The present Arabians, according to their OW11 historians, are sprung from two stocks,—Kalitan, the same with Joktan or Yoktan of the Bible, the son of Eber, whose descendants occupy the south ; and Adnan, descended in a direct line from Ishmael, the son of Abraham and Hagar, who occupy the north. Yoktan, according to Ch. Bunsen, was 011C of the two sons of Nimrucl, and was the chief of the first Arabian emigration that proceeded southwards. Tradition points to the mountains of Armenia, as the birthplace of the Arab and Canaanitish races. It is supposed that they travelled along the banks of the Tigris into Mesopotamia, front which a portion of them commenced a great migration southwards, the result of which was the foundation of the primeval kingdoms of Southern Arabia, the kingdoms of the Adites in Yemen, who believe that they came from the sacred North, and once lived in a glori ous garden of the earth which they are to restore.
It has not been unusual to describe the Semites as essentially monotheistic, but their tribes and nations were worshippers of El, Elohim, Jehovah, Sabaoth, Moloch, Nisroch, Rimmon, Nebo, Dagon, Ashtaroth, Baal or Baal-peor, Baal-zebub, Chem osh, Milcom, Adra-Mclek, Anna-Melek, Nibhaz, Tartak, Ashima, Nergal, Succoth-benoth, the sun, the moon, the planets, and all the host of heaven. Amongst the nomade branch, there seems early to have been a monotheistic belief, but the great bulk of the Hebrew nation continued to worship idols of their own manufacture ; and the prophet, when ordered by inspiration to proceed to the wilderness of Damascus, was told that there were only in Israel 7000 people who believed in the one God. Some branches of the Semitic race, ignorant of science theocratic, have devoted themselves to the ex pression of religious instincts and intuitions,—in one word, to the establishment of monotheism.
The doctrine of a future life and retribution, which in one form or other was inwoven with the religious ideas of Egypt, appears to have been unknown to the Semitic nations. The Assyrians were Semites. The names of the Assyrian gods, as Baal or Belus (the supreme deity amongst many of the Semitic races), Nisroch and Mylittit (known by a nearly similar »ame to the Arabians), of members of the fatnily of the king, such as Adra Melek (son of Sennscherib), and of many of the principal officers of state mentioned in Scripture, such na Rabsaris, the chief of the eunuchs, and Rabshakeh, the chief of the cup-bearers, are purely Semitic. Phcenicians, Carthaginians, Syrians, Assyrians have presented forms of wor ship as gross and sensuous as those of Greece or India. Until the return of the Jews from Babylon, the people generally were ever prone to fall into a worship of gods many and lords naany, like the nations around them, which the few thinking minds amongst them could not prevent. Their entire history shows that the people fell into the lower forms of thought and speech, their very worship of Jehovah became polytheistic, even fetish in its nature, and it was in protest against this that their lawgivers, prophets, and psahnists spoke; and when Mahomed appeared with a mono theism the most ri,gorous and exclusive that the world had witnessed, he was one of a Semitic race who were polytheists and fetish-worshippers. The Jews' belief had as a basis, not monotheism, the belief in a deity numerically one, but in a living God, the Father and the King of men. But when Mahomed proclaimed that the Lord was One, he did so as reviving the faith of Abraham, who derived his knowledge through a special revelation of God.—E. H. Plumptre, Review of Max Muller's Science of Religion ; Contemporary Review, January 1868.