This monotheistic development was very gradual, and passed through many stages in unfolding itself out of Polytheism. People spoke of the ‘God of the Elôhîms of Israel’ (Êl elôhê Yisrâʾêl), without giving any account as to who these Elôhîms were and what were their names. Whatever may be said, the plural form Elôhîm itself, the interpretation of which as _pluralis majestatis_ belongs to the stage of pure Monotheism, decidedly indicates that a plural conception was inherent in this word. Such expressions, created by polytheistic imagination, were retained at the monotheistic stages. Like the myth, they lost their original signification, and were used by zealous monotheists without any idea of the Polytheism which had created them and been expressed by them. This Monotheism comes to light in the monotheistic turn which was given to the name Elôhîm; and the stronger the national life, and the intenser the national sentiment grew, so much more eagerly did the people grasp this Elôhîm-idea as a national one, entirely ignoring the fact that the name was not its exclusive property. At the conclusion of the national development the Elohistic monotheism attained perfection; but from the very beginning the mind of the nation lived in the conviction that ‘Elôhîm was not like the Elôhîms of the nations.’ The monotheistic turn given to the word is distinctly impressed on the form hâ-Elôhîm = ὁ Θεός, which is related to Elôhîm exactly as among Mohammedans Allâh to Ilâh. An important part in the encouragement of this monotheistic development was played by the Levitical priesthood, which conducted the centralised worship; as also by those inspired men of action who appeared as teachers and monitors in the early days of the monarchy, precursors of the later great Prophets, harbingers of the epoch of the _Prophètes écrivains_, as Renan correctly calls them.[656] The later Prophets, although when writing history they depict these precursors as completely imbued with their own intentions, did not ignore their position as precursors. Elijah and Samuel were prototypes of prophecy, in whose lives and actions the prophetic historian of a later time unfolded his own program; but even they are endowed with infirmities foreign to later Jahveism; and these faults are characterised as such. A prophet of the Postexilian period, in which a history of the growth of Jahveism as reconciled with the law (tôrâ), with Moses as law-giving prophet at the head, was already brought into notice, regarded Elijah as the precursor of the ‘great and dreadful day of Jahveh.’ Malachi, namely (III. 22, 23 [IV. 4, 5]), one of the chief representatives of the reconciliation effected between the two opposites, Sacerdotalism and Jahveism, exhorts the people to remember the Tôrâ of Moses, and in the same breath speaks of Elijah, the chief member of the old school of prophecy, as precursor of the great day of Jahveh. These are two reminiscences, valuable in a religious sense to the prophet of the