making the people say to the prophet Samuel, ‘Give us a King to judge us, as all the nations [have a king], that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles’ (1 Sam. VIII. 5, 20). Even concerning the political subjection of the tribes of Canaan, it has long been perceived that this was by no means so complete as is commonly supposed, but that the Canaanitish element in the centre of the Hebrew dominion was powerful enough[630] to nourish exterior religious or civilising influences. A somewhat later didactic poet exclaims, ‘They did not destroy the nations which Jahveh told them [to destroy]; but mixed with the nations and learned their works’ (Ps. CVI. 34 _seq._). To this time belongs the naturalisation of theological terms and consequently of theological conceptions, for the independent working out of which the Hebrews had not passed through the necessary historical experience and continuous religious stages, but in which the history of the religion of the Canaanites found its natural result. At the time when the nomadic nation of the Hebrews entered Canaan, it first, so to speak, produced out of the ancient myth the first elements of a religion; we cannot speak of a _system_ of religion existing in that age. In the Canaanitish peoples, on the other hand, a systematical religion had already been formed. Even independently of the preponderating spiritual influence of the native population, it was particularly natural to the Hebrews to attach themselves to their system, as community of language familiarised them with much of the religious terminology of the Canaanites. Ever since the Hebrews had by their own efforts begun to have any religious ideas, they called every power which they regarded as divine Êl and Shadday ‘the Powerful;’ and as these Powers (which they also called Elôhîm, i.e. ‘the Worshipped’ or ‘the Feared’) were seen by them on the dark sky, Êl was also called ʿElyôn ‘the Highest’ (a synonym of Abh-râm). To the Hebrews these names were not yet exclusively theological, _termini technici_ of religion. Religion itself had not yet grown so stiff and fixed as to have taken from such names their appellative character: and that of Elôhîm and ʿElyôn continued to the latest times. But with the Canaanites even at that early age these ancient Semitic expressions had been already employed long enough in a theological sense to take the step which converted them into a religious terminology. Many synonyms of the terms in question are found among the Phenicians as religious terms, and among the Hebrews (when the words are equally native there) in a completely appellative sense, e.g. Baʿal ‘Lord,’ Kabbîr ‘Great, Powerful.’