Page:Charles Bradlaugh A Plea for Atheism.djvu/7

 as is required for the sustenance of modern Theism. The most you can make of it by any stretch of imagination is equivalent to the declaration "I am, I have been,I shall be." The word יהוה is hardly ever spoken by the religious Jews who actually in reading substitute for it, Adonai, an entirely different word. Dr. Wall notices the close resemblance in sound between the word Yehowa or Yeue, or Jehovah, and Jove. In fact Ζεύς πατὴρ Jupiter and Jeue—pater (God the father) present still closer resemblance in sound. Jove is also Ζεύς or θεὸς or Δεύς, whence the word Deus and our Deity. The Greek mythology, far more ancient than that of the Hebrews, has probably found for Christianity many other and more important features of coincidence than that of a similarly sounding name. The word θεὸς traced back affords us no help beyond that it identifies Deity with the universe. Plato says that the early Greeks thought that the only Gods (ΘΕΟΥΣ) were the sun, moon, earth, stars, and heaven. The word אלֹהים, Aleim, assists us still less in defining the word God, for Parkhurst translates it as a plural noun signifying "the curser," deriving it from the verb אלֹה (Ale) to curse. Finding that philology aids us but little, we must endeavour to arrive at the meaning of the word "God" by another rule. It is utterly impossible to fix the period of the rise of Theism amongst any particular people, but it is notwithstanding comparatively easy, if not to trace out the development of Theistic ideas, at any rate to point to their probable course of growth amongst all peoples.

Keightley, in his "Origin of Mythology," says—"Supposing, for the sake of hypothesis, a race of men in a state of total or partial ignorance of Deity, their belief in many gods may have thus commenced. They saw around them various changes brought about by human agency, and hence they knew the power of intelligence to produce effects. When they beheld other and greater effects, they ascribed them to some unseen being, similar but superior to man." They associated particular events with special unknown beings (gods), to each of whom they ascribed either a peculiarity of power, or a sphere of action not common to other gods. Thus one was god of the sea, another god of war, another god of love, another ruled the thunder and lightning;