"¦" :¦;¦,:;:¦''¦'¦'¦ '¦¦¦¦ .;'.' : ¦'^' ¦¦--,¦¦¦ "¦,'¦¦¦¦:'¦•:>.;¦. ¦•^•fi'..'--':?'--:--''- ¦'¦'¦':.¦ ;~":f-. . tl.'.l.l.l.T.T.I.I.I.I.l.T.l.l.f.l.l.l.T.l.l.TTTU.I.I.I.I.M.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.l.l.J.I.ITTXT Library of the pile Bivinirg Scbool The Books of ]frank Cbamberlain porter Winkley Professor of Biblical Theology ^'.'ivl'i'l'i'lviviviviviviviYiviviVIVriTi'l'i'l'riVIVI'iTt'lYI'i'l'riVI'iT, "Religious Science and literature Series EDITED BY E. HERSHEY SNEATH, Ph.D., LL.D., Yale University THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL THE MACMILLAN COMPANY HEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN &. C0.f Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO, OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL BY GEORGE A. BARTON, Ph.D., LL.D. PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE AND SEMITIC LANGUAGES IN I1RYN MAWR COLLEGE Nro ^ork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1918 AU rights reserved, Copyright, 1918 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published, September, 1918 TO THE MEMORY OF FRANCIS BROWN LATE PRESIDENT OF UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY HEBREW LEXICOGRAPHER WHO MADE ALL STUDENTS OF HEBREW HIS DEBTORS PREFACE This little book is written for college undergradu ates, and is, accordingly, not a systematic treatise on Old Testament Theology. The writer ha^Jiad consid erable experience in teaching both graduate and under graduate students and has endeavoured to put into the following pages the kind of information in which, as he has learned, college undergraduates take an interest, and to present it as he has found they like to have it presented. He has found that the undergraduate wishes to know the truth as fully and frankly as it can be known, and, while he has not always the disciplined patience to enjoy the details which the more mature student must master, he is interested in watching the development of great movements in history, and in tracing the forces that shaped them. In the following pages an effort is made to present for such students the development of Israel's religion from its primitive Semitic beginnings to the coming of Christ. Since even those students who have had a course in the literature of the Old Testament seldom have been taught how to use the earlier books from the historical point of view, it seemed best to devote a chapter to that subject. As the history of its religion PREFACE involves the history of the nation, it was also necessary to treat the origin of Israel in the light of our latest information. Having disposed of these topics, the story of the unfolding of the religion is in several chap ters traced from the time of Moses to the beginning of the Christian era. In these chapters an effort is made to" emphasize the spiritual and social forces that were at work^to let the great creative personalities pass be fore the mnid, and to follow in broad outline the changes in organization, spiritual vision, and ethical practice. Two chapters are then devoted to topics that could not well be treated with the general history, but which are in themselves of great importance, i.e., the development of the priesthood, and the belief in angels and demons. The remaining chapters are devoted each to some impor tant phase of the manifold Jewish religious thought and activity in the centuries after the exile. Many students have testified that there is no subject of greater intellectual interest than the Old Testament, when studied from the historical point of view. It is the writer's hope that in reading this book some under graduates may find their interest awakened in one of the most fascinating and important phases of human history. A considerable portion of chapter II formed part of an article in the Proceedings of the American Philo sophical Society, and much of the material of chapters IV-VIII appeared in a series of articles in the Biblical World, Vol. XXXIX. The writer hereby expresses his PREFACE thanks to the American Philosophical Society and the University of Chicago Press for permission to use this material here. It has been revised, brought up to date, and adapted to its present use. As the writing of this book neared completion in June, 19 1 6 (its printing has been delayed by conditions pro duced by the great war) , the writer requested the late Francis Brown, President of Union Theological Sem inary, to permit the book to be dedicated to him, in recognition of the debt under which President Brown had placed all students of Hebrew by the production of his Hebrew Lexicon. In a letter dated June 27th, 19 1 6, President Brown granted the desired permission, and added: "I am glad and grateful if the Lexicon has been of use to you. I could make a much better one now, and perhaps this may be revised sometime." In speaking of his health President Brown added: " I am really much better, and hope to go to work in the autumn, though I shall have to walk softly for a while." When autumn came, instead of returning to his work he passed to his reward on October 15, 1916. George A. Barton. Bryn Mawr, Pa. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I The Semitic Background i II The Value of the Early Biblical Narratives 18 III The Origin of the Israelitish Nation . . 43 IV Moses and the Covenant 'with Yahweh . . 56 V Pre-Prophetic Period in Canaan .... 75 VI The Prophets of the Eighth Century . . 94 VII Deuteronomy and Jeremiah 114 VIII The Exile and the Reorganized Jewish State 127 IX Legalism 141 X Development of the Priesthood and Ritual 158 XI Angels and Demons 173 XII The Religion of the Psalmists 195 XIII The Religion of the Sages 216 XIV Five Religious Tracts 235 XV The Hopes of the Apocalyptists .... 248 XVI The Jewish Dispersion 263 EDITOR'S PROSPECTUS One of the notable developments of modern scholar ship is an increasing interest in the scientific study of religion. It is safe to say that never before has religion been made the subject of such careful and extended in vestigation as during the last two decades. History, anthropology, psychology, archaeology, comparative re ligion, and sociology have been drawn upon to aid in the determination and interpretation of the facts of re ligious experience; — each of them making a substan tial contribution toward this important end. Indeed, during this period a new science, the psychology of re ligion, has come into being, and already a compara tively large literature on this subject has been devel oped. Philosophy, also, has felt the impulse of this interest, and, in the more speculative fields of religious scholarship, a philosophy of religion is rapidly supplant ing dogmatic theology in the effort to furnish an ulti mate interpretation of the phenomena of religious con sciousness. Furthermore, application of the historical method to the study of Old and New Testament Liter ature has contributed toward a much better understand ing of the Bible, and to a more intelligent appreciation, and a higher valuation, of the Christian religion. EDITOR'S PROSPECTUS Further interest in religion is manifest in the wide spread movement in behalf of systematic religious edu cation. Biology, genetic and child psychology, the psychology of adolescence, and experimental pedagogy, are rendering valuable aid in the organization and appli cation of curricula in this important field. Thus far elementary and secondary religious education has re ceived more attention than religious education in the college. The time seems ripe for more adequate edu cation in this field in colleges and universities. For this purpose a special literature in the history, psy chology and philosophy of religion, and in Old and New Testament Interpretation is necessary. The " Re ligious Science and Literature Series " is specially de signed to meet this need. Each book of the Series is written by a well-known specialist, and is prepared with reference to class-room work. The Series includes the following volumes : The History of Religion (Ready) E. Washburn Hopkins, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, Yale University Psychology of Religion (In preparation) Luther A. Weigle, Ph.D., Professor of Christian Nurture, Yale University Philosophy of Religion (In preparation) Douglas Clyde Macintosh, Ph.D., Professor of Theology, Yale University History and Literature of the Old Testament (In preparation) Charles Cutler Torrey, Ph.D., D.D., Professor of Semitic Languages, Yale University editor's prospectus History of the Relicion of Israel (Ready) George A. Barton, Ph.D., LL.D. Professor of Biblical Literature and Semitic Languages, Bryn Mawr College History and Literature of the New Testament (In preparation) Henry Thatcher Fowler, Ph.D., Professor of Biblical Literature and History, Brown University Life and Teachings of Jesus (In preparation) Edward Increase Bosworth, D.D., Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, and Dean of Oberlin Seminary A Book About the English Bible (In press) Josiah H. Penniman, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of English Literature and Vice-Provost, University of Pennsylvania History of the Christian Religion (In preparation) John Winthrop Platner, D.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Andover Theological Seminary The author of " History of the Religion of Israel," Professor George A. Barton, is professor of Biblical Literature and Semitic Languages in Bryn Mawr Col lege. His recognized scholarship, and large experience as a teacher in this branch of learning, eminently qualify him for writing a book of this character. E. Hershey Sneath. Yale University. THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL CHAPTER I THE SEMITIC BACKGROUND Evolution and Revelation — The Hebrew Semites — Semites lived in Arabia — Were Animistic — Semitic Social Organization — Deities connected with Springs — Deities of Fertility — Pillars and Asheras — Circumcision — Animal Sacrifice — The Passover — The Autumn Festival — Law of Revenge — The Ban — Ecstatic Prophecy — Re ligion a Body of Ceremonies. Religion may be viewed from either the human or the divine point of view. From the divine standpoint God ^ reveals truth; from the human, man discovers it. Even a superficial study of the history of religion makes it clear that there has been in the course of the centuries an advance in the apprehension of truth and in the grasp of moral and religious ideals. Viewed from the divine side revelation has been progressive ; looked at from the human, it has been evolutionary. He who speaks of the evolution of religion does not thereby deny the divine element, nor he who speaks of revelation, the human factor. If, then, in the following pages we seek to trace the evolution of the religion of Israel, we shall be but treating in the favourite phraseology of the time the progress of revelation in Israel. The Hebrews were one of the Semitic peoples. The 2 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL evolution of their religion took place, accordingly, upon soil prepared by the religious conceptions of the primi tive Semites. In order either to trace the evolution or to estimate the permanent significance of the religious message of the Old Testament it is necessary to glance at the Semitic background of Israel's religion. Israel was a Semitic people, and without some knowledge of her Semitic inheritance one can not discriminate between the ancestral and the original in her religious institutions and customs, nor so easily separate the eternal from the transitory in the Old Testament. The Semitic nations known to history were the Babylonians, Assyrians, Aramaeans, Phoenicians, He brews, Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, Carthagenians, Arabs, and Abyssinians. While a non-Semitic people, the Sumerians, contributed much to Babylonian civiliza tion, that civilization was on the whole Semitic. The languages of these Semitic nations are closely akin to one another. Their resemblances often remind the student of the kinship between the modern derivatives of Latin — French, Italian, and Spanish. A close kinship also existed between the Semitic peo ples and the peoples called Hamitic, — the Egyptians, Berbers, and the tribes of Somaliland. This kinship is attested by linguistic affinities, and of it there can be no doubt. How this kinship came about is differently interpreted by different scholars. Egyptologists such as Erman and Breasted hold that it came about in conse quence of a large infiltration of Semites into Egypt at THE SEMITIC BACKGROUND 3 an early time. Such a migration of Semites into Egypt from Asia has long seemed to the writer an inadequate explanation of the phenomena,1 for the similarities are not confined to the ancient Egyptian language, but run through the Berber dialects which are spoken through the whole of North Africa to the Atlantic, and through the dialects of Somaliland, which are also spoken to the present day. These fundamental likenesses indicate that at a remote epoch the Semites and the Hamites were one stock. This kinship to the Hamites does not, however, con cern us here. The point which is of interest to our sub ject is that the Semites, even if at some very remote period they had migrated from North Africa, lived for a long time (so many scholars now believe2) in the desolate peninsula of Arabia, and little by little, as they became too numerous for that barren country to sup port, spilled over into the more fertile lands to the northeast, north, and northwest of Arabia (not to men tion Abyssinia to the southwest) , thus forming in time the various Semitic nations catalogued above. Even if the beginnings of the fundamental Semitic institu tions had their birth in North Africa, they were brought to their perfection through long residence in Arabia. As several of these fundamental institutions existed for a long time in Israel, and some of them are per- 1 See the writer's Sketch of Semitic Origins, New York, 1902, pp. 9-13. 2 For different theories, see the writer's Sketch of Semitic Origins, New York, 1902, Ch. I. 4 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL petuated by the Jews to the present time, a brief glance at the most important of them will help to clearness of thought in seeking for that which is vital in the religious message of Israel. Like all people at a similar stage of evolution, the ancient Semites thought that every place, tree, rock, spring, etc., had its spirit, or was inhabited by a spirit. Out of these spirits the Semitic deities were in time developed. It thus happened that all Semitic deities were regarded as fixed to certain localities, — an idea that was only slowly outgrown. Thus Yahweh, the God of Israel, was first thought to dwell at Horeb ( i Kgs. 19: 8 f.), and later in the temple on Zion at Jerusalem (Isa. 31: 4, 5, and 9). It took a long experience of pain to teach one of the later psalmists the great lesson ofthe omnipresence of God (Ps. 139: 7-16). Arabia, a land a thousand miles long, with an aver age width of six hundred miles, is one of the most barren countries in the world. Desolate mountains of igneous rock are separated by broad, elevated, unwatered plains, which produce only a few hardy, thorny shrubs. In parts, as in the region called the Nafud, the gravel of these plains gives place to sand which drifts like snow. There is almost no rainfall, and rivers are unknown. The only fertile spots occur at those rare intervals where, through the volcanic action of remote ages, a rift in the rocks conducts water from unknown, far away sources to the surface of the ground and forms a spring. Irrigation from this spring produces in that THE SEMITIC BACKGROUND 5 subtropical climate an abundant vegetation. As one wanders across the desolate sun-burned spaces which constitute the larger part of Arabia, the contrast of the cooling waters and refreshing shade of these oases be comes unspeakably impressive. It was this contrast, combined with the grim strug gle for existence in such a country that gave to the early Semite his conception of deity. One can easily under stand how, in such an environment, the spirit of an oasis, — a spirit which could produce such refreshing waters, such cooling shade, such delicious fruits, and sustain ing crops, — would become to him a beneficent deity. It is not strange that in such an environment fertility, — the power to give life, both vegetable and animal, — should seem to the Semite the divinest of all powers. It was natural, therefore, that practically all Semitic deities were thought to be closely connected with life processes, and to be especially interested in fertility and reproduction. The social organization of the early Semitic tribes in Arabia was matriarchal,1 and religious conceptions, the world over, are expressed in the terms of the social and political organization of a people's life. People do not call their god a king until they have a king as a part of their political economy, nor do they call him a father, where fatherhood is not a prominent feature of their social organization. 1 See W. R. Smith's Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, 2 ed., London, 1903; and the writer's Semitic Origins, New York, 1902, Ch. II. 6 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL It is not strange, therefore, that the early Semites •* regarded the principal deity of each oasis as a goddess, and the next important deity as her son. The god dess appears to have been the spirit of the spring which gave the oasis its fertility, and was consequently thought to reside in the spring; the son appears to have been regarded as the spirit of the vegetation, or more specific ally, of the palm-trees which grew near the spring. -They called the mother goddess by a name which is found among all the Semitic nations known to history. It appears among the Babylonians as Ishtar; among the Phoenicians as Ashtart. It was called by the Greeks Astarte, and perverted by later Hebrews to Ashtoreth. It apparently meant " the Self-waterer." 1 We do not know the primitive name of the goddess's son. In Babylonia he was called Dumuzi (corrupted in Hebrew to Tammuz), which meant "Son of life." Naturally these deities were thought to feel and act as the barbar ous men and women of that early stage of development felt and acted. It was natural that, in a religion which originated in such an environment, certain springs, trees, and rocks should be considered sacred, for they were the residences of deities or spirits. It was also natural that, when Semites settled in lands watered by rivers, these rivers should be considered sacred too. Thus in the code of laws promulgated by the Babylonian king, Hammurapi, 1 See the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xxxi, p. 355 f- THE SEMITIC BACKGROUND J the river is several times regarded as a god, and in II Kgs. 5 : 10-12 it is implied that divine qualities were thought to belong both to the river Jordan and to the two rivers at Damascus. As deities of fertility the Ishtars and Tammuzes were,, thought to approve of the sexual relations which existed in primitive Semitic society; indeed, they were thought to be especially anxious to encourage those relations. Among all early peoples it has been thought that acts that occur, as we say, by chance are especially directed by a god. As these primitive deities were thought to be especially interested in fertility, it was customary to leave the selection of a partner to the first sexual act in the life of a woman to chance, in order to secure to her the blessings of the mother goddess. This custom survived among several of the Semitic nations down to late times. An outgrowth of this custom, which arose after the establishment of priesthoods, was the conse cration of men and women to represent this function of the deity.1 These men and women were not prostitutes in the ordinary sense of the term. The purpose of their existence seems to have been to secure fertility to those men and women who were barren. The institution was not begotten by immoral tendencies; it simply repre sented a very primitive point of view. Doubtless at times it was put to uses that were more sensual than religious, but such was not its original purpose. This 1 See the article " Hierodouloi," in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, New York, 1908, Vol. VI. 8 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL institution was known in Israel as among the other na tions, and was not eradicated until the reform of Josiah in 621 B. c (II Kgs. 23: 7). Closely connected with these conceptions of fertility were the pillars and asheras which stood beside Semitic altars. The pillars were rude stones which roughly rep resented a phallus, the asheras represented in different ways at different times the physical gateway of life. These, too, survived at the altars of Yahweh in Israel until the reform of Josiah (II Kgs. 23: 7, 15). Somewhat akin to the pillars just mentioned were circles of stones arranged in a perpendicular position. These were called by the Hebrews Gilgals. Such circles may still be seen in the land beyond Jordan, and are no doubt of pre-historic origin. What the exact signifi cance of these circles was we cannot now divine. The enclosure within them was rendered sacred, and is ap parently still so regarded by the trans-Jordanic nomads.1 These Gilgals Israel took over, and in time some of them were explained by traditions of their own. Thus one in the Jordan valley was regarded as having been made of stones taken from the bottom of the Jordan at the time of the Hebrew crossing (Josh. 4: 20). _^ A part of this primitive cult was the rite of circumci sion. This rite can no longer be regarded as the peculiar possession of the Hebrew people, though it was inter preted by Jews as the special sign of Yahweh's covenant with them (Gen. 17: 1— 15) . In reality it is a most iSee Biblical World, XXIV, p. 177. THE SEMITIC BACKGROUND 9 primitive institution; it originated so early that it was practised by Egyptians as well as by Semites. Egyp tian reliefs made prior to 2500 b. c portray the opera tion, while the examination of many mummies proves that it was practised. It would seem to have originated at a time when the Hamites and Semites were still one stock. The rite was performed on both men and women. Scholars are in doubt as to the original pur pose of circumcision. Some hold that it was intended to be an offering of a part of the body as a sacrifice to the deity in lieu of the whole; others, that it was in tended as a consecration of the organs of reproduction to the deity, intended to secure from the goddess the blessing of fertility; 1 still others that it was intended as a mere physical convenience. It seems to the writer that the second motive mentioned is more likely to be the correct one. Whatever the motive may have been, the antiquity of the origin of circumcision and its widespread prac tice outside of Israel are now beyond doubt. It is one of those institutions which the chosen people inherited from their Semitic ancestry. As so often happens in religious history this rite underwent a new interpreta tion at their hands; it lost its primitive significance, and became the symbol of their choice by Yahweh. Under 1 See the article " Circumcision " In Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Re ligion and Ethics, New York, 1908, Vol. III. Toy, Introduction to the History of Religion, New York, 1913, p. 72, thinks that probably at first circumcision had no religious significance whatever. IO THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL prophetic influence circumcision became the " outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," for Deut. 30 : 6 speaks of a circumcision of the heart, which should enable Israel to love Yahweh with all the heart.1 The Apostle Paul carried this further and discarded the outward rite, holding that he who had the inner experience did not need the outward sign ( Rom. 2 : 28 f. ; Col. 2: 11). All this does not alter the fact of the pre-Israelitish origin of the rite, which was slowly spirit ualized by Israel, and which, though discarded for a spiritual reality by Paul, is still practised by Israelites. Another institution closely connected with circumcision was animal sacrifice.2 Animal sacrifice is peculiar to no nation or race. All people have, at a certain stage of mental development, practised it. It can be traced among the ancestors of the philosophically minded in habitants of India and Greece as well as among the less philosophical Egyptians and Semites. It is based on two conceptions: 1, that the gods are corporeal beings and need food; 2, that in disposition they are like men, and are irritable and savage when hungry, but more mercifully inclined when the pangs of appetite are satis fied. Every nation which has advanced to a high men tal and religious plane has had a struggle to throw off this point of view. The method adopted to rationalize 1 See for similar treatment of it, Jer. 4:4, and Lev. 26:41. 2 Animal sacrifice included human sacrifice. This was practised by the Hebrews, at least sporadically, until a late time, as the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter (Jud. 11:34-40) and the sacrifice of children in the reign of Manasseh prove (II Kings 21:6; Jer. 32:35). THE SEMITIC BACKGROUND II sacrifices in India may still be traced in the literature of that country.1 Some scholars hold that among the Semites sacrifice was commensal, that is, that its essential feature was a meal of which the worshipper partook and of which the god was supposed to partake. The food, according to this view, became a material bond between the wor shipper and the deity.2 Others hold that the essential feature of the sacrifice in this primitive time was the bursting forth of the blood.3 The deities were thought to be barbarous and unfeeling. When they were of fended they, like the human beings of the time, could only be appeased by a bloody offering. Perhaps both elements entered into the conception. Men have, the world over, misunderstood God. They have thought him hard and cruel, — a being who demanded blood, — one who could be moved as men can be moved by ap pealing to appetite or the lust for vengeance. They have thought of God as altogether like to themselves.* Such animal sacrifice Israel inherited from her Semitic ancestry, and with conscientious reverence perpetuated. Prophets protested,5 but ancient ideas were too strong to yield. The law of Deuteronomy, which limited sacrifice 1 See Bloomfield, Religion of the Veda, New York, 1908, p. 33 f. and 215 f. 2 See W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2 ed., London, 1894, Chs. VI-IX. 3 S. I. Curtis, Primitive Semitic Religion Today, New York, 1902, pp. 216-228. 4Ps. 50:21. 6 Amos 5 : 21-25. 12 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL to one place, reduced it to a minimum, but continued the theory that it was necessary. In course of time, be cause of the limitation of the Deuteronomic law, the synagogue developed a worship without sacrifice, but Judaism ever regarded this as worship of a lower plane than that of the temple. The destruction of the temple in 70 A. D. brought Jewish sacrifices to an end, but to this day Orthodox Judaism looks to their restoration, if the temple at Jerusalem is ever restored. It was left for Christianity to develop a theory of religion in which animal sacrifice has no place. Another inheritance which was in reality a part of animal sacrifice, was the institution of the passover. This feast, as celebrated in Israel, was a reinterpreta- tion of the primitive Semitic festival of the yeaning time, at which some of the gifts of the goddess of fertility were returned to her in the form of sacrifices.1 Perhaps in early times the sacrifices of the yeaning time consisted of first-born animals and included the first born of men as well. At all events it was long regarded as a religious obligation to offer the first-born in sacrifice to Yahweh. Later it was considered right to substitute a lamb for the first-born of men and asses. To justify the substitution in the case of human beings, the story was told that Abraham was directed from heaven to make such a substitution.2 This story is not really the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, as it is often called, but 1 See Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins, New York, 1902, pp. 108- 111. 2 See Genesis 22. THE SEMITIC BACKGROUND 1 3 the story of the rescue of Isaac from this barbarous fate. From the early Semitic time there descended along with the passover another festival that was celebrated in the autumn. Among the oasis dwellers this festival was celebrated at the time of the date harvest at the end of summer.1 After the Hebrews settled in Canaan, where the grape harvest was a prominent agricultural fact, while the date harvest was a negligible quantity, the feast was reinterpreted as a celebration of the in gathering of the grapes.2 The wailing which had pre ceded the festival, and which had been in the wilderness period expressive of the death of Tammuz or of vegeta tion in the fierce summer heat, was also given a new interpretation and was made a wailing for sin. Mem ory of the origin of the festival in the conditions of the previous nomadic life was kept alive by the custom of living in booths or tents during the week of the feast.3 In the unsettled life of the Semitic nomad there was no regularly constituted authority or any code of laws. Such sheiks or chieftains as they had were local or tribal leaders, possessing only such authority as their fellow tribesmen chose to give them, and no means of enforcing their authority except the public opinion of the tribe. Through long centuries of such life there gradually grew up certain principles of rough and ready justice which 1 Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins, New York, 1902, pp. m-115. 2 Deut. 16: 13. 3 Lev. 23 : 34, 40. Id. THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL received the sanction of all, and which were in time thought to have divine sanction. These principles were embodied in the lex talionis or unwritten laws of retalia tion. According to this unwritten law, if a man knocked out another's eye, his eye must be knocked out. If he knocked out another's tooth, his tooth must be knocked out. If he injured another's hand, a corresponding in jury must be inflicted upon his hand. If he killed an other, he himself must be put to death. It became the sacred duty of the one next of kin to the slain man to avenge the blood of his kinsman. Wherever Semites went they carried deeply ingrained in their customs this law. In the code of Hammurapi, which comes from Babylonia, a majority of the penalties imposed are but detailed applications of this principle, and the principle with all the force of a divine law prevails among the nomadic Arabs until the present time. Every reader of the Old Testament is aware that this principle is enshrined in the laws of the Pentateuch,1 but probably few realize to what an extent it was thought to have back of it the authority of Israel's God. The story told in 2 Sam. 21 : 1-14, which is treated below, p. 82, is an interesting revelation of the way in which this law was regarded. Yahweh was thought to have sent a famine of three years' duration upon the whole land because the bloody penalties, which this law demanded, had not been exacted, and was only appeased by a ghastly conformity to the law, which makes a modern 1 See Deut. 19: 19. THE SEMITIC BACKGROUND 15 reader shudder. It is one of the gains that scientific study brings us that we no longer think of this law as really given by the one God, but as a barbarous inherit ance from Israel's Semitic forebears. Another barbarous Semitic custom which was per petuated for a time in Israel was the her em or ban. The word is sometimes translated in the Revised Version "devoted," as in Josh. 6: 17, 18, and sometimes "ut terly destroy" as in Josh. 6:21 and 1 Sam. 15:3, 8. The custom represented by this word was in brief this : when for any reason the hatred of a people towards v an enemy had been fanned to a white heat, those en tertaining the hatred, thinking that their god shared their feelings, vowed, if they could conquer the hated ones, to utterly destroy them as an act of service to their own god. When once such a vow had been taken, all sacred associations compelled those taking it to execute it. A massacre thus became a religious duty, and wholesale murder a divine service. This, too, was an ancestral custom, which the better spirit of Israel finally sloughed off. Still another institution which Israel shared with her - Semitic neighbours was ecstatic prophecy. The idea that epileptics and those whose nervous constitutions are so delicate that they are easily thrown off their balance are possessed of spirits either good or bad has been widely prevalent among mankind.1 If the spirit by which the 1 See Davenport, Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, New York, 1905. 1 6 THE RELIGION OF, ISRAEL patient is possessed is thought to be a good one, the utterances of the patient are regarded as an oracle. Such a prophet was found at the court of a king of the Phoenician city of Gebal 1 about noo B. c, and, if we had fuller records, it would probably be found that they existed in other parts of the Semitic world. Israel's i early prophets were of this sort. Such was the company of people whom King Saul in his early life joined, and such was the prophet into which he for a while turned.2 Even Elisha, at a later time, employed music to induce such an ecstasy so that he could give an oracle.3 Fortunately for us and for the world such prophecy was displaced in Israel by something better. Ecstasy gave place in the great literary prophets to vision, — to that spiritual sight which God sometimes gives to con secrated souls, when with wills dedicated, hearts aflame, and all their mental powers alert and active, they address themselves to the deepest problems of life. It should also be noted that the early Hebrews shared with their Semitic kinsmen the view that religion con sisted of a body of ceremonies to be gone through with, rather than a body of beliefs to be accepted. The world was thought to be full of supernatural powers of which man stood in awe. If one did not behave toward these powers as the powers themselves thought proper, in anger they might blast one's life. Just as one must 1 See Breasted, Ancient Records, Egypt, IV, Chicago, 1906, p. 280. 2 I Sam. 19:20-24. »II Kgs. 3:15. THE SEMITIC BACKGROUND IJ observe a polite etiquette in approaching a powerful man, so the ceremonies of religion were the proper man ners to be observed in one's relationship with the gods. So long, then, as the right practices were carried out, one might believe what he wished. Connected with different gods were various myths that had grown up to explain their actions or their nature. These myths one could accept or reject, if only his outward conduct was irre proachable. At first, accordingly, religion consisted of a body of ceremonies. TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY I. Semitic Conceptions of Deity; cf. W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2 ed. London, 1894, Lecture II; G. A. Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins, New York, 1902, ch. iii; Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, New York, 1908, Vol. VI, pp. 24.7-252; Toy, Introduction to the History of Religion, New York, 1913, §§ 751-764- 2. Are there Traces of Totemism among the Semites ? Cf. W. R. Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, 2 ed., London, 1903; Jacobs, Studies in Biblical Archaeology, London, 1894; G. A. Barton, Sketch of Semitic Origins, New York, 1902, p. 33 ff . ; Toy, Introduction to the History of Religion, §§ 422-580. 3. The Meaning of Sacrifice among the Semites; cf. W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, Lectures vi-xi, especially Lecture viii ; S. I. Curtis, Primitive Semitic Religion Today, New York, 1903, ch. xiii. 4. The Semitic Law of Blood-Revenge; cf. W. R. Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, pp. 25-27, 41-56, Re ligion of the Semites, passim, " Blood-feud (Semitic) " in Hast ings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, III, 731 ff. ; G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1916, Part II, ch. xiii. CHAPTER II THE VALUE OF THE EARLY BIBLICAL NARRATIVES Expansion of Modern Knowledge — Comparatively Late Date of Early Biblical Documents — the Historical Clue in Genesis 10 — Jacob's Marriages — Joseph — Story of Potiphar's Wife — Joseph as Ruler of Egypt — Joseph and the Famine — Judah — Simeon and Levi — Asher — Jacob — Abraham and Babylonian Documents — the Na ture of the History in the Narratives. Since the birth of the sciences in the nineteenth century, knowledge has been revolutionized and enlarged in every department. The effect of the creation of the historical and social sciences is as marked in this respect as that of the natural sciences. The account which the records and traditions of a country give of its history is found to begin with mythical stories, which gradually give place to legends and later emerge into sober history attested by documents, which, if not contemporary, date from a time so near to the events, that their testimony, when tested by general considerations, may be accepted. The scientific method applied to ordinary history is gen erally accepted quietly by the public, which is usually grateful for the clearer vision of past events which it affords. It has been inevitable, that in the general progress of knowledge the scientific method should be applied to all existing records, sacred as well as to so-called profane. 18 THE VALUE OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVES 1 9 A part of the movement of modern knowledge consists, accordingly, of the application of the scientific method, generally known as the higher criticism, to the records in the Bible. The application of this method has re sulted in the division of scholars into three camps: (1) there are the sincere, conscientious, open-minded, rev erent scholars, who believe in the scientific method, who see that the Biblical records cannot be rightly exempted from scientific treatment, and who go about the work with reverence and sanity; (2) there are the reactiona ries, who are unable to believe that any Biblical narra tive can ever have had any other significance than that which they have always attached to it, and who spend their efforts endeavouring to prove, often by the flimsiest arguments from supposed archaeology, that every Bibli cal narrative must be taken by the historian at its face value; (3) there is the mythological, or pseudo-scientific school, which has become enamoured of the scientific method from afar, but has never undergone the train ing in judgment necessary to the application of scientific principles. The members of this school fall into two groups. There are those who, like Winckler, dissolve Solomon and everything before him into forms of Bab ylonian myths, while others, like Jensen and Zimmern, resolve most of the Biblical characters into myths. Under Jensen's touch every important character of the Old Testament and Apocrypha, as well as Jesus and Paul, become simply forms of the myths of the Gilga- mesh epic. In view of the division of scholarship into 20 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL these three camps, it is clear that a scientific student of history must take his stand with the first group. He cannot refuse to use the scientific method upon sources simply because they are sacred, nor can he exercise the liberty of dissolving into myth events attested by docu ments that are nearly contemporary with the events described. The application of the scientific method to the Bible has made it evident that, apart from a few poems such as the song of Deborah in Judges, chap. 5, we have no Hebrew literature from a date earlier than the ninth century B. c Broadly speaking, Hebrew literature be gins with the prophetic documents of the Pentateuch J and E which were written in the ninth and eighth cen turies B. c, and similarly early strata in the Books of Judges and Samuel. As these writings are prophetic in tone, and as the Book of Deuteronomy (which is pro phetic in tone) is demonstrably from the seventh century B. c, while the great body of Levitical laws and priestly narratives are generally recognized as from the fifth century b. c, it is now clear that, broadly speaking, the prophets were anterior to the law. Although there may be pre-exilic psalms in the Psalter, the collection as a whole was the hymn-book of the second temple, and such pre-exilic material as was embodied in it was re- edited to suit the changed conditions and sentiments of the post-exilic time. The beautiful piety and spiritual aspirations of the noblest parts of the Psalter can, there fore, no longer be attributed to David. All this sets THE VALUE OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVES 21 the development of Israel's religion in new perspective. This is not the place to dwell in detail upon these literary facts and problems, though in the discussion which fol lows they will be presupposed. The reader who is un familiar with them is referred to one of the several ex cellent " Introductions " 1 to the Old Testament. It is clear that there was an evolution in Israel's religion far more real than was formerly supposed. The material in the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings embodies the historical traditions of the life of Israel in Canaan. These traditions have apparently in a few instances been heightened by mythical influences. Such, at least, seems to be the case with the stories of Samson. When we come to the stories of the earlier time, however, we are moving on less certain ground. How are we to estimate the value of the stories of the patriarchs in Genesis; of the giving of the law at Sinai; of the conquest of Canaan in the Book of Joshua? In entering upon this task it is convenient at first to classify the sources from which the traditions are derived. Scholars recognize that they fall into four groups, i. There are traditions which Israel brought with her into Palestine. Such are the traditions of the Exodus from 1 Such as C. C. Torrey, The Literature of the Old Testament, New York, in preparation; S. R. Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, New York, new ed., 1913; C. H. Cornill, Introduction to the Canonical Books of the Old Testament, New York, 1907; J. E. McFayden, Introduction to the Old Testament, New York, 1905; Gray, Critical Introduction to the Old Testament, New York, 1913; or G. F. Moore, Literature of the Old Testament, New York, 1913. 22 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL i Egypt and the covenant at Sinai. 2. There are tradi tions which were borrowed from the Canaanites. Such is the tradition of the origin of the Dead Sea in Gen. 1 8, 19; such also are the traditions connected with the various shrines, such as that the altar at Shechem was built by Abraham (Gen. 12: 7), and that Jacob set up ^Ithe pillar at Bethel (Gen. 28) . 3. There are traditions that were developed by the Israelites in Palestine. Such is the account of the marriages of Judah and his sons in \ Gen. 38. 4. There are traditions that were borrowed "'' from Babylonia and adapted to the religion of Israel. Such were the accounts of the creation in Gen. i, 2, and of the flood in Gen. 6-9. The appraisal of the value of some of these will be dealt with at a later point. At present attention will be directed to the historical value of the narratives in Genesis concerning the patriarchs. The historical student finds, perhaps, his most difficult task the proper estimation of the patriarchal narratives. ^ Scientific criticism has shown that the records of these narratives have been drawn verbatim from three docu ments, the earliest of which dates from the ninth century B. c, and the latest from the middle of the fifth pre- Christian century. These are the J document, written 900-800 B. C, the E document, dating from about 750, B. c, and the P document, dating from about 450 B. c The demonstration of this is so convincing that it has won the consent of nearly all the scientific experts. But let him follow the sound historical maxim and prefer the testimony of the earliest document, he is still in per- THE VALUE OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVES 23 plexity, for the oldest document, the so-called J docu ment, is at least three hundred years later than Moses. It is as far removed from Moses as the translators of the Authorized Version are from us, and further re moved from Abraham than we are from Columbus and Martin Luther. The historian may obtain a clue to guide him in his perplexity from a study of Genesis, ch. 10. For exam ple, Gen. 10: 6 states that the sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put and Canaan. Cush here is the Egyptian Kesh, or Nubia. Mizraim is simply the Hebrew word for Egypt. Put is the Punt which figures so largely in Egyptian history — the country to the far south whence so many expeditions were sent and from which myrrh, ivory and pigmies were brought.1 Canaan is the well- known tribe or group of tribes from which the Phoeni cians were developed, which also inhabited Palestine and gave it one of the names by which it is still called. It is clear that these names represent, not individuals, but personified tribes or nations. Take Egypt, for example. We now have the outlines of its history back to about 5000 B. c. At that time it consisted of forty-two dis tinct tribes, who lived so long in separation from one another that their animal totems persisted as the repre sentatives of the gods of the different nomes down to the Roman period. Perhaps as early as 4000 B. c. these nomes, often at war with one another, had been united 1 See Breasted, History of Egypt, 2 ed., New York, 1909, pp. 127, 140, 142, and passim. 24 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL into the two kingdoms of upper and lower Egypt, but these were not united into a single monarchy until the time of Mena, about 3400 B. C. It is simply impossible that these forty-two tribes were descended from one man. Their gods, customs, sacred animals, and war like emblems were all different. The farther back we push our knowledge of Egypt, the more its constituent parts ramify into a congeries of unrelated atoms. It is only from the point of view of later times that it can be spoken of as one entity. The Biblical writer has ac cordingly personified a nation. What can be proved for Egypt can also be proved in lesser degree for Nubia. If now other parts of the chapter be explored the names of many nations and countries appear. Gomer (v. 2) is the Gamir of the Assyrians, the Cimmerians of the Greeks ; Madai is the Medes ; Tubal and Meshech, the tribes Tabali and Mushki of the Assyrian inscrip tions. Javan is the " Ion " of the word Ionians. Elisha (v. 4) is the Alashia of the El-Amarna letters, or the Island of Cyprus ; Kittim, the Kiti or Kition, on that island. Tarshish is Tartessos, the Phoenician mining and trading camp in Spain. Similarly in v. 22 Elam, Asshur and Aram are clearly the names of well known countries. In v. 26 most of the persons mentioned are known to be tribes or towns in south Arabia. In v. 15 it is stated that Canaan begat Zidon. Zidon is the city. Its name means " fishing." The name was not derived from a man, but from an in dustry. THE VALUE OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVES 25 We derive from this chapter, then, partly composed of J material (ninth century) and P material (fifth century) the general principle that patriarchal names are probably not personal names, but are personified tribes, nations, or places. This is in accord with modern Arabian custom. The Arabs make alliances with other tribes under the fiction of kinship, and then to justify the supposed kinship trace their descent from a com mon ancestor.1 In combining the personifications of two documentary sources in Genesis 10 confusion has, in at least one case, resulted. To the J writer (v. 8) the Cush who begat Nimrod was the Kash of the Bab ylonian inscription, i. e., the Kassites or Cossaeans, who, entering Babylonia from the East, conquered it about 1750 B. c. and established a dynasty that ruled for 576 years. To the P writer of v. 6 Cush was Nubia, as already pointed out. The combination of these narratives by a later editor has made the two Cushes appear to be the same, so that some interpreters, not recognizing the difference, feel compelled to claim that the Assyrians are descended from a Hamitic race.2 We are, then, on safe historical ground, if we assume that at least a part of the patriarchal narratives con sists of tribal history narrated as the experiences of individual men. To assume that all patriarchal story 1 Cf. Sprenger, Geographie Arabiens, Berlin, 1875, and Lectures and Essays of W. Robertson Smith, London, 19 12, p. 461. The position set forth in the text is not new. Many scholars have taken it. 2 See Kyle, The Deciding Voice of the Monuments in Biblical Criti cism, Oberlin, 1912, p. 196. 26 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL is tribal history, would be to create for ourselves new difficulties. When once a man, or a supposed man, has caught the popular imagination, tradition frequently attaches to his name stories, which were originally told of others. This could, if it were necessary, be illus trated by many examples, some of which will be men tioned below. In applying the principle of interpretation drawn from Genesis, ch. 10, it is convenient to begin with the narratives connected with the twelve sons of Jacob. These correspond to the twelve tribes of Israel, and are probably simply personifications of those tribes. These sons are divided by the narratives into four groups, which are said to be respectively the offspring of four mothers. It is natural to suppose that, if these narratives represent tribal history, that there was an alliance between the tribes which composed each group before the groups themselves were formed into a union. Two of the groups are said to be the offspring of full wives of Jacob. These probably joined in an alliance with each other earlier than the two groups which are said to be descended from Jacob's concubines. In Jacob's marriages, then, and the stories of the birth of his children we probably have an out line of the history of the formation of the confederacy of the twelve Israelitish tribes. The nucleus of this confederacy was the tribes which counted their descent from Leah, viz. : Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, THE VALUE OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVES 27 Zebulon. These were the original tribes of Israel. Later were born the sons of Rachel; i. e., the Rachel tribes came into the confederacy after the other six existed as a definite group. The name Leah means wild-cow; the name Rachel, ewe.1 It has accordingly been suggested that these were simply the animal sym bols of the tribes, and that the Leah tribes were cow boys and the Rachel tribes sheep raisers. Others hold that they were not economic, but totemistic, symbols. Whichever alternative is adopted, the interpretation of Leah and Rachel which makes them the symbols ofv the intertribal alliances is most probable. The appli cation of the name Joseph to two of these tribes, for reasons which will be mentioned later, was probably not made until after the settlement in Palestine. Again the tribe of Benjamin was not differentiated from the other Rachel tribes until after the settlement in Canaan. Benjamin originally meant " sons of the south " or " southerners," and was given them because they were the southernmost of the Rachel folk. This southern position they occupied in Palestine, but could hardly have held as a nomadic tribe. The tradition that Benjamin is the youngest of Jacob's sons is a recol lection of the late development of the tribe. Similarly, the name Joseph seems to have been at tached to the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh after 1 W. R. Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, 2d ed., London, 1903, p. 254. 28 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL the settlement in Canaan. The name itself has had an interesting history. A Babylonian business document of the time of the first dynasty of Babylon (2225- 1926 B. c.) had for one of its witnesses Yashub-ilu,1 or Joseph-el. Thothmes III, who conquered Pales tine and Syria between 1478 and 1447 B. c, records as one of the places which he conquered in Palestine Wa-sha-p'-ra,2 which Eduard Meyer many years ago recognized as Joseph-el. This equivalence is doubted by W. Max Miiller, but is, so far as I can see, pos sible. How did the name of a Babylonian man be come attached to a Palestinian city? There was at the time of the first dynasty frequent intercourse between Mesopotamia and Palestine. Documentary evidence of this will be cited below in connection with Abraham. Is it too much to imagine that a Joseph-el migrated, and that his name became attached to a Palestinian city? Not only have we in our own country many places named for men, but modern Palestine affords an ex ample of a village that lost during the nineteenth cen tury its name, Karyet el-'Ineb, and substituted for it the name of a famous sheik, Abu Ghosh? If in some such way Joseph-el made its way into Palestine, be- 1 Cuneiform Texts, etc., in the British Museum, II, no. 23, 1. 15. 2 Mittheilung der Vorderasiatische Gesellschaft, 1907, p. 23. Miiller thinks it equivalent to Yesheb-el, " God dwells." The Babylonian might also be so interpreted. The phonetic equivalence between Bab ylonian and Hebrew points rather to Joseph-el, and the Babylonian form may account for the Egyptian spelling, which forms the basis of Miiller's doubt. 3 See Baedeker's Paldstina, Leipsig, 1910, p. 16. THE VALUE OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVES 29 coming the name of a city and Rachel tribes afterward settled in the region, the shortened form of the name, Joseph, might naturally become the name of their sup posed ancestor. The principle of interpretation gained from Genesis 10 compels us to suppose that the name Joseph came in in some such way, for in the historical period no tribe of Joseph appears. If the investigator is forced to this conclusion, how are the vivid narratives of the personal fortunes of Joseph to be accounted for? The archaeological discoveries of recent years have made it probable that the Joseph tribes alone were con cerned in the Egyptian residence and bondage.1 The stele of Merneptah,2 to whom all Biblical indications point as the Pharaoh of the Exodus, clearly shows that Israel, or the Leah tribes, were already in Pales tine. The fact that the Ephraimite document, E, re calls as the Judaean document J does not, the revelation of the name Yahweh,3 and that the ark of the covenant was afterward preserved in an Ephraimite shrine,4 point in the same direction. If these tribes alone had the Egyptian experience and were at first the sole guard ians of the Egyptian tradition, when once they had come to regard Joseph as their ancestor it would be natural for many stories to cluster about his name. In 1 See Paton's article, " Israel's Conquest of Canaan," Journal of Biblical Literature, XXXII, pp. 1-54, and ch. iii, below. 2 See Breasted's Ancient Records, Egypt, Chicago, 1906, III, § 617. 3 Ex. 3:13, 14. 4 I Sam. 3 and 4. 30 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL this connection it is an interesting fact that several of the stories told of Joseph are almost identical with other stories and facts which archaeological research has brought to light, but which in their original set ting are connected with other names. The chief of these are the following: (i) The story of Joseph's temptation by Potiphar's wife is strikingly parallel to the tale of two brothers — a tale in which the younger brother is subjected by his sister-in-law to the same temptation as Joseph, and, when, like Joseph, he repulses her, she professes to have been outraged by him, and plunges him into mis fortune. This story comes to us in a papyrus dated in the reign of Seti II, 1 209-1 205 B. c, and is accord ingly very old. (2) The career of Joseph as ruler of Egypt is paralleled by the career of Dudu or David, an official bearing a Semitic name, who seems to have held a high position under Amenophis IV of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, before 1350 b. c. In the El- Amarna correspondence 1 two letters addressed to this Dudu by Aziru, king of the Amorites, occur. In these letters Aziru constantly classes Dudu with the king. He fears to offend Dudu as he fears to offend the king. The words of Dudu he counts as of equal importance to those of the king. Dudu clearly 1 That is, some letters dug up at Tell.