History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6)

The practical theory of life amongst ancient nations was intimately connected with their conception of the Divine; the one implied the other. Was their perverted morality the result of perverted theology, or its original cause? Whatever may have been the relationship between cause and effect, the injurious consequences remained the same. Polytheism, however poetically described, produces discord, passion, and hate. In a council of gods, there must be strife. Even when the objects of worship are of a dual nature, the result is an inimical contrast – one god of creation and one of destruction, one god of light and one of darkness. The creative divinity is usually divided into two sexes, and is endowed with all the frailties of sex. Although it has been said that man formed his gods according to his own image, yet when theology was once systematized, morality was demanded from the worshipers of the gods, who nevertheless became as sinful as the images which they adored. The people of Israel proclaimed a God at one with Himself, and unchangeable; a holy God, who requires holiness from mankind, the Creator of heaven and earth, of light and darkness. He, though mighty and exalted, is yet near to humanity, especially protecting the poor and the oppressed, a jealous but not a vengeful God, to whom the moral conduct of man is not a matter of indifference, although he is a God of mercy, and regards all mankind with love as the work of His hands. To this God evil is an abomination, for He is a God of justice, a Father to the orphan, and a Defender of the widow. These words of world-wide import penetrated deep into the heart of man, and, at a later period, were the means of hurling the beautiful gods of the heathen into the dust.

The thought and desire that men should be equal before the law as before God, that the stranger should have equal rights with the native, also grew from the idea of man's resemblance to the divine image, and became established amongst the Israelites as a fundamental law of the state. This was the first recognition of the rights of man, for, among the nations of old, even the leaders of civilization never conceded that right which has now become an established rule. If a stranger, wrecked on a foreign shore, was no longer offered up as a sacrifice, as in the earliest times, he was nevertheless placed under exceptional laws, and only considered to be a degree higher than a slave. This harshness towards the stranger, to the disgrace of nations, actually survived the destruction of the ancient world.

Israel's dominant idea became of far-reaching importance in its ethical tendency. It is by no means a matter of indifference in the moral conduct of man, as regards both great and small things, whether the earth, the scene of action, is governed by one Power or by several mutually antagonistic forces. The one conception ensures unity and peace, the other unveils a picture of dissension and discord, and leads to barbarism. The likeness of man to God – in opposition to the blasphemous idea of God's likeness to man – and the train of thought arising from monotheism impresses man with self-respect and with a regard for his fellow-man. Thereby the life of even the humblest of men is placed under religious and moral protection.

Is the abandonment of the new-born infant by its parents a crime? Amongst the ancients, even amongst the Greeks, it was not so regarded. The mountains resounded with the wailings of female children, and the rivers bore along the corpses of the little creatures, whom their parents (finding it inconvenient to rear them) had cast into the depths of the streams without a pang or regret. The ancients felt no prick of conscience at sighs of a murdered infant, and still less would a tribunal of justice demur at such crime. To kill a slave was of no more consequence than to slay an animal in the chase. Why, then, do cultured persons now shudder at the idea of such misdeeds? Because the people of Israel proclaimed the law, "Thou shalt not kill, for in the image of God has man been created. Thou shalt not take even a young life, nor one whose existence is passed in servitude." It has been asserted that man's intellect has made giant strides, whilst his moral culture has remained far behind, or has progressed but little since primæval times. But it must be remembered that the barbarous state of man declined much later than his ignorance.

Slumbering conscience and a repugnance to crime was aroused only at a later period, and this awakening was due to the people of Israel. Still less did the ancient nations recognize chastity of conduct, for they were sunk in the depths of vice and unchastity. Whilst the nations were still at the pinnacle of their greatness the Jewish Sybilline poets repeatedly uttered warnings that the sinful nations would be given over to death, because of their unnatural vices, their atrocities, and perverted worship, and the abominations which had ensued in consequence.

