Though the mythology of our Teutonic forefathers knew of the "All-Father,"--the holy Odin,--it is from those children-loving people, the Hebrews, that our Christian conception of "God the Father," with some modifications, is derived. As Professor Robertson Smith has pointed out, among the Semites we find the idea of the tribal god as father strongly developed: "But in heathen religions the fatherhood of the gods is a physical fatherhood. Among the Greeks, for example, the idea that the gods fashioned men out of clay, as potters fashion images, is relatively modern. The older conception is that the races of men have gods for their ancestors, or are the children of the earth, the common mother of gods and men, so that men are really of the same stock or kin of the gods. That the same conception was familiar to the older Semites appears from the Bible. Jeremiah describes idolaters as saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth. In the ancient poem, Num. xxi. 29, the Moabites are called the sons and daughters of Chemosh, and, at a much more recent date, the prophet Malachi calls a heathen woman, 'the daughter of a strange god'" (535. 41-43).
Professor Smith cites also the evidence furnished by genealogies and personal names: "The father of Solomon's ally, Hiram, King of Tyre, was called _Abibaal_, 'my father is Baal'; Ben-Hadad, of Damascus, is 'the son of the god Hadad'; in Aramæan we find names like _Barlâhâ_, 'son of God,' _Barba'shmîn_, 'son of the Lord of Heaven,' _Barate_, 'son of Ate,' etc." We have also that passage in Genesis which tells how the "sons of God saw the daughters of men that were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose" (vi. 2), while an echo of the same thought dwells with the Polynesians, who term illegitimate children _tamarika na te Atua_, "children of the gods" (458. 121). D'Alviella further remarks: "Presently these family relations of the gods were extended till they embraced the whole creation, and especially mankind. The confusion between the terms for creating and begetting, which still maintained itself in half-developed languages, must have led to a spontaneous fusion of the ideas of creator and father." But there is another aspect of this question. Of the Amazulu Callaway writes: "Speaking generally, the head of each house is worshipped by the children of that house; for they do not know the ancients who are dead, nor their laud-giving names, nor their names. But their father whom they knew is the head by whom they begin and end in their prayer, for they know him best, and his love for his children; they remember his kindness to them whilst he was living; they compare his treatment of them whilst he was living, support themselves by it, and say, 'He will treat us in the same way now he is dead. We do not know why he should regard others beside us; he will regard us only.'" Of these people it is true, as they themselves say: "Our father is a great treasure to us, even when he is dead" (417.144).