conflict between the creator and hostile
forces was contrary to the monotheistic thesis, and has disappeared from
our two versions of Genesis; but the suppression sufficiently proves
that it was very ancient and had long been accepted."

The Martian finds that theologians have attempted to crawl out of
desperate situations in their interpretation of the Old Testament by a
method of reading into a passage or extracting out of it ideas
altogether foreign to its original intent. This method they call
"Allegory." By means of this process they have been able to extract any
meaning which suits their purposes, and by this method of juggling could
prove anything. A classic example is that licentious piece of literature
called the "Song of Solomon," in which it is claimed that a woman's
breasts, thighs, and belly are the symbols of the union of Jahveh and
the Synagogue.

Continuing his researches, the Martian notices a number of passages in
the Old Testament that lead him to the conclusion that the Hebrews were
originally polytheists. The name Elohim, he finds, is plural (singular,
Eloah), meaning the gods. Again, in another passage of Genesis, God is
described as saying, "Let us make man in our image (I, 26)," and further
on, "The man is become as one of us." It becomes evident to him that
the Hebrews, like their neighbors, worshiped "baalim" or the gods of the
heathens. The "teraphim," the etymology of which is unknown, were little
portable idols which seem to have been the Lares of the ancient Hebrews.
David owned some (I Samuel XIX, 13-16), and the prophet Hosea, in the
eighth century before Christ, seems still to have considered the
"teraphim" as indispensable in worship (Hos. III, 4). These evidences of
polytheism and fetichism in the people of Israel destroy, in the mind of
the Martian, the claim of these people to have been faithful from their
earliest origin to a spiritual monotheism. Rather does he find that they
took the religions of other peoples with whom they came in contact.

The Old Testament contains numerous instances of the practice of magic.
Moses and Aaron were magicians who rivalled Pharaoh's magicians (Ex.
VII, 11-20); and Balaam was a magician who pronounced incantations
against Israel and afterwards passed over to the service of Jehovah.
Jacob resorted to a kind of sympathetic magic to procure the birth of a
speckled sheep (Gen. XXX, 39). "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,"
is written in Exodus X