but in this fusion have undergone an inner purification.&quot; 

 While natural religion ends in self - dissolution, the Old 

 Testament shows us &quot; the sway of a new principle, the 

 Spirit of God raising men above the mythological process, 

 the spirit of revelation.&quot; These sentences serve to indi 

 cate the religious standpoint of the volume. A very 

 learned and thorough investigation of the origin of law 

 as the name of a deity, demonstrates conclusively that 

 law is a mere reproduction of the tetragrammaton, not 

 the name of a Canaanite or other heathen god, thus wholly 

 demolishing the argument maintained by Lenormant, 

 and in this country by Colenso, to show that the Israelites 

 borrowed the name Jahve from heathenism. Other 

 arguments for a non-Hebrew origin of the name are also 

 discussed and found wanting. 



The essay on the symbolism of the serpent among the 

 Semites, especially in the Old Testament, has for its main 

 object to prove that it is needless to assume any influence 

 of Parsism, in which the serpent is connected with 

 Ahriman, in order to explain the story of the fall. The 

 character of cunning or intelligence, it is argued, is ascribed 

 to the serpent in the religious symbolism of all the Semites, 

 so far as our present knowledge extends. That know 

 ledge, however, as appears from the examination to 

 which our author successively subjects the Assyrian, the 

 Phoenician, and the Arabian data, is very imperfect, and 

 a good deal that has been put forward by Movers and 

 others must be rejected. That the Kadmos of Greek 



