612 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1887 



of the far ruder and wilder type to which all other evidence 

 points. In the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as 

 they are depicted in Genesis, the lack of a stable home 

 is a mere incident dependent on the supernatural call to 

 sojourn in a land not their own. In every other respect 

 their life is of a type inconceivable in the true nomad, but 

 precisely similar to that of a great householder in the time 

 of David and his successors. They are not chiefs of tribes 

 but heads of families, and their family life is indistinguish 

 able from that of the earlier ages of the Hebrew kingdom, 

 the only golden time which the prophets know. Accord 

 ing to M. Kenan s own chronology, the history of the 

 patriarchs was set down in writing in the same age in 

 which the prophets continually speak of the first days of 

 the kingdom as Israel s ideal past. Are we to believe that 

 in spite of this the ideal of the Pentateuch and the ideal of 

 the prophets are two entirely different types of life ? 



But, again, with the fall of the theory of a non-super 

 natural &quot; golden age &quot; of Semitic antiquity (Preface, p. 10) 

 falls also the theory of a natural monotheistic tendency of 

 the Semitic race, which is the corner-stone of M. Kenan s 

 whole construction of the religious development of Israel. 

 The monotheism of the patriarchs in the Book of Genesis 

 is not natural monotheism, and it does not resemble any 

 thing which has existed in Semitic lands apart from the 

 influence of Judaism and Christianity. It is vain to appeal 

 to Islam or to the movements in Arabia which preceded 

 Islam, for these are demonstrably dependent on the 

 influence of the synagogue and the church. And every 

 thing of monotheistic tendency or of the nature of what is 

 called monolatry which M. Kenan adduces in support of 

 his thesis from the phenomena of the older Semitic religions 

 has it parallel among other races. To compare the Semitic 

 tribal religions with the Pan-Hellenic religion of Homer 

 or with the not less secondary religion of the Vedas is to 

 beg the question. When Semitic society ceased to be 

 purely tribal, Semitic religion showed as little tendency to 



