Yin THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 299 



of the heathen, who were thought to have definite 

 quasi-corporeal forms and to be as much real 

 entities as any other Elohim. 1 The difference 

 which was supposed to exist between the different 

 Elohim was one of degree, not one of kind. 

 Elohim was, in logical terminology, the genus of 

 which ghosts, Chemosh, Dagon, Baal, and Jahveh 

 were species. The Israelite believed Jahveh to be 

 immeasurably superior to all other kinds of 

 Elohim. The inscription on the Moabite stone 

 shows that King Mesa held Chemosh to be, as 

 unquestionably, the superior of Jahveh. But if 

 Jahveh was thus supposed to differ only in degree 

 from the undoubtedly zoomorphic or anthropo- 

 morphic " gods of the nations/' why is it to be 

 assumed that he also was not thought of as hav- 

 ing a human shape ? It is possible for those who 

 forget that the time of the great prophetic 

 writers is at least as remote from that of Saul as 

 our day is from that of Queen Elizabeth, to insist 

 upon interpreting the gross notions current in the 

 earlier age and among the mass of the people by 

 the refined conceptions promulgated by a few 

 select spirits centuries later. But if we take the 

 language constantly used concerning the Deity in 



1 See, for example, the message of Jephthah to the King of 

 the Ammonites: "So now Jahveh, the Elohim of Israel, hath 

 dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel, and 

 shouldest thou possess them ? Wilt not thou possess that which 

 Chemosh, thy Elohim, giveth thee to possess ?" (Jtid. xi. 23, 24). 

 For Jephthah, Chemosh is obviously as real a personage as 

 Jahveh. 



