uperior of Jahveh. But if Jahveh was thus
supposed to differ only in degree from the undoubtedly zoomorphic or
anthropomorphic "gods of the nations," why is it to be assumed that
he also was not thought of as having a human shape? It is possible for
those who forget that the time of the great prophetic writers is at
least as remote from that of Saul as our day is from that of Queen
Elizabeth, to insist upon interpreting the gross notions current in the
earlier age and among the mass of the people by the refined conceptions
promulgated by a few select spirits centuries later. But if we take the
language constantly used concerning the Deity in the books of Genesis,
Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, or Kings, in its natural sense (and I am
aware of no valid reason which can be given for taking it in any other
sense), there cannot, to my mind, be a doubt that Jahveh was conceived
by those from whom the substance of these books is mainly derived, to
possess the appearance and the intellectual and moral attributes of a
man; and, indeed, of a man of just that type with which the Israelites
were familiar in their stronger and intellectually abler rulers and
leaders. In a well-known passage in Genesis (i. 27) Elohim is said to
have "created man in his own image, in the image of Elohim created he
him." It is "man" who is here said to be the image of Elohim--not man's
soul alone, still less his "reason," but the whole man. It is obvious
that for those who call a manlike ghost Elohim, there could be no
difficulty in conceiving any other Elohim under the same aspect. And if
there could be any doubt on this subject, surely it cannot stand in the
face of what we find in the fifth chapter, where, immediately after a
repetition of the statement that "Elohim created man, in the likeness
of Elohim made he him," it is said that Adam begat Seth "in his own
likeness, after his image." Does this mean that Seth resembled Adam only
in a spiritual and figurative sense? And if that interpretation of
the third verse of the fifth chapter of Genesis is absurd, why does it
become reasonable in the first verse of the same chapter?

But let us go further. Is not the Jahveh who "walks in the garden in
the cool of the day"; from whom one may hope to "hide oneself among the
trees"; of whom it is expressly said that "Moses and Aaron, Nadab and
Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel," saw the Elohim of Israel
(Exod. xxiv. 9-11); and that, although the seei