pointed out, we learn from the temple-tariffs of Carthage and Marseilles
that in the later ritual of Phoenicia a ram took the place of the
earlier human sacrifice.

Where was this mountain in the land of Moriah whereon the altar of
Abraham was built? It would seem from a passage in the Second Book of
Chronicles (iii. 1) that it was the future temple-mount at Jerusalem.
The words of Genesis also point in the same direction. Abraham, we read,
"called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said to this day,
In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." It is hard to believe that
"the mount of the Lord" can mean anything else than that _har-el_ or
"mountain of God" whereon Ezekiel places the temple, or that the proverb
can refer to a less holy spot than that where the Lord appeared
enthroned upon the cherubim above the mercy-seat. It is doubtful,
however, whether the reading of the Hebrew text in either passage is
correct. According to the Septuagint the proverb quoted in Genesis
should run: "In the mountain is the Lord seen," and the same authority
changes the "Moriah" of the Book of Chronicles into _Amôr-eia_, "of the
Amorites."

It is true that the distance of Jerusalem from Beer-sheba would agree
well with the three days' journey of Abraham. But it is difficult to
reconcile the description of the scene of Abraham's sacrifice with the
future temple-mount. Where Isaac was bound to the altar was a solitary
spot, the patriarch and his son were alone there, and it was overgrown
with brushwood so thickly that a ram had been caught in it by his horns.
The temple-mount, on the contrary, was either within the walls of a city
or just outside them, and the city was already a capital famous for its
worship of "the most High God." Had the Moriah of Jerusalem really been
the site of Abraham's altar it is strange that no allusion is made to