OF BABYLONIAN CONCEPTIONS ON JEWISH THOUGFIT. 303 



But as modifying this undoubted distinction, Eerdmanns thinks 

 that polytheism dominated originally all the narratives of 

 which Genesis is composed. He refers to the passages in 

 chapters i, 26, and xx, 13, as ones in which the original poly- 

 theism is still apparent: and others, as e.g., "blessed be the 

 Lord God of Shem," or "I am the God of Abraham thy father, 

 and the God of Isaac," as recognizing Yahweh as one among 

 many Gods.* Moreover, many Babylonian expressions have 

 a decidedly monotheistic tendency, as e.g., the following : a hymn 

 to the Moon God of Ur and Harran, from which Abraham and 

 his father came, says, "Father long suffering and forgiving, who 

 upholds all living things by his hand ; begetter of gods and 

 men, firstborn ; omnipotent, whose unfathomable heart none 

 can know ; in Heaven and on earth thou alone art supreme. 

 Among the Gods thou hast no rival." This hymn Boscawen 

 considers older than the time of Abraham. 



Sinai was called after Sin the Moon God, and it was a sacred 

 place long before Moses communed there with God. Sargon 

 and Naram-Sin conquered Sinai in very early times ; in Exodus 

 iii, 1, we read that "Moses was keeping the flock of his father- 

 in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian ; and he came to the mount 

 of Yahweh, even to Horeb." This seems to infer that the 

 mountain was so called "the mount of God" before Moses 

 visited it. Driver thinks that possibly Israelites had worshipped 

 Yahweh at Sinai before Moses went there. In 1896, at 

 Kurnah, in the funeral temple of Manephthah, were found the 

 words, " Ysiraal is desolated, its seed is not " ; this is in a 

 description of this king's victory over enemies in Canaan, and 

 as tliese words were written before the Exodus, probably there 

 were Israelites in Canaan before the Exodus (possibly left 

 behind after the famine of Joseph).f 



If this were so, we can understand Yahweh and Sin havino; 

 some attributes in common. Sin had been called " the Lord of 

 laws," " he who created law and justice," " the ordainer of the 

 laws of heaven and earth." And Sinai was the place where 

 Moses received God's laws. 



The Eev. H. T. Knight considers that it was not until the time of 

 Isaiah that the higher conception was reached, that Yahweh was not 

 merely a tribal god, but the god of all the world : and he points out 

 that Jephthah regards Chemosh as having a real existence : that Ruth is 

 content to follow Naomi, and cleave to her people and her God : and 

 that David, when driven into exile, conceived himself as in a land 

 belonging to other gods, 

 t Vide Petrie. 



