Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II GOD'S DWELLING-PLACE Monolatry as distinct from Monotheism.—Two or three times in the course of the preceding chapter the term Monolatry has been used in distinction from Monotheism, and it has been briefly indicated that this term—which means the worship of one God only, as distinct from the belief in the existence of one God only—embodies the true description of the earlier stage of Israel's national religion; because at this earlier stage Yahwe was thought of, not as the only Divine Being in existence, but as the only Divine Being with whom Israel as a nation had any concern, or to whom they were bound by any obligation. Yahwe, in short, was the national God, and, as national God, He made an exclusive claim upon Israel's allegiance, and would not tolerate the worship of any other god beside Himself. Such a view, however, of Israel's relationship towards Yahwe obviously did not hinder the belief that other nations might also have their national gods, and that these gods, though concerned only with their own nations, and in no position to exact worship or any other form of notice from Israel, were not merely false gods or idols, but had a real existence of their own. This is the meaning of the term Monolatry. Yahwe was Israel's national God, and their only God ; but, at the same time and in much the same way, Chemosh was Moab's national God, Milcom Ammon's national God, and so on. It is true that Chemosh and Milcom had no concern with Israel; but that was merely because they were exclusively concerned with their own nations, justas Yahwe was exclusively concerned with His own nation. They might be held really to exist, even though they did not enter in any way into Israel's religion. Evidence that Yaliwo was at first regarded as God of the Land of Israel.—N...