so far as they admitted the existence of other Elohim of divine
rank beside Jahveh; they differed from ordinary polytheists, in
so far as they believed that Jahveh was the supreme god and the
one proper object of their own national worship. But it will
doubtless be objected that I have been building up a fictitious
Israelitic theology on the foundation of the recorded habits and
customs of the people, when they had lapsed from the ordinances
of their great lawgiver and prophet Moses, and that my
conclusions may be good for the perverts to Canaanitish
theology, but not for the true observers of the Sinaitic
legislation. The answer to the objection is that--so far as I
can form a judgment of that which is well ascertained in the
history of Israel--there is very little ground for believing
that we know much, either about the theological and social value
of the influence of Moses, or about what happened during the
wanderings in the Desert.

The account of the Exodus and of the occurrences in the Sinaitic
peninsula; in fact, all the history of Israel before the
invasion of Canaan, is full of wonderful stories, which may be
true, in so far as they are conceivable occurrences, but which
are certainly not probable, and which I, for one, decline to
accept until evidence, which deserves that name, is offered of
their historical truth. Up to this time I know of none.<28>
Furthermore, I see no answer to the argument that one has no
right to pick out of an obviously unhistorical statement the
assertions which happen to be probable and to discard the rest.
But it is also certain that a primitively veracious tradition
may be smothered under subsequent mythical additions, and that
one has no right to cast away the former along with the latter.