Essays Upon Some Controverted QuestionsHuxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
who is here said to be the image of Elohim--not man's soul alone, still
less his "reason," but the whole man. It is obvious that for those who
called a manlike ghost Elohim, there could be no difficulty in conceiving
any other Elohim under the same aspect. And if there could be any doubt on
this subject, surely it cannot stand in the face of what we find in the
fifth chapter, where, immediately after a repetition of the statement that
"Elohim created man, in the likeness of Elohim made he him," it is said
that Adam begat Seth "in his own likeness, after his image." Does this mean
that Seth resembled Adam only in a spiritual and figurative sense? And if
that interpretation of the third verse of the fifth chapter of Genesis is
absurd, why does it become reasonable in the first verse of the same
chapter?
But let us go further. Is not the Jahveh who "walks in the garden in the
cool of the day"; from whom one may hope to "hide oneself among the trees";
of whom it is expressly said that "Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and
seventy of the elders of Israel," saw the Elohim of Israel (Exod. xxiv.
9-11); and that, although the seeing Jahveh was understood to be a high
crime and misdemeanour, worthy of death, under ordinary circumstances, yet,
for this once, he "laid not his hand on the nobles of Israel"; "that they
beheld Elohim and did eat and drink"; and that afterwards Moses saw his
back (Exod. xxxiii. 23)--is not this Deity conceived as manlike in form?
{144} Again, is not the Jahveh who eats with Abraham under the oaks at
Mamre, who is pleased with the "sweet savour" of Noah's sacrifice, to whom
sacrifices are said to be "food"[31]--is not this Deity depicted as
possessed of human appetites? If this were not the current Israelitish idea
of Jahveh even in the eighth century B.C., where is the point of Isaiah's
scathing admonitions to his countrymen: "To what purpose is the multitude
of your sacrifices unto me? saith Jahveh: I am full of the burnt-offerings
of rams and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of
bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats" (Isa. i. 11). Or of Micah's inquiry,
"Will Jahveh be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of
rivers of oil?" (vi. 7). And in the innumerable passages in which Jahveh is
said to be jealous of other gods, to be angry, to be appeased, and to
repent; in which he is represented as casting off Saul because the king
does not quite literally execute a command of the most ruthless severity;
or as smiting Uzzah to death because the unfortunate man thoughtlessly, but
naturally enough, put out his hand to stay the ark from falling--can any
one deny that the old Israelites conceived Jahveh not only in the image of
a man, but in that of a changeable, irritable, and, occasionally, violent
man? There appears to me, then, to be no reason to doubt that the notion of
likeness to man, which was indubitably held of the {145} ghost Elohim, was
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