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Updated: May 26, 2025
As time passed, the two races mingled and the tendency was toward an amalgamation of their respective cults. But a storm of protest set in, led by the prophets and the simpler, less concretely naturalistic religion prevailed. The very simplicity of the cult of Yahweh made it a fitting basis for that ethical development which we associate with the names of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah.
The motives and mental processes at work are, however, essentially those which we have already examined. Unfortunately, we have only hints here and there in the Old Testament of the more primitive traditions which were worked over and built upon by the priests and prophets. Moreover, the Yahweh religion seems to have been adopted quite late and to have made easy a break with the older tales.
Yahweh could command whole tribes to be slaughtered, and no one felt the least religious discomfort. But the man of to-day, when he allows himself to think, revolts against such heartlessness. God must be at least as merciful as man and man would not do these things. Yet our experience tells us that pain and disaster are everywhere rampant in the world.
The Canaanites had their local Baal cults and myths, and these were associated with agricultural festivals and with that worship of fertility which was so wide-spread among the ancients. The followers of Yahweh, on the other hand, were hillmen and shepherds and their rites were closely connected with sacrificial observances.
For many centuries he was regarded merely as the most powerful of the gods, superior to the deities of other nations, and it was only after the beginning of our era that the Hebrew thought discarded all other gods and made "Yahweh" synonymous with "God."
The Hebrews adopted the Babylonian cosmogonic myth, but it became a mere literary attachment to the conception of the supreme god Yahweh, and was otherwise ineffective. +974+. The same thing is true of certain cosmogonic myths of the Greeks, such as the war of the Titans against Zeus and similar episodes.
Somewhat later, in the visions of Zechariah, angels play a great part; they are sometimes spoken of as "men," sometimes as mal'akh, and the Mal'akh Yahweh seems to hold a certain primacy among them. Similarly in Job the bne Elohim, sons of God, appear as attendants of God, and amongst them Satan, still in his rôle of public prosecutor, the defendant being Job.
Possibly also we have here a struggle of a clan for the recognition of its own god, as among the Israelites the Yahweh party represented exclusive devotion to the old national god.
So, too, the angels are styled "holy ones," and "watchers," and are spoken of as the "host of heaven" or of "Yahweh." Those who see the Mal'akh Yahweh say they have seen God.
She sat up, looked at her husband, her unacknowledged and unacknowledging husband. A mysterious voice drew her from his side as cogently as the hand of Yahweh drew the rib that became a woman from under the elbow of Adam. She rose and looked back and down at the man whom the law had united her with indissolubly. Eve must have wondered back at Adam with the same sense of escape while he lay asleep.
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