Page:The Polytheism of Genesis Chapter 1.djvu/5

 themselves to the worship of the foreign gods in whose country they sojourned, and not that they themselves had possessed their own special deities. The tendency to a persistent idolatry among the Israelites is freely acknowledged, but this, it is claimed, "cannot be counted as among the relics of a once prevalent Israelitish polytheism." Thus MacLean, relying upon Kautzsch, does not hesitate to say that there is "no trace of Hebrew polytheism." To us, however, it seems that there is not only a very clear trace of an original and continuous Hebrew polytheism, but that the very plain evidence of this is lost sight of by those scholars who deny it because of their failure to take into consideration the origin and development of that part of the Hebrew people who only later became known as the nation of Israel. Jacob went down into Egypt with a family of seventy souls, which returned to Canaan four hundred years later as a nation with some six hundred thousand men capable of bearing arms, besides women, children, their own old people, and many followers, about two million persons. As Jacob's descendants increased in Egypt they adopted the religion of the country, and the question has now to be asked, Was such an adoption contrary to their own idea of deity? But this necessitates the prior question, What was their religion when, as a family, a mere handful of people, they had gone down into Egypt? Hommel would have us see in Abraham a monotheist, who, however, was nothing more than a henotheist, since the god of Melchizedek, to whom he willingly paid tithes, was a mere Canaanite deity. Jacob also was a henotheist, as can be seen from the covenant made between himself and Laban, where the deities of Abraham and Nahor are two different gods. This is further proved by Jacob demanding that his household should put away the images and amulets of the gods which they, as former members of Laban's household, had been accustomed to worship.