-el-Amarna in Egypt during the winter of 1887-1888. The letters were written between 1410 and 1350 B.C. THE VALUE OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVES 3 1 occupied a position of power with the king similar to that ascribed to Joseph in Genesis.1 (3). The action of Joseph in storing up corn and then distributing it during a time of famine is paralleled by the course of Baba of El-Kab, who flourished under the eighteeth dynasty of Egypt about 1500 B. c, and who says in an inscription carved in his tomb, at the close of a description of the activities of his life : " I collected corn as a friend of the harvest-god. I was watch ful in time of sowing. And when a famine arose, lasting many years, I distributed corn to the city each year of the famine." 1 The principal features of Joseph's life are thus paralleled in ancient history. The careers of Baba and Dudu are thoroughly historical; our knowledge of them rests upon contemporary documents. While the latter part of the tale of the two brothers contains much that is mythical, the portion which deals with the brother's wife is so natural, and presents such a vivid picture of Egyptian rural life, that there can be little doubt that it is based on a real incident. When once a name has become prominent in a nation it tends, by a law of human nature, to gather to itself all the appropriate stories known. One heard at Harvard a generation ago stories told of the late Pro fessor Andrew P. Peabody, which a generation before had been told in Germany of the absent-minded Pro fessor Neander. Before our eyes today stories are *For this material parallel to Joseph see G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1916, Part II, ch. x. 32 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL attaching themselves to Colonel Roosevelt which orig inally were told of others. It is not too much to sup pose that the stories known to us from the sources quoted attached themselves to the name of Joseph, and thus filled out to the later Israelites the figure of their shadowy patriarch. This supposition, confirmed by historical and legendary analogies, enables us to find in the Joseph stories real history. It is not, it must be confessed, the history of a real Hebrew patriarch, but it is real history of Egypt and Palestine and of real men in them. The history is recovered, too, by following historical methods and historical analogies, and relieves us from the necessity of supposing with Winckler that Joseph is but a series of Tammuz myths, or with Jensen, that he is a group of Gilgamesh myths. Our pursuit of the origin of the Joseph-stories has taken us far afield from the discussion of the tribal history of the patriarchs. The accounts of the mar riages of the sons of Judah and of an episode in the life of Judah himself in Genesis 38 may easily be under stood to be alliances made by that tribe with clans pre viously living in their territory. Judah in all the sub sequent history stood apart from the other Hebrew tribes. That she formed in David's early reign and after the time of Solomon a separate kingdom was in part due to the larger element of Canaanite blood in her. Similarly the story in Genesis 34 of Simeon and Levi 1 1 The story appears in two forms; one is by J and the other by a THE VALUE OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVES 33 represents an unsuccessful and treacherous attack of those tribes on the ancient city. In this attack they were practically annihilated and their kinsmen regarded their punishment as just.1 According to the view that the patriarchal stories are adumbrations of tribal his tory, the traditions which ascribe the birth of the patriarchs Gad, Asher, Dan and Naphtali to slave mothers may indicate that these tribes joined the Israel itish confederacy later than the union between the two great groups of Leah and Rachel tribes. If this were the case, these tribes probably came into the confed eracy after the settlement in Palestine, and were, pre sumably, Amorite or Canaanite tribes who were there already. In the case of the tribe of Asher this sup position receives some confirmation from documents out side the Old Testament. The father of Aziru, the Amorite, who wrote the let ters to Dudu quoted above, was named Ebed-Ashera, Ashera being a goddess. Ebed-Ashera in his time was in frequent war with Gebal, whose king, Rib-Adda, com plained to the king of Egypt in many letters pre served for us in the El-Amarna correspondence. Rib- Adda sometimes calls the people over whom Ebed- Ashera ruled Amorites (Amurru), sometimes the " men priestly writer. In the former Shechem appears on one side and Simeon and Levi on the other; Shechem violates Dinah and the brothers take terrible vengeance upon him. In the latter Hamor, the father of Shechem proposes honourable marriage for his son with Dinah, and all the sons of Jacob are represented as acting as one man. Cf. Carpenter and Harford-Battersby, Hexateuch, London, 1900, p. 52 ff. 1 Gen. 49 : 5-7. 34 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL of Ebed-Ashera " and often the " sons of Ebed- Ashera." It would be easy in course of time for the Ebed to drop out and the tribe to be called " sons of Ashera " or " sons of Asher." x As this tribe in the period covered by the El-Amarna correspondence (1400-1350 b. c.) was in the same region in which the Hebrew tribe of Asher was afterward settled, it seems probable that the Hebrew tribe was the same as the earlier Amorite tribe. This would fit in well with the conclusion to which the tribal interpretation of Jacob's marriage points. When the investigation moves back a generation in the patriarchal genealogies, the same principle holds, but new perplexities appear. It is clear that Esau is the personification of the Edomite nation, and Israel that of the nucleus of the Hebrews. Already in the time of Merneptah there was an Israel, which was a nation. Probably it consisted of the Leah tribes. But the Hebrew patriarch is also called Jacob, and most of the stories concerning him are told of him as Jacob. There is reason to believe that the name Jacob had an origin similar to the name Joseph. In the reign of the Babylonian king, Apil-Sin (2161- 2144 B.C.), two witnesses to a contract, Shubna-ilu and Yadakh-ilu, gave the name of their father as Yakub- ilu or Jacob-el.2 A witness to another contract from 1 See, e. g., Schrader's Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, Nos. 53, 54, 55, 56, 57> 59. 6°. 62, 63, 64, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 83, 84, 86, 88, 91, 92, 101. 2 Cuneiform Texts, etc., in the British Museum, IV, 33, 22b. THE VALUE OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVES 35 the same reign, Lamaz, had a Jacob-el as his father.1 In the reign of the next king, Sin-muballit (2 143-2 124 B. c), a witness named Nur-Shamash was the son of Yakub-ilu, or Jacob-el,2 while another witness, Siner- biam, gave his father's name simply Yakub, or Jacob.3 Seven hundred years later Thothmes III records among the names of cities which he conquered in Palestine a city Ya'ke-b'-ra,4 the Egyptian equivalent of Jacob-el. The probability is that some Babylonian who bore the name migrated to the west, and in course of time a city was named for him. Later, when the Hebrews set tled near this city, they took over the name of its hero in shortened form as a name for their eponymous an cestor. All the reasons quoted above for the name Joseph apply here. Apart from stories of marriages and friction with Esau, which denote tribal relations, the one important tale connected with Jacob is his dream at Bethel. This was one of the stories by which the Hebrews justified to themselves their adoption of an old Canaanitish shrine. The stories of Isaac seem, in like manner, to be tales of alliance with Aramaeans, and tales of shrines like that at Beersheba. We have no extra Biblical material with which to compare them. When the investigator takes up the stories of Abra- 1 Meissner, Altbabylonische Privatrecht, 36, 25. 2 Cuneiform Texts, VIII, 25, 22. 3 Cuneiform Texts, II, 8, 26. 4 Mitteilungen der vorderasiatische Gesellschaft, 1907, p. 27. The city seems to have been east of the Jordan and was, perhaps, the same as Penuel, Gen. 32:31. 36 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL ham, moving back still a generation from the nation Israel, he is confronted with much material and with a wealth of conflicting theories. Of course to Jensen Abraham is a form, of the Gilgamesh myth.1 To Winckler and Zimmern Abraham is a moon god. The reasons for this latter view have seemed convincing to many. Abram, of which Abraham was but a variant form, has been held to be of West Semitic origin and to mean " exalted father." 2 It is really, as we shall see, of Babylonian origin and has another meaning. Tra dition connected him with Harran and Ur, both seats of the worship of the moon god. In Babylonian hymns Sin, the moon god, is frequently called Ab or father.3 Sarah or Sarai, the name of Abraham's wife, is the Hebrew equivalent of sarratu, " queen," an epithet of the consort of the moon god at Harran. Milcah, Abraham's sister-in-law (Gen. 11, 29), is Malkatu, the name of a consort of the sun god and perhaps also of the moon god.4 These are some of the arguments which seem to the adherents of this view conclusive. It must be confessed that many of the stories told of Abraham in Genesis are connected with shrines, and would be explicable on this view. Their purpose was undoubtedly to justify the use by Hebrews of the shrines of Shechem, Bethel, Hebron, and Beersheba. This is not, however, the whole of the matter. We have now 1 Gilgameshepos und der Wellliteratur, Leipsig, 1906, I, p. 256 ff. 2 Briggs, Brown and Driver, Hebrew Lexicon, Oxford, 1906, p. 4. 3 Cf. Journal of Biblical Literature, XXVIII, p. 166, n. 26. 4 Schrader, Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, 3d ed., p. 364 ff. THE VALUE OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVES 37 evidence that Abraham was in Babylonia a personal name. This evidence comes from Dilbad, a little place about eight miles south of Borsippa, and consists of some contracts in which an Abraham figures. Three of the documents are here translated : 1 I 1 ox, broken to the yoke, an ox of Ibni-Sin son of Sin-im- gurani, from Ibni-Sin through the agency of Kishti-Nabium, son of Eteru, Abarama, son of Awel-Ishtar, for 1 month has hired. For I month 1 shekel of silver he will pay. Of it Yz shekel of silver from the hand of Abarama Kishti-Nabium has received. The names of the witnesses then followed and the date, which is the nth year of Ammizadugga, or 1967 B.C. II To the patrician speak saying, Gimil-Marduk (wishes that) Shamash and Marduk may give thee health! Mayest thou have peace, mayest thou have health! May the god who protects thee keep thy head in good luck! (To inquire) con cerning thy health I am sending. May thy welfare before Shamash and Marduk be eternal! Concerning the 400 shars of land, the field of Sin-idinam, which to Abarama, to lease, thou hast sent; the land-steward and scribe appeared and on behalf of Sin-idinam I took that up. The 400 shars of land to Abarama as thou hast directed I have leased. Concerning thy dispatches I shall not be negligent. Ill 1 shekel of silver, the rent of his field for the year that Am mizadugga, the king, (set up) a lordly, splendid statue (/'. e. 1 For the whole group of documents, see Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Part II, ch. ix. 38 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Ammizadugga's 13th year), brought Abarama; received (it) Sin-idinam and Iddatum. Month Siman, (May- June) 28th day, the year Ammizadugga, the king (set up) a lordly, splendid statue. These documents are conclusive proof that Abarama, or Abraham, was a personal name in Babylonia. The name apparently meant, " He (i. e., some god) loves the father." The Abraham revealed in these documents was not the patriarch, but was a small farmer in Bab ylonia. His father was Awel-Ishtar, not Terah; his brother, Iddatum, not Nahor. His existence, however, shows that, just as in the cases of Jacob and Joseph, a living person probably existed far back in history about whose name stories, gathered from various quarters, afterward clustered. That such a person may have migrated from Bab ylonia to Palestine, as the Biblical patriarch is said to have done, is clearly attested by an interesting little contract from Sippar, which reads as follows : 1 A wagon from Mannum-balum-Shamash, son of Shelibia, Khabilkinum, son of Appanibi on a lease for 1 year has hired. As a yearly rental % of a shekel of silver he shall pay. As the first of the rent % of a shekel of silver he has received. Unto the land of Kittim he shall not drive it. (After the names of the witnesses comes the date.) Month Ulul, day 25th, the year the king as a friend protected Erech from the flood of the river. 1 See Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Part II, ch. ix. THE VALUE OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVES 39 The date of this interesting document has not been identified with certainty, but it probably comes from the reign of Shamsuiluna (2080-2043 B.C.). The coun try Kittim mentioned in it is the Mediterranean coast, which was sometimes so called by the Hebrews (cf. Jer. 2: 10, and Eze. 27: 6). The interesting thing is that intercourse between the Babylonian city of Sippar and the Mediterranean coast was so frequent when this con tract was made, that a man could not lease his wagon for a year without running the risk that it might be driven to the Mediterranean coast lands. It was in a period of such frequent intercourse that some Joseph-el and Jacob-el migrated from Babylonia and gave their names to Palestinian cities. And it would seem that some Babylonian Abraham may have done the same, for Sheshonk I., of the twenty-second Egyptian dynasty (the Shishak of the Bible), records as one of the places captured by him in Palestine a place called " The field of Abram." 1 This place would seem to have been in southern Judah. It would seem quite as likely that a Babylonian Abraham may have given his name to the place in the same way that a Jacob-el and a Joseph-el did, and that, after Hebrews had settled in the country, they took his name over, just as they did the other two, as to suppose that the name Abraham originated in an epithet of a moon god. One cannot well refuse to believe that many of the stories connected with Abraham grew up in Palestine 1 See Breasted, Ancient Records, Egypt, IV, pp. 352, 353. 40 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL around certain shrines. They were the instruments by which Israel justified her use of these shrines. Other stories, like that in Genesis 18, 19, arose as the expla nation of natural phenomena, such as the existence of the impressive gorge of the Dead Sea, and probably in their earliest form had no connection with Abraham. One can hardly believe, in view of all the evidence pre sented, that Abraham was the real ancestor of all the peoples said to be descended from him, any more than he can believe that all Egyptians were descended from one, Mizraim, but it is no longer unthinkable that the stories collected about Abraham have been attached to the name of a real man, who once migrated from Babylonia.1 The evidence passed in review indicates that the patri archal narratives represent a combination of the move ments and alliances of tribes, and of traditions connected with certain shrines and places. While they are not, as formerly supposed, to be taken literally as the expe riences and fortunes of individuals, they nevertheless portray certain tribal and historical facts, which they have grouped around the names of certain famous Amorites who once migrated into Palestine and gave their names to certain of its localities. This view does not seriously affect the religious value of the stories. That value was always greater in some cases than in others. The J writer related the inci- 1 For a discussion of the much debated fourteenth chapter of Genesis, see G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Part II, ch. ix. THE VALUE OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVES 41 dents mainly for the interest of the story itself. The religious lesson that the story teaches was often made prominent by him, but, if the story was interesting, he did not withhold it even if its religious suggestion was slight. In E the religious interest is more generally manifest; in P it is predominant. The religious lessons conveyed by means of these narratives and the religious spirit by which they are pervaded are only made more prominent by the historical method of study.1 TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. The Literary Analysis of the Book of Genesis'; cf. S. R. Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 9th ed., New York, 19 14, pp. 5-21 ; J. Estlin Carpenter and G. Harford-Battersby, The Hexateuch, London, 1900, Vol. I, chaps, i and xiv; Vol. I, pp. 1-79. 2. Classification of the Narratives of Genesis according to the Source from which they came, such as the Wilderness, the Canaanites, Babylonia, etc. ; cf. L. B. Paton, " Oral Sources of the Patriarchal Narratives " in the American Journal of The ology, VIII (1904), pp. 658-682; J. P. Peters, Early Hebrew Story, its Historical Background, New York and London, 1904, chaps, iii-v. 3. Babylonian Parallels to the Accounts of the Creation and Flood; cf. G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Philadel phia, 1916, Part II, chaps, i-viii; R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament, New York, 1912, pp. 3-60 and 90-113. 4. Abraham and Archaeology; cf. G. A. Barton, Archaeology 1 See, for a demonstration of this, G. A. Barton, The Roots of Chris tian Teaching as Found in the Old Testament, Philadelphia, 1902. 42 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL and the Bible, Part II, ch. ix; M. G. Kyle, The Deciding Voice of the Monuments in Biblical Criticism, Oberlin, Ohio, 1912, ch. xi and passim; and G. A. Barton, " Higher Archaeology and the Verdict of Criticism " in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. XXXII (1913), pp. 244-260. 5. Archaeological Parallels to the Stories of Joseph; cf. G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Part II, ch. x; W. M. Flinders Petrie, Egyptian Tales, second series, London, 1895, p. 36 ff. CHAPTER III THE ORIGIN OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION Hebrew Tribes came together in Different Groups — Archaeological Evidence for this — Evidence in Old Testament — Leah Tribes En tered Palestine from South in Fourteenth Century B.C. — Rachel Tribes in Egypt — Entered Palestine from East about 1200 B.C. — Religion of the Separate Tribes. In tracing the steps by which the religion of Israel sprang up, grew, and blessed the world, it is helpful first to gain a clear idea of the origin of the Israelitish people. If the facts set forth in the preceding chapter are valid, the traditional view, which traces the ancestry of all the tribes to Abraham, who was himself a mono- theist and a worshipper of Yahweh, has to be modified. The tribes came together in different groups and pos sibly from different directions. Whence did they come ? When did they respectively arrive in Palestine ? Were they all originally worshippers of the same God? These are some of the questions that press for answer before the modern student of the Bible can feel his feet upon firm ground. It has been shown in the preceding chapter that there are two distinctly marked groups of tribes, each with its own totemistic or economic symbol, the Leah tribes and the Rachel tribes. The traditions mark the difference between these groups as radical. 43 44 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL If we judge by the documents of the Hexateuch, there was to some degree a religious difference also. The J document, composed in Judah, one of the Leah tribes, prefers the name Yahweh for God, and represents the worship of Yahweh as beginning in the earliest times (Gen. 4: 26). The E document, written in Ephraim, one of the Rachel tribes, prefers the name Elohim for God, and has an account of how the name Yahweh was revealed first in the time of Moses (Ex. 3:1—14). This difference points to a difference in religious history and tradition. The difference thus suggested receives striking sup port from archaeology. The El-Amarna letters show that in the time of Amenophis IV of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty about 1375-1360, a people called Habiri was struggling for the possession of the coun try around Jerusalem.1 At the same time a people was overrunning the northern part of Palestine whom the kings of Gebal and neighbouring districts designate by the ideogram SA-GAZ, which sometimes means plun derers, but which a tablet found at Baghas Koi, the old Hittite capital in Asia Minor, equates with Habiru.2 Habiru is phonetically equivalent to Ibri, Hebrew, and the evidence of these letters is that Hebrews were struggling for the possession of both northern and southern Palestine at this time. It has already been pointed out in the preceding chapter that the tribe of 1 See G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Part II, ch. xv. 2 See Mitteilungen der deutschen Orientgesellschaft, No. 35, p. 25, note. THE ORIGIN OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION 45 Asher was probably also present in northern Palestine at that period.1 Seti I and Ramses II, of the nine teenth dynasty, mention a land Isr which many scholars believe to be Asher, and hold that we have confirmation in this way that Asher continued during the nineteenth dynasty to reside in northern Palestine. On the other hand, it has long been recognized that the story of the oppression of Israel in Egypt in Ex. 1 and 2, which is made up of a combination of J and E narratives, shows a belief that Israel was in Egypt dur ing the time of Ramses II (1292-1225 b. c) and that Ramses was the Pharaoh of the oppression. The He brews are said to have built for him the cities of Pithom and Raamses (Ex. 1: 11). Naville in 1883, in exca vating the mound Tell el-Maskhuta, discovered the city Pi-tum, and the cartouch of Ramses in the inscriptions found there shows that the city was either built or re built by him. The name of the neighbouring city, Raamses, is in itself evidence that the text points to the reign of this king. If Ramses II was the oppressor of the Hebrews, then the Exodus could not have occurred until the reign of his successor, Merneptah (1 225-1215 B. c), who was a less vigorous ruler than Ramses, or until some later period. It has been customary in many circles in recent years to regard Merneptah as the Pharaoh of the Exodus. This, however, involves us in a difficulty. In a hymn of victory, set up in Mernep- tah's fifth year, when he had come off victorious in wars 1 See above, p. 33 f. d.6 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL with all his enemies, he mentions Israel as one of the nations of Palestine. The reference is made as though Israel was one of the old residents of the region.1 In a number of Egyptian texts there is mention of a people called '-pw-r, which Chabas suggested might be the Egyptian form of ' Ibri, Hebrews. Many scholars have hesitated to accept this view, but there is much to be said in its favour. These people are mentioned not only in the reign of Rlamses II, but in the reigns of Ramses III ( 1 198-1 167 B. c.) and Ramses IV (1167- 1161 B.c). It would seem, therefore, that we have evidence' that the Hebrews were in Palestine and in Egypt at the same time. How is this contradiction to be explained? 2 The suggestion has been made by several scholars that the two main groups of tribes, the Leah group and the Rachel group, did not enter Palestine at the same time, but that the Leah group entered that country in the time of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, and the Rachel group in the time of the nineteenth or twentieth dynasties. Thus, and thus only, can the evidence be fore us be harmonized, and it is probable that this is the historical fact. According to this view the Leah tribes were first called Israel and the Rachel tribes only were in Egypt. The nation was never welded together into 1 See J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records, Egypt, Vol. Ill, § 617, or Bar ton, Archaeology and the Bible, Part II, ch. xii, § 2, p. 311. 2 For a fuller discussion of these facts see L. B. Paton in the Biblical World, Vol. XLVI, 82-88, to whose article the writer is greatly in debted. THE ORIGIN OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION 47 one whole until the time of David and Solomon. This view is confirmed by much in the Old Testament nar ratives, when they are analysed into their original docu ments. It appears from both the J and E narratives in Ex odus that the Hebrews formed but a small community in Egypt. According to J they all lived in Goshen and could be easily assembled to hear a message from Moses (Gen. 45 : 10; Ex. 4: 20; 8 : 22) ; according to E they were so small a community that two mid-wives could control the birth-rate among them (Ex. 1 : 15). These accounts presuppose a smaller group of people than the twelve tribes, and tend to justify the supposition that there were but two. Another striking fact is the presence of two tradi tions, one of a sojourn at Kadesh, and the other of a sojourn at Sinai, which the later compilers of tradition were unable to harmonize. In the E document, Ex. 15:25b, there is a fragment, inserted just after the crossing of the Red Sea, which explains the origin of the name Massa, " proving," which is the same as Meribah, "place of strife" (Ex. 17:7; Dt. 33:8). But Meribah is the same as Kadesh (Nu. 27:14). After this mention of Kadesh in Ex. 15: 25b, the ac count resumes the march to Sinai, but in Ex. 17: 7, the mention of Massah-Meribah shows that we are back at Kadesh again. In Ex. 17:8-16 Israel fights with Amalek at Sinai, but Amalek is the enemy that attacked Israel at Kadesh (Nu. 14:45)- In Ex. 18 Moses at 48 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Sinai appointed Judges, but this happened at Kadesh (Nu. n:i6ff.). Still other inconsistencies arising from the confusion of the two places might be gathered from the pages of the Pentateuch. The most natural reason for this failure of the Biblical writers success fully to combine the narratives of Sinai and Kadesh is the supposition that these two places were the rendez vous of two different groups of tribes, who centred in these respective places at two different times, and whose sojourns the compiler of the Pentateuch, having lost the historical perspective, strove unsuccessfully to regard as the successive sojourns of the same people. Kadesh was the centre of the Leah tribes, for accord- > ing to Nu. 21 : 1-3, Jud. 1 : 17 and the genealogies of Chronicles these tribes invaded Canaan from the south. Sinai, on the other hand, belongs to the Rachel tribes, who entered Palestine from the east. Thus in the song of Deborah, which was written in the north, Yahweh is said to come from Sinai (Jud. 5:5), and in the stories of Elijah, which took literary form in Ephraim, Elijah is said to have gone to Sinai to meet with Yahweh ( 1 Kgs. 19: 8). In the traditions of the stay at Kadesh the Leah tribes, Reuben and Levi, are especially men tioned, while Joseph is conspicuously absent. Joshua, the Ephraimite leader, is also not mentioned in the ac counts of Kadesh which come from J, E, and D. His name is inserted only in the later P document. We con clude, then, that the Leah tribes, called Israel, made the spring of Kadesh their rendezvous before they invaded THE ORIGIN OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION 49 Palestine from the south in the time of Egypt's eight eenth dynasty, while it was the Rachel tribes, who first sojourned at Sinai and afterward invaded Palestine from the east. The narratives of the conquest that are embedded in the Biblical documents likewise bear out this view. As already noted, Nu. 21 : 1-3 and Jud. 1 : 1-20 con tain an account of an invasion of Palestine from the south by " Israel," or, more specifically, by Judah and Simeon. In Jud. 1 : 1 the phrase " after the death of Joshua " is the addition of a later editor. Removing this we have a similar account (Jud. 1 : 1—20) of how Judah and Simeon went up.1 Israel was not united, but the tribes went up singly or in small groups to fight each for its own abiding place. They successfully fought Adoni-Bezek, who was apparently a king of Jerusalem. The Calebite and Kennizite clans took Hebron and the region around it, and a certain Kenite or certain Ken- ites moved in and mingled with the tribe of Judah. The later narrator recognizes the connection of this clan with Moses by marriage. The thirty-eighth chap ter of Genesis relates the marriages of Judah and his sons with various Canaanitish women. Interpreting this on the principles laid down in the preceding chap ter, it is clear that this conquest of the highlands of Judaea did not result in the expulsion of all the tribes who were previously there. Alliances were made with 1 The first chapter of Judges, with the exception of a few editorial additions, is an excerpt from the J document. 50 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL them and they were gradually absorbed. The remain der of Judges i is occupied with accounts of how other tribes fought singly for standing room in Palestine, and records their varying successes. None of them suc ceeded in driving out all of the Canaanites, but these dwelt long in their midst and were absorbed only gradually. The book of Joshua is composed of four strands, J, E, D, and P.1 The J narrative in Joshua contains sev eral passages that are parallel, and almost identical with parts of Judges i. These are Joshua 13: 13; 15: 14- 19, 63; 16: 1-3, 10; 17: 11-18; 19: 47. This, with the E narrative, represents the tribes as going up singly or in small groups to fight for their inheritances, though here they are all represented as having entered Pales tine from the east. Joshua was the leader only of the Rachel tribes. According to these narratives the He brews did not expel all the previous inhabitants of the land, nor even conquer them all, but settled among them and gradually absorbed them. The D and P narratives of Joshua represent Joshua as having completely conquered Palestine, including the Philistine plain, and as assigning by lot their portion to the different tribes, and even the Levitical cities to the Levites. Of these three groups of narratives one cannot hesi- 1 The student should look up the text of these documents in Carpenter and Harford-Battersby's Hexateuch, London, 1900, Vol. II, pp. 320-359, or Bennett's Joshua in Paul Haupf s Sacred Books of the Old Testament, New York, 1899. THE ORIGIN OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION 5 1 tate, in view of the archaeological evidence, to regard that of Nu. 21: 1-3 and Jud. 1: 1-20 x as the more historical. All critical scholars agree in regarding the view presented in D and P, that the land was wholly conquered and divided by Joshua, as unhistorical. It shows how religious men of a later time thought events ought to have transpired. It is contradicted by too many facts in the older narratives to be accepted. The JE account of Joshua forms an intermediate stage be tween that of Nu. 21 : 1-3, etc., and the later D and P picture. The earlier historical fact of the separate at tack and partial conquest is in the JE portions of Joshua recalled and recorded, but the fact that a part of the tribes entered from the south had already been lost sight of.2 Thus, when studied in the light of historical analysis, the Biblical documents, like the archaeological facts, point to the conclusion that the Leah tribes entered Pal estine first, and that they came, at least in part, from the south, while the Rachel tribes came later from the east. If this be so, the Rachel tribes were not fused with the Leah tribes until after the latest comers, the Rachel tribes, had entered Palestine, i. e., some time about 1 Many scholars take " the City of Palm Trees " in Jud. 1:16 to refer to Jericho. It is not so certain, however, but that some city in the south may have been intended. 2 See the excellent discussion by Paton in the Biblical World, Vol. XLVI, 173-180. Also his discussion of the whole subject in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. XXXII, pp. 1-53. 52 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 1 200 b. c or later. The date of this event cannot be accurately fixed. If the '-pw-r of the Egyptian inscrip tions were Hebrews, some of them remained in Egypt until the reign of Ramses IV, 11 67-1 161 B.C. It is hardly possible that the Rachel tribes really left Egypt as late as this, for the song of Deborah (Jud. 5) bears witness to the fact that Ephraim and Machir, a clan of the tribe of Manasseh, were well settled in Pal estine before the time of Deborah, and the events de scribed in this song cannot well be placed much later than 1 100 B. c. On the other hand, it is possible that the men whom Moses persuaded to follow him out of Egypt, and who became the Rachel tribes of history, did not constitute the whole body of '-pw-r who were settled there. Some of them may have remained, pre ferring the assured plenty of Egyptian life to the un certain fortunes of the desert adventure. If this were so, the Exodus may have occurred before the time of Ramses IV. Whenever the exodus from Egypt occurred and the final fusion of the Israelitish tribes into one whole be gan, the problem of the nature of their religion before the time of Moses becomes an interesting one. As they were all Semitic tribes, it may be assumed that their gods were related to those early Semitic deities whose wor ship was shaped by the desert and oasis life. It may probably be assumed that, like other early clans, they were henotheists and had each its own god. One or two divine names have survived which bsar out to some THE ORIGIN OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION 53 degree this assumption. If the tribe of Asher origi nated as has been supposed above,1 the name goes back ultimately to the goddess Ashera, a goddess practically identical in character with Astarte (Ashtart2). Since Ebed-Ashera bore a name which means " servant of the goddess Ashera," it seems a fair inference that this god dess was worshipped by his clan, and there is at present nothing known which contradicts this inference. The letters of Aziru, the son of Ebed-Ashera, in the El- Amarna correspondence, mention no other deity. We assume, then, that the tribe Asher had originally a god dess Ashera. Similarly the tribe of Gad would appear to have had a god Gad. True the name of this god is mentioned but once, and that in a late text (Isa. 65 : 11), where he appears as a god of fortune, but the name identifies him with the tribe of Gad. It has happened many times in the history of religion, that the god of one tribe or city, when that tribe or city was merged in a larger and a complex political entity, became but one of many gods, and the later feeling for religious unity, which grew out of political unity, resulted in the assignment of special functions to such a god. Thus a god that had at one time done all that a tribe was thought to need a super natural friend to do for it, might become the god of the rain, or the air, or of the dew, or of fortune. Such 1 See above, p. 33 f. 2 See Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins, Social and Religious, New York, 1902, p. 246 f. 54 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL analogies lead us to suppose that the god Gad was once the deity of the tribe of the same name. The names of no other deities have survived that can be connected with any particular tribe of Israelites. It is only because of analogy that we assume that they probably had such deities. The name of one other deity, Meni, a goddess of fortune, appears in Isa. 65 : 11, but the name cannot be connected with any tribe. A study of Hebrew proper names reveals the fact that in the early periods of the history a number of divine names were popular. Such were Ab, " father," Melek, " king," Adon, " lord," Ba'al, " owner " or " lord," El, " god," but these are mere epithets that might be ap plied to any deity, and it is by no means certain that where they occur they do not refer to Yahweh. There are also two or three divine names known to us outside of proper names, such as Eloah, " god," of which Elo him is the plural, Shaddai, " the mountain deity," or " mighty one," and Elyon, " the exalted one." These, too, may all refer to Yahweh. Elyon, which is charac teristic of late Biblical texts, certainly refers to him. Possibly some one of these tribes had a deity Moth or Maweth. At all events in 1 Chron. 6: 25 we find a name Ahi-moth, " My brother is Moth," and in 2 Sam. 23 : 31 (also I Chr. 11 : 33) the name Azmaweth, "Moth is mighty." If, however, there was such a deity, all other traces of his existence in Israel have disappeared. It is probable that the religion of the Hebrew tribes before the time of Moses was of the THE ORIGIN OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION 55 same general nature as the worship of other Semitic tribes, and that each had one or more deities. Whether any two of them worshipped the same god, we cannot now say. Possibly the Leah tribes did so. Whether this god was Yahweh or not, will be treated in the next chapter. Since the Hebrew tribes had many of them migrated from place to place, it is probable that there was at the beginning of their united history some degree of syn cretism in their religion. But their religious ideas must, in any case, have been as unorganized and confused as was their political life. TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. The Evidence for the Formation of the Hebrew Nation; cf. L. B. Paton, in the Biblical World, Vol. XLVI, pp. 82-88, 173-180, and in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. XXXII, pp. 1-53. 2. The Religion of Israel before Moses ; cf . J. P. Peters, The Religion of the Hebrews, Boston, 19 14, ch. iii. CHAPTER IV MOSES AND THE COVENANT WITH YAHWEH Rachel Tribes made Covenant with Yahweh — Moses — Yahweh God of the Kenite-Midianites — Name of Yahweh in Arabia — Nature of Kenite Yahweh — Moses' Experience of Yahweh — Bearing of Covenant on Ethical Development — The Decalogue of this Pe riod — The Spread of Yahweh's Worship to Other Tribes — Hy potheses, not Certainty. In the preceding chapter reasons have been given for believing that the Leah tribes settled in Palestine be tween 1400 and 1350 B. c, and that the Rachel tribes were the ones who settled for a time in Egypt, came out in that Exodus of which the Old Testament says so much, sojourned for a time at Sinai, and afterward en tered Palestine from the east. In the course of this discussion it was noted that the earliest document of the Rachel tribes, the E document,1 contains a distinct ac count of the revelation of the name Yahweh to Moses (Ex. 3: 1-14), while the Judaean document J assumes that the name had been known from the time of the grandson of Adam (Gen. 4: 26). Both documents re cord, however, the fact that, in the time of Moses, 1 The E writer adopted his favourite term, Elohim, for God from the Canaanites in whose land he settled. The writer showed in the Pro ceedings of the American Oriental Society, 1892, pp. 196-199, that the Canaanites of the El-Amarna period already used this plural as a singular. 56 MOSES AND THE COVENANT WITH YAHWEH 57 Israel entered into a distinct covenant to serve Yahweh, whereby Yahweh became the God of the nation. It re mains to state more clearly the historical facts which led to the exclusion of other gods from Israel and the con centration of its worship upon Yahweh. The convergence of the Hebrew traditions upon Moses as the man who gave the initial impulse to the worship of Yahweh in Israel mark him out as the emancipator of the Rachel tribes, and the one who in troduced, at least to this portion of Israel, the religion of Yahweh. The fact that Hebrews keenly suffered in Egypt, that deliverance came through Moses, that faith for the accomplishment of it was aroused by his preach ing of Yahweh, that they proceeded to Sinai and a cov enant was made between Yahweh and Israel, which became the basis of Israel's subsequent religion, are facts that were sufficiently burned into the national con sciousness of Israel to be attested by all her future lit erature. Without them the later religious history would be inexplicable. While these fundamental facts stand out clearly through the haze of tradition, there is less certainty as to details. Naturally when the written records come from a period so much later, absolute historical cer tainty cannot be secured in dealing with details. We can discern certain outlines which are probably true, but in drawing these outlines it must ever be borne in mind that they are not historical certainties, but at the most, probable hypotheses. 58 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL One such hypothesis, which has in the last thirty years won for itself a large acceptance among scholars, is that Yahweh was the deity of the Kenites, a part of whose habitat was a volcanic mountain,1 that it was there that Moses learned of his worship, and that the covenant at that mountain was the introduction into Israel of the worship of a god who had previously been the tribal god of the Kenite-Midianites. The reasons for this view are in part : ( 1 ) That it was at Horeb that Moses first learned of the name of Yahweh — a name that was previously unknown to him (see Exod. 3 : 2-14) . In the ancient East the introduction of a new name meant the introduction of a new deity. (2) That after the exodus from Egypt and the arrival at Horeb it was Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, the priest of Midian, who offered to Yahweh the first sacrifice in which Hebrews participated. Moses, Aaron, and all the elders of Israel were present and participated in the sacrificial festival which followed (Exod. 18:12). Apparently Jethro was initiating the Hebrews into the worship of the new deity. Then followed the covenant between Yahweh and Israel. This was sealed by a sac rificial feast without Jethro, at which were Moses, 1 This volcanic mountain can hardly have been the traditional Sinai, at the apex of the Sinaitic peninsula, as there has been no volcanic activity there within the historic period. It is probable that it was a mountain to the east of the Gulf of Akabah. A volcano to the north of the city of Medina was active as late as 1256 A. D. ; see Studies in the History of Religions presented to Craiuford Hoiuell Toy by Pupils, Colleagues and Friends, New York, 1912, p. 197 f. MOSES AND THE COVENANT WITH YAHWEH 59 Aaron, and seventy elders of Israel (Exod. 24: 9-1 1). These traditions, which come in part from the J docu ment and in part from the E document, our oldest sources, embody apparently Israel's earliest recollection of these events, and indicate clearly that Yahweh was a tribal god of the Kenite-Midianites before he became the covenant God of the Rachel tribes.1 Is it possible to penetrate farther into the past and ; discern anything of the previous history of Yahweh? Information which has come to light in recent years makes it probable that the name Yahweh was known in Babylonia about 2000 b. c, where it formed a part of certain proper names. This was seven hundred years or more before Moses. The same name appears there again in the fourteenth century B. c, and was also in the same century an element of a proper name in Palestine. These names come from the century before Moses. It also appears to form a part of the name of an Aramaean king of Hamath in the eighth century B. c. The Babylonians who bore these names were foreigners, having moved to that country from elsewhere, and analogy with other Semitic migrations would lead us to believe that they migrated from some part of north Arabia. The Kenite-Midianites had their habitat in that very region, roaming from the peninsula of 1 For fuller statements of this view see Budde, The Religion of Israel to the Exile, New York, 1899, chap, i; Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins, New York, 1902, pp. 272 f., 275 f.; and Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible in One Volume, New York, 1907, p. 410. 60 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Sinai on the west far into the heart of Arabia on the east.1 It accordingly seems probable that for hundreds !of years the name Yahweh may have been known in north Arabia and that emigrants from this region had carried it into Babylonia and Palestine before the time of Moses. The Yahweh of this ancient time, as an Arabian tribal god, was believed to give the tribe its life and to do whatever a supernatural being could do for his people. Like other Semitic tribal deities he was be lieved especially to preside over the functions of life. He "opened the womb" (Gen. 29:31; 30:22; 49: 25 ; Exod. 13 : 2; Ps. 127 : 3), or " shut up the womb " (I Sam. 1 : 5, 6). So sacred were the genitals to him that oaths by Yahweh were taken upon them (Gen. 24 : 2 ) .2 It was he who caused grass and trees to grow ; who caused volcanoes to upheave (Gen. 19: 24; Exod. 19: 18) ; who manifested himself in cloud and thunder and lightning (Ps. 18 : 7 ff. ; Judg. 5:4; Ezek. 1 : 4 ff. ; Hab. 3: 4 ff.; Job. 38: 1; Sam. 7: 10; Job 38: 25). These were natural activities which every Semitic tribe 1 For further details see the writer's article, " Yahweh before Moses,'' in Studies in the History of Religion presented to Craiuford Hoivell Toy, New York, 1912, and the numerous references to other literature there given. 2 Probably the name Yahweh originated in the Arabic dialect spoken by these tribes, coming from the verb haiuiya, " to love passionately," or ''desire," meaning "He who causes to desire." (See the discussions by the present writer, cited above.) The writer of Exod. 3:14 natu rally, at a later time, took it for a Hebrew word and explained it accordingly. Many other explanations of it have been offered by dif ferent writers. MOSES AND THE COVENANT WITH YAHWEH 6 1 that lived in a region of volcanoes and rain attributed to its deity. One other function apparently was at tributed to Yahweh in these early days : he was thought to be a god of war. In ancient wars the gods of the contending tribes were thought to contend as really as their worshippers. The struggle was in the last anal ysis a supernatural one. Any victory achieved was the triumph of the deity of the victorious tribe. The Ken ite-Midianites appear to have become a terror to the tribes about them, and to his other functions their god naturally added those of a god of battles. A later hymn in speaking of the Exodus declares : " Yahweh is a man of war" (Exod. 15:3), and one of his pre eminent titles was " Lord of hosts " or " armies." Probably it was his reputation for giving victory that attracted the oppressed Hebrews to him, and when the promises that Moses made in his name had been ful filled and they actually found themselves free from Egypt they entered into covenant with him, that he should be their God. There is no reason to believe that Yahweh in this early Kenite period differed materially from other Sem itic gods. His worship was no more ethical than theirs. Down to a much later time he was worshipped in connection with pillars and Asherahs, which were in part sexual symbols, and it would be difficult in this early time to distinguish the ceremonial of his festivals from the festivals of those nomadic tribes who wor shipped other gods, or whose deity was the great Sem- 62 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL itic goddess.1 Like other Semitic and Egyptian gods of fertility he required circumcision of his worshippers, and also demanded animal sacrifice. In the thirteenth century B. c. the spiritual period of religious and ethical conception had not yet begun. We do not find it in any race until about the eighth century B. c. The religious life of early peoples was much like that of children, who experience the psycho logical emotions of religion with intensity, but whose interpretations are objective and anthropomorphic. If the traditions of Exod., chap. 3, .may be taken as a guide, Moses in his experience of Yahweh at the burn ing bush gained a personal impression of the power and awe of Yahweh that possessed his whole being. He went to proclaim to his brethren, with an enthusiasm and unction born of very great awe, Yahweh as a deliverer. No doubt the personal conviction created by his own impressive experience was a dominant factor in enabling him to kindle in the minds of his kinsfolk a faith in the living might of Yahweh sufficient to pro duce action. Thus in the person of the great founder J of Israel's religion there became effective, we cannot 'but believe, those forces which arise from a personal ! experience of God. They took the childlike form ap propriate to an immature period of human develop ment, but none the less did they mightily impress the tsoul with the majesty and awfulness of Yahweh and that i terrible quality called holiness — a quality which at that 1 See the writer's Sketch of Semitic Origins, New York, 1902, p. 289 ff. MOSES AND THE COVENANT WITH YAHWEH 63 period of religious thought was not yet ethical, but was conceived as a sort of divine electricity with which it was dangerous for one not initiated to tamper.1 In lesser degree the experience of Moses was probably shared by his followers. The awe and power were kept frequently before them in the storm and the lightning. The thunder with all its terrors was thought to be Yah- weh's voice.2 Thus from the beginning there was im pressed upon the adherents of the new religion that conception of Yahweh's awfulness and majesty, which at a later time was destined to reinforce in the Hebrew conscience high ethical ideals. In this covenant between Yahweh and Israel con-' summated at Horeb lay the possibilities of future ethi cal development. The fact that at a definite period of national life — a period ever well remembered — Yah weh had taken Israel for his people placed their mutual relations upon quite a different footing than the rela tions which existed between any other god and his wor shippers. Semitic deities generally were believed to be bound to their worshippers by ties of kinship — ties that were thought to be indissoluble. A Semitic god of this sort was like an Arab sheik : he might not like what his tribesmen did; he might even sulk and leave them for a while to their fate ; but in the end he was compelled to come to their rescue, for if he did not he would be 1 See W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2d ed., London, 1894, pp. 141 ff., 450 ff. 2Cf. I Sam. 7:10; Ps. 104:7. 64 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL cast out into the world alone. He would not only be a sheik no longer, but could not even keep alive. So a god who did not rescue his human kinsfolk, however unethical their conduct, would no longer be a god. There was little possibility that such religion could ever become ethical. The covenant at Horeb placed the religion of the '. Hebrews upon an entirely different basis. Yahweh was related to his Hebrew worshippers, not by kinship, '-, but by contract. If they did not fulfil their part of the contract, they could not expect him to fulfil his. He had chosen one people; he could cast them off and choose another. He was bound by no indissoluble ties ; his fate was not inevitably linked with that of but one people. In this fact lay the possibilities of Israel's ethi cal and spiritual progress. Interpreting as the prophets of a later time did this covenant as of ethical and spir itual content, they differentiated the religion of Israel from the other religions of the world and made it the earliest beacon of humanity's highest destiny. The potentialities of this covenant for ethical and spiritual advance lay in part in the fact that at the mo ment it was not put in written form, but was committed to tradition. That it was not at once committed to writing is clear from the wide divergence of opinion in later times as to what the real content of the covenant was. The author of the J document held the basis of the covenant to be the ten ritualistic commands of Exod. 34: 14-28; the writer of the E document, the agricul- MOSES AND THE COVENANT WITH YAHWEH 65 tural code of Exod. 20:24-23:19; the Deuterono- mist, that expansion of E's code into which a new humanitarian tone and greater definiteness of ritual had been read, which we now find in Deut., chaps. 12-26; the priestly writer believed it to be the great body of ceremonial law which fills the last part of Exodus and all of Leviticus and Numbers; while to the great proph ets Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Jeremiah the essence of this covenant did not lie in ceremony at all, but in thor ough fidelity of heart to Yahweh exhibited in a life of ethical justice and purity among men. The 'covenant became of creative significance because it was sufficiently grand and awful to be inspiring, and sufficiently vague to bear reinterpretation and become a moving ideal — a flying goal. Of the various " codes " referred to, that in Exod. 34: 14-28, often called by scholars the " Decalogue of J," is on many accounts more likely to represent with approximate fidelity the content of the covenant in the time of Moses than any of the others. This is prob able ( 1 ) because it consists for the most part of simple ritualistic requirements appropriate to the habits and ideas of a nomadic people of that age and country; (2) because the other codes all contain agricultural provi sions which presuppose a settled agricultural life and are inappropriate to the nomadic period at which the covenant originated; (3) because these requirements were arranged in ten simple sentences which were easily carried in the memory and which could be checked off 66 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL on the fingers; and (4) because these provisions are found in all the other codes, and are the only provisions which run through all four Pentateuchal documents.1 These ten rquirements, when separated from their pres ent literary setting, appear probably to have been as follows : 1. Thou shalt worship no other god.2 2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. 3. The feast of the Passover thou shalt keep. 4. The firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb ; all the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. 5. None shall appear before me empty. 6. Six days shalt thou work, but on the seventh thou shalt rest. 7. Thou shalt observe the feast of ingathering.3 8. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leav ened bread, neither shall the sacrifice of the Passover remain until the morning. 1 See for proof, Briggs, The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, New York, 1893, pp. 189-210. 2 This was not monotheism, for the existence of other gods is ad mitted. It is an exhibition of Yahweh's intolerance or "jealousy." 