The Influence of Buddhism on Primitive Christianity. Arthur Lillie
When the Jews fought against Askelon it is recorded:—
"The Lord was with Judah, and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." (Judges i. 19.)
He wrestles with Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 29), and the superior wrestling of the man forces the god to give his blessing. He strives to kill Moses, but fails to do it. (Exod. iv. 24.) He is a purely local god, like Kemosh and other Semitic deities.
"Surely Yahve is in this place," said Jacob in Mesopotamia, "and I knew it not."
"David himself," says M. Soury, "who was not and could not have been the monotheistic king of tradition, David, who had teraphim in his house, as had Jacob in his time, does he not seem to restrict the kingdom of Yahve to the land of Israel when he complains that Saul has driven him out from abiding in the inheritance of Yahve, saying, 'Go, serve other gods'? Finally, many centuries afterwards the contemporaries of Ezekiel still believed that Yahve, having abandoned the country, could no longer see them." (Ezek. ix. 9.) (Soury, "Religion of Israel," c. v.)
Anthropology divides the early races who used stone implements into two groups, the palæolithic or rough-stone-using man, and the neolithic man, who polished his implements. The editing of Ezra has burnished up the early Hebrew a little, but it is plain that he had not emerged from the stone age. His god is a stone. Jacob erected a menhir. A menhir is a piece of chipped rock, erect, huge, imposing, the neolithic man's first rude piece of sculpture, the neolithic man's god. Moses erected a circle of these stone monoliths. Joshua erected twelve stone gods on the Jordan, and sacrificed to them. (Josh. iv. 9.) Palestine abounds in such circles archæologists tell us. These circles were the "high places" of scripture.
Some hold that the Yahve who travelled with Israel in the Ark was a stone. The mighty God of Jacob is called the "Stone of Israel." (Gen. xlix. 24.) We read of Eben-ezer, the "Stone of Help," when the Ark gives the victory to Samuel. (1 Sam. vii. 12.) Daniel's "stone cut out of the mountain without hands" brake in pieces the kings and the kingdoms. (Dan. ii. 45.) The "Shem Hamphoras," the stone in the Holy of Holies in Solomon's temple, was said to be the "Stone of Jacob."
Circumcision, a savage rite, was performed with "knives of flint." (Josh. v. 2.) Mr. Tylor ("Early History of Mankind," p. 216) shows us that even at the date of the Mishna, the beast at the altar was killed with the kelt of the neolithic man. Stones were the official weights in Israel, and also the instruments of execution. David used the sling, and perhaps the chipped stone missiles that we see in museums, and his singing and dancing naked before the fetish, and the very unpleasant scalps that purchased him a wife, savour a little of the latitude of Polynesia. And his hanging up the hands and feet of Rechab and Baanah remind us of the stakes crowned with sculls round the huts of the Dyaks of Borneo.
"At a late date," says M. Soury, "we perceive in Hebrew legislation the repression of monstrous habits and depraved tastes which are only found amongst the very lowest savages. They are forbidden to tattoo themselves, to eat insects, reptiles," etc. (Levit. xi. 31; xix. 28.)
I have still to record a quaint use of stones in Israel, another survival from the stone age. In Astley's "Collection of Voyages" (vol. ii., p. 674,) it is announced that the savages of West Africa consult their god with a sort of "Odd or Even!" with nuts. In Israel, the weightiest questions were settled by the same rude divination. "The pebble is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord." (Prov. xvi. 33.) By this odd or even Saul was chosen to be king and Jonah to be thrown overboard. By stones also malefactors were judged in the Holy of Holies, but the exact method of this is a secret that is lost.
