Prolegomena to the History of Israel by Julius Wellhausen (page 12)

have been possible to conjecture the state of the country in these circumstances, even if we had not been informed of it by means of the prophetical book of Hosea, which dates from the time when the Assyrians had begun indeed to tamper with the country, but had not yet shown their full design. After the death of Jeroboam II. there had been wild outbursts of partisan war; none of the kings who in quick succession appeared and disappeared had real power, none established order. It was as if the danger from without, which was only too obviously threatening the existence of the kingdom, had already dissolved all internal bonds; every one was at war with his neighbour. Assyrians and Egyptians were called in to support this or that government; by such expedients the external confusion was, naturally, only increased. Was there any other quarter in which help could yet be sought? The people, led by the priests, turned to the altars of Jehovah, and outdid itself in pious works, as if by any such illusory means, out of all relation to the practical problem in hand, the gangrene of anarchy could possibly be healed. Still more zealous than Amos against the cultus was Hosea, not merely on the ground that it had the absurd motive of forcing Jehovah’s favour, but also because it was of heathenish character, nature-worship and idolatry. That Jehovah is the true and only helper is certainly not denied by Hosea. But His help is coupled with the condition that Israel shall undergo a complete change, and of such a change he sees no prospect. On this account the downfall of the state is in Hosea’s view inevitable, but not final ruin, only such an overthrow as is necessary for the transition to a new and fair recommencement. In Hosea’s prophecies the relation between Jehovah and Israel is conceived of as dissoluble, and as actually on the point of being dissolved, but it has struck its roots so deep that it must inevitably at last establish itself again.

The first actual collision between Israel and Assyria occurred in 734. Resin, king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of Samaria, had united in an expedition against Judah, where at that time Ahaz ben Jotham occupied the throne. But Ahaz parried the blow by placing himself under the protection of the Assyrians, who perhaps would in any case have struck in against the alliance between Aram and Israel. Tiglath-pileser made his first appearance in 734, first on the sea-coast of Palestine, and subsequently either in this or in the following year took up his quarters in the kingdom of the ten tribes. After he had ravaged Galilee and Gilead, he finally concluded a peace with Samaria conditionally on his receiving the head of King Pekah and a considerable yearly tribute. Hosea ben Elah was raised to the throne in Pekah’s place and acknowledged by the Assyrian as a vassal For some ten years he held his position quietly, regularly paying his dues. But when at the death of Tiglath-pileser the Syro-Palestinian kingdoms rebelled _en masse_, Samaria also was seized with the delirium of patriotic fanaticism (Isaiah xxviii.). Relying upon the help of Seve, king of Ethiopia and Egypt, Hosea ventured on a revolt from Assyria. But the Egyptians left him in the lurch as soon as Shalmaneser IV., Tiglath-pileser’s successor, invaded his territory. Before his capital had fallen, Hosea himself fell into the hands of the Assyrians. Samaria offered a desperate resistance, and succumbed only to Sargon, Shalmaneser’s successor (72I). Energetic measures were adopted by the victor for the pacification of the country; he carried all the inhabitants of mark into captivity to Calachene, Gozanitis, and Armenia. Much light is thrown upon the conditions of the national religion then and upon its subsequent development by the single fact that the exiled Israelites were absorbed by the surrounding heathenism without leaving a trace behind them, while the population of Judah, who had the benefit of a hundred years respite, held their faith fast throughout the period of the Babylonian exile, and by means of it were able to maintain their own individuality afterwards in all the circumstances that arose. The fact that the fall of Samaria did not hinder but helped the religion of Jehovah is entirely due to the prophets. That they had foreseen the downfall of the state, and declared in the name of religion that it was inevitable, was a matter of much greater historical importance than the actual downfall itself.

7. THE DELIVERANCE OF JUDAH.

Hitherto the small kingdom of Judah had stood in the background. Its political history had been determined almost exclusively by its relation to Israel. Under the dynasty of Omri the original enmity had been changed into a close but perhaps not quite voluntary friendship. Judah found itself drawn completely into the train of the more powerful neighbouring state, and seems even to have rendered it military service. The fall of the house of Omri was an ominous event for Judah as well as Israel; Jehu, as he passed to the throne, put to death not only Ahaziah the king but also two and forty other members of the royal house of David who had fallen into his hands; and those who still survived, children for the most part, were murdered wholesale by the regent Athaliah for reasons that are unknown. Only one little boy, Joash, was concealed from her fury, and by a successful conspiracy six years afterwards was placed upon the throne of his ancestors. At that time the Syrians were extending their incursions to Judah and Philistia, and Joash bought them off from Jerusalem with the temple treasures. Perhaps it was this disgrace that he expiated with his death; in like manner perhaps the assassination of his successor Amaziah is to be accounted for by the discredit he had incurred by a reckless and unsuccessful war against Israel. Just as Israel was beginning to recover itself after the happy termination of the Syrian wars, Judah also experienced its period of highest prosperity. What Jeroboam II. was to the northern kingdom, Uzziah was to that of the south. He appears to have obtained possession of Edom, and for a considerable time to have held that one province of David’s conquests which fell to Judah; and at the trading port of Elath he revived the commerce which Solomon had created. The prosperity of his long reign was uninterrupted till in his later years he was smitten with leprosy, and found it necessary to hand over the affairs of the kingdom to his son Jotham. But Jotham appears to have died about the same time as his father,–his successor, still in very early youth (Isaiah iii. 12), being Ahaz ben Jotham ben Uzziah.

If Judah could not compare with Israel in political and general historical importance, it nevertheless enjoyed more than one considerable advantage over the larger kingdom. It was much safer from foreign foes; for the Egyptians, as a rule, were not dangerous neighbours. But its chief advantage consisted in the stability of its dynasty. It was David who had elevated Judah and Jerusalem to a position of historical significance, and the prosperity of his house was most intimately connected with that of the town and territory, and even with that of religion. On two separate occasions it occurred that a king of Judah was murdered by subjects, but in both cases the “people of the land” rose up against the assassins and once more placed a member of the Davidic family upon the throne. The one actual recorded revolution was that against Athaliah, which had for its object the restoration of the throne to the legitimate heir. Under shelter of the monarchy the other institutions of the state also acquired a measure of permanency such as was not found at all in Israel, where everything depended on the character of individuals, and the existing order of things was ever liable to be subjected to fresh dispute. Life in Judah was a much more stable affair, though not so exciting or dramatic. Possibly the greater isolation of the little kingdom, its more intimate relations with the neighbouring wilderness, and the more primitive modes of life which resulted, were also factors which contributed to this general result.

In the capital of course the life was not primitive, and its influence was undoubtedly greater than that of the country. Successive kings exerted themselves for its external improvement, and in this respect Hezekiah ben Ahaz was specially distinguished. Above all they manifested sincere interest in the temple, which from an early period exerted a powerful force of attraction over the entire mass of the population. They regulated the cultus according to their individual tastes, added to it or curtailed it at their pleasure, and dealt with the sacred treasures as they chose. Although the priests had in a certain sense great power–the conspiracy against Athaliah was led not by a prophet but by a priest,–they were nevertheless subjects of the king, and had to act according to his orders. That the cultus of Jehovah at Jerusalem was purer than that at Bethel or at Samaria is an assertion which is contradicted by more than one well-attested fact. In this respect there was no essential difference between Israel and Judah. It was in Israel that the reaction against Baal-worship originated which afterwards passed over into Judah; the initiative in all such matters was Israel’s. There the experiments were made from which Jerusalem learned the lesson. How deep was the interest felt in the affairs of the larger kingdom by the inhabitants even of one of the smaller provincial towns of Judah is shown in the instance of Amos of Tekoah.

Step by step with the decline of Israel after the death of Jeroboam II. did Judah rise in importance; it was already preparing to take the inheritance. The man through whom the transition of the history from Israel to Judah was effected, and who was the means of securing for the latter kingdom a period of respite which was fruitful of the best results for the consolidation of true religion, was the Prophet Isaiah. The history of his activity is at the same time the history of Judah during that period.

Isaiah became conscious of his vocation in the year of King Uzziah’s death; his earliest discourses date from the beginning of the reign of Ahaz. In them he contemplates the imminent downfall of Samaria, and threatens Judah also with the chastisement its political and social sins deserve. In chapter ix., and also in chapters ii.-v., he still confines himself on the whole to generalities quite after the manner of Amos. But on the occasion of the expedition of the allied Syrians and Ephraimites against Jerusalem he interposed with bold decision in the sphere of practical politics. To the very last he endeavoured to restrain Ahaz from his purpose of summoning the Assyrians to his help; he assured him of Jehovah’s countenance, and offered him a token in pledge. When the king refused this, the prophet recognised that matters had gone too far, and that the coming of the Assyrians could not be averted. He then declared that the dreaded danger would indeed be obviated by that course, but that another far more serious would be incurred. For the Egyptians would resist the westward movement of Assyria, and Judah as the field of war would be utterly laid waste; only a remnant would remain as the basis of a better future.

The actual issue, however, was not yet quite so disastrous. The Egyptians did not interfere with the Assyrians, and left Samaria and Damascus to their fate. Judah became indeed tributary to Assyria, but at the same time enjoyed considerable prosperity. Henceforward the prophet’s most zealous efforts were directed to the object of securing the maintenance, at any price, of this condition of affairs. He sought by every means at his command to keep Judah from any sort of intervention in the politics of the great powers, in order that it might devote itself with undivided energies to the necessities of internal affairs. He actually succeeded in maintaining the peace for many years, even at times when in the petty kingdoms around the spirit of revolt was abroad. The ill success of all attempts elsewhere to shake off the yoke confirmed him in the conviction that Assyria was the rod of chastisement wielded by Jehovah over the nations, who had no alternative but to yield to its iron sway.

While thirty years passed thus peacefully away so far as foreign relations were concerned, internal changes of all the greater importance were taking place. Hezekiah ben Ahaz undertook for the first time a thoroughgoing reformation in the cultus of Jehovah. “He removed the high places, and brake the pillars, and cut down the Ashera, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made;” so we are told in 2Kings xviii. 4, with a mixture of the general and the special that does not inspire much confidence. For, e.g., the “high places” which Solomon had raised on the Mount of Olives were not removed by Hezekiah, although they stood quite close to Jerusalem, and moreover were consecrated to foreign deities. But in every respect there must have been a wide difference between the objects and results of the reformations of Hezekiah and Josiah. Undoubtedly Hezekiah undertook his reforms in worship under the influence of Isaiah. Following in the footsteps of Hosea, who had been the first to take and to express offence at the use of images in the worship of Jehovah, this prophet, utilising the impression which the destruction of Samaria had produced in Jerusalem (Isaiah xvii., cf. Jeremiah iii.), strove to the utmost against the adoration of the work of men’s hands in the holy places, against the Asheras and pillars (sun-pillars), and above all against the ephods, i.e., the idols of silver and gold, of which the land was full. But against the high places in and by themselves, against the multiplicity of the altars of Jehovah, he made no protest. “( In the Messianic time) ye shall loathe and cast away as an unclean thing your graven images with silver coverings and your molten images overlaid with gold,” he says (xxx. 22); and the inference is that he contemplated the purification of the high places from superstitious excesses, but by no means their abolition. To this one object /1/

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1. That is, to the abolition of the images. Jeremiah’s polemic is directed no longer against the images, but against wood and stone, i.e, Asheras and pillars. The date of the reformation under Hezekiah is uncertain; perhaps it ought to be placed after Sennacherib’s withdrawal from Jerusalem. ********************************

Hezekiah’s reformation seems to have confined itself,–an object of much greater primary importance than the destruction of the altars themselves. Their destruction was a measure which arose simply out of despair of the possibility of cleansing them.

