sacrifice, it may be taken for tolerably certain that he knew
nothing of the Levitical laws which severely condemn the high
places and those who sacrifice away from the sanctuary hallowed
by the presence of the ark.

There is no evidence that, during the time of the Judges and of
Samuel, any one occupied the position of the high priest of
later days. And persons who were neither priests nor Levites
sacrificed and divined or "inquired of Jahveh," when they
pleased and where they pleased, without the least indication
that they, or any one else in Israel at that time, knew they
were doing wrong. There is no allusion to any special observance
of the Sabbath; and the references to circumcision are indirect.

Such are the chief articles of the theological creed of the old
Israelites, which are made known to us by the direct evidence of
the ancient record to which we have had recourse, and they are
as remarkable for that which they contain as for that which is
absent from them. They reveal a firm conviction that, when death
takes place, a something termed a soul or spirit leaves the body
and continues to exist in Sheol for a period of indefinite
duration, even though there is no proof of any belief in
absolute immortality; that such spirits can return to earth to
possess and inspire the living; that they are, in appearance and
in disposition, likenesses of the men to whom they belonged, but
that, as spirits, they have larger powers and are freer from
physical limitations; that they thus form a group among a number
of kinds of spiritual existences known as Elohim, of whom
Jahveh, the national God of Israel, is one; that, consistently
with this view, Jahveh was conceived as a sort of spirit, human