3 The command now reads (Exod. 34:22): "Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, even the ingathering of the wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end." Two feasts, which occurred more than four months apart, are here merged into one command. Of these the first is purely agricultural. Even if we grant that some wheat may have been raised in the wilderness of Sinai, or in the region of Ain- Kadesh, this was only at the extreme western limit of the Kenite- Midianite habitat, and could hardly have been produced in the whole of it. The date harvest was an annual event of the whole region, and probably the " feast of ingathering," which afterward was made a commemoration of the grape gathering, referred in the nomadic period to the date gathering. See Sketch of Semitic Origins, New York, 1902, pp. in ff., and 115. MOSES AND THE COVENANT WITH YAHWEH 67 9. The firstlings of thy flocks 1 thou shalt bring unto Yah weh, thy God. 10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk. It will be observed that these ten requirements are nearly all of a ritualistic nature. That is what should be expected from a nomadic people of this distant age. For a long time after this, religion consisted not of creeds but of rituals. The customs or mishpats of the deities must be observed; if one were faithful to these, no one asked what he believed. It goes far to establish the historical character of the J document's account of the covenant that these ten simple requirements so well accord with the nature of the religions of people simi larly situated. They are easily remembered; they are ritualistic; they are fitted to a desert and nomadic en vironment. Nevertheless these requirements in one respect con tained an unusual element — one in which was the seed of progress. Yahweh, the God of the thunderbolt and the burning mountain, was a jealous God. Less tol erant of rivals than other deities, he demanded that his worshippers worship him alone. This was not the gen eral Semitic custom. Gods were generally regarded as the supernatural proprietors of certain districts, and when one was in the district belonging to a god it was 1 It is supposed that " firstlings of thy flocks " in the nomadic days stood where "first of the first-fruits of thy ground" (Exod. 34:26) now stands, because, as noted above, the harvests of grain then formed no important feature of the economic life. 68 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL both the polite and safe course to pay him homage, just as one would pay homage to ah earthly potentate if one came within the range of his power by crossing his do main (cf. I Sam. 26: 19). This custom was so deeply ingrained in the Semitic character that it was long be fore this first condition of the covenant of Sinai was observed by Hebrews generally, but it was ever present as a demand on the part of their God making toward monotheism. It was not a demand for monotheism; it distinctly recognized the reality of other gods; it was not even in theory monotheistic. It was but an expres sion of the jealousy of Yahweh which his worshippers naturally attributed to a god whose chief avenue of expression they believed to be the quaking mountain and the burning fire. Later, however, this command and this jealousy came as powerful aids to the prophets as they sought to impress upon the people the higher views of Yahweh and his will which had been born in their souls. Some scholars think it necessary to contend that the more ethical decalogue of Exod., chap. 20, and Deut., chap. 5, originated at Horeb. They feel that somehow the authority of the ethical commands is less if they came from the prophetic period than if they came from Moses. This feeling the present writer does not share. Whenever the ethical decalogue was written, it has back of it all the authority of right. God has made the mind of man capable of perceiving the right, and, when once it is perceived, man has been given a conscience which, MOSES AND THE COVENANT WITH YAHWEH 69 stirred by the Spirit of God, never lets him rest without living up to the right. There is no other alternative except to eradicate the conscience. When once the ethi cal decalogue was conceived to be a part of Yahweh's law of righteousness, it had back of it all that power. Had it originated in the time of Moses it could have been enforced by no greater authority. The question of the date of this decalogue may, then, be discussed dispassionately on the external evidence alone. Had it originated with Moses, it seems probable that all the documents would have contained it, as they do the ritu alistic decalogue, whereas it was unknown to J, the old est writer of all. This fact seems to the writer decisive, and this view is confirmed by the fact that the ethical decalogue finds a more appropriate environment in the ninth and eighth centuries than is afforded by the thir teenth century B. c. One other feature of the religion, in addition to the ritualistic decalogue, can now be discerned. Moses in troduced among his people an outward symbol of Yah weh in the form of an ark or box that could be carried from place to place (Ex. 25-45 passim). According to later tradition this ark contained the two tables on which the law was written (Dt. 10: 5). In the opin ion of many modern scholars it contained a sacred stone, either an aerolite of meteoric origin or a stone from Yahweh's sacred mountain. To this ark long poles could be attached by which it could be carried from place to place. It formed a suitable sacred emblem for JO THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL a nomadic people. Similar receptacles for their gods are portrayed on Babylonian monuments. By the Bab ylonians they were used only on festal occasions, when the gods were carried in procession, but by the migratory Rachel tribes the ark was in frequent use. This ark remained in the possession of these tribes after their settlement in Palestine, and plays a considerable part in the early history (see i Sam. 3; 6; 2 Sam. 6). It was the sacred emblem in the temple at Shilo. The introduction of the worship of Yahweh by Moses in the way indicated has been held by many scholars to completely account for his becoming the God of Israel. It would sufficiently account for it, if all Israel had been in Egypt, if all had come out at the same time, and all had participated in the covenant made at Horeb. If, however, the Leah tribes were in Palestine a century and a half before this, having never been in Egypt, and if the J document, written in Judah, regards the worship of Yahweh as primeval, the solu tion of the problem in its larger aspect is not so easy. It has been customary to say that, since some of the Kenites settled in Judah and mingled with the various strands of that tribe, the tribe of Judah might naturally think that the religion of Yahweh went back to the earliest times. If we had only to account for the atti tude of the J document, this would seem to be a fairly satisfactory account of the matter, for in that case only the views of Yahweh entertained in the tribe of Judah would need to be accounted for. When, however, we MOSES AND THE COVENANT WITH YAHWEH 7 1 see that the other Leah tribes who lived far to the northward are said in the song of Deborah to have obeyed the summons to war issued in Yahweh's name, other questions are raised. Did these northern tribes first learn of Yahweh through the settlement, then com paratively recent, of the Rachel tribes in their midst? Is it probable, if that had been the case, that they would have so soon manifested even the slight degree of unanimity and devotion portrayed in the song of De borah in his service? It does not seem probable. One naturally turns, therefore, to other and more probable considerations. It has already been noted that some of the Kenites settled in the tribe of Judah (see Jud. 1 : 17), and ap parently became merged in that tribe. It is by no means certain that such fusion between the Kenites and Judahites first took place after the time of Moses. If, as has been shown, the Leah tribes had during a part of their nomadic life made their centre at Kadesh, it is not at all unlikely that they must have often come into contact with the Kenite-Midianites more than a hundred and fifty years before the time of Moses. Such con tacts would be sure to be either hostile or friendly. If friendly, they would take the form of a more or less close alliance. So far as our records inform us there is no memory of hostility between these two groups. It seems probable, therefore, that the fusion may have begun long before the time of Moses, and that Yahweh was a god known to the Leah tribes before their settle- 72 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL ment in Canaan. Perhaps they had a more or less binding allegiance to him. . It should also be observed that some of the Leah tribes, and possibly all of them, may have come origi nally out of northern Arabia, so that if Yahweh had been known in that region for a thousand years before this, to the consciousness of the Leah tribes also Yah weh's worship would naturally be primeval. At all events it seems probable that in some way the Leah tribes were predisposed to the worship of Yahweh be fore their union with the Rachel tribes. However, even if this be so, it was the experience of the Rachel tribes in their exodus from Egypt, and the work of Moses at the burning mountain, that in all later time gave character and direction to the religion. The awful manifestation at the burning mountain impressed the making of the covenant with the Rachel tribes in delibly upon the national consciousness. Yahweh's goodness and power in delivering them from bondage eclipsed any traditions that the Leah tribes had of him before, so that in later ages the traditions of this ex perience became the common possession of all Hebrews, and no tribe was conscious that, its ancestors had not participated in it. To these traditions prophets success fully appealed; it was these memories that made prog ress possible. Whatever knowledge of Yahweh may have been the possession of the Leah tribes before the time of Moses, it was the point of view given by Moses to the Rachel tribes that prevailed. MOSES AND THE COVENANT WITH YAHWEH 73 Such is the outline of the beginnings of the religion of Israel as we can now discern them. Beyond the fact that Yahweh became the God of Israel by covenant at Horeb through the instrumentality of Moses, this out line is confessedly hypothetical. Nevertheless the writer believes it approximately correct. Yahweh was. a jealous God, a God of war, a God who could give toi Israel just what she wanted — ability to gain freedom! and to conquer enemies. If not appreciably higher thanl other Semitic religions of the time, it certainly was not lower, and the poverty of the steppe kept it relatively pure as compared with the cults of wealthy agricultural communities. It had, however, in it new possibilities, and it had come to Israel in a way that eventually af forded these possibilities the opportunity to be realized. From these simple beginnings the best religion of the world has sprung, illustrating the Master's word: " first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear." TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Theories of Yahweh before Moses; cf. G. A. Barton, " Yahweh before Moses " in Studies in the History of Religion Presented to Crawford Howell Toy by Pupils, Colleagues and Friends, New York, 1912, pp. 187-204. 2. Theories of the Origin of the Worship of Yahweh; cf. Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile, New York, 1899, pp. 1—38 ; G. A. Barton, Sketch of Semitic Origins, Social and Re ligious, New York, 1902, ch. vii; also in Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible in One Volume, New York, 1909, article " Israel " § ii, 2 (p. 410 ff.) ; W. E. Addis, Hebrew Religion, New York, 74 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 1905, ch. iii; Marti, Religion of the Old Testament, New York, 1906, ch. i; H. P. Smith, Religion of Israel, New York, 1914, ch. iii; and J. P. Peters, Religion of the Hebrews, Boston, 19 14, ch. iii. 3. What Decalogue did Moses introduce? Cf. Barton and Peters in references under the preceding topic. CHAPTER V PRE-PROPHETIC PERIOD IN CANAAN Influence of Agriculture — Canaanite Shrines become Yahweh's — Tra ditions and Ritual taken over with Shrines — Festivals trans formed — Personal Religious Life — Use of Images — Yahweh's Character in this Period — Prophecy in this Period — Hebrews a Farmer- Folk — Solomon an Innovator — Ahab and Elijah — The E Document and its Decalogue — Date of this Decalogue. The conquest of Canaan brought many new elements into Israel's life. The change from nomadic to settled agricultural ways necessarily produced modifications of religious forms and conceptions; the cultivation of the grape instead of the date palm is but one of the differ ences which led to the new interpretation of an old rite. The Canaanites were subdued only in part; many re mained in the land, to be gradually absorbed into the Hebrew nation.1 Accepting, as these gradually did, the worship of Yahweh, they continued to believe their old myths and to practise their old customs. Just as heathen myths and festivals have sometimes been intro duced into Christianity by giving them Christian names, so Canaanite ideas and customs inevitably fused with those brought by Israel from the wilderness. Perhaps the most striking way in which this fusion is exhibited is in the fact that the old shrines of the land were taken over and became shrines of Yahweh. At ijosh. 15:63, 16:10; Judges 1:21, 27, 29, 35. 75 76 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Shechem there was a high place to a god called Baal- berith (Judg. 9:4) or El-berith (Judg. 9:46). This became not only a shrine of Yahweh, but tradition in time attributed its origin to Abraham, the Hebrew (Gen. 12: 6 ff.). Abraham had had a vision there by a sacred oak, it was said, and in this vision God had promised Canaan to his descendants. Bethel, another old Canaanite sanctuary, had been regarded as a divine abode because of the peculiar character of the stones there. At this point the limestone vertebrae of Pales tine protrude through the soil and are worn by the weather into curious shapes; these led early men to be lieve that a god was manifesting himself there. The Israelites, taking over this sanctuary, explained the be ginnings of its sanctity by the story of a dream that Jacob, their ancestor, once had there. The sanctity of a neighbouring hill was accounted for by the tradition that Abraham had built an altar there. Similarly Hebron, another old shrine, to which was attached a sacred cave similar to that discovered at Gezer,1 became a shrine of Yahweh, where Abraham had experienced a divine visitation (Gen., chap. 18). Veneration for its sacred cave was afterward accounted for by the tra dition that there the patriarchal dead were buried (Gen., chap. 23). The sanctity of the sacred wells of Beer-sheba tradition in time accounted for by saying that Abraham had dug one of them, or had planted a tam- erisk tree there (Gen. 21 : 22-33). 1 See Macalister, The Excavation of Gezer, London, 1912. PRE-PROPHETIC PERIOD IN CANAAN 77 Two instances of the transfer of Canaanite shrines to Yahweh are pretty clearly detailed in the Old Testament narratives. At the foot of Mount Hermon the Jordan pours forth from a subterranean spring as a full-grown river. This marvellous and sudden appearance of such quantities of life-giving water marked the place off as the abode of a god from the time men dwelt in its vicinity. In the midst of the period of the Judges the Hebrews conquered this place and at once, without de lay or compunction, made it a sanctuary of Yahweh, in stalling a grandson of Moses as its chief priest (Judg., chaps. 17, 18). Jerusalem also was not captured by the Hebrews at first, but was held by the Jebusites until the time of David (Judg. 1:21; 19:11-12; II Sam. 5:6-9). The sacred rock and cave which have played such a part in Hebrew, Christian, and Mohammedan ritual and tradition were, no doubt, a part of an earlier Jebusite shrine. The Jebusites, with that hospitable mingling of things sacred and secular characteristic of Semitic folk,1 employed their sanctuary as their threshing-floor. This sanctuary David naturally took over, and the act was justified to Hebrew thought by the belief that Yahweh had stopped at that point the ravages of a plague (II Sam., chap. 24) . The taking-over of these sanctuaries involved the taking-over of much of their traditions and ritual. It meant that Yahweh had become the God of the land — 1 Cf. W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2 ed., London, 1894, p. 145. 78 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL its owner or proprietor — just as the Canaanite gods had been. The term Baal (i.e., owner, possessor) had been freely applied to them; this term was now trans ferred to Yahweh, so that his worshippers called him Baal. Thus Gideon, an enthusiastic worshipper of Yahweh, bore the name Jerrub-baal; Saul named his son Ish-baal; David one of his, Meri-baal. As both mon archs were champions of the worship of Yahweh, it is clear that they intended the term Baal to refer to him. The prophet Hosea also definitely states that Yahweh had been called Baal (Hos. 2: 16). As the Baal of Palestine it came in time to be believed that Yahweh was connected with the soil of the land and could be rightly worshipped only upon it. This is the thought which underlies the request of Naaman to take two mule-loads of earth from Palestine to Damas cus, that he might be able to worship Yahweh there (II Kings 5 : 17), a request which Elisha, the leader of the Yahweh worship of his day, granted. As God of the land Yahweh became the God of agri cultural law; he was especially interested in its enforce ment. As a natural result of the conquest of Canaan and the transfer of the land and its shrines to Yahweh, the author of the E document in the eighth century re gards the body of agricultural laws in Exod., chaps. 21-23, as a fundamental part of the covenant of Yah weh with Israel. These laws had doubtless been a slow growth; they were the outcome of a long agricultural experience. Many of their provisions are similar to PRE-PROPHETIC PERIOD IN CANAAN 79 those of the Code of Hammurapi, which had been pro mulgated in Babylon before 2000 B. c. For centuries before the conquest of Palestine by Thothmes III of Egypt in 1478 B. c, Babylonian influence had been dominant in Canaan and communication with Babylonia very frequent. At times the country may have been controlled by Babylonian kings. It is possible, though hardly probable,, that some of the laws of the Book of the Covenant had been shaped in some slight degree by those of Babylon,1 but Babylonian influence had not been controlling, as the many points in which the Book of the Covenant diverges from the Code of Hammurapi prove. As a part of the transfer of emphasis in the religion of Yahweh to an agricultural basis the great festivals were transformed. To the simple Passover feast, which commemorated the yeaning time of domestic ani mals, an agricultural offering of first-fruits in the form of unleavened bread was added. This occurred because the first ripe grain was gathered at the very season in which the old nomadic feast fell.2 Seven weeks later a new agricultural festival, commemorative of the com pletion of the harvest, was added, while the old autumn 1 Cf. Kittel, Scientific Study of the Old Testament, New York, 1910, pp. 28-30, and Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Part II, ch. xiii. 2 A similar fusion had already occurred among the pre-Israelite in habitants of Canaan. They too had come from the Arabian desert where their spring festival had celebrated the birth-time of animals, and had joined to this the offering of first-fruits. This was because they too had been subjected to the same agricultural influences; cf. Barton, Sketch of Semitic Origins, New York, 1892, pp. 108 ff. 80 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL festival of the date harvest became the festival of the grape-gathering. Such changes were not peculiar to the religion of the Hebrews; they had been silently going on for centuries wherever nomadic Semites became agri cultural peoples. During this period there was no organized priest hood that was confined to one family or tribe. Micah could make one of his sons priest in his temple (Judg. 17: 5) ; Samuel, an Ephraimite, could offer sacrifice (I Sam. 9: 13, 14; 16: 1-5) ; while David made his sons priests (II Sam. 8 : 18) . Nevertheless there was a feel ing abroad that it was better to have a Levite for a priest, so that when one appeared Micah put him in place of his son (Judg. 17: 10-12). How unorganized the Levites were is shown by the fact that a young member of this class, who appears in the sequel to be a grandson of Moses, started out like any other young adventurer to seek his fortune, and accepted successive positions as they appeared attractive to him (Judg., chaps. 17, 18). After the settlement in Canaan, while these changes were silently progressing, the religious life of the peo ple went quietly forward. In the charming stories of the time many attractive religious scenes are graphically presented. How devout souls celebrated the festivals of animal sacrifices from year to year and poured out their hearts in private prayer is portrayed in the story of Elkanah and Hannah (I Sam., chaps. 1, 2). Han nah's aspirations move in the sphere of the objective world. In accordance with the views ingrained through PRE-PROPHETIC PERIOD IN CANAAN 8 1 long ages into the Semitic stock, her chief desire is for offspring. She regards Yahweh as the giver of chil dren, and thinks that he can best be approached with her request when he is brought into especial nearness to his people at the feast, and his heart has been made warm by it. Nevertheless she approaches him in pri vate prayer without the intervention of a priest, and affords us a glimpse of that beautiful private devotion and personal religious life which in greater or less de gree must have accompanied Hebrew worship every where. As devotional aids the Hebrews, like other peoples at the same stage of culture, used images of their deities. The decalogue of J, on which the covenant at Sinai was based, had not prohibited the use of such images, but only of expensive images. " Thou shalt make thee no molten gods" (Exod. 34: 17) forbade them to have images of silver or gold, but left them free to use " graven images " or cheap idols carved out of wood. Such idols, called Teraphim, we find accordingly in the houses of the best of the Hebrews, the one in David's house having been so large that it could be put in David's bed and passed off for David himself (I Sam. 19: 13—16). This opened the way in time for more expensive images, and after a time Yahweh, like the Baals, was symbolized by little bulls made of precious metal. That Yahweh was still emphatically regarded as a God of war, the stories of Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, 82 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL and David attest. So much was this the case that David, Israel's ideal warrior, was regarded as a man after Yahweh's own heart (I Sam. 13 : 14). In spite of such attractive pictures of simple devotion as that presented in the story of Elkanah and Hannah, it is clear that the conceptions of Yahweh which pre vailed were characteristic of the hard, crude age of which they were a part. Jephthah, for instance, bar gained with Yahweh for victory in battle, promising to offer in sacrifice the first living thing which met him on his return home from battle. When victory was won and he was met by his only daughter, he believed Yahweh would be far more outraged by infidelity to his vow than by the horrible gift of a human sacrifice. The maiden accordingly became a victim. A similarly crude conception of Yahweh is reflected Jn a story from the reign of David (II Sam. 21 : 1-14). A famine, caused as Palestinian famines usually are by insufficient rainfall, had occurred for three successive years, and the minds of king and people were greatly exercised to ascertain what had angered Yahweh. It was taken for granted that in some way he had been offended or he would not withhold his rain. An oracle was obtained, which explained the cause of Yahweh's wrath. It is clear that the oracle came from the sanc tuary at Gibeon, whither Solomon afterward betook himself to worship (I Kings 3:48.), and that it was manipulated by the Gibeonite priesthood. The Gib eonites were an Amorite clan with whom the Hebrews PRE-PROPHETIC PERIOD IN CANAAN 83 at the conquest had made a treaty, promising to spare their lives (Josh. 9:3-15). In spite of this compact, Saul had endeavoured to exterminate the Gibeonites, and now the oracle declared that Yahweh was angry because the innocent blood thus shed had never been avenged. Seven descendants of Saul were accordingly sought out and delivered to the Gibeonites to be put to death. These men were hanged in the springtime, just at the end of the rainy season, and their bodies were left hanging all through the long, dry summer, a ghastly testimony to the vengeance of Yahweh. When the rainy season once more came, copious showers fell, and we are told: " God was entreated for his land." The Yahweh who could be thought to punish a whole land with starvation because so gruesome a penalty for sin had not been exacted, had not yet been conceived as a merciful or loving being. Prophets flourished at this time, but they were of a very different order from the literary prophets of a later period. In all parts of the world men have believed that people who possess such peculiarly excitable nervous organizations that they easily lose control of themselves and fall into ecstasies or trances, becoming unconscious and speaking in a broken automatic manner, are medi ums of divine communication.1 The ecstasy is ac counted for by the belief that a god or spirit takes pos session of the speaker and suppresses his humanity, 1 See Davenport, Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, New York, 1905, chaps, i-iii. 84 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL making him the mouthpiece of a supernatural being. No sharp line is drawn between this condition and lunacy, for among such peoples lunacy is regarded as demoniacal or supernatural possession. The early prophets of Israel were of this class. The distinguish ing mark which denoted that King Saul was a prophet was that " he stripped off his clothes and prophesied and lay down naked all that day and all that night " (I Sam. 19:24). The prophets of this period were men of such peculiar temperament that they easily fell into such ecstasies (cf. I Sam. 10: io). They were men of unstable nervous organization; Saul himself, afterward became insane. Indeed the Hebrew word for " prophesy," which means to " utter in a low voice," " to bubble over with speech," is applied both to prophet and to lunatic. It was out of men of this sort that Israel's guilds of professional prophets were organized. They cherished the arts by which ecstatic states could be produced, and lived from the fees given them by their credulous coun trymen. Such prophecy not only had a basis in natural phemonena common to others, but is clearly traceable among the Canaanites. An interesting Egyptian docu ment, the " Report of Wenamon," written about 1100 B. c, describes a well-defined instance of this class of frenzied or ecstatic prophecy at Gebal in Phoenicia.1 Such prophecy was common, therefore, to the Semites of the whole region. The prophets of this period 1 See Breasted, Ancient Records, Egypt, IV, p. 280, § 570. PRE-PROPHETIC PERIOD IN CANAAN 85 sometimes, perhaps, relied upon other arts. Samuel is called a seer (I Sam. 9:9) and his functions seem to have been legitimately regarded as those of a man who for a small sum would inform people where to find lost property. " Seer " was the name given by the Bab ylonians to priests who gave forth oracles from the in spection of the livers of victims,1 and it is possible that Samuel belonged to this class. It is noteworthy that he had celebrated a sacrifice the day before he gave his oracle to Saul. One can hardly emphasize too strongly the fact that the Hebrews had become thoroughly agricultural. We have noted this in contrast to the nomadic life of the wilderness, but it is equally striking in contrast with the urban and commercial civilization of Phoenicia, Bab ylonia, and Egypt. In these three countries the gods had their temples or houses, decorated with many orna ments, adorned with expensive furniture and hangings, where they were served with implements of bronze and vessels of silver and gold. In striking contrast to this were the Hebrew high places, where under the open sky rude stone pillars and an altar of earth or unhewn stone constituted the simple sanctuary — a sanctuary which remained the orthodox type down to the composition of the E document, about 750 B. c. (Exod. 20: 24-26). The ephemeral temple at Shilo (I Sam., chaps. 1-3) 1 See Jastrow, Aspects of Religious Belief in Babylonia, New York, 1911, pp. 158 ff., and 198 ff.; also Journal of Biblical Literature, XXVIII, pp. 42-56. 86 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL was an exception to the general rule among the He brews. Their God, like themselves, lived in the open air; he was pleased with rude, natural implements. The products of the forge and the smith were an abomi nation to him. Solomon was an innovator. Seeking to make his people a commercial people and to beautify his capital after the manner of the commercial nations, he erected a splendid temple at Jerusalem, adorned it in the Phoe nician fashion, equipped it with an unorthodox bronze altar, and a great variety of bronze implements. Though this temple in later ages was looked back upon as the ideal House of God, it impressed his contempo raries very differently. It was reaction against such re ligious innovations as well as against burdensome taxa tion, which enabled Jeroboam to rend the kingdom asunder. Jeroboam, when he said: " Behold thy God, O Israel, who brought thee up out of the land of Egypt " (I Kings 12: 28), was not a religious innovator, but a religious conservative. The innovations of Solomon affected but one shrine in the land, the shrine of Jerusalem, and that one of the newest. Not more than forty years had passed since Jerusalem had come into the possession of the Hebrews. Nevertheless it was one of the influences which produced political revolution. It was not till a century later that the introduction of the religious practices of a commer cial and artisan people led to religious revolt. During the first three centuries of Israel's residence PRE-PROPHETIC PERIOD IN CANAAN 87 in Palestine, while the transformation outlined above was going on, it would have been hard to distinguish the religion of Israel from the religions of her neigh bours. The elements noted in the previous chapter which made for higher ethical and spiritual views were in abeyance. The seed was germinating; the time for fruitage had not yet come. In the reign of Ahab in the ninth century a change began. Ahab had married Jezebel, a daughter of Eth- baal, king of Tyre, and had built for her shrines to her native god, Melkart of Tyre (I Kings 16:31 ff.). Ahab was also led in his assertion of regal power to trespass on the ancestral rights of Naboth. The He brews had from the beginning been free tribesmen, and, as among the Arabs, there was a strong democratic spirit among them. They had never taken kindly to the ways of splendid monarchs. They could be loyal to a man of the people, like David, but against the ways of Solomon they had revolted. Ahab's seizure of Na- both's vineyard caused deep popular resentment. At this moment a new element appeared in the national life in the advent of Elijah of Tishbeh in Gilead, who represented the old nomadic ideal of Yahweh's re ligion. The people to the east of the Jordan had never been as fully agriculturalized as those who dwelt to the west of the river. The fertile lands merge gradually into the desert, and from the desert new reinforcements of nomads were ever coming. Among these the no madic ideal of Yahweh still remained. All more civil- 88 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL ized forms of life were considered abominations to him. To live in houses, or to drink wine, as settled Hebrews did, was considered wrong by some.1 Such ideas were not indeed confined to the trans-Jordanic country, for they find ample expression in the J document, written during this century in Judah. Its author represents all progress in civilization, the tilling of the soil, the wear ing of clothing, the invention of metal-working, music, etc., as the result of sin. Of this ideal, Elijah was a militant representative.2 Into the social ferment of Israel there thus came in the reign of Ahab three religious ideals. The agricul tural Yahweh, who fostered the land with its wheat fields and vineyards, and was worshipped in the high places as a Baal, was one; the Yahweh or Baal of an artisan and commercial people — the Baal of Tyre wor shipped with bronze altars and luxurious ritual, like the Yahweh of Solomon's temple — was the second ; the sim ple Yahweh of the wilderness, to whom the arts and luxuries of even a simple agricultural community were foreign — the Yahweh whose prophet and champion was Elijah — was the third. Elijah linked the rights of the people with his presen tation of his austere Yahweh and as a divinely sent messenger boldly opposed the king. By him the king was regarded as the representative of a hated foreign 1 Cf. II Kings 10: 15 and Jer., chap. 35. 2 See Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile, New York, 1899, chap, iv; and Barton, Sketch of Semitic Origins, New York, 1892, pp. 300 ff. PRE-PROPHETIC PERIOD IN CANAAN 89 cult — a cult of rich and commercial Tyre — a cult im pure with manufactured implements and ceremonies which in idle luxury were made to pander to basest lust. Thus began that social and religious ferment, which went on for centuries, awakening gradually the Hebrew con science. It called into existence the great Hebrew prophets, and ultimately lifted the Hebrew religion to the highest plane attained by any pre-Christian faith. After the first manifestation of this new spirit in the person of Elijah there came a time of apparent retro gression. Elisha was by no means the spiritual equal of his great predecessor. He was the leader of the guild of ecstatic prophets, and once when an oracle was re quired of him, employed artificial means to produce the prophetic ecstasy in himself (II Kings 3: 15). Elisha anointed Jehu to be king and encouraged him in the name of Yahweh to undertake a reform. Jehu's treach erous methods and bloody massacre of the devotees of Baal (II Kings 10: 18-28) reveal anything but the dominance of an ethical spirit. In this bloody work he was aided by the Rechabites, the living exponents of the nomadic ideal. Their religion was not more ethical than that of the bloody king. In spite, however, of barbarities perpetrated in Yah weh's name the century between Elijah and the E docu ment was not without fruit. Spiritual awakening and ethical advance generally occur in times of social press ure, and the fruitage of the movement begun by Elijah is apparent in the moral decalogue of the E document. 90 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL In this document these ethical commands stand before even the agricultural laws, and are thus given special prominence. Three of them are in substance identical with commands of the decalogue of J, but the ritual features of that decalogue were relegated to a place among the laws at the end of the Book of the Covenant. These ten commands, as then set forth, were simple and brief. While negative — declaring simply what must not be done — they marked out for all time the ethical foundations of Yahweh's religion, and prepared the way for the work of the great prophets who were to follow. Stripped of later editorial additions, they are : I. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 2. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image.1 3. Thou shalt not lift up the name of Yahweh in vain (i. e., thou shalt not swear to a lie). 4. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. 5. Honor thy father and thy mother. 6. Thou shalt do no murder. 7. Thou shalt not commit adultery. 8. Thou shalt not steal. 9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. 10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house. In this decalogue but three of the commands are iden tical with commands in that earlier decalogue, which, it 1 This command goes a step farther than the decalogue of J and prohibits even cheap idols. PRE-PROPHETIC PERIOD IN CANAAN 9 1 has been conjectured, goes back to the time of Moses. For the seven ritual commands of the other decalogue ethical requirements are substituted, or, to be more accurate, unethical conduct is prohibited. The question naturally arises: when and where did these commands originate, and how were they substituted for the corre sponding ritualistic commands in the decalogue of J? These questions cannot in the present state of our knowl edge be definitely answered. It is a plausible conjec ture that these commands were conceived by Elijah and his followers to be more in accord with the demands of Yahweh, the champion of social justice, than the ritual istic decalogue of J. Indeed it is tempting to think that certain features of this decalogue were suggested by the trial and execu tion of Naboth and the confiscation of his property by Ahab and Jezebel. It is true that the prohibition of murder, theft and adultery are regulations that suit well any period of Israel's history. They record the people's ethical aversion to deeds that must for a long time have been considered wrong. Similarly the obligation to honour father and mother registers, probably, a sense of filial duty that had been growing from the time of the emergence of the patriarchal family. This is not true of all, however. The modification of J's first command to read: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," or " in my presence," may well have been suggested by Elijah's war on the Baals, which was in part precipi tated by the introduction by Jezebel of the worship of 92 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL her ancestral Tyrian gods. The prohibition of cheap idols in the second commandment may also be plausibly connected with the same effort to differentiate the wor ship of Yahweh from that of Baal. " Thou shalt not swear to a lie," may have been called forth by the dire consequences of such conduct at the trial of Naboth (I Kings 21:10). The commands against bearing false witness and against coveting, which conclude this decalogue may with equal probability have been sug gested by the Naboth incident. While some scholars still insist that this decalogue must have originated with Moses, because no later period seems suited to its intro duction, the hypothesis that the impetus to its compila tion was given by Elijah and that it was compiled among his disciples is a more satisfactory explanation of the facts. As the basis of the covenant at Horeb had not been put in writing in the time of Moses, it would not be difficult in the course of a hundred years for the belief to become general in the northern kingdom, where Elijah had preached, that these were the genuine ten commands of Moses. In this case the substitution in the oral tradition would be easy. The J document, written in Judah about the time Elijah was doing his work in Israel, naturally adhered to the older form of the tradi tion. TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY. i. The Influence of the National Traditions on the Religion of this Period; cf. J. P. Peters, The Religion of the Hebrews, Boston, 1914, ch. vi. PRE-PROPHETIC PERIOD IN CANAAN 93 2. Religion as reflected in the Early Literature; cf. H. P. Smith, The Religion of Israel, ch. v. 3. The Temple of Solomon; cf. articles "Temple" in Hast ings, Dictionary of the Bible and the Encyclopaedia Biblica, and " Temple of Solomon " in the Jewish Encyclopedia; also G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, New York, 1908, Vol. II, pp. 48-82, and G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1916, pp. 193-196. 4. The Development of Priesthood in this Period; cf. J. P. Peters, Religion of the Hebrews, ch. vii. 5. The Date of the Decalogue; cf. G. A. Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins, Social and Religious, New York-, 1902, pp. 292-295, and in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible in One Vol ume, pp. 410, 411; J. P. Peters, The Religion of the Hebrews, pp. 96-110; Morris Jastrow, Jr., Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions, New York, 1914, pp. 162 ff. 174, 184, and 283 ; W. F. Bade, The Old Testament in the Light of To day, Boston, 1916, pp. 87-131, and the articles on " The Mosaic Origin of the Decalogue " by J. E. McFadyen in The Expositor for 1916. CHAPTER VI THE PROPHETS OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY The Great Personalities — Amos and Monotheism — Yahweh's Demands Ethical — Ritual denounced — Amos preached Fear ; Hosea, Love — Hosea's Marriage — Isaiah's Message — Critical Theories — Isaiah's Messianic Hope — The Message of Micah — Isaiah and Sen nacherib — Jerusalem Yahweh's Dwelling-Place — Isaiah's Com promise with Ritual — Hezekiah's Reform. The history of every great religion is at times the his tory of a great man or a group of great men. Spiritual and ethical insight comes to great souls, and it is only as they lift their fellows to their own level that advances are made. It thus happens that the progress of the religion of Israel in the eighth century B.C. is bound up with the personal experiences and thoughts of four men — Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah. As noted in a previous chapter, the ninth and eighth centuries B.C. were times of great ferment in Israel, and in this ferment a new social conscience had been born. Elijah, in the ninth century, had been its exponent, and the author of the E document had collected social laws shaped in response to it, but with the shepherd-prophet Amos, the earliest of the eighth-century literary proph ets, there began a new movement upward and forward. The teaching of Amos embodied four important ele ments, two of which, if not entirely new, were put with such new emphasis as to be practically so. 94 THE PROPHETS OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY 95 The first of these elements or doctrines is monotheism. The monotheism of Amos was not a philosophical theory of the universe ; Amos did not declare that there is and can be only one God. It was a practical monotheism reached apparently in consequence of the prophet's per sonal experience of the righteousness and power of Yahweh. However he attained his faith, Amos clearly believed that Yahweh ruled all the nations. He does not, like the E document, recognize the reality of other gods, nor like Jeremiah formally deny their existence. He simply ignores them and tells how Yahweh rules the nations. Yahweh brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the Aramaeans from Kir (Amos 9:7). The Phil istines, Damascus, Moab, Edom, and all the nations mentioned are responsible to Yahweh for their acts and are to be judged by him (chaps. 1,2). This monotheistic thought of the shepherd of Tekoah was big with the fate of the progress of the race. Egypt's thinkers had begun to grope after a sort of monotheistic thought earlier than the fourteenth century, but never really reached it in any practical way. Of the conceptions proposed by Ikhnaton (Amenophis IV) they would have none.1 The Babylonian priests at some period had conceived all the other gods as differ ent forms of Marduk2 but the conception had never 1 See Breasted, History of Egypt, 2nd ed., New York, 1909, chap, xviii, and Steindorf, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, New York, 1905, pp. 57 ff. 2 See the text translated by Pinches in the Transactions of the Vic toria Institute, XXVIII, pp. 8 f. 96 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL become of practical religious value. In India, perhaps as early as Amos, men were talking of the Brahma, or Brahma-Atman, as the ultimate principle of life,1 but potent as the idea was in later Indian thought, it never exerted the creatively ethical influence upon the race that the monotheism of Amos has done. Some 2 have sup posed that Amos was influenced by the abstract thought of the priesthoods of Egypt and Babylon — that he gave practical expression to a monotheistic conception that was, as it were, in the air. In reality there was no such conception in the air even in Babylon.3 When one sees how unaffected Palestinian shepherds today are by sys tems of thought which have dwelt for centuries in the cities of their own land, he is slow to believe that Amos was at all influenced by speculations of distant priest hoods. Amos's thought grew out of the old conceptions of Yahweh as a holy and jealous God, and the ethical and spiritual discoveries of his own soul. It may have been to some degree aided by the division of Israel into two monarchies or nations. When Yahweh became the God of two nations the frontiers of religion were en larged. If he controlled two nations why not more than two?4 Amos applied his conception of Yahweh's na- 1 Cf . Bloomfield, Religion of the Veda, New York, 1908, pp. 87, 211. 2 So Baentsch, Altorientalischer und israelitischer Monotheismus, Tubingen, 1906. 3 Cf. G. F. Moore, History of Religions, Vol. I, New York, 1913, p. 242, and G. A. Barton, Religions of the World, Chicago, 1917, p. 26. 4 Cf. J. M. P. Smith, " The Effect of the Disruption on the Hebrew Thought of God," in the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, XXXII (1916), pp. 261-269. THE PROPHETS OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY 97 ture in the terms, not of abstract thought, but of practical ethical endeavour, and his conception and his application of it were shared by the other literary prophets of the century. The monotheism of Amos became effective be cause it was closely coupled with his ardent champion ship of social righteousness. In the eighth century Israel was economically very prosperous. The rich were growing richer, the poor, poorer, and the rich were oppressing the poor. Social corruption was fos tered not only by wealth, but by religion. Amos pro claimed Yahweh as the God of social righteousness. Yahweh demanded justice and fair play for the op pressed, purity and chastity in personal life (see 2 : 6, 7 ; 5:11, 12, 14, 24; 8:4-7). Yahweh had of all the nations of the world chosen Israel alone, but this choice, far from being a guaranty of his favour, demanded of her a higher righteousness (3:2). In this aspect of his teaching, Amos continued and intensified the message of Elijah. The religion of Yahweh as conceived by Amos was not only socially ethical, but it was that alone. Ritual formed no part of it. Sacrifices and burnt offerings had no place in it. These, Amos declared, were no part of Yahweh's original covenant (5:25). In most em phatic terms he proclaims Yahweh's displeasure and even abhorrence of the sacrificial feasts (4:4, 5; 5: 21-24). In that age of the world, when in every land animal sacrifices were regarded as a necessary element of re ligion, this was a very radical position. 98 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL As the message of Amos was a call to righteousness, it was also a proclamation of punishment. That sin brings doom — that Israel's sin will bring punishment and destruction to Israel — is stated by him in many forms (3:2, 11, 1254: 2, 3, 12; 5: 1-3, 27; 6: 1, 2, 7; 8 : 10-14). This threat of punishment is the only mo tive for a righteous life which Amos presented. He assumes that the people can do right, and that if they so do, all will be well, but the one reason which he urges to persuade them to righteousness is the fear of doom. The preaching of Amos came as a bugle-call to awaken the conscience of the nation. Though Yahweh was bound to them by covenant, not by kinship, many had lulled themselves into security by the heathen doc trine that their God could not abandon them. Amos awakened such by threatening doom to wicked Israel — a doom all the more sure because she was Yahweh's chosen — reminding them that Yahweh was with them only on condition that they sought good, not evil (5 : 14, 15). Great as was the message of Amos, it was in some respects defective. Fear of punishment is not the high est motive for right doing; but Amos offered no other. Yahweh, as proclaimed by him, was an ethical, but not a loving God. As Amos portrayed him, he was cold and unfeeling. These defects in the preaching of Amos were soon supplied by his younger contemporary, Hosea. Larger vision of God has often entered a soul through a door opened by sorrow. According to the view of THE PROPHETS OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY 99 the story of Hosea's marriage which has prevailed for a generation, this is believed to be true of Hosea. A man of tender and loyal affections, he had married a wife whom he dearly loved, but who proved to be untrue to him. As he yearned over her, pondering on the heart-breaking blight that had fallen on his life, he saw in it a revelation of the relation between Yahweh and Israel. The covenant of Sinai was a covenant of mar riage. The unethical worship which was practised by Hebrews all about him was in his view really worship of Baal. It was as much infidelity to Yahweh as Go- mer's life with her lovers was infidelity to Hosea. But the heavenly husband was not less loving than the earthly, and the measure of his own unquenchable love for Gomer became to Hosea a revelation of Yahweh's unconquerable love for Israel. Gomer left Hosea's home and led the life of a fallen woman till she fell into slavery; Hosea then bought her back, placed her apart where she was protected from her own evil pro pensities, and tried to win back her affection. So he believed Yahweh would bring affliction upon Israel — would bring her into the wilderness apart, where he could court her again and win back her love. Another view of Hosea's marital experiences has re cently been proposed,1 which rests upon a less forced exegesis of the text. According to this view Hosea was a prophet before he was married at all; at Yahweh's 1 J. M. P. Smith in the Biblical World, XLII, 94-101, and Amos, Hosea, and Micah in the Bible for Home and School, p. 80 f. ICO THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL command he married a woman of the street, known to be a harlot, and gave to the children born of the union names which had a prophetic significance. This was all done as an object lesson to Israel. According to this view Hosea regarded himself as the spokesman and rep resentative of Yahweh. Anything that he regarded as Yahweh's command had binding force upon him. That the action was abnormal would not deter him, for many of the prophets adopted abnormal courses in order for cibly to express by symbol Yahweh's will.1 The action of the prophet was not designed to express the way in which the relations which existed between Yahweh and Israel began, but the condition in which they actually were at the time. According to this theory the story of Hosea's marriage emphasizes his self-sacrifice as a prophet, but leaves unexplained how he became a prophet. Whatever doubt may attach to interpretations of the story of Hosea's marriage, it is certain that he became the prophet of the love of Yahweh — not love as it had been grossly conceived in the worship of the old Semitic goddesses of fertility, but the pure love of an affectionate husband — a love that survives the grossest wrong. In his interpretation of the love of Yahweh, Hosea sup plied a new motive, and that the most powerful, for re form and ethical righteousness. Israel's sin not only injured herself, but broke the heart of Yahweh. Yah weh did not stand apart from her struggles as a threat- 1 See Isa. 20:1-5; Jer. 16: if.; Eze. 4:7-15, 24:16-18. THE PROPHETS OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY IOI ening judge; he stood ready to help with all the inspir ing influences of an infinitely loving companionship. Hosea fully shared the ethical enthusiasm of Amos. He falls not a whit behind that prophet in proclaiming Yahweh as a God who loves righteousness, champions the oppressed, punishes wickedness, and takes no delight in ritual and sacrifices; but he employs the various figures of the tenderest family relationships as symbols of Yah weh's love in his endeavour to make his contemporaries realize this hitherto unsuspected aspect of Yahweh's character — this new interpretation of the covenant of Horeb — this new motive to righteous living. In the kingdom of Judah the prophet Isaiah a little later, perhaps before the death of Hosea, took up the message of Amos and Hosea, and continued in various ways to proclaim it through a ministry of forty years. The great poetic gifts of Isaiah and the close relation in which he stood to the kings Ahaz and Hezekiah have made his name the most prominent of all the prophetic circle, so that the work of other prophets has been at tributed to his pen. His genuine prophecies, however, exhibit the same monotheistic conceptions, picture Yah weh as possessing the same passion for righteousness in his people, and as feeling the same abhorrence of the re ligious ceremonies of unethical men, that appear in the works of his two predecessors (see, e.g., Isa., 1 : 12-17) • This gifted aristocrat and adviser of kings championed the down-trodden poor with all the ardour of the Tekoan shepherd. 102 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Isaiah, like his earlier contemporaries, saw a vision of a higher religious life. He believed that Yahweh de manded that life. It was a life essentially ethical. The ritual of the day with costly holocausts had no place in it. With all his gifts he sought to make his people see his vision and live this life. Sometimes he compares Israel to a stupid child (1:2, 3), sometimes to a vine yard (5: 1-7). In each case Yahweh, the father or owner, is keenly disappointed in the returns which he gains from his possessions. If the figures are not as often from the same tender sphere as those of Hosea, the lesson taught is the same, and it is embodied in poetry of greater literary charm. In one respect the conception of Yahweh presented by Hosea and Isaiah was defective. Both thought of him as caring chiefly for Israel, and as caring for other nations only for their influence upon Israel. Isaiah, for example, speaks of Assyria simply as the rod with which Yahweh in his anger is to chastise Israel. When the chastisement is over, the rod is to be broken and thrown away (Isa., 10:5 ff.). Yahweh is thought to care no more for Assyria than a father does for the switch with which he whips his boy; his love is centred in the boy. In the prophecies of Isaiah as they have come down to us we come upon the beginnings of the Messianic hope. Before considering this, however, it will be help ful to take note of some modern critical theories. In a series of articles published in 1881-1884,1 Stade began 1 In the Zeitschrift fur alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. THE PROPHETS OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY 103 to relegate Messianic prophecies in Isaiah and Micah to the time after the exile. This work has been carried forward since by Soerensen, Guthe, Giesebrecht, Duhm, Cheyne, Hackmann, Bruckner, Volz and Marti.1 In the Commentaries of Marti,2 the movement reaches its cli max. It is held that every Messianic prophecy must be post-exilic. Many who do not follow Marti entirely find it hard to detect in the time before the exile definite periods when Messianic prophecy was possible. On the other hand Gressmann 3 and Oesterley 4 have en deavoured to show that Messianic prophecy presupposes the presence in Israel of certain myths out of which Messianic expectations were woven, that these myths were actually present in the time before the exile, and that, not the outward circumstances of the time, but the presence of these myths, makes Messianic prophecy pos sible in these centuries. Marti and his school are wrong, in the judgment of the present writer, in holding that the utterances of a prophet must all fit into the events of the period in which he lived, as we in looking back see those events. A prophet may well have entertained hopes that did not in all details come true. He must, however, have 1 See the excellent summary of their work by Fullerton in the Har vard Theological Revieiu, VI, pp. 478-520. 