Sargon, king of Assyria, was succeeded in 705 by Sennacherib. The opportunity was seized by Merodach Baladan of Babylon to secure his independence; and by means of an embassy he urged Hezekiah also to throw off the yoke. The proposal was adopted, and the king of Judah was joined by other petty kingdoms, especially some of the Philistine towns. Relations with Egypt were established to secure its support in case of need. Sennacherib’s more immediate and pressing business in Babylon enabled Palestine to gain some time; but the issue of that revolt made self-deception impossible as to the probable result of the other movement.

This was the period at which Isaiah, already far advanced in life, wielded his greatest influence. The preparations for revolt, the negotiations with Egypt, were concealed from him,-a proof how greatly he was feared at court. When he came to know of them, it was already too late to undo what had been done. But he could at least give vent to his anger. With Jerusalem, it seemed to him, the story of Samaria was repeating itself; uninstructed by that sad lesson, the capital was giving itself up to the mad intoxication of leaders who would inevitably bring her to ruin. “Quietness and rest” had been the motto given by Jehovah to Judah, powerless as it was and much in need of a period of peace; instead of this, defiance based on ignorance and falsehood expressed the prevailing temper. But those who refused to listen to the intelligible language of Jehovah would be compelled to hear Him speak in Assyrian speech in a way that would deafen and blind them. Isaiah shows himself no less indignant against the crowd that stupidly stared at his excitement than against the God-forsaken folly of the king, with his counsellors, his priests, and his prophets. They do not suffer themselves to be shaken out of their ordinary routine by the gravity of such a crisis as this; the living work of Jehovah is to them a sealed book; their piety does not extend beyond the respect they show for certain human precepts learnt by rote.

Meanwhile Sennacherib, at the head of a great army, was advancing against Philistia and Judah along the Phoenician coast (701). Having captured Ascalon, he next laid siege to Ekron, which, after the combined Egyptian and Ethiopian army sent to its relief had been defeated at Eltheke, fell into the enemy’s hand, and was severely dealt with. Simultaneously various fortresses of Judah were occupied, and the level country was devastated (Isaiah i.). The consequence was that Hezekiah, in a state of panic, offered to the Assyrians his sub-mission, which was accepted on payment of a heavy penalty, he being permitted, however, to retain possession of Jerusalem. He seemed to have got cheaply off from the unequal contest.

The way being thus cleared, Sennacherib pressed on southwards, for the Egyptians were collecting their forces against him. The nearer he came to the enemy the more undesirable did he find it that he should leave in his rear so important a fortress as Jerusalem in the hands of a doubtful vassal. Notwithstanding the recently ratified treaty, therefore, he demanded the surrender of the city, believing that a policy of intimidation would be enough to secure it from Hezekiah. But there was another personality in Jerusalem of whom his plans had taken no account. Isaiah had indeed regarded the revolt from Assyria as a rebellion against Jehovah Himself, and therefore as a perfectly hopeless undertaking which could only result in the utmost humiliation and sternest chastisement for Judah. But still more distinctly than those who had gone before him did he hold firm as an article of faith the conviction that the kingdom would not be utterly annihilated; all his speeches of solemn warning closed with the announcement that a remnant should return and form the kernel of a new commonwealth to be fashioned after Jehovah’s own heart. For him, in contrast to Amos, the great crisis had a positive character; in contrast to Hosea, he did not expect a temporary suspension of the theocracy, to be followed by its complete reconstruction, but in the pious and God-fearing individuals who were still to be met with in this Sodom of iniquity, he saw the threads, thin indeed yet sufficient, which formed the links between the Israel of the present and its better future. Over against the vain confidence of the multitude Isaiah had hitherto brought into prominence the darker obverse of his religious belief, but now he confronted their present depression with its bright reverse; faint-heartedness was still more alien to his nature than temerity. In the name of Jehovah he bade King Hezekiah be of good courage, and urged that he should by no means surrender. The Assyrians would not be able to take the city, not even to shoot an arrow into it nor to bring up their siege train against it. “I know thy sitting, thy going, and thy standing,” is Jehovah’s language to the Assyrian, “and also thy rage against me. And I will put my ring in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.” And thus it proved in the issue. By a still unexplained catastrophe, the main army of Sennacherib was annihilated on the frontier between Egypt and Palestine, and Jerusalem thereby freed from all danger. The Assyrian king had to save himself by a hurried retreat to Nineveh; Isaiah was triumphant. A more magnificent close of a period of influential public life can hardly be imagined.

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What Sennacherib himself relates of his expedition against his rebellious vassals in Palestine (George Smith, Assyrian Eponym Canon, p. 67, 68, 131-136) runs parallel with 2 Kings xviii. 14-16, but not with the rest of the Bible narrative. These three verses are peculiar, and their source is different from that of the context. After having captured various Phoenician cities, and received tribute from a number of kings, his first measure is forcibly to restore the Assyrian governor who had been expelled from Ascalon, and next he turns his arms against Ekron. This city had put in irons its own king, Padi (who remained loyal to the suzerain), and handed him over to Hezekiah, who appears as the soul of the rebellion in these quarters. The Egyptians, who as usual have a hand in the matter, advance with an army for the relief of the beleaguered city, but are defeated near Eltheke in the immediate neighbourhood; Ekron is taken, remorselessly chastised, and forced to take Padi back again as its king. For Hezekiah in the meantime has delivered up his prisoner, and, terrified by the fall of his fortresses and the devastation of his territory, has accepted the position of a vassal once more, paying at the same time a heavy fine, inclusive of 30 talents of gold and 800 of silver. Such is the Assyrian account. If we treat the 300 talents mentioned in 2Kings xviii. 14 as Syrian (=800 Babylonian), it completely fills in the vague outlines given in 2Kings xviii. 14-16, and, while confirming in their place immediately after ver. 13 these verses, unrelated as they are to the main connection of the Biblical narrative, corrects them only in one point, by making it probable that the subjection of Hezekiah (which is not equivalent to the surrender of his city) took place while Sennacherib was still before Ekron, and not at later date when he had gone further south towards Libnah. As regards his further advance towards Egypt, and the reasons of his sudden withdrawal (related by Herodotus also from Egyptian tradition), the great king is silent, having nothing to boast of in it. The battle of Eltheke, which is to be regarded only as an episode in the siege of Ekron, being merely the repulse of the Egyptian relieving army, was not an event of great historical importance, and ought not to be brought into any connection either with 2Kings xix. 7 or with xix. 35; Sennacherib’s inscription speaks only of the first and prosperous stage of the expedition, not of the decisive one which resulted so disastrously for him, as must be clear from the words themselves to every unprejudiced reader.

8. THE PROPHETIC REFORMATION.

Isaiah was so completely a prophet that even his wife was called the prophetess after him. No such title could have been bestowed on the wife of either Amos or Hosea. But what distinguished him more than anything else from those predecessors was that his position was not, like theirs, apart from the government; he sat close to the helm, and took a very real part in directing the course of the vessel. He was more positive and practical than they; he wished to make his influence felt, and when for the moment he was unsuccessful in this so far as the great whole of the state was concerned, he busied himself in gathering round him a small circle of like-minded persons on whom his hope for the future rested. Now that Israel had been destroyed, he wished at all events to save Judah. The lofty ideality of his faith (ii. 1 seq.) did not hinder him from calling in the aid of practical means for this end. But the current of his activities was by the circumstances of the case directed into a channel in which after his death they continued to flow towards a goal which had hardly been contemplated by himself.

The political importance of the people of Jehovah was reduced to a minimum when Judah only was left. Already at an earlier period in that kingdom the sacred had come to be of more importance than the secular; much more was this the case under the suzerainty of Assyria. The circumstances of the time themselves urged that the religion of Israel should divest itself of all politico-national character; but Isaiah also did his best to further this end. It was his most zealous endeavour to hold king and people aloof from every patriotic movement; to him the true religious attitude was one of quietness and sitting still, non-intervention in political affairs, concentration on the problems of internal government. But he was compelled to leave over for the coming Messiah (xi. 1 seq.) that reformation in legal and social matters which seemed to him so necessary; all that he could bring the secular rulers of his country to undertake was a reform in worship. This was the most easily solved of the problems alluded to above, and it was also that which most closely corresponded to the character of the kingdom of Judah. Thus it came about that the reform of the theocracy which had been contemplated by Isaiah led to its transformation into an ecclesiastical state. No less influential in effecting a radical change in the old popular religion was Isaiah’s doctrine which identified the true Israel with the holy remnant which alone should emerge from the crisis unconsumed. For that remnant was more than a mere object of hope; it actually stood before him in the persons of that little group of pious individuals gathered around him. Isaiah founded no “ecclesiola in ecclesia” indeed, but certainly an “ecclesia in civitate Dei.” Now began that distinction between the true Israel and the Israel according to the flesh, that bipartite division of the nation which became so important in later times. As head and founder of the prophetic party in Judah, Isaiah was, involuntarily, the man who took the first steps towards the institution of the church.

The catastrophe which befell the army of Sennacherib had no very great effect upon the external affairs of Judah. Sennacherib indeed, being busy in the east, was unable to retrieve the loss he had sustained, but his son Esarhaddon, who succeeded him in 681, resumed the Egyptian war with better success. He made himself master of the Nile valley, and brought the Ethiopians into submission. That the petty kingdoms of Palestine returned to the old relations of dependence is to be taken as a matter of course. Judah appears to have resumed the yoke voluntarily, but the Samaritans only after force had been applied; they were afterwards deported, whereupon the deserted country was occupied by foreign colonists, who, however, accepted the cultus of the god of the land.

That Manasseh ben Hezekiah should have again come under Assyrian suzerainty appears at that time to have made but little impression; since the time of Ahaz Judah had been accustomed to this relation. The Book of Kings speaks only of internal affairs under the reign of Manasseh. According to it, he was a bad ruler, who permitted, and even caused, innocent blood to flow like water. But what was of greater consequence for the future, he took up an attitude of hostility towards the prophetic party of reform, and put himself on the side of the reaction which would fain bring back to the place of honour the old popular half-pagan conception of Jehovah, as against the pure and holy God whom the prophets worshipped. The revulsion manifested itself as the reform had done, chiefly in matters of worship. The old idolatrous furniture of the sanctuaries was reinstated in its place, and new frippery was imported from all quarters, especially from Assyria and Babylon, to renovate the old religion; with Jehovah was now associated a “queen of heaven.” Yet, as usual, the restoration did more than merely bring back the old order of things. What at an earlier period had been mere naivete now became superstition, and could hold its ground only by having imparted to it artificially a deeper meaning which was itself borrowed from the prophetical circle of ideas. Again, earnestness superseded the old joyousness of the cultus; this now had reference principally to sin and its atonement. Value was attached to services rendered to the Deity, just in proportion to their hardness and unnaturalness; at this period it was that the old precept to sacrifice to Jehovah the male that opens the matrix was extended to children. The counter- reformation was far from being unaffected by the preceding reformation, although it understood religious earnestness in quite another sense, and sought, not to eliminate heathenism from the cultus, but to animate it with new life. On the other hand, the reaction was, in the end, found to have left distinct traces of its influence in the ultimate issue of the reformation.

