The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Thomas Henry Huxley (reading the story of the TXT) 📗

god was either a deified ghost of an ancestor or chief, or, at any rate, a being of like nature to these. If one wanted to get anything out of him, therefore, the first step was to put him in good humour by gifts; and if one desired to escape his wrath, which might be excited by the most trifling neglect or unintentional disrespect, the great thing was to pacify him by costly presents. King Finow appears to have been somewhat of a freethinker (to the great horror of his subjects), and it was only his untimely death which prevented him from dealing with the priest of a god, who had not returned a favourable answer to his supplications, as Saul dealt with the priests of the sanctuary of Jahveh at Nob. Nevertheless, Finow showed his practical belief in the gods during the sickness of a daughter, to whom he was fondly attached, in a fashion which has a close parallel in the history of Israel.

 

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“If the gods have any resentment against us, let the whole weight of vengeance fall on my head. I fear not their vengeance —but spare my child; and I earnestly entreat you, Toobo Totai [the god whom he had evoked], to exert all your influence with the other gods that I alone may suffer all the punishment they desire to inflict (vol. i. p. 354).

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So when the king of Israel has sinned by “numbering the people,”

and they are punished for his fault by a pestilence which slays seventy thousand innocent men, David cries to Jahveh:—

 

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Lo, I have sinned, and I have done perversely; but these sheep, what have they done? let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my father’s house” (2 Sam. xxiv. 17).

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Human sacrifices were extremely common in Polynesia; and, in Tonga, the “devotion” of a child by strangling was a favourite method of averting the wrath of the gods. The well-known instances of Jephthah’s sacrifice of his daughter and of David’s giving up the seven sons of Saul to be sacrificed by the Gibeonites “before Jahveh,” appear to me to leave no doubt that the old Israelites, even when devout worshippers of Jahveh, considered human sacrifices, under certain circumstances, to be not only permissible but laudable. Samuel’s hewing to pieces of the miserable captive, sole survivor of his nation, Agag, “before Jahveh,” can hardly be viewed in any other light.

The life of Moses is redeemed from Jahveh, who “sought to slay him,” by Zipporah’s symbolical sacrifice of her child, by the bloody operation of circumcision. Jahveh expressly affirms that the first-born males of men and beasts are devoted to him; in accordance with that claim, the first-born males of the beasts are duly sacrificed; and it is only by special permission that the claim to the first-born of men is waived, and it is enacted that they may be redeemed (Exod. xiii. 12-15). Is it possible to avoid the conclusion that immolation of their first-born sons would have been incumbent on the worshippers of Jahveh, had they not been thus specially excused? Can any other conclusion be drawn from the history of Abraham and Isaac?

Does Abraham exhibit any indication of surprise when he receives the astounding order to sacrifice his son? Is there the slightest evidence that there was anything in his intimate and personal acquaintance with the character of the Deity, who had eaten the meat and drunk the milk which Abraham set before him under the oaks of Mamre, to lead him to hesitate—even to wait twelve or fourteen hours for a repetition of the command? Not a whit. We are told that “Abraham rose early in the morning” and led his only child to the slaughter, as if it were the most ordinary business imaginable. Whether the story has any historical foundation or not, it is valuable as showing that the writer of it conceived Jahveh as a deity whose requirement of such a sacrifice need excite neither astonishment nor suspicion of mistake on the part of his devotee. Hence, when the incessant human sacrifices in Israel, during the age of the kings, are put down to the influence of foreign idolatries, we may fairly inquire whether editorial Bowdlerising has not prevailed over historical truth.

 

An attempt to compare the ethical standards of two nations, one of which has a written code, while the other has not, is beset with difficulties. With all that is strange and, in many cases, repulsive to us in the social arrangements and opinions respecting moral obligation among the Tongans, as they are placed before us, with perfect candour, in Mariner’s account, there is much that indicates a strong ethical sense. They showed great kindliness to one another, and faithfulness in standing by their comrades in war. No people could have better observed either the third or the fifth commandment; for they had a particular horror of blasphemy, and their respectful tenderness towards their parents and, indeed, towards old people in general, was remarkable.

 

It cannot be said that the eighth commandment was generally observed, especially where Europeans were concerned; nevertheless a well-bred Tongan looked upon theft as a meanness to which he would not condescend. As to the seventh commandment, any breach of it was considered scandalous in women and as something to be avoided in self-respecting men; but, among unmarried and widowed people, chastity was held very cheap.

Nevertheless the women were extremely well treated, and often showed themselves capable of great devotion and entire faithfulness. In the matter of cruelty, treachery, and bloodthirstiness, these islanders were neither better nor worse than most peoples of antiquity. It is to the credit of the Tongans that they particularly objected to slander; nor can covetousness be regarded as their characteristic; for Mariner says:—

 

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When any one is about to eat, he always shares out what he has to those about him, without any hesitation, and a contrary conduct would be considered exceedingly vile and selfish (vol.

ii p. 145).