2 His Jesiah, Tubingen, 1900, and his Dodekapropheten, Tubingen, 1903, 1904. 3 Ur sprung der israelitisck-judischen Esckatologie, Tubingen, 1905, and American Journal of Theology, XVII, pp. 173-194. * Evolution of the Messianic Idea, New York, 1908. 104 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL had hopes, or he could not have been a prophet. It is possible that there may be some elements of truth in the theory of Gressmann and Oesterley. In the ut terances of an Egyptian sage who lived more than 2000 years B.C., the conception of an ideal king, who once lived on the earth as the god Re, before whom all in justice flees, is set forth.1 Several scholars have thought that some tradition of this ancient Egyptian ideal may have reached Israel and have been cherished there. If the tradition of the Tale of Two Brothers influenced the Joseph story, as we have supposed in ch. 2, it is possible that the ideal king of this Egyptian sage, Ipuwer, may have also been cher ished in Israel, and may have influenced the Messianic idea. Such influence, if it existed, would account for the name " god of a warrior " in Isa., 9 : 6. Such influence, though possible, is by no means certain. Indeed, the more the present writer studies the messianic prophecies of Isaiah, the more clear it seems to him that they grew naturally out of ideas that were ready to Isaiah's hand in the common stock of Hebrew thought, and that the greatest of them are the utterances of Isaiah himself. This seems to be true of Isa., 9 : 2-6 and 1 1 : 1-8. For the first of these passages (Isa., 9:2-6) there is no period in the whole course of prophetic activity which presents so fitting and probable a background as the war of 735 B. c. 1 See Gardiner, The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage, Leipzig, 1908, p. 78. THE PROPHETS OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY 1 05 In the time of Saul and David the king himself had been the Messiah or " the Lord's Anointed " (I Sam., 24: 10; II Sam. 22:51). In Isaiah's time the glories of the Davidic empire had long passed. In the year 735 a weakling, Ahaz, was on the throne of Judah. Two more powerful kings were threatening Jerusalem. Isaiah's hopes leaped forward to a time when Israel should again be ruled by a worthy prince. He took as the ideal pattern the Assyrian statesman and general, Tiglathpileser IV, describing his ideal prince as a Won der-counsellor, a god of a warrior, a Father of booty,1 and a Prince of peace (Isa., 9:5). He was to be great in planning battles, terrible in fighting them, rich in the resulting plunder, and great in ability to rule the conquered territory in peace. This is the ideal of a young man in whose veins hot blood still courses. In his later years the prophet drew a different picture. In these hopes of Isaiah's young manhood, however, we have the first powerful literary expression of an ideal, which, transformed as the centuries went on, exerted a creative influence upon Christianity. Between the time of Isaiah's earlier prophecies and his later ones the prophecies of Micah, chaps. 1-3, were uttered.2 Micah lived at Maresha, called in the Greek period Marissah, near the modern Beit Gibrin. His home was in the foot- 1 The word translated usually " eternal " is here to be taken as "booty," or "prey" as in Gen. 49:27. 2 The rest of the Book of Micah belongs to a later time — a time not earlier than the seventh century. 106 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL hills of Judea, just on the Philistine border. His prophecies were uttered, perhaps, about 713-71 1 B.C., when Sargon chastised Ashdod. Though living in a different environment, Micah was thoroughly at one with the other prophets of the cen tury in his teaching. Like theirs, his faith was monothe istic; he believed Yahweh to be supreme (cf. 1 : 3, 4, 10- 16; 3: 1). His presentation of Yahweh's demands for social righteousness is no less insistent than theirs (chap. 2) . The cultus of the period with its sacrifices and im moral practices, he, like the others, denounces (1: 5). Finally Micah's threat of judgment for sin falls little short of that of Amos in the intensity of its earnestness. If Micah does not materially advance the religious teach ing of the time beyond his contemporaries, he is thor oughly abreast of them in proclaiming the creative thoughts of the period. The later prophecies of Isaiah which in this hasty glance we have time to notice are connected with the invasion of Palestine by Sennacherib. The writer agrees with those scholars1 who hold it probable that Sennacherib made two expeditions against Judah. In the first of these in the year 701 B.C., Heze kiah submitted and paid a heavy tribute, as is recorded 1 This view was advocated by Winckler, Alttestamentliche Un- tersuchungen, Berlin, 1892, pp. 27-50; Prasek, Sanhertb's FeldzUge gegen Juda, Berlin, 1903 ; Fullerton, Bibliotheca Sacra, LXIII, pp. 577- 634; Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament, New York, 1912, pp. 332-340- THE PROPHETS OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY 1 07 both in II Kings 18: 14-16 and in Sennacherib's own account of the expedition. A considerable portion of Judaean territory was, at this time, given by Sennacherib to his Philistine vassals. It was on his second expedi tion, which occurred after the accession of Taharkah, king of Egypt, in the year 691 or 688 B.C., that the dis aster described in II Kings 19: 9-35, and which is also mentioned in Herodotus, occurred.1 Hezekiah, contrary to the advice of Isaiah, had joined a coalition to throw off the Assyrian yoke. Sennacherib, having defeated the armies of Hezekiah and his allies in the Philistine plain, sent a summons to Jerusalem to surrender, threatening a siege and destruction if his summons were not heeded. In this crisis Isaiah declared that Yahweh would come down and pro tect Jerusalem and that the Assyrian should be destroyed (Isa., 31: 5, 8). The prophet could denounce unspir- itual ritual (1:3), but he really did not yet see that the religion of Yahweh could live without a temple. Some sort of external form was necessary for the faith ; some external dwelling necessary for Yahweh. The faith of Isaiah was signally justified. Sennach erib had sent his main army to inflict punishment upon Egypt, the strongest member of the coalition which had 1 This view presupposes that Hezekiah reigned longer than is usually supposed, and that the reign of Manasseh was somewhat shorter than the period assigned to it in Kings. It is needless to say that not all interpreters concur in this view. To the writer it seems most reasonable. 108 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL opposed him. While on its way to Egypt the army was attacked by bubonic plague x and so decimated that the Assyrian had to withdraw. Jerusalem had escaped; the prophetic word was vindicated; the power of the hated conqueror was curbed. The effect of this event was far-reaching. Yahweh had not permitted Judah to suffer the fate which twenty years before had overtaken Israel. He had shown, both by the word of his prophet and by his destruction of the Assyrians, that Jerusalem was indeed his dwelling-place, and from this time on Jerusalem occupied a new place in the affections and faith of the Jews. The lapse of more than two hundred years had already softened the aver sion caused by Solomon's departures from orthodox practices in the equipment of the temple, but until this time Jerusalem had been but one of the many shrines of Israel. From this time onward it was more and more regarded as the earthly home of Yahweh, and that senti ment grew which has made it a sacred city to Jew, Chris tian, and Mohammedan. If we are not mistaken, it was in connection with the events of Sennacherib's invasion that Isaiah uttered an other messianic prophecy, setting forth the picture of 1 This seems the real ground of the statement of II Kings 19:5, that the "angel of Yahweh smote the Assyrians" (cf. II Sam. 24:16ft., and Acts 12:23 for the association of the "angel" with sickness), and of Herodotus (Book II, § 141), that Sennacherib's camp was overrun at night by mice which ate up the bow-strings. Bubonic plague attacks rats and mice first and is by them spread to human beings. Cf. G. A. Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, New York, 1895, pp. 158 ff., and Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible in One Volume, p. 403, a. THE PROPHETS OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY 109 the messianic kingdom 1 which now stands in Isaiah 1 1 : 1-9. The foolishness of Hezekiah and the ruthlessness of Sennacherib had turned the prophet's thoughts again to the ideal social state. In his youth he had thought of the Wonder-counsellor who should fight and conquer, who should make Judah glorious ; now he thinks more of the social nature of the kingdom, and the ability of the Messiah to secure justice among its citizens. With lan guage of marvellous beauty and images of unsurpassed power he portrays a time when the wanton passions of men shall be subdued to a higher law, the cruelty of man to man shall cease, when They shall not harm nor destroy In all my holy mountain, For the earth shall be full of Yahweh's knowledge As the waters cover the sea. In this prophecy the social forces, the social conscience of the whole eighth century B.C. finds its highest expres sion, as well as the faith in Yahweh as a God of social righteousness which had animated each of the four great prophets of this century. These men, gifted with re- 1 Marti and others, of course, assign this prophecy to the time after the exile. Though Duhm had granted it to Isaiah's old age, Gray (Isaiah in the International Critical Commentary) holds that 11 :i im plies the fall of the Davidic dynasty, the word translated " stock " means " cutting " or " stump." The present writer has contended else where (Journal of Biblical Literature, XXXIII, p. 73) that the Hebrew word used means " cutting " and the Palestinian custom of cutting off the limbs of a growing tree for fire-wood makes it an appropriate metaphor for a reigning dynasty, many of the members of which hac] died. IIO THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL ligious insight beyond their fellows and endowed with a power of expression unsurpassed in its reach, while com prehensible by the most untutored, had for ever made it impossible for men, into whose hearts their words sank, to rest in the thought that religion could be divorced from ethics, or that God can ever be pleased with the praises of those in whose hearts is no pity for the unfor tunate poor or who traffic in the life-blood of their fel low-men. The teaching of these great prophets brought to a head and crystallized into definite form the protest against the baalization of the religion of Yahweh which Elijah had first raised. The causes of this protest were in part the antipathy which people usually feel to re ligious practices other than their own, but other and worthier motives were present also. Canaanite re ligious customs were emphatically more sensual than those of the simpler nomads, and against these sensual practices the awakened conscience of the prophets re volted. What cause they had to revolt he only fully appreciates who sees a high place, like that at Gezer, excavated and beholds the countless obscene emblems which were offered as votive tokens to the deities of fer tility. The wonder is that the teaching even of men like the great prophets of Israel ever lifted a peasantry, to whom such sensual indulgence was religion, out of their slough. The prophets gained a hearing because with a higher sexual morality they linked the cause of the poor who THE PROPHETS OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY III were oppressed by the rich. The poor man, then as now, was ready to listen to one who gave him practical help in the struggle for existence, even if the teaching to which he listened condemned some cherished indul gence. Isaiah, however, seems to have realized toward the end of his career that if the higher life, of which he and his fellow-prophets had gained a vision, was ever to be lived by his fellow-countrymen, it must be em bodied in some outward form which could not be con fused with the worship of the Canaanite Baals. As religion had been organized from the conquest to that time, this was not the case. Yahweh was worshipped in numerous high places, just as the Baals were. The high places of Yahweh had been high places of the Baals before they were his. He was worshipped in many of them by ceremonies which had crystallized long before his name was known in the land. No wonder that in the popular mind there was little distinction between Yahweh and Baals, or between the morality demanded by him and by them. It is not surprising, therefore, that we find Hezekiah, probably at Isaiah's suggestion, making an effort to give the worship of Yahweh a form of its own, which should make it for ever distinct. To this end he endeavoured to purify it of obscene emblems and to centralize its cult in Jerusalem. Pillars and asheras, the old sexual symbols of deity, were placed under the ban, and an endeavour was made to suppress all shrines except the one on Zion (see II 112 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Kings 18:4, 22). Such a reform was in accord with the declaration so often made by the prophetic group, that the sacrifices of the popular high places were really transgressions and that Yahweh took no delight in them. It was also in accord with Isaiah's conception that Zion was necessary to the perpetuity of the religion of Yahweh ; it was his dwelling-place — the city which he loved. No doubt in this effort at reform many time-honoured superstitious customs and practices were swept away. One of these was the worship of a brazen serpent (II Kings 18:4). Serpent worship among early peoples was widespread, if not universal. The excavation at Gezer has revealed striking evidence of its practice there during the Hebrew period.1 This, with other symbols which obscured the ethical and spiritual Yahweh, was swept away. On the other hand, the reform was a recognition that the new and higher religious conceptions of a people must link themselves with the religious forms of their past. Yahweh had, according to popular views, shared apparently by Isaiah himself (Is. 6:1 ff.), long had dwellings in their midst, or at least places where he habitually manifested himself. After the reform, he still had one. The ritual of the Jerusalem temple had had a continuous existence of more than two hundred years; it represented elements of worship inherited from 1 See R. A. S. Macalister, Excavation of Gezer, II, 399, or Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, p. 171 and Fig. 219a. THE PROPHETS OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY 113 Israel's remote Semitic ancestry. This ritual was puri fied and retained. Apparently Isaiah and his royal co- labourer hoped that by this reform the conditions of progress had been met, and that the ideals which had been so forcefully set forth in the prophetic preaching of half a century would now be embodied in the religion and ethics of a nation. Was Judah ready for such a reform as this? We shall see in the next chapter. TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. The Eighth Century in Israel; cf. G. A. Smith, The Book of the Twelve Prophets, New York, 1896, ch. iii. 2. Amos, the Man and his Work; cf. G. A. Smith, Ibid, ch. vi. 3. Hosea, the Man and his Work; cf. G. A. Smith, Ibid, chapters xii and xiii; also J. M. P. Smith, Amos, Hosea, and Micah, pp. 77-82 (in The Bible for Home and School). 4. The Composition of the Book of Isaiah; cf. G. B. Gray, Isaiah, pp. xxix— lix (in the International Critical Commentary) . 5. The Campaigns of Sennacherib ; cf. K. Fullerton in Bibli otheca Sacra, LXIII, pp. 577-634; R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament, pp. 332-340; G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1916, pp. 374 ff. 6. The Dating of Messianic Prophecy; cf. K. Fullerton in the Harvard Theological Review, VI, pp. 478-520, and G. A. Barton in the Journal of Biblical Literature, XXXIII, pp. 68- 74- CHAPTER VII DEUTERONOMY AND JEREMIAH The Reaction under Manasseh — Micah 6 — The Deuteronomic Law — Its Introduction as the Law of the Land — The Young Jeremiah — Five New Truths — Heathen Deities non-Existent — Yahweh God of all Nations — Religion Inward — Individual Responsibility — Ezekiel and Jeremiah. With the accession of Manasseh, 696 B. c, reaction ary sentiment became for a time supreme in Judah. There were many causes which contributed to this end. Hezekiah had denied to many of the smaller towns of the land the right to worship in their ancestral high places and had made an effort to make Jerusalem the only legitimate place of sacrifice. This was naturally as much resented by the people of the provincial cities as an effort to close all churches in England except one central cathedral in London would anger the popula tion of the provinces. It was a movement which im posed upon them great inconveniences and which struck heavy blows at local pride. Each city was naturally jealous of the honour of its own high place. In addition to this the reform demanded that the people of outly ing towns should desist from hoary religious practices. It required them to believe that religion was a matter of the heart to a degree hitherto unknown, and that sac- 114 DEUTERONOMY AND JEREMIAH 1 1 5 rifice was a ceremony, to be participated in only on the rare occasions when they went to Jerusalem. Such a religion the prophets of the eighth century had indeed proclaimed, but the majority of the population had never been seriously disposed to accept it. Another strong reason for the reaction lay in the su perstitious veneration of the people for their high places. From time immemorial these had been the abodes of Yahweh — the places where he was wont to manifest himself. Semitic conceptions of holiness led the people to believe that a sort of divine energy resided in the sacred soil of these places. If they were pro faned or .this energy were not propitiated, all sorts of disasters might be expected to overtake the neighbouring towns. Again, there were powerful priesthoods connected with these shrines. These were thrown out of business by the reform. When their pockets were touched and their livelihood endangered, we may be sure that they did their utmost to inflame the pride, religious rever ence, and superstition of the people to the highest de gree. Manasseh, sympathizing with this numerous class of his subjects, restored the high places, and gave the reac tionaries the encouragement of his royal protection. A tradition preserved in different forms in different parts of the Talmud declares that the prophet Isaiah was put to death by him. Reactionary movements generally carry their adher- Il6 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL ents, not simply back to their original positions, but beyond them, and the reaction under Manasseh was no exception to the rule. Worship in Judah reverted to barbarous customs, once practised by all Semites, but which the Hebrews had, with a few notable exceptions, left behind them. The author of the Books of Kings tells us that the worship of Moloch, the god of the Ammonites, prevailed, and that the custom of sacrific ing children to him was adopted. If, however, we take the evidence afforded by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, it is clear that the worship referred to was not that of a foreign deity, but was worship of Yahweh under the title Melek, or king, and that the children were sacrificed to him.1 In the reaction Yahweh had come in the popular mind to stand for some of the crassest and most barbarous of primitive religious ceremonies. Such for the time seemed to be the result of the preaching of the great prophets of the eighth century. In this dark time, however, the prophetic ideals did not die. Here and there faithful souls cherished the vision which the teachers of the previous generation had enabled them to see. According to many scholars 2 it was at this period that a prophetic voice gave utter ance to the ethical definition of religion which now stands in Micah 6 : 6—8 : 1 See the articles " Moloch " in the Encyclopedia Biblica, Vol. Ill, and the Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII ; the former by G. F. Moore, the latter by the present writer. 2 Wellhausen and J. M. P. Smith, however, regard the. passage as post-exilic. DEUTERONOMY AND JEREMIAH 117 Wherewith shall I come before Yahweh? . . . Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, And the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? ... Yea, what does Yahweh seek from thee, But to do justice and love kindness And to walk humbly with thy God ? Such a statement gains great force, if uttered against a background of altars reeking with human blood. Scholars are agreed that it was at this period, when much active teaching was impossible, that a disciple of the eighth-century prophets, or a group of disciples, produced the kernel of the Deuteronomic code, which consisted, excepting some later additions, of Deut., chaps 5-26, and 28: 1-46. This code was in an im portant sense the Book of the Covenant (Exod., chaps. 20—23) revised and infused with the teachings of the eighth-century prophets. Among the many modifications which were introduced the most drastic were those which demanded a reform identical with that which had been attempted in the reign of Hezekiah and had so signally failed. The law which had permitted a multiplicity of shrines (Exod. 20: 24-26) was transformed into a law which permit ted but one (Deut., chap. 12). Pillars and Asheras, which Hosea had regarded as the natural accompani ments of a cult (Hos. 3:4), were to be uprooted (Deut. 7:5), and the social impurity fostered in the name of religion was prohibited (Deut. 23:17). Many cus toms of agricultural and social life had moved about Il8 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL the local sanctuaries as centres; in the new code care was taken that the centralization of the ritual should not work too great inconvenience or hardship. The ears of slaves who elected perpetual slavery had been of old pierced against a post at the local sanctuary (Exod. 21 : 6). Lest it should be a hardship to make a journey to a distant city, it was now provided that it could be done against the door-post of the house (Deut. 15:17). Formerly the local altar had been the sanctuary at which one who accidentally killed an other could find refuge from the primitive law of blood revenge (Exod. 21 : 12-14). For such a man to have to flee to the altar in distant Jerusalem might, in a land where many were not Marathon racers, rob him of his one chance of life. Three cities of refuge were ac cordingly established to take over this function of the local shrines (Deut. 19:3-7). In providing for the feasts this code is more definite than the older require ments of J and E. They had simply required three feasts, stating that one of them should be held in the month Abib. Deuteronomy gives more definite dates for the celebration of the other two festivals (Deut. chap. 16). One finds a more humanitarian spirit in the code of Deuteronomy than in the Book of the Covenant. The work of the eighth-century prophets had borne fruit, and greater provision was made for the needs of the poor and the unfortunate. For example, a slave who, at the appointed year chooses his freedom, is not as in DEUTERONOMY AND JEREMIAH 119 the older code, sent away empty (Exod. 21 : 4-6), but is to be given some provision with which to make a new start in life (Deut. 15: 13-15). The needs of slaves, and even of animals, are thoughtfully considered (Deut. 5:13-15; 25:4). While this code was, we believe, formulated in the dark reign of Manasseh, the time to promulgate it had not come. The prophetic party must wait. The long reign of Manasseh passed at last, Amon ruled but two years, and then the boy Josiah came to the throne. As he grew to manhood the advocates of purer religion discerned in him a kindred spirit, and when in his eighteenth year a royal order was given for the repair of the temple, the propitious time for re form was thought to have come. The new law was " found " there and read to the king. The king was greatly shocked. If this was really the law of Moses the nation was indeed in a sorry state, for it had never been observed. The days of paleography and of higher criticism had not then dawned. Desiring to know whether the new law was really the Law of Moses, Jo siah resorted to a religious test; he submitted it to an aged prophetess named Huldah. She declared it to be the genuine law; it met her views of what the original requirements of the Mosaic code should have been, for it was designed to meet the needs of the religious situa tion of the hour as she understood them. Accepting this prophetic witness as to the character of the law, Josiah set himself to carry it into effect, and a great 120 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL religious reform was undertaken similar to that at tempted in the preceding century (II Kings, chaps. 22, 23)- It has been frequently said by those unwilling to ac cept the results of modern critical study, that if this is the true account of the origin and introduction of Deu teronomy the prophetic party was guilty of fraud, and, if guilty of fraud, the book would be unworthy to form a part of divine revelation. This is not, however, a valid objection. Ethics as well as revelation has been progressive, and it is unfair to judge ancient men by standards which have become ruling ideals only since they died. The conduct of those who secured the in troduction of Deuteronomy was quite in accord with the best conscience of that age. No man of that time stood nearer to the ideal standard than Jeremiah; no man in the whole pre-Christian period carried revela tion forward by greater strides than he. Nevertheless Jeremiah, at the instigation of King Zedekiah, once took a course not in accord with the highest ethics (Jer. 38: 14-27). Five years before the finding of the law Jeremiah, then a very young man, had begun to prophesy. Dur ing the early years of his prophetic activity a great ter ror hung over the land. Assyria was rapidly declin ing in power, but hordes of barbarians were streaming along the Philistine lowlands and threatening to over run the land; Herodotus calls them Scythians. Pour ing into Asia from what is now southern Russia, they DEUTERONOMY AND JEREMIAH 121 had half a century before this overrun large tracts to the south of the Black Sea; now they moved southward to the borders of Egypt (Herodotus i, 105). The earlier prophecies of Jeremiah are filled with gloomy forebodings of a disaster which is coming from the north, and it is probable that these Scythians were in his thoughts to be the agents of this catastrophe. The little book of Zephaniah, which is from beginning to end a gloomy prediction of woe, was probably written under the shadow of the coming of this horde. Per haps it was fear that Yahweh was thus about to bring chastisement upon the land for not having observed his law that led Josiah so readily to inaugurate his re form when the law book was discovered. The accomplishment of the reform undertaken by Josiah was no less difficult than it had been eighty years before when undertaken by Hezekiah. The same forces of personal convenience, religious reverence, su perstition, and self-interest that had then defeated it were arrayed against it now, and years of strenuous labour on the part of the prophetic party were necessary to secure its observance. Into this work the young Jeremiah threw himself with ardour, and the notes of the sermons of this period which the book of his prophecies contains have for their theme the various aspects of this struggle. Just after the death of Assurbanipal (626 B.C.) Babylon had, under a Chaldean dynasty, gained her in dependence. Assyria during the next twenty years rap- 122 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL idly declined to her fall. The twenty-sixth dynasty, es tablished now on the throne of Egypt, was ambitious to rebuild again Egypt's empire in Asia. Thus it came about that in the year 608 Necho marched into Asia with an invading army. Josiah, apparently thinking that the time was propitious to restore the empire of his great ancestor, David, met Necho at Megiddo in battle, but was defeated and killed. This is not the place to recount the political events which followed. How Nechp for four years made Judah a vassal of Egypt, how he was then defeated by Nebuchadnezzar at Car chemish, how Judah passed under Babylonian control, how certain prophets and others continually sought by the aid of Egypt to sever the bonds which bound Judah to Babylon, how Jeremiah continually opposed these, declaring that it was Yahweh's will that his land should remain under Babylonian protection, how Jehoiakim and Zedekiah disregarded Jeremiah's teaching and brought on the captivities of 597 and 586, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem, and how Jeremiah he roically suffered during all this time, are matters of --common knowledge. Jeremiah during his ministry advanced the religious conception of his people in several respects. He re vived the main features of the teaching of Hosea, dwelling as Hosea had done on the love of Yahweh and interpreting the covenant between Yahweh and Israel as a covenant of marriage. In tenderness and depth of feeling he surpasses all his predecessors except DEUTERONOMY AND JEREMIAH 123 Hosea. As the tragic events through which he lived drove Jeremiah to seek anew the foundation of life, he gained new light on five important points, advancing in as many particulars the progress of revelation. Jeremiah was the first Hebrew known to us who reached a theoretical monotheism. Others, as we have seen, had been practical monotheists, but it remained for Jeremiah to declare that the gods of the heathen were vanities — mere figments of the imagination (10: 15; 14: 22). The second point in which Jeremiah advanced the thought of his people was the declaration that Yahweh was willing to become the God of the nations as well as the God of the Jews — that he would welcome the repentant heathen to his worship (16: 17-21). Since the recognition of this fact was necessary to the estab lishment of a religion that should be in any sense uni versal, this was a long step forward. The third important point in Jeremiah's teaching is his conception of the inwardness of religion. To the prophets of the eighth century, religion was ethical; to Jeremiah it was an experience of the heart. To him the real covenant was not that at Horeb written upon tables of stone, but a covenant written upon the heart within ; not a law imposed upon the heart from without, but such an experience of Yahweh in the inner man that one does right from the impulses which spring from the soul (31:31-34)- Such was Jeremiah's concep tion of the religion of the future. The seer who could 124 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL take that step in religious thought was surely one of the greatest of the prophets. Because Jeremiah regarded religion as a change of heart rather than an outward institution the mainte nance of the ritual became to him a secondary consider ation. Isaiah had believed that the existence of the temple was vital to the religion of Yahweh, and the decimation of Sennacherib's army had vindicated this faith. So far as we can see, the destruction of the temple in Isaiah's time would have been disastrous to the Hebrew religion. Such a faith in the security of the temple might, however, lead to an over-confidence which would produce unethical results. Moreover the Mosaic covenant was now interpreted in a code which required the greater part of the people to dispense with sacrifice during the greater part of the year. Jere miah, conceiving religion as in its essence inward, was able, therefore, to declare that if the people sinned the temple would be destroyed, and the event justified his belief. Dearly as he loved the temple he could see it perish without losing his faith in Yahweh's presence and power. Jeremiah's other great contribution to religious thought was his assertion of individual responsibility. Among the Hebrews, as among other early Semites, the family or clan had been regarded as the moral unit. Not only had Achan, for example, been put to death for his sin, but his whole house and even his cattle (Josh. 7: 22—25). No very high type of ethical or religious DEUTERONOMY AND JEREMIAH 1 25 life was possible until the individual was regarded as the moral unit, and it is to the credit of Jeremiah that he led in asserting this fundamental truth (31 : 29, 30). In the year 592 Ezekiel, a young priest, who had been carried captive to Babylonia five years previously, be gan to prophesy, and it is one of the distinguishing fea tures of his work that he too championed the new doc trine of individualism (Ezek. chap. 18). Indeed he gives it a reasoned form and a detailed explanation such as the writings of Jeremiah, its enunciator, have not preserved. During the last six years before the fall of Jeru salem, Ezekiel in Babylonia was ably seconding the work of Jeremiah. The first twenty-four chapters of his book come from this period. It would seem that frequent messengers went back and forth between Jeru salem and Babylonia so that Ezekiel knew what was oc curring in Jerusalem, and his prophecies were known there. We learn from his book that the Deuteronomic reform and the lofty thoughts of Jeremiah had not touched the hearts of all. Women still worshipped Tammuz and men worshipped the sun and did homage to all sorts of animal totems, such as in primitive days their Semitic ancestors had thought to be an embodi ment of their gods. No nation moves forward in even ranks and Judah was no exception to the rule. Prophetic reformers might frame laws for the elevation of religion, and great souls might carry its thoughts forward to glorious 126 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL heights, but among the rank and file custom and super stition must be slowly outgrown. The heights have no attraction for many and to break with the past seems dangerous, so they inertly perpetuate outgrown customs, which have become meaningless. Yet the future lay with the type of religion which the great soul of Jere miah had discerned, which he had so powerfully taught, and for which through so many years he had suffered. TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY i. The Reaction under Manasseh; cf. " Molech " in the En cyclopaedia Biblica and " Moloch " in the Jewish Encyclopedia. 2. The problem of Deuteronomy; cf. " Deuteronomy" in the Encyclopaedia Biblica. 3. A Comparison of Deuteronomy with the Book of the Covenant: compare Ex. 20: 24-23 : 19 with Deut. 12-26 section by section using a reference Bible and a concordance as an aid in finding the parallel portions. 4. The Life and Work of Jeremiah; cf. H. P. Smith, The Religion of Israel, Chapter 9 and Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, Chicago, 1897. 5. The Structure of the Book of Jeremiah; cf. S. R. Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 9th ed. ch. iv, or Cornill, Introduction to the Canonical Books of the Old Testament, pp. 295-311. CHAPTER VIII THE EXILE AND THE REORGANIZED JEWISH STATE Ezekiel both Priest and Prophet — Ezekiel proposed Levites as Dis tinct Class — Cyrus — The Second Isaiah — Israel's Mission to teach Yahweh to World — Zerubbabel — Rebuilding of the Tem ple—The Third Isaiah — The Code of Holiness — The Priestly Document — Nehemiah — Introduction of the Priestly Law. Ezekiel, who, as a prophet in Babylonia, had so efficiently aided the work of Jeremiah during the six years immediately preceding the fall of Jerusalem, con tinued his prophetic work among the captives for more than fifteen years after the destruction of his native city. Before the close of his life he drew up a plan for the reorganization of the political and religious polity of his people, when their institutions should be again es tablished in their own land. This plan, thrown into the form of visions, now occupies chaps. 40—48 of the book of Ezekiel. In Ezekiel two streams of influence, once antagonis tic to each other, met and were reconciled. He was by birth a priest and by calling a prophet. The traditions of the priesthood were dear to him on account of early association and personal participation; the moral and spiritual aspirations of the prophets fired his soul and commanded the devotion of his powers. He therefore undertook to shape the ritual of the priesthood so that 127 128 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL it should become an instrument for the preservation and expression of the prophetic ideals. In this under taking he was but carrying on the work of the Deuter- onomist, for, as previously pointed out, the Deuter onomic code was a fusion of ritual with prophetic ideals. In this brief sketch we can notice but one aspect of Ezekiel's work, but it is the part of it which most pro foundly affected the institutions of Judaism. In Deu teronomy priests and Levites were synonymous terms; every Levite was a potential priest (see e.g., Deut. 18: 1-5). This Ezekiel changed. He tells us (44: 8-14) that in former times the menial work of the sanctuary, such as keeping the gates and slaying the sacrifices, had been performed by foreigners. In the future he de clares that this shall not be done, but those Levites who formerly officiated as priests in the high places shall be deposed from their priesthood and shall in future be degraded to this menial service. Thus Ezekiel created a new class of temple servants by creating this distinc tion between priests and Levites. It is a distinction un known to the earlier religion, but everywhere assumed in the priestly laws. All these laws are, accordingly, later than Ezekiel. After the death of Ezekiel the Babylonian empire gradually waned. About 550 B.C. Cyrus the Great overthrew the empire of the Medes and laid the foun dations of the Persian empire. The succeeding years were occupied by his brilliant conquests, of which the overthrow of Croesus, king of Lydia, in 546 B.C. was THE REORGANIZED JEWISH STATE 1 29 but one. These brilliant achievements of the new con queror were known to the Hebrew captives in Babylon, among whom a new prophet now arose. The name of this prophet has been lost. Scholars call him the " sec ond Isaiah," because in the course of the centuries his book was bound up with the work of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, and now forms chaps. 40-55 of our Book of Isaiah. This nameless prophet, one of the world's greatest, was an exponent of the monotheistic faith of his pro phetic predecessors. He foresaw that Cyrus, who was everywhere so irresistible, would conquer Babylon, and with that magnificent faith which sees the manifesta tions of a living God in the events of contemporary history he declared that Cyrus was Yahweh's creature, and that it was for Yahweh and for Yahweh's people, Israel, that Cyrus was winning his victories. When Babylon fell into his hands, and perhaps even before, Cyrus issued an edict permitting all captive peoples to return to their lands and rebuild their institutions. This was a reversal of a policy pursued by Assyrians and Babylonians for two hundred years. These powers had torn nations to shreds to prevent rebellion; Cyrus proposed to bind the people to him by kindness and gratitude. Foreseeing that through the victory of Cy rus this opportunity for Israel to return to her land would come, our great prophet devoted his sermons de livered before the fall of Babylon in the year 538 (i. e., Isa., chaps. 40-48) to an endeavour to create in his 130 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL fellow-captives in Babylonia an enthusiasm to return and rebuild their state, when the opportunity should come. As the captives, many of whom were engaged in prosperous business in Babylonia, did not avail them selves of this privilege when Cyrus triumphed in 538 B. c, a second series of addresses (Isa., chaps. 49—55), still further setting before them their opportunities and obligations, followed. The great contribution of this prophet to Israel's religious thought consists of the new interpretation which he gave to Yahweh's choice of Israel, to Israel's mission, and to Israel's sufferings. His interpretation was in brief this : Yahweh had chosen Israel to be his interpreter to the world. Israel's election was accord ingly an election to service, not an election for his own aggrandizement and glorification. His mission was to be Yahweh's missionary to the world, and his sufferings were a part of the appointed means by which he should make Yahweh known to the nations. He graphically represented Israel as Yahweh's servant; sometimes he was an unfaithful servant, dull of understanding and wayward of heart (Isa., 43: 22-24), but at times, the chosen servant (41 : 8-9), upheld by Yahweh to bring justice to the gentiles (42: 2-4; 49: 1-4), who heroic ally endured the insults showered upon him (50: 4—9). Finally, kings stand in astonishment at the servant's awful fate, and wonder why it should be (52 : 15) when they become conscious that his sufferings were for their THE REORGANIZED JEWISH STATE 131 salvation (53: 4-6). J This interpretation of Israel's career reveals the. prophet's profound insight into the nature of God, man, and life; the agony of the best be comes intelligible when its vicarious value is understood. This view gave the mission of Israel a moral signifi cance and a spiritual purpose which transfigured it. Indeed the prophet had conceived an ideal for the nation that a nation could never fulfil. It remained for Jesus of Nazareth, the ideal Israelite, to take up in his person and experience the work which the prophet had conceived as possible for the nation, and to make the idea real. The privileges granted by Cyrus had no immediate effect upon the fortunes of Jerusalem. A governor of the seed of David, Zerubbabel, whose name betrays his Babylonian birth, became ruler of Jerusalem, but the opportunities of gain which Babylonia offered proved to the majority of Jews far more attractive than the barren soil of Judaea. It thus came about that in the year 520 B.C., nearly a score of years later, the condi tion of Jerusalem had not changed. Its population was still the peasantry, who had never been carried to Babylonia ; its temple and walls were still in ruins.2 1 Many interpretations of the " servant passages '' in Isaiah are en tertained by different scholars. These have given rise to an extensive literature. The writer has given his own view above, and lack of space makes the discussion of other views impossible. 2 This is the view presented in the contemporary prophets, Haggai and Zechariah. Scholars rightly give these credence rather than the late account in Ezra. 132 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Just at this time a drought occurred. In Palestine an insufficient rainfall always causes a famine. As in the days of David (II Sam. 21 : 1-14), men sought to understand why Yahweh had withheld his rain. Hag gai, who now began to prophesy, declared that Yahweh was by this famine inflicting punishment upon his peo ple for not rebuilding the temple. Another new prophet, Zechariah, appeared and enforced the same teaching. Their words were taken to heart; the people began to build. When the rainy season came around, copious showers fell, and all were satisfied that the prophets had rightly divined the cause of Yahweh's an ger. The building went steadily forward, and two years later the temple was completed. Its splendour was far inferior to that of the former building, but it was nevertheless a " house " for Yahweh. During this work the colony of Jews in Babylonia, which was for many centuries known as the " Captiv ity," began to exert its great influence in Palestinian affairs. They sent some gold and silver from which crowns were to be made (Zech. 6: 9 ff.). As the text now reads, these crowns were to be set on the head of Joshua, the high priest, but many scholars believe that originally the text contained here the name of Zerub babel. There were widespread revolts throughout the Persian empire during the first six years of the reign of Darius I. Babylon revolted twice, as did Susiana. Media and many other provinces attempted to gain their independence. Even his native Persia revolted THE REORGANIZED JEWISH STATE 1 33 once. In the disturbed state of the empire, it is prob able that the Jews thought their time had come, and, hoping that Zerubbabel might prove a Messiah, strove in vain to regain independence. After the rebuilding of the temple, historical sources fail us for more than seventy years. Probably it was during this period that that prophet arose whose work now constitutes Isa., chaps. 56-66. He endeavoured to keep alive in Palestine the ideals for which the sec ond Isaiah had so eloquently pleaded in Babylonia. He graphically portrayed the glory which awaited Zion (e.g., chap. 60), and endeavoured to keep before the minds of his countrymen their great mission as the serv ant of Yahweh as this mission had been explained by the second Isaiah (see 61:1-4; 62:1). His words show that in at least one soul the highest ideals were still aflame, although the realization of them seemed farther away than ever. Incidentally we learn from this prophet that some of the people had not yet been touched by the prophetic conception of religion. Here and there men were still found who sought relief from the hard fortunes of life in sacrificing unclean animals to heathen gods (cf. 65: 11; 66:3-4). Meantime the influences set in motion by Ezekiel were at work in other minds. The so-called " Holiness Code," compiled at some time before 500 b. c, and per- 1 Many scholars hold that this code was earlier than Ezekiel and that Ezekiel was influenced by it. That there is a direct literary connection 134 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL haps as early as the second Isaiah, by a writer whose name is now lost to us, though here and there interpo lated by later material, now forms the main part of LeV., chaps. 17-26. Like Ezekiel, this writer was devoted at once to the prophetic and priestly ideals. Nowhere else in the Old Testament is the thought that Yahweh is holy, and that, therefore, his people must be holy, insisted upon with so much emphasis. He com piled a code of laws, many of which represented prac tices much older than his time, the main purpose of which was to preserve the holiness of Israel. Holiness, as here conceived, was, as among the early Semites, partly a physical condition, but nevertheless there breathes through his work a lofty and passionate devo tion to prophetic ideals, which links his work to Deut eronomy and to that of Ezekiel. A little later, but be fore 450 B. c, another writer compiled the main body of priestly laws in the Pentateuch. To give his laws a literary setting he composed an account of the creation of the world, of the fortunes of the patriarchs, and of the exodus, of the covenant at Sinai, and of the conquest of Palestine. This writer carried the regulation of the ritual of worship into much greater detail than previous codifiers had done, though he, also, in many instances, between the two, is acknowledged by all. To the mind of the present writer the decisive evidence for the date given above is the full experi ence of exile and the promise of return expressed in Lev. 26 : 27-45. Those who claim an earlier date for the writer of the code regard 26:30, 34 f., 39-45 as later interpolations, but there seems no sufficient warrant for this. THE REORGANIZED JEWISH STATE 1 35 did no more than give literary expression to many older practices. By means of the literary setting that he gave the whole it was made to appear that many of the insti tutions which the priesthood considered vital were primeval. The Sabbath was traced back to creation (Gen. 2: 1-3), circumcision, to Abraham (Gen., chap. 17), and the distinction between priests and Levites, to Moses (Num. 3 : 5-21 ff.) . The religious atmosphere of this priestly document is very different from that of the prophetic writings. Its author was, it is true, a devout monotheist, but he apparently had no conception that God still communi cated with men. In his thought God was a very exalted Being, all created things came into existence in simple obedience to God's word — but God was very remote. God had once spoken to Moses — how, we are not told — and had given to Moses the laws. Now the nation could know God only by obeying the laws thus divinely given. In this code monotheism had triumphed, but it had lost its warmth. The prophetic sense of familiar communication with Yahweh, with all the inspiring ex periences which that involved, had given place to unim- passioned obedience to the commands of a far-off God, who once held communion with an especially favoured man. In the year 444 B. c, Nehemiah, a wealthy young He brew who was acting as a cupbearer to Artaxerxes I of Persia, obtained appointment to the governorship of Jerusalem, with permission to rebuild the walls. The 136 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL story of the energetic way in which he accomplished this, contained in Neh., chaps. 1—7, is no doubt familiar to every reader. As the text of Neh. 8-10 now stands, it appears that at the Feast of Tabernacles in October of that year a great concourse of people gathered be fore the water gate in Jerusalem, and Ezra, who is said to have brought the book of the law from Babylon, read the law to the assembled multitudes, and before the month was over they had bound themselves to keep it. Several scholars have in recent years expressed doubts of the historical character of this representation, and others, who find in it an historical kernel are in clined to think that it is here placed at too early a time. This last view the writer shares. There is much reason to believe that the mission of Ezra was later than that of Nehemiah — perhaps so late that Nehemiah had passed away before Ezra came from Babylonia.1 On the other hand, there is evidence that the priestly law had been introduced into Jerusalem before 419 b. c, for in that year a letter was sent to the colony of Jews at Elephantine in Egypt, directing them to keep the Passover in accordance with the provisions of the priestly law. It is, in the writer's judgment, probable 1 See Batten, Ezra and Nehemiah in the International Critical Com mentary, p. 28 f., though the view set forth by Professor Batten does not altogether commend itself. 2 See Sachau, Aramdische Papyrus und Ostraka aus einer jiidischen Militdr-Kolonie zu Elephantine, Leipzig, 191 1, No. 6; also Arnold in Journal of Biblical Literature, XXXI, p. 1 f., and the writer in Journal of Biblical Literature, XXXII, p. 256 f., and G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 191 6, Part II, ch. xix, § 2. THE REORGANIZED JEWISH STATE 1 37 that this law was introduced in 432 B. c, when Nehe miah came back as governor the second time. When ever it was introduced, it would be natural that such an assembly as that described here should be called to gether to hear the law. Even if the compiler of Nehe miah has confused its details and dated it incorrectly, it probably represents a kernel of historical fact. The law to which the people thus committed them selves certainly included the priestly code (cf. Neh. 8: 14 with Lev. 23:33 f.). Probably that code had already been combined with the earlier documents sub stantially as we now find them in our Pentateuch, for otherwise it could not have displaced the older legisla tion. This combination was made so skilfully that the priestly laws seemed naturally to be the heart of the whole and the basis of the covenant with Yahweh at Horeb. To the superficial reader of the Pentateuch this still seems to be the case. The introduction of the priestly legislation brought into Jewish life a puritanic spirit. Nehemiah and Ezra, who directed the movement, were ardent expo nents of this spirit. In the language of the priestly laws, Israel was a " holy congregation." Nehemiah and Ezra determined that the nation should merit the name. In their view this could not be if Hebrews were not of pure blood, or if they associated closely with for eigners. They accordingly compelled those who had married foreign wives to put them away. This movement to purify the " congregation " of all 138 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL foreign elements led to a schism. At Samaria there had existed for almost three hundred years a group of peo ple who were anxious to be regarded as rightful wor shippers of Yahweh. A part of their ancestry had been brought from eastern countries by Sargon of Assyria (II Kings 17: 24-34), but these had at an early date embraced the worship of the God of Israel. These for eigners had intermarried with the Israelite peasantry whom Sargon left behind. In reality their descendants were of as pure a Hebrew stock as many a Judaean, although, unfortunately, the coming of their foreign an cestors was such a notorious historical fact that the Judaeans refused to recognize their Hebrew descent. From the beginning of Nehemiah's administration there was friction with these Samaritans. How tenaciously the Samaritans clung to the monotheistic worship of Yahweh and to Hebrew ideals is shown by the fact that they persisted in sharing the worship at Jerusalem until after the introduction of the priestly laws, which, like the Jews, they accept as a part of their torah. The puritanic movement, inaugurated by Nehemiah and Ezra, finally led them to withdraw, and, in time they built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim. The friction caused by this schism lasted for many centuries (cf. John 4 : 20-2 1 ) . Nehemiah and Ezra organized, not only the life of the people, but the ritual. The various orders of Le vites were assigned their duties, some of them becoming the temple musicians. It was probably at this time that THE REORGANIZED JEWISH STATE 1 39 the first book of the Psalter, which then consisted of Psalms 3-41, was compiled and edited. It was named for David; why, we cannot now tell. Perhaps the hymn with which it opened was, or was believed to be, written by David. It contained, however, the work of many later poets. Psalms 8 and 19, for example, make defi nite allusion to the work of the author of the priestly document. In the period between Ezekiel and Nehemiah the prophetic movement reached its end. Never since has Israel produced prophets like those who composed Isa., chaps. 40-66. The two or three minor prophets who appeared later are so far inferior that they do not come into comparison. In Isa. 40-66 the last great exponents of prophecy gave utterance to some of its profoundest and most spiritual ideals. This period, too, witnessed the culmination of that movement which transformed the Hebrew nation into the Jewish church. This transformation began with the prophets of the eighth century; it had produced the fusion of prophetic and legal ideas in Deuteronomy, the blending of the prophetic and priestly interests in Ezekiel and the author of the Holiness Code, and finally the austere monotheistic laws of the priestly document. The external fortunes of the nation had providentially facilitated the adoption of the higher ideals, and the effort to conserve these ideals had called into existence a ritual which for ever separated Israel from the heathen cults of her kindred. 140 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY i. The Temple as Rebuilt; cf. "Temple, the Second" in the Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. XII, p. 97 ff. 2. The Servant of Yahweh; cf. Budde, "The So-called ' Ebed-Yahweh Songs ' and the Meaning of the Term ' Servant of Yahweh ' in Isaiah, Chaps. 40-55," in The American Journal of Theology, III, pp. 499-540. 