encer then assigns, as evidence for ancestor-worship in Israel,
mourning dresses, fasting, the law against self-bleeding and cutting off
the hair for the dead, and the text (Deut. xxvi. 14) about 'I have not
given aught thereof for the dead.' 'Hence, the conclusion must be that
ancestor-worship had developed as far as nomadic habits allowed, before it
was repressed by a higher worship.'[9] But whence came that higher worship
which seems to have intervened immediately after the cessation of nomadic
habits?

There are obvious traces of grief expressed in a primitive way among the
Hebrews. 'Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your
eyes for the dead' (Deut. xiv. 1). 'Neither shall men lament for them,
nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them; neither shall men
tear themselves for them in mourning, to comfort them for the dead' (by
way of counter-irritant to grief); 'neither shall men give them the cup
of consolation to drink for their father or their mother,' because the
Jews were to be removed from their homes.[10] 'Ye shall not make any
cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you.'[11]

It may be usual to regard inflictions, such as cutting, by mourners, as
sacrifices to the ghost of the dead. But one has seen a man strike himself
a heavy blow on receiving news of a loss _not_ by death, and I venture to
fancy that cuttings and gashings at funerals are merely a more violent
form of appeal to a counter-irritant of grief, and, again, a token of
recklessness caused by a sorrow which makes void the world. One of John
Nicholson's native adorers killed himself on news of that warrior's death,
saying, 'What is left worth living for?' This was not a sacrifice to the
Manes of Nicholson. The sacrifice of the mourner's hair, as by Achilles,
argues a similar indifference to personal charm. Once more, the text in
Psalm cvi. 28, 'They joined themselves unto Baal-Peor, and ate the
sacrifices of the dead,' is usually taken by commentators as a reference
to the ritual of gods who are no gods. But it rather seems to indicate an
acquiescence in foreign burial rites. All this additional evidence does
not do much to prove ancestor-worship in Israel, though the secrecy of the
burial of Moses, 'in a valley of the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor;
but no man knoweth of his sepulchre to this day,' may indicate a dread of
a nascent worship of the great leader.[12] The scene of the defecti