name Baal (Lord) was used, like
El, Elohim, El Eljon, El Schaddai, Adonai, even among the Israelites,
to designate the Supreme Being. Secondly, the God of Abraham (Elohim),
although he desires no human sacrifices, nevertheless praises the
willingness of the father to offer up his first-born, and sees in that
the highest proof of devotedness and obedience.[20] Thirdly,
circumcision, already before Moses[21] the bloody symbol of consecration
to God,[22] and also the right of Jahveh to the first-born, and the
necessity of ransoming them from him,[23] imply an earlier conception of
the deity as a being, who, although on a higher development of the
religion he is not indeed any longer thought to desire human sacrifice,
nevertheless has a right to such a sacrifice, and thus demands indemnity
for remitting it. Fourthly, the later conception, of Jahveh as a
destroying fire, and the way in which the God of Israel is conceived in
connection with fire, and as manifesting himself in fire,[24] betray,
even in the midst of a more advanced religious development, an original
relationship with the like conceptions of the other Semites. Fifthly,
even in the orthodox Jahveh-worship, some symbols, as the twelve oxen in
the porch of the temple,[25] the horns of the altar for
burnt-offerings,[26] perhaps also the in part oxlike form of the
cherubim,[27] point to an earlier worship of the deity under the form of
an ox, the symbol of the highest might, especially among the Semitic
races.[28]

In confirmation of the supposition thus suggested of a community of
origin in the religion of the Israelites and in that of the nations
related to them, there is also to be remarked, firstly, the sympathy
always felt among the people of Israel for the worship of Baal and
Molech, in face of the strongest opposition on the part of the
prophets;[29] secondly, the statement of Amos,[30] that even in the
wilderness the Israelites worshiped Molech; thirdly, the fact that in
the time of the Judges, Jephthah offered his daughter to Jahveh,[31] and
still later the feeling, not driven out even by Mosaism, that the wrath
of Jahveh must be appeased by human blood,[32] a necessity which David
recognizes;[33] fourthly, the ancient custom in Israel, as in the
nations related to them, of worshiping the deity on mountains and
heights,[34] against which the priestly legislation strove in the
interest of the pure worship of Jahveh;[35] fifthly, the heterodox
worship of Jah