3. The Nature and Influence of the Babylonian Exile; cf. J. P. Peters, The Religion of the Hebrews, Boston, 1914, chap ter xx. 4. The Relation of the P. Document to the Babylonian Cre ation-Myth ; cf . G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Phil adelphia, 2nd ed., 1917, Part II, chapter i. 5. The Conception of God in the P. Document; read the document as arranged in Addis, Documents of the Hexateuch, London, 1892-1898, Vol. II, noting the conception of God. 6. The Origin of the Levitical Cities; cf. G. A. Barton, " The Levitical Cities of Israel in the Light of the Excavation at Gezer " in The Biblical World, Vol. XXIV, pp. 167-179. CHAPTER IX LEGALISM Legal Attitude of Malachi — Beginnings of the Psalter — The Law as a Background for Piety — Persecution under Persians — Alexander the Great — Chronicles — The Last of the Prophets — Universality in Religion — The Synagogue — The Maccabaean Revolt — Ni- canor's Day — Simon Prince and High Priest — Completion of the Psalter — Psalmists praise the Law — Pharisees and Sadducees — The Oral Law — Hillel and Shammai — Nature of Oral Law — Mishna and Talmud. With the adoption of the Levitical law in the time of Nehemiah the foundations of Judaism had been laid, but the edifice was not completed. During the centu ries which followed the superstructure was gradually erected. The Jews who were resident in Palestine seem to have accepted the law at once, though the acceptance on the part of many of them was not enthusiastic. The prophecy which now passes under the name of Malachi was apparently written to persuade the Jews faithfully to support the law. Whether it was written before Nehemiah's reforms or soon after them, is a point on which scholars are not agreed. It seems probable that it was written before that reform. In any case it is clear that the message of this book is addressed to an age whose ideals were legalistic, and that it is the proph et's effort to persuade the men of the time to live up to these ideals. He says in 3 : 8 f . : 141 142 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Will a man rob God ? Yet ye rob me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings Ye are cursed with a curse; For ye rob me, even this whole nation. Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse, That there may be food in my house, And prove me now herewith, Says Yahweh of hosts, Whether I will not open the windows of heaven, And pour you out a blessing Until there is no more need. This utterance is in striking contrast with that of Amos 5: 25, which declared that sacrifice was no part of the original religion of Yahweh. Malachi, on the other hand, makes all blessing depend upon the faithful fulfilment of the ritual. When Prophets took this at titude it is clear that the age of the free spirit of proph ecy had passed and the age of legalism was approaching. The law was not only accepted by those in Jerusalem, but was soon disseminated among Jews who were resid ing abroad. The letter in which information concern ing one part of it was conveyed to the Jewish colony at Elephantine in Egypt has in part survived. It was written in 419 B. c. by one Hananiah, who was, per haps, a brother of Nehemiah.1 The correspondence 1 See G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, Part II, ch. xix, § 2. LEGALISM 143 from Elephantine indicates that the new law was ac cepted there and obeyed, and that, in consequence, the Jews resident in Egypt became more obnoxious to their Egyptian neighbours than they had been before. After the reorganization of the time of Nehemiah, one of the first undertakings was to provide the re formed religion a suitable hymn book. Our present Psalter, as will be pointed out more fully in another chapter, is the result of a gradual compilation, but the beginning of its growth dates probably from this time. The first book of Psalms, comprising Psalms 3-41, was apparently compiled during this period. It is alto gether probable that older hymns were included in the compilation, but we may be sure that such were re-edited to express the religious point of view of the reformed faith. An age that did not hesitate to readjust the laws of the Book of the Covenant (Ex. 20: 24-23 : 19) and of Deuteronomy so that the code of Leviticus should appear to be the heart of the whole legislation of Moses, would, we may be sure, take good care that the sentiments expressed in the hymn book did not belie those expressed in the law. It is often a relief to pious souls, especially to those of a certain type, to have the requirements of religion laid down in a set of definite rules that can be clearly known. One, it is thought, then knows when he is righteous and when he is not. There is a definite stand ard by which the achievements of life can be measured. It is easy to understand, therefore, how the law, which 144 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL had reached its completion in this period, was venerated by some of the best spirits of the time. One of these has beautifully expressed his appreciation of it in Ps. 19: 7 f.: The law of Yahweh is perfect, restoring the soul ; 1 The testimony of Yahweh is sure, making wise the simple; The precepts of Yahweh are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of Yahweh is pure, enlightening the eyes; The fear of Yahweh is clean, enduring for ever; The ordinances of Yahweh are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Also thy servant is warned by them; in keeping them is great reward. Thus the life of puritanic legalism began by evoking deep sentiments of thanksgiving and gratitude. During much of the following period our sources af ford almost no information as to what was happening to the little colony in Jerusalem. Until the year 332 B. c. Judea was under Persian rule, and so far as we can tell few events of importance occurred. It is in ferred from Josephus, Antiquities, xi. 7: 1, that about 350 b. c. the Palestinian Jews made another unsuccess ful attempt to regain their independence, in consequence of which the Persian governor punished them severely. This unsuccessful revolt called forth a new wave of national sentiment, and was, perhaps, the occasion of the compilation of two more books of the Psalter. In 1 Literally "bringing the soul back from captivity." LEGALISM 145 these books the attitude of devotion toward the law is taken for granted. Thus Ps. 78, which is a long poeti cal review of the fortunes of the nation as those for tunes are recounted in the earlier Scriptures, begins : Give ear, O my people, to my law: Incline your ear to the words of my mouth. A little further on it assigns the following reason : For he established a testimony in Jacob, And appointed a law in Israel, Which he commanded our fathers, That they should make them known to their children. (Ps. 78:5.) Thus in the passing of these years, of which we have almost no outward record, the law continued to evoke the devotion of some of the best minds. With Alexander's conquest the Jews passed under Greek control, and when the wars which followed Alex ander's death were over the Jews were for a hundred years subject to the Ptolemies of Egypt. Suffering much from the contentions of the Seleucids of Antioch and the Ptolemies, they finally passed in 199 B. C. under the control of the Seleucids. During much of this time they had been left to govern themselves with little out side interference. Jewish colonies were established in increasing numbers all over the eastern Mediterranean, and contact with foreigners tended to broaden the thought of many Jews. In time the devotees of the 146 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL law produced the Book of Chronicles — an expurgated edition of the history of Israel. This work represents the great worthies of the nation as keeping the Levitical law, and David as assigning to the Levites their duties ! Then as now the influence of ritualism was not wholly bad. Mystically inclined souls made it the basis of an attractive piety. Such a piety is not the most spiritual, but it may be thoroughly genuine. Early in the Greek period the last of the prophets lived. What name he bore we do not know. His work in later time was bound up with that of the prophet Zechariah and now forms chapters 9-14 of the book of that prophet. Perhaps the prophet bore the same name as that of the contemporary of Haggai. It may be that it was identity of name that led to the fusion of their prophecies. That this second Zechariah lived in the Greek period is clearly shown by Zech. 9: 13, and other considera tions lead us to think that he lived in the third century B. c. This writer was conscious that he was the last of the prophets, for he predicts that in future there shall be no more prophets, and that, if any one shall presume to prophesy his father and mother shall assist in putting him to death (Zech. 13:3). His prediction was ful filled. No more prophets arose. An incident of the time of the Maccabees (see 1 Mace. 4: 46) shows how pathetically Israel longed for the guidance of the pro phetic voice which was heard no longer. This prophet was not so completely absorbed in the LEGALISM 147 law as Malachi, but he nevertheless took the law and its institutions for granted. He, like the author of Micah 4: 1-5, looked for a time when the religion of Israel should become universal, and should command the devotion of the nations of the earth. This devotion was in his opinion to be manifested in an annual coming of all peoples to Jerusalem to observe the feast of Tab ernacles; that is, it was to be manifested in a ritual observance of at least a part of the law. The hold of the law on the Jewish people was greatly strengthened by the institution of the synagogue, the origin and development of which are shrouded in great obscurity. With the adoption of the Deuteronomic law all sanctuaries except one were done away. So long as no substitute was provided this reform deprived all Jews who resided outside of Jerusalem of the privilege of worship except on those rare occasions when they could go to Jerusalem. Such a situation was naturally intolerable, and the synagogue was called into existence to relieve it. It is thought by some that synagogues be gan to be employed during the Babylonian exile. How ever this may be it is certain that many of them existed in Babylonia in later time, but the same is true of all other communities of Jews outside of Palestine. There were many synagogues in Palestine itself before the Maccabaean revolt, for a passage often ascribed to the Maccabaean period complains : " They have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land." (Ps. 74=8.) 148 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL It is certain therefore that the synagogue had its origin at some time after the adoption of the Deuteronomic law and before the Maccabaean uprising. In the synagogue there was no sacrifice; it was a place for the reading and exposition of the law. No ornate ritual distracted the attention from the great regulations of the Pentateuch. Though the voice of God was thought no longer to speak to the chosen people as it had once done through the prophets, or as God had done face to face with Moses and the Patri archs, yet here were the commands that God had ut tered to these holy men in the days of old. They were commands of life; to keep them was to obtain God's favour. The synagogue centred the attention upon them ; it tended to exalt the law. In Jerusalem itself much eagerness was manifested for Grecian forms of life, though deep devotion to the law remained in many faithful hearts. In 168 B.C. Antiochus Epiphanes endeavoured to blot out the Jew ish religion and to Hellenize the Jews. An altar to Zeus was to be established in the temple at Jerusalem and swine offered in sacrifice upon it. In the smaller towns altars were to be erected and similar sacrifices made. The priests and people of Jerusalem yielded to the royal order without serious struggle, but in the little village of Modein, on the borders of the Philis tine plain, Mattathias, an old priest, struck down the pliant Jew who was offering a sacrifice to Zeus and called the Jews to war. The band who followed him LEGALISM 149 and his seven stalwart sons was small, but for a year they maintained themselves. At the same time others besides them were faithful. We hear of a woman and seven sons who remained constant to their religion under torture and who suffered cruel deaths; (see 2 Mace. 7). Reference is probably made to this family in Heb. 11 : 35, 36. Those who held views like those of Mattathias and this devoted mother called them selves Chasidim, or " the pious." These followed the old priest and with extraordinary courage they with stood the mighty Syrians. Mattathias held out under the hardships but little more than a year. When he passed away he exhorted his sons to follow the lead ership of his son Judas, although he was not the oldest of the family. This they did. Judas with great cour age and consummate generalship defeated the Syrians in three separate battles, and was able in December, 165 B.C., just three years after the temple had been defiled by the sacrifice of swine to Zeus on its altar, to dedicate it again to the worship of Yahweh. This dedication was a great event — so great that it was afterward commemorated annually in a new festival, called the Feast of the Dedication, which is mentioned in John 10: 22. Because of his great successes Judas was called Makkab, or " The Hammer," and so the war came to be called the Maccabaean war. The Syrians kept up the struggle with varying suc cess. In 161 B.C. Judas won a signal victory over the Syrian general Nicanor under circumstances which 1^0 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL caused great joy among the Jews. This victory was celebrated in a yearly festival known for a time as Nicanor's Day, but which is now called the Feast of Purim. With the restoration of their religion the Chasidim were satisfied, but not so the Maccabaean brothers. They now aimed at political independence, and, accord ingly, prolonged the war. The defection of the Chasi dim greatly weakened them, and reverses followed. The war was prolonged for twenty-five years from its beginning, and was not terminated until 143 B.C. The Maccabees would soon have been crushed out, but for the rivalries in the royal house of the Seleucidae in Syria. Judas was killed in battle in 161 B.C., when his brother Jonathan became leader. As one Syrian faction after another tried to obtain the support of the Jews Jonathan dextrously advanced the fortunes of the nation. In 1 53 B.C. Jonathan became high priest, and when, ten years later, Jonathan was treacherously murdered by one of the Syrian leaders, his brother Simon, the only survivor of the seven sons of Matta thias, succeeded to the honour. In the same year a new treaty with Demetrius II of Syria acknowledged the independence of Judah, and an assembly of the Jews was held in Jerusalem at which it was ordained that " Simon should be their prince and high priest for ever, until there should arise a faith ful prophet" (I Mace. 14:41). In the judgment of LEGALISM 1 5 1' many scholars Psalm no was written at this time and addressed to Simon. This struggle, resulting in a political liberty such as they had not possessed for six hundred years, cre ated among the Jews a new devotion to their country and their God, and made a deep impress upon their religion and literature. Under the Asmonaean kings, who were descended from the Maccabees, and who ruled down to 63 B.C., the limits of the realm were ex tended almost as far as in the glorious reigns of David and Solomon. As a part of the expression of the new national and religious spirit evoked by the achievement of this inde pendence an addition was made to the Psalter. Books iv and v of that hymnal were probably collected at this time. The greater part of that collection we leave for consideration at a later point, and call attention here to but one psalm, as that psalm is a remarkable witness to the place held by the law in the affections of the pious Jews of the time. Reference is made to Ps. 119 which is a collection of alphabetical eight-line verses on the law. For some time Hebrew psalmists had been fond of writing alphabetical acrostics, or psalms, each verse of which should begin with a successive letter of their alphabet. The author of Ps. 119 carried this device further. He composed a poem in which the law is cele brated, employing first eight verses, each one of which 1^2 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL begins with Aleph, the first letter of the alphabet, then eight verses, each one of which begins with Beth, the sec ond letter, and so on throughout the twenty-two letters of his alphabet. The result is a hymn consisting of 176 verses. As eight different words for law are employed it is an eight-fold psalm in more senses than one. The impressive thing about the psalm is the writer's devotion to the law — a devotion which is thoroughly sincere, and which almost exhausts language as it seeks expression. He begins with Blessed are they that are perfect in the way Who walk in the law of Jehovah. He prays: Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold Wondrous things out of thy law, (v. 18). Again he exclaims : Oh how I love thy law! It is my meditation all the day. (v. 97). Toward the end he declares: Great peace have they that love thy law; And they have no occasion of stumbling, (v. 165). It was out of such devotion as this that Pharisaism grew. At the beginning of the Maccabaean outbreak the Chasidim, as we have pointed out, supported the Mac cabees. When, however, religious liberty had been se- LEGALISM 153 cured and the Maccabees pushed on, won political lib erty, and established a worldly state they lost the sym pathy of the Chasidim. These Jewish puritans thought a high priest, who was at the same time a worldly prince, and who often treated religious matters from the point of view of statecraft, a renegade. As time went on the friction increased, and in the reign of Alex ander Jannaeus, 104-79 B-c-> tne opposition of this party, which had taken the name of Pharisees, or " sep aratists," caused much embarrassment to the govern ment. When Alexander left the government to his widow, Alexandra, in 79 b. c, he counselled her to rule in accordance with pharisaical ideas, and thus the Phar isees, who were the most numerous element in Judaism, became dominant. Out of this friction the opposition party, the Saddu cees grew. They were the Maccabaean or Asmonaean house and its friends. They included the priestly, wealthy, and aristocratic class. They were officially, but not enthusiastically religious, and it is probable that the name Sadducees, " righteous ones," was given them in derision. The Pharisees were radical where the Sadducees were conservative, and conservative where the Sadducees were radical. Along with the supernaturalization of the messianic hope and faith in a resurrection there had grown up a belief in numerous demons and angels. The apocalypses of the period contain many of their names, so definite had their personalities become in 154 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL the popular thought. All this, together with the new doctrine of the resurrection, the Pharisees accepted, but the more sceptical Sadducees did not. Some of the psalmists had protested against the resurrection — it seemed so incredible to them (see Ps. 88: 10; 115: 17) — and the Sadducees fully shared their views. As to the observance of the details of the law, the Sad ducees were much less strict. Naturally, as the Pharisees were so much more in terested in the law, there arose from their ranks the copyists and students of the law, who were called scribes. In order to enable faithful Jews to be sure that they were observing the law, a " hedge " of oral tradition was gradually collected about it, and schools of the law were established. So far as we can trace these schools they began in the reign of Herod the Great, just before the beginning of our era. Naturally there were differences of opinion among the Pharisees. The school of Shammai interpreted the law with great strictness, while Hillel, who had come from the captiv ity in Babylon to establish a school in Jerusalem, inter preted it far more liberally. For a long time these interpretations were not committed to writing; both students and teachers carried them in the memory. Ul timately, expanded by later teachers, they became the Jewish Mishna. In their zeal to observe the law rightly these legal schools developed in time a vast body of tradition which dealt with all the details of life. The law forbade LEGALISM 155 work on the Sabbath, but obviously people could not live without dressing and eating. Some work was ac cordingly necessary, so a vast body of traditions as to what could and could not be done developed. These traditions descended to such details that they defined the kind of knots that a woman could tie and untie in making her toilet without breaking the Sabbath. Again Leviticus (19:29, 23:22) commanded that, in reaping, the corners of a field should not be cut, but should be left for the poor. This law was indefinite, and pious farmers were anxious to know just what it was necessary to do to observe the law. How much must be left for the poor in order to satisfy the divine requirement? If a man left only one stalk standing had he broken the law? Must the standing grain nec essarily be left in a corner? Would not the middle of the field do? Did the law apply only to grain? Did it not apply to leguminous plants as well? Did it also apply to vineyards, olive trees, date orchards and pome granates? If two men shared a field did they both have to leave a corner? If a man left a " corner " for the poor and they did not take it, how long must he wait before he could take it himself? If through for getfulness an owner left more than was intended in a field, could he return and get it, or must it all be left as a " corner "? Gradually the answers to these ques tions were worked out. It was decided that the law applies to trees as well as to grains, that a just man would leave one-sixtieth of the produce of the field, 156 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL though this might vary according to the size of the field, its fertility, or the number of the poor. If, however, a man left one stalk he could not be said to have broken the law ! * In a similar way all the details of life and of devotion were covered. After about 200 a.d. the traditions that had accumulated between Hillel and that time were written down in what is called the Mishna. The law went on developing through additional commentaries for four hundred years longer. The commentaries written between 200 and 600 A.D. make up the Gemara. The Mishna and Gemara together comprise the vast storehouse of the Jewish Talmud. Of course most of this Talmud comes from a time later than the Christian era. Only the merest nucleus can be traced back to Hillel and Shammai. Neverthe less as one studies its vast elaboration of the details of life, he gains his best insight into the Pharisaism of the time of Christ. He appreciates the genuine re ligious desire of the Rabbis, their reverence for the past, their love for the law of God, their conviction that the living voice of God was now silent, and their pathetic loss of the best in religion as they were occu pied with its little details. Pharisaism was a not unnatural culmination of that regard for external law that, with the introduction of the priestly code and the dying out of prophecy, be- 1 These regulations and opinions are collected in the tract of the Mishna and Talmud entitled Peah or " Corner." LEGALISM 157 came the ruling idea of Jewish religion. And yet, as we shall see in future chapters, this was but one line of development in the varied life of post-exilic Judaism. TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Legalism, its Origin and Nature; cf. Marti, Religion of the Old Testament, New York, 1907, chapter iv. 2. The Influence of the Maccabaean Struggle on Judaism; cf. John P. Peters, The Religion of the Hebrews, Boston, 1914, Chapter xxvii. 3. Pharisaism; cf. Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, III, pp. 821—829, or Jewish Encyclopedia, IX, pp. 661-666. 4. The Oral Law; cf. The Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. IX, pp. 423-426. 5. The Synagogue, its Organization and Services; cf. Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. XI, pp. 619-631. CHAPTER X DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRIESTHOOD AND RITUAL Primitive Priests Older Men — Lewi as a Priest not necessarily of Tribe of Levi — Possible Origin of Leiui — Priesthood in Time of Moses — In Time of Judges — Eli and Samuel — In Time of David and Solomon — Under the Two Kingdoms — Influence of Deuteron omic Law on Priesthood — Ezekiel Creates Levites — After Exile Priest represents Nation — Under Ptolemies Practical Rulers — Ori gin of Priestly Cities — Development of Ritual of Feasts — Day of Atonement. Among the Semitic nomads the priestly functions are performed by the heads of families, or the older men, the sheiks. It was probably so among the early He brews. According to a later tradition the tribe of Levi was, in the time of Moses, chosen to have a monopoly of the priestly office. There is, however, much in the Bible that shows that this tribe possessed no such mo nopoly during the early periods of the history, and there is a plausible theory that the tradition arose through an accidental, though natural, confusion of two similar words. The evidence can be most conveniently pre sented by reviewing the material in chronological se quence. It is clear from the early traditions that there was a tribe of Levi (Hebrew lewi) that met with some dis aster during the struggle for the possession of Palestine, — a disaster that was regarded as a punishment for 158 PRIESTHOOD AND RITUAL 1 59 wickedness; (see Gen. 34: 25 ff.; 49: 5-7). It is, how ever, doubtful whether this tribe was more definitely connected with the priesthood than any other. It seems probable that it was reduced to a few remnants that were scattered and absorbed by other tribes. The narrative in Ex. 32:26-29, from the J docu ment, suggests that Lewi or Levite as applied to a priest may have had quite a different origin. It is a story of how in a crisis in the wilderness, when the religion of Yahweh was in danger, Moses stood in the gate and said: "Whoso is on Yahweh's side let him to me." The Hebrew sentence contains no verb, though the Greek has " let him come to me." It is possible that the Hebrew originally had leweh li, " let him be joined to me." The narrative then goes on to state that all the sons of lewi joined themselves to Moses, that he sent them through the camp to slay the apostates, and after that he bade them " fill " their " hands " * to Yahweh. This term " fill the hand " is the term employed in the Book of Judges for the conse cration of a priest (Jud. 17:5-12), so that it seems probable that this story related how the lewim, who had the privileges of exercising the priesthood of Yahweh, acquired the right as a reward for their zeal at a time when Yahweh's religion was in danger. This is borne out by the fact that in the later history men who were descendants of the tribes of Ephraim and Judah acted as priests. 1 Revised Version renders " consecrate yourselves." 160 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL The priesthood in the time of Moses, according to Ex. 33:7-11 (an extract from the E document) con sisted of the guardianship of a shrine and the right to consult Yahweh there. This shrine was a tent, called the Tent of Meeting, pitched apart from the camp, to which Moses went for consultation with Yahweh, and to which Yahweh came down in a cloud to meet Moses. The perpetual guardian of this tent, who departed not out of it, was Joshua, not a member of the tribe of Levi, but an Ephraimite. It was only Moses, how ever, who received the oracles. Priesthood is here portrayed as the keeping of a shrine and the ability to obtain oracles, and at least one of those who partici pated in it was not a descendant of the patriarch Levi. He may well have been one of the lewim who joined Moses in the crisis referred to in Ex. 32 : 26 ff. In the time of the Judges the priesthood was not at all fixed according to the Levitical rules of later days. Micah, an Ephraimite, though he thought it better to have a lewi for a priest, if he could obtain one, had no hesitation in making one of his own sons priest until he could do so (Jud. 17.) The lewi who at the begin ning of the story lived at Bethlehem in Judah was not provided in advance with a living by such a system as that embodied in the Levitical law, but was under the necessity of going out to seek his fortune like any other poor boy. The sequel of the story too reveals the fact that this youth, whose double dealing led to such per sonal advancement that he became the founder of the PRIESTHOOD AND RITUAL l6l long Jine of priests at the shrine of Dan, was a grand son of Moses.1 The attitude toward the priesthood that prevailed in the period of the Judges is quite con sistent with the view that the lewim who joined (lawu) themselves to Yahweh in some crisis in the wilderness established the presumption that they and their descend ants had a better right to the priesthood than others. It is quite inconsistent with the view that the exclusive right to the priesthood had been granted to members of the tribe of Levi. At the opening of the book of I Samuel Eli was priest at the shrine of Shilo. The shrine was not a tent, but a building with doors (I Sam. 3 : 15). Nothing is said as to whether Eli was a descendant of the tribe of Levi or of Ephraim, but it is noteworthy that the young Samuel, the son of an Ephraimite, was received into the temple as an acolyte, and slept in the holy of holies where the ark of God was (I Sam. 3:3). Samuel was thus trained for the priesthood, and, when grown, him self offered sacrifices (I Sam. 7:9, 10; 9 : 13; 15 : 33 ; 16:3 ff.). During this period something of the old Semitic function of the priest as a seer or giver of ora cles still remained, for Samuel was even more noted as a seer than as a priest. During the reigns of David and Solomon and the early days of the divided kingdom similar conditions prevailed in the priesthood. David made his sons priests (II Sam. 8: 18), although the chief priest was 1 Judges 18: 30. 1 62 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Abiathar, a descendant of Eli, with whom, toward the end of David's reign, Zadok was associated. Abiathar was displaced by Solomon because he had favoured the accession of Adonijah, and Zadok was put in his place (I Kings 2:27, 35). As time passed on the succes sion of priests of the line of Zadok became as regular in Jerusalem as the succession of kings of the line of David, nevertheless the right to officiate in offering sacrifice was not confined to priestly families. Elijah, the Gileadite, built altars and offered sacrifices, al though it is nowhere claimed that he was a Levite (I Kings 18:30-38). In the lapse of time the priests of the great shrines, especially of those that received royal patronage, be came personages of influence and importance. At Bethel in the time of the prophet Amos Amaziah the priest appears to have been an important official (Amos 7 : 10). At Jerusalem in the time of Athaliah Jehoiada the priest was sufficiently powerful to organize a re bellion (II Kings 11:4 ff.), while Urijah in the days of Ahaz was the friend both of the king and the prophet Isaiah (II Kings 16: 10; Isa. 8:2). During these prosperous centuries it was natural that the wealth of all the shrines in the land should in crease, and that the priests who controlled this wealth should increase in power and influence. The wealth thus acquired was in many instances invested in land in the vicinity of the city in which the priests officiated. In course of time, therefore, there were large priestly PRIESTHOOD AND RITUAL 1 63 estates in and about the cities where temples or high places were situated. The priesthood thus became a prosperous class, and to a degree averse to the performance of the manual labour of the priesthood. In many instances they owned foreign slaves whom they compelled to perform the menial labour connected with the shrines and the sacrifices (Eze. 44: 7). The promulgation of the Deuteronomic law in 621 B. c. had a profound influence on the fortunes of the priesthood. The abolition of all the shrines except the one at Jerusalem threw many of them out of employ ment. While there were large estates in the hands of priestly families, — estates accumulated through cen turies of exercise of the priestly office, — yet many of these estates, especially in the northern kingdom, had been devastated by the Assyrian invasions. The Deu teronomic law endeavoured to remedy the distress caused by the centralization of the worship by providing that any priest might come to Jerusalem from any part of the land and exercise the priestly office in Jerusalem (Deut. 18:6-8). The idealists who framed the law thought thus to prevent the priestly emoluments from becoming a monopoly in the hands of the descendants of Zadok. The vested interests of that house in the sanctuary at Jerusalem proved to be more potent than the Deuteronomic law, even though that law was be lieved to be the law of Moses. The priests from the high places or country shrines were not permitted to 164 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL enter the sanctuary at Jerusalem as priests or to share in the income that was to be derived from that source (II Kings 23 : 9). It thus came about that there were during the last years of the kingdom of Judah many priests and members of priestly families who were with out occupation or income. Even had they been permit ted to share in the emoluments of the priestly office these would not have sufficed for all. The Deuter onomic legislators were aware of this, and, knowing that their reform would deprive many of these people of income, they commended the Levites to the charity of the people along with the stranger, the widow, and the fatherless (Deut. 14: 29; cf. 12 : 19 and 14: 27). The changes introduced by the Deuteronomic reform tended to give the priesthood of the city of Jerusalem a more prominent and influential position in the realm. Ez ekiel, who was both a priest and a prophet, and who in his early life had served in the temple in Jerusalem, pondered during the Babylonian exile the religious problems of his people and laid plans for the reorgani zation of their life. He proposed a plan that remedied two evils. It banished the foreign slaves from Yah weh's temple, and it gave employment to the priests who had been unfrocked by the Deuteronomic reform. In the Deuteronomic law every Levite was a priest, or a potential priest (Deut. 18: 1 ff.). The two terms in that law are coextensive ; they are constantly put in ap position the one with the other. Ezekiel really legis lated the Levites as a class separate from the priesthood PRIESTHOOD AND RITUAL 1 65 into existence by providing that the priests of the aban doned high places should in future be debarred from the priestly office, but should perform the menial duties of the sanctuary (Eze. 44: 8-13). This plan of Ezekiel appealed to the priestly legis lators who came after him. In the main priestly docu ment written about 450 B.C. we find the distinction be tween priests and Levites clearly made (see Num. 16: 10, 18—23). As time passed the different families of Levites were assigned different duties by the supple mentary priestly laws. Thus in Num. 3 and 4 the care of the sanctuary and of its different vessels is assigned to different groups of Levites. By this step the evolu tion and organization of the priesthood became com plete. In the Judean state as reorganized after the exile the priests held the most influential place. In Zechariah 3 : 1 Joshua the high priest stands as the representative of the nation, and in Zechariah 6 : 1 1 two crowns, one of silver and one of gold, are to be placed upon his head. While it is probable that in the original form of the text the crown of gold was intended for Zerubbabel, who, it was hoped, would become king, even then the high priest was given rank only less exalted than that of the king. The hope that Zerubbabel would free the nation from the foreign yoke was not realized, and in the years that followed the high priest became more and more the representative of the nation. Under the early Ptolemies he was the practical ruler of Judea, 1 66 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL and, until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. though not always the political head of the nation, he probably had more influence than any other individual. During the Maccabaean struggle Jonathan the Macca- bee was made high priest, and, when independence was regained in 143 B.C., the high priest Simon was declared to be prince of the people as well as high priest (I Mace. 14:35-42). When his descendants became kings, the priesthood held the regal sceptre as well. The dig nity thus acquired by the supreme priest was an index of the importance attached to all priests. The voice of prophecy was silent; the priests held the keys to the things of God. The reorganization and exaltation of the priesthood in the post-exilic period led to a new interpretation of the earlier history. Since the priest hood was thought to have been instituted by Moses, all subsequent history was naturally viewed in the light of this supposed fact. Wherever there had been a high place, there were large priestly estates. Thus at Schechem, Gezer, Hebron, Beth-shemesh, Kedesh, Taanach, Ashtaroth,1 Ramoth-Gilead, Bezer, Gibeon, and many other places, the Levites, who had been made by Ezekiel and the priestly legislators the menial work ers of the sanctuary, possessed large estates. These had been referred to in Deut. 18:8 as their "patri mony." How did it happen that so many Levites were connected with these cities and possessed property there? The priestly writers could only account for it 1 Called in Josh. 21 : 27, Be-eshterah, a corruption of Beth-Ashtoreth. PRIESTHOOD AND RITUAL 1 67 on the theory that Joshua had assigned these cities to the tribe of Levi as a means of support instead of giving it a compact inheritance such as the other tribes received. This theory was put forth by the priestly supplementer who wrote Joshua 21, and was repeated with some variations in detail by the Chronicler in I Chron. 6. That it is a later interpretation and does not correctly represent the real history of pre-exilic times has been abundantly shown by the excavations at Gezer, Taanach, and Beth-shemesh, which show that the worship of the heathen Semitic high places was practised in these places down to the time of the Deu teronomic reform, if not till the exile.1 The same was probably true of cities like Ashtaroth, the very name of which connects it with the primitive Semitic mother- goddess. At Hebron there was a place of sacrifice in the time of David (II Sam. 15:7 ff.), and at Gibeon in the time of Solomon (I Kings 3:4). Could the complete history of these Levitical cities be written it seems probable that in each case it would be found that each had been the centre of an independent shrine in the days before Josiah's reform. This view is confirmed by a study of the Levitical cities and genealogies. Thus Hebron is a city of Judah (Josh. 15 : 13) belonging to the clan of Caleb; in Josh. 21 : 13 it is a Levitical city given to the house of Aaron the priest; in I Chron. 6: 18 it is a Levitical clan. Eshtemoa is a clan of Judah in I Chron. 4: 17, 19, but a 1 See G. A. Barton in the Biblical World, 167-179. 1 68 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Levitical city in Josh. 21:13. I*1 1 Chron. 2 : 43 Korah is a clan of Judah connected with Hebron; in I Chron. 6: 37 a clan of Levi (cf. also Num. 16) ; while in the Psalter the " Sons of Korah " are a clan of Levitical singers for whom a small hymn-book was named (Ps. 42 ff.). In I Sam. 1: 1 Zuph is an Ephraimite; in I Chron. 6:35, a Levite. It thus appears that in the hands of the priestly writers the perspective of the his tory underwent a change. Towns that had contained high places were called by these writers Levitical cities. Clans that had belonged to other tribes were regarded by them as Levitical because they hailed from cities where worship had been maintained and claimed Leviti cal functions. Believing that the Levitical law was from Moses, the Chronicler could not imagine the saintly David as not observing it, so he attributed to David the organization of the worship whereby each Levitical clan had its appropriate duty to perform in connection with the sanctuary (I Chron. 26). The same feeling that led the Chronicler to believe that this was true led him also to suppress many fea tures in the life of David as recorded in the books of Samuel, and to so portray the lives of other ancient heroes, that it would appear that the law had been ob served through all the history of Israel. Side by side with the development of the priesthood there was a development in the regulation of the rit ual. The directions for the performance of each act became more specific as time elapsed. This is particu- PRIESTHOOD AND RITUAL 1 69 larly noticeable in the laws which governed the feasts. When these are placed in chronological order, the steady increase in definiteness is striking. In the J Document, Ex. 34: 14^28, it is laid down that there must be three feasts before Yahweh in the year. No time is set for these feasts, except that the feast of unleavened bread is set for the month Abib. But even then no day is fixed for it and the mention of the month Abib is believed by many to be a later addition. In the case of the feast of weeks and the feast of ingathering the month in which they were to be held is not even mentioned. In the E Document the same indefinite provisions appear (Ex. 23 : 14 ff.). The only note of time is that which places the feast of unleavened bread in the month Abib and states that it shall be held seven days (Ex. 23:15), but the statement is here also regarded by many as a later addition. So far as written legislation goes it thus appears that in the early times the dates of the feasts, their length, and their ritual are alike un defined. Turning to the Deuteronomic legislation, in Deuter onomy 16 we find the beginnings of closer definition. The passover is to be kept seven days in the month Abib ; the feast of weeks is to be celebrated seven weeks from the time " thou beginnest to put the sickle to the standing grain " ; the feast of tabernacles is to be kept for seven days after the grain has all been brought in from the threshing floor, and the wine from the wine- 170 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL press. In the case of the feast of weeks and the feast of tabernacles no month is set, but the time is never theless fixed by a practical rule. In Leviticus 23, where the original Code of Holi ness has been expanded by the priestly writer, the tend ency to closer definition of time and of ritual has proceeded a step further. The passover is here set for the first month and the fourteenth day of the month. It is to be kept seven days; they are to be counted from the evening of the fourteenth day to the evening of the twenty-first day. The whole time is to be a holy convocation; it is a kind of Sabbath; all ordinary work is prohibited. In the case of the feast of weeks the method of reck oning the seven weeks is more carefully defined than in Deuteronomy 16, and more specific directions are given concerning the sacrifices that are to be offered. The autumn festival is by this code placed in the seventh month; it is directed that it shall begin on the fifteenth day of the month and continue for seven days. It, too, is made a holy convocation during which ordi nary work must cease. One has but to read the provi sions to realize that Judaism was travelling fast on the road to a ritual that defined everything. The climax of all this development is reached in Numbers 28 and 29, where the number of animals to be sacrificed at each of these festivals, as well as upon the sabbaths, the new moons, and other feasts is care fully defined, so that there could be no excuse for not PRIESTHOOD AND RITUAL 1 7 1' performing the right act at the right time and in the right way. It is clear from a review of the develop ment of the ritual that this development went hand in hand with the emergence of the priesthood into prominence and the concentration of power in its hands. Another development synchronous with the exalta tion of the priesthood was the regulation of the Day of Atonement on the tenth day of the seventh month. The ritual for this day is set down in Leviticus 16. It re quired the choosing of two goats, one of which was sacrificed to Yahweh, and its blood sprinkled by the high priest on the holy place and the altar. On the head of the other goat the high priest confessed the sins of the people, after which he was driven out into the wilderness, where Azazel, a wilderness demon, could catch him. The ritual itself is very old. It goes back to fairly primitive ideas, and yet it is here perpetuated and connected with a ceremony, in which the high priest entered the Holy of Holies and made atonement for the whole people. It is plausible to suppose that the Day of Atonement is a development from the primitive Semitic custom of wailing for Tammuz.1 If this be true, the whole ritual is a rearrangement of immemorial ceremonies, which were perpetuated by the priesthood, and made to exalt 1 See W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2 ed., London, 1894, pp. 411, 414, and G. A. Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins, New York, 1902, pp. 114, 289. 172 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL the religious and propitiatory functions of the priest hood in the days of its ascendancy. It is not to be supposed that the priests in the post- exilic time were conscious that the Day of Atonement had its beginnings in the customs of primitive Semitic heathenism. In many religions primitive customs have survived, and have undergone many reinterpretations. They are of value in each generation because of what they are understood by that generation to mean. Into that religious value the origin, no matter how interest ing historically, does not enter. It was thus that the Day of Atonement, when the high priest as the repre sentative of the nation, entered the holy of holies bear ing the atoning blood of a sacrifice, became one of the most solemn and religiously significant days in the Jew ish religious year. TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY i. Priesthood among the Early Semites; cf. W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2 ed. London, 1894, PP- 47 ff- 79, 349 ff., and 417. 2. Who Officiated at the Sacrifices in Early Hebrew Times? cf. the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings. 3. Compare the Laws concerning Levites in Deuteronomy, Ezekiel 44, and Leviticus and Numbers, using the Biblical text of those books. 4. The High Priesthood in Post-exilic Times; cf. "Priests and Levites " in Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. IV. CHAPTER XI ANGELS AND DEMONS Primitive Animism — Angel of Yahweh, Yahweh himself acting for a Special Purpose — " Sons of the gods " — Yahweh a King with Spirits as Courtiers — Angels in E Document — Cherubim and Seraphim — Demons before the Exile — The Prologue to Job — Angels in Zechariah — Names and Functions of Angels in Post- Exilic Time — Demons in Canonical Literature — Azazel and Satan — Attitude of Apocryphal Writers toward Angels — Four Attitudes toward Demons — Demons Fallen Angels — Sins and Angels — Satan Author of Sin — Asmodaeus — Demons Personified Qualities. As pointed out in chapter i, the ancient Semites, like other people in a similar stage of development, believed that the world was full of spirits. Every rock, tree, spring, or other natural object was believed to be ani mated by a non-material existence similar to man's own inner nature, only much more powerful. During all their early history the Hebrews continued to hold this belief, although the pre-eminence of Yahweh and his jealousy tended to push the consciousness of other spir its into the background of their thoughts. Thus in the early poems of Israel there is no reference to a spirit or demon, and, when the text is correctly read, but one reference to an angel. This is in Judges 5 : 23 : " Curse ye Meroz saith the angel of Yahweh." For the mean- 173 174 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL ing of the term " angel of Yahweh " we must look to its usage in the J document. In our oldest document (generally called the J -docu ment), the term angel is used to indicate that Yahweh himself appeared or came to accomplish some special purpose or mission. The Hebrew word mal'ak, which means " messenger " or angel, appears to come from a root that means " to go " or " to send as a messenger," and its earliest usage shows that it referred to the com ing of Yahweh for the accomplishment of a special pur pose. Thus in Gen. 16:7 the angel of Yahweh ap peared to Hagar, but in verse 13 she recognized in him Yahweh himself. In Exodus 3 : 2 the angel of Yahweh appeared to Moses at the burning bush, but it was Yah weh himself whom Moses turned aside to the bush to see (v. 4), and it was Yahweh who spake to Moses (v. 7). The angel of Yahweh appeared to Gideon (Judges 6: 11), but it is later made clear (verses 21-23) tnat lt was Yahweh himself. So the angel of Yahweh that appeared to the wife of Manoah (Jud. 13:2 ff.) in the sequel was none other than Yahweh. It may thus be taken for granted that in the J document the angel of Yahweh is not a being distinct from Yahweh, but Yahweh manifesting himself for the accomplishment of some particular purpose. In the light of this clear usage other passages in the same document become clear. When Yahweh appeared to Abraham in human form (Gen. 18) it was the same kind of an appearance elsewhere described by the term ANGELS AND DEMONS 1 75 angel of Yahweh. In Gen. 32 : 4 ff. doubtless the " man " who came to wrestle with Jacob was believed to be Yahweh himself, though the text does not make the formal statement. It is probably he that is referred to in Gen. 48: 16 as "the angel that hath redeemed me" [Jacob]. The angel of Yahweh who appeared to Balaam in the way (Nu. 22: 22-35) was> n0 doubt, believed to be Yahweh himself. In Joshua 5: 13-15 the " man " that appeared to Joshua as the captain of the host of Yahweh was in all probability thought to be Yahweh himself coming for the help of his people as they undertook the conquest of Palestine. He is prob ably the same who is said in Judges 2 : 1 to have moved from Gilgal to Bethel. It follows from all this that in early times other spir its did not play a prominent part in the thought or consciousness of the Hebrews. Yahweh who had been so overwhelmingly manifested in the volcanic mountain was ready to appear to his followers whenever they needed his aid. He was believed to have undertaken many a mission for their guidance, comfort, and deliv erance. There was no clear line of distinction between Yahweh and his angel. Such manifestations of Yah weh were regarded as life's most desirable experiences. No higher praise could be given to. a man than to say: " Thou art good in my sight as an angel of God (I Sam. 29: 9; II Sam. 14: 17, 20; 19: 27). The J document affords proof of the existence of supernatural beings other than Yahweh. They are 176 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL called in Gen. 6 : 2-4 " sons of the gods " 1 which is the Hebrew way of saying they were beings of the same class as the gods. In the passage referred to they are said to have come down to earth and married human wives, and the offspring of such marriages are said to have been the heroes of olden time. In this story early Hebrew thought shows its original kinship with the thought of other nations. Early men have everywhere believed that one who showed greater energy or ability than his fellows was either a god or akin to the gods. It was this belief that so often made gods of early kings. Where the belief did not take this form, unusual ability was frequently accounted for, as in the case of Heracles, on the supposition that a god was his father. It was in a similar way that the early Hebrews accounted for their heroes, only they did not say that Yahweh became a physical father; they were begotten by other beings of the divine order. It was a thought that long lay dormant, but was revived in the last two centuries be fore Christ in the apocalypses and turned to a different use. There is a story in I Kings 22 which, although it comes from a document that is possibly a little later than J, relates to the period that saw the composition of the J document and may well be considered with it. It is the story of how Yahweh lured Ahab to his de struction. It represents Yahweh as a monarch whose 1 The English version reads " Sons of God," but the other rendering is more literal. ANGELS AND DEMONS 1 77 court was composed of a large number of spirits. Yah weh is said to have consulted these spirits as an earthly monarch might consult his courtiers. The suggestions of one and another were rejected until a suggestion was made that seemed, to the wisdom of the sovereign, practicable. The spirits themselves were morally col ourless. Intrinsically they were neither good nor bad. Yahweh could send them on missions for the help or for the ruin of men, and the character of the work assigned to a spirit made him for the time being good or evil from the human point of view. In Judges 9 : 23 God is said to have sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the man of Schechem, and in I Samuel an evil spirit from God is said to have come upon Saul (I Sam. 16: 14-16, 23; 18: 10). The story of I Kings 22 is of great value in that it shows how the Hebrews, who had inherited a belief in the existence of many spirits, reconciled, at this stage of their religious development, that belief with the supremacy of Yahweh. This type of belief prevailed about 750 B.C. when the E document was composed. In Gen. 28: 12 Jacob is said to have seen the angels of God ascending and de scending upon the ladder at Bethel, but they were so closely associated with God himself that Jacob ex claimed: " This is none other than the house of God." In Gen. 31:11 we are told that the " angel of God " appeared to Jacob in Aram, but in 31 : 13 he said: " I am the God of Bethel." The angel was, accordingly, only a manifestation of God. This is borne out by 178 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Exodus 23 : 21, where it is said of an angel " my name is in him." As the name of Yahweh embodied, to He brew thought, the attributes of Yahweh himself, the ex pression implies that Yahweh was present in his angel. Outside the passages discussed the term " angel " does not often appear in the literature written before the Babylonian exile. In Hosea 12:4 it is declared that Jacob " had power over the angel," — a reference to the "man" of Genesis 32: 24 ff., who was, as we have seen, Yahweh himself. Angels are said to have spoken to Elijah and other prophets (I Kings 19:7; II Kings 1:3, 15), but there is nothing to show that the " angel " was not Yahweh acting for the accomplish ment of his purposes. The conclusion seems warranted, therefore, that in the pre-exilic time the angel of Yahweh was not sharply distinguished from Yahweh, but was only a special manifestation of Yahweh himself. Apart from spirits and " sons of the gods " we hear of Cherubim (Gen. 3 : 24), who were, perhaps, the per sonified winds.1 Isaiah also speaks of Seraphim (Isa. 6: 1—7). The seraphim were creatures with six wings who were attendants of Yahweh. While the seraphim appear to have been composite figures, it is probable that they were really winged serpents, for in Nu. 21:6 fiery seraphim are really fiery serpents. According to 1 See G. A. Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins, Social and Religious, New York, 1902, p. 91. In addition to the references there given cf. Skinner, Genesis in the International Critical Commentary, New York, 1910, p. 89 ff. ANGELS AND DEMONS 1 79 Ezekiel i and 10 the cherubim were composite creatures, part lion, part ox, part eagle and part man. In some of the apocalypses (Enoch 61:10; 71:7; Secrets of Enoch 20: 1 ; 21 : 1) the seraphim were associated with the cherubim as the guardians of Paradise. In many ancient religions serpents have been regarded as sacred and there is reason to believe that such was the case in Israel.1 Probably the winds and the serpents, the sacred associates of Yahweh in Paradise, became in later thought the cherubim and seraphim. In the pre-exilic literature there are but few refer ences to demons. In Deut. 33: 13 it is said that the deep (tehom) crouches, and the word for crouches is one often employed to express the action of an animal. Probably the poet personified the deep just as Tiamat, the Babylonian deep, is personified as a great dragon. In a later poem (see Deut. 32: 17) it is said that the Hebrews sacrificed to Shedim and not to God. The translators of the Septuagint regarded Shedim as de mons. Shedim is, however, the Assyrian shedu, a bull- deity, and probably it was used by the Deuteronomic poet to designate a foreign deity. It thus appears that before the exile the Hebrews did not entertain a belief in demons in the ordinary sense of the term. The innumerable spirits who were, they thought, the attendants of Yahweh, were non-ethical in character. They might be sent by him on any sort of a mission. If the task assigned one of them was help- 1 See above, ch. vi, p. 112. 180 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL ful to men, the spirit was good; if harmful to man, he was evil. The prophet Amos, for example, was so thorough a monotheist that he had no room in his the ology for a Satan. He believed that Yahweh did all that was done, whether good or bad. He asks : " Shall evil befall a city and Yahweh hath not done it? " (Amos 3:6). Satan and his attendant demons, who have played such a prominent part in later thought, had no place in this period of Israel's religion. The prophets of the exile, Ezekiel and the Second Isaiah, maintain in general the pre-exilic attitude with refer ence to angels and demons. The same is true of the Third Isaiah, whose expression " the angel of his pres ence " (Isa. 63: 9), is probably a reference to Exodus 33 : 12 ff., where it is promised that Yahweh's presence will accompany Israel. To identify Yahweh's presence with his angel is in thorough accord with pre-exilic usage. The point of departure for the post-exilic develop ment is found in the prologue of the book of Job. This prologue is older than the poem itself. Whether it was written before the exile or later cannot now be determined. It is together with the epilogue the por tion of the original story which the poet left intact, when he substituted his poetical discussion for the middle por tion of the prose narrative.1 In this prologue Yahweh is represented as surrounded by a group of " sons of the gods," or beings of the divine class. As in I Kings 22, 1 See below, ch. xiii, ANGELS AND DEMONS l8l these constitute his courtiers. They may go forth through the world at will, but they have certain days on which they return to pay their court to Yahweh. Satan is one of these " sons of the gods " ; he, too, is a member of Yahweh's court. These courtiers corre spond to the angels of the later time, just as they cor respond to the spirits of the earlier time. Satan, then, is in this narrative still an angel, though a disgruntled angel. He is not entirely happy, and accordingly is not a contributor to the joy of Yahweh. He has be come sceptical of human virtue; he believes that every man has his price. The way in which Satan is here made to stand apart from the other " sons of the gods " is the starting point of that later development which regarded him as a fallen angel. In Zechariah, about 520 B. c, the function of the angel as an intermediary between God and man is clearly developed. All of the prophetic messages of Zechariah are said to have been revealed to him by an angel (Zech. 1:9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 19; 5:5, 10; 6:4, 5). The conception that angels were intermediaries between Yahweh and men became necessary because at this time the Jews were coming to think of God as so exalted that he would not act like a man. In the priestly document, written a few decades later than this, God is repre sented as apart and remote. He no longer appears in human forms as in the J document, nor does he dis course familiarly with men. Religious thought sup plied this lack of familiar converse with God by the 1 82 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL belief that he sent his messenger. In the writings of this prophet Satan appears again. His character has deteriorated; he is more malignant than in Job, though not yet the arch-fiend that he afterward became. He here opposes the high priest, the representative of the nation Israel. Satan was accordingly thought to be the adversary of Israel. From this time onward angels played a prominent part in Jewish thought, though they were much more popular with some writers than with others. They are called by a variety of names, and perform many differ ent kinds of duties. They are called " sons of the mighty" (Ps. 29:1; 89:6); "mighty ones" (Joel 3:11); " watchmen " (Isa. 62 : 6) ; " the host of the high ones" (Isa. 24: 21) ; "morning stars" (Job 38: 7); "watchers" (Dan. 4,17); "holy ones" (Zech. 14:5; Ps. 89:7); and "princes" (Dan. 10:13, 2°i 21). Their functions were also various. They acted as God's council (Ps. 89:7), as intercessors for men (Job 5: 1), as guardians of the righteous (Ps. 34: 7), whom they bear up in their hands (Ps. 91 : 11 f.) ; they are channels of divine revelation (Dan. 8: 16 ff.) ; they inflict punishment on the wicked (Ps. 78 : 49) ; some of them guard nations (Dan. 10: 20, 21). In short it was thought to be their duty to do whatever Yahweh desired to have done. In one of the latest of the Old Testament canonical books, Daniel, certain angels are exalted over other angels and are called " princes." It thus appears that ANGELS AND DEMONS 1 83 by the Maccabaean time Jewish thought divided the angels into ranks after the manner of Persian thought.1 Whether this was a purely native development may well be doubted. It seems probable, since by this time Jews and Persians had been in contact for some time, that Jewish angelology was to some degree influenced by the Persian. In this period, too, certain angels are so far individu alized as to be given names. We meet, for example, with Michael (Dan. 10: 13, 21) and Gabriel (Dan. 8: 16; 10:4). This is an evidence of the increasingly prominent place angels were coming to hold in religious thought. In the earlier time angels, like the spirits that preceded them, had been nameless. In the canonical literature of the time after the exile demons also become somewhat prominent. They are not so prominent as angels, and yet there are several references to them. They also are given various des ignations. In Isaiah 34: 14, where the Revised Ver sion renders "satyrs" (margin, "he-goats"), the Hebrew means literally " hairy ones." They were the spirits that were supposed to haunt ruins and waste places and are here mentioned in connection with the desolation of Edom. The same word (" hairy ones ") is employed in Isa. 13:21, a passage written during the exile, in depicting the ruins of Babylon. Perhaps these " hairy ones " were the deities of foreign nations, 1 See G. A. Barton, The Religions of the World, Chicago, 1916, chap ter vii, § 131, 184 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL degraded in the thought of the Hebrews as the Arabs afterward degraded similar deities to jinn x and attrib uted to them some of the characteristics of animals. It is probably for this reason that in Lev. 17:7 sacrifice to " hairy ones " is for the future prohibited. Similarly in Psalm 106:37 shedim, which, as al ready pointed out, were Assyrian deities, is clearly used for demons. In the Mishna and Talmud shed has come to designate demons in general. It thus appears that one class of demons in whom Jews believed were orig inally heathen gods. In accordance with this view Paul declared: " The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God," (I Cor. 10: 20). In Isaiah 34: 14 Lilith (RV, "night monster") is mentioned in connection with " hairy ones." Some have supposed that her name is derived from the Hebrew word for night, and that she was the spook of darkness. Another possibility is that her name is the survival of the Sumerian HI, " spirit," and that she too is of for eign origin. Be this as it may, Lilith played a most important part in Jewish post-Biblical thought. She was supposed to be especially harmful to pregnant women and little children, and many homes contained spells against her.2 Another great demon or dragon which in this period 1 See W. R. Smith's Religion of the Semites, 2nd ed., London, 1894, p. 120 f. 2 Cf. J. A. Montgomery, Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur, Philadelphia, 1913, pp. 75~79- ANGELS AND DEMONS 1 85 assumed large proportions in Jewish thought was Ra hab. She was none other than the Babylonian prim itive sea dragon, Tiamat. In Babylonian tradition she had opposed the gods; and Marduk had conquered her and her helpers, had cut her in two, making the heavens of one part and the earth of the other. Hebrew poets took over these traditions, putting Yahweh in the place of Marduk. Thus the Second Isaiah asks: "Art not thou he who hewed Rahab in pieces, who pierced through the dragon?" (Isa. 51:9). Job, in speaking of the might of Yahweh says : " The helpers of Rahab do stoop under him; how much less shall I answer him?" (Job 9:13); and again: "He quelleth the sea with his power, by his understanding he smiteth through Rahab; the bars of heaven fear him," 1 (Job 26:12, 13). Similarly the author of Psalm 89:10 sang: " Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces as one that is slain; thou hast scattered thine enemies with the arm of thy strength." Another dragon of Babylonian origin was Leviathan. In Job 3 : 8 he was a monster capable of darkening the day, while in Psalm 74: 14 we read: " Thou breakest the heads of Leviathan in pieces." As verses 16 and 17 go on to speak of the creation of the sun, the fixing of earth's bounds and the making of summer and winter, it is clear that this is also an allusion to the Babylonian creation epic. As Leviathan is masculine it is prob- 1 The reasons for this rendering are given in Barton's Commentary on Job in the Bible for Home and School, p. 219. 1 86 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL able that he is either Kingu, Taimat's Babylonian con sort, under a new name, or a masculinized form of Tia mat herself. While so many Jewish demons of this period are of foreign origin there are two that are purely native. One of these was Azazel, a wilderness demon, who was appeased on the day of atonement by having a goat driven out into the wilderness where Azazel could catch him. In the canonical literature Azazel is mentioned only in Leviticus 16 in connection with the ritual of the " scapegoat," — the term by which the Authorized Ver sion of the Bible concealed Azazel's existence. It is clear that the part of the ritual of this chapter that has to do with the sending out of this goat into the wilder ness is very old. It is a survival from early times, when Israel felt more secure after the demon of the wastes, — demons that were supposed to be hostile be cause their habitat was inhospitable, — had been pro pitiated. In the canonical books later than Zechariah, Satan, the second native Hebrew demon, is mentioned but once. This is in I Chron. 21:1, where the Chronicler is retell ing the story of David's census. The author of II Samuel 24 had said that Yahweh prompted David to number Israel; the Chronicler says it was Satan. As the Chronicler was writing somewhere between 300 and 200 B.C., it appears that by this time Satan was recog nized in certain Jewish circles as the great adversary of Israel, — the author of evil. Nevertheless the fact ANGELS AND DEMONS 1 87 that he is mentioned but once shows that other demons occupied a more prominent place in popular thought than he. The apocryphal Jewish literature that developed be tween 200 B.C. and 100 a.d. is a fruitful source of in formation as to Jewish conceptions of angels and de mons. The writers of this literature lived partly out side of Palestine and partly in the Holy Land. They were subjected to diverse influences and entertained di verse points of view. Some, like the author of the Wis dom of Solomon, were philosophically inclined; others, like the author of I Maccabees, were touched with in cipient Sadduceeism. Some revelled in the old concep tions and regarded angels and demons as real and nu merous ; others made spirits and demons of the powers of nature and of the tendencies of men; still others ignore this class of beings almost entirely. The author of the Enoch parables (Enoch 37-71) speaks of the spirit of the sea, of hoar frost, of hail, of snow, of fog, of dew, and of rain (Enoch 60: 17-21). The author of the Book of Jubilees speaks of the spirits of fire, wind, darkness, hail, snow, frost, thunder, cold and heat, winter and summer (Jubilees 2:1). This is either a survival of the old animism, or a new personi fication. The Book of Jubilees also calls these spirits angels. The earliest of these writings, Enoch 1-36, repre sents a definite belief in angels, as does also Enoch 37-70, written a century later. These writers re- 1 88 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL garded angels as a kind of supernatural men. Like men they are said to possess bodies and spirits (Enoch 67: 8) ; they intermarried with human women (Enoch 7:1) , — an idea that is clearly borrowed from Gen. 6 : 2—4. This conception was shared by the author of the Secrets of Enoch, for in ch. 22 he describes in great detail how Enoch was transformed by a change of rai ment and a glorification of his body into an angel. When later Enoch was permitted to return to earth for thirty days, an angel chilled his face, apparently to dim its angelic lustre before he came down to mingle with ordinary men (Secrets of Enoch 36:2537:1; 38:1). As in the Book of Daniel, angels are said in these works to be divided into ranks. The ranks had their leaders, of whom Gabriel was one (Secrets of Enoch 21:3). The same writer (20: 3) represents the Lord as sitting on his throne, and at ten steps remove stand the heavenly angels according to their rank. Four angels were called " angels of the throne " (Enoch 9:1; 40:2); they were Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael, though in two passages Penuel is substituted for Uriel. Both the conception of ranks of angels and the tendency to name them 1 may possibly, though not necessarily, have been borrowed from the Persians. 1 For a list of the names of the angels of this period see the writer's article, " The Origin of the Names of Angels and Demons in the Extra- Canonical Apocalyptic Literature to ioo A. D.," in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. XXXI, pp. 156-159. ANGELS AND DEMONS 1 89 The author of the Apocalypse of Baruch (59: 11) de clared angels to be innumerable. These countless hosts were supposed to do all that God desired to have done. Through their agency the whole course of nature was carried on. Myriads of angels attended the sun (Secrets of Enoch 14) ; they reg ulated the courses of the stars (ch. 19) ; they guarded the habitations of the snow (ch. 5) ; they kept the treas uries of oil (ch. 6). Angels controlled the lightning, causing a pause before the thunder came (Enoch 60: 13— 15) ; they presided over the treasuries of frost, hail, dew, and rain (60: 16-22). Another function of angels was to instruct the apoc alyptic seers. Thus Enoch was guided about the uni verse by an angel who revealed its secrets to him (Enoch 40: 8, etc.) ; an angel talked to Ezra (II Esdras 2: 44 ff.) ; and angels according to the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs communicated with most of the sons of Jacob. Angels were also supposed to be God's in struments for conveying blessings or chastisements. The angel Raphael came to heal Tobit's blindness (Tob. 5: 1—6) and, in the sequel conveyed to Tobit many other favours and blessings. On the other hand they are said to have destroyed the Assyrians in the time of Sennacherib (II Mace. 11:6; 15:22). Enoch also saw angels administering punishment in the other world (Secrets of Enoch 10:2 ff.). When Jerusalem was destroyed four angels were said to have stood at its four corners with lamps and accomplished its ruin 190 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL (Apocal. of Baruch 7:158:1). It was believed that an angel would be appointed as an avenger on the day of judgment (Assumption of Moses 10: 2). God was, by this time, thought to be remote and exalted, and those who believed in angels at all made them very active as his intermediaries, to carry out in all spheres of life his will. While the beliefs of the apocryphal writers with ref erence to angels represent but a slight advance over those of the canonical books, their conceptions concern ing demons are much more developed. These beliefs present, however, considerable variety. Four different types of thought can be traced in them. (1). The authors of Enoch 1-36 and of the Enoch Parables (37—70) present the most complete and de veloped demonology. Both were intensely interested in tracing the origin of evil, and both found it in de moniacal activity. But in tracing the origin of evil they traced the genesis of the demons themselves, for in their view the demons were developed out of the angels or " sons of the gods " mentioned in Genesis 6 : 2—4. It is assumed that these beings were really angels, who rebelled against God in their heavenly estate, and who came down to earth endowed with a supernatural knowl edge of evil arts. They then married human wives and taught to men various evil practices. According to these writers this angelic host, when it descended from heaven, landed on Mount Hermon. The origin of sin is, accordingly, traced by these thinkers, not to the Gar- ANGELS AND DEMONS 191 den of Eden and the serpent, but to Mount Hermon and the narrative of Genesis 6 : 2-4. In the view of these apocalyptists there were hosts of these angels and they were divided into different ranks, being governed by archangels, who became arch fiends. The names of these leaders are given by both writers in a somewhat corrupt form. The original list seems to have been Shemiaz, Akrab, Rahamiel (or Ra- miel), Kokabel, Tamiel, Daniel, Ezekiel, Baraqel, Asa- hel (afterward confused with Azazel), Herem, Hana- nel, Shemapishael, Satharel, Turel, and Sahariel.1 These names are all appropriate to angels. For ex ample, Shemiaz meaning " my name is strong," Ramiel, " my exalted one is God," Kokabel, " star of God," Sahariel, " my moon is God," 2 etc. Shemiaz taught conjurers and root-cutters their arts; Herem the loosen ing of incantations; Baraqel and Tamiel, astrology; Kokabel, signs; Sahariel, the courses of the moon.3 Azazel is said to have taught men metal work (the making of swords, etc.) as well as all kinds of wicked ness (Enoch 8: if. ; 9: 6; 10: 8). In the Enoch Para bles the functions are distributed somewhat differently. Gadreel (perhaps a corruption of Azazel) is said to have led Eve astray, to have taught men the instruments of death and the use of coats of mail (Enoch 69: 6) ; 1 For a complete list of demons in the writings of this period see Journal of Biblical Literature, XXXI, 162-166. 2 For these and other etymologies see reference in preceding note. 3 Compare Enoch 8:3. 192 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Penemue, or, according to one reading, Tuniel, taught men to discern bitter and sweet, wisdom and the art of writing (69: 8 f.). The writer of the Enoch Parables represents the earth-dwellers as subject to Satan (Enoch 54:6), although Satan is being punished (Enoch 53: 3). The name of the angel who led all the other angels astray and so started the whole course of sin is given as Yeqon (Enoch 69:4). In one manuscript it is Qeyon, a slightly transformed spelling of the Hebrew name of Cain. As Yeqon probably arose from Qeyon by a process well known to Semitic philologists, it ap pears that the first murderer of the books of Genesis became in the thought of this writer the originator of sin in heaven. Thus near did Cain approach to apo theosis; he became the archfiend. There is thus pre sented a complete theory of the origin of evil and a complete system of demonology, but in this system Satan, though present, is not particularly important, and is not thought to be the agency by which sin came into the world. (2) Another point of view is represented by the Wisdom of Solomon and the Secrets of Enoch. To these writers Satan was the archfiend, — the demon who led mankind astray. The author of the Wisdom of Solomon (ch. 2:24) was the first writer to identify Satan with the serpent of the Garden of Eden. In so doing he attributed to him the work of evil which the earlier Enoch-writers had attributed to the host of fallen angels. This view was adopted by the author of ANGELS AND DEMONS 1 93 the Secrets of Enoch (ch. 31 : 6), who, although much interested in angels, has, on the whole, little to say of demons. Like the author of Wisdom, he simply ac cepted Satan from the canonical literature. He did not believe that Satan's rule over men will be eternal, for he represents Enoch as seeing him hurled to the abyss (Secrets of Enoch 29:4; 31:4). The author of the Testament of Gad (ch. 6:7) also regarded Satan as the chief of the demons. It is this view which is taught in the Gospels (Mark 1 : 13, etc.) and was held by Paul and other New Testa ment writers and which prevailed in Christianity. (3) The book of Tobit represents a third type of thought. It names but one demon, Asmodaeus, who was evidently of Persian origin. Asmodaeus is the Persian Aeshma-daeva, " evil deity " or " spirit." The author of this book belonged to the Persian portion of the dispersion and a Persian demon appears to have supplanted in his thought the native Israelitish agents of evil.(4) A fourth type of thought is represented by the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Ascension of Isaiah. In these writings, while the demonology is very real and all-pervasive, it is made up in a purely rational way. The world is believed to be pervaded by evil spirits, but these are simply the personification of the evil propensities of man, — jealousy, lust, pride, chicanery, injustice, rapacity, etc. Writers who re garded their demons in this way moved in a different 194 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL realm of thought than those who gave to the divine beings of Genesis 6 : 2—4 orthodox Hebrew names. Over this host of evil propensities Beliar presided.1 He takes the place of Shemiaz and Satan in the other systems. Beliar is a corruption of Belial, — which had been employed in Nahum 2 : 1 as the name of a great evil power. In earlier historical books Belial had been used to designate worthlessness, as, for example, in 1 Samuel 25:25. Perhaps it was an old name for Sheol, but this is uncertain. To most of the Jews of this time and afterward the world was full of supernatural agencies, but the devel opment of their thought during the centuries after Christ lies beyond the scope of this work. TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. A Fuller Study of the Origin and Development of Angels and Demons; cf. "Demons and Spirits" (Hebrew) in Hast ings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. IV, pp. 594- 601, and G. A. Barton, " The Origin of the Names of Angels and Demons in the Extra-Canonical Apocalyptic Literature," in Journal of Biblical Literature, XXXI, pp. 156-168. 2. The Babylonian Creation Myth and its Influence in the Old Testament; cf. G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1916, Part II, chapter i. 3. Persian Influences in Hebrew Angelology and Demonol ogy,; cf. J. H. Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, London, 1913, Lecture IX. 1 See, e. g., Test of Reuben 2:1, 6:3; Simeon 5:3; Levi 19:1; Issachar 6:1, 7:1; Dan. 1:7, 4:7, 5:10; Naphtali 3:1; Joseph 7:4; Benjamin 7:1, 2; Ascension of Isaiah 1:8, 9, etc. CHAPTER XII THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS Widespread Influence of the Psalter — Psalter Re-edited Many Times — Steps by which it was Compiled — Psalm 44 — Imprecatory Psalms — War Songs — Religious Classification of Psalms — Reli gion of the Nature-Psalms — Consciousness of Righteousness — Prayers — Emotional Experience — Sacrifice in Psalms 50 and 51 — Psalm 139 and Enlarged View of God — Psalm 51 and its Spiritual Religion. In the great Hebrew prophets we find the most spirit ual message of the Old Testament; in the Psalms we find the tenderest devotional expression. No book of praise has so long been the instrument for the expres sion of the best devotion of such a wide and varied circle of the most civilized men. " St. Chrysostom flee ing into exile; Martin Luther going to meet all possible devils at Worms ; George Wishart facing the plague at Dundee ; Wickliffe on his sick bed, surrounded by his enemies; John Bunyan in Bedford jail; William Wilber- force in a crisis when all his most strenuous efforts seemed in vain, and his noble plans were threatened with ruin, — all stayed their hearts and renewed their courage with verses from the Psalms. The Huguenots at Dieppe marched to victory chanting the sixty-eighth psalm ; and the same stately war-song sounded over the field of Dunbar. It was a psalm that Alice Benden 19s 196 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL sung in the darkness of her Canterbury dungeon; and the lips of the Roman Paulla, faintly moving in death, breathed their last sigh in the words of a psalm. The motto of England's proudest university is a verse from the psalms; and a sentence from the same book is writ ten above the loneliest grave on earth, among the snows of the arctic circle. It was with the fifth verse of the thirty-first psalm that our Lord Jesus Christ commended his soul to God; and with the same words St. Stephen, St. Polycarp, St. Basil, St. Bernard, St. Louis, Huss, Columbus, Luther, Melancthon — yea, and many more saints of whom no man knoweth — have bid farewell to earth and their welcome to heaven." 1 As pointed out in the last chapter, this psalter which has been so widely employed, came into existence as the hymn book of the second temple. It had a gradual growth, somewhat analogous to that of the Moody and Sankey hymn books. This growth can be traced in the titles which are still prefixed to many of the psalms. The nucleus of this growth was psalms 3-41, or the first of the books into which the psalter is at present divided, minus psalms 1 and 2 which were afterward prefixed. For some reason, which we cannot now dis cover, this first book was called " The Psalms of David." Perhaps it was so named because of his fame as a musician — a fame which brought him to the court of King Saul (I Sam. 16: 16 f.), and which had lost nothing in the time of the prophet Amos (Amos 6:5). 1 See Henry Van Dyke, The Story of the Psalms, New York, 1887, p. n. THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS 1 97 If actual compositions of David were included in it, they cannot now be discovered. It is probable, as will be shown below, that pre-exilic compositions were included in the psalter, but these were certainly re-edited so that they would accord with those religious ideals for which the recently adopted priestly law stood. We have already noted how these ideals led to the composition of the books of Chronicles, in order to supplant the books of Kings. We may be sure that the hymns, intended for actual use in the worship of the temple, would also not be permitted to express sentiments which, however consonant with the religious ideals of the time before the Deuteronomic reform, were utterly alien to the religious ideals of Nehemiah and his friends. In modern times people will sing theology far more crude than that which they will tolerate in sermons, but even the hymn books are revised from time to time in order to make them continuously acceptable vehicles of devotional expression,1 and we may be sure that the sec ond temple did not inaugurate its ritual by singing a pre-prophetic theology. At some time when the national spirit of Israel was 1 A seventeenth century hymn book is said to have contained the following: " Ye monsters of the briny deep, Your maker's praises spout, Up from the deep ye codlings peep, And wag your tails about! " This has long been revised out of our hymn books. No modern con gregation could maintain a devotional mood while singing it. 198 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL again stirred, perhaps at the time of the unsuccessful rebellion about 350 B. c.,1 books 2 and 3 of the psalter were collected. This collection included psalms 42-83, to which psalms 84-89 were afterward added. In order to make the hymn book which contained psalms 42-83 the editor combined three previously existing hymn books, and, as he did so, he left clues by which we can trace his work. These hymn books had been called respectively, " Psalms of the Sons of Korah," " Psalms of Asaph," and " The Prayers of David, the Son of Jesse." Up to this time the hymns had referred to Israel's God as Yahweh. This had been done in book I (psalms 3-41 ) and also in the three psalm books which were now combined. The editor who combined them did not approve of this and changed Yahweh everywhere to elohim, i.e., to " God." 2 In course of time psalms 84-89 were added to this collection, and the man who added them permitted the divine name Yahweh to remain in them. After the lapse of consid erable time — a time so long that many of the musical terms used in the first three books of the psalter had gone out of fashion — books iv and v were collected and added to the psalter. This was probably done at the time of the great revival of the national and reli- 1 See above, p. 144. 2 He did this with such zeal that he sometimes made mistakes. In Ps. xiv, a non-religious poem written on the marriage of some king, vs. 6 read, " Thy throne shall be for ever and ever." As " shall be " looks in Hebrew a little like " Yahweh," the editor inserted elohim in its place! THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS 1 99 gious spirit which attended the Maccabaean struggle. These books were in part made up of previously exist ing collections, as psalms 120-134 show, and at first formed one book consisting of psalms 90-136. To this psalms 137-150 were within a few years added, for the whole seems to have been translated into Greek about 130 b. c. At the time of the Maccabaean struggle many of the psalms which had long been in the psalter were revised, to make them express more clearly the feelings of the time. This revision is especially noticeable in psalms 44, 74, and 79. In the case of psalms 74 and 79 the revision took the form of an extensive retouching throughout the hymn; in the case of psalm 44 another strophe was added to the hymn. Psalm 44 instructively illustrates the history of the psalter.1 Verses 1-8 contain a hymn of victory, which breathes the exultation and the confidence of a nation whose arms are triumphing. This is strikingly illus trated in vs. 5 f . : Through thee we push down our adversaries : Through thy name we tread them under that rise up against us. Thou savest us from our adversaries, And puttest them to shame that hate us. This must have been written when Israel had armies that were winning battles. As she had none in the 1 See American Journal of Theology, Vol. Ill, p. 740 f. 200 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL early post-exilic days, it is probable that a bit of pre- exilic triumphal poetry has been utilized here by the post-exilic psalm-book makers. To this pre-exilic poem, which forms the first strophe of the psalm, they added another of a very different character. It begins at vs. 9 : But now thou hast cast us off and brought us to shame, Thou goest not forth with our hosts. Thou makest us to turn back from the adversary; And they that hate us take spoil for themselves. This surely is a wail from an unsuccessful rebellion, and fits well the time about 350 B. c. when Bagoses cruelly treated the Jews. The second strophe of the psalm (vss. 9-16) is all of this character. This strophe is separated from the first one by the musical term, Selah, which indicated that an instrumental inter lude should come in between verses 8 and 9. The last strophe, verses 17-26, is of still a different character. It reflects, not unsuccessful rebellion, but re ligious persecution, — persecution, too, endured by a people that is conscious of having kept God's law. All this is come upon us ; Yet have we not forgotten thee, Nor have we been false to thy covenant. Yea, for thy sake we are killed all the day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Such religious persecution was endured only in the THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS 201 Maccabaean time, and there can be little doubt that this strophe was added then. This view is confirmed by the omission of " Selah " after verse 16. In the Maccabaean time such musical notation was not much used. We cannot trace so clearly the history of the psalter in other psalms, but we may be sure that by somewhat similar processes of collecting, re-editing, and adapta tion our psalter was brought to completion. , This post-exilic Jewish church was a noble body of struggling idealists, and, withal, very human. Good and evil struggled in their hearts, and there was great variety of opinion among them. All this is mirrored in their psalms, and this is one cause of their popularity. One can find here something expressed in simple, emo tional phrase, to voice almost every mood of the soul. In the imprecatory x psalms even unregenerate hate finds expression. This hate one can understand, even though he abhors it, as in the sentiment: Let his days be few; Let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, And his wife a widow. Let his children be vagabonds and beg; Let them be thrust from their desolate places. Ps. 109:8-10. Again in Ps. 137: 1 The imprecatory psalms are: 109, 129, 137, and 140. The following may be called half imprecatory, viz.: — 5, 9, 10, 35, 79, 101, 149. 202 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL O daughter of Babylon, destined to destruction, Happy is he who shall pay thee The dealing thou hast dealt to us ! Happy he who shall seize and dash Thy babes against the rock! In such passages the Psalter touches its lowest depths. If it did not have depths as well as heights it would not have been so useful a book to imperfect human beings. Closely allied with the imprecatory Psalms are the hymns of war, of which we may take Ps. 68 as an ex ample. This psalm has undergone so many re-editings that it is the crux of interpreters. Probably it had a pre-exilic nucleus, was treasured by some early collector in the hymn-book called " The Prayers of David," was edited again for use in the struggle with Bagoses, when it found its present position in the Psalter, and was per haps retouched in Maccabaean times. It thus echoes the trust and the hates of many wars, — strains that have become strangely familiar in the agony of the world war which began in 19 14. Such war-songs rose, as we now realize so well, out of a narrow patriotism, that made men feel sure that they were the favourites of heaven, and that God hated their enemies as much as they did. This intense na tional narrowness runs through much of the psalter, and mars its beauty. So great a psalmist as the author of Ps. 91, whose great words: He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty, THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS 203 have sustained many a saint, could not rise above it. So long as he is safe he seems careless of humanity. He sings : A thousand shall fall at thy side, And ten thousand at thy right hand, But it shall not come nigh thee! Two psalms, as noted in a previous chapter, are de voted to extolling the law; x eight contain retrospects of Israel's history,2 retelling the story to create a devo tional spirit; seven3 are nature psalms, whose authors saw in the processes of nature a revelation of the power and goodness of God. No modern reader can peruse them intelligently without catching something of their worshipful spirit. Such is the case in Ps. 19 : The heavens declare the glory of God ; And the firmament showeth his handiwork. One feels it also in Ps. 147 : He giveth snow like wool; He scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes. He casteth forth his ice like morsels: Who can stand before his cold ? He sendeth out his word and melteth them: He causeth his wind to blow and the waters flow. 1 These are 19:7-14, and 119. 2 They are 77, 78, 83, 105, 106, 114, 135, and 136. 3 These are 8, 19:1-6, 29, 104, 107, 139, 147, 148. In this classifica tion a psalm has to be placed sometimes in two classes as its author either did not confine himself to one theme, or so treated his theme as to bring in other motives. 204 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL The authors of such psalms as these help us to look through nature to God. One feels it even in such pas sages as Ps. 74: 13-15, where the Psalmist has bor rowed his science bodily from the Babylonian Creation Myth, simply putting Yahweh in place of Marduk: Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: Thou brakest the heads of the sea-monsters in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of Leviathan in pieces; Thou gavest him to be food to the people inhabiting the wilderness. Thou didst cleave fountain and flood : Thou driedst up mighty rivers. The day is thine, the night also is thine: Thou hast prepared the light and the sun. The same power is felt in: The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof ; The world and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, And established it upon the floods. Ps. 24: 1, 2. Seven psalms 1 reflect a peculiar consciousness of righteousness. It is the kind of spiritual phenomenon that might easily spring up in the minds of a people that was earnestly devoting itself to the observance of an external law by which they could measure themselves. The possession of an objective law, which one could be tolerably sure he had kept, begot in some psalmists a 1 These are 17, 18, z6, 44 at end, 101, 131, 134. THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS 20$ consciousness of righteousness. Thus we read in Ps. 59:3: For, lo, they lie in wait for my soul; The mighty gather themselves together against me: Not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O Lord. This attitude reaches its climax in Ps. 18: 20-24. Yahweh hath rewarded me according to my righteousness ; According to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of Yahweh, And have not wickedly departed from my God. For all his ordinances were before me, And I put not away his statutes from me. I was also perfect with him, And I kept myself from mine iniquity. Therefore hath Yahweh recompensed me according to my righteousness, According to the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight. Such psalmists were the predecessors of the one whose prayer began: "God I thank thee that I am not as other men are." They had never, like Paul, a later Pharisee, noticed that the law contained a command: " Thou shalt not covet," and who was led thereby to discover the impossibility — apart from a change of nature — of controlling desire. Thirty-four psalms are prayers for help,1 — prayers, 1 These are 3, 6, 7, 12, 13, 2Z, 25, 35, 38, 39, 44 middle part, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58. 59. 60, 64, 69, 70, 71, 74, 80, 83, 86, 88, 94, 102, 120, 141, 142, 143, 144- 206 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL which in the varying needs and moods of modern life the Christian often finds in part appropriate to his own needs. Forty-three psalms x are of a reflective or moral izing nature; their authors grapple with practical facts or difficulties. Their efforts call forth our sympathies, and their decisions instruct us. Twenty-eight psalms contain expressions of trust that make them admirable vehicles of personal devotion. Of this number special mention must be made of Psalms 42, 43, 46 and 84.2 Some of the compilers of psalms were interested in one aspect of devotion and some in others. Thus the compiler of the Psalms of Asaph found a strong attrac tion in poems that discussed a problem. He included in his psalter Ps. 50, which discusses animal sacrifice, and Ps. 73, which discusses the inexplicable problem of evil. The first of these problems, though an acute one for his age, is no longer a problem to us, but the second of them vexes us still. The compiler of the Psalms of the Sons of Korah was an expert in devotional literature. He had sounded the depths of emotional experience, and has brought to gether a rare anthology of psalms for life's crises arid sorrows. What Christian has not been fain to use his hymn: 1 These are i, 2, 14, 15, 20, 21, 24, 33, 34, 36, 37, 41, 49, 50, 52, 53, 60, 62, 65, 66, 68, 73, 76, 82, 88, 90, 92, 93, 97, 99, 100, 107, 108, m, 112, 115, 116, 118, 125, 127, 128, 133, and 138. 2 The whole list is: 4, 16, 23, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 39, 40, 42, 43, 46, 56, 57, 61, 62, 63, 67, 70, 84, 91, 121, 123, 124, 130, 140, 141. THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS 207 As the hart pants for brooks of water So pants my soul for thee, O God ? Have we not often encouraged ourselves with his re frain: Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him For the help of his countenance? (cf. Ps. 42). Many another than the hero of the Reformation has been comforted in singing : God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change, Though the mountains be carried into the midst of the seas; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, Though the mountains shake with their swelling; (Ps. 46). In other moods the words My soul longeth, yea even fainteth For the courts of Yahweh, My heart and my flesh cry out Unto the living God, (Ps. 84). express our deepest longings far better than could any words of our own. There are three psalms about the thought of whose authors a few words should be said. These are psalms 50, 139, and 51. Attention was called in the first chap- 208 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL ter to the fact that animal sacrifice was inherited by the Hebrews from their heathen Semitic ancestors. No doubt it, like all permanent religious institutions, had, in the lapse of time, been given different explanations. Prophets had declared 1 that sacrifice formed no part of the original religion of Yahweh, but it was too firmly established as an institution to be lightly thrown aside. The prophets themselves, as noted in a former chapter, had been compelled in the Deuteronomic legislation to make terms with it. In the post-exilic time one inter pretation of sacrifice was that it was food presented to Yahweh. He did not eat it in a human way, but took it in a sublimated form by smelling its odour, and yet he took it. Malachi had declared it robbery to with hold it from him. With this view the authors of psalms 50 and 51 dared to take issue, though they approached the matter in different ways. The writer of psalm 50 treats this view of sacrifice with sarcasm. He says : Hear, my people, and I will speak, O Israel, and I will bear witness against thee ; God, thy God, am I. Not for thy sacrifices will I rebuke thee, For thy burnt offerings are before me continually. I will not take from thy house a bullock, Nor from thy folds he-goats ; For every beast of the forest is mine, The cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird of the mountains, 1 See Amos 5:21-25. ' THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS 209 And the creatures of the field are with me. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee, For the world and its fulness are mine. Will I eat the flesh of bulls? Or drink the blood of goats ? Sacrifice to God thanksgiving, And pay to the Most High thy vows; Then call upon me in the day of trouble, And I will deliver thee, and thou shalt give me glory. The sacrificer of thanksgiving shall honor me, And to him who directs his way I will disclose the salvation of God. (Ps. 50: 6-15, 23.) This psalmist represents God as repudiating with scorn the idea that he needs the food of animal sacrifices, and declares unequivocally that all the sacrifice which God wishes is that men should be thankful and should direct their ways aright. The author of psalm 5 1 held a sim ilar view. He says : Thou desirest not sacrifice, else I would give it; In burnt offerings thou delightest not. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; — A heart broken and contrite, O God, thou wilt not despise. (Ps. 51 : 16, 17.) This psalmist agrees with the other as to the uselessness of animal sacrifices, but holds that God requires some thing more than mere thanksgiving and outward moral ity; he requires a penitent heart. This view is in accord with this psalmist's perception of the inward nature of religion, of which more will be said below. 2IO THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL The views of these psalmists did not, however, prevail. An editor who thought the expression of Ps. 51 : 16, 17 too strong, added two verses to the psalm (i. e. 51 : 18, 19), which make the psalm itself give the impres sion that the language was only justified because it was written during the exile, when Jerusalem was in ruins! Thus animal sacrifice was continued. Both Hebrew and heathen altars reeked with blood down to the de struction of the temple. Post-exilic Judaism had, in the synagogue, developed a worship without sacrifice, but Judaism did not in theory justify such worship. It was only a make-shift. They believed the worship of sacrifice in the temple was far better. It was the true and genuine worship. So far as western Asia is con cerned it was left for early Christianity to inaugurate a religion entirely without such sacrifice, and then the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews was compelled to interpret the death of Christ in sacrificial terms (Heb. 7-10) in order to explain why the new religion could discard this world-old custom. Perhaps no psalm indicates more clearly certain as pects of the progress of religious thought than the one hundred and thirty-ninth. It stands in the last appen dix added to the psalter, and its many quotations from previously existing psalms, as well as the form of its language, prove it to be among the latest in the psalter. Probably it was written in the Maccabaean or early Hasmonean time, i. e., after the middle of the second century B. c. It is remarkable for the consciousness THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS 211 which its author manifests that God's presence pervades the world. It is true that his world was not as large as ours. He knew of nothing further east than India, or further west than the straits of Gibraltar. The Scythians of southern Russia were the most northerly people known to him, and probably he knew of no country further south than the Somaliland of today. Four hundred and fifty years before him some Phoeni cians, under the patronage of an Egyptian king had cir cumnavigated Africa,1 but their tales were received with incredulity, and it is doubtful if this Jew ever heard of them. To him and the men of his time the sky was an overarching dome into which the stars were fixed as lights. Sheol was a dark cavern underneath the earth. Nevertheless this was a much larger world than that known to the men of early Israel, and this writer sets the men of our time a needed example in that his religious faith had kept pace with the enlargement of knowledge. God fills his world. O Yahweh, thou hast searched me and known me, Thou knowest my sitting down and my rising up, Thou perceivest my thought from afar. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Whither shall I flee from thy presence ? If I go up to heaven, there thou art, If I make my bed in Sheol, lo thou art there. If I take the wings of the dawn, 1 See Herodotus, IV, 42. 212 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL And dwell in the westernmost sea, There also would thy hand lead me, And thy right hand hold me. If I say, Only let darkness cover me, Then the night shall be light about me. Even darkness hides not from thee, But night like day gives light ; Darkness is as light. For thou hast formed my reins, Thou hast woven me in the womb of my mother. To appreciate what an advance of thought this rep resents, we need but glance at the thought of David or Elisha. David thought that Yahweh was the God of Palestine. He was one among many gods. One served him as a matter of course in Palestine, but if one were driven from Yahweh's soil and compelled to take refuge in another land, one as naturally then served the god of that land. It was for this reason that David said to Saul, " They have driven me out this day from abiding in the inheritance of Yahweh, saying, Go serve other gods " (I Sam. 26: 19). Similarly Naaman, the Syrian, who wished to worship Yahweh in Damascus (II Kings 5: 17 f.), asked Elisha for two mule-loads of earth to take to Damascus, that he might make a lit tle Palestine there, and so worship Yahweh on Yahweh's soil. Elisha evidently shared the idea that the power of Yahweh was confined to his own land, and granted the request. The author of this psalm had left all such conceptions far behind. The all-seeing eye of Yahweh and his creative power fills, in his belief, the whole THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS 213 world. The psalmist not only held this as an article of intellectual belief, but he so assimilated it to his religious life that it became a devotional help to him. The thought of an omnipresent, all-seeing God must, when it is fully grasped, either fill men with terror or with hope — terror, if the heart is out of harmony with God; hope, if it is in accord with the divine purpose. This psalmist was of the last mentioned class. He ex claims : How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God ! I awake, and am still with thee. Search me, O God, and know my heart ; Try me, and know my thoughts ; And see if there is any idolatrous way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting. (Ps. 139: 17, 18, 23.) In his case larger knowledge led to beter piety. It was a vigorous, militant piety, i. e., a piety read to fight for the will of God. For in the same context the psalmist could exclaim: With perfect hatred do I hate them, (i.e., Yahweh's foes) ; I count them my enemies. (Ps. 139: 22.) He so identified himself with Yahweh that he loved what Yahweh loved, and hated what Yahweh hated. The most spiritual conception of religion in the whole psalter, not to say the whole Old Testament, is ex pressed in the fifty-first psalm. Its author alone of all 214 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Old Testament writers saw that sin is of the heart, and that it is the insuperable barrier to communion with God. For my transgression I know, And my sin is continually before me. Lo, thou desirest truth in the inward parts, And in the hidden part thou wilt make me to know wisdom. Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, And take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, And with a free spirit uphold me. (Ps. 51 : 3, 7, 10-12.) In no other pre-Christian writer is there so keen a consciousness of sin, or so real an appreciation of the fact that the essence of wrong doing is in the attitude of the inner nature to God. Of all Hebrew writers this one alone anticipates the teaching of Jesus, that God requires not only a moral outward life, but a clean heart. To him as to the Master both morality and the joy of living flow from a heart cleansed by God and indwelt by the Spirit. The psalmist, too, when he sings : The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ; — A heart broken and contrite, O God, thou wilt not despise, anticipates in principle the parable of the prodigal son. THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS 21 5 The Father needs no propitiation except the penitence of the son for whom he has watched so long. The Old Testament contains no more spiritual view of religion than this. Here is the finest flower of its piety. TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY i. The Compilation of the Psalter; cf. J. P. Peters " Hebrew Psalmody," in the Harvard Theological Review, IX, 36-55 (Jan. 1916), comparing his "Development of the Psalter" in the New World, III, (1893), pp. 285-312. Also G. A. Barton, " The Bearing of the Composition of the Psalter on the Date of the Forty-fourth Psalm," in the American Journal of Theology, III (1899), PP- 740-746. 2. The Religious Point of View of the Psalms of the Sons of Korah, using the Psalter itself. 3. The Religious Point of View of the Psalms of Asaph, using the Psalter itself. 4. Study fully the References in the Psalter to the Law. 5. Compare the Psalter with other ancient hymns; cf. S. Lang- don, Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, Paris, 1909, the transla tions in J. H. Breasted's Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, New York, 1912, or G. A. Barton, Archae ology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 19 1 7, Part II, chapter xxi; F. Max Miiller, Sacred Books of the East, Vols. 32, 42, 46, and 47. CHAPTER XIII THE RELIGION OF THE SAGES The Sages — Hebrew Wisdom — The Book of Job — Its Prologue — The Debate — Interpolations — Author of Job a Critic of Current Theology — Taught a Deeper View of God — Conviction of a Fu ture Life — Healing Power of Communion with God Discovered through Suffering — The Function and Limitation of Reason in Religion — Expediency of Religion taught in Proverbs — Author of Ecclesiastes an Earnest Sceptic — Proverbs of Ben Sira — In Wisdom of Solomon Wisdom a Revelation of God — His Theory of Religion Attractive — Some of his Thoughts in New Testament. Apart from the prophets and priests there was in ancient Israel a class of sages, who, in the time after the exile, created a body of literature, known as the " wisdom " books. This name is given to their writ ings because they gave to wisdom so prominent a place. This wisdom literature is akin in its general spirit to similar classes of literature in Egypt and Babylonia,1 though it always reflects the point of view of Hebrew monotheism. Wisdom to the Hebrews did not mean, as it did to the Greeks, knowledge or philosophy; it was rather an ex alted kind of common sense or insight into human na- 1 For examples of Egyptian wisdom see the Wisdom of Ptah-hotep and The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage. The former, too difficult for connected translation, is described in Breasted's Development of Reli gion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, New York, 1912, p. 226 f. ; the latter was published and translated by Alan Gardiner, Leipsig, 1908. A sample of Babylonian wisdom may be found in the experiences of Tabi- utul-Ellil; see G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1917, PP- 392-395- ':.'.. 216 THE RELIGION OF THE SAGES 217 ture. Wise people of this sort are mentioned early in the history of Israel. Joab brought a " wise woman of Tekoah " to Jerusalem to reconcile David to his son Absalom, (II Sam. 14:2 f.). Her wisdom consisted in ability skilfully to play upon the thoughts of the king and justify to his mind what at heart he wished to do. Of all Israel's wise people Solomon was the most famous. His wisdom was also of this practical sort. The example of it given in I Kings 3 : 16-28 shows that it consisted of insight into character and a knowledge of the motives which control human conduct. So great was Solomon's practical, common-sense insight and such was his exalted position that he became in later tradi tion the wise man par excellence of Israel, so that writ ings composed long after his time were ascribed to him, just as psalms, composed long after David's time, were called David's. It may have been the intention to im ply in the case of the Book of Proverbs that this was the kind of wisdom for which Solomon was famous; in the case of Ecclesiastes the ascription to Solomon was probably owing to a mistaken interpretation of a sin gle phrase in the book.1 The earliest and greatest of these wisdom writers was the author of the Book of Job, who lived and wrote about 400 B. c2 His poem is one of the world's mas- 1 See Barton, Ecclesiastes, in the International Commentary, pp. 58 and 78. 