nations of a different stock, the ancient religion of the Semites was Monotheistic. Many Semitic tribes, like the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, and even the Hebrews themselves at more than one period of their history, fell into Polytheism and idolatry through contact with the Hamites; but the process was a very gradual one, and in many cases the names of the deities worshipped of themselves prove that they had their origin in Monotheistic conceptions.¹ The Northern Arabs especially seem to have preserved their pristine faith in a fair degree of purity up to a comparatively late period. We find among them no such deities² as the Baal, Ashtoreth,³ Moloch, Ammon, worshipped in Canaan. If Professor Plumptre⁴ and others are right in believing in the Arabian origin of the Book of Job, that wonderful work⁵ shows us that Monotheism was only just beginning to be affected in the minds of the Arabs of the early age in which the book was written by Sabaean ideas and the

worship of the host of heaven. Herodotus¹ informs us that in his day the Arabs had two principal deities, Orotal and Alilat. The former of these names is doubtless a corruption of Allah² Ta'ala' (GOD Most High), while the latter is the goddess Al Lat³ mentioned in the Qur'an. Knowing how very inaccurate most of the classical writers are in their accounts of the religions of other nations (of which Tacitus' description of the Jewish worship in the Temple at Jerusalem⁴ is a fair example), we cannot depend very much on this statement of "the Father of History" as a proof that Polytheism was already prevalent among the Arabs generally. Indeed the very name Allah Ta'ala' GOD Most High, in which the word Allah is exactly equivalent to ό Θεος ⁵ in