Among this people there was no real develop ment of polytheism, although there were trans gressions of God's law by their falling into the customs of the heathen around them; we find evi dence of the occasional worship of the powers of nature side by side with the spiritual faith of their fathers. This was Syncretism, or the attempted union of such opposite forces as the worship of, God and Baal. Faith in Jehovah as the God of Israel was pure monotheism, and it was connected with that perfect conception of God which was afterwards revealed in the Christ.
Dr. Jevons says: "The monotheism of the Jews is a unique and solitary phenomenon in the history of religion. Nowhere else in the world has the development of religion culminated in monotheism" (p. 388).
"The tendencies which have been supposed in polytheism to make for monotheism have always been purely pantheistic; speculative rather than practical, metaphysical rather than religious; and as being metaphysical speculations have always been confined to the cultured few, and have never even leavened the polytheism of the masses" (p. 3S9)• "Pantheism is the philosophical complement of • first extending until the Babylonian captivity; the second until one or two centuries after the de struction of Jerusaletn by the Romans; and the third from the adpotion of the calendar of Rabbi HiIlel the younger (i. c. from about the middle of the fourth century of our era) until the present time.
(15 First Period. In the first period the months are, as a rule, mentioned by their numeri cal designation only—as 'the first month,"the sec ond,' etc. We have no explicit indication of the number of days in a month, nor of the number of months in a year; the z7th day and the tth month being respectively the highest mentioned (Gen. viii:t4 ; Deut. i :3) ; unless Kings iv:7 be
considered to prove that the year had 12 months. Nevertheless, the two Hebrew terms for month —literally new moon, thence month, from a root signifying to bc new; and moon, and thence month —afford some proof that the months were meas ured by the moon (comp. Ps. civ :9).
(2) Second Period. In the second period we find, in part, a continuation of the previous meth od, with somewhat more definite statements (for instance, t Chron. xxvii clearly proves that the year had twelve months), and, in part, the adop tion of new names for the months; but the co existence of both these systems is not easily ex plained. For, whereas Zechariah, Ezra, Nehe miah, and Esther, introduce the seven new names —Shebat, Chisleu, Adar, Nisan, Elul, Tebeth, and Sivan—all the other canonical books written after the restoration do nothing more than enumerate the months, without any name, in the order of their succession. Although only the above-men tioned seven names occur in the Old Testament, yet there is no manner of doubt that the Jews at the same time adopted the entire twelve names, of which the following is a table: a pantheon; but the spirit which produced the monotheism of the Jews must have been some thing very different" (p. 39o).
Those who claim that monotheism did gener ally develop from polytheism will be obliged to reckon with the arguments and with the stubborn facts which are presented by Dr. Jevons and other competent scholars. (See An Introduction to the History of Religion, by Frank Byron Jevons, M. A., Litt. D., London, Methuen & Co., 1/397; see, also, The Am. lour. of Theol., p. 1,002, sq.) (See SEMITIC RELIGION.)