2 See Barton, Commentary on Job, p. 39 f. 21 8 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL terpieces. It ranks with the productions of Greek, Ital ian, German or English poets. His theme is the suf ferings of the righteous. For the central figure of his poem he chose the hero of an old story, who, according to the tale, had proven most patient and exemplary under the great misfortunes which had befallen him. Removing the middle part of the tale, all of which had probably been handed down in prose, he inserted his poem in the place of it, thus permitting the old prologue and epilogue to stand as the introduction and conclu sion of his immortal work.1 According to the prologue God permitted misfor tunes and suffering to come upon Job, in order to con vert Satan from the error of his ways. Satan was not yet the malignant character which he became in later thought; he was only a sceptical or disgruntled angel, whom God had hopes of reclaiming through Job's con stancy. While the prologue thus lets the reader into the secret of Job's pain, to Job himself all this was unknown. He had been an upright moral man accord ing to the standards of his time. He had, in common with the men of his generation, held that God rewards the righteous with earthly prosperity and the wicked with earthly misfortunes, but, conscious that he had not sinned, his poignant suffering shattered his faith in this comfortable theology, and led him to doubt the goodness of God. His three friends, who held still the theology which Job once held, came to condole 1 Ibid., p. i f . THE RELIGION OF THE SAGES 219 with him, but, overcome by his misfortunes, they sat long in silence. It is here that the poet begins his work. He puts into the mouth of Job a wail of despair which is also an arraignment of God. This shocked the three friends, and they began in turn to try to show to Job the error of his ways. They were sure that he must have sinned, even if he is unconscious of it, for, ac cording to their theory, nothing else could explain why God had sent such punishment upon him. Job ener getically repudiated their insinuations, and so the de bate waxed warm. The genius of the poet is strikingly exhibited in the skilful way he portrays the discussion. He has made the speeches of Job reflect the varying moods of a really noble man, whose nerves are unstrung by dis ease and whose faith, wrecked by misfortune, is slowly struggling back to a new and better life. The inevi table outbursts of irritability and indignation, the in tense feeling of God's injustice, the sensitiveness of one nervously unstrung to the criticism of well-meaning but tactless friends, and the deep underlying yearning for God which comes from a really unconquerable faith in his goodness and justice, are all portrayed with masterly skill. On the other hand the friends are treated with no less skill. Eliphaz begins his first speech in the fourth chapter in the tenderest and most tactful man ner. He is full of sympathy for his friend's misfor tune, though he must needs, in fidelity to his theology, 220 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL hint at an underlying sin as the cause of suffering. This tenderness, as the debate becomes hot, is, in the most natural way, gradually thrown off, until the friends boldly charge Job with the commonest sins. The speeches which the poet put into the mouth of Job, shocked the sensibilities of orthodox Judaism. The work was accordingly interpolated and to some degree mutilated in order to make it more acceptable to Jewish thought. But for this it would probably never have been preserved for us. Fortunately most of the inter polations and changes can, with much probability, now be discovered and rectified.1 The author of Job was in reality a great critic of the theology which was current in his day, but he was a constructive as well as a destructive critic. It was necessary for him to show how inadequate that the ology was to explain the actual experiences of life, but he also, in portraying how a soul may grow under the discipline of suffering, presented a far more profound and adequate theology. He did this by setting forth, as the poem advanced, Job's growing faith in God, in a future life, and in the healing power of present com munion with God. Owing to the theory of the religious life that Job 1 These interpolations consist of ch. 28, the praise of wisdom, ch. 32- 37, the Elihu speeches, which were added by two hands, and ch. 40: 15- 41 : 34, the description of behemoth and leviathan. In chapters 24, 27, and 30, words of Bildad and Zophar are attributed to Job, to make his utterances seem more orthodox. See Barton, Commentary on Job, pp. 19-37, and the notes on the chapters mentioned. THE RELIGION OF THE SAGES 221 had held, the first shock of his suffering destroyed his faith in God's goodness. When a false theology is swept away, it often takes for the moment all faith with it. Job, as the poet delineates him, passed through this experience. He bitterly complains in 7 : 12-21 that the great " Watcher of men " is relentlessly and use lessly torturing him, and in 9: 21, 22 he declares that God " destroys the perfect and the wicked " alike. All faith in God as a good and just Being had gone. But later, while Job was reasserting this point of view, a new conviction of God's justice burst involun tarily from his lips. Behold he will slay me ; I may not hope, But my ways to his face I will maintain. This also shall be my salvation; For a godless man shall not come before him. (Job 13: 15, 16.) In the varying moods of Job's soul this new conviction did not at first find permanent standing room. As in other men it had to struggle for the mastery. So in ch. 16: 12—18 Job could again make a bitter complaint of the way God had delivered him to misfortune in order to destroy him, but once more, while he was ut tering the thought, the new-born conviction that God is good came back to him with renewed power, and he declared: Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, And he that voucheth for me is on high. 222 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Though buffeted to death by God and scorned by his friends, the heart instinctively turned to the Almighty, and Job lifted his broken heart to his Creator. Again this conviction is expressed in ch. 19: 25, in a context in which Job had been dwelling on the immi nence of dissolution. Here he expressed his conviction of the moral character and unshakable justice of God in the words : I know that my Vindicator liveth, And he shall arise as a last One over the dust. God is the vindicator, because he is just, and he is the last One because, after all the harsh and perverse judg ments of men have been expressed, his word shall be final. Thus the sufferer who blasphemed in the first agonies of his torture, reached a firmer and more se cure faith. Parallel with this reviving faith in God there grew in Job's soul the conviction of a future life. Like all his Semitic kinsfolk he had believed that the departed go into Sheol, a cavern within the earth, where, de prived of all the joys of real life, for a time they lead a shadowy and undesirable existence.1 Job's suffering had created in him a longing to come face to face with God, that he might be vindicated ( 13 : 22) . This long ing had taken the form of a wish that, if a man die, he might live again (14: 13-15). At last his reviving faith in the moral nature of God led him to the convic- 1 See Isa. 14:9^, and Eze. 32:22-32. THE RELIGION OF THE SAGES 223 tion that, though his flesh should perish, yet apart from his flesh he should see God (19:27). As in many minds since, the conviction that God is good, combined with the impossibility of realizing an adequate theodicy in this life, kindled his faith in a life with God, where such a theodicy could be experienced.1 The poet, too, has represented Job as discovering the healing power of present communion with God. Job had longed to come face to face with God as with an opponent in a lawsuit (13:22), then the conviction grew that a close approach to God might result in some sort of communion (14: 15). After that, when he de spaired of living to meet God in this life, he had reached the conviction that he would come face to face with God in an after life and be vindicated (19:25-27). This conviction, reached in a moment of exaltation, was apparently not an abiding one. As the feelings of the patient, whose nerves were weakened by illness, ebbed, the glowing hope receded again into the background. So Job in his final appeal to God demanded that his divine Adversary should answer him, declaring that he would go into the divine Presence proudly wearing his indictment upon his shoulder (31 : 35-37). Then God appeared to Job in the whirlwind, and the infinite Pres ence affected Job in ways that he had not anticipated. Life looked different when viewed from the divine point of view; new feelings of penitence and of trust sprang up within him, and he made the unexpected dis- 1 Compare G. A. Gordon, Immortality, A New Theodicy, Boston, 1897. 224 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL covery that the solution of life's paradoxes and travail are really to be found in present communion with God.1 One goes on happily, not because he knows the answer to life's riddle, but because he is conscious that he lives in the loving companionship of One who knows and will guide the feet of his child into the ways of peace. In treating his immortal theme in this way the great poet has not only set forth the solid foundation of re ligion, and pictured the growth of a soul as it may be shaped in the furnace of life, but he has incidentally shown at once the function and the limitations of reason in religion. Its function is to question and demolish outworn theologies, — to criticize and to brush aside theories of the divine government that no longer sat isfactorily explain the facts of experience. Reason cannot, however, penetrate the deeper mysteries of life ; it can give no satisfactory answers to life's tragedy and heart-break. Only God can do this as he enters into communion with the soul in living experience. In a much lower rank than the great poet of Job stand the writers of Proverbs. Job, when the interpo lations are removed, is the connected working out of a great thought by a great mind. Proverbs on the other hand is a collection of sayings of wise men from va rious ages and times. Aside from the general intro duction (ch. i: 1—6) there are eight separate strata in the book, and a number of these have titles which indi- 1 See Barton, Commentary on Job, 9-12, Peake, Job 18-21, and Prob lem of Suffering in the Old Testament, London, 82-102. THE RELIGION OF THE SAGES 22C, cate that they were separate collections of sayings of the wise before they were placed in our book of prov erbs.1 These collections all teach a sound morality and a real, though not an impassioned, religion. Their tone is practical, and the motive urged for a moral life as well as for the fear of God is usually expediency. The authors exhibit deep insight into the motives of human conduct, and at times show real humour. This last appears, for example, in the words addressed to the drunkard in ch. 23 : 34 : And thou shalt be like one lying in the midst of the sea, Or one lying on the top of a mast, or in the following from ch. 20: 14: It is bad, it is bad, says the buyer, But when he is gone his way, then he boasteth. In all the parts of the book except the first we have sim ply collections of thoughts. The different proverbs lie, for the most part, like marbles in a bag; they touch, but have no organic connection. This is not the case in ch. 1-9. Here a wise man gives instruction in a con nected discourse to a pupil, who is addressed as " my son." This instruction reaches its most poetic culmina- 1 These parts are as follows: a discourse on wisdom, 1:7-9:18; a collection of proverbs entitled "The Proverbs of Solomon," 10:1-22: 16; another collection entitled "The Words of the Wise," 22:17-24:22; another, called "Other Sayings of the Wise," 24:23-34; "Proverbs of Solomon, which the Men of Hezekiah, King of Judah, copied out," 25-29; "The Words of Agur," 30; "The Words of Lemuel," 31:1-9; "A Worthy Woman," 31:10-31. 226 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL tion in ch. 8, which is devoted to a praise of wisdom. Toward the end of the chapter wisdom is personified as a helper that stood beside God as an architect at the creation, apparently to aid him. Perhaps this was no more than a strong literary metaphor, but neverthe less this and similar personifications by later writers are probably what influenced Paul to call Christ the " wisdom of God." On the whole the proverb-writers represent a worldly- wise ethics and an expediential fear of God. In this work-a-day world it is necessary at times that this side should be emphasized as well as inner, spiritual ex perience. There are those who can appreciate religion in no other form, but to many this form does not appeal as much as the deeper experiences of Job. The sages are represented in the Old Testament by still a different type of mind. This is found in the author of the book of Ecclesiastes, who lived and wrote in Palestine about 200 B.C.1 Its author was a sage, who had largely outgrown the formal religion of his people and had, unfortunately, found no other. He had not lost faith in God's existence. He still believed God to be a powerful, transcendent Being, who keeps man in ignorance of his ways, and who has circum scribed man in the meshes of fate, so that man may be compelled to fear God. Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, counsels reverence, obedience, and the faithful perform- 1 See Barton, Ecclesiastes, in the International Critical Commentary, 1908, pp. 58-65. THE RELIGION OF THE SAGES 227 ance of whatever covenants one enters into with God. His conception of God was not an attractive one, but such religion as he had was sincere. He had no toler ance for shams in religion, nor any sympathy for the glib worshipper who will in moments of danger conve- nant with God for anything, if only he may escape, and then go his way in forgetfulness when the danger is past (see Eccl. 5: 1-7). For the rest the Preacher's outlook on life is not in spiring. He had sounded the depths of all human functions and pleasures and his deliberate verdict is that all is vanity and a striving after empty air. All real pleasure eludes, he believed, him who pursues it. A ceaseless round of vain efforts characterized, to his mind, all the activities both of nature and of man. No hope of an immortality in which a greater satisfaction could be experienced brightened his outlook. He knew of the doctrine, but rejected it as not supported by suf ficient evidence (Eccl. 3:19-21). Notwithstanding this, his philosophy of life is not altogether dark. His attitude is manly and healthy, if not inspiring. He ad vises one to enter into life heartily, be kindly, venture to sow and reap, fill up the whole round of life's duties while you can. The young are to make the best use of their bodily powers during the years when life is strong, for inevitable decay comes with advancing years, and cheerless Sheol will end all (Eccl. 11 and 12 except the glosses). The few years of bodily vigour constituted, in the Preacher's view, man's only chance 228 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL for a little enjoyment. His advice, however, is always moral. Immoral excesses he believed robbed man even of this meed of enjoyment.1 The words of Ecclesiastes would, probably, never have been preserved for us, had not his literary impersona tion of Solomon (Eccl. i: 12 ff.), been mistaken for literal fact. Even then his words had to be softened down by two interpolators before they ceased to give offence. One of these interpolators was of the ortho dox Jewish type,2 the other was a sage, who besprinkled the pages with a number of proverbs that often inter rupt the flow of the thought.3 This last writer acted, perhaps, also as the editor, who supplied the title and a very few editorial touches,4 but even with all these helps the book of Ecclesiastes represents a minimum of faith and a maximum of scepticism. If the Bible is meant to speak to every mood of the mind of man, Ecclesiastes has his place in the canon, for often in the course of history men have gone through the Preacher's sceptical experience. Though Job or the Psalms much more often speak the needed message to a troubled heart, it is well that Ecclesiastes should stand as a perpetual monitor to the sceptical, that life need never fall to an 1 For a fuller statement, see Barton, Ecclesiastes, pp. 46-50. 2 This writer added 2:26; 3:17; 7:18b, 26b, 29; 8:2b, 3a, 5, 6a, n-13; 11:9b; 12:1a, 13 from the words "fear God," and 14. 3This writer added 4:5; 5:3, 7a; 7:1a, 3, 5, 6-9, n, 12, 19; 8:1; 9:17, 18; 10:1-3, 8-i4a, 15, 18, 19. * The editorial material consists of 1 : r, the words " says the Preacher " in 1:2; 7:27, and 12:8. THE RELIGION OF THE SAGES 229 immoral level, or lack of faith drive one to self-de struction. Although not included in our Protestant canon of Scripture, there are two other products of Israel's circle of sages which have had wide influence in the Christian world, the so-called Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, and the book which is entitled The Wisdom of Solomon. The first of these was composed by Joshua (in Greek, Jesus) son of Sirach about 190- 180 B. c, and was translated into Greek about 130 b. c. by his grandson, of the same name. We now know it in both the Hebrew and the Greek text. Ecclesiasticus resembles the book of Proverbs. It contains much of the same sort of gnomic wisdom — shrewd observations upon various aspects of life and conduct, expressed in brief poetic form. Its author, like the author of Proverbs 1-9 holds wisdom in high esteem. Wisdom and knowledge are to his mind vir tue, and the fool and the ungodly are placed in the same category and both are condemned to a lot worse than death (Ecclus. 22: 11, 12). His praise of wis dom in ch. 24 rises to a lofty poetic strain and, like Prov. 8, makes a strong personification of wisdom. Ec clesiasticus like Proverbs holds that the fear of God is wisdom, and also as in Proverbs the conception of re ligion is controlled by prudential consideration. He sometimes carries expediency to the point of hypocrisy, as in 38 : 17, where he counsels one to weep bitterly at a funeral " lest thou be evil spoken of." The writer, 230 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL like the author of Ecclesiastes, had no outlook beyond the grave (Ecclus. 10: 11; 19:3), and no passionate yearning for a high ideal breathes from his pages.1 Of a very different character, in some ways, is the so- called Wisdom of Solomon, which was written in Greek probably in the first century before Christ. Its author shares with Proverbs and the son of Sirach a profound reverence for wisdom. His seventh chapter contains a praise of personified wisdom as beautiful and as im passioned as theirs. In his view, too, virtue is wisdom and knowledge, but he goes further and holds that wis dom is the active revelation of the divine will. This writer was passionately religious. He sympa thized with the Chasidim, that class of pious souls in Israel out of which the Pharisees were developed. One of the objects of his book was to combat false teachers, among whom was the author of our book of Ecclesi astes.2 He believed that moral renewal comes only by the gift of God, and moral dynamic is from above, (Wisd. 8:21, 9:6); nevertheless wisdom which gives this moral dynamic, may be found of all who seek her (Wisd. 6 : 12 f.) . The whole thesis of the book is that the moral life can be lived only in fellowship with wis- 1 The author at the beginning of ch. 44 sets himself to " praise famous men," and in this and in following chapters he takes up one by one the characters of the Old Testament. His book at this point reveals to us how much of the Old Testament was regarded as canonical in his day. 2 For proof, see Barton, Ecclesiastes, pp. 57, 58. THE RELIGION OF THE SAGES 23 1 dom. As wisdom " sitteth by the throne of God " and is from God, and as one cannot be perfect unless wis dom be granted him, it follows that he realized that the highest life is impossible apart from fellowship with God. As the Christian speaks of fellowship with Christ, when he refers to that divine companionship that is the inspiration of the highest life, this sage speaks of fellowship with wisdom. He had in his way learned the same secret as the author of the fifty- first psalm. This fellowship with wisdom appears to have led him to entertain a hope of immortality (see Wisd. 8: 17). We should notice in passing that this writer held some views which afterward found expression in the New Testament. He is the first to identify the serpent of the garden of Eden (Gen. 3) with Satan (see Wisd. 2: 23, 24), and to account for the fall of man thereby. Some of the apocalyptists had held that the fall of man was accomplished by the angels who came down to earth and took human wives (Gen. 6: 2-4) ,J but this writer championed the view, to which Paul afterward gave such powerful expression in Romans 5: 12-19. The writer of Wisdom was also one of those who helped to prepare the way for the use of the term " Word " in the Gospel of John. Psalmists and prophets had sometimes so personified God's word as to imply that it could be sent on errands for him. Thus the great prophet of the exile says that God's word shall 1 So for example the Ethiopic Enoch, chapters 6-8 ; see above, p. 190 f. 232 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL not come back empty, but shall accomplish God's pleas ure (Isa. 55: 11), and a psalmist had sung: He sendeth out his word and healeth them (Ps. 107: 20). The personification of the divine word in Wisdom is even more emphatic. In speaking of the night when the firstborn of the Egyptians were slain, he says, " For while . . . that night was in the midst of her swift course, thine almighty word leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne, as a fierce man of war into the midst of a land of destruction." 1 Here the word is not far removed from God himself. Into the ancestry of the term Word as it is applied to Christ in the Fourth Gospel Greek elements as well as those of Hebrew origin entered, but the use of the term " word " by this writer shows to some degree what that Hebrew ancestry was.2 A survey of the wisdom literature reveals religious expression of very diverse types, ranging from the im passioned utterances of Job's growing soul as it throbbed with pain and with aspiration to the prudential expe diency of Proverbs and the son of Sirach. The different parts stand upon quite different levels of religious in sight and inspiring power. It is a striking fact that the earliest of the wisdom writers is the only one that made a great contribution to religious thought. The 1 Wisdom 18: 14, 15. 2 On the Logos doctrine of the Gospel of John, see E. F. Scott, The Fourth Gospel, ch, v. THE RELIGION OF THE SAGES 233 author of Job blazed out a new path. After him the wisdom literature, when read chronologically, makes a, to some degree, religious anticlimax. And yet it is not altogether an anticlimax, for the Wisdom of Solomon lifts the thought out of the commonplace expediency of Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus and the cold scepticism of Ecclesiastes into a warmer realm of faith and com munion. Though his thought lacks the creative power of the author of Job, it is full of faith and a genuine, calm piety. We cannot be too thankful that the sages- were in cluded in the Old Testament. Had we only the utter ances of priests and prophets, the whole of the reflect ive side of life would have been without adequate rep resentation. It would have seemed that the Bible had no message for it. The wisdom literature for ever tes tifies that God has a message for the men who think, as well as for the men who pray — for the unimaginative, commonplace doer, as well as for the prophet of in spired and inspiring vision. TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. The Problem of Suffering in Job; cf. A. S. Peake, The Problem of Suffering in the Old Testament, London, 1904, chapter 5 ; G. A. Barton, Commentary on Job in the Bible for Home and School, New York, 1911, pp. 7-13, 40—42. 2. The Future Life in Job; cf. R. H. Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel, in Judaism and in Christianity, London, 1899, pp. 68-72; G. A. Barton, Jab (as above), p. 9 ff., 140 ff., p. 175 ff. 234 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 3. Study comparatively the Praise of Wisdom in Job 28, Prov. 8, Ecclesiasticus 24, and Wisdom of Solomon, 7. 4. The Scepticism of Ecclesiastes; cf. Barton, Ecclesiastes in International Critical Commentary, pp. 32-50. 5. A Comparison of Egyptian and Babylonian Wisdom ; cf . J. H. Breasted, The Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, New York, 1912, chapter 7; G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1916, Part II, chapters 20 and 22. CHAPTER XIV FIVE RELIGIOUS TRACTS The Short Story not a Modern Invention — Ruth taught God's Favour to Foreigners — Jonah a Humorous Allegory — A Missionary Tract — Its Teaching that of Second Isaiah — Esther and the Feast of Purim — Origin of the Book — Vengeance — Noblesse Oblige — Self-Sacrifice and Deception in Judith — Tobit — His Practical Re ligion — Persian Influences. We are accustomed to think that the short story is a modern invention. Such a view would be impossible if we rightly appreciated the literature in our Bibles, for there are three interesting short stories in the Old Testament, and, if we include the Apocrypha, there are five. These short stories were each written for a pur pose more or less closely connected with religion. They come from different centuries; their authors represent different standpoints; their messages, accordingly, vary. The oldest of these is the book of Ruth, a beautiful idyl, which transports us in imagination to the period of Israel's Judges. This was the most barbarous pe riod of Israel's history, but in the pages of Ruth the barbarism does not appear. The reader, instead of seeing these, beholds only such suffering as death and bereavement may bring to all in every age. The whole sweep of the story moves in such experiences as all understand. The lonely widow returning to her kin- 235 236 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL dred, the faithful daughter-in-law who endures exile rather than desert a lonely woman, the niggardly kins man who was unwilling to perform the duty of the next of kin, the more noble Boaz, generous to the poor, who first befriends a woman out of charity, and then makes her his bride, all move attractively across the pages of the brief story and make a universal appeal. Cer tain of the customs are archaic; the course of Ruth is more in accord with ancient Semitic customs than with those of modern society. Nevertheless the story can never lose its charm so long as death breaks up homes, unselfish love gladdens bereaved hearts, and men and women love and wed. The climax of the whole story lies in the fact that Ruth, the foreign girl, became the mother of the great king, David. It was to impress this fact that the book was written. Ezra and Nehemiah inaugurated in the fifth century B. c. a campaign against foreign-born wives. With the zeal of narrow sectarians they insisted that all such wives should be put away (see Ezra 10; Neh. 13:23 f.). Affection they disregarded. The rights of faithful women were nothing in their eyes, unless the women happened to be of Hebrew ancestry. The children of such mothers suffered with them, but in the eyes of the zealous puritans no sacrifice was too great. The congregation of the Lord must be purged of all foreign blood — of all possible taint of foreign re ligion. The author of this book uttered a protest against FIVE RELIGIOUS TRACTS 237 such narrow zeal. He demonstrated that David, the king whom they venerated, the king after God's own heart, was descended from a foreign mother. The lesson was obvious. God did not disapprove of for eigners as such. He had blessed Ruth in a signal way. The author did not say, as Peter afterward did, " God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him," but such is clearly the inference to be drawn from his story. Another delightful story, written to teach a lesson still more lofty, constitutes our book of Jonah. It will surprise some to find Jonah classified as a story, rather than a prophecy, but that is only because Jonah is the most misunderstood of all the books of the Bible. It is not a prophecy, but a story about a prophet. Com pare it with the books of Amos and Hosea, and he must indeed be obtuse in literary perception who can not see that it is a work of entirely different character. To take it as literal history has been the occasion of endless jests from mockers, and equally endless perplexi ties. As history it presents serious difficulties, and improbabilities ; x as a story, it is delightful, attractive, and entertaining. It charms the reader with its piquant incidents; it inspires him with its broad re ligious horizons. If it provokes a smile, may it not have been intended to do so? Only a most unimagin- 1 See the excellent statement of this in Bewer's Jonah in the Inter national Critical Commentary, p. 3. 238 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL ative age could hold that the Bible has no place for humour ! The story of Jonah's fish was long regarded as unique, but can no longer be so regarded. Such stories have been told among many peoples, and Frobenius calls them " Jonah-stories." 1 Perhaps this part of the tale was suggested to the author by the fact that Babylon had been spoken of as a dragon who had swallowed Israel up in the exile, but who should be made to cast her out of his maw; (Jer. 51 : 34, 44). It is clear that the purpose of the book of Jonah was to teach Israel a lesson, and it would not be strange if, with Jeremiah before him, the author intended by this story to alle gorize the Babylonian exile. But in this case, why should he call the hero of his story Jonah? Such a prophet had lived in the first half of the eighth century in Israel (II Kings 14: 25), but why should his name be selected rather than that of some more prominent prophet? Perhaps because the name Jonah means " Dove," and " Dove " was often a symbolic name for Israel.2 The story seems to have been written in the third cen tury before Christ, perhaps about 250 B. c. It was writ ten to satirize Israel for her unwillingness to fulfil her God-given mission. The great prophet of the exile had taught that Israel's mission was to make God known to the world. All her suffering had been to this end (Isa. 1 See Bewer, Jonah, 6. 2 See Encyclopedia Biblica, II, 2567, u. 4, and Bewer, Jonah, 8. FIVE RELIGIOUS TRACTS 239 52:13-53:12), and was to become a potent means of bringing the nations to realize their sinfulness. The book of Jonah approaches the same great theme in a different way. God sent the " Dove " on a message to one great nation, but she was unwilling to go, and tried to run away from the task. As a punishment she was swallowed up in the Babylonian exile, but God mar vellously preserved her life, and caused her to escape that she might still perform her mission. She engaged in a little service and Gentiles repented, but she was angry because God did not destroy them. This whole attitude is, in the book of Jonah, held up to ridicule. With his satire and his humour the author prods his un willing compatriots to the performance of that glorious duty which the Second Isaiah had portrayed with such pathos and sympathy. The book of Jonah is a missionary tract. Its author is the one man, whose work has come down to us, who, in the time after the exile, caught the vision which the Second Isaiah had had of Israel's mission for God, and urged it upon his countrymen. His was the world wide conception of service that was given fuller expres sion in Jesus Christ, and, through the efforts of St. Paul, finally triumphed. Another story of still a different character is con tained in the book of Esther. Our forefathers of course regarded Esther as literal history, but it is not possible to so regard it now. We know that the name of the wife of Xerxes, whom the Hebrews called Ahas- 240 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL huerus, was not Vashti, but Amestris,1 and, so far as we know, he had no other wife. It has also been shown that Mordecai and Esther are not the names of his torical persons, but are but slightly disguised forms of the names of the Babylonian deities, Marduk and Ish- tar. The origin of the names of Vashti and Haman is not so certain, but in the opinion of several scholars they are probably of Elamite origin, Vashti being a cor ruption of Mashti, an Elamite goddess, and Haman a corruption of the name of the Elamite god Humbaba.2 The book of Esther was clearly composed to explain the origin of the feast of Purim, which was celebrated on the 14th of Adar. Opinions differ as to the origin of this festival. One theory proposed more than a hundred years ago, which has proved acceptable to a number of eminent scholars, is that Purim originated in the celebration of the victory of the Jews over the Syrian General Nicanor on the 13th of Adar, 161 B. c.3 For a time the anniversary of this victory was celebrated as a festival. It seems more probable that Purim is of Babylonian or Persian origin. It is probably an old spring festival, which the Jews living in those countries adopted, just as Jews in modern times adopt the festi vals of the people in the midst of whom they live. It is only thus that the Persian setting and colouring of the book of Esther can be accounted for. They are inex- 1 See Herodotus, ix, 109. 2 See Paton's Esther in the International Critical Commentary, p. 67 f. 3 I Mace. 7:39-50; II Mace. 15:20-36; Josephus, Antiquities, xii, 10, 6. FIVE RELIGIOUS TRACTS 24 1 plicable if the feast originated in the celebration of Nic anor's day. It is, of course, possible that Nicanor's day was merged with a festival that the Jews who lived in Mesopotamia had previously adopted from their neighbours, and that it was for this reason that the feast became a general one among orthodox Jews, but cer tainly the story of the book of Esther, by which Purim is justified, is of Babylonian origin. It seems probable, too, that the story is a modification of a tale that the Babylonians had told of a victory they had at some time won over Elam. All ancient wars were regarded as conflicts, not only between two earthly armies, but also between their gods. A war between Babylonia and Elam was consequently regarded as a conflict between Marduk and Ishtar on the one hand and Humbaba and Mashti on the other. While the exact origin of the tale cannot now be as certained with certainty, it is clear that it was of non- Jewish extraction. It was probably chosen and two of its chief characters represented as Jewish, because it de scribed a deadly struggle, and was thus well adapted to summarize the struggles with persecutors through which the Jews were so often called upon to pass. The Jew ish author, in giving his tale a setting at the Persian court of Xerxes, displayed not a little knowledge of Per sian customs, but this does not prove his tale historical. Many of the stories of the Arabian Nights reflect his torical conditions of the court of the Caliphs of Bagdad, but are nevertheless not historical. The story was, 242 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL probably, written about ioo B. c. It gave an explana tion of the origin of the new feast of Purim, and at the same time expressed something of the national feel ing against foreigners aroused by the Maccabaean strug gle. One of the strange features of the story of Esther is that it is almost non-religious. The name of God does not occur in it. No religious motive is assigned to any action which it records. Intense national hatred against the Jews is recorded, and this is met by a hatred on the part of the Jews equally intense. Jews escape destruc tion ; those who planned their overthrow are themselves destroyed. At this last fact Jews exult, not with the gladness begotten of deliverance merely, but with the exultant hatred of those who are able to wreak their vengeance on their enemies. There is one noble trait portrayed in the book — the heroism of Esther. She is braced for the dangerous undertaking that might so easily have meant death by the consideration that perhaps her high position had been granted her for just such a service (Esth. 4: 14). Her action is, accordingly, the vehicle of a noble lesson. Po sition, learning, wealth are not to be hoarded. They are great trusts. Their possessors should in times of crisis consider that Providence has especially prepared them for heroic service. " Who knowest whether thou hast not come to the kingdom for such a time as this ? " Noblesse oblige! What noble spirit can resist such a call? In Esther's case, however, the call is patriotic FIVE RELIGIOUS TRACTS 243 rather than religious, though patriotism and religion are closely allied and often merge into each other. But the book of Esther, through its dark picture of the destructive hatred generated by oppression, conveys an other much needed lesson. Modern lands suffer as acutely from race antagonism as did any country of the ancient world. This antagonism results in plots as bloody and cruel as that depicted in the book of Esther, and, sometimes, in massacres and lynchings, which, if not as extensive as those portrayed in Esther, are no less barbarous. All modern civilized countries suffer from an industrial antagonism which is at times as deep- seated and as fierce as race antagonism — an antagonism that often causes war and bloodshed. We read in the pages of Esther how hate always begets hate, that vio lence begets violence, and that it may deflower the souls of those who participate in it of their fairest beauty and noblest spirit. The story of Judith in the Apocrypha is, like Esther, the story of an heroic woman, who risked her life to save her people. It was, perhaps, originally told of an incident in the Maccabaean wars,1 but the version of it that has come down in our Apocrypha was written with many embellishments in the first century B. c, perhaps about the time of Pompey's siege of Jerusalem in the year 63 B. C. It reads much more like a modern novel 1 See the shorter form of the story published by Gaster in the Pro ceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, XVI, 160, 161, and Gaster's remarks in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, II, col. 2644. 244 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL than the book of Esther does, and though full of his torical incongruities, is so told as to be interesting for the sake of the story. The conduct of Judith expresses a heroism and self-sacrifice like that of Esther. The same hatred and rejoicing at the ruthless destruction of enemies, on which we have just commented, appears in Judith also. The new feature of its teaching is its reverence for the ceremonial Jewish law. All this cere monial is emphasized, including regulations of diet and ceremonial ablutions (Judith, 10:5; 12:2, 7, 19; 16: 8). It is implied (ch. 11:10-13) that the neglect of the laws of diet will so anger God that he will de stroy his chosen people. This is the attitude of Pharisa ism. This scrupulous regard for ceremonial purity stands in striking contrast with the deliberate lying and deception which Judith practised (ch. 11: 11-17; 12: 14-20), not to mention murder (ch. 13:8). Even while Judith was lying she protested that she was tell ing the truth (ch. 11:5). In these respects the story reflects the tendency to make clean the outside of the cup and the platter, while within they were anything but pure, which about a hundred years later Christ so strongly denounced. The book of Tobit, composed probably about 100 B. c, or a little earlier, contains another story which reads much like a novel. Much of the scene is laid in distant Persia, and Persian influences are clearly to be traced in the book.1 The story in its present form is a 1 As in the case of the demon Asmodaeus, Tobit, iii, 17. FIVE RELIGIOUS TRACTS 245 gradual growth, in which it is now clearly possible to trace some elements of the Story of Ahikar, another tale that was popular in antiquity.1 The book is difficult to classify doctrinally, since op posing currents of opinion are expressed in it. In some respects its writer was as legalistic as the Pharisees. He prided himself on not having eaten the bread of the Gentiles (Tobit 1:10), on paying tithes (ch. 1:7), and upon fasting and prayer (ch. 12:8). He also condemned intermarriage with Gentiles (ch. 4: 12). In these respects he was in agreement with the pious puritans of Judaism. In other respects the teachings of the book are not in harmony with the law. Its au thor, for example, encourages marriages between kins folk (ch. i:9;3:i5;4:i2;5:nf). If Tobit 7: 2-4 is to be taken literally, Sara and Tobias were first cousins, in which case the book advocates a marriage between those within the degrees of kinship prohibited by Lev. 18 : 6-18 and 20: 11 f. This type of marriage was common in Persia 2 and is one of the evidences of Persian influence in the book. The author expressed moral teaching of a high order. A master should pay just wages to his servants and should pay promptly (ch. 4: 14, 12: 1 f.). He had a fine sense of the relative value of material things. " Be not," he says, " greedy to add money to money: but let it be as refuse in respect to our child " (5:18). 1 See J. R. Harris, Story of Ahikar, Cambridge University Press, 1898. 2 See J. H. Moulton in Expository Times, March, 1900. 246 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Again: "A little with righteousness is better than much with unrighteousness" (12:8). He commends philanthropy in two ways. His hero buried the bodies of his slain compatriots (1: 19; 2: 1-10), and he en joined most earnestly the duty of almsgiving (1:3, 16 f. ; 4:16; 12:8). His philosophy of almsgiving was, however, false. He held that alms atoned for sin and delivered from death (4: iof. ; 12:9) — a view which has been shared by many in different countries and centuries, and which still leads capitalists to salve their consciences for the robbery of widows and orphans by founding churches and endowing colleges. Perhaps Tobit's closest approach to the teaching of Christ is to be found in his negative form of the "golden rule." He says (ch. 4: 15) : "That which thou hatest do to no man." Diverse as these short stories are, they give us wel come knowledge of some of the many forms which reli gious thought and practice took during the centuries between the exile and the coming of Christ. TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Study further the Purpose of Ruth; cf. " Ruth " in Hast ings, Dictionary of the Bible and the Encyclopaedia Biblica. 2. Investigate the Theories of the Book of Jonah ; cf . Bewer, Jonah in the International Critical Commentary, pp. 6—23, and G. A. Barton, The Roots of Christian Teaching as Found in the Old Testament, Philadelphia, 1902, chapter 51. 3. The Nature of the Book of Esther; cf. L. B. Paton, Esther FIVE RELIGIOUS TRACTS 247 in the International Critical Commentary, pp. 47-93, or " Esther " in Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible and the En cyclopaedia Biblica. 4. The Nature and Problems of Judith ; cf. " Judith " in Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible and the Encyclopaedia Biblica, or R. H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. 5. The Nature and Problems of the Book of Tobit; cf. " Tobit " in Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible and the En cyclopaedia Biblica, or R. H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseud epigrapha. CHAPTER XV THE HOPES OF THE APOCALYPTISTS The Nature of an Apocalypse — Reasons for Apocalypses — Number of Them — They have Common Point of View and Common Mate rial — Origin of the Material — Apocalyptic Theory of History — Ethiopic Enoch 1-36 — Belief in Resurrection and Judgment — Kingdom of God — Date and Composition of Daniel — Son of Man in Daniel — Enoch Parables — Pre-existence of the Messiah, the Son of Man — Temporary. Character of Apocalyptic — Its Function. Apocalypse is a form of literature by itself. It is quite distinct from prophecy, and developed in Israel only after prophecy had died out. It has been pointed out 1 that prophecy died out in the third century B. c. After that time no one dared to stand up and in his own name speak as an oracle of Yahweh. Notwithstanding this, troublous times continued to come, and men longed for some word of divine guidance as of old. To meet this need individuals began to write apocalypses or " revelations." These men were apparently obscure persons. They felt that, if they uttered the truth which they believed God wished their generation to know in their own names, it would fall upon heedless ears. The one way they could obtain a hearing for their message was, they thought, to represent it as the message of some worthy who had lived long ago and whose name and character the men of their time revered. All apoc- x See above, p. 146. 248 THE HOPES OF THE APOCALYPTISTS 249 alypses are, accordingly, pseudepigraphs, i.e., they are attributed to persons who did not write them, and in all cases but one, to men who lived long before the writer's time. This does not mean that they are forgeries in the modern sense of the word " forgery." The apocalypse became as much a recognized literary form in the cen turies between 200 B. e. and 100 A. D. as the historical novel is today. The authors of apocalypse were most pious and patriotic men. Their one desire was to give consolation and courage to their suffering brethren. They were willing to be themselves unknown and for gotten. They had no pride of authorship. Their one desire was that the inspiring vision that had come to them might be so conveyed to others as to be heeded. The famous characters chosen to be the mouthpieces of the apocalyptic messages were men like Enoch, Noah, the twelve sons of Jacob, Baruch, Ezra, etc., — men who had lived long ago. How could these men be plausibly represented as having uttered messages for the later periods in which the apocalyptists lived? This diffi culty was met by the literary form of the apocalypse. The early saint whoever he might be, whether Noah, Enoch, Moses, or another, was represented as having had visions in which the future course of the history of the world was revealed or " unveiled " to him. This was always done in a kind of cipher which but thinly veiled the real history of the past. When in this way the course of events had been traced down to the time 250 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL of the apocalyptist, a prophecy of divine intervention, whereby God was to come to the rescue of his people in the impending crisis, was introduced. The thinly veiled history, all of which had been future to the saint who was supposedly speaking, was of course easily un derstood by the readers, and when they saw how this was true, it gave them greater faith in the prophecy that referred to what was in their time still in the future. This form of literature must have been most helpful, or so many apocalypses would not have been composed. We have but two of these works in our canon of Scrip ture, Daniel and the Book of Revelation, but in modern times two apocalyptic volumes have come to light at tributed to Enoch, two to Baruch, one to Moses, one to Isaiah, one to each of the Hebrew patriarchs, not to mention the Book of Jubilees, the Psalms of Solomon, and parts of the Sibylline Oracles. The Book of IV Esdras, called in the English Apocrypha II Esdras, has never been lost, and did not need to await discovery in modern times. The mere mention of these books does not, however, give an adequate idea of the number of apocalypses composed. One of the volumes attributed to Enoch contains no less than five different apocalypses now woven into one. Among these parts of a still earlier apocalypse of Noah can be detected. One of the vol umes attributed to Baruch has in like manner been com posed of six originally separate apocalypses of Baruch. IV Esdras is likewise a conglomerate of several works. ' THE HOPES OF THE APOCALYPTISTS 25 1 It is perhaps not too much to say that no single apoca lypse now known to us was written at one sitting. All are pieced together from previously existing composi tions, and no one of them bears the name of its compiler. The apocalyptic method makes it easy in most cases approximately to fix the date when each work was com posed. So long as history is told in the form of vision we are sure the writer was dealing with times which lay behind him. It is when his prophecy becomes vague and general, that we know he has reached his own time and is dealing with the future. All these apocalyptists have a similar point of view and a mass of common material. This material seems to have been traditional with them. They regarded it as the key to the ages, and each one tried to fit it into the lock of his own times. This material was drawn from two principal sources, unfulfilled Old Testament prophecy, and the Babylonian Creation Epic. A good example of the use made in apocalypse of unfulfilled prophecy may be seen in Daniel, ch. 9, which is based on Jer. 25 : 12. The motif of the Babylonian Creation Epic may be said to underlie most, if not all, apocalypse. According to this epic the heavens and earth were created by Marduk, the god of light, out of the dragon of the primitive watery chaos, Tiamat. The result was achieved only after Marduk had fought a fierce battle with Tiamat and her host of horrible monsters, had overcome her, and cut her up. To the apocalyptists Tiamat was represented by the world power which hap- 2C2 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL pened to be oppressing the Jews in his day. Yahweh, of course, took the place of Marduk. The fight be tween Marduk and Tiamat represented to him the fierce struggle in which Yahweh was going to destroy the ter rible oppressor of his people. Since the apocalyptists had the book of Genesis before them, they could not think that this Babylonian material referred to the cre ation of the present heavens and earth. If they gave it any credence at all, they must consider it prophetic. This they all did, and from thence came their view that before the appearance of the new heavens and the new earth a great struggle must ensue. The great dragon, the world-power, whether Antiochus, or Rome or some special emperor, must be overcome and destroyed. In the light of the origin of this imagery the words of Rev. 21 : i, " I saw a new heaven and a new earth . . ., for the sea is no more," gain a new significance. This Babylonian material expresses the general view of all the apocalyptists. They hold that the world is in the possession of an evil power. This power is tight ening its grip on all mundane things and its arrogance is increasing. The world is becoming worse; the only hope for it is in a divine cataclysmic intervention in which the world power shall be broken, and her wicked adherents destroyed. After this, the kingdom of God can be established. While there is general agreement upon this, there is in the apocalypses a great variety of views upon details. Some apocalyptists entertained a lively hope in the com- THE HOPES OF THE APOCALYPTISTS 253 ing of a Messiah; others make no reference to a Mes siah at all. In the thought of the former the Messiah was to be the agent in establishing the kingdom of God on the earth ; in that of the latter, God was to intervene directly. Some apocalyptists believed the kingdom of God was to be established upon the earth; others be lieved it would be established in heaven. This last view was, however, the later. The earlier apocalyptists ex pected a Messianic kingdom here below. We can select for a somewhat closer examination the points of view of but three apocalypses, two which passed under the name of Enoch, and the Book of Daniel. Our oldest bit of apocalyptic literature is the so-called Ethiopic Enoch, 1— 36. 1 This is not all from one hand. Chapters 6-1 1 are taken from a previously existing apocalypse of Noah, and chapters 1-5 may be a later addition. It may be said with some confidence, how ever, that chapters 6-36 were composed between 200 and 170 b. c. The author of this work was deeply impressed with the wickedness of the world and sought to account for it. He found its explanation in the sections which he incorporated from the apocalypse of Noah. Accord ing to these chapters evil was introduced into the world by those angels who came down from heaven and mar ried human wives. This supposed event is alluded to in the old myth recorded in Genesis 6 : 2-4, where the 1 See R. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch, 2d ed., 1912, p. 1 f. 254 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL birth of the heroes of olden time is explained. Our apocalyptists have elaborated the brief statement. They know the names of the archangels who led these hosts. These names are appropriate to angels who were once pure, but have fallen from their high estate.1 They know that these angels, when they came down to earth, alighted upon Mount Hermon, and they know just what phase of knowledge and of wickedness each one of these fallen beings taught to mankind. Accord ing to the theory of these writers sin came into the world, not through the serpent's temptation of Adam and Eve in Eden, but through the agency of these fallen angels. This point of view was shared by other apoca lyptists. These writers seem also to have shared the somewhat pessimistic point of view of the old J docu ment, in that they consider wickedness and a knowledge of the arts to be closely intertwined. In the later part of this work Enoch is represented as beholding the punishments which these angels are already suffering, and as having had revealed to him their final rewards. These angels and their fate had a great fascination for some other apocalyptists, and even for the authors of Jude and II Peter in our New Testa ments.2 Another interesting feature of this writer's thought 1 See the writer's article, " The Origin of the Names of Angels and Demons in the Extra-canonical Apocalyptic Literature to ioo a. d.," in the Journal of Biblical Literature, XXXI, 156 f. and above, p. 190 ff. 2 See Jude 6 and II Pet. 2 : 4. Jude 14 quotes Enoch 1:9 as a genu ine work of the patriarch Enoch. THE HOPES OF THE APOCALYPTISTS 25c. is that he believes in a resurrection at which the right eous are to receive their reward and the wicked are to be punished. Until this judgment comes, the two classes will, he thinks, be kept in Sheol, but his Sheol is not that of the Old Testament. It is divided, not into two parts, like the under-world in Vergil's Aeneid, but into four, — one for the very good, one for the very bad, a third for the partially good, and a fourth for the partially bad. Here the first two classes men tioned enter by way of anticipation, upon their future bliss or woe.1 As to the kingdom of God, these writers believed that it was to be established upon the earth after the re moval of the wicked (Enoch 10: 17-22). God him self will at that time establish his throne upon the earth (Enoch 25:3). Neither the writer of the apoca lypse of Noah, nor the one who embodied his work in the book of Enoch speaks in any way of a Mes siah. A few years after the composition of Enoch 1-36 our canonical Book of Daniel came into existence. The unanimous opinion of modern scholars is that it was written between 168 and 165 B. C, during the fierce struggles precipitated by the attempt of Antiochus Epiphanes to blot out the Jewish religion. In the opin ion of the present writer, it consists of a series of tracts for the times written by at least three different men, though they all lived and wrote during the three years 1 See Book of Enoch, ch. 22. 