Was this bull-shaped deity Jahweh’ himself, or one of the polymorphic forms of Jahweh? Such is the opinion of Kuenen, who says explicitly, “Jahweh was worshipped in the shape of a young bull. It cannot be doubted that the {191}cult of the bull-calf was really the cult of Jahweh in person.” And certainly in the prophetic writings of the eighth century, we can clearly descry that the worshippers of the bull regarded themselves as worshipping the god Jahweh, who brought up his people from the land of Egypt. Nevertheless, dangerous as it may seem for an outsider to differ on such a subject from great Semitic scholars, I venture to think we may see reason hereafter to conclude that this was not originally the case: that the god worshipped under the form of the bull-calf was some other deity, like the Molech whom we know to have been represented with a bull’s head; and that only by the later syncretic process did this bull-god come to be identified in the end with Jahweh, a deity (as seems likely) of quite different origin, much as Mnevis came to be regarded at Heliopolis as an incarnation of Ra, and as Apis came to be regarded at Memphis as an avatar of Ptah and still later of Osiris. On the other hand, we must remember that, as Mr. Frazer has shown, a sacred animal is often held to be the representative and embodiment of the very god to whom it is habitually sacrificed. Here again we trench on ground which can only satisfactorily be occupied at a later stage of our polymorphic argument. A second animal-god, apparently, also adored in the form of a metal image, was the asp or snake, known in our version as “the brazen serpent,” and connected by the Jehovistic editors of the earlier traditions with Moses in the wilderness. The name of this deity is given us in the Book of Kings as Nehushtan, “the brass god”; but whether this was really its proper designation or a mere contemptuous descriptive title we can hardly be certain. The worship of the serpent is said to have gone on uninterruptedly till the days of Hezekiah, when, under the influence of the exclusive devotion to Jahweh which was then becoming popular, the image was broken in pieces as an idolatrous object. It is scarcely necessary to point out in passing that the asp was one of the most sacred animals {192}in Egypt: but, as in the case of the bull, the snake was also a widespread object of worship throughout all the surrounding countries; and it is therefore probable that the Hebrew snake-worship may have been parallel to, rather than derived from, Egyptian ophiolatry. Such, then, seen through the dim veil of Jehovism, are the misty features of that uncertain pantheon in which, about the eighth century at least, Jahweh found himself the most important deity. The most important, I say, because it is clear from our records that for many ages the worship of Jahweh and the worship of the Baalim went on side by side without conscious rivalry.