In writing thus, of course, I do not believe myself to be dealing with the actual neolithic period. Its survivals are tough. In India before the Mutiny I was employed with a force sent to put down the rebellion of the Santals. These, a branch of the Kolarias, represent the early races that the Arya displaced. And their institutions were singularly like those of the Jews. They worshipped in "high places" rude circles of upright monoliths. They worshipped in "groves;" and on one occasion we came across a slaughtered kid still warm, that under the holy Sal tree had been sacrificed to obtain the help of Singh Bonga against us. They had, like the Jews, twelve tribes. They believed, like them, that death ended consciousness. They had marriage by capture, softened down into a comedy, like other savage tribes. They believed that all diseases were due to the wrath of evil spirits, or the spell of a sorcerer. All through the night we could hear their war tom-toms sounding, the tuph of the Jews (whence "tympanum," according to Calmet). They fought with the bows and arrows and axes that are marked "aboriginal weapons" in the South Kensington Museum. When we met them in action a chief came forward like Goliath with gestures and shouts of defiance. Like the Jews they were stiff-necked in their conservatism. Buddhism and Buddha had risen in their very midst. Brahmins, Mussulmans, Christians, had ruled them and plied them with missionaries; but pious Hindoos, instead of converting them, had been persuaded to offer sacrifices to Bagh Bhut, a tiger god, all-powerful in Santal jungles. They recited at night their deeds of theft and pillage and slaughter, like the Sioux Indians or the early Jews.
Circumcision is another savage rite. We find it with the Papuans. We find it in Central America. We find it amongst the Australian aborigines. That it was performed in Israel with knives of flint (Josh. v. 4) argues a survival from the men of stone implements. Sanitary precautions have been suggested as the origin of the rite, but such an idea would be in advance of the filthy savages using it. The "Encyclopædia Britannica" holds that it was a sacrifice to Aschera, the goddess of generation, like a somewhat similar mutilation of females. Professor Sayce ("Ancient Empires," p. 199) shows that with young men a complete mutilation in honour of the Phœnician Ashtoreth was common.
Mr. Frazer ("Golden Bough," i. 169) explains another cruel law of Leviticus. The Maoris believe that if anyone touches a dead body, and then accidentally touches food, any one partaking of that food will join the dead man in the shades. This superstition about the power of the dead is the root idea of other practices, covering pictures and looking-glasses whilst the corpse is still in the house, shunning the graveyard at night when it is buried. It is treated as an enemy who might pass his soul into the picture and do mischief. The death penalty for touching Yahve's food (Levit. vii. 21) is probably the same superstition. When God is supposed to be walking about on earth in human form, as in the instance of a semi-divine savage chief, the danger of touching his food increases enormously. Mr. Frazer shows that the Mikado used to eat every day off new rude earthenware platters, which were at once broken and buried, that no one might lose his life by accidentally touching a particle of his food. ("Golden Bough," i. 166.) Mr. Frazer gives numerous instances, where the same fatality is believed to result from food contaminated by a menstruous woman.
In the view of M. Soury, the early Jew was a tattooed savage, who ate insects; but anthropology has shed an unexpected light on this. The families, and small clans of early savages, had each some animal as a Totem. They were tattooed with this for distinction, and it was everywhere ruled that cat could not marry cat, or fox fox. A young man tattooed as a fox would have to capture a lady with another crest, "stunning her first with a blow from his dowak" perchance, like the Australian savage described by Sir John Lubbock.
It has been shown by Professor Robertson Smith that the "unclean" animals of the Old Testament are these totems. "So I went in and saw, and behold every form of creeping things and abominable beasts and all the idols of the house of Israel pourtrayed upon the wall round about." (Ezek. viii. 10.) This accounts for the hare being "abominable" in Israel, and the beetle edible. It was meritorious to eat the totems of one's foes, but the totems of friendly tribes, and one's own totems, were tabooed. The origin of these ideas is much debated. The custom is believed to be closely connected with marriage by capture. Female infanticide was prevalent, as women only attracted ravishers. The story of the sons of Benjamin capturing the daughters of Shiloh is a frequent sort of story in savage annals. (Judges xxi.)
The sacrifice has puzzled the modern divine.
It is urged that rites are necessary to religion, and that the sacrifice was an apparatus to train Israel to a deep sense of sin, and a necessity for a blood atonement. It is contended that it was merely a form, as only the useless portions of the carcase were given to Yahve. Those who talk like this libel