We possess one document dating from Manasseh’s time in Micah vi. 1- vii. 6. Here, where the lawlessness and utter disregard of every moral restraint in Judah are set in a hideous light, the prophetic point of view, as contrasted with the new refinements in worship, attains also its simplest and purest expression. Perhaps to this period the Decalogue also, which is so eloquently silent in regard to cultus, is to be assigned. Jehovah demands nothing for Himself, all that He asks is only for men; this is here the fundamental law of the theocracy.

Manasseh’s life was a long one, and his son Amon walked in his ways. The latter died after a brief reign, and with his death a new era for Judah began. It was introduced by the great catastrophe in which the Assyrian empire came to an end. The sovereignty of the world was beginning to pass out of the hands of the Semites into those of the Aryans. Phraortes of Media indeed was unsuccessful in his attempt against the Assyrians, but Cyaxares beat them and proceeded to besiege their capital. The Scythian invasion of Media and Western Asia (c. 630) at this juncture gave them another respite of more than twenty years; but even it tended to break in pieces the great, loosely-compacted monarchy. The provinces became gradually disintegrated, and the kingdom shrivelled up till it covered no more than the land of Asshur. /1/

**************************************** 1. Our knowledge of the events of the second half of the 7th century has remained singularly imperfect hitherto, notwithstanding the importance of the changes they wrought on the face of the ancient world. The account given above is that of Herodotus (i. 103-106), and there the matter must rest until really authentic sources shall have been brought to light. With regard to the final siege of Nineveh, our chief informant is Ctesias as quoted by Diodorus (ii. 26, 27). Whether the prophecy of Nabum relates to the LAST siege is doubtful (in spite of ii. 7, and the oracle given in Diodorus, (OTI THN *NINON )OUDEIS (ELEI KATA KRATOS )EAN MH PROTERON (O POTAMOS TH| POLEI GENHTAI POLEMOS), inasmuch as Nahum (i. 9) expressly speaks of the siege alluded to by him as the first, saying, “the trouble shall not rise up the second time.” ******************************************

The inroad of the Scythians aroused to energy again the voice of prophecy which had been dumb during the very sinful but not very animated period of Manasseh’s reign. Zephaniah and Jeremiah threatened with the mysterious northern foe, just as Amos and Hosea had formerly done with the Assyrians. The Scythians actually did invade Palestine in 626 (the 13th year of Josiah), and penetrated as far as to Egypt; but their course lay along the shore line, and they left Judah untouched. This danger that had come so near and yet passed them by, this instance of a prophetic threatening that had come to pass and yet been mercifully averted, made a powerful impression upon the people of Judah; public opinion went through a revolution in favour of the reforming party which was able to gain for itself the support also of the young king Josiah ben Amon. The circumstances were favourable for coming forward with a comprehensive programme for a reconstruction of the theocracy. In the year 621 (the eighteenth of Josiah) Deuteronomy was discovered, accepted, and carried into effect.

The Deuteronomic legislation is designed for the reformation, by no means of the cultus alone, but at least quite as much of the civil relations of life. The social interest is placed above the cultus, inasmuch as everywhere humane ends are assigned for the rites and offerings. In this it is plainly seen that Deuteronomy is the progeny of the prophetic spirit. Still more plainly does this appear in the _motifs_ of the legislation; according to these, Jehovah is the only God, whose service demands the whole heart and every energy; He has entered into a covenant with Israel, but upon fundamental conditions that, as contained in the Decalogue, are purely moral and of absolute universality. Nowhere does the fundamental religious thought of prophecy find clearer expression than in Deuteronomy,–the thought that Jehovah asks nothing for Himself, but asks it as a religious duty that man should render to man what is right, that His will lies not in any unknown height, but in the moral sphere which is known and understood by all. /1/

************************************** 1. The commandments which I command thee are not unattainable for thee, neither are they far off; not in heaven so that one might say, Who can climb up into heaven and bring them down, and tell us them that we might do them! not beyond the sea so that one might say, Who shall go over the sea, and fetch them, and tell us them that we might do them!–but the matter lies very near thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, so that thou canst do it (Deut. xxx. 11-14). ****************************************

But the result of the innovation did not correspond exactly to its prophetic origin. Prophecy died when its precepts attained to the force of laws; the prophetic ideas lost their purity when they became practical. Whatever may have been contemplated, only provisional regulations actually admitted of being carried, and even these only in co-operation with the king and the priests, and with due regard to the capacity of the masses. The final outcome of the Deuteronomic reformation was principally that the cultus of Jehovah was limited to Jerusalem and abolished everywhere else,–such was the popular and practical form of prophetic monotheism. The importance of the Salomonic temple was thereby increased in the highest degree, and so also the influence of the priests of Jerusalem, the sons of Zadok, who now in point of fact got rid entirely of their rivals, the priests of the country districts.

9. JEREMIAH AND THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.

Josiah lived for thirteen years after the accomplishment of his great work. It was a happy period of external and internal prosperity. The nation possessed the covenant, and kept it. It seemed as if the conditions had been attained on which, according to the prophets, the continuance of the theocracy depended; if their threatenings against Israel had been fulfilled, so now was Judah proving itself the heir of their promises. Already in Deuteronomy is the “extension of the frontier” taken into consideration, and Josiah actually put his hand to the task of seeking the attainment of this end.

Jehovah and Israel, religion and patriotism, once more went hand in hand. Jeremiah alone did not suffer himself to be misled by the general feeling. He was a second Amos, upon a higher platform– but, unlike his predecessor, a prophet by profession; his history, like Isaiah’s, is practically the history of his time. In the work of introducing Deuteronomy he had taken an active part, and throughout his life he showed his zeal against unlawful altars and against the adoration of wood and stone (Asheras and pillars). But he was by no means satisfied with the efforts of the reformation that had been effected; nothing appeared to him more sinful or more silly than the false confidence produced by it in Jehovah and in the inviolability of His one true temple. This confidence he maintained to be delusive; Judah was not a whit better than Israel had been, Jerusalem would be destroyed one day like the temple of Shiloh. The external improvements on which the people of Judah prided themselves he held to leave this severe judgment unaffected; what was needed was a quite different sort of change, a change of heart, not very easy positively to define.

An opportunity for showing his opposition presented itself to the prophet at the juncture when King Josiah had fallen at Megiddo in the battle with Pharaoh Necho (608), and when the people were seeking safety and protection by cleaving to Jehovah and His holy temple. At the instance of the priests and the prophets he had almost expiated with his blood the blasphemies he had uttered against the popular belief; but he did not suffer himself to be driven from his course. Even when the times had grown quiet again, he persisted, at the risk of his life and under universal reproach and ridicule, in his work as a prophet of evil. Moments of despair sometimes came to him; but that he had correctly estimated the true value of the great conversion of the nation was speedily proved by the facts. Although Deuteronomy was not formally abolished under Jehoiakim, who as the vassal of Egypt ascended the throne of his father Josiah, nevertheless it ceased to have practical weight, the battle of Megiddo having shown that in spite of the covenant with Jehovah the possibilities of non-success in war remained the same as before. Jehoiakim tended to return to the ways of Manasseh, not only as regarded idolatry, but also in his contempt for law and the private rights of his subjects;–the two things seem to stand in connection.

The course of events at last brought upon the theocracy the visible ruin which Jeremiah had been so long expecting. After the Egyptians had, with comparative ease, subjugated Syria at the time when the Medes and Chaldaeans were busied with the siege of Nineveh, Nebuchadnezzar, that task accomplished, came upon them from Babylon and routed them on the Euphrates near Carchemish (605-4). The people of Judah rejoiced at the fall of Nineveh, and also at the result of Carchemish; but they were soon undeceived when the prospect began to open on them of simply exchanging the Egyptian for the Chaldaean yoke. The power of the Chaldaeans had been quite unsuspected, and now it was found that in them the Assyrians had suddenly returned to life. Jeremiah was the only man who gained any credit by these events. His much ridiculed “enemy out of the north,” of whom he had of old been wont to speak so much, now began to be talked of with respect, although his name was no longer “the Scythian” but “the Babylonian.” It was an epoch,–the close of an account which balanced in his favour. Therefore it was that precisely at this moment he received the Divine command to commit to writing that which for twenty-three years he had been preaching, and which, ever pronounced impossible, had now showed itself so close at hand.

After the victory of Carchemish the Chaldaeans drove Pharaoh out of Syria, and also compelled the submission of Jehoiakim (c. 602). For three years he continued to pay his tribute, and then he withheld it; a mad passion for liberty, kindled by religious fanaticism, had begun to rage with portentous power amongst the influential classes, the grandees, the priests, and the prophets. Nebuchadnezzar satisfied himself in the first instance with raising against Judah several of the smaller nationalities around, especially the Edomites; not till 597 did he appear in person before Jerusalem. The town was compelled to yield; the more important citizens were carried into exile, amongst them the young king Jechoniah, son of Jehoiakim, who had died in the interval; Zedekiah ben Josiah was made king in his stead over the remnant left behind. The patriotic fanaticism that had led to the revolt was not broken even by this blow. Within four years afterwards new plans of liberation began to be again set on foot; but on this occasion the influence of Jeremiah proved strong enough to avert the danger. But when a definite prospect of help from Pharaoh Hophra (Apries) presented itself in 589, the craving for independence proved quite irrepressible. Revolt was declared; and in a very short time the Chaldaean army, with Nebuchadnezzar at its head, lay before Jerusalem. For a while everything seemed to move prosperously; the Egyptians came to the rescue, and the Chaleaeans were compelled to raise the siege in order to cope with them. At this there was great joy in Jerusalem; but Jeremiah continued to express his gloomy views. The event proved that he was right; the Egyptians were repulsed and the siege resumed. The city was bent on obstinate resistance; in vain did Jeremiah, at continual risk of his life, endeavour to bring it to reason. The king, who agreed with the prophet, did not venture to assert his opinion against the dominant terrorism. The town in these circumstances was at last taken by storm, and along with the temple, reduced to ruins. Cruel vengeance was taken on the king and grandees, and the pacification of the country was ensured by another and larger deportation of the inhabitants to Babylon. Thus terminated in 586 the kingdom of Judah.

The prophets had been the spiritual destroyers of the old Israel. In old times the nation had been the ideal of religion in actual realisation; the prophets confronted the nation with an ideal to which it did not correspond. Then to bridge over this interval the abstract ideal was framed into a law, and to this law the nation was to be conformed. The attempt had very important consequences, inasmuch as Jehovah continued to be a living power in the law, when He was no longer realised as present in the nation; but that was not what the prophets had meant to effect. What they were unconsciously labouring towards was that religious individualism which had its historical source in the national downfall, and manifested itself not exclusively within the prophetical sphere. With such men as Amos and Hosea the moral personality based upon an inner conviction burst through the limits of mere nationality; their mistake was in supposing that they could make their way of thinking the basis of a national life. Jeremiah saw through the mistake; the true Israel was narrowed to himself. Of the truth of his conviction he never had a moment’s doubt; he knew that Jehovah was on his side, that on Him depended the eternal future. But, instead of the nation, the heart and the individual conviction were to him the subject of religion. On the ruins of Jerusalem he gazed into the future filled with joyful hope, sure of this that Jehovah would one day pardon past sin and renew the relation which had been broken off-though on the basis of another covenant than that laid down in Deuteronomy. “I will put my law upon their heart, and write it on their mind; none shall say to his neighbour, Know the Lord, for all shall have that knowledge within them.”

