e Dyaus, like Indra, like Brahman, Baal and El and
Moloch were names of God, but not yet of the One God.

And we have only to follow the history of these Semitic names in order
to see that, in spite of their superlative meaning, they proved no
stronger bulwark against polytheism than the Latin Optimus Maximus.
The very names which we saw explained before as meaning the Highest,
the Lord, the Master, are represented in the Phenician mythology as
standing to each other in the relation of Father and Son. (Renan, p.
60.) There is hardly one single Semitic tribe which did not at times
forget the original meaning of the names by which they called on God.
If the Jews had remembered the meaning of El, the Omnipotent, they
could not have worshipped Baal, the Lord, as different from El. But as
the Aryan tribes bartered the names of their gods, and were glad to
add the worship of Zeus to that of Uranos, the worship of Apollon to
that of Zeus, the worship of Hermes to that of Apollon, the Semitic
nations likewise were ready to try the gods of their neighbours. If
there had been in the Semitic race a truly monotheistic instinct, the
history of those nations would become perfectly unintelligible.
Nothing is more difficult to overcome than an instinct: naturam furca
expellas, tamen usque recurret. But the history even of the Jews is
made up of an almost uninterrupted series of relapses into polytheism.
Let us admit, on the contrary, that God had in the beginning revealed
Himself the same to the ancestors of the whole human race. Let us then
observe the natural divergence of the languages of man, and consider
the peculiar difficulties that had to be overcome in framing names for
God, and the peculiar manner in which they were overcome in the
Semitic and Aryan languages, and everything that follows will be
intelligible. If we consider the abundance of synonymes into which all
ancient languages burst out at their first starting--if we remember
that there were hundreds of names for the earth and the sky, the sun
and the moon, we shall not be surprised at meeting with more than one
name for God both among the Semitic and the Aryan nations. If we
consider how easily the radical or significative elements of words
were absorbed and obscured in the Aryan, and how they stood out in
bold relief in the Semitic languages, we shall appreciate the
difficulty which the Shemites experienced in framing any name that
should not seem to take too one-side