The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study | Page 4

chemistry or of mineralogy. And if people of these ways of thinking
choose to read beyond the present paragraph, the responsibility for
meeting with anything they may dislike rests with them and not with
me.
We are all likely to be more familiar with the theological history of the
Israelites than with that of any other nation. We may therefore fitly
make it the first object of our studies; and it will be convenient to
commence with that period which lies between the invasion of Canaan
and the early days of the monarchy, and answers to the eleventh and
twelfth centuries B.C. or thereabouts. The evidence on which any
conclusion as to the nature of Israelitic theology in those days must be
based is wholly contained in the Hebrew Scriptures--an agglomeration
of documents which certainly belong to very different ages, but of the
exact dates and authorship of any one of which (except perhaps a few

of the prophetical writings) there is no evidence, either internal or
external, so far as I can discover, of such a nature as to justify more
than a confession of ignorance, or, at most, an approximate conclusion.
In this venerable record of ancient life, miscalled a book, when it is
really a library comparable to a selection of works from English
literature between the times of Beda and those of Milton, we have the
stratified deposits (often confused and even with their natural order
inverted) left by the stream of the intellectual and moral life of Israel
during many centuries. And, embedded in these strata, there are
numerous remains of forms of thought which once lived, and which,
though often unfortunately mere fragments, are of priceless value to the
anthropologist. Our task is to rescue these from their relatively
unimportant surroundings, and by careful comparison with existing
forms of theology to make the dead world which they record live again.
In other words, our problem is palaeontological, and the method
pursued must be the same as that employed in dealing with other fossil
remains.
Among the richest of the fossiliferous strata to which I have alluded are
the books of Judges and Samuel.<1> It has often been observed that
these writings stand out, in marked relief from those which precede and
follow them, in virtue of a certain archaic freshness and of a greater
freedom from traces of late interpolation and editorial trimming.
Jephthah, Gideon and Samson are men of old heroic stamp, who would
look as much in place in a Norse Saga as where they are; and if the
varnish- brush of later respectability has passed over these memoirs of
the mighty men of a wild age, here and there, it has not succeeded in
effacing, or even in seriously obscuring, the essential characteristics of
the theology traditionally ascribed to their epoch.
There is nothing that I have met with in the results of Biblical criticism
inconsistent with the conviction that these books give us a fairly
trustworthy account of Israelitic life and thought in the times which
they cover; and, as such, apart from the great literary merit of many of
their episodes, they possess the interest of being, perhaps, the oldest
genuine history, as apart from mere chronicles on the one hand and
mere legends on the other, at present accessible to us.
But it is often said with exultation by writers of one party, and often
admitted, more or less unwillingly, by their opponents, that these books

are untrustworthy, by reason of being full of obviously unhistoric tales.
And, as a notable example, the narrative of Saul's visit to the so-called
"witch of Endor" is often cited. As I have already intimated, I have
nothing to do with theological partisanship, either heterodox or
orthodox, nor, for my present purpose, does it matter very much
whether the story is historically true, or whether it merely shows what
the writer believed; but, looking at the matter solely from the point of
view of an anthropologist, I beg leave to express the opinion that the
account of Saul's necromantic expedition is quite consistent with
probability. That is to say, I see no reason whatever to doubt, firstly,
that Saul made such a visit; and, secondly, that he and all who were
present, including the wise woman of Endor herself, would have given,
with entire sincerity, very much the same account of the business as
that which we now read in the twenty-eighth chapter of the first book of
Samuel; and I am further of opinion that this story is one of the most
important of those fossils, to which I have referred, in the material
which it offers for the reconstruction of the theology of the time. Let us
therefore study it attentively--not merely as a narrative which, in the
dramatic force of its