10. THE CAPTIVITY AND THE RESTORATION

The exiled Jews were not scattered all over Chaldaea, but were allowed to remain together in families and clans. Many of them, notwithstanding this circumstance, must have lapsed and become merged in the surrounding heathenism; but many also continued faithful to Jehovah and to Israel. They laboured under much depression and sadness, groaning under the wrath of Jehovah, who had rejected His people and cancelled His covenant. They were lying under a sort of vast interdict; they could not celebrate any sacrifice or keep any feast; they could only observe days of fasting and humiliation, and such rites as had no inseparable connection with the holy land. The observance of the Sabbath, and the practice of the rite of circumcision, acquired much greater importance than they formerly possessed as signs of a common religion. The meetings on the Sabbath day out of which the synagogues were afterwards developed appear to have first come into use during this period; perhaps also even then it had become customary to read aloud from the prophetic writings which set forth that all had happened in the providence of God, and moreover that the days of adversity were not to last for ever.

Matters improved somewhat as Cyrus entered upon his victorious career. Was he the man in whom the Messianic prophecies had found their fulfilment? The majority were unwilling to think so. For it was out of Israel (they argued) that the Messiah was to proceed who should establish the kingdom of God upon the ruins of the kingdoms of the world; the restitution effected by means of a Persian could only be regarded as a passing incident in the course of an historical process that had its goal entirely elsewhere. This doubt was met by more than one prophetical writer, and especially by the great anonymous author to whom we are indebted for Isaiah xl.-lxvi. “Away with sorrow; deliverance is at the door! Is it a humiliating thing that Israel should owe its freedom to a Persian? Nay, is it not rather a proof of the world-wide sway of the God of Jacob that He should thus summon His instruments from the ends of the earth? Who else than Jehovah could have thus sent Cyrus? Surely not the false gods which he has destroyed? Jehovah alone it was who foretold and foreknew the things which are now coming to pass,–because long ago He had prearranged and predetermined them, and they are now being executed in accordance with his plan. Rejoice therefore in the prospect of your near deliverance; prepare yourselves for the new era; gird yourselves for the return to your homes.” It is to be observed, as characteristic in this prophecy, how the idea of Jehovah as God alone and God over all–in constantly recurring lyrical parenthesis he is praised as the author of the world and of all nature–is yet placed in positive relation to Israel alone, and that upon the principle that Israel is in exclusive possession of the universal truth, which cannot perish with Israel, but must through the instrumentality of Israel, become the common possession of the whole world. “There is no God but Jehovah, and Israel is his prophet.”

For many years the Persian monarch put the patience of the Jews to the proof; Jehovah’s judgment upon the Chaldaeans, instead of advancing, seemed to recede. At length, however, their hopes were realised; in the year 538 Cyrus brought the empire of Babylon to an end, and gave the exiles leave to seek their fatherland once more. This permission was not made use of by all, or even by a majority. The number of those who returned is stated at 42,360; whether women and children are included in this figure is uncertain. On arriving at their destination, after the difficult march through the desert, they did not spread themselves over the whole of Judah, but settled chiefly in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. The Calebites, for example, who previously had had their settlements in and around Hebron, now settled in Bethlehem and in the district of Ephrath. They found it necessary to concentrate themselves in face of a threatened admixture of doubtful elements. From all sides people belonging to the surrounding nations had pressed into the depopulated territory of Judah. Not only had they annexed the border territories–where, for example, the Edomites or Idumaeans held the whole of the Negeb as far as to Hebron; they had effected lodgments everywhere, and– as the Ammonites, Ashdodites, and especially the Samaritans–had amalgamated with the older Jewish population, a residue of which had remained in the country in spite of all that had happened. These half-breed “pagani” (Amme haarec ‘oxloi) gave a friendly reception to the returning exiles (Bne haggola); particularly did the Samaritans show themselves anxious to make common cause with them. But they were met with no reciprocal cordiality. The lesson of religious isolation which the children of the captivity had learned in Babylon, they did not forget on their return to their home. Here also they lived as in a strange land. Not the native of Judaea, but the man who could trace his descent from the exiles in Babylon, was reckoned as belonging to their community.

The first decennia after the return of the exiles, during which they were occupied in adjusting themselves to their new homes, were passed under a variety of adverse circumstances and by no means either in joyousness or security. Were these then the Messianic times which, it had been foretold, were to dawn at the close of their captivity? They did not at all events answer the expectations which had been formed. A settlement had been again obtained, it was true, in the fatherland; but the Persian yoke pressed now more heavily than ever the Babylonian had done. The sins of God’s people seemed still unforgiven, their period of bond-service not yet at an end. A slight improvement, as is shown by the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah, followed when in the year 520 the obstacles disappeared which until then had stood in the way of the rebuilding of the temple; the work then begun was completed in 516. Inasmuch as the Jews were now nothing more than a religious community, based upon the traditions of a national existence that had ceased, the rebuilding of the temple, naturally, was for them an event of supreme importance.

The law of the new theocracy was the Book of Deuteronomy; this was the foundation on which the structure was to be built. But the force of circumstances, and the spirit of the age, had even before and during the exile exerted a modifying influence upon that legislative code; and it continued to do so still. At first a “son of David” had continued to stand at the head of the Bne haggola, but this last relic of the old monarchy soon had to give way to a Persian governor who was under the control of the satrap of trans-Euphratic Syria, and whose principal business was the collection of revenue. Thenceforward the sole national chief was Joshua the high priest, on whom, accordingly, the political representation also of the community naturally devolved. In the circumstances as they then were no other arrangement was possible. The way had been paved for it long before in so far as the Assyrians had destroyed the kingdom of Israel, while in the kingdom of Judah which survived it the religious cultus had greater importance attached to it than political affairs, and also inasmuch as in point of fact the practical issue of the prophetic reformation sketched in Deuteronomy had been to make the temple the national centre still more than formerly. The hierocracy towards which Ezekiel had already opened the way was simply inevitable. It took the form of a monarchy of the high priest, he having stepped into the place formerly occupied by the theocratic king. As his peers and at his side stood the members of his clan, the Levites of the old Jerusalem, who traced their descent from Zadok (Sadduk); the common Levites held a much lower rank, so far as they had maintained their priestly rank at all and had not been degraded, in accordance with Ezekiel’s law (chapter xliv.), to the position of mere temple servitors. “Levite,” once the title of honour bestowed on all priests, became more and more confined to members of the second order of the clergy.

Meanwhile no improvement was taking place in the condition of the Jewish colonists. They were poor; they had incurred the hostility of their neighbours by their exclusiveness; the Persian Government was suspicious; the incipient decline of the great kingdom was accompanied with specially unpleasant consequences so far as Palestine was concerned (Megabyzus). All this naturally tended to produce in the community a certain laxity and depression. To what purpose (it was asked) all this religious strictness, which led to so much that was unpleasant? Why all this zeal for Jehovah, who refused to be mollified by it? It is a significant fact that the upper ranks of the priesthood were least of all concerned to counteract this tendency. Their priesthood was less to them than the predominance which was based upon it; they looked upon the neighbouring ethnarchs as their equals, and maintained relations of friendship with them. The general community was only following their example when it also began to mingle with the Amme haarec.

The danger of Judaism merging into heathenism was imminent. But it was averted by a new accession from without. In the year 458 Ezra the scribe, with a great number of his compatriots, set out from Babylon, for the purpose of reinforcing the Jewish element in Palestine. The Jews of Babylon were more happily situated than their Palestinian brethren, and it was comparatively easy for them to take up a separatist attitude, because they were surrounded by heathenism not partial but entire. They were no great losers from the circumstance that they were precluded from participating directly in the life of the ecclesiastical community; the Torah had long ago become separated from the people, and was now an independent abstraction following a career of its own. Babylonia was the place where a further codification of the law had been placed alongside of Deuteronomy. Ezekiel had led the way in reducing to theory and to writing the sacred praxis of his time; in this he was followed by an entire school; in their exile the Levites turned scribes. Since then Babylon continued to be the home of the Torah; and, while in Palestine itself the practice was becoming laxer, their literary study had gradually intensified the strictness and distinctive peculiarities of Judaism. And now there came to Palestine a Babylonian scribe having the law of his God in his hand, and armed with authority from the Persian king to proceed upon the basis of this law with a reformation of the community.

Ezra did not set about introducing the new law immediately on his arrival in Judaea In the first instance he concentrated his attention on the task of effecting a strict separation between the Bne haggola and the heathen or half-heathen inhabitants. So much he could accomplish upon the basis of Deuteronomy, but it was long before he gave publicity to the law which he himself had brought. Why he hesitated so long it is impossible to say; between the seventh and the twentieth year of Artaxerxes Longimanus (458-445 B.C.) there is a great hiatus in the narrative of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The main reason appears to have been that, in spite of the good will of the Persian king, Ezra had not the vigorous support of the local authorities. But this was indispensably necessary in order to secure recognition for a new law.

At last, in 445, it fell to the lot of a Jew, who also shared the views of Ezra, Nehemiah ben Hakkelejah, /1/

****************************************** 1. According to the present punctuation this name is Hakalja (Hachaljah), but such a pronunciation is inadmissible; it has no possible etymology, the language having no such word as _hakal_. The name in its correct form means “wait upon Jehovah.” *******************************************

the cupbearer and the favourite of Artaxerxes, to be sent as Persian governor to Judaea. After he had freed the community from external pressure with vigour and success, and brought it into more tolerable outward circumstances, the business of introducing the new law-book was next proceeded with; in this Ezra and Nehemiah plainly acted in concert.

On the first of Tisri–the year is unfortunately not given, but it cannot have been earlier than 444 B.C.–the promulgation of the law began at a great gathering in Jerusalem; Ezra, supported by the Levites, was present. Towards the end of the month, the concluding act took place, in which the community became solemnly bound by the contents of the law. Special prominence was given to those provisions with which the people were directly concerned, particularly those which related to the dues payable by the laity to the priests.

The covenant which hitherto had rested on Deuteronomy was thus expanded into a covenant based upon the entire Pentateuch. Substantially at least Ezra’s law-book, in the form in which it became the Magna Charta of Judaism in or about the year 444, must be regarded as practically identical with our Pentateuch, although many minor amendments and very considerable additions may have been made at a later date.

The character of the post-Deuteronomic legislation (Priestly Code) is chiefly marked, in its external aspects, by the immense extension of the dues payable to the priests, and by the sharp distinction made between the descendants of Aaron and the common Levites; this last feature is to be traced historically to the circumstance that after the Deuteronomic reformation the legal equality between the Levites who until then had ministered at the “high places” and the priests of the temple at Jerusalem was not _de facto_ recognised. Internally, it is mainly characterised by its ideal of Levitical holiness, the way in which it everywhere surrounds life with purificatory and propitiatory ceremonies, and its prevailing reference of sacrifice to sin. Noteworthy also is the manner in which everything is regarded from the point of view of Jerusalem, a feature which comes much more boldly into prominence here than in Deuteronomy; the nation and the temple are strictly speaking identified. That externalisation towards which the prophetical movement, in order to become practical, had already been tending in Deuteronomy finally achieved its acme in the legislation of Ezra; a new artificial Israel was the result; but, after all, the old would have pleased an Amos better. At the same time it must be remembered that the kernel needed a shell. It was a necessity that Judaism should incrust itself in this manner; without those hard and ossified forms the preservation of its essential elements would have proved impossible. At a time when all nationalities, and at the same time all bonds of religion and national customs, were beginning to be broken up in the seeming cosmos and real chaos of the Graeco-Roman empire, the Jews stood out like a rock in the midst of the ocean. When the natural conditions of independent nationality all failed them, they nevertheless artificially maintained it with an energy truly marvellous, and thereby preserved for themselves, and at the same time for the whole world, an eternal good.