But they only scoffed at the warning voice, continued to pursue their evil ways, and were destroyed. Their arts and their wisdom could not save them from death. This shows that the Israelite nation alone and solely effected the emancipation of man by proclaiming holiness of life, the equal rights of aliens and home-born, and all that is included in the term humanity. It is not superfluous to point out that the foundation-stone of culture, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," was laid by this people. Who prayed that the poor might be raised from the dust; the suffering, the orphan, and the helpless from the dunghill? The Israelite people. Who declared that everlasting peace was the holy ideal of the future, "when one nation should no longer draw sword against the other, and should no longer learn the art of war"? Israel's prophets. That people has been called a wandering mystery, but it should rather be called a wandering revelation. It has revealed the secret of life, and the art of all arts – how a nation may guard itself against being given up to destruction.

This people cannot be charged with having introduced self-mortification, self-torture, and a gloomy view of life, and as having thus paved the way for that monkish asceticism which covers the brightness of life with the pall of death. Quite the contrary; all the nations of antiquity except the Israelites laid especial importance on death, made immolations at the graves of the departed, and gave themselves up to pious melancholy. These were the mysteries which, like all exaggerations, passed to an opposite extreme, and ended in the excesses of orgies. The gods themselves did not escape contact with death; they had to make a death-journey, and here and there might be seen the grave, or the Calvary, of some god. The Israelite conception, which revered in God "the source of life," places so much value on life, that it seeks to banish from the circle of holiness all that recalls death. So little is thought of what lies within and beyond the grave, that the Israelites have been reproached with having indulged in the enjoyments of life. And this is true.

The prophets knew no higher ideal than that the earth should be filled with the knowledge of God as the sea covers its bed. Life is highly prized, but it must be a pure and holy life. Only after a long and unhappy course of history did a gloomy and ascetic theory of life creep in, and produce a sad and misanthropic order, which stamped out pure gladness as a sin, and regarded the earth as a valley of tears, and to this condition it actually became, to some extent, reduced.

The Israelite people have nothing in common with their kindred, who are called Semites, whether in their self-torturing madness in honor of one god, or in their dissipated excesses in honor of another god. The Israelites were severed from the Semitic tribes by hard discipline, and they weaned themselves from the perversions of their alien kinsmen. It is likewise erroneous to endeavor sophistically to attribute the peculiarities of Israel to the Semitic character, or to consider the relationship of the two nations as that of two descendants from one stock. The Israelites and other Orientals, through divergent causes, are the result of a mixed union, and both have lost many traits of their inherited nature.

The Israelites decidedly have great faults; they have greatly erred, and have been severely punished for their shortcomings. History describes and reveals these errors, their origin, their eventful results, and the consequences which resulted from them. Many of these faults were acquired, and were to some extent the effect of their surroundings; but there were also peculiar and original features in the character of this people. Why should they be more perfect than all other nationalities, not one of which has ever attained to perfection in all directions?

Those who eagerly endeavor to show the failings and shortcomings of the Israelite people as through a magnifying glass unconsciously pay them high honor by making greater demands upon them than upon other nations. It is a decided defect on the part of the Israelites that they left behind neither colossal buildings nor architectural memorials. Possibly the race did not possess any talent for architecture; or perhaps, owing to its ideals of equality, the kings and warriors were not so highly esteemed that it was considered necessary to erect in their memory stupendous palaces, pyramids, or marble monuments. The hovels of the poor ranked higher. The Israelites did not even erect a temple to God (Solomon's Temple being built by the Phœnicians), for the heart was God's temple. The Israelites neither sculptured nor painted gods, for they did not consider the Deity a subject for pleasant pastime, but gave Him pious and earnest devotion. Nor did the Israelites excel in artistic epics, and still less in drama or comedy. This may have been a want in their idiosyncrasy, and is also connected with their strong distaste for mythological births and scandals. They evinced a similar dislike to all dramas, public games, and theatrical displays. However, in compensation, they had poetical conceptions which adequately reflect the ideals of life, as these are described in the Psalms and in the poetically fashioned eloquence of the prophets. Both possess this trait in common, that their fundamental quality is truth and not fiction, whereby poetry instead of being a mere toy and plaything for the imagination, became the instrument for attaining ethical culture.

