is lamentably scanty.

Again, traces of human sacrifice appear in the ritual of Israel, and it is
only relatively late that the great prophets, justly declaring Jehovah to
be indifferent to the blood of bulls and rams, try to bring back his
service to that of the unpropitiated, unbought Dendid, or Ahone, or
Pundjel. Here is degeneration, even in Israel. How the conception of
Jehovah arose in Israel, whether it was a revival of a half-obliterated
idea, such as we find among low savages; or whether it was borrowed from
some foreign creed; or was the result of meditation on the philosophical
Supreme Being of high Egyptian theology, is another question. The Biblical
statement leans to the first alternative. Jehovah, not by that name, had
been the God of Israel's fathers. The question will be discussed later;
but, unless new facts are discovered, we must accept the version of the
Pentateuch, or take refuge in conjecture.

Not only is there degeneration from the Australian conception of
Mungan-gnaur, at its best, to the conception of the Semitic gods in
general, but, 'humanly speaking,' if religion began in a pure form among
low savages, degeneration was inevitable. Advancing social conditions
compelled men into degeneration. Mungan-ngaur is, so far, in line with
our own ideas of divinity because he is not localised. He dwelleth not in
temples made with hands; it is not likely that he should, when his
worshippers have neither house, tent, nor tabernacle. As Mr. Robertson
Smith says, 'where the God had a house or a temple, we recognise the work
of men who were no longer pure nomads, but had begun to form fixed homes.'
By the nature of Australian society, a deity could not be tied to a
temple, and temple-ritual, and consequent myths to explain that ritual,
could not arise. Nor could Darumulun be attached to a district, just as
'the nomad Arabs could not assimilate the conception of a god as a
land-owner, and apply it to their own tribal deities, for the simple
reason that in the desert private property in land was unknown.'[8]

Darumulun is thus not capable of degenerating into 'a local god, as
_Baal_, or lord of the land,' because this 'involves a series of ideas
unknown to the primitive life of the savage huntsman,' like the widely
spread Murring tribes.[9]

Nor could Darumulun be tied down to a place in Semitic fashion, first by
manifesting himself there, therefore by receiving an altar of sacrifice
there, and in the end