The Evolution of Theology: an Anthropological Study: Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"Huxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
The Evolution of Theology: an Anthropological Study: Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Bible and science; Evolution; Paleontology; Science
soul alone, still less his "reason," but the whole man. It is obvious
that for those who call 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? 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" [6]--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 ghost
Elohim, was carried out consistently throughout the whole series of
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