VIIT THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 361 



might naturally be expected from their previous 

 history and the conditions of their existence. But 

 there is excellent evidence to the contrary effect. 

 And, for my part, I see no reason to doubt that, 

 like the rest of the world, the Israelites had passed 

 through a period of mere ghost-worship, and had 

 advanced through Ancestor-worship and Fetishism 

 and Totemism to the theological level at which we 

 find them in the books of Judges and Samuel. 



All the more remarkable, therefore, is the extra- 

 ordinary change which is to be noted in the 

 eighth century B.C. The student who is familiar 

 with the theology implied, or expressed, in the 

 books of Judges, Samuel, and the first book of 

 Kings, finds himself in a new world of thought, 

 in the full tide of a great reformation, when he 

 reads Joel, Amos, Hosea. Isaiah, Micah, and 

 Jeremiah. 



The essence of this change is the reversal of the 

 position which, in primitive society, ethics holds in 

 relation to theology. Originally, that which men 

 worship is a theological hypothesis, not a moral 

 ideal. The prophets, in substance, if not always 

 in form, preach the opposite doctrine. They are 

 constantly striving to free the moral ideal from the 

 stifling embrace of the current theology and its 

 concomitant ritual. Theirs was not an intellectual 

 criticism, argued on strictly scientific grounds ; the 

 image-worshippers and the believers in the efficacy 