As regards the subsequent history of the Jewish community under the Persian domination, we have almost no information. The high priest in Nehemiah’s time was Eliashib, son of Joiakim and grandson of Joshua, the patriarchal head of the sons of Zadok, who had returned from Babylon; he was succeeded in the direct line by Joiada, Johanan, and Jaddua (Nehemiah xii. 10, 11, 22); the last-named was in office at the time of Alexander the Great (Josephus, Antiquities, xi. 8). Palestine was the province which suffered most severely of all from the storms which marked the last days of the sinking Persian empire, and it is hardly likely that the Jews escaped their force; we know definitely, however, of only one episode, in which the Persian general Bagoses interfered in a disagreeable controversy about the high-priesthood (cir. 375).

To this period also (and not, as Josephus states, to the time of Alexander) belongs the constitution of the Samaritan community on an independent footing by Manasseh, a Jewish priest of rank. He was expelled from Jerusalem by Nehemiah in 432, for refusing to separate from his alien wife. He took shelter with his father-in-law Sanballat, the Samaritan prince, who built him a temple on Mount Gerizim near Shechem, where he organised a Samaritan church and a Samaritan worship, on the Jerusalem model, and on the basis of a but slightly modified Jerusalem Pentateuch. If the Samaritans had hitherto exerted, themselves to the utmost to obtain admission into the fellowship of the Jews, they henceforward were as averse to have anything to do with these as these were to have any dealings with them; the temple on Mount Gerizim was now the symbol of their independence as a distinct religious sect. For the Jews this was a great advantage, as they had no longer to dread the danger of syncretism. They could now quite confidently admit the Amme haarec into their communion, in the assurance of assimilating them without any risk of the opposite process taking place. The Judaizing process began first with the country districts immediately surrounding Jerusalem, and then extended to Galilee and many portions of Peraea. In connection with it, the Hebrew language, which hitherto had been firmly retained by the Bne haggola, now began to yield to the Aramaic, and to hold its own only as a sacred speech.

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11. JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY.

The post-Deuteronomic legislation is not addressed to the people, but to the congregation; its chief concern is the regulation of worship. Political matters are not touched upon, as they are in the hands of a foreigner lord. The hierocracy is taken for granted as the constitution of the congregation. The head of the cultus is the head of the whole; the high priest takes the place of the king. The other priests, though his brothers or his sons, are officially subordinate to him, as bishops to the supreme pontiff. They, again, are distinguished from the Levites not only by their office but also by their noble blood, though the Levites belong by descent to the clergy, of which they form the lowest grade. The material basis of the hierarchical pyramid is furnished by the contributions of the laity, which are required on a scale which cannot be called modest. Such is the outward aspect of the rule of the holy in Israel. Inwardly, the ideal of holiness governs the whole of life by means of a net of ceremonies and observances which separate the Jew from the natural man. “Holy” means almost the same as “exclusive.” Originally the term was equivalent to divine, but now it is used chiefly in the sense of religious, priestly, as if the divine were to be known from the worldly, the natural, by outward marks.

It had so fallen out, even before the exile, that the reform of the theocracy which the prophets demanded began in the cultus; and after the exile this tendency could not fail to be persisted in. The restoration of Judaism took place in the form of a restoration of the cultus. Yet this restoration was not a relapse into the heathen ways which the prophets had attacked. The old meaning of the festivals and of the sacrifices had long faded away, and after the interruption of the exile they would scarcely have blossomed again of themselves; they had become simply statutes, unexplained commands of an absolute will. The cultus had no longer any real value for the Deity; it was valuable only as an exercise of obedience to the law. If it had been at first the bond connecting Israel with heathenism, now, on the contrary, it was the shield behind which Judaism retreated to be safe from heathenism. There was no other means to make Judaism secure; and the cultus was nothing more than a means to that end. It was the shell around the faith and practice of the fathers, around the religion of moral monotheism, which it alone preserved until it could become the common property of the world. The great public worship gave the new theocracy a firm centre, thus keeping it one and undivided, and helped it to an organisation. But of more importance was the minor private cultus of pious exercises, which served to Judaize the whole life of every individual. For the centre of gravity of Judaism was in the individual. Judaism was gathered from scattered elements, and it depended on the labour of the individual to make himself a Jew. This is the secret of the persistence of Judaism, even in the diaspora. The initiatory act of circumcision, which conferred an indelible character, was not the only safeguard; the whole of the education which followed that act went to guard against the disintegrating effects of individualism. This is the real significance of the incessant discipline, which consisted mainly in the observance of laws of purity and generally of regulations devised to guard against sin. For what holiness required was not to do good, but to avoid sin. By the sin and trespass offerings, and by the great day of atonement, this private cultus was connected with that of the temple; hence it was that all these institutions fitted so admirably into the system. The whole of life was directed in a definite sacred path; every moment there was a divine command to fulfil, and this kept a man from following too much the thoughts and desires of his own heart. The Jews trained themselves with an earnestness and zeal which have no parallel to create, in the absence of all natural conditions, a holy nation which should answer to the law, the concrete embodiment of the ideals of the prophets.

In the individualism thus moulded into uniformity lay the chief difference which separated the new period from the old. The aim was universal culture by the law, that the prophecy should be fulfilled which says: “They shall all be taught of God.” This universal culture was certainly of a peculiar kind, and imposed more troublesome observances than the culture of our day. Yet the strange duties which the law imposed were not universally felt to be a heavy burden. Precepts which were plain and had to do with something outward were very capable of being kept; the harder they seemed at first, the easier were they when the habit had been formed. A man saw that he was doing what was prescribed, and did not ask what was the use of it. The ever-growing body of regulations even came to be felt as a sort of emancipation from self. Never had the individual felt himself so responsible for all he did and left undone, but the responsibility was oppressive, and it was well that there should be a definite precept for every hour of his life, thus diminishing the risk of his going astray. Nor must we forget that the Torah contained other precepts than those which were merely ceremonial. The kernel did not quite harden into wood inside the shell; we must even acknowledge that moral sentiment gained very perceptibly in this period both in delicacy and in power. This also is connected with the fact that religion was not, as before, the custom of the people, but the work of the individual. A further consequence of this was, that men began to reflect upon religion. The age in question saw the rise of the so-called “Wisdom,” of which we possess examples in the Book of Job, in the Proverbs of Solomon and of the Son of Sirach, and in Ecclesiastes. This wisdom flourished not only in Judah, but also at the same time in Edom; it had the universalistic tendency which is natural to reflection. The Proverbs of Solomon would scarcely claim attention had they arisen on Greek or Arabian soil; they are remarkable in their pale generality only because they are of Jewish origin. In the Book of Job, a problem of faith is treated by Syrians and Arabians just as if they were Jews. In Ecclesiastes religion abandons the theocratic ground altogether, and becomes a kind of philosophy in which there is room even for doubt and unbelief. Speculation did not on the whole take away from depth of feeling; on the contrary, individualism helped to make religion more intense. This is seen strikingly in the Psalms, which are altogether the fruit of this period. Even the sacrificial practice of the priests was made subjective, being incorporated in the Torah, i.e., made a matter for every one to learn. Though the laity could not take part in the ceremony, they were at least to be thoroughly informed in all the minutiae of the system; the law was a means of interesting every one in the great public sacrificial procedure. Another circumstance also tended to remove the centre of gravity of the temple service from the priests to the congregation. The service of song, though executed by choirs of singers, was yet in idea the song of the congregation, and came to be of more importance than the acts of worship which it accompanied and inspired. The Holy One of Israel sat enthroned, not on the smoke-pillars of the altar, but in the praises of the congregation pouring out its heart in prayer; the sacrifices were merely the external occasion for visiting the temple, the real reason for doing so lay in the need for the strength and refreshment to be found in religious fellowship.

By the Torah religion came to be a thing to be learned. Hence the need of teachers in the church of the second temple. As the scribes had codified the Torah, it was also their task to imprint it on the minds of the people and to fill their life with it; in this way they at the same time founded a supplementary and changing tradition, which kept pace with the needs of the time. The place of teaching was the synagogue; there the law and the prophets were read and explained on the Sabbath. The synagogue and the Sabbath were of more importance than the temple and the festivals; and the moral influence of the scribes transcended that of the priests, who had to be content with outward power and dignity. The rule of religion was essentially the rule of the law, and consequently the Rabbis at last served themselves heirs to the hierarchs. At the same time, while the government of the law was acknowledged in principle, it could at no time be said to be even approximately realised in fact. The high-born priests who stood at the head of the theocracy, cared chiefly, as was quite natural, for the maintenance of their own supremacy. And there were sheep in the flock not to be kept from breaking out, both in the upper and in the lower classes of society; the school could not suppress nature altogether. It was no trifle even to know the six hundred and thirteen commandments of the written law, and the incalculable number of the unwritten. Religion had to be made a profession of, if it was to be practiced aright. It became an art, and thereby at the same time a matter of party:, the leaders of the religious were of course the scribes. The division became very apparent in the time of the Hellenization which preceded the Maccabaean revolt; at that period the name of Pharisees, i.e., the Separated, came into vogue for the party of the religious. But the separation and antipathy between the godly and the ungodly had existed before this, and had marked the life of the congregation after the exile from the very first.

It was the law that gave the Jewish religion its peculiar character. But, on the other hand, a hope was not wanting to that religion; the Jews cherished the prospect of a reward for the fulfilling of the law. This hope attached itself to the old prophecies, certainly in a very fantastic way. The Jews had no historical life, and therefore painted the old time according to their ideas, and framed the time to come according to their wishes. They stood in no living relation with either the past or the future; the present was not with them a bridge from the one to the other; they did not think of bestirring themselves with a view to the kingdom of God. They had no national and historical existence, and made no preparations to procure such a thing for themselves; they only hoped for it as a reward of faithful keeping of the law. Yet they dreamed not only of a restoration of the old kingdom, but of the erection of a universal world-monarchy, which should raise its head at Jerusalem over the ruins of the heathen empires. They regarded the history of the world as a great suit between themselves and the heathen. In this suit they were in the right; and they waited for right to be done them. If the decision was delayed, their sins were the reason; Satan was accusing them before the throne of God, and causing the judgment to be postponed. They were subjected to hard trials, and if tribulation revived their hopes, with much greater certainty did it bring their sins into sorrowful remembrance. Outward circumstances still influenced in the strongest way their religious mood.

But the old belief in retribution which sought to justify itself in connection with the fortunes of the congregation proved here also unequal to the strain laid upon it. Even in Deuteronomy it is maintained that the race is not to suffer for the act of an individual. Jeremiah’s contemporaries thought it monstrous that because the fathers had eaten sour grapes the teeth of the children should be set on edge. Ezekiel championed in a notable way the cause of individualism on this ground. He denounced the Jews who had remained in Palestine, and who regarded themselves as the successors of the people of Jehovah because they dwelt in the Holy Land and had maintained some sort of existence as a people. In his view only those souls which were saved from the dispersion of the exile were to count as heirs of the promise; the theocracy was not to be perpetuated by the nation, but by the individual righteous men. He maintained that each man lived because of his own righteousness, and died because of his own wickedness; nay more, the fate of the individual corresponded even in its fluctuations to his moral worth at successive times. The aim he pursued in this was a good one; in view of a despair which thought there was nothing for it but to pine and rot away because of former sins, he was anxious to maintain the freedom of the will, ie., the possibility of repentance and forgiveness. But the way he chose for this end was not a good one; on his showing it was chance which ultimately decided who was good and who was wicked. The old view of retribution which allowed time for judgment to operate far beyond the limit of the individual life had truth in it, but this view had none. Yet it possessed one merit, that it brought up a problem which had to be faced, and which was a subject of reflection for a long time afterwards.

