small oasis with abundant springs of water in the desert south of Palestine. In its vicinity the tribes, after leaving Mount Horeb, are said to have encamped for a generation before their entry into Canaan. There are traces, however, of an independent tradition, presumably the oldest of all, according to which, upon their escape from Egypt, they made their way directly to Kadesh, which in this story must have been the chief scene of the work of Moses. Beersheba, farther north, on the borders of Canaan itself, is also a famous holy place of Jehovah, associated especially with the name of Abraham; in the time of the kingdoms it was a favourite place of pilgrimage, particularly for worshippers from Israel. In a similar way Beer-lahai-roi, in the same region, is connected with the names of Isaac and Ishmael. There were thus several spots in the region south of Palestine at which Jehovah was worshipped by the nomads who pastured their flocks thereabout.

In their further migrations the Israelite tribes carried with them a portable sanctuary, a tent, sheltering a chest in which were preserved-so, at least, it was believed in later times-two stone tablets inscribed with the fundamental precepts of their religion. To this tent, which was pitched outside the encampment, Moses resorted to consult the oracle. When the Israelites entered Palestine, the chest was deposited in a shrine at Shiloh, in the heart of the territory of Joseph.

In the religion of Israel in Canaan, as it appears in the earliest sources, it is easy to distinguish certain elements which are an inheritance from the nomadic stage, and others that are as plainly adopted from the settled population of the land, while much was doubtless common to both peoples. Speaking generally, the nomadic elements are original constituents of the religion of Jehovah, and the agricultural rites are engrafted upon it. Of the former the most characteristic is the festival called the Pesakh, translated, after a questionable popular etymology, "Passover" (Exod. 12, 13). This festival fell in the spring, on the night of the equinoc

tial full moon. It was a family feast, though of course many families might celebrate it at the same place. Each household provided its own victim, a lamb or kid, which was roasted, and eaten with a bitter salad. The meal was consumed "hurriedly," what could not be devoured was burned, not a scrap must be left over sunrise. In the account of the institution of the ritual in Exod. 12, the blood of the victim is splashed upon the door-frame of each house to keep out "the destroyer" who brought death into the homes of the Egyptians; and although this feature disappears from later laws-perhaps in consequence of the transfer of the originally domestic festival to a fixed sanctuary-it can hardly be doubted that it was one of the most important parts of the observance. A spring festival, corresponding in its main features to the Israelite Passover, was kept by the Saracens of the Sinaitic Peninsula in the fourth century A. D., and by the Arabs in Mohammed's time; the splashing or smearing of blood on tents and houses, and on cattle and human beings, for protection against disease and death is common to-day in all those countries, among both Moslems and Christians.

When the Israelites in their new seats learned from the Canaanites not merely to grow grain-which even nomads occasionally do-but to cultivate the vine, olive, and fig, and to make oil and wine, they learned with the arts of agriculture the religious ceremonies without which their labours would have been fruitless. Canaanite agriculture, as Hosea recognised, led directly to the adoption of Canaanite cults: Israel worshipped the gods of the land, who, as men thought, gave the corn and wine and oil, the wool and flax.

The Canaanites formed a multitude of petty city-states, which not even external pressure ever welded into a larger unity. Each of these had its own god, who was distinguished from the rest only as the god of the particular community; in attributes and functions as well as in the worship paid them they were essentially alike. The civilisation of the inland Canaanites was agricultural, and the chief busi

ness of the local deities was therefore to give to their worshippers bountiful increase of their fields and vineyards. To these Baals, as the divine "proprietors"1 of the city and its fields, their offerings were made for protection and prosperity. Each city and town had its own place of worship, often upon a hilltop, as the Canaanite name, “high places," imports.

Jehovah and the Baals thus occupied in the beginning distinct spheres: Jehovah was the champion of Israel in war, and it was he who gave the increase of his flocks to the Israelite peasant as he had to his nomadic ancestors; the Passover and the sacrifice of firstlings were parts of his worship, and his name was probably pronounced when an Israelite cut the throat and spilled the blood of a sheep or a goat killed for the entertainment of a guest, or to celebrate by a feast some event in the life of the family or of the community. On the other hand, the Baals were the gods of the soil, and in their honour the festivals of the husbandman's year were kept. It is not to be supposed that in thus acknowledging the powers which blessed their labours in the field and vintage the Israelites thought that they were ignoring their own god or depriving him of his due; agriculture was not his calling. After the establishment of the kingdom, when the Israelites were in complete possession of the land which by right of conquest had become Jehovah's land, so that he was not only the god of Israel but god of Israel's inheritance, the worship of Jehovah superseded that of the Baals in their own sanctuaries, preserving the established ritual custom.

