Lectures on the religion of the Semites. First series, The fundamental institutions / by the late W. Robertson Smith.

  • William Robertson Smith
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on the religion of the Semites. First series, The fundamental institutions / by the late W. Robertson Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    24/536 (page 4)
    LECT. I. tribes of Israel. The proof that this is so will appear more clearly in the sequel; but, indeed, the thing will hardly be denied by any one who has read the Bible with care. In the history of old Israel before the captivity, nothing comes out more clearly than that the mass of the people found the greatest difficulty in keeping their national religion distinct from that of the surrounding nations. 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. The significance of this fact is manifest if we consider how deeply the most untutored religious sensi- bilities are shocked by any kind of innovation. Nothing appeals so strongly as religion to the conservative instincts; and conservatism is the habitual attitude of Orientals. The whole history of Israel is unintelligible if we suppose that the heathenism against which the prophets contended was a thing altogether alien to the religious traditions of the Hebrews. In principle there was all the difference in the world between the faith of Isaiah and that of an idolater. But the difference in principle, which seems so clear to us, was not clear to the average Judaean, and the reason of this was that it was obscured by the great similarity in many important points of religious tradition and ritual practice. The conservatism which refuses to look at principles, and has an eye only for tradition and usage, was against the prophets, and had no sympathy with their efforts to draw a sharp line between the religion of Jehovah and that of the foreign gods. This is a proof that what I may call the natural basis of Israel’s worship was very closely akin to that of the neighbouring cults.