The problem assumed the form of a controversy as to the principle on which piety was rewarded–this controversy taking the place of the great contest between Israel and the heathen. Were the wicked right in saying that there was no God, i.e., that He did not rule and judge on earth? Did He in truth dwell behind the clouds, and did He not care about the doings of men? In that case piety would be an illusion. Piety cannot maintain itself if God makes no difference between the godly and the wicked, and has nothing more to say to the one than to the other; for piety is not content to stretch out its hands to the empty air, it must meet an arm descending from heaven. It must have a reward, not for the sake of the reward, but in order to be sure of its own reality, in order to know that there is a communion of God with men and a road which leads to it. The usual form of this reward is the forgiveness of sins; that is the true motive of the fear of God. That is to say, as long as it is well with him, the godly man does not doubt, and so does not require any unmistakable evidence by which he may be justified and assured of the favour of God. But misfortune and pain destroy this certainty. They are accusers of sin, God’s warnings and corrections. Now is the time to hold fast the faith that God leads the godly to repentance, and destroys the wicked, that He forgives the sin of the former, but punishes and avenges that of the latter. But this faith involves a hope of living to see better things; the justification of which the good man is sure must at last be attested by an objective judgment of God before the whole world, and the godly delivered from his sufferings. Hence the constant anxiety and restlessness of his conscience; the judgment passed upon him is ultimately to be gathered from the external world, and he can never be sure how it is to turn out. And a principle is also at stake the whole time, namely, the question whether godliness or ungodliness is right in its fundamental conviction. Each individual case at once affects the generality, the sufferings of one godly person touch all the godly. When he recovers and is saved, they triumph; when he succumbs, or seems to succumb, to death, they are cast down, unless in this case they should change their minds about him and hold him to be a hypocrite whom God has judged and unmasked. In the same way, they are all hurt at the prosperity of an ungodly man, and rejoice together at his fall, not from jealousy or pleasure in misfortune for its own sake, but because in the one case their faith is overturned, while in the other it is confirmed.

The tortures incident to this curious oscillation between believing and seeing are set forth in the most trenchant way in the Book of Job. Job, placed in an agonizing situation, condemned without hope to the death of sinners, and yet conscious of his godliness, demands vengeance for his blood unjustly shed. But the vengeance is to be executed on God, and in such a case who can be the avenger? There is no one but God Himself, and thus the striking thought arises, that God will be the champion against God of his innocence, after having first murdered it. From the God of the present he appeals to the God of the future; but the identity between these two is yet maintained, and even now the God who slays him is the sole witness of his innocence, in which the world and his friends have ceased to believe. God must be this now if He is to avenge him in the future. An inner antinomy is in this way impersonated; the view of the friends is one of which the sufferer himself cannot divest himself; hence the conflict in his soul. But, supported by the unconquerable power of his good conscience, he struggles till he frees himself from the delusion; he believes more firmly in the direct testimony of his conscience than in the evidence of facts and the world’s judgment about him, and against the dreadful God of reality, the righteous God of faith victoriously asserts Himself.

Job in the end reaches the conclusion that he cannot understand God’s ways. This is a negative expression of the position that he holds fast, in spite of all, to himself and to God; that is to say, that not outward experience, but inner feeling, is to decide. This inner feeling of the union of God with the godly meets us also in some of the Psalms, where, in spite of depression arising from untoward circumstances, it maintains itself as a reality which cannot be shaken, which temptations and doubts even tend to strengthen. It was a momentous step when the soul in its relations to God ventured to take its stand upon itself, to trust itself. This was an indirect product of prophecy, but one of not less importance than its direct product, the law. The prophets declared the revelation of God, which had authority for all, but along with this they had their own personal experience, and the subjective truth of which they thus became aware proved a more powerful solvent and emancipator than the objective one which formed the subject of their revelation. They preached the law to deaf ears, and laboured in vain to convert the people. But if their labour had produced no outward result, it had an inner result for them. Rejected by the people, they clung the more closely to Jehovah, in the conviction that the defeated cause was favoured by Him, that He was with them and not with the people. Especially with Jeremiah did prophecy, which is designed primarily to act on others, transform itself into an inner converse with the Deity, which lifted him above all the annoyances of his life. In this relation, however, there was nothing distinctively prophetical, just because it was a matter of the inner life alone, and was sufficient for itself; it was just the essence of the life of religion that the prophets thus brought to view and helped to declare itself. The experience of Jeremiah propagated itself and became the experience of religious Israel. This was the power by which Israel was enabled to rise again after every fall; the good conscience towards God, the profound sentiment of union with Him, proved able to defy all the blows of outward fortune. In this strength the servant, despised and slain, triumphed over the world; the broken and contrite heart was clothed and set on high with the life and power of the Almighty God. This divine spirit of assurance rises to its boldest expression in the 73rd Psalm: “Nevertheless I am continually with Thee; Thou holdest me by my right hand;
Thou guidest me with Thy counsel,
and drawest me after Thee by the hand. If I have Thee, I desire not heaven nor earth; if my flesh and my heart fail,
Thou, God, art for ever the strength of my heart, and my portion.”

The life surrendered is here found again in a higher life, without any expression of hope of a hereafter. In the Book of Job we do indeed find a trace of this hope, in the form that even after the death of the martyr, God may still find opportunity to justify him and pronounce him innocent; yet this idea is only touched on as a distant possibility, and is at once dropped. Certainly the position of that man is a grand one who can cast into the scale against death and devil his inner certainty of union with God– so grand indeed that we must in honesty be ashamed to repeat those words of the 73d Psalm. But the point of view is too high. The danger was imminent of falling from it down into the dust and seeking comfort and support in the first earthly experience that might offer, or, on the other hand, sinking into despair. Subjective feeling was not enough of itself to outbid the contradictions of nature; the feeling must take an objective form, a world other than this one, answering the demands of morality, must build itself up to form a contrast to the world actually existing. The merit of laying the foundations for this religious metaphysic which the time called for belongs, if not to the Pharisees themselves, at least to the circles from which they immediately proceeded. The main features of that metaphysic first appear in the Book of Daniel, where we find a doctrine of the last things. We have already spoken of the transition from the old prophecy to apocalypse. With the destruction of the nation and the cessation of historical life, hope was released from all obligation to conform to historical conditions; it no longer set up an aim to which even the present might aspire, but ran riot after an ideal, at the advent of which the historical development would be suddenly broken off. To be pious was all the Jews could do at the time; but it caused them bitter regret that they had no part in the government of the world, and in thought they anticipated the fulfilment of their wishes. These they raised to an ever-higher pitch in proportion as their antagonism to the heathen became more pronounced, and as the world became more hostile to them and they to the world. As the heathen empires stood in the way of the universal dominion of Israel, the whole of them together were regarded as one power, and this world-empire was then set over against the kingdom of God, i.e., of Israel. The kingdom of God was entirely future; the fulfilling of the law did not prepare the way for it, but was only a statutory condition for its coming, not related to it inwardly as cause to effect. History was suddenly to come to a stop and cease. The Jews counted the days to the judgment; the judgment was the act by which God would at once realise all their wishes. The view thus taken of the world’s history was a very comprehensive one and well worked out from its principle, yet of an entirely negative character; the further the world’s history went wilfully away from its goal, the nearer did it unintentionally approach its goal. In this view, moreover, the earth always continued to be the place of hope; the kingdom of God was brought by the judgment into earthly history; it was on earth that the ideal was to be realised. A step further, and the struggle of the dualism of the earth was preluded in the skies by the angels, as the representatives of the different powers and nations. In this struggle a place was assigned to Satan; at first he was merely the accuser whom God Himself had appointed, and in this character he drew attention to the sins of the Jews before God’s judgment-seat, and thereby delayed the judicial sentence in their favour; but ultimately (though this took place late, and is not met with in the Book of Daniel) he came to be the independent leader of the power opposed to God, God’s cause being identified with that of the Jews. But as this prelude of the struggle took place in heaven, its result was also anticipated. The kingdom of God is on earth a thing of the future, but even now it is preserved in heaven with all its treasures, one day to descend from there to the earth. Heaven is the place where the good things of the future are kept, which are not and yet must be; that is its original and true signification. But the most important question came at last to be, how individuals were to have part in the glory of the future? How was it with the martyrs who had died in the expectation of the kingdom of God, before it came? The doctrine of the _zakuth_ was formed: if their merit was not of service to themselves, it was yet of service to others. But this was a solution with which individualism could not rest content. And what of the ungodly? Were they to escape from wrath because they died before the day of judgment? It was necessary that the departed also should be allowed to take some part in the coming retribution. Thus there arose–it is remarkable how late and how slowly–the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, that the kingdom of God might not be of service only to those who happened to be alive at the judgment. Yet at first this doctrine was only used to explain particularly striking cases. The Book of Daniel says nothing of a general resurrection, but speaks in fact only of a resurrection of the martyrs and a punishment of the wicked after death. With all this the resurrection is not the entrance to a life above the earth but to a second earthly life, to a world in which it is no longer the heathen but the Jews who bear rule and take the lead. Of a general judgment at the last day, or of heaven and hell in the Christian sense, the Jews know nothing, though these ideas might so easily have suggested themselves to them.

It is not easy to find points of view from which to pronounce on the character of Judaism. It is a system, but a practical system, which can scarcely be set forth in relation to one leading thought, as it is an irregular product of history. It lives on the stores of the past, but is not simply the total of what had been previously acquired; it is full of new impulses, and has an entirely different physiognomy from that of Hebrew antiquity, so much so that it is hard even to catch a likeness. Judaism is everywhere historically comprehensible, and yet it is a mass of antinomies. We are struck with the free flight of thought and the deep inwardness of feeling which are found in some passages in the Wisdom and in the Psalms; but, on the other hand, we meet with a pedantic asceticism which is far from lovely, and with pious wishes the greediness of which is ill-concealed; and these unedifying features are the dominant ones of the system. Monotheism is worked out to its furthest consequences, and at the same time is enlisted in the service of the narrowest selfishness; Israel participates in the sovereignty of the One God. The Creator of heaven and earth becomes the manager of a petty scheme of salvation; the living God descends from His throne to make way for the law. The law thrusts itself in everywhere; it commands and blocks up the access to heaven; it regulates and sets limits to the understanding of the divine working on earth. As far as it can, it takes the soul out of religion and spoils morality. It demands a service of God, which, though revealed, may yet with truth be called a self-chosen and unnatural one, the sense and use of which are apparent neither to the understanding nor the heart. The labour is done for the sake of the exercise; it does no one any good, and rejoices neither God nor man. It has no inner aim after which it spontaneously strives and which it hopes to attain by itself, but only an outward one, namely, the reward attached to it, which might as well be attached to other and possibly even more curious conditions. The ideal is a negative one, to keep one’s self from sin, not a positive one, to do good upon the earth; the morality is one which scarcely requires for its exercise the existence of fellow-creatures. Now pious exercises can dam up life and hold it in bounds, they may conquer from it more and more ground, and at last turn it into one great Sabbath, but they cannot penetrate it at the root. The occupation of the hands and the desire of the heart fall asunder. What the hands are doing has nothing in common with the earth, and bears no reference to earthly objects; but with the Jews the result of this is that their hope assumes a more worldly complexion. There is no connection between the Good One and goodness. There are exceptions, but they disappear in the system.

