696 ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



coming flood, which came as foretold and &quot; swept away 

 all living creatures; Manu alone was left.&quot; The story of 

 Moses birth is paralleled by an Assyrian story, which says 

 &quot; I am Sargina the great King . . . my mother ... in 

 a secret place she brought me forth: she placed me in an 

 ark of bulrushes . . . she threw me into the river . . .&quot; etc. 

 Similarly with the calendar and its entailed observances. 

 &quot; The Assyrian months were lunar . . . the seventh, four 

 teenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days, being the 

 sabbaths. On these sabbath days, extra work and even 

 missions of mercy were forbidden . . . The enactments were 

 similar in character to those of the Jewish code.&quot; 



So again is it with their Theology. Under the common 

 title Elokim,v?eYQ comprehended distinguished living persons, 

 ordinary ghosts, superior ghosts or gods. That is to say, with 

 the Hebrews as with the Egyptians and numerous other 

 peoples, a god simply meant a powerful being, existing 

 visibly or invisibly. As the Egyptian for god, Nutar, was 

 variously used to indicate strength ; so was II or El among 

 the Hebrews, who applied it to heroes and also &quot; to the gods 

 of the gentiles.&quot; Out of these conceptions grew up, as in 

 other cases, the propitiation or worship of various super 

 natural beings a polytheism. Abraham was a demi-god to 

 whom prayers were addressed. &quot; They sacrificed unto devils, 

 not to God ; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that 

 came newly up, whom your fathers feared not&quot; (Deut. xxxii, 

 17). That the belief in other gods than Jahveh long sur 

 vived, is shown by Solomon s sacrifices to them, as well as by 

 the denunciations of the prophets. Moreover, -even after 

 Jahveh had become the acknowledged great-god, the general 

 conception remained essentially polytheistic. Eor just as iu 

 the Iliad (bk. v, 1000-1120) the gods and goddesses are 

 represented as fighting with sword and lance the battles oi 

 the mortals whose causes they espoused ; so the angels and 

 archangels of the Hebrew pantheon are said to fight in 

 Heaven when the peoples they respectively patronize fighl 



