A. E. Whatham

“ But the fathers of the Babylonian Hebrews, southern Arabians, were pronounced polytheists who, in conquering the Sumerian-Babylonians, adopted their polytheism because they themselves were polytheists. Their descendants, that is, so many of them as finally went down into Egypt and there became Hebrew-Israelite-Egyptians, followed in their footsteps by adopting the gods of Egypt. ”

“ Some modern scholars reject the once generally accepted opinion that the Israelites borrowed the calf-worship from the Egyptians, attributing it rather to "the primitive conception of the Semitic stock to which the Hebrews belonged, the bull being a symbol of deity throughout the Semitic world." ”

“ Jacob went down into Egypt with a family of seventy souls, which returned to Canaan four hundred years later as a nation with some six hundred thousand men capable of bearing arms, besides women, children, their own old people, and many followers, about two million persons. [21] As Jacob's descendants increased in Egypt they adopted the religion of the country, and the question has now to be asked, Was such an adoption contrary to their own idea of deity? ”

“ Professor Driver unreservedly admits that in Gen. 6:1-4 we have "an ancient Hebrew legend .... a piece of 'unassimilated mythology,'" adding, "as a rule the Hebrew narrators stripped off the mythological coloring of the pieces of folklore which they record, but in the present instance it is still discernible." [14] Now if we have here a piece of pure mythology, similar to the classical myths which record the marriages between the gods and mortals, [15] in other words, a polytheistic narrative, we are fully justified in seeing in Gen. 1:26 an allusion to a polytheistic conception of deity. ”

“ Others, however, still accept the old view. [30] We agree with the latter, since the Israelites, while from an original Semitic stock, had grown up in a country in which Egyptian and not Semitic ideas prevailed. Indeed, it is doubtful whether they knew anything at all about Semitic faith and ritual. Nor is there anything in the argument that the Israelites just freed from Egyptian bondage would not have adopted an Egyptian deity to worship. They had asked for gods, new gods like Yahweh, to whom they had only recently been introduced by Moses. ”

“ This Yahweh himself is represented as indicating, and this was the cause of Moses demanding a reconsecration to Yahweh with the terrible slaughter of the apostates. It is now freely conceded that while through the judges and the monarchy Yahweh alone was Israel's God, "it was generally held that the gods of other nations — Chemosh, Milcom, and so on — had a real existence and authority in their respective lands." ”

“ Professor Toffteen, referring to the phrase in Gen. 1:26, "Let us make man in our image," describes it as plainly polytheistic "implying a recognition of more than one God." "Gen., chap. 1," he adds, "uses Elohim in a polytheistic sense." ”