i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 479 



Edomite name apparently a stock-name (Gen. xxxvi. 38), 

 as the jerboa and another mouse-name j^ (Abulf. 



H.A.-I. 196, 10) are among the Arabs. The same name 

 occurs in Judah. But such isolated facts do not really 

 carry us further. What we want to complete the argu 

 ment is twofold : (i) direct evidence to connect the animal 

 names with animal worship, and (2) proof that men with 

 a common animal stock-name in different tribes or nations 

 recognised their unity of stock. Our most definite in 

 formation as to animal worship in Israel is derived from 

 Ezek. viii. 10, n. There we find seventy of the elders of 

 Israel that is, the heads of houses worshipping in a 

 chamber which had on its walls the figures of all manner 

 of unclean creeping things and quadrupeds, even all the 

 idols of the house of Israel. In some sense, then, there was 

 a national worship, not a foreign innovation but appar 

 ently an old superstition, on which the people had fallen 

 back, because, as they said, Jehovah would not attend to 

 them. It appears also that, though the prophet in vision 

 saw the seventy elders together, the actual practice was 

 that each elder had his own chamber of imagery (ver. 12). 

 We have here in short an account of gentile or family 

 idolatry, in which the head of each house acted as priest. 

 And the family images which are the object of the cult 

 are those of unclean reptiles and quadrupeds (norm tool 

 j&amp;gt;p&). The last point is important. The word ppm is in 

 the Levitical law the technical term for a creature that 

 must not be used as food. That such prohibitions are 

 associated with the totem system of animal worship is 

 well known. The totem is not eaten by men of its stock, 

 or else is eaten sacramental] y on special occasions, while 

 conversely to eat the totem of an enemy is a laudable 

 exploit. Thus in the fact that the animals worshipped 

 were unclean in the Levitical sense we gain an additional 

 argument that the worship was of the totem type. And 

 finally, to clinch the whole matter, we find that among the 