The Gospel develops hidden impulses of the Old Testament, but it is a protest against the ruling tendency of Judaism. Jesus understands monotheism in a different way from his contemporaries. They think in connection with it of the folly of the heathen and their great happiness in calling the true God their own; He thinks of the claims, not to be disputed or avoided, which the Creator makes on the creature. He feels the reality of God dominating the whole of life, He breathes in the fear of the Judge who requires an account for every idle word, and has power to destroy body and soul in hell. “No man can serve two masters; ye cannot serve God and Mammon; where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” This monotheism is not to be satisfied with stipulated services, how many and great soever; it demands the whole man, it renders doubleness of heart and hypocrisy impossible. Jesus casts ridicule on the works of the law, the washing of hands and vessels, the tithing of mint and cummin, the abstinence even from doing good on the Sabbath. Against unfruitful self-sanctification He sets up another principle of morality, that of the service of one’s neighbour. He rejects that lofty kind of goodness, which says to father and mother, If I dedicate what I might give to you, that will be best even for you yourselves; He contends for the weightier matters in the law, for the common morality which sees its aim in the furtherance of the well-being of others, and which commends itself at once to the heart of every one. Just this natural morality of self-surrender does He call the law of God; that supernatural morality which thinks to outbid this, He calls the commandment of men. Thus religion ceases to be an art which the Rabbis and Pharisees understand better than the unlearned people which know nothing of the law. The arrogance of the school fares ill at the hands of Jesus; He will know nothing of the partisanship of piety or of the separateness of the godly; He condemns the practice of judging a man’s value before God. Holiness shrinks from contact with sinners, but He helps the world of misery and sin; and there is no commandment on which He insists more than that of forgiving others their debts as one hopes for forgiveness himself from heaven. He is most distinctly opposed to Judaism in His view of the kingdom of heaven, not as merely the future reward of the worker, but as the present goal of effort, it being the supreme duty of man to help it to realise itself on earth, from the individual outwards. Love is the means, and the community of love the end.

Self-denial is the chief demand of the Gospel; it means the same thing as that repentance which must precede entrance into the kingdom of God. The will thereby breaks away from the chain of its own acts, and makes an absolutely new beginning not conditioned by the past. The causal nexus which admits of being traced comes here to an end, and the mutual action, which cannot be analysed, between God and the soul begins. Miracle does not require to be understood, only to be believed, in order to take place. With men it is impossible, but with God it is possible. Jesus not only affirmed this, but proved it in His own person. The impression of His personality convinced the disciples of the fact of the forgiveness of their sins and of their second birth, and gave them courage to believe in a new divine life and to live it. He had in fact lost His life and saved it; He could do as he would. He had escaped the limits of the race and the pains of self-seeking nature; He had found freedom and personality in God, who alone is master of Himself, and lifts those up to Himself who seek after Him.

Jesus works in the world and for the world, but with His faith He stands above the world and outside it. He can sacrifice Himself for the world because He asks nothing from the world, but has attained in retirement with God to equanimity and peace of soul. And further, the entirely supra-mundane position, at which Jesus finds courage and love to take an interest in the world, does not lead Him to anything strained or unnatural. He trusts God’s Providence, and resigns Himself to His will, He takes up the attitude of a child towards Him, and loves best to call Him the Heavenly Father. The expression is simple, but the thing signified is new. He first knows Himself, not in emotion but in sober quietness, to be God’s child; before Him no one ever felt himself to be so, or called himself so. He is the first-born of the Father, yet, according to His own view, a first-born among many brethren. For He stands in this relation to God not because His nature is unique, but because He is man; He uses always and emphatically this general name of the race to designate His own person. In finding the way to God for Himself He has opened it to all; along with the nature of God He has at the same time discovered in Himself the nature of man.

Eternity extends into the present with Him, even on earth He lives in the midst of the kingdom of God; even the judgment He sees inwardly accomplished here below in the soul of man. Yet He is far from holding the opinion that he who loves God aright does not desire that God should love him in return. He teaches men to bear the cross, but he does not teach that the cross is sweet and that sickness is sound. A coming reconciliation between believing and seeing, between morality and nature, everywhere forms the background of His view of the world; even if He could have done without it for His own person, yet it is a thing He takes for granted, as it is an objective demand of righteousness. So much is certain; for the rest the eschatology of the New Testament is so thoroughly saturated with the Jewish ideas of the disciples, that it is difficult to know what of it is genuine.

Jesus was so full of new and positive ideas that He did not feel any need for breaking old idols, so free that no constraint could depress Him, so unconquerable that even under the load of the greatest accumulations of rubbish He could still breathe. This ought ye to do, He said, and not to leave the other undone; He did not seek to take away one iota, but only to fulfil. He never thought of leaving the Jewish community. The Church is not His work, but an inheritance from Judaism to Christianity. Under the Persian domination the Jews built up an unpolitical community on the basis of religion. The Christians found themselves in a position with regard to the Roman Empire precisely similar to that which the Jews had occupied with regard to the Persian; and so they also founded, after the Jewish pattern, in the midst of the state which was foreign and hostile to them, and in which they could not feel themselves at home, a religious community as their true fatherland. The state is always the presupposition of the Church; but it was at first, in the case both of the Jewish and of the Christian Church, a foreign state. The original meaning of the Church thus disappeared when it no longer stood over against the heathen world-power, it having become possible for the Christians also to possess a natural fatherland in the nation. In this way it became much more difficult to define accurately the spheres of the state and the Church respectively, regarding the Church as an organisation, not as an invisible community of the faithful. The distinction of religious and secular is a variable one; every formation of a religious community is a step towards the secularisation of religion; the religion of the heart alone remains an inward thing. The tasks of the two competing organisations are not radically different in their nature; on the one side it may be said that had not the Christian religion found civil order already in existence, had it come, like Islam, in contact with the anarchy of Arabia instead of the Empire of Rome it must have founded not the Church, but the state; on the other side it is well known that the state has everywhere entered into possession of fields first reclaimed to cultivation by the Church. Now we must acknowledge that the nation is more certainly created by God than the Church, and that God works more powerfully in the history of the nations than in Church history. The Church, at first a substitute for the nation which was wanting, is affected by the same evils incident to an artificial cultivation as meet us in Judaism. We cannot create for ourselves our sphere of life and action; better that it should be a natural one, given by God. And yet it would be unjust to deny the permanent advantages of the differentiation of the two. The Church will always be able to work in advance for the state of the future. The present state unfortunately is in many respects only nothing more than a barrier to chaos; if the Church has still a task, it is that of preparing an inner unity of practical conviction, and awakening a sentiment, first in small circles, that we belong to each other.

Whether she is to succeed in this task is certainly the question. The religious individualism of the Gospel is, and must remain for all time, the true salt of the earth. The certainty that neither death nor life can separate us from the love of God drives out that fear which is opposed to love; an entirely supra-mundane faith lends courage for resultless self-sacrifice and resigned obedience on earth. We must succeed: _sursum corda_!

12. THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD.

Palestine fell into Alexander’s possession in 332; after his death it had an ample share of the troubles arising out of the partition of his inheritance. In 320 it was seized by Ptolemy I., who on a Sabbath-day took Jerusalem; but in 3I5 he had to give way before Antigonus. Even before the battle of Ipsus, however, he recovered possession once more, and for a century thereafter Southern Syria continued to belong to the Egyptian crown, although the Seleucidae more than once sought to wrench it away.

In the priestly dynasty during the period of the Ptolemies, Onias I. ben Jaddua was succeeded by his son Simon I., after whom again came first his brothers Eleazar and Manasseh, and next his son Onias II.; the last-named was in his turn followed by his son Simon II., whose praises are sung by the son of Sirach (xlix. 14-16). At the side of the high priest stood the gerusia of the town of Jerusalem, as a council of state, including the higher ranks of the priesthood. The new sovereign power was at once stronger and juster than the Persian,–at least under the earlier Ptolemies; the power of the national government increased; to it was intrusted the business of raising the tribute.

As a consequence of the revolutionary changes which had taken place in the conditions of the whole East, the Jewish dispersion (diaspora) began vigorously to spread. It dated its beginning indeed from an earlier period,–from the time when the Jews had lost their land and kingdom, but yet, thanks to their religion, could not part with their nationality. They did not by any means all return from Babylon; perhaps the majority permanently settled abroad. The successors of Alexander (diadochi) fully appreciated this international element, and used it as a link between their barbarian and Hellenic populations. Everywhere they encouraged the settlement of Jews,–in Asia Minor, in Syria, and especially in Egypt. Alongside of the Palestinian there arose a Hellenistic Judaism which had its metropolis in Alexandria. Here, under Ptolemy I. and II., the Torah had already been translated into Greek, and around this sprung up a Jewish-Greek literature which soon became very extensive. At the court and in the army of the Ptolemies many Jews rose to prominent positions; everywhere they received the preference over, and everywhere they in consequence earned the hatred of, the indigenous population.

After the death of Ptolemy IV. (205) Antiochus III. attained the object towards which he and his predecessors had long been vainly striving; after a war protracted with varying success through several years, he succeeded at last in incorporating Palestine with the kingdom of the Seleucidae. The Jews took his side, less perhaps because they had become disgusted with the really sadly degenerate Egyptian rule, than because they had foreseen the issue of the contest, and preferred to attach themselves voluntarily to the winning side. In grateful acknowledgment, Antiochus confirmed and enlarged certain privileges of the “holy camp,” i.e., of Jerusalem (Josephus, Antiquities, xii. 3, 3). It soon, however, became manifest that the Jews had made but a poor bargain in this exchange. Three years after his defeat at Magnesia, Antiochus III. died (187), leaving to his son Seleucus IV. an immense burden of debt, which he had incurred by his unprosperous Roman war. Seleucus, in his straits, could not afford to be over-scrupulous in appropriating money where it was to be found: he did not need to be twice told that the wealth of the temple at Jerusalem was out of all proportion to the expenses of the sacrificial service. The sacred treasure accordingly made the narrowest possible escape from being plundered; Heliodorus, who had been charged by the king to seize it, was deterred at the last moment by a heavenly vision. But the Jews derived no permanent advantage from this.

It was a priest of rank, Simon by name, who had called the attention of the king to the temple treasure; his motive had been spite against the high priest Onias III., the son and successor of Simon II. The circumstance is one indication of a melancholy process of disintegration that was at that time going on within the hierocracy. The high-priesthood, although there were exceptional cases, such as that of Simon II., was regarded less as a sacred office than as a profitable princedom; within the ranks of the priestly nobility arose envious and jealous factions; personal advancement was sought by means of the favour of the overlord, who had something to say in the making of appointments. A collateral branch of the ruling family, that of the children of Tobias, had by means of the ill-gotten wealth of Joseph ben Tobias attained to a position of ascendancy, and competed in point of power with the high priest himself. It appears that the above-mentioned Simon, and his still more scandalous brother AIenelaus, also belonged to the Tobiadae, and, relying upon the support of their powerful party (Josephus, Antiquities, xii. 5, 1), cherished the purpose of securing the high-priesthood by the aid of the Syrian king.