256 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL mentioned.1 They all professed to relate visions which had been granted to Daniel, an old patriarch whom Ezekiel classes with Noah and Job.2 Toward the end of this period of three years some editor collected these tracts into one little book. The book thus constituted contains seven little apoca lyptic stories and apocalypses, and two encouraging narratives. The narratives are in chapters 3 and 6, the story of the fiery furnace and of Daniel in the lions' den. The apocalypses are in chapters 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10: 1-12: 4, respectively. Five of the apocalypses trace the history from Nebuchadnezzar to Antiochus Epiphanes under various figures, and then predict the coming of the kingdom of God; two of them (chapters 4 and 5) are content to predict the punishment of the persecutor. Out of the utterances of these tracts two things of importance emerge. One is the phrase in ch. 7:13 " like unto a son of man." This phrase is significant since the term " Son of man " afterward became the title by which Jesus called himself. It should be noted, however, that, as used in Daniel, the term is not a per sonal or Messianic title. It is used simply to charac terize the kingdom that God is about to establish. The four preceding empires have been brutal and ruthless. 1 See the writer's article, " The Composition of the Book of Daniel," in the Journal of Biblical Literature, XVII, 62-86. Wildeboer was con vinced of the correctness of this view ; see his De Letterkunde des ouden Verbonds, 1903, p. 415 f. 2 See Eze. 14: 14. THE HOPES OF THE APOCALYPTISTS 2^7 They are fittingly characterized by beasts — the lion, bear, leopard, and the beast indescribable. God's king dom is to be in comparison intelligent and humane. It is characterized by a " son of man " or a human being. That is all the term means here, but it thus came into human speech and was destined to high service in the future. The other important utterance is the definite expres sion in ch. 12: 2-4 of a faith in a resurrection and a judgment day, followed by everlasting rewards and punishments. Such a faith this writer ardently held. Not yet was it the happy possession of all; Sadducees doubted it in the time of Christ. It must, nevertheless, have been the faith of a growing multitude. That which Job had hoped for, these men held to be certain. A third apocalyptic work of importance to us is the Enoch Parables, which now comprise chapters 37-71 of the Book of Enoch. This work, which consists of three parables, was not all written at one sitting, or even by one hand,1 but its final editor has nevertheless given it a certain unity and made it to express a toler ably consistent point of view. Its writer, like the com piler of Enoch 1-36, was interested in the punishment of the fallen angels, but he lived at least a hundred years 2 after that writer and his whole outlook was dif ferent. In his time the Asmonaean kings and Saddu- 1 See R. H. Charles, Book of Enoch, p. 64 f. 2 Charles holds that Enoch 37-71 was written after 94 and before 64 B. C, and probably before 79 B. c. After Alexander Jannaeus the Pharisees were not oppressed. 258 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL cees were oppressing the Pharisees, and his sympathies were with the Pharisees. The deliverance which God was to work for his saints was from these ungodly princes.1 Passing by all minor matters, however, we direct our attention to this writer's great contribution to religious thought. This consists of his transformation of Is rael's Messianic expectations. He first of all of whom we know held that the Messiah was to be a being that had enjoyed pre-existence with God in heaven, and he also was the first to use the term " Son of Man " as a Messianic title. His conceptions of the Messiah are clearly expressed in two or three different places. In ch. 46 he says: And there I saw one who had a head of days, And his head was like wool, And with him was another being whose countenance had the appearance of a man, And his face was full of graciousness, like one of the holy angels. And I asked the angel who went with me and showed me all the hidden things, concerning that Son of Man, who he was, and whence he was, and why he went with the Head of Days? And he answered and said unto me: This is the Son of Man who hath righteousness, With whom dwelleth righteousness, And who revealeth all the treasures of that which is hidden, Because the Lord of Spirits hath chosen him, And whose lot hath the pre-eminence before the Lord of Spirits for uprightness for ever. 1 See Enoch 62: 10-13. THE HOPES OF THE APOCALYPTISTS 259 The passage goes on to describe the Messianic role that this Son of Man is destined to undertake. Again in chapter 48 : 2 f . is the following statement : And at that hour that Son of Man was named In the presence of the Lord of Spirits, And his name before the Head of Days. Yea, before the sun and signs were created, Before the stars of the heaven were made, His name was named before the Lord of Spirits. He shall be the staff of the righteous whereon to stay them selves and not fall, And he shall be the light of the Gentiles, And the hope of those who are troubled of heart. All who dwell on the earth shall fall down and worship be fore him, And will praise and bless and celebrate with song the Lord of Spirits. It was thus that the expectation of a warrior king, which Isaiah had centuries before conceived as the Messiah,1 was transformed under the pressure of the eschatological expectations, and men began to look for a heavenly pre-existent being, capable of taking more than a human part in the cataclysmic upheaval for which they were looking. It is probable that this collection of Enoch parables, which were clearly written by a Pharisee, circulated 1 See above, p. 105. 260 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL widely among the adherents of that sect. The sympa thies of Joseph and Mary and of the circle at Nazareth in which Jesus grew up were with the Pharisees, and this book may have been among those from which Christ read as a boy. At all events he took this term " Son of Man " as his self-designation, and measured the depths of his own consciousness of God against the background of such Messianic expectations as these and claimed in some sense to be the Messiah.1 It was at this point in the development of the conception of the Messiah that he brought in his view of the Kingdom of God and the function of the Messiah, and the Jewish Church gave birth to the Christian Church. Jesus as the Christ for ever illumined the religious message of Israel by adding to it the Christian message for which Israel had pre pared the way. It was thus that apocalypse, though it took in one sense a false view of God's relation to the world, per formed a most useful function. It sustained men with the hope that God would soon effectually intervene on behalf of his saints, when their hearts would have failed them could they have seen the whole future, and it fur nished the calyx that was to preserve the older concep tion of the kingdom of God and of a Messiah until one should come who could ripen both ideas, and make them blossom into a beauty of which neither prophet nor apocalyptist ever dreamed. Even then the apocalyp- 1 See the writer's Heart of the Christian Message, N. Y., 1912, p. 8 f. THE HOPES OF THE APOCALYPTISTS 26 1 tist's conception died hard. The apostles did not un derstand their Master's more spiritual view, and con fidently expected Jesus to return on the clouds of heaven.1 As he did not come mockers began to trouble the church with reference to it by the middle of the second century,2 but even though centuries passed away and he did not come, many have still not lost faith, but believe that it is yet to be. Other generations, they think, have misunderstood the time. It is only modern science and modern criticism that is revealing to us the temporary character of the apocalyptic view of the world. Like many other philosophies it was but a pass ing phase of thought, but, like them, it rendered a real service in its time. It was one of the most important links in that chain of providential events by which the world received its most precious religious inheritance. TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. The Transition from Prophecy to Apocalyptic; cf. R. H. Charles, Religious Development between the Old and New Tes taments, New York, chapter 1 (in the Home University Li brary) . 2. The Kingdom of God in Apocalyptic; cf. R. H. Charles, op. cit. chapter, 2. 3. The Apocalyptic Conception of the Messiah; cf. R. H. Charles, op. cit. chapter 3. 4. The Apocalyptic Conception of the Future Life; cf. R. H. Charles, op. cit., chapter 4. 1 See Mark 14 : 62. Compare also the Heart of the Christian Message, pp. 2-5. 2 See II Peter 3 : 3, 4. 262 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 5. The Jewish View of the Pre-existence of the Messiah; cf. G. Dalman, The Words of Jesus, Edinburgh, 1902, pp. 299- 303, and G. A. Barton in " On the Jewish-Christian Doctrine of the Pre-existence of the Messiah," the Journal of Biblical Lit erature, Vol. XXI, pp. 78-91. CHAPTER XVI THE JEWISH DISPERSION Meaning of Dispersion — Its Beginnings — The " Captivity " in Bab ylonia — Its Nature and Influence — Jewish Colonies in Egypt — The Colony at Elephantine — Its Temple and Religious Life — Later Temple at Leontopolis — Dispersion in Persia and Else where — Foreign Influences and the Essenes — Dispersion in the Hellenic World — The Septuagint — Jewish Propaganda — The Sibylline Oracles — Jewish Drama — Allegorical Method — Greek Philosophy and Wisdom of Solomon — Philo — His System — The Logos or Word — Hellenistic Judaism gave its Treasures to Christi anity — Judaism reverted to Talmudic Type. The dispersion (Greek Diaspora) is the name given by the Jews themselves to the Jewish communities out side of Palestine.1 For several centuries during the time that Judaism was developing some of its most dis tinguishing characteristics, large numbers of Jews lived in widely separated places in contact with non-Jewish peoples. This condition exposed them to influences widely different from those that were felt in Palestine. The influences that affected the dispersion were not homogeneous, so that although contact with foreigners tended to broaden the Jewish point of view, the scat tered Jews presented widely different forms of thought. It is uncertain when the dispersion began. It would seem from II Kings 20: 34 that a Hebrew colony was established in Damascus in the reign of Ahab. Perhaps 1See II Mace, 1:27; John 7:35; James 1:1; I Pet. i : i, 263 264 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL David and Solomon had, through their friendly rela tions with Phoenicia, established similar colonies there. Tiglath-pileser IV (745-727 B. c.) carried many Israel ites captive to Assyria (II Kings 15: 29), and Sargon in 722 B. c. transported 27,290 1 people from Samaria and settled them in Mesopotamia and Media (II Kings 17: 6).2 All this was, however, before the Deuteron omic reform, and it is not certain that Hebrews who were removed from their kindred at this time ever identified themselves with the type of religion that pre vailed after the reign of king Josiah. It is probable that such communities, though they maintained their identity for a time, were ultimately absorbed by the peoples among whom they dwelt. The real dispersion began when in 597 and 586 Neb uchadnezzar transported to Babylonia the most pros perous and influential of the Judean population (II Kings 24: 12-16; 25 : 11 ; Jer. 52 : 15). Perhaps as many as 50,000 people were transferred to Babylonia, and Jewish communities were formed at various points in that country. One was at Tell-abid; of this Ezekiel was a member (Ezekiel 3:15); an other was at Casiphia (Ezra 8: 17). In these Bab ylonian colonies the Jewish religion was not only main tained, but enthusiastically adhered to and developed. There Ezekiel uttered his prophecies, and proposed his 1 Sargon so states; see G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, 2nd ed., Philadelphia, 1917, p. 370. 2 Ibid., pp. 450-452. THE JEWISH DISPERSION 265 reform of the priesthood and the ritual; legislators like Ezra developed Ezekiel's thought and elaborated the priestly laws. Babylonia was much better suited to business than Jerusalem. The Jews resident in Bab ylonia represented the most forceful and enterprising elements of the nation. It was because they had pos sessed these qualities that Nebuchadnezzar had trans ported them; their initiative had made him afraid to leave them behind. It is not strange, therefore, that they became rich. More loyal, probably, to the na tional religion than the peasantry that remained in Pal estine, the " Captivity " of Babylon exerted an enor mous influence on the reorganization of the Jewish com munity in the post-exilic time. Babylonian business documents bear witness to the participation of large numbers of Jews in business, and the Bible bears wit ness to their liberality in aiding their poorer brethren at home (Zech. 6:10, 11). In things temporal as well as in religious ideals the Babylonian Jews made large contributions to the life of their kindred in Pal estine. In reality Babylonia became the great centre of Jewish Pharisaism and for fifteen centuries exerted an influence on the Judaism of the world of an extraor dinary character. Not only Ezra, but Hillel was a gift of Babylonian Judaism, and Hillel was one of the ear liest exponents of that oral law that ultimately crystal lized into the Mishna and Talmud. The Talmud in'its most widely used form was compiled in Babylonia, and the decisions of the Babylonian Geonim were widely 266 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL accepted in Europe even after the Talmudic period had passed. Indeed it was not until the overrunning of Babylonia by the Seljuk Turks drove the Babylonian scholars to Egypt and Spain that Jewish learning as sumed in those countries its really brilliant phase. The influence of the Babylonian group is profoundly felt in Judaism even to the present time. Other colonies of Jews were established in Egypt. In B. c. 608 Necho took Jehoahaz and probably others to Egypt (II Kings 23:34). According to Jeremiah 44 : 1 colonies of Jews were living at Memphis, Migdol, Tahpanhes, and Pathros in Egypt. When some of these colonists went thither we have no means of knowing except that one group of Jews fled thither in 586 B. c. (II Kings 25 : 26). This was the colony that settled at Tahpanhes (Jer. 43:7). Of greater inter est than any of these is a colony of Jews that settled at some time on the island of Elephantine in the first cataract of the Nile. The importance of this colony is due to the fact that papyri, found in recent years on the island where they lived, reveal many details of their life. In these docu ments, written between 497 and 400 b. c, we see He brews in the fifth century before Christ buying, selling, marrying and giving in marriage. The documents af ford us unexpected insight into their religion. Strange to* say there was a Jewish temple at Elephantine; it had been built before Cambyses conquered Egypt in 525 b. c. ; in 411 B. c. an enemy of the Jews had destroyed THE JEWISH DISPERSION 267 it, and in 408 B. c they appealed to have it rebuilt, — a request which was granted.1 It has been conjectured that this colony, connected as it was with a fortress, was placed at this point by Psamettik II, king of Egypt 593-588 B. c, as an out post against the Nubians.2 While this theory cannot be confirmed it seems quite probable. The temple at Elephantine appears to have been built after the adop tion of the Deuteronomic law in the year 621 b. c, for in the enumeration of its various parts there is no men tion of the " pillars " so often denounced in Deuteron omy. As this law provides that there should be but one sanctuary, it has been plausibly conjectured that the temple at Elephantine was constructed after the de struction of the temple at Jerusalem in 586 B. c.3 In this temple in the land of Egypt Yahweh was worshipped under the name Yahu or Yaho. The members of this Egyptian colony were loyal to their religion and to their race as many passages in the papyri prove. In some respects they modified by private agreement the provisions of the Deuteronomic law. For example, ac cording to Deut. 24: 1 ff. a Jewish husband may divorce a wife, but no law provides that a wife may divorce a husband. Nevertheless a marriage contract from the colony at Elephantine provides that the bride, 1 See Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1917, Pt. II, ch. xix. 2 See Herodotus, II, 161. 3 Cf. H. Anneler, Zur Geschichte der Juden von Elephantine, Bern, 19 12, p. 104 ff. 268 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL Miphtahyah may stand up in the congregation and say " I divorce Ashor, my husband." x Of course Ashor is given the right to treat his wife in the same way, but the significant thing is that the woman exacted by agreement, what the law did not allow her. Another letter dated in the year 419 B. c. is thought to inform us of the way the Jews at Elephantine received infor mation as to the provisions of the priestly code concern ing the manner of observing the Passover. It has also been thought that the documents reveal an increasing dislike of the Jews on the part of the Egyptians in consequence of the new exclusiveness which the priestly laws imposed upon them. Be this as it may, the Ele phantine section of the dispersion appears to have been composed of earnest Jews, eager in most things to ob serve the laws of their religion. If the founders of the temple at Elephantine had no thought of violating the law of Deuteronomy, having erected their temple when that at Jerusalem was in ruins, their descendants clung passionately to the possession of their place of worship after the one at Jerusalem had been rebuilt. This was most natural. Long associations aided them in regard ing the spot as sacred to Yahweh, and such associations are not easily set aside. Then, too, they might natu rally reason that, if the erection of their temple was ever right, changes of conditions at Jerusalem could not make it wrong. At all events they persisted in maintaining it. 1 See Sayce and Cowley, Aramaic Papyri discovered at Assuan, Lon don, 1906, p. 43. THE JEWISH DISPERSION 269 While speaking of this colony it is most appropriate to describe a later Jewish migration to Egypt which produced another temple. When Jonathan the Macca- bee was made high priest in 153 b. c, Onias, the son of Onias III, the deposed high priest, having fled to Egypt, obtained a grant of land at Leontopolis, as the ancient city of Bubastis was then called, and erected a temple to Yahweh there, which was modelled on the temple at Jerusalem.1 Ptolemy VII, anxious to cement the loyalty of the Jews resident in Egypt, gave Onias the revenues of a considerable territory to support the temple. Excavation has within a few years brought this temple to light, confirming the statements of Jose phus at many points.2 This temple at Leontopolis con tinued to exist until after the destruction by Titus of the temple at Jerusalem in the year 70 A. D. The move ment headed by Onias was a schism due to personal am bition. Both he and the Jews who worshipped with him in Egypt reverenced the whole Pentateuch as coming from Moses, but, as the Maccabees were not of the direct line of Zadok, Onias and his supporters ap parently felt justified in regarding the Jewish temple as administered by them as a schismatic organization. This temple and the one at Elephantine show what va garies were possible even among orthodox Jews of the dispersion. 1 See Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XIII, iii, and Wars of the Jews, VII, x. 2 Cf. G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1917, p. 38 ff- 270 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL The book of Tobit furnishes us with evidence as to the religious attitude of the dispersion in Media. As has been pointed out already 1 the Jews, as represented by this book, appear to be eager to observe the Jewish law, but were nevertheless influenced, perhaps uncon sciously, by the Persian customs and religious ideas of those with whom they daily associated. By the Apostolic age the dispersion included Parthia, Media, Elam, Babylonia, Pontus, Cappadocia, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Cyrene, Rome, Crete, and Arabia (Acts 2:8-11). Such foreign influences as those which appear in the book of Tobit appear to have found their way to Pal estine and to have aided in calling into existence about the Maccabaean period the order of the Essenes. While it is impossible to account for all the peculiarities of this sect on the theory of Persian influence, the fact that they prayed with their faces toward the sun, and that they alone of Jews, or, for that matter, of Semites, abstained from marriage and apparently regarded mat ter as corrupt, indicate that, among the foreign influ ences that produced the Essenes, Persian ideas were not lacking. According to Josephus Essenes existed in the time of Jonathan the Maccabee,2 and there were in the time of Christ about 4000 of them.3 They were celi bates, lived in communities, engaged in agriculture, ab- 1 Above, p. 253. 2 Antiquities of the Jews, XIII, v, 9. 3 Antiquities of the Jews, XVIII, i, 5, and Wars of the Jews, II, viii, 2. Philo also twice describes them, confirming Josephus. THE JEWISH DISPERSION 27 1 jured trade, demanded a novitiate of three years before admission to their order, denied themselves pleasure, kept themselves pure and upright, and were especially helpful to one another. Their purity was both cere monial and moral; they were most careful about ablu tions and kept their hands clean of theft and unlawful gain. They loved truth and denounced liars. The Essenes were in reality an order of monks, — the first order of the kind known to the Mediterranean world. That such an order should have been started among the practical, family-loving Jews seems inexplic able apart from foreign influences. No such order is native to Persia, and it has been plausibly conjectured that Buddhistic influence is responsible for the form of the organization. Possibly it is one of the results of the missionary propaganda of Asoka, the Buddhistic Constantine of India, who sent Missionaries to several Hellenistic capitals about 260 b. c.1 While the Es senes held the body to be corrupt, they held to the im mortality of the soul. When released from the body the soul was supposed to dwell beyond the ocean in a land unvexed by rain, snow, or oppressive heat. Their ideas of the soul and of immortality have been thought to be borrowed from the Pythagoraeans. Although the Essenes lived in Palestine, there is no better example than they of the diverse influences to which the dispersion was subjected. 1 See G. A. Barton, The Religions of the World, Chicago, 1917, chap ter ix, p. 160, and note 3. 272 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL The portion of the dispersion which is best known, and of which most people think when they hear the word, consisted of the Jews resident in the many cities of the successors of Alexander the Great. According to Josephus Jews followed Alexander to Egypt and were given a quarter of the city of Alexandria.1 This part of the city was called the Delta and was in the neighbourhood of the royal palace. Josephus claims that they were given the right to call themselves Mace donians, i.e., they were made citizens. Under the Ptol emies other Jews went to Egypt, some being taken there forcibly, others attracted by inducements.2 As time passed the numbers increased. In the reign of Caligula (38-41 A. D.) Philo estimated the number of Jews in Egypt at a million. Josephus also states that Seleucus I of Syria made Jews citizens in the cities which he founded in Asia and Syria, including Antioch itself.3 Some have doubted his statements, but the Jews were certainly present in the regions mentioned long before the Christian era in large numbers, — a fact that seems to make the statement probable. The Jews residents in the Hellenistic cities were com pelled to acquire Greek for the transaction of their business, and in a generation or two largely forgot their Hebrew. So many of them were resident in Egypt that they soon conceived the idea of translating their 1 Contra Apion, II, 4, and Wars of the Jews, II, xviii, 7, 8. 2 Antiquities of the Jews, XII, i, 1 ; ii, 1 ff. 3 Antiquities of the Jews, XII, iii, 1. THE JEWISH DISPERSION 273 Scriptures into the Greek tongue. Legend connects this enterprise with the name of Ptolemy II (Philadelphus), 283-247 b. c Whether the king had anything to do with the enterprise or not, scholars agree that the Pen tateuch was translated into Greek in the third century before Christ, and that the translation of the other Biblical books in time followed. This opening of the treasures of the Jewish religion to the Hellenistic world was a great event. Perhaps the motive that lay behind it was not altogether a self ish one; it is possible that already the ideal set forth by the Second Isaiah and voiced by the book of Jonah, (the ideal of winning the world to Judasim) was in the minds of those who promoted the translation. At any rate this ideal found expression a little later in many forms of activity. One ancient form of oracle among the Greeks was found in the supposed sayings of the Sibyl. These were treasured, and frequently consulted. They were widely influential outside of Greece. Rome introduced them centuries before Christ, and accorded them a high place. In the second century b. C. the Jews began to put their history into the mouth of the Sibyl in hexam eter verse.1 She was made to call herself a daughter of Noah, saying that she had come from Babylon and that the Greeks had given her a false name. She is then made to recount the fortunes of Israel, the glories of Solomon, and the various events of the national his- 1 Sibylline Oracles, Bk. Ill, lines 114-829. 274 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL tory down to about 140 b. c The Jews are represented as God's people, to whom the Messiah is promised, and all others are threatened with destruction unless they join the Jews by becoming proselytes and worship God. Since everything attributed to the Sibyl was widely read and pondered, these Jewish oracles exerted a profound influence. Another instrument that was employed for the con version of the Gentile world to Judaism was the drama. We learn from Clement of Alexandria 1 and Eusebius that a Jewish tragedian named Ezekiel wrote a play called " The Exodus " in which he dramatized that great event in Biblical history. Eusebius quotes a num ber of extracts from the play. These include a solilo quy of Moses after the murder of the Egyptian as de scribed in Exodus 2, the meeting of Moses with the seven daughters of Jethro, and his marriage to Zip- porah. Then follows the narration by Moses of a dream which his father-in-law interpreted to mean that Moses would one day be exalted to high station and would understand things both past and to come. An other extract represents God as speaking unseen from the burning bush; in another God gives directions con cerning the exodus and the passover. In a later scene an Egyptian messenger enters and recounts the disaster at the Red Sea, while the last excerpt contains the 1 Stromata, I, 23, 155; Praeparatio Evangelica, IX, 28, 29; cf. Schurer, Geschichte des judischen Volkes in zeitalter Jesu Christi, 4te Auf., Leip sig, 1909, III, 500 ff. THE JEWISH DISPERSION 275 speech of a messenger who had been with Moses in advance of the host, and who tells how Moses had found a good camping-place at Elim, where were twelve springs and seventy palm trees. The whole is based on Biblical material. The poetry, however, is laboured and dull. This Ezekiel must have had predecessors and successors in his art, though their works have not survived. Such plays, like the Sibylline oracles, were intended to familiarize the Gentile world with the facts of Jewish history and with the reality of God's choice of the Jew ish people. A part of the design was to make the Gen tiles desire to throw in their lot with Israel, that they might gain a share in her religious privileges. It was a part of that movement that Jesus characterized as compassing " sea and land to make one proselyte " (Matt. 23: 15). The movement had, for a time, con siderable success, but the necessity of circumcision and of keeping the Jewish law was a handicap which Chris tianity and the cults that flourished in the early days of the Roman empire did not have, so that Judaism ulti mately fell behind in the competition. While the Judaism of the dispersion was earnestly trying to win the Gentile world, she was herself pro foundly influenced by that world. This influence, which must have been felt in ways which we cannot now de tect, was especially noticeable upon Jewish exegesis and Jewish thought. Before the beginning of the Christian era Hellenistic students of Homer had invented the al- 276 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL legorical method of interpretation in order to maintain their interest in the ancient writings. To men who val ued philosophical and ethical ideas it seemed impossi ble that venerable Homer should sing of how Agamem non and Achilles slugged each other. Such exploits of physical strength were unworthy the lyre of the im mortal poet. There must be, they felt, some deeper meaning; so they claimed that the physical encounters were mere allegory; that the poet really sang of the contest of truth with falsehood, of light with darkness, of virtue with vice. Such a method enabled a reader to find his own best thoughts in any narrative. Into any old story, however crass, he could read any lofty philosophy which pleased him. It was a method that enabled every generation to bring up to date all the literature of the past without the trouble of rewriting it, and it became immensely popular. The Apostle Paul, himself a product of the disper sion, had imbibed the allegorical method and, in order to read Christian meanings into the Old Testament stories he employs it more than once (see Gal. 4:21- 31 ; I Cor. 10: 1-4). Through Paul the method passed into use in the Christian Church, where it has persisted until our own time. By this method the whole sacri ficial theology of evangelical Christianity is found by some in the book of Leviticus. This time-honoured method of interpretation with all its vagaries Christian ity inherited from the dispersion. More definite, though perhaps not more far-reach- THE JEWISH DISPERSION 277 ing in its results, was the influence of Greek philosophy upon certain Hebrew minds. The ground for this influence was prepared by the " wisdom literature " of the Hebrew sages which has been already treated.1 Indeed the Wisdom of Solomon, the last of the books included in that treatment, is the earliest work in which the influence of Greek philosophic thought can be clearly discerned. It is conceded that the author of Wisdom was a Jew resident in Egypt, and it is probable that he wrote in the first century before Christ. He is a true Jew and a worthy successor of the earlier sages, but contact with the Greeks had enabled him to view the world as an ordered cosmos beautifully and logically arranged. This view he had imbibed from the Platon- ists or the Stoics or both. He had also accepted the Platonic doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul (Wis dom 8 : 19, 20) . He had not, however, been influenced by the Stoic doctrine that the Logos or Reason had given the universe its beautiful order. In his system the di vine agent in the creation was Wisdom, as in the older book of Proverbs. That God manifested himself through an intermediate agency, he, with the Stoics, be lieved; but that agency was still Wisdom. This func tion of Wisdom he does not explain; he takes it for granted. In the works of Philo, an Alexandrian Jew who died about 40 A. D., the philosophical influences of Hellen ism found their noblest Jewish exponent. Philo, al- 1 In chapter xiii. 278 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL though he was more profoundly influenced by philoso phy than the author of Wisdom, was in outward form not so independent. The author of Wisdom had, like the older sages, written his thoughts in a way to make Wisdom speak her own message; Philo grounds his teaching on the Pentateuch, and, by means of allegorical interpretation, reads into the text of Scripture the doc trines he would teach. The influence of Greek Philosophy produced a note worthy effect upon Philo's conception of God. Among Palestinian Jews, and probably among the great major ity of" Jews everywhere, it was customary to think of God as a magnified man. This conception underwent a searching examination at the hands of Philo; it was dis carded and replaced by one more in accord with philo sophic thought. While he recognized that there is a certain analogy between God and man, Philo regarded God as so unlike man that our language is inadequate to describe him. He held to God's personality, but held that his essence is unknown. One result of the inscru table character of God is his namelessness. This Philo inferred from Exodus 3:14: "I am that I am." Moses had asked for God's name ; God replied, says Philo, merely with a statement that he is the self-exist ent One. Philo held that God is without qualities, that he is external, incorruptible, that he is a unity, that he is light, that he is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipo tent, that he is perfection, that he is free from passion and sin, that he is himself rest and peace. Philo rec- THE JEWISH DISPERSION 279 ognized that the world is full of toil and pain, but he found, like Plato, an evidence in this of God's goodness. God had not begrudged to imperfect matter something of his own nature, and the struggle after this was the cause of earth's agony. But even this the providence of God guides. About God, and above the angels in whom Philo implicitly believed, he recognized the ex istence of numerous divine powers. These powers cor respond in Philo's system to Plato's archetypal ideas. They are such things as piety, holiness, natural philos ophy, meteorology, ethics, polity, economy, regal, legis lative, and innumerable other powers. These powers were not conceived to be descended one from another as in later Gnostic systems, but were all regarded as equally related to God. First and greatest of all these powers was the Logos. In his idea of the Logos Philo betrays Stoic influence as the author of the Wisdom of Solomon had not. He says : " The Logos of God also is above all the cosmos, the oldest and most generic of the things that have come into being." x In another place he states " God is the most generic thing, and 'the Logos is second." The Logos was said to be the all-beautiful pattern of the human mind, and to be better than beauty itself; it is equated with the moral law; it is declared to be the bond of the universe. Philo found in man a two fold reason, the inward and the uttered. He declares several times that the divine Logos is two-fold, but does 1 James Drummond, Philo Judaeus, London, 1888, Vol. II, p. 160. 280 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL not clearly define wherein its duality consists. The Lo gos is declared to be God's reason, God's son, God's image, to be eternal; it mediates between God and creation; it constitutes the ground that the propitious God will never overlook his own work.1 Philo at least once calls the Father the first God, and speaks of the second God, the Logos.2 Sometimes Philo seems to identify Logos and Wisdom; sometimes, to distinguish one from the other. Opinions differ as to why he did this, but on the whole he appears to have employed Wisdom where the divine activity was brought into personal relations with men.3 The Logos in his view was personal and appeared to Hagar, to Jacob, and to Moses. Like the philosopher that he was Philo believed sin to be ignorance and error. It sprang from the body and its passions. It was to be put away by following the dictates of the divine Reason; and these dictates Philo probably found in the Scriptures. Thus he grafted philosophy on to the ceremonial of Judaism, and interpreted its ceremonial in the light of Platonic and Stoic thought. While Philo, in consequence of his writings, is the best example of the influence of Hellenism upon Juda ism, there is evidence that he was not the only Jew that experienced this influence. St. Paul came of the 1 Drummond, Ibid., 191. 2 Drummond, Ibid., 197. 3 Drummond, Ibid., 212. THE JEWISH DISPERSION 28 1 dispersion. In the course of his career contact with the Greeks led him to place emphasis upon the Wisdom of Israel's sages. Wisdom had been personified so as to become almost a part of God; 1 Paul declared Christ to be the Wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:30). Later in his career, when called upon to combat the ideas of the Gnostics, Paul assigns to Christ much the same func tions as Philo had assigned to the Logos. He is the image of God; the agency by which the worlds were made; the vitalizing energy which holds the universe together (Col. 1:15-17). At the end of the first Christian century the author of the Fourth Gospel took up and elaborated the Pauline idea, and he also adopted Philo's terminology. " In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and the Logos was divine. All things were made by him" (John 1 : 1, 2). It was thus that the best fruits of the marriage of Greek phi losophy with the Jewish faith passed into Christianity. Through Paul and the Fourth Gospel they shaped the Christian conception of Christ and of God. Probably it was because of the adoption of this point of view by Christians that Hellenism left no permanent mark upon Judaism. The dispersion had all along held firmly to the forms of their ancestral faith. Whatever variations local influences, whether Egyptian, Persian, or Hellenistic had produced in their theories, syna gogues were established wherever any number of Jews resided, and the law was read and expounded. As close 1 Prov. 8:29-31. 282 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL a connection as possible was maintained with Jerusalem. Many went each year to the great festivals (Acts 2 : 8-1 1), and probably many others besides Saul of Tar sus were sent from the various cities of the dispersion to be educated in Jerusalem. It was this that through out the centuries kept the Jews loyal to their law, the unifying instrument of the Jewish faith. When, there fore, Christianity broke away from the synagogue and became a hated rival of Judaism there was a natural reaction from all that which Christianity had appropri ated. The Septuagint had become the Christian Bible, so the Versions of Aquila and Theodotion were called into existence for the use of Greek-speaking Jews. The philosophic conceptions of Hellenistic Judaism had been appropriated by Christianity; there was accordingly a reaction toward the oral law, and in the centuries that followed the Talmud shaped Judaism. Babylonia, not Alexandria, was mistress of the future of Jewry.1 Nevertheless the fruits of Hellenism were not lost; they were simply poured into the Christian treasury. As the prophets and the apocalyptists had prepared the way for the Christ, so Hellenistic Judaism prepared the way for that understanding of his person that has made Christianity what it is. TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. The Babylonian Captivity and its Influence; cf. "Captiv ity," in Hastings Dictionary of the Bible and in the Jewish En- 1 Cf. G. A. Barton, The Religions of the World, Chicago, 1917, ch. v. THE JEWISH DISPERSION 283 cyclopedia, Vol. Ill ; also G. A. Barton, Religions of the World, Chicago, 1916, chapter v, §§ 93, 97-101. 2. The Jewish Colony at Elephantine ; cf . S. A. Cook, " The Significance of the Elephantine Papyri for the History of the Hebrew Religion," in the American Journal of Theology, XIX (July, 1915), PP- 346-382. 3. The Essenes; cf. " Essenes," in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Encyclopaedia Biblica, and the Jewish Encyclopedia. 4. The Jewish Propaganda; cf. O. Thatcher, The Apostolic Church, Boston, 1893, chapter 2. 5. Philo and his Thought; cf. James Drummond, Philo Ju- daeus or the Jewish Alexandrian Philosophy, London, 1888, Vol. II, or " Philo " in the Jewish Encyclopedia. INDEX Aaron, 58 Abraham, 35 ff., 76; in a Baby lonian document, 37 f. Addis, W. E., 73, 140 Ahab, 87, 91 Ahikar, story of, 245 Alexander, the Great, 145 Allegorical interpretation, 273 ff. Amos, 65, 94, 97 f. Angel of Yahweh, 173 ff. Angels, functions of, 182; in apocryphal literature, 187 ff. Animal sacrifice, 10, 80 Anneler, H., 267 Antiochus Epiphanes, 148 ff. Apocalypse, nature of, 248 Apocalypses, pseudepigraphs, 249 ; sources of, 251 ff. ; their philos ophy of the world, 252 Arabia, 3 ; influence of on Semi tic religion, 4 f. Archangels, 182 f., 188 Ark of Yahweh, 69 f . Arnold, W. R., 136 Ashera, a goddess, 53 Ashera, a post, 61 Asheras, 8, 117 Asher, tribe of, 33 f., 45 Ashtart, 6 Asmodaeus, 193 Asmonaean kings, 151, 257 Atonement, day of, 171 f. Azazel, 171, 186 Baal, 78 f. Bade, W. F., 93 Baentsch, B., 96 Batten, L. W., 136 Beliar, 194 285 Benjamin, tribe of, 27 Bennett, W. H., 50 Bewer, J. A., 237, 238 Blood revenge, 13 f. Bloomfield, M., n Breasted, J. H., 2, 23, 29, 39, 46, 84, 95, 216, 234 Briggs, C. A., 35, 66 Brown, F., 35 Budde, K., 73, 88, 140 Buddhism, influence of, 271 Canaan, conquest of, 75 Captivity, Babylonian, 264 ff. ; in fluence of, 265 ff., 282 Carpenter, J. E., 41, 50 Charles, R. H., 233, 247, 253, 261 Chasidim, 149, 150, 152 f. Cherubim, 178 Cheyne, T. K., 103 Circumcision, 8 f., 62 Clement of Alexandria, 274 Clue, historical, 23 Cook, S. A., 283 Corner, law of, 155 f. Cornill, C. H., 21 Covenant at Horeb, 58 ff.; made ethical development possible, 63 f. ; reinterpretations of, 64 f., 98 f. Cowley, A. E., 268 Curtis, S. I., 4, 17 Cyrus, the Great, 128 f. ; allows freedom to captives, 129 Dalman, G., 262 Damascus, 264 Daniel, book of, 250, 255 Dan, shrine of, 77 >86 INDEX Dan, tribe of, 33 Davenport, F. M., 15, 83 Decalogue of J, 65 ff., 90; ethi cal decalogue, 68 ff., 90 Dedication, feast of, 149 Deities confined to localities, 4 Demons in pre-exilic literature, 179; after exile, 183; in apoc ryphal literature, 190 ff. Deuteronomic code, 117 f., 169; finding of, 119 f. Deuteronomic view of the Cove nant, 64 f. Deuteronomy, 26, 267 Dispersion, 263 ff. Documents of the Hexateuch, 20 Drama of the Exodus, 274 Driver, S. R., 21, 35, 41, 126 Drummond, J., 279, 280, 283 Duhm, B., 103, 109 Dumuzi, or Tammuz, 6, 7 Ecclesiastes, religion of, 226 ff. Ecclesiasticus, religion of, 229 ff. E Document, 20, 41, 64, 78, 89, 160, 169, 177 Egypt, 2, 3, 24, 56 ff., 136, 226 ff., 272 ff. Elephantine, Jews of, 142, 266 ff. Elephantine papyri, 136 Eli, 161 Elijah, 87 ff., 91 Elisha, 16, 89 Elohim, 44, 56 Elyon, 54 Enoch, book of, 253 ff. Enoch-parables, 257 ff. Ephraim, tribe of, 27 Erman, A., 2 Esau, 34 Esdras II, 250 Essenes, 270 ff. Esther, religion of, 239 ff. Evolution, 1 Ezekiel, 125 ff., 127 ff., 164 ff. Ezra, 136, 137, 138, 265 Festivals of Yahweh, 80 ff., 169 ff. Foreign marriages, 236 f. Fullerton, K., 106, 113 Future life in Job, 222; in Eccle siastes, 227; in Daniel, 257 Gabriel, 183, 188 Gad, a god, 53 Gad, a tribe, 33 Gardiner, A., 104, 216 Gaster, M., 243 Gemara, 156 Gezer, shrine at, 76 Giesebrecht, F., 103, 104 Gilgals, 8 Gordon, G. A., 223 Gray, G. B., 21, 109, 113 Gressmann, H., 103 Guthe, H., 103 Habiru-Hebrews, 44 Hackmann, H., 103 Haggai, 132 Hamites, 2 ff., 25 Hammurapi, 6 ; code of, 79 Harford-Battersby, G., 41, 50 Harris, J. R., 245 Haupt, P., 50 Hebrews, Semites, 1 f. ; descended from Habiru, 44; in Egypt, 46 Hebron, 167; shrine at, 76 Hellenism, influence of, 281 Herem, or ban, 15 f. Herodotus, 107, 120, 121, 240, 267 Hezekiah, 107, 109, in Hierodouloi, 7 Higher criticism, 19 ff. High places, 85 f. High place at Shechem, 75 f. High priest, 162, 165 f. Hillel, 154, 156, 265 INDEX 287 Historical value of early narra tives, 21 ff. ; clue to, 23 f . Holiness code, 133 f., 170 Horeb, 58 ff. Hosea, 65, 94, 98 f. Huldah, 119 Human sacrifices, 12 f., 82 ff. Idols, 92 Images, 81 f., 92 Ingathering-festival, 13 Isaiah, 94, 101 ff., 106, 107, 108, in, 113, 115 Isaiah Second, 28 f. Isaiah Third, 133 Israel, origin of, 43 ff. Ishtar, goddess, 7 Jacob-el, 28, 35 Jacob, sons of, 26 f . Jastrow, M. Jr., 85, 93 J Document, 20, 25, 40, 44, 64, 174 Jensen, P., 19, 36 Jeremiah, 65, 120, 121, 122 ff. Jerusalem, shrine of, 77, 107 f., in, 114 f. Jesus of Nazareth, 131, 260 Jethro, 58 ff. Jezebel, 87, 91 Job, religion of, 217 ff. Jonah, religion of, 237 ff. ; mis sionary tract, 239 Jonathan Maccabasus, 150, 166 Joseph, tribes of, 29 ; stories of, 30 ff. Joseph-el, 28 Josephus, Flavius, 144, 240, 269, 270, 272 Joshua, 50 Josiah, 119 ff. Jubilees, book of, 250 Judas Maccabaeus, 149 Judith, religion of, 243 f. Kadesh, 47 f. Kenite-Midianites, 58, 71 Kenite theory of Yahweh, 57 ff. Kittel, R., 79 Knowledge, expansion of, 18 Kyle, M. G., 42 Langdon, S., 215 Leah-tribes, 27 ; at Kadesh, 48 ; enter Palestine from south, 49, 56, 70 ff. Levi, tribe of, 158 f. Leviathan, 185 f. Levites, origin of, 1593.; created as a class by Ezekiel, 80, 128 f. ; 164 f. Levitical cities, 166 f. Levitical laws, 20, 141 ; praised in Psalter, 142 ff. Lex talionis, 13 f. Lilith, 184 Logos doctrine, 279 Macalister, R. A. S., 76, 112 Maccabees, 146 ff. McFadyen, J. E., 21, 93 Malachi, 141 f. Manasseh, king of Judah, 10, 107, 114 f., 119 Manasseh, tribe of, 27 f. Marti, K., 103, 157 Mattathias, 148 f. Maweth or Moth, 54 Meissner, B., 35 Meni, a goddess, 54 Merneptah, king of Egypt, 29, 34, Messianic ideal, 105, 109 ff., 258 ff. Micah, 65, 94, 106 Michael, 183, 188 Mishna, 154 Moloch (Melek), 116 Moore, G. F., 21, 96, 116 Monotheism, 94 f., 97, 123 f. 288 INDEX Moses, 56 ff.; experience of Yah weh, 62 Moth, or Maweth, 54 Moulton, J. H., 194, 245 Miiller, F. Max, 215 Miiller, W. Max, 28 Naphtali, tribe of, 33 Naville, E., 45 Nebuchadnezzar, 122 ff., 264 Nehemiah, 135 f., 137, 138 Nicanor's day, 150 Oesterley, W. O. E., 103, 104 Passover, feast of yeaning-time, 12, 79 Paton, L. B., 29, 41, 46 ff., 51, 55, 240, 246 Paul, the Apostle, 276 P Document, 25, 41, 134 f. Peake, A. S., 233 Penuel, 188 Peters, J. P., 41, 55, 74, 92, 93, 140, 157, 215 Petrie, W. M. F., 42 Pharisees, 1538., 257 ff. Philo Judaeus, 270, 278 ff. Pillars, 8, 61, 117 Pinches, T. G., 95 Priesthood, 160, 161 f., 163 f. Priestly code, 137, 141 ; in psalter, 142 ff. Priests, wealthy, i62f. Prophecy, 15 f., 83 f., 146 Prophets, 83 f. Proselytism, 273 ff. Proverbs, religion of, 224 ff. Psalms, imprecatory, 201 f . ; na ture-psalms, 203 f. ; or Korah, 206 f. Psalter, 20, 139, 143, 151; growth of, 197 f. ; religion of 196 ff, Purim, 150 Rachel tribes, 27 ; in Egypt, 29 f . ; entry into Palestine, 51, 56 f., 71 ff. Rahab, 185 Ramses II, 45 Reform of Josiah, 119 f. Refuge, cities of, 118 Religion, Semitic background of, 2 ff. ; ceremonial, 16 f. ; pre- Mosaic, 52 ff. Resurrection, 257 Revelation, 1 Revelation, book of, 250 Revenge, 13 f. Righteousness, consciousness of, 204 f. Ritual, denounced, 97 ; develop ment of, 168 f. Rogers, R. W., 41, 106, 113 Ruth, religion of, 235 ff. Sabbath laws, 154 ff. Sacrifice, 10 ff.; theories of, n; human, 12 f., 82 f., 116 f. ; de nounced, 97 f . ; psalmists' views of, 208 ff.; a broken spirit, 214 Sachau, E., 136 Sadducees, 153 f., 257 Samaritans, 138 f. Samuel as seer, 85; as priest, 161 Sargon, 264 Satan, 180 ff., 186, 192, 231 Sayce, A. H., 268 Schrader, E., 34, 35 Schiirer, E., 274 Sennacherib, 106 ff. Semites, 2 ff . ; kindred to Hamites, ibid., animistic culture of, 4; matriarchal organization of, 5 Septuagint, 272 ff. Seraphim, 178 Serpent of Eden, 231; worship, 112 Servant of Yahweh, 130 f. Shaddai, 54 INDEX 289 Shammai, 154, 156 Shedim, 179, 184 Sheol, 255 Shrines of Yahweh, 75 f. Sibylline oracles, 250, 273 ff. Simon Maccabasus, i5of. Sin, origin of, 190 f., 231, 254; in the heart, 214 Sinai, 47 f., 58 Sirach, son of, 229 f. Smith, G. A., 93, 108, 113 Smith, H. P., 74, 93, 126 Smith, J. M. P., 96, 99, 113, 116 Smith, W. R., 5, 11, 17, 27, 77, 171, 172 Solomon, 86, 217 ; wisdom of, 230 Somaliland, 3 Son of Man, in Daniel, 256 ; in Enoch, 258 ; as employed by Jesus, 260 Steindorf, G., 95 Synagogue, 147 ff. Talmud, 156 Tammuz, 6 Temple, at Shiloh, 85; of Solo mon, 86 f. ; at Elephantine, 267 ff. ; at Leontopolis, 269 Thatcher, O., 283 Tiglath-pileser IV, 264 Tobit, book of, 270;. religion of, 244 ff. Torrey, C. C, 21 Toy, C. IL, 9, 58, 73 Traditions, classification of, 21 ff. Uriel, 188 Van Dyke, H., 196 Wellhausen, J., 116 Wildeboer, D. G., 256 Winckler, H., 19, 36, 106 Wisdom, Hebrew meaning of, 21 6f. Wisdom literature, religion of, 216 ff. Wisdom of Solomon, 277 ff. ; re ligion of, 230 Word of God, 231 f. Yahweh, 44; covenant with Is rael, 56 ff.; Kenite god, 588.; of North Arabia, 59 ; God of fertility, 60, 81; of weather, 60; of war, 61; agricultural, 75; connected with soil, 78; jealous God, 67 f . ; the one God, 94 f . ; angel of, 173 ff. Zadok, 162 Zecheriah, 132 Zecheriah, Second, 146 Zephaniah, 121 Zerubbabel, 131, 132, 133, 165 Zimmern, H., 19, 36 FEINTED IN THE UNITED STATES Or AMERICA '"THE following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects. Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered By DR. KAUFMANN KOHLER, President of Hebrew Union College $2.50 This is the first complete systematic presentation of Jewish. Theology to appear in English; the work of a scholar of international reputation, now president of the Hebrew Union College. Its five hundred pages give a detailed yet popular exposition of the belief of Judaism. It will serve both as a text-book for students and as a general source of enlightenment for Jewish and Christian readers. Dr. Kohler divides his text into three main parts : Part I, God; in which God As He Makes Himself Known to Man, The Idea of God in Judaism and God in Relation to the World, are taken up ; Part II, Man ; and Part III, Israel and The Kingdom of God. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY PublisHers 64^86 Fifth Avenue New York Zionism and the Jewish Future BY VARIOUS WRITERS Edited by Harry Sacher Cloth, i2tnot $/,2j "This volume should be read by Zionists so that they should become more familiar with what even some of them know more or less imperfectly. It should be carefully perused by non- and anti-Zionists so that they may become informed with a subject which many of them are inclined to censure without any knowledge of that which they are censuring." — B'na B'rith Messenger. " ' Zionism and the Jewish Future ' is one of the most illuminating of all the serious- minded books of the year. If we belonged to the Hebrew race we would first master all that is said about Palestine and the movement to restore it to a living place among the Nations. Next, we would go to the Great Jewish Encyclopedia, and look up everything connected with the subject,' — also the fifteen or more writers who have made this book. Lastly, if we agreed with the movement, we would get in line at once. Note in especial the bibliography of the whole matter (Appendix 4), " Zionism looks ' forward, not backward,' and the vast hope behind it is one that will help the non-Jewish world as much as the children of Abraham. May Israel yet have a Hebrew University in Jerusalem, They are right — these idealists. Palestine ' is essen- t:illv the land of religious influences and spiritual association/ and also of ' political and geographical importance.' The problems in all this are fairly met and fully discussed in this book, which Dr. H. Sacher edits. "And how is the Gentile to approach the subject? With a perfectly open mind on all its economic, historical and religious questions. If taken up in this way the book grows on one; it presents wholly reasonable aspirations which all right-minded people can endorse and will desire to aid as far as practicable. To have a ' perfectly open mind ' is to take up the problems of these earnest people who discuss ' Zionism ' as our fiends, our neighbors, our fellow-workers. Don't be ' tolerant ' or patronizing towards Jew or Gentile, American, European, Asiatic, African or Islander. "We are ' all of one blood.' " One of the best of Californian novelists, who has enjoyed the book, writes as follows : "'It is an excellent round-up and exposition of all the vagrant — and vague — theories and history of the subject. It makes the evolution and logical being of the question perfectly clear. Whereas in most Jewish minds Zionism means a belief in Palestine as the native soil of all Jews and the refuge for the oppressed, the motive here expressed is that by drawing the Jewish soul to its ancient Fatherland, it will create a spiiitual center for all Jewry.' " — Daily Fresno Republican. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York Studies in Judaism By RABBI SOLOMON SCHECHTER, Litt.D. The author is President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America since 1902 ; formerly Reader in Talmudic, Cambridge University, and Pro fessor of Hebrew, University College of London, 1898-1902. Cloth, i2tno, 366 pages, $r.jo " The book is, to our mind, the best on this subject ever written. The author condenses a literature of several thousand pages into 564 pages, and presents to us his history in a splendid English and splendid order. This work deserves the highest appreciation, and without the slightest hesitation do we recommend it to the public at large, and more especially to our co-religionists in this country." — fewish Tribune. '7 CONTENTS Introduction. 1. The Chassidim. 2. Nachman Krochmal and the "Perplexities of the Time*5- 3. Rabbi Elijah Wilna, Gaon. 4. Nachmanides. 5. A Jewish Boswell. 6. The Dogmas of Judaism. 7. The History of Jewish Tradition. 8. The Doctrine of Divine Retribution in Rabbinical Ln- ERATURE. 9. The Law and Recent Criticism. 10. The Hebrew Collection of the British Museum. ii. Titles of Jewish Books. 12. The Child in Jewish Literature. 13. Woman in Temple and Synagogue. 14. The Earliest Jewish Community in Europe. Notes.Index. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-68 Fifth Arenue Hew York A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy By ISAAC HUSIK Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania Cloth, octavo, I + 4SS pages, $3.00 The first complete history of mediaeval Jewish rational istic philosophy for both the student and the general reader which has as yet been written in any modern tongue. The story is told simply and interestingly. Dr. Husik is gifted with the faculty of clear insight and he has suc ceeded in grasping and in exhibiting in a very readable manner the essential nature of the various problems treated and the gist of the solutions offered by the different Jewish philosophers discussed. The author has not attempted to read into the mediaeval thinkers modern ideas which were foreign to them. He has endeavored to interpret their ideas from their own point of view as determined by their history and environment, and the literary sources, religious and philosophical, under the influence of which they came. It is an objective and not too critical exposi tion of Jewish rationalistic thought in the middle ages. In the words of an eminent reviewer, "To have com pressed a comprehensive discussion of five centuries of earnest and productive thought upon the greatest of themes into a book of less than four hundred and fifty pages is an achievement upon which any author may be congratulated. To have done the work so well and in particular to have expressed profound reflections upon abstruse problems in a style so limpid, so fluent, so readily understood is to have placed all who are interested in thought and thinkers under great obligation. That an American-Jewish scholar should have produced a pioneer work that must, for a long time to come, be the authority in its field is a subject of felicitation to all who have at heart the perpetuation of Jewish learning in America." THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York