seldom with distinct proper names, so that it was easy to regard them as a whole and confound them together. Yet the power bore different names in different tribes. In some cases it was called El, or Alon, or Eloah; in other cases Elion, Saddai, Baal, Adonai, Ram, Milik or Moloch.
The Elohim, though generally bound together, sometimes acted separately; thus each tribe gained in time its protecting god, whose function was to watch over it and direct it to success.
In the transition to nationality, the Israelites conceived a national god, Jahveh, who was not just, being partial toward Israel and cruel toward all other peoples. The worship of a national god is not monotheistic, but henotheistic, recognizing other gods of other peoples. The work of the later prophets consisted in restoring the attributes of the ancient elohism under the form of Jahveh, and in generalizing the religious cult of a special god.
Jahveh was not at first the god of the universe, but subsequently became so because he was the God of Israel, and very long afterward was claimed to be the only god, mainly because the Israelites claimed to be the peculiar people. Even down to the time of the prophet Isaiah, there was alternation of conflict and of co-ordination between Jahveh and the other gods of Canaan, especially Baal.
The revolution accomplished by the prophets did not change expressions. The concept of Jahveh was too deeply rooted to be removed, and the people spoke of Jahveh as they had formerly spoken of the Elohim. He thus became the supreme being who made and governed the world. In time even the name of Jahveh was suppressed and its utterance forbidden; and it was replaced by a purely theistic word meaning the Lord. Undoubtedly the prophets, at the time of the kings and later, taught the worship of one God, but the people were not converted to the doctrine until after the great captivity.
When established in Palestine, the Israelites entered into communion with the Canaanites, their kindred, and worshiped Baal. Later they frequently bowed down to the Dagon of the Philistines, probably because he was the god of their warlike victors. Solomon, perhaps from admiration of Sidonian culture, introduced the service of Astarte, which was intermitted; but later, Ahab established the worship of the Sidonian divinities in the kingdom of Samaria. It was subsequently readopted in the kingdom of Judah, and not until the reign of Josiah were the Sidonian altars finally demolished.
The true parallel, therefore, between the Indians and the Israelites, as to belief in a single overruling God, is not that both, but that neither, held it.
In the stage of barbarism all the phenomena of nature are
