Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/122

 1 1 2 Rcviczos of Books Religion of Israel to the Exile. By Karl Budde, D.D., Professor of Theology in Strassburg. (New York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1899. Pp. xi.K, 228.) In 1892 a committee was organized for the purpose of arranging courses of popular lectures on religious history, to be styled " American Lectures on the History of Religions." Series have been given on Buddhism (by Rhys Davids), on the religions of primitive peoples (by Brinton), and on Jewish religious life after the exile (by Cheyne) ; the fourth series is published in the present volume. The Israelitish religious history natur- ally divides itself into three periods : the pre-Mosaic, or pre-Yahwistic, or nomadic, about which little or nothing is known, the stories of the patriarchs in Genesis being a legendary reflection of later times ; the first formative and creative period, in which the sole worship of Yahweh was established ; and the period of strict ecclesiastical organization. It is the second period, extending from the thirteenth century B. C. to the sixth, that Professor Budde here describes. The first question he considers is the origin of the Israelitish worship of Yahweh. The Pentateuch narrative is compiled from three documents : the Yahwistic (the earliest, known as J), the Elohistic (E), and the late Priestly (P). In E (Ex. iii. iT,i.) and P (Ex. vi. 2ff.) it is said that the name Yahweh was revealed for the first time to Moses, while J (Gen. iv. 26 al.') assumes that it was known from the earliest times, long before the period of the patriarchs. What is the meaning of this discrepancy ? Dr. Budde, in agreement with a large number of scholars, explains it as follows : the cult of Yahweh was practised by the Midianites or Kenites, from whom it was taken by Moses and introduced into Israel ; a Kenite colony established itself in the south of Canaan, the territory of Judah, and the Kenite tradition, embodied in J (which was composed in that region), represents the worship of Yahweh as primeval, since the Kenites knew no other deity ; on the other hand, E (followed by P) embodies the Ephraimite tradition, which was conscious of having received Yah- weh from an outside source. Dr. Budde further holds that the story in Ex. xviii. (in which the Midianite priest Jethro takes the leading part in a national sacrifice to Yahweh) really describes a solemn covenant by which Israel adopted Yahweh as its god, and this, he says, is the oldest known example of such adoption, by a people, of a foreign deity. Such a procedure does not seem to me probable ; I should rather suppose that the Yahweh cult came to Israel through a slow process of social inter- course ; the episode is, however, obscure, and a definitive judgment is hardly possible. It is probable that the Israelites took the Yahweh cult from Midian ; how Midian got it, and what is the meaning of the name ' Yahweh, we do not know. This preliminary question is of less interest than the history of Isra- el's religious career in Canaan. How the Hebrew nomads, entering ag- ricultural Canaan, gradually adopted the social and religious customs of its more cultivated people, and how the Yahweh religion maintained it-