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CONFLUENCE OF OPPOSITES
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the serpent, ate the fruit of the first named tree. For this he was turned out of the Garden of Eden with his consort Eve who was his companion in the transgression and who became his wife thereafter. Death also came to fasten itself on Adam in consequence of the act of disobedience. Adam had at first two sons, Abel and Cain, the former of whom was murdered by the latter, his brother. Cain was thereupon cursed by Jehovah, and he became a fugitive and wanderer on the face of the earth. Subsequently a third son, Seth, the appointed, was born to Adam, and it was Enos, the son of Seth in whose time people began to call on the Lord, or, according to another reading of the text, to call themselves by the name of the Lord (vide marginal notes to Genesis (iv, 26).
Ever since the transgression Jahweh has been exhorting the people to obedience and has repeatedly sent messages to that effect to Israelites through sundry prophets. The worship of Jehovah, whose most signi- . ficant name is I AM, consisted in prayer, psalm and sacrifice chiefly. Jehovah describes himself as a jealous god, visiting the iniquity of men into the third and fourth generation of them that hate bim. As for future life, metempsychosis was rejected by Exoteric philosophers among the Jews but accepted by the Kab. balists (ERE. VII. 626). In a way, the Jews believed in resurrection and also the advent of a future Messiah who is to establish a new order of things. Their ethical code may be said to be summed up in the following com
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