The Israelite places of worship were for the most part the same high places at which the Canaanites had worshipped before them, and the furnishing remained essentially the same. The altar was a pile of rude ́stones-altars cut in the living rock or built of cut stone such as the Canaanites often used are forbidden-the upright stone and the wooden post (massebah, asherah) stood by it. Sometimes there was

1 This is the meaning of the word ba'al.

also a hall for sacrificial feasts, but no temple as a house of the god. At these local altars sacrifices were offered on many occasions of domestic or communal life; there also the annual festivals were held, at which thrice in the year every man was required to "see the face" of Jehovah with an offering in his hand. Worshippers frequented in greater concourse at festival seasons the more famous sanctuaries, such as Bethel, Gilgal, and Beersheba.1

In private sacrifices the victim was commonly a sheep or goat; the blood was dashed upon the altar or poured out at its base, the fat of the inwards burned on the altar,2 the flesh boiled, and eaten by the offerer with his family and guests. Communal sacrifices offered by the elders or heads of the families of a town took the same form. On extraordinary occasions the whole carcass of a victim was burned on the altar. The burning of the fat was attended to by a priest, at least at the greater high places, and he had a toll for his service, which was at first, doubtless, fixed by local custom; later the attempt was made to regulate it by more general rules.

The three festivals to which reference has already been made fell in the spring, in early summer, and in autumn, respectively. The first was the celebration of the beginning of the barley harvest, the characteristic feature of which was the presentation of a first sheaf at the altar and the eating of unleavened cakes of the new crop. This festival in its original local form must have been movable, depending on the ripening of the grain in the region and season; but it was, at an early time, fixed to follow immediately the observance of the Passover at the vernal full moon. The end of the wheat harvest also was marked by a festival, probably once kept when the reaping was actually completed, but in the calendar set seven weeks after the beginning of the barley harvest at the Passover. The greatest of all, often called "the feast," by way of eminence, was the har1 See Encyclopædia Biblica, "High Place."

2 The burning of the fat was a Canaanite, not a nomadic, custom.

vest-home in the autumn after the fruits had been gathered and the vintage was over. It was, indeed, primarily a vintage festival, and the booths, from which its familiar name, "tabernacles," is derived, were originally the temporary shelters in the vineyards in which the owners lodged during the season. A uniform date for the celebration, the full moon of the seventh month, was perhaps not established till after the centralisation of worship at Jerusalem had detached it from its natural environment.

In early times the assistance of a priest was not necessary to the offering of sacrifice. The most important function of the priesthood was divination, which they practised by means of a specific apparatus, apparently a form of divination by lot. They had also an expert knowledge of the rules of clean and unclean and of the appropriate purifications and expiations. This knowledge, as well as the art of manipulating the oracle, was transmitted by tradition in certain families, but these families formed no exclusive caste, though at an early time "Levite" priests-whether Levi be the name of a guild or a clan-were regarded as a superior kind. The ancient customs of Israel, which were under the sanction of religion, fell naturally into their province; they gave decisions on questions of customary law as well as of ritual. The priesthoods of such sanctuaries as Shiloh, Dan, Bethel, Gilgal, doubtless had much influence in shaping custom and making it uniform throughout the land, and in harmonising and consolidating tradition.

Besides the priests, with their divination by art, there were men who practised natural divination. They were called "seers," because they had the gift of second-sight, and could tell, like Samuel, what had become of stray asses, or had visionary premonitions of future events, as when the same seer foresaw Saul's meeting with the band of prophets. The visions of Amos (cc. 7-8) are examples of a somewhat different kind. The prophets (nebi'im) whom Saul met coming down from the high place, by whose contagious enthusiasm he was carried away to the surprise and scandal

1