of the chief or wealthy man were invited to appear on the spot that he had chosen for the site. Addressing them at great length, he referred with pride to the various deeds of his ancestors and promised to so conduct himself as to shed more lustre on the family name. The space for the house was then cleared, a spot for the fireplace designated, and four holes dug wherein the corner posts were to be set. A slave, or the descendant of a slave who had been captured in war, was then blindfolded and compelled to lie down face uppermost on the spot selected for the fireplace. A sapling was then cut, laid across the throat of the slave, and, at a given signal, the two nearest relatives of the house sat upon the respective ends of the sapling, thereby choking the wretch to death."

The Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. vi., p. 51, Boston, New York, and London, 1893.

CHAPTER X

HEBREW WRITERS ON THE ORIGIN OF THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY-CHILD SACRIFICE CONDEMNED IN THE STORY OF ISAAC CIRCUMCISION SUBSTITUTED -REVERSION TO BARBARIC HABITS IN CANAANTRIUMPH OF THE PROPHETS.

HA

AVING reviewed the ethnological and archæological aspect of the attitude of the Semitic people toward the sacrifice of the first-born, we turn to the written record of the small bands of Semites who gave to the world the humane ideas that dominate it today. From that written record we will learn that nowhere among the civilization of the world was there the same spirit that there was in that outlandish corner of Syria. Israel was never content with the abuses of the world and in this her philosophy differed from Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Chinese, and Indian philosophies as we have been able to judge of them in the writing of the civilizations they produced. If, to make one more comparison, the Greeks were wanting in humanity the Israelites were passionately human. "The Israelitish prophets were impetuous writers such as we of the present day should denounce as social

ists and anarchists. They were fanatics in the cause of social justice. "I

Modern Bible criticism has made the period of the writing of the Elohistic part of the Hexateuch about 770 B. C. Whatever the sources that were drawn on and whatever actual historical value they have, we know that the ideas contained therein represent the ideas of the eighth century

B. C. 3

According to these writings, Abraham, the eponymic father of the Israelites, was tested in his loyalty to Yahweh by being told to take his son Isaac into the land of Moriah, a district in Palestine, and there sacrifice him as a burnt offering. In the land of Canaan at the time the Jahvist and the Elohist wrote of this temptation, the ceremony of sacrificing the first-born of a living thing was still practised; among the neighbouring peoples— the Phoenicians on one side and the Sabeans on the south-east-children were still sacrificed. The Elohist therefore was anxious to show that a thousand or more years back, in the time of the founder of their race, it was not the custom of the tribe to sacrifice children and that it was only done when the Lord gave the especial command.

With Abraham the command, while painful, was apparently not surprising. He went about the execution in a businesslike way, only to find when

2

E. Renan, History of the People of Israel, vol. i., preface, p. viii.

J. F. McCurdy, Jewish Encyclopædia.

3 A. Kuenen, The Religion of Israel, p. 102.