The failure of the mission of Heliodorus was attributed by Simon to a piece of trickery on the part of Onias the high priest, who accordingly found himself called upon to make his own justification at court and to expose the intrigues of his adversary. Meanwhile Seleucus IV. died of poison (175), and Antiochus IV. Epiphanes did not confirm Onias in his dignity, but detained him in Antioch, while he made over the office to his brother Jason, who had offered a higher rent. Possibly the Tobiadae also had something to do with this arrangement; at all events, Menelaus was at the outset the right hand of the new high priest. To secure still further the favour of the king, Jason held himself out to be an enlightened friend of the Greeks, and begged for leave to found in Jerusalem a gymnasium and an ephebeum, and to be allowed to sell to the inhabitants there the rights of citizenship in Antioch,–a request which was readily granted.

The malady which had long been incubating now reached its acute phase. Just in proportion as Hellenism showed itself friendly did it present elements of danger to Judaism. From the periphery it slowly advanced towards the centre, from the diaspora to Jerusalem, from mere matters of external fashion to matters of the most profound conviction. /1/ Especially did the upper and cultivated

************************************* 1. The Hellenising fashion is amusingly exemplified in the Grecising of the Jewish names; e.g., Alcimus = Eljakim, Jason = Jesus, Joshua; Menelaus = Menahem.
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classes of society begin to feel ashamed, in presence of the refined Greeks, of their Jewish singularity, and to do all in their power to tone it down and conceal it. In this the priestly nobility made itself conspicuous as the most secular section of the community, and it was the high priest who took the initiative in measures which aimed at a complete Hellenising of the Jews. He outdid every one else in paganism. Once he sent a considerable present for offerings to the Syrian Hercules on the occasion of his festival; but his messenger, ashamed to apply the money to such a purpose, set it apart for the construction of royal ships of war.

The friendship shown by Jason for the Greek king and for all that was Hellenic did not prevent Antiochus IV. from setting pecuniary considerations before all others. Menelaus, intrusted with the mission of conveying to Antioch the annual Jewish tribute, availed himself of the opportunity to promote his own personal interests by offering a higher sum for the high-priesthood, and having otherwise ingratiated himself with the king, gained his object (171). But though nominated, he did not find it quite easy to obtain possession of the post. The Tobiadae took his side, but the body of the people stuck to Jason, who was compelled to give way only when Syrian troops had been brought upon the scene. Menelaus had immediately, however, to encounter another difficulty, for he could not at once pay the amount of tribute which he had promised. He helped himself so far indeed by robbing the temple, but this landed him in new embarrassments. Onias III., who was living out of employment at Antioch, threatened to make compromising revelations to the king; he was, however, opportunely assassinated. The rage of the people against the priestly temple-plunderer now broke out in a rising against a certain Lysimachus, who at the instance of the absent Menelaus had made further inroads upon the sacred treasury. The Jews’ defence before the king (at Tyre) on account of this uproar resolved itself into a grievous complaint against the conduct of Menelaus. His case was a bad one, but money again helped him out of his straits, and the extreme penalty of the law fell upon his accusers.

The feelings of the Jews with reference to this wolfish shepherd may easily be imagined. Nothing but fear of Antiochus held them in check. Then a report gained currency that the king had perished in an expedition against Egypt (170); and Jason, who meanwhile had found refuge in Ammanitis, availed himself of the prevailing current of feeling to resume his authority with the help of one thousand men. He was not able, however, to hold the position long, partly because he showed an unwise vindictiveness against his enemies, partly (and chiefly) because the rumour of the death of Antiochus turned out to be false. The king was already, in fact, close at hand on his return from Egypt, full of anger at an insurrection which he regarded as having been directed against himself. He inflicted severe and bloody chastisement upon Jerusalem, carried off the treasures of the temple, and restored Menelaus, placing Syrian officials at his side. Jason fled from place to place, and ultimately died in misery at Lacedaemon.

The deepest despondency prevailed in Judaea; but its cup of sorrow was not yet full. Antiochus, probably soon after his last Egyptian expedition (168), sent Apollonius with an army against Jerusalem. He fell upon the unsuspecting city, disarmed the inhabitants and demolished the walls, but on the other hand fortified Acra, and garrisoned it strongly, so as to make it a standing menace to the whole country. Having thus made his preparations, he proceeded to carry out his main instructions. All that was religiously distinctive of Judaism was to be removed; such was the will of the king. The Mosaic cultus was abolished, Sabbath observance and the rite of circumcision prohibited, all copies of the Torah confiscated and burnt. In the desecrated and partially-destroyed temple pagan ceremonies were performed, and upon the great altar of burnt-offering a small altar to Jupiter Capitolinus was erected, on which the first offering was made on 25th Kislev 168. In the country towns also heathen altars were erected, and the Jews compelled, on pain of death, publicly to adore the false gods and to eat swine’s flesh that had been sacrificed to idols.

The princes and grandees of the Jews had represented to Antiochus that the people were ripe for Hellenisation; and inasmuch as, apart from this, to reduce to uniformity the extremely motley constituents of his kingdom was a scheme that lay near his heart, he was very willing to believe them. That the very opposite was the case must of course have become quite evident very soon; but the resistance of the Jews taking the form of rebellious risings against his creatures, he fell upon the hopeless plan of coercion,–hopeless, for he could attain his end only by making all Judaea one vast graveyard. There existed indeed a pagan party; the Syrian garrison of Acra was partly composed of Jews who sold themselves to be the executioners of their countrymen. Fear also influenced many to deny their convictions; but the majority adhered firmly to the religion of their fathers. Jerusalem, the centre of the process of Hellenisation, was abandoned by its inhabitants, who made their escape to Egypt, or hid themselves in the country, in deserts and caves. The scribes in especial held fast by the law; and they were joined by the party of the Asidaeans (i.e., pious ones).

13. THE HASMONAEANS.

At first there was no thought of meeting violence with violence; as the Book of Daniel shows, people consoled themselves with thoughts of the immediate intervention of God which would occur in due time. Quite casually, without either plan or concert, a warlike opposition arose. There was a certain priest Mattathias, of the family of the Hasmonaeans, a man far advanced in life, whose home was in Modein, a little country town to the west of Jerusalem. Hither also the Syrian soldiers came to put the population to a positive proof of their change of faith; they insisted upon Mattathias leading the way. But he was steadfast in his refusal; and, when another Jew addressed himself before his eyes to the work of making the heathen offering, he killed him and the Syrian officer as well, and destroyed the altar. Thereupon he fled to the hill country, accompanied by his sons (Johannes Gaddi, Simon Thassi, Judas Maccabaeus, Eleazar Auaran, Jonathan Apphus) and other followers. But he resolved to defend himself to the last, and not to act as some other fugitives had done, who about the same time had allowed themselves to be surrounded and butchered on a Sabbath-day without lifting a finger. Thus he became the head of a band which defended the ancestral religion with the sword. They traversed the country, demolished the altars of the false gods, circumcised the children, and persecuted the heathen and heathenishly disposed. The sect of the Asidaeans also intrusted itself to their warlike protection (1Maccabees ii. 42).

Mattathias soon died and left his leadership to Judas Maccabaeus, by whom the struggle was carried on in the first instance after the old fashion; soon, however, it assumed larger dimensions, when regular armies were sent out against the insurgents. First Apollonius, the governor of Judaea, took the field; but he was defeated and fell in battle. Next came Seron, governor of Ccelesyria, who also was routed near Bethhoron (I66). Upon this Lysias, the regent to whom Antiochus IV., who was busied in the far east, had intrusted the government of Syria and the charge of his son, Antiochus Philopator, a minor, sent a strong force under the command of three generals. Approaching from the west, it was their design to advance separately upon Jerusalem, but Judas anticipated their plan and compelled them to quit the field (166). The regent now felt himself called on to interpose in person. Invading Judaea from the south, he encountered the Jews at Bethsur, who, however, offered an opposition that was not easily overcome; he was prevented from resorting to the last measures by the intelligence which reached him of the death of the king in Elymais (165).

The withdrawal of Lysias secured the fulfilment of the desires of the defenders of the faith in so far as it now enabled them to restore the Jerusalem worship to its previous condition. They lost no time in setting about the accomplishment of this. They were not successful indeed in wresting Acra from the possession of the Syrians, but they so occupied the garrison as to prevent it from interfering with the work of restoration. On 25th Kislev 165, the very day on which, three years before, “the abomination of desolation” had been inaugurated, the first sacrifice was offered on the new altar, and in commemoration of this the feast of the dedication was thenceforth celebrated.

As it was easy to see that danger still impended, the temple was put into a state of defence, as also was the town of Bethsur, where Lysias had been checked. But the favourable moment presented by the change of sovereign was made use of for still bolder attempts. Scattered over the whole of Southern Syria there were a number of Jewish localities on which the heathens now proceeded to wreak their vengeance.

For the purpose of rescuing these oppressed co-religionists, and of bringing them in safety to Judaea, the Maccabees made a series of excursions, extending in some cases as far as to Lebanon and Damascus. Lysias had his hands otherwise fully occupied, and perhaps did not feel much disposed to continue the fight on behalf of the cultus of Jupiter Capitolinus. Daily gaining in boldness, the Jews now took in hand also to lay regular siege to Acra. Then at last Lysias yielded to the pressure of Syrian and Jewish deputations and determined to take serious steps (162). With a large force he entered Judaea, again from the south, and laid siege to Bethsur. Judas vainly attempted the relief of the fortress; he sustained near Bethzachariah a defeat in which his brother Eleazar perished. Bethsur was unable to hold out, being short of provisions on account of the sabbatic year. The Syrians advanced next to Jerusalem and besieged the temple; it also was insufficiently provisioned, and would soon have been compelled to surrender, had not Lysias been again called away at the critical moment by other exigencies. A certain Philip was endeavouring to oust him from the regency; as it was necessary for him to have his hands free in dealing with this new enemy, he closed a treaty with the temple garrison and the people at large, in accordance with which at once the political subjection and the religious freedom of the Jews were to be maintained; Thus the situation as it had existed before Antiochus IV. was restored. Only no attempt was made to replace Menelaus as high priest and ethnarch; this post was to be filled by Alcimus.

The concessions thus made by Lysias were inevitable; and even King Demetrius I., son of Seleucus IV., who towards the end of 162 ascended the throne and caused both Lysias and his ward to be put to death, had no thought of interfering with their religious freedom. But the Maccabees desired something more than the _status quo ante_; after having done their duty they were disinclined to retire in favour of Alcimus, whose sole claim lay in his descent from the old heathenishly-disposed high-priestly family. Alcimus was compelled to invoke the assistance of the king, who caused him to be installed by Bacchides. He was at once recognised by the scribes and Asidaeans, for whom, with religious liberty, everything they wished had been secured; the claims to supremacy made by the Hasmonaeans were of no consequence to them. Doubtless the masses also would ultimately have quietly accepted Alcimus, who of course refrained from interference with either law or worship, had he not abused the momentary power he derived from the presence of Bacchides to take a foolish revenge. But the consequence of his action was that, as soon as Bacchides had turned his back, Alcimus was compelled to follow him. For the purpose of restoring him a Syrian army once more invaded Judaea under Nicanor (I60), but first at Kapharsalama and afterwards at Bethhoron was defeated by Judas, and almost annihilated in the subsequent flight, Nicanor himself being among the slain (13th Adar = Nicanor’s day). Judas was now at the acme of his prosperity; about this time he concluded his (profitless) treaty with the Romans. But disaster was impending.