86 SEMITIC LANGUAGE 



dr. 320 years B.C.; and the ancient Semites had no word for it 

 whatever. When, then, we find the prophets of the Old Testament 

 ringing out in the face of royal murderers, venal judges, false pro- 

 phets, a worldly priesthood, their stern and uncompromising de- 

 nunciations, and threatening the nation's doom, and prefacing these 

 prophecies with a "Thus saith Yahwe," we must ask ourselves in the 

 face of this fact what this "thus saith Yahwe" means. Now many 

 a Christian theologian has laid particular emphasis upon passages 

 so prefaced, and claimed for them a special degree of revelation, but 

 many of these phrases and ideas were formed in the days when men 

 were prattling as children, nearer to savagery than civilization, when 

 there was no science, no philosophy, no psychology, no pathology, 

 when a man's brains were supposed to be in his heart and his tender- 

 est emotions in his bowels, when a sterile octogenarian or a barren 

 concubine could bring the generous stork to the home by chewing 

 a mouthful of mandragoras root or bestowing the proper rites upon 

 the aban aladi, or birthstone. It was an age when pain was the poison 

 of demons, or the punishment of the gods, when an eclipse was an 

 almighty frown. 



The other fact to which I have alluded is that there was no thought 

 of Secondary Causation. That is an idea that was introduced by the 

 Greeks. With the Semites all that happened was the direct result of 

 the divine interference. Even in Jesus' day he had to combat the 

 idea when he asked the Jews whether they thought that they upon 

 whom the tower of Siloam fell were more wicked than others. This is 

 the theory upon which the pragmatically constructed Book of Judges 

 rests. All the calamities which befell the tribes were the direct result 

 of departure from Yahwe; every deliverance from foes the reward of 

 return to him. This is the theory, too, which called forth that great 

 religious protest from the author of the book of Job. Conscious of his 

 own integrity, Job became the arch-heretic of his day, bade defiance to 

 all the teaching of the schools, and, though he had no explanation 

 for the mystery of pain, he, nevertheless, became a pioneer of truth, 

 cleared the way for better thought of God, and wrote himself immor- 

 tal. The pure in heart see God. 



I have already said enough to indicate the way in which the 

 study of Semitics is contributing to clear the way for a new and larger 

 idea of deity and his relations to man and the universe. Biblical as 

 well as Semitic study is beginning to see that the deity of the Bible 

 is a Semitic deity and as such insufficient. And, as every religion 

 must be measured by its thought of God, it is clear that the work 

 that Semitics is performing in relation to religion is of fundamental 

 importance. A circumscribed, or limited God, or a God whose nature is 

 conceived of in terms of our own, cannot have a religion large enough 

 for humanity, any more than a bad God can have a good religion. 