Their literature, though it does not treat of the drama, is yet full of dramatic vigor; and, if not actually humorous, is nevertheless replete with irony, and from its ideal pedestal proudly contemplates all delusions. The Israelite prophets and psalmists, whilst developing a beautiful poetic form, never sacrificed the truth of the subject for the sake of style. The Israelites also introduced a historical style of their own, which pictured events according to the canons of truth, and without any endeavor to excuse or hide the shortcomings of heroes, kings, or nations. This peculiar Hebrew literature, of which no other nation on earth can show the like (at best only an imitation), through its excellence has achieved many moral conquests. The nations capable of culture could not withstand the warmth and truth which pervade these writings. If Greek literature elevated the dominion of art and its perceptions, Hebrew literature idealized the domain of holiness and morality. The history of a nation which has achieved so much has a decided right to full appreciation.

Judged superficially, the course of history from the entry of the Israelites into Canaan until far into the times of the kings may easily give rise to misconception, for the most striking events seem to bear a political character. Invasions, battles, and conquests, occupy the foreground of history. We behold on the scene leaders of nations, heroes, kings, and generals, treaties are made and broken, whilst the prevailing intellectual activity is hardly perceptible in the background. The hero-judges who first form the subjects of history – Ehud, Gideon, his son Abimelech, and especially Jephthah and Samson – evince so few of the national characteristics that they might equally well pass for Canaanites, Philistines, or Moabites. Of Samson it has been asserted that he is cast in the mould of the Syrian Hercules. Most of the kings, and also their sons and courtiers, acted as arbitrarily as if there had been no code of law to set limits to their despotic will, and as if they had never even heard of the Ten Commandments of Sinai.

For centuries the people wore the bonds of wild idolatry, and differed only in a slight degree from the heathen world which surrounded it. Was the race in its beginnings actually of no importance? Did the people for a considerable time keep pace with its Semitic kinsmen, and only at a given period become stamped with those peculiarities which caused it to contrast so strongly with its neighbors? Did not Sinai illumine its very cradle? or was this fact stated to have been the case only in after-days and by historians? Sceptics have said as much, but the fragments of Israelite poetry, dating from primæval times, give the lie to this assertion. Several centuries before the inception of kingly rule, and in the first days of the hero-judges, in the days of Deborah, "the mother in Israel," a poet sang of the marvels of the revelation; at Sinai he described the people of God as contrasting strikingly with their environment, and ascribed their lapses to the fact that they had followed "false gods," and thereby fallen away from their widely different origin. Even if one were inclined to doubt the veracity of history, yet credence must be given to poetry as a trustworthy eye-witness. It is not to be denied, that the spiritual birth of the Israelite people was simultaneous with their actual birth, and that Sinai was the scene of the one event, as Egypt was of the other; and that the Ark of the Covenant with the sacred Ten Commandments was its faithful attendant from the earliest days.

The nucleus of the people's faith in God and in their mission, the fundamental doctrine graven on the tablets of stone, were of hoary antiquity, coeval with their representatives. Men especially chosen, and having no connection with the work-a-day actions and turmoil of the people, like the Cherubim at Shiloh, were to shield the sanctuary. This sanctuary only apparently bears a religious stamp, is only apparently theocratic, but its essence is contained in the laws of morality. God is the origin of the doctrine, but not its end, which lies rather in individual and communal life and its legitimate demands.

In this law God is the Holy Will, determining whatever is ethical and good. He is the sacred Type which indicates the way, but not the cause for which actions are to be performed, in order that some definite advantage may accrue. The Israelite creed is, therefore, by no means a dogmatic doctrine, but one of duty. Though a law of deliverance, it has no mystic admixture. But this religion or law of redemption was certainly beyond the comprehension of the people while yet in its infantine stage, and the ideal which was intended to endow it with significance and vitality remained for a long time an enigma to the people. This enigma was first solved by the prophets. A considerable period elapsed even after the prophets had spoken their burning words of fire, before the nation became the guardian of the teachings heard at Sinai, and before they erected a temple for it in their own hearts.

