In fact, we have to suppose that the forgers who produced the Pentateuch, not only passed off their fraud upon the Jewish public, but actually secured recognition for it from the intensely hostile and intensely conservative population of Samaria. A layman may be pardoned for feeling that such criticism as this is pure mythology. But, in view of the uncertainties which are prevalent, I mean to give here some estimate of the Jewish religious standpoint as a whole, without distinguishing the various alleged strata in the deposit, or claiming for the whole any very remote antiquity. The notion that monotheism was a private discovery of the prophet Amos in something like 800 B.C. will hardly commend itself to the impartial observer who considers the intense obstinacy of the Jewish race, and its eager retentiveness of tradition. As a condition of monotheism, the Jewish people had to be particularly on its guard against local worship, and against pictorial representations of the Divine Influence.
Idolatry is at once the expression and the breeding-ground of polytheism.
Here again, if our documents are worth anything at all, the history of the Jewish people is not the history of a development away from idolatry towards a more spiritual form of worship. The Jew was not more convinced of God's uniqueness than of the unique position which belonged to his own race. The most inclusive of theologies is paradoxically maintained by the most exclusive of peoples. A monotheistic religion is commonly a missionary religion. To this principle Judaism forms a curious exception.