Page:The Polytheism of Genesis Chapter 1.djvu/8

 world." Others, however, still accept the old view. We agree with the latter, since the Israelites, while from an original Semitic stock, had grown up in a country in which Egyptian and not Semitic ideas prevailed. Indeed, it is doubtful whether they knew anything at all about Semitic faith and ritual. Nor is there anything in the argument that the Israelites just freed from Egyptian bondage would not have adopted an Egyptian deity to worship. They had asked for gods, new gods like Yahweh, to whom they had only recently been introduced by Moses. In Aaron making them a calf they did not necessarily see in it an Egyptian god, but a deity whose mere image and style of worship they were familiar with, and that was all. As for the inference sought to be drawn from the words of Aaron that the Israelites thought they were worshiping Yahweh, this is doubtful. They wanted gods, and they had no particular choice, as the form of their request shows (Exod. 32:1-6). If Aaron chose to represent that the god he had made for them was Yahweh, they did not care so long as they could worship with their accustomed heathen rites. Thus in spirit and action they were still out-and-out idolatrous polytheists. This Yahweh himself is represented as indicating, and this was the cause of Moses demanding a reconsecration to Yahweh with the terrible slaughter of the apostates. It is now freely conceded that while through the judges and the monarchy Yahweh alone was Israel's God, "it was generally held that the gods of other nations — Chemosh, Milcom, and so on — had a real existence and authority in their respective lands." But this, unfortunately, was not all. In the time of the Judges the Israelites frequently forsook Yahweh for the Baals, the gods of the people among whom they dwelt; Solomon reared altars for Ashtoreth, Chemosh, Milcom, and others in Jerusalem itself for his heathen wives, and here he himself bowed to them; while on the very edge of the exile men, women, and children took their customary part in the worship of the queen of heaven (Judg. 2:11; I Kings 11:1-7; Jer. 7:18).