But as soon as this maturity was attained, and the "heart of stone had become a heart of flesh," as soon as the prophetic body were able to dispense with the intervention of the priesthood, they could depart from the scene; they had become superfluous, for the nation itself had attained to a complete comprehension of its own being and its own mission. History shows how this twofold transformation was effected; how the family of a petty sheik became the nucleus of a people; how this small people was humiliated to the condition of a horde; how this horde was trained to become a nation of God through the law of self-sanctification and self-control; and how these teachings, together with a spiritual ideal of God, became breathed into it as its soul.

This national soul likewise grew into the national body, was developed and took the form of laws, which, though they were not subjected to the fluctuations of time, were yet suited to the occurrences of the age. The transformation was effected only amidst severe struggles; obstacles from within and without had to be overcome, and errors and relapses to be amended, before the nation's body could become a fitting organ for the nation's soul. The hidden things had to be revealed, the obscure to be illumined, vague notions to be brought into the light of certainty, before that ideal Israel (as foreshadowed by the prophets in the far distance of time, and which had been expressly distinguished by them from Israel as it then existed with all its defects) might become a "light unto the nations." Assuredly, there is no second people now dwelling upon the globe, or hidden within the stream of time, which, like Israel, has carried with it a pre-ordained law. This people not alone possessed such a law, but also the full conviction that it existed only on account of this law, and in order to be the exponent of this law, and that its sole importance lay in its vocation to announce the truths of salvation. These were to be inculcated not by violence and compulsion, but by example, by action, and by the realization of those ideals which as a people the Israelites were to proclaim.

The profound insight afforded by History has proved that it was the mission of the Greeks to bring to light the ideals of art and science, but the Greeks themselves had no knowledge of this fact.

It was otherwise with the Israelites. Not only was their task apportioned to them, but the revelation was made to them that it was their task, and that without it they were of no more significance than "a drop in the pitcher, or a mote of dust in the balance." Only on this account did the men of God call the Israelites a chosen people. The fact of being chosen imposed on the nation heavier and more important responsibilities, and a greater measure of duty; and when their mission, as the exponents of a special and religious moral conception, became clear to them, the people prized their task beyond all things – more highly than their fatherland and nationality, and even more than life itself. And because they sacrificed themselves, the idea which dominated them attained to enduring existence and to immortality.

The Israelites were the first people who possessed the courage of their own opinions, and who risked all worldly goods for their convictions. They proved that a propaganda-making truth can be sealed only by the blood of its martyrs. The loyalty of their convictions endowed them with steadfastness and endurance. Their inner core cannot have been utterly corrupt, seeing that they were enabled to bid defiance to the destructive force of nearly four thousand years, and to a host of enemies. The history of the Israelite nation in its beginnings is of a decidedly changeful character. Two distinct factors determined its elevation and decadence, one physical, the other spiritual, one political, the other ethical. Suddenly, there gushed forth a spiritual current, strong and foaming like the mountain spring which has been gradually gathering whilst hidden from sight, and the existence of which commenced only at the moment when it issued from its rocky bed.

The appearance of gifted prophets and psalmists from the days of Amos and Isaiah resembles, in its force and fertilizing power, the outpouring of a mountain spring. The prophets and psalmists who sowed the seed of great and ever true thoughts in a charming and attractive form, and who constitute the flower of the Israelite people, could not have arisen and carried out all that they actually effected, unless the previous conditions had been favorable to their purpose. They arose because the soil had been spiritually fertilized for them, and they were understood only because their exalted moral theories of life did not announce anything novel or strange to the people, but they preached what was already well known, in impassioned and poetically illumined words, and were impelled by self-abnegation, zeal, and manly courage.

Even those who do not believe in wonders must admit and admire the marvelous course of Israel's history. Is it not marvelous that just during the untoward conditions of the Babylonian exile, in a country "full of idols and license," and amongst a Judæan nobility who, untaught and unconverted by their sad experience, continued their evil ways during exile – that amid such surroundings a spiritual movement could be developed which found vent in a peculiarly characteristic manner? During the Babylonian exile the psalmists bewailed in touching strains, and with poetic brilliance, their own sorrows and the national misfortunes, and these strains resound even to-day in the high-places of worship.