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In fact, they thought very badly of the English when Mariner told them that his countrymen did not act exactly on that principle. It further appears that they decidedly belonged to the school of intuitive moral philosophers, and believed that virtue is its own reward; for

 

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Many of the chiefs, on being asked by Mr. Mariner what motives they had for conducting themselves with propriety, besides the fear of misfortunes in this life, replied, the agreeable and happy feeling which a man experiences within himself when he does any good action or conducts himself nobly and generously as a man ought to do; and this question they answered as if they wondered such a question should be asked” (vol. ii. p. 161).

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One may read from the beginning of the book of Judges to the end of the books of Samuel without discovering that the old Israelites had a moral standard which differs, in any essential respect (except perhaps in regard to the chastity of unmarried women), from that of the Tongans. Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, and David are strong-handed men, some of whom are not outdone by any Polynesian chieftain in the matter of murder and treachery; while Deborah’s jubilation over Jael’s violation of the primary duty of hospitality, proffered and accepted under circumstances which give a peculiarly atrocious character to the murder of the guest; and her witch-like gloating over the picture of the disappointment of the mother of the victim—

 

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The mother of Sisera cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? (Jud. v. 28.) <end quote>

 

—would not have been out of place in the choral service of the most sanguinary god in the Polynesian pantheon.

 

With respect to the cannibalism which the Tongans occasionally practised, Mariner says:—

 

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Although a few young ferocious warriors chose to imitate what they considered a mark of courageous fierceness in a neighbouring nation, it was held in disgust by everybody else (vol. ii. p. 171).

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That the moral standard of Tongan life was less elevated than that indicated in the “Book of the Covenant” (Exod. xxi.-xxiii.) may be freely admitted. But then the evidence that this Book of the Covenant, and even the ten commandments as given in Exodus, were known to the Israelites of the time of Samuel and Saul, is (to say the least) by no means conclusive. The Deuteronomic version of the fourth commandment is hopelessly discrepant from that which stands in Exodus. Would any later writer have ventured to alter the commandments as given from Sinai, if he had had before him that which professed to be an accurate statement of the “ten words” in Exodus? And if the writer of Deuteronomy had not Exodus before him, what is the value of the claim of the version of the ten commandments therein contained to authenticity? From one end to the other of the books of Judges and Samuel, the only “commandments of Jahveh” which are specially adduced refer to the prohibition of the worship of other gods, or are orders given <i>ad hoc,</i> and have nothing to do with questions of morality.

 

In Polynesia, the belief in witchcraft, in the appearance of spiritual beings in dreams, in possession as the cause of diseases, and in omens, prevailed universally. Mariner tells a story of a woman of rank who was greatly attached to King Finow, and who, for the space of six months after his death, scarcely ever slept elsewhere than on his grave, which she kept carefully decorated with flowers:—

 

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One day she went, with the deepest affliction, to the house of Mo-oonga Toobo, the widow of the deceased chief, to communicate what had happened to her at the <i>fytoca</i> [grave] during several nights, and which caused her the greatest anxiety.

She related that she had dreamed that the late How [King]

appeared to her and, with a countenance full of disappointment, asked why there yet remained at Vavaoo so many evil-designing persons; for he declared that, since he had been at Bolotoo, his spirit had been disturbed<22> by the evil machinations of wicked men conspiring against his son; but he declared that “the youth”

should not be molested nor his power shaken by the spirit of rebellion; that he therefore came to her with a warning voice to prevent such disastrous consequences (vol. i. p. 424).

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On inquiry it turned out that the charm of <i>tattao</i> had been performed on Finow’s grave, with the view of injuring his son, the reigning king, and it is to be presumed that it was this sorcerer’s work which had “disturbed” Finow’s spirit. The Rev. Richard Taylor says in the work already cited: “The account given of the witch of Endor agrees most remarkably with the witches of New Zealand” (p. 45).

 

The Tongans also believed in a mode of divination (essentially similar to the casting of lots) the twirling of a cocoanut.

 

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The object of inquiry … is chiefly whether a sick person will recover; for this purpose the nut being placed on the ground, a relation of the sick person determines that, if the nut, when again at rest, points to such a quarter, the east for example, that the sick man will recover; he then prays aloud to the patron god of the family that he will be pleased to direct the nut so that it may indicate the truth; the nut being next spun, the result is attended to with confidence, at least with a full conviction that it will truly declare the intentions of the gods at the time (vol. ii. p. 227).

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Does not the action of Saul, on a famous occasion, involve exactly the same theological presuppositions?

 

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Therefore Saul