338 



NATURE 



[Feb. 



O' 



1890 



Prof. Robertson Smith, "those who had no grasp of 

 spiritual principles, and knew the religion of Jehovah 

 only as an affair of inherited usage, were not conscious 

 of any great difference between themselves and their 

 heathen neighbours, and fell into Canaanite and other 

 foreign practices with the greatest facility. . . . Tradi- 

 tional religion is handed down from father to child, and 

 therefore is in great measure an affair of race. Nations 

 sprung from a common stock will have a common inherit- 

 ance of traditional belief and usage in things sacred as 

 well as profane, and thus the evidence that the Hebrews 

 and their neighbours had a large common stock of 

 religious tradition falls in with the evidence which we 

 have from other sources, that in point of race the people 

 of Israel were nearly akin to the heathen nations of 

 Syria and Arabia." Prof. Robertson Smith, in common 

 with the general opinions of the best scholars, is inclined 

 to place the original home of the Semitic race in the 

 Arabian peninsula, and it is pretty certain that, from time 

 immemorial, the tract of land bounded by the Medi- 

 terranean on the west, Persia on the east, the Armenian 

 mountains on the north, and the Indian Ocean on the 

 south, was peopled by tribes who spoke Semitic dialects. 

 It must not be forgotten that the so-called Babylonians 

 had their territory invaded by a horde of warlike but 

 intelligent men from the east who eventually succeeded 

 in imposing upon them the cuneiform writing. After all 

 the nonsense which has been talked during the last few 

 years about the so-called " Hittites " being identical with 

 the Hittites of the Bible, it is refreshing to find a scholar 

 like Prof. Robertson Smith stating plainly that the " Hit- 

 tites of the Bible . . . were a branch of the Canaanite 

 stock, and that the utmost concession that can be made 

 to modern theories on this subject is that they may for a 

 time have been dominated by a non-Semitic aristocracy." 

 It is as well to say at once that no successful attempt has 

 yet been made to decipher the " Hittite " inscriptions, and 

 none can be made until a bilingual inscription has been 

 found. The "boss" of Tarkondemos is, no doubt, a 

 forgery ; but, even granting that it is not, no one can 

 certainly say what or how many of the signs in the centre 

 of the " boss " represent one of the words in cuneiform 

 around it. 



Prof. R. Smith is quite right not to place too much 

 trust in the traditions of the Babylonian religion as made 

 known to us by the cuneiform inscriptions. It is true 

 that these are the oldest Semitic inscriptions known to 

 us, but it is to be remembered that the writing itself and 

 many of the religious myths and traditions known to the 

 Babylonians were either forced upon them by, or bor- 

 rowed from, their conquerors from the east. Just as 

 the Arabic language is the right point to start from in 

 the study of comparative Semitic mythology, so the 

 traditions of the old, heathen inhabitants of Arabia are 

 those which must form the ground-work of any compara- 

 tive inquiry into the traditions of Semitic religion gener- 

 ally. The remainder of the first lecture is occupied with 

 general statements of an important nature, which no 

 reviewer could do justice to in an ordinary review. Lecture 

 II. describes the primitive Semitic society and its religion ; 

 the oldest Semitic communities and their gods ; the 

 fatherhood of the gods, and the kinship of gods and men ; 

 monarchy and monotheism, &c. Lecture III. discusses 



the gods, jinn,itotems, and Semitic totemism ; Lecture IV.,^ 

 holiness, taboo, the sanctuary, and the jealousy of the 

 god ; Lecture V., sanctuaries, holy waters, trees, caves, 

 and stones ; Lecture VI., sacrifice in all its various forms ; 

 Lecture VII., first-fruits, tithes, and sacrificial meals ; 

 Lecture VIII., the original significance of animal sacrifice ; 

 Lecture IX., the sacrificial elBcacy of animal sacrifice, the 

 blood covenant, &c. ; Lecture X., the development of 

 sacrificial ritual and fire sacrifices ; Lecture XL, the 

 special ideas involved in piacular sacrifices. A series of 

 "additional notes" (A— N) and a good index complete 

 the volume. Prof Robertson Smith's arguments are 

 sound, and they are carefully reasoned out ; but as new 

 material comes to hand some of the details may require 

 alteration. The work deserves the careful study of all 

 scholars who are anxious to meet with a straightforward, 

 unbiassed statement upon the difficult subject of ancient 

 Semitic religion ; where it has been necessary to combat 

 opposite opinions, the discussion is carried on with fairness 

 to the scholars concerned, and consequently with credit to 

 the author of these lectures. The works of Kuenen, Well- 

 hausen, and Goldziher, repel, rather than attract, many 

 readers ; we do not imagine that any honest seeker after 

 truth, be he theologian or lay reader, will turn away from 

 the perusal of these lectures, having once begun to read 

 them. It is to be hoped that Bible commentators will at 

 once embody in their works the explanations of the large 

 number of Scriptural passages which have, up to the 

 present, been simply not to be understood. It is also to 

 be hoped that Prof. R. Smith will soon be enabled to give 

 to the world the concluding part of his valuable work, the 

 publication of which is a sign of the times in JLngland. 



ALGEBRA. 

 Algebra: an Elementary Text -book for the Higher 

 Classes of Secondary Schools and for Colleges. By 

 G. Chrystal, M.A. Part 11. (Edinburgh : Adam and 

 Charles Black, 1889.) 



THE work before us is the realization of the hope with 

 which we concluded our notice of the first part 

 (Nature, vol. xxxiv. p. 614). 



The author apologizes for the delay in its appearance. 

 The occupation of a busy life would be to most men 

 a sufficient raison d'etre for such delay, and to this has 

 been added a further source of delay arising from circum- 

 stances of a private character. Students, however, have 

 gained hereby, for the work has grown in the progress of 

 its construction. It has not, "as some one prophesied, 

 reached ten volumes," for this is the concluding volume ; 

 but it has, we are told, cost the writer infinitely more 

 trouble than he expected. The first instalment extended 

 to 542 pages ; this one, with answers and index of names 

 (which we are glad to have), is comprised in 588 pages. 

 The prominent features of the exposition as to its 

 " singular ability and freshness of treatment " are as 

 conspicuous here as in Part I., and we need not repeat 

 the praise which we accorded to it (/.<:.). 



Let us hearken to Prof Chrystal, for he always writes 

 to the point : — 



"The main object of Part II. is to deal as thoroughly 

 as possible with those parts of algebra which form, to 