During this exile that magnificent didactic poem in semi-dramatic form between the suffering Job and his friends was composed, a poem consisting in dialogues on human destiny and Divine Providence, which is almost unrivaled. During this exile the prophets once more addressed their deaf and blind community in poetic strains. Amongst them was that divinely-favored man, the second Isaiah, who was called the "great unknown." His words of fire pour forth with inimitable power, chastising like a father, yet comforting like a mother, wounding as with a lash, yet healing as with balm. This prophet fully established the fundamental idea for the justification of Israel's continued existence, that, by its submission of martyrdom, it is destined to be the servant of God, to become a light to all nations, and to carry salvation to the ends of the earth. Is it less marvelous that Cyrus accorded to the Babylonian exiles the permission to return to their native land, to cultivate the deserted country, to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple in honor of their God, and again to enjoy a certain amount of independence? Still more wonderful is it that prophets had predicted with unqualified certainty the regeneration of the nation in a single day, and that the exodus from Egypt would be succeeded by an exodus from Babylon. Even their prophecy that the heathen would join the Judæan people was fulfilled. Thus the Judæan nationality became resuscitated in their own land, the people became filled with ancient recollections and new hopes, and were determined to realize the exhortations of the prophets. The people preserved their independence in their own country during six hundred years. The proneness to idolatry, which, to a great extent, had been found irresistible in the pre-exilic period, suddenly disappeared, and with it also pagan customs and vices. The Torah, as the law book, was to become the guiding-line of the regenerated nation, whose "heart of stone had been changed into a heart of flesh," and not only of the individual but of the whole community. By periodically reading the Torah in the Synagogue – a custom which was now introduced – and by explaining it at least in one of the school-houses, its teachings became the common property of the higher classes. The Torah was the "Magna Charta" of public life in the same way as the Judæan community developed into a species of "Civitas Dei."

The prophets could now withdraw, for the law-givers – Pharisees (Soferim) – relieved them of their duties, and created a Synhedrion, which also possessed a legislative function. Thus post-exilic history received a form entirely different to that of pre-exilic times. The tribunal of the Synhedrion was filled with painful anxiety as to the rigid execution of pentateuchal ordinances. The teachers of the people desired to avoid the repetition of pre-exilic conditions, of idolatry, intercourse with the heathen, and the imitation of pagan customs. Entire separation from the heathen world and total isolation were the consequences. A similar state of things was also maintained against the Samaritans, who defiantly sought to obtain equal rights of citizenship in the "Civitas Dei." This was denied to them. As, however, they would not be prevented from worshiping the God of Israel, they erected a rival temple on Mount Gerizim. Thus there arose the first semi-Judæan sect, that of the Samaritans, who assumed an inimical bearing towards Jerusalem. This was one result of over-punctiliousness. The other consequence was the result of the maxim, "Make a fence round the law." Thereby everything which had formerly been permissible, and which only touched on the fringe of what was forbidden, was interdicted. The members of the Synhedrion, or authorized teachers of the law, on the ground of this maxim, added fresh decisions to the pentateuchal laws. These new sopheric laws, and the prevailing punctiliousness, did not prevent the establishment of Jewish colonies in Alexandria, Antioch, and other Greek centers which had been founded by Alexander of Macedon and his successors. The Jewish colony in Egypt built a special Temple, that of Onias, which rivaled the sanctuary at Jerusalem. There the law was first translated into Greek, and in this language it was read in all Greek-speaking countries. This was a turning-point in the course of Jewish history, although, owing to the practice of reading the law in Greek, public mourning was instituted in Jerusalem. Judaism from this cause became, to some extent, more closely approximated to the pagan world, and the accession of nations into the community of Abraham was promoted. On the other hand, the Hellenizing of Judaism brought the nation close upon the verge of destruction, and exposed it to the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, and also to apostasy. From these troubles it was only delivered through the revolt of the Maccabees, whose rising was the cause of many martyrdoms.