i88 7 ] KENAN S &quot; HISTOIRE D ISRAEL &quot; 615 



mischievous things which had to be eliminated in the 

 future progress of religion. Moreover, the gentle temper 

 of the primitive nomad was changed to harshness and 

 obstinacy by the yoke of oppression ; and the faith in the 

 special care of Jahve for Israel, which was developed (not 

 without the aid of pious fraud) by the experiences of the 

 wilderness, strengthened national feeling at the expense of 

 the sublime and true idea of primitive Elohism. &quot; The 

 national idea desired a God who thought only of the 

 nation, and who in the interests of the nation was cruel, 

 unjust, an enemy of the human race.&quot; The &quot; adoption 

 of Jahve seems to have been consummated at the Sinaitic 

 epoch,&quot; but what actually happened at Sinai is obscure. 

 Sinai is a mountain of terror, whose storms were conceived 

 as awful theophanies. In some such storm the Israelites 

 believed that Jahve appeared to them, and they left the 

 sacred mountain full of terror and persuaded that a very 

 powerful deity dwelt in its summits. It is scarcely 

 probable that the theophany gave occasion to Moses to 

 put forth any moral precepts. In truth the role of Moses 

 seems to have been &quot; rather that of a chief like Abd-el- 

 Kader than of a prophet like Mahomet.&quot; 



All the characteristic features in this outline of the 

 origins of Israel are more or less arbitrary. There is 

 absolutely no evidence that the Babylonian elements in 

 the traditions of Genesis reached the Hebrews through 

 the Aramaeans of Harran rather than through the Phoeni 

 cians ; it is certain that they show no sign of having been 

 the property of a nomadic race, and there is no probability 

 that they all date from the same period. M. Renan does 

 not regard the first twelve chapters of Genesis as a literary 

 unity : on this point he accepts the analysis of modern 

 criticism. But on purely subjective grounds he refuses to 

 believe that one of the two main documents is of the same 

 origin with the Levitical legislation, both forming part of 

 the document which is denoted by the symbol A. He 

 sees that the legislation of